The highest incidence of Covid deaths are seen in developed
countries, thought to have better treatment facilities. Though one can
think of many reasons, the main culprit is the neo-liberal policies that
have curtailed public health services. Lack of timely treatment is one
of the leading causes of deaths in the United States and Italy. Many
received no treatment at all. For the vast majority of the poor who do
not have health insurance in the United States (the majority of
African-Americans and Spanish speaking Hispanics), even primary care is
impossible.
The same is true of the unemployed middle class. Therefore, they would not have gone to a doctor as soon as they felt ill. By the time they are forced to go, the disease would have gone out of control. Lack of adequate equipment or staff made matters worse. Trump and other imperialist rulers exhibited the heights of selfish irresponsibility at the outset. Rather than caring for the health of the people, their concern was to maintain routine, profit-seeking economic activities. This too contributed to the galloping death rate seen over there. Such a huge loss has been caused by a disease that has a death rate of barely two per cent. This sharply brings out the sheer incompetence and anti-people character of neo-liberalism and its progenitor, capitalism.
The role of these criminals doesn’t end there. There are those who argue that the advent of such pathogens is incidental, none can stop it. Then there are those who think that shortcomings can, at the most, be identified in the measures taken to deal with it. There are those who describe it as a punishment delivered by nature and those who oppose this. Nature certainly hasn’t come as some sort of a transcendental power to punish us. Neither will it do that in future. Yet, something of that sort has surely taken place, in the sense of Engels’ words.
Engels wrote that though man may boast that he has conquered nature, he will, in the end, be given a heavy blow by nature, reminding him who the true master really is. What he meant was the consequences of human actions. These words, which exposed the hollowness of capitalist claims, also hinted at the danger of its destructive development approach.
That is well seen in the origins and spread of today’s Corona pandemic. Some have reduced the matter to genetic causes alone. Thereby they hide the role played by imperialist relations that bind the world. That role is scientifically analysed and argued out in the upcoming lead article of the Monthly Review’s May issue (jointly written by Rob Wallace, Alex Liebman, Louis Fernando Shaw, and Roderick Wallace).
They too start from the wet meat market in Wuhan. But they don’t get bogged down in the food habits of the Chinese, seen as strange in the orientalist gaze of the imperialist world. Rather, their essay enters into the social and economic relations that are revealed by this market. “How did the exotic food sector arrive at a standing where it could sell its wares alongside more traditional livestock in the largest market in Wuhan?” – this is where they begin from.
They point out, “Well beyond fisheries, worldwide wild food is an increasingly formalised sector, evermore capitalised by the same sources backing industrial production.” A chain extends back from the Wuhan market to the hinterlands where exotic and traditional foods are raised by operations bordering the edge of a contracting wilderness. And then a number of trading/transportation chains link up such centers to different countries and big cities. The corona virus arrived, traveling over it, much like SARS that came before it.
Some multinational corporations, such as Johnson & Johnson, have prepared a feasibility map marking where new germ cells may appear in the future. The geographic view that they adopted points to Third world countries,. The Monthly Review essay criticises this approach. It points out, “Focusing on outbreak zones ignores the relations shared by global economic actors that shape epidemiologies.” When these relations are taken into consideration, not Third world countries, but the main sources of global capital — New York, London, and Hong Kong — turn out to be the worst hotspots. These new viruses harmful to humans spread from wild life. Much of that is happening today at the boundaries of capitalism. That is, in the remaining forest areas. Deforestation destroys the habitats of disease-carrying wildlife, thus creating conditions for its spreading out. Within a few days, the new pathogens that began their journey from sparsely populated forests, spread out across the globe, sheltered by a globalisation straddling time and space.
The crux of this essay may be summarised thus: Viruses that had been largely contained through the complexities of the tropical forests have entered the mainstream through the deforestation caused by capital, and deficits in public health and environmental sanitation.
In short, the changes in livelihood conditions and environmental conditions of the vast majority, caused by globalisation and neo-liberal policies, lie at the root of the present tragedy. Its primary solution is the destruction of the imperialist system and the success of the Communist project. That is the only path to realise a humaneness that values human life and redeems nature, of which those lives too are a part.
In fact, both Cuba and Vietnam point to that possibility. They are not socialist countries today. They are countries that have been re-entangled by imperialist relations in one or the other manner, by the restoration of capitalism. When China increased its wages, global monopolies moved to Vietnam. However, some remnants of the socialist era still persist.
The health sector is still largely in the public sector. There are organisations that can contribute voluntary service on a large scale. These countries have been aided by such factors in fighting the pandemic. One can see how the achievements of the old socialist era have benefited China too, now an imperialist country. Keralam, where the public health sector has been largely defended through mass struggles, has been able to combat Corona in a better manner compared to other Indian states. Meanwhile, big private sector hospitals inhumanly turn away people who approach them with a cold or fever.
It remains to be seen how long this will last. The impact that Corona has created is sure to bring about a resurgence in public health care. However, its subordination to the dynamics of capital will impose barriers. The memory of capital is rather weak. There is a good chance that the demands of profit will once again force the public sector to yield to privatisation. Even if the public health system is retained, it could be used as a great source of data that serves capital. That is what was seen in the Springler deal*, which allowed data collection hardly bothering about individual privacy.
