Wednesday, April 22, 2020

COVID-19 and Capitalist Carnage

The politics of the pandemic is nasty and divisive. And politicians thrive on it. Working people around the world face an agonising choice; to go to work and risk catching COVID-19 or becoming destitute. Not working can mean hunger and homelessness. Our fellow-workers are feeling this pain right now.

We all live under an economic system that values our lives relative to our ability to produce profits for the owning class. We are measured by our productivity. In this coronavirus pandemic, many are finally awakening to understand its bitter consequences. We are now aware that we do not have access to the resources we need to live decently or, perhaps even to survive. People are now beginning to understand just how badly governments has let us down by their belated and disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most working people now understand that our problems are more entrenched and that we remain trapped in a social  system that presents us with only limited choices which have already proved unable to solve our problems, even when the solutions are well-known and obvious. The king has no clothes and sits stark naked on his throne, tossing bags of money to his friends in court as he rules over an empire of corruption, inequality, war, poverty and racism. 

The apologists for the capitalist system have always pushed the narrative that homelessness, poverty, and inequality are aberrations in an otherwise healthy society. Recessions we were told are avoidable by the correct economic fiscal policies implemented by governments. Populist demagogues have presented themselves as protectors of the poor. Don’t be fooled. This crisis didn’t start with the coronavirus. Across the world, people need to question capitalism.

It should no longer be possible to ignore the structural crisis of poverty and inequality. Lockdowns reveal how expendable the majority of workers are. While at the same time, it’s ever clearer how many of the most “essential” tasks in our economy are done by the least well-paid workers. The spread of death and disease via the Covid-19 pandemic exposes its disproportionate impact on poor people and people of colour. It is working people who suffer and die while the rich, like the sharks they are circle around, to sieze the opportunities to further enhance their wealth and power.

These crises have highlighted our collective interdependence. Isn’t it time to demand a transformative change in the way we run and organise our society. This crisis demonstrates the way an economy structured around the rich brings death and destruction in its wake.

Capitalism is economic and political system that is structurally incapable of acting for the common good, even when millions of lives are at stake. It is not just failing to solve our problems. It is the problem. We must grow a political movement based on real solutions to the systemic problems of society, directly challenging the powerful interests who control and profit from the status quo. We do not have to accept a dysfunctional profit system with its ever-worsening inequality and poverty. Healing our sick society is the key to a healthy future. We have descended into insane chaos because of capitalist madness.

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