[D66] The coronavirus pandemic crisis intensifies

[A.OUT]

wsws.org:

The coronavirus pandemic crisis intensifies
Capitalism is at war with society
13 March 2020

The coronavirus pandemic is developing into a social, economic and 
political crisis on a scale that is without precedent. Yesterday’s 
drastic fall in global markets and especially in the United States, 
where Wall Street recorded its greatest one-day loss since 1987, arose 
from the recognition that the pandemic will massively impact the world 
economy and profoundly disrupt the existing social order.

Estimates of the probable scale of deaths from the illness are causing 
growing anxiety. The total number of confirmed infections worldwide is 
approaching 150,000 and rising exponentially, but this vastly 
understates reality. Due to the lack of adequate testing and the long 
latency period before symptoms, the actual number is far higher. The 
official death toll is now over 5,000, and the lives of countless 
millions throughout the world are in danger.

Italy is deepening its nationwide lockdown, with virtually all stores 
closed and streets emptied. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said 
that 60 to 70 percent of the population will become infected, meaning 
that millions will require intensive care or die. Iran has reportedly 
begun digging mass graves as the epidemic spirals out of control. France 
is closing all schools and universities. In the United States, major 
public sporting and entertainment events have been canceled, and grocery 
stores have quickly run out of basic necessities.
Servpro cleaning workers are sprayed as they exit the Life Care Center 
in Kirkland, Wash., Thursday, March 12, 2020, at the end of a day spent 
cleaning inside the facility near Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the inability of the capitalist 
system to deal with such a crisis. Governments throughout the world have 
responded with a staggering level of incompetence and disarray. No 
preparations have been made for an entirely foreseeable disaster. Health 
care systems, starved of resources, are overwhelmed.

The complete incapacity of the United States, the richest capitalist 
country in the world, to respond to this emergency is an indictment of a 
government and of the entire economic system.

In his national address on Wednesday night, President Donald Trump 
epitomized the indifference of the capitalist oligarchy to the lives of 
millions of people. His nationalist diatribe placed blame for the 
“foreign virus” on China and Europe.

Trump’s speech came after weeks in which the president, focused entirely 
on the impact of the crisis on the stock market, proclaimed that 
everything was fine, that coronavirus was not a serious threat. He could 
not bring himself to express an ounce of sympathy for the masses of 
people in the United States and internationally who are seeing their 
lives upended. He announced no measures to address the absence of 
testing or the extreme shortage of health care facilities.

It is not, however, just a matter of the sociopathic personality of the 
present occupant of the White House. Trump is the product of American 
capitalism, of a society dominated by unprecedented levels of 
inequality, in which vast wealth has been accumulated by the financial 
elite at the expense of everything else.

The class character of the government response was starkly revealed on 
Thursday. The Federal Reserve, in a desperate and futile attempt to 
counteract the selloff on Wall Street, announced that it was allocating 
$1.5 trillion to buy up stocks and other assets. The US Congress, on the 
other hand, is haggling over a few billion dollars in assistance to 
those who are thrown out of work or otherwise impacted—a drop in the 
bucket compared to what is urgently required.

The outbreak of the pandemic and its consequences can only be understood 
within the context of the development of global capitalism over the past 
four decades. These four decades have revealed all the socially 
reactionary characteristics of a system based on private ownership of 
the means of production, in which all considerations of social need are 
subordinated to the drive for profit and vast personal wealth. The motto 
of the capitalist oligarchy is: “If the accumulation of our billions 
requires the death of millions, so be it.”

In 1987, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher infamously declared that 
“There is no such thing as society.” Thatcher’s dictum was the 
justification for a wholesale attack on social programs and 
infrastructure and a massive transfer of wealth from the working class 
to the rich. For four decades, the ruling elites, above all in the 
United States, have engaged in social plunder. All policy has been based 
on the private enrichment of the oligarchs at the expense of society.

Both political parties, Democrat and Republican, have presided over this 
social arson. For the past three years, as Trump has waged his assault 
on workers and immigrants, the Democrats proclaimed that the overriding 
threat to the American people came from Russia. All social opposition to 
the Trump regime was subordinated to the reactionary agenda of the 
military and intelligence agencies.

Now we see the consequences. More than any other country, the United 
States has revealed a level of unpreparedness that is nothing less than 
criminal. On Thursday, the director of the Ohio Health Department stated 
that evidence of community spread indicates that one percent of 
residents in the state are infected, or 117,000 people. Only five 
individuals have actually been tested.

The Centers for Disease Control has the capacity to process only 300 to 
350 tests a day. In practice it is doing even less. This very week, even 
as the contagion spread throughout the country, there were only eight 
tests on Tuesday and none on Wednesday. Anthony Fauci, the director of 
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, acknowledged 
in testimony before Congress on Thursday that “the system is not really 
geared to what we need right now… That is failing.”

As the disease spreads, the health care system in the United States will 
be quickly overwhelmed. The number of hospital beds and intensive care 
units is utterly inadequate to meet the expected demand, meaning that 
tens of thousands of people will simply not be able to get care, vastly 
increasing the death toll. Health care workers face a shortage of 
critical supplies, including masks and other essential gear, exposing 
themselves and their patients to heightened risk.