Data collected in the guise of serving the public health service could become raw material for pharmaceuticals, insurance companies and others. This is a new, more dangerous, level of privatisation. Capital will be able to profit while hiding behind the structures of the public sector; absolutely indirectly. The same holds for the health app Modi is promoting.
It’s not enough to have a public sector. It must be one that truly serves the people. That will be possible only when it becomes part of a transition towards a society that eliminates the divide between the private and public in the economy and infrastructure. If this is to be revived in any country in the world, not as a shadow of socialism but as a transition to communism, as a continuing revolution, it must be guided by the current heights of communist theory.
The same is true of the unemployed middle class. Therefore, they would not have gone to a doctor as soon as they felt ill. By the time they are forced to go, the disease would have gone out of control. Lack of adequate equipment or staff made matters worse. Trump and other imperialist rulers exhibited the heights of selfish irresponsibility at the outset. Rather than caring for the health of the people, their concern was to maintain routine, profit-seeking economic activities. This too contributed to the galloping death rate seen over there. Such a huge loss has been caused by a disease that has a death rate of barely two per cent. This sharply brings out the sheer incompetence and anti-people character of neo-liberalism and its progenitor, capitalism.
The role of these criminals doesn’t end there. There are those who argue that the advent of such pathogens is incidental, none can stop it. Then there are those who think that shortcomings can, at the most, be identified in the measures taken to deal with it. There are those who describe it as a punishment delivered by nature and those who oppose this. Nature certainly hasn’t come as some sort of a transcendental power to punish us. Neither will it do that in future. Yet, something of that sort has surely taken place, in the sense of Engels’ words.
Engels wrote that though man may boast that he has conquered nature, he will, in the end, be given a heavy blow by nature, reminding him who the true master really is. What he meant was the consequences of human actions. These words, which exposed the hollowness of capitalist claims, also hinted at the danger of its destructive development approach.
That is well seen in the origins and spread of today’s Corona pandemic. Some have reduced the matter to genetic causes alone. Thereby they hide the role played by imperialist relations that bind the world. That role is scientifically analysed and argued out in the upcoming lead article of the Monthly Review’s May issue (jointly written by Rob Wallace, Alex Liebman, Louis Fernando Shaw, and Roderick Wallace).
They too start from the wet meat market in Wuhan. But they don’t get bogged down in the food habits of the Chinese, seen as strange in the orientalist gaze of the imperialist world. Rather, their essay enters into the social and economic relations that are revealed by this market. “How did the exotic food sector arrive at a standing where it could sell its wares alongside more traditional livestock in the largest market in Wuhan?” – this is where they begin from.
They point out, “Well beyond fisheries, worldwide wild food is an increasingly formalised sector, evermore capitalised by the same sources backing industrial production.” A chain extends back from the Wuhan market to the hinterlands where exotic and traditional foods are raised by operations bordering the edge of a contracting wilderness. And then a number of trading/transportation chains link up such centers to different countries and big cities. The corona virus arrived, traveling over it, much like SARS that came before it.
Some multinational corporations, such as Johnson & Johnson, have prepared a feasibility map marking where new germ cells may appear in the future. The geographic view that they adopted points to Third world countries,. The Monthly Review essay criticises this approach. It points out, “Focusing on outbreak zones ignores the relations shared by global economic actors that shape epidemiologies.” When these relations are taken into consideration, not Third world countries, but the main sources of global capital — New York, London, and Hong Kong — turn out to be the worst hotspots. These new viruses harmful to humans spread from wild life. Much of that is happening today at the boundaries of capitalism. That is, in the remaining forest areas. Deforestation destroys the habitats of disease-carrying wildlife, thus creating conditions for its spreading out. Within a few days, the new pathogens that began their journey from sparsely populated forests, spread out across the globe, sheltered by a globalisation straddling time and space.
The crux of this essay may be summarised thus: Viruses that had been largely contained through the complexities of the tropical forests have entered the mainstream through the deforestation caused by capital, and deficits in public health and environmental sanitation.
In short, the changes in livelihood conditions and environmental conditions of the vast majority, caused by globalisation and neo-liberal policies, lie at the root of the present tragedy. Its primary solution is the destruction of the imperialist system and the success of the Communist project. That is the only path to realise a humaneness that values human life and redeems nature, of which those lives too are a part.
In fact, both Cuba and Vietnam point to that possibility. They are not socialist countries today. They are countries that have been re-entangled by imperialist relations in one or the other manner, by the restoration of capitalism. When China increased its wages, global monopolies moved to Vietnam. However, some remnants of the socialist era still persist.
The health sector is still largely in the public sector. There are organisations that can contribute voluntary service on a large scale. These countries have been aided by such factors in fighting the pandemic. One can see how the achievements of the old socialist era have benefited China too, now an imperialist country. Keralam, where the public health sector has been largely defended through mass struggles, has been able to combat Corona in a better manner compared to other Indian states. Meanwhile, big private sector hospitals inhumanly turn away people who approach them with a cold or fever.
It remains to be seen how long this will last. The impact that Corona has created is sure to bring about a resurgence in public health care. However, its subordination to the dynamics of capital will impose barriers. The memory of capital is rather weak. There is a good chance that the demands of profit will once again force the public sector to yield to privatisation. Even if the public health system is retained, it could be used as a great source of data that serves capital. That is what was seen in the Springler deal*, which allowed data collection hardly bothering about individual privacy.
Data collected in the guise of serving the public health service could become raw material for pharmaceuticals, insurