COVID-19: masters, government, state, worse
remedies than evil
The corona virus epidemic that developed in China
infecting and affecting an entire area, Wuhan, of 11 million people,
and spread to several other countries in the world with an important
outbreak in Europe, Italy, has become a global health emergency that
has gradually brought all States and governments into play.
The corona viruses are a group of circular viruses
with a series of protrusions on the surface that make them resemble a
crown, penetrate the cells of the mucous membranes and affect the
upper respiratory tracts and progressively reach the lungs. Hence its
dangerousness, particularly for people who have a lower resistance
because of previous diseases, mainly due to age and/or to reduced
immune defense.
It is the latest case of historical epidemics and
pandemics: avian flu, Ebola virus, SARS, nevertheless there is still
no effective vaccine to eradicate it.
Huge financial resources, the enormous potential
of science and research, in a system dominated by the laws of profit,
did not allow us not only to prevent but also to promptly intervene
in front of the spreading of these serious diseases. Most part of
science and research are in the hands of capital and are used to a
significant extent to produce more and more sophisticated weapons;
indeed a part of them is used to create chemical and bacteriological
weapons, capable of spreading deadly diseases in a theater of war. On
the other hand, US imperialism has already used chemical and
bacteriological weapons in the Vietnam war, and the affair of
chemical weapons has emerged repeatedly in the recent wars in the
Persian Gulf, the Middle East, etc.
The development of these deadly epidemics should
make clear to the eyes of proletarians and people’s masses that
this system is not able to protect people's lives, indeed it puts
their health more and more at risk, just as it puts at risk the
environment and the life of the whole planet.
If we do not talk about this during emergencies
that affect everyone, if we do not go to the root of what happens, we
do not identify the real culprits of the thousands of deaths, the
tens and tens of thousands, so far, of infected people and the
serious danger represented by increasing extension of the epidemic.
Therefore, we cannot ask the system that creates
and feeds these diseases, to those who make profits in this system –
including the scandalous pharmaceutical farms - the states and
governments that manage this system, to be those who can protect and
save us in these dramatic circumstances. We cannot ask who destroy
public health system day by day, in favor of private sector and
transforming it into a sensational business, to be the organizers of
the response to the health emergency today.
This is why the measures that governments are
taking are generally unacceptable, as spirit and practice. They are
all based on the centralization of the power of intervention and on a
state of emergency which imposes, as in a dictatorship, not only some
necessary health, prevention and intervention measures to contain the
epidemic, but a general militarization, with the closure of jobs,
schools and every gathering and socialization place, saying to
everyone: “stay at home... we'll take care of it...”
During these weeks it has already been seen that
this line, this practice has not prevented the corona virus from
spreading, nor the number of dead and sick people from increasing,
and indeed created an atmosphere of induced fear among people, making
them increasingly prey to news and measures that impede their normal
life, without a real connection with an effective result in
protecting against the spread of the epidemic.
In our country, a Council of Ministers in
permanent session mainly produces bans, shared by all parties, local
institutions, etc.; while they are “tight-fisted” in financing
and empowering hospitals and health facilities, enrolling doctors,
nurses, calling voluntary associations and any association that
organizes the masses to participate and support the emergency.
The people’s masses are kept under a terrifying
information and those who want to know more must do by themselves,
looking the internet, instead of being really informed, conscious and
mobilized. Factors that are decisive for dealing with emergencies and
even epidemics.
The masses of elderly people, who risk more, left
to themselves, a policy of "swabs" either too extensive or
defective, give the sense not of a response but of a use of the
corona virus emergency to achieve the protection of the interests as
ever.
Clearly, in a situation in which the world economy
is undergoing an economic and financial crisis, with the spread of
the trade war, of which that to China war is the main one, it is
obvious that the impact of the corona virus epidemic opens the way to
an extreme exacerbation of this crisis, to a world recession that
extends from the eternal areas of poverty and misery to the very
heart of the capitalist and imperialist countries.
Be it as it may, the corona virus originates in
the country with the highest development rate in the world, China,
and finds its "contagion" in the other rich countries.
So, are we “all in the same boat” to deal with
the emergency? Not at all. Every crisis, even the health crisis,
accentuates the contrast between a handful of rich countries and the
peoples of the world and, within these countries, between the
industrial and financial bourgeoisie, the parasitic classes on the
one hand, and the proletarians and the people’s masses on the other
one.
Governments and ruling classes want to rule more
than before, despite the fact that their rule appears more and more
clearly the cause social and human disasters. They want to use the
emergency to direct resources to guarantee their economies and
profits; while proletarians are given at the most the misery of
unemployment insurance, if their factory is located in an area where
the closure is imposed. And they take shelter from any protest by
prohibiting it from source, with measures that forbid strikes,
demonstrations, meetings and any similar activity. Proletarians and
people’s masses are good for working, even where health is at risk,
but it is forbidden to go on strike to claim, to ask for what they
really need -even the so-called "masks"- this cannot be
done, is prohibited. But there are
no prohibitions on being exploited,
dying for the job – so many deaths these days in the perennial
situation of working conditions with lack of security - on this,
there are no impositions from governments and states. Indeed, if you
report all this you get fines, repression.
No! Communists, the class unions and
organizations, the struggle movements cannot and must not accept this
state of things. A part of them say to represent the workers and the
masses, but when they are needed, where are they?
Their wavering around the ban on women's national
strike on the March 9 and other strikes is shameful. Mainstream
unions share the government measures and are committed to convince
workers not to question them at all; but most of the base unions and
mass movements are not consistent with the things they write and say
in their communiqués.
It is the first time in the history of the Italian
Republic that a general national strike is banned. Should we accept
it?
We must – and we did- call for the full
mobilization of the proletarians and people’s masses, both in the
dramatic conditions of the so-called "red zones", and in
all other parts of the country where this general emergency is still
unjustified and illegitimate.
We have to organize, hold meetings,
demonstrations, to transform the right requests raised by workers,
above all in the health sector, into claims that urge an immediate
acceptance.
In no factory, no job, we can accept to be sent
home without guarantee of full wages and continuity of work and if
the are not allowed workers being able to have their say on whether
the measures adopted are really suitable for the situation in their
workplace and territory. No precarious worker should be sent home.
Being understood that there is still no data about workers who have
fallen ill for corona virus in their factory or has been infected
operating in their workplace, apart from the healthcare.
Finally, if there is really a serious danger, it
is certainly not by transforming the hospitals into besieged
fortresses that deal with it, but by creating ten, one hundred, one
thousand health units, hiring doctors and operators everywhere: in
the workplace, in industrial areas and in the territories. Every
citizen should easily find who informs him, who checks her health and
assists her.
The health emergency is an opportunity to reverse
what has been done with the privatization of health care.
If not now, when? If there is not a movement of
struggle and mobilization, how can we hope that this government will
serve our interests.
As well as the closure of schools is unnecessary
and harmful. In occasion of other emergencies, youth mobilized and
had proven themselves. On the contrary, with closed schools they
brought back to tinkering with smartphones.
We do not know, and nobody, including the
so-called "scientists and experts" who appear on TV, can
tell whether we are in a severe but temporary and under control
phase, or it is just the beginning of something much more extensive
and heavy. What is certain is that we should let pass not a single
day accepting this state of thing or without caring out all the
necessary activity so that the proletarians and people’s masses
take into their own hands, not the precautionary measures which are
suggested –most of which are common and trivial- but the real fate
of their own health, their daily life and even more the future that
belongs to us, and must not become a nightmare and an endless horror.
Italy
10 March 2020
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