Workplaces are not equipped to ensure safety, with many workers 
reporting unsanitary conditions, a lack of soap and even hot water. On 
Thursday, an autoworker at a Fiat Chrysler plant in Indiana tested 
positive for the disease, but the plant, a critical bottleneck for FCA 
production, is being kept open. Service workers, most of whom have no 
paid sick leave, are dangerously exposed.

As schools and colleges are being closed, hundreds of thousands of 
students face eviction from their dormitories with no plans in place for 
alternative housing. Parents are being forced to take unpaid time off 
work or find childcare with nothing in place to assist them.

The same story is repeated in every country. Governments are floundering 
to safeguard the profits of corporations as millions face the 
consequences with no assistance. There is no coordination or plan to 
address the pandemic. The World Health Organization, which supposedly 
exists to coordinate responses to health emergencies, is powerless, and 
its guidelines and regulations are being universally ignored.

Precious time was wasted as the global pandemic gathered fatal momentum. 
When the pandemic first manifested itself in Wuhan, Washington was 
interested in the development only from the standpoint of how the crisis 
in China might be exploited to the geopolitical advantage of the United 
States. The media paid only limited attention to the threat and issued 
no calls for urgent and globally coordinated action.

In contrast, basing itself on an international socialist perspective 
that prioritizes the common universal interests of the working class, 
the International Committee of the Fourth International and its 
affiliated Socialist Equality parties recognized the danger and sounded 
the alarm. The World Socialist Web Site warned this past January 28: 
“The outbreak has exposed the enormous vulnerability of contemporary 
society to new strains of infectious disease, dangers for which no 
capitalist government has adequately prepared.” The WSWS wrote that the 
urgent need for internationally coordinated action to fight the pandemic 
was undermined by national conflicts:

     At a time when rational planning across national borders is 
critical to combat the global spread of a virulent disease, the United 
States and China are locked in a growing trade conflict in what has been 
called a new “cold war.” Even as new pathogens require the scientific 
resources of every continent to combat, the countries of the world are 
building metaphorical and literal walls.

     The defense of human civilization against the threat of global 
pandemics, just like climate change and the growing threat of ecological 
disasters, requires a level of planning and global cooperation of which 
capitalism is incapable. Society has outgrown the capitalist system and 
the arbitrary divisions it imposes on the world. The provision of the 
most existential social needs requires rational planning. That is, it 
requires socialism.

Six critical weeks have been wasted by the ruling oligarchs and the 
global threat has grown exponentially. Action must be taken.

The essential principle that must guide the response to the crisis is 
that the needs of the working people of the world must take absolute and 
unconditional priority over all considerations of corporate profit and 
private capitalist wealth.

The Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the 
Fourth International demand a massive, internationally coordinated 
mobilization of social resources to combat the coronavirus, including 
the allocation of trillions of dollars to ensure access to testing and 
the highest-quality medical care for all those infected. The class-based 
and profit-driven system of health care must be abolished, replaced with 
equal and universal coverage. A massive public works program must be 
initiated to produce desperately needed medical equipment.

Immediate measures must be taken to safeguard the health of workers. 
Workplaces where there is a danger of the spread of the virus must be 
shut down, with full income to those affected. Where schools are closed, 
parents must be given paid time off. College students forced out of 
dormitories must be provided safe housing. There must be a moratorium on 
evictions and utility shutoffs, combined with a moratorium on rent 
payments and other forms of emergency assistance.

All those who claim, like Bernie Sanders, that anything can be done 
without a frontal assault on the capitalist system itself are peddling 
lies. In a speech on Thursday, Sanders declared that as many as 400,000 
could die from the coronavirus, and that the crisis “is on a scale of a 
major war.” Sanders, however, repeated his claim that measures to 
address the crisis can be achieved through the actions of both the 
Democratic and Republican parties.

In fact, what the crisis proves is the urgent necessity of a mass 
political movement of the working class in the United States and 
internationally against capitalism and for the socialist reorganization 
of world economy. What we are witnessing is the consequence of a society 
organized on the basis of profit. A society in which three individuals 
own more than half the population is incapable of resolving any of the 
great problems confronting mankind.

The giant banks and corporations must be placed under public ownership 
and democratic control. The vast fortunes of the rich must be 
expropriated to make funds available to ensure universal access to 
health care, housing, utilities and other social needs. All of economic 
life must be reorganized on the basis of a global, planned economy, 
removing the obstacle of private property and the profit motive. The 
last consideration on anyone’s minds should be the impact on corporate 
profits and Wall Street share values.

The pandemic has laid bare the inescapable necessity of a fundamental 
restructuring of society. This is not the first time in history that a 
great crisis has demonstrated that human progress is inseparable from 
the struggle against inequality. In an important new book, The Great 
Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to 
the Twenty-First Century, historian Walter Schiedel writes: “Throughout 
recorded history, the most powerful leveling invariably resulted from 
the most powerful shocks. Four different kinds of violent ruptures have 
flattened inequality: mass mobilization warfare, transformative 
revolution, state failure, and lethal pandemics. I call these the Four 
Horsemen of Leveling.” Each of these Horsemen are now visible.

The future of humanity is at stake. Capitalism is at war with society. 
The working class, under the banner of international socialism, must 
wage war against capitalism.

Joseph Kishore and David North