Vaccinate for Class solidarity here ♦ Communist Analysis Resonates with Workers and Youth here ♦
Vaccinate for Class Solidarity, not for Bosses’ Mandates
USA, October 23— “As a teacher, I am frightened,” wrote a comrade three weeks ago. “Unvaccinated students are attending school. But as a teacher I am mandated to teach in person, while school district officials hide in their offices. They don’t give a damn about the education or the safety of those students.”
Many private and public institutions (including schools) are now mandating Covid vaccination. Hundreds of healthcare and airline employees have been fired for refusing to submit proof of vaccination.
In capitalism, being fired puts a worker at risk of homelessness and starvation. That won’t be true in communism, where all will be supplied according to need. If someone can’t or won’t comply with health and safety measures, they could be excluded from doing a particular kind of work. We would find other work for them, and meanwhile they would have food, health care and shelter just like everyone else.
Follow the Science – and Fight for Better, Communist Science
In communism, the masses will be able to trust science in a way we really can’t today. Now, capitalists control, profit from, and sometimes distort scientific research. Politicians lie about it. In contrast, communist science will be done by and for the masses!
Meanwhile, though, we should try to follow the science. Vaccinations save lives. So do masks. Wearing a mask is a concrete and crucial act of social solidarity. We urge those around us to be vaccinated, except for a very few people with unusual medical conditions.
Health is a class question.
The worldwide death toll from Covid-19 surpassed five million on October 1. The highly contagious Delta variant has exposed wide disparities in vaccine availability worldwide and anti-scientific vaccine hesitancy in some places where vaccine is available.
Maps in the capitalist press show vaccinations and cumulative deaths as percentages of each nation’s population. They don’t show who in any country has access to vaccines, or to medical care, clean water, nutritious food or safe housing.
Capitalism is a worldwide system. The existence of racism, poverty, exploitation and war means that it is an unhealthy system. This deadly system will lead inevitably to more pandemics like Covid until we get rid of it.
The capitalists have a problem. They want to rein in the pandemic to stabilize their economies. But they can’t do that, or create a healthy world, while managing a society based on exploitation, racism, climate disaster and war.
Some capitalists are expanding vaccination mandates. Others are refusing to allow any mandates at all. The result is mass confusion. This is classic divide and rule. Having failed to stop the virus, they now want to shift the blame for its spread to those yet unvaccinated. Still without providing the social supports many need to get the vaccine, such as childcare, sick pay, transportation, and time off work.
Vaccination is an act of solidarity and a socially responsible choice. But we as communists never call on capitalists to coerce the working class.
Communists call for communism. It is our responsibility, always, to struggle for class solidarity and to fight for a communist world. In that communist world, social relations, not profit, will govern our lives.
We will rely on collective struggle against all forms of anti-social behavior. That means collective organization to protect each other from criminals as well as collective struggle against less serious anti-social behavior. We won’t rely on cops, or the external discipline of bosses, markets, pay checks and unemployment lines.
Acting on that commitment now means struggling with our co-workers, friends, neighbors and relatives to act in their class interest, in solidarity with other workers. That includes masking up. It means following the science and getting vaccinated where we can.
Some of our friends and comrades have been convinced, out of fear, to support capitalist vaccine mandates. But we don’t call for the bosses to protect us, or to keep us safe. We don’t call for more power in the hands of the capitalist state. And we don’t side with the capitalists in calling for the disciplining of unvaccinated workers and children.
We call on workers to overthrow the capitalists and their murderous system. We will build a new society where we work together to build healthy social relations and a healthy society.
There are no short-term, reform solutions to this crisis. The only solution is communist revolution.
Communist Analysis of “Vaccine Hesitation” Resonates with Workers and Youth
NOTE: The comrades and friends quoted here had read a version of the article above that appeared several weeks ago on the ICWP website.
USA, October 23— “This article really resonated with me, especially the part about the government failing us and shifting the blame to the unvaccinated rather than addressing the root of why people aren’t vaccinated,” said a friend. She does not identify as a communist, but she says she is “getting there” as she learns more. She compared the U.S. government to a “toxic parent who messes up a thousand times, yet has the audacity to say, ‘Well, why aren’t you following my rules?’”
Vaccine hesitation is often rooted in the racist US health care system. Another friend, an unvaccinated Black woman, said the article also resonated with her because her distrust “comes from the gatekeeping of scientific and medical knowledge as well as those institutions being rooted in white supremacy like the rest of the American systems.”
She touched on the notion that the vaccine rollout caused mass confusion. “The ‘rulers’ don’t keep us safe; they control us and what gets distributed and to whom… and I’m supposed to trust that?”
She mentioned that reading a communist point of view on vaccine hesitancy made her feel less apprehensive about getting the vaccine. She also appreciated reading that the politicians, in typical capitalist fashion, shift the blame of their failure to stop the virus to those who are unvaccinated.
A comrade’s similar response highlighted the rulers’ hypocrisy. “The elite are indifferent to death, and suffering amongst the working class puts them at a profit loss, which is all they care about,” he said. “This is why the blame for Covid has now shifted to those who are not vaccinated. What they fail to address is even with the presence of a vaccine there is still a pandemic and still billions unvaccinated due to the hoarding of the vaccination by wealthy capitalist countries.”
A new ICWP member argued that “community care is why people should get vaccinated. To put an emphasis on mutual-aid community vaccine support. Because the bosses won’t care for us, and medical reasoning is manipulative.” She thought the article needed “more emphasis on community needs.” This new comrade has joined an ICWP youth collective. She has agreed to show Red Flag to two close friends and invite them to the next meeting.
An airline worker, whose family immigrated to the US from the Philippines, commented: “That was VERY interesting. I like the vaccine in solidarity idea. I especially appreciate what is presented regarding how from a communist standpoint, the idea of the worker being penalized is to be rejected. As you can imagine, it’s big talk at work right now. This perspective is the first one I’ve been able to appreciate that addresses the penalty by the bosses.
“In general, what I struggle with the most as I’ve read Red Flag,” she continued, “and am still mulling and volleying in my mind, is ideals versus actually attainable goals in the face of the privileged. Example: I don’t believe in nationalism on any scale. It’s a root cause for so many issues. Yet it’s not realistically changeable. So we must work within its constraints. Literal boundaries.”
We need to discuss, with these friends and others, how communist society will address these issues. The strength of our fight against racism, sexism, nationalism, xenophobia and more will depend on winning millions and then billions of people to struggle with themselves and each other.
Communism will lay the material basis that will make this possible. Workers will no longer be money-producing factories for the bosses. No bosses! All genders will play key roles in fighting for this society. Nationalism and xenophobia will become archaic as borders are smashed and workers’ unity grows.
We are not willing to merely lengthen our chains (reform). We are fighting for a real communist world. The sooner our friends, families, co-workers, soldiers, sailors, and others join ICWP, the closer revolution will become and the sooner this can happen. Break the chains of wage slavery!