COVID-19 GLOBAL PANDEMIC
QUARANTINE NEWS
24 MARCH 2020
If the past two days have not opened the eyes of the working class to just how disposable the ruling class regards our lives, what will it take for those still in denial about it to recognize that? Even the corporate news media and some politicians are acknowledging that US President Donald Trump’s impatient insistence to get the market restarted in order to keep wealth flowing to the top is dangerous. Health officials – the same who Trump dismisses as having less informed perspective on pandemics than himself – are pleading for continued quarantine.
Capitalists, whether they are politicians, billionaires, corporate executives (sometimes all 3 in one!), or their boot-licking peons, have been all too willing to sacrifice the lives of others in the name of capitalism – and without the consent of those victims! Check out the tweets from this alleged attorney, Scott McMillan, as seen on Twitter.
Scott’s ready to sacrifice seniors and disabled people like myself, but one of the insightful fans from the Comrade Birb Facebook page pointed out, 2.5% probably covers a lot of capitalists! Give that an ole Midwest OPE!
I understand that things are moving quickly, but please take notice of how much we are getting to see from “behind the curtain” of power and recognize that class war has been going on since long before any of us were born. This is a long-time struggle of humanity, and it only makes sense that it is reaching its peak at the same time that our planet manifests an inability to sustain that struggle on our behalf. This imbalance of life quality, due to the hoarding of resources by a a minority, while relying upon the exploitation of the majority and the extraction and exploitation of our shared ecosystem to enrich a few cannot continue. The economy is a human construct. Humans must preserve ourselves. The ruling class has the means to make this planetary pause possible. They have demonstrated they lack the will. The working class must demonstrate to them that labor creates all wealth!
There are stores, factories, offices, all standing still during quarantine. But are those empty? NO! They contain all of the objects and machines that we are told would create wealth without us, but what is actually happening? It is obvious that they need workers to perform activities with those tools in order for the enterprise to be functional. Workers are the only way that Capitalism works. And all workers must be underpaid in comparison to the value they create in order for profit to exist. Profits are the stolen wages of workers.
The ruling class has been receiving billions and trillions in bailouts to prop up their hoards of wealth during this pandemic, and they have received taxpayer funded bailouts in the past when they have crashed the economy with their greed and carelessness. Every time this happens, the working class suffers more losses in income and freedom.
We are all facing the imminent collapse of our healthcare systems as they are overwhelmed by patients, and this is forcing crushing choices upon medical staff when they have limited resources like respirators, masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment. Already we’ve read the stories of those doctors and nurses who have had to make unthinkable choices about who will receive life-saving care, and who will be left to die.
We know concentrations of people together help spread the disease, and yet very little to nothing is being done to help imprisoned people and the refugees being held in concentration camps. We know we all need to shelter in place, but what of the unhoused – expecting them to crowd into shelters that already didn’t have enough space before this crisis is sentencing them to horrible deaths.
Have you heard or read what death is like for victims? I won’t get into all of the terrifying details, but it is not a gentle good night, and if you’re feeling cocky about it, saying it’s no different than seasonal flu, you are deadly wrong, and need to correct it.
We are going to have traumatized survivors – both of the virus itself, and beloved survivors of victims of the virus, in our communities, and already do. But those numbers are going to grow, and we’re going to need to develop community strategies and resources for helping them. The federal government has demonstrated its reluctance to provide us with our basic survival needs, even as those same leaders manipulated the news cycle in order enrich themselves from our suffering instead of warning us. Do not trust them to have your best interests at heart. They regard workers as expendable biolabor units, to be used, abused, and disposed of when they’ve used us up.
Capitalists use indoctrination and propaganda to manipulate us. But the working class actually has the upper hand being in our homes. Don’t go back to work to make capitalists even more rich. Demand that the billionaires who made their fortunes on the backs of workers, and who misled us about this global pandemic through the media and politicians – who they own – in order to secure their own gains, pay for all of us. We’ve learned that billionaires and corporations pay little to no income taxes. So the working class has been holding up the economy all this time. Let that sink in. They cannot “restart the economy” without workers!
I echo Comrade Lenin’s query: What Is To Be Done?
And I urge you to get familiar with Mutual Aid, Rent Strike, and General Strike.
You must choose sides. You are unlikely a capitalist if you are reading this. And if you are, HEY you know you can stop being a hoarder and share your resources in humanity’s time of need, right?
The Age of Capitalism is over. The Working Class must choose to fight for socialism, or lay down our lives for the barbarism of these wealth hoarders, who could very literally bring on extinction with their continued insistence that they be served and enriched during a global plague, and by restarting the same capitalist practices that have driven the ecosystem damage that this pandemic will likely be traced back to one day. My personal suspicion is that it is something that was frozen safely away in the permafrost and that it’s one of the things that scientists have been warning us would happen for the last several years now.
Restarting the economy and returning to “status quo” is a death sentence for humanity. The billionaires can easily eliminate debt and enable us to all live safely and comfortably in homes while our species recovers from this pandemic and we can work on sustainable, just policies for all to be implemented. They’ve always had the means – they just haven’t had the will. You’re seeing it everywhere with rapid policy and structural changes happening in response to covid-19. Let’s give them the will.
I aim to misbehave. Do you?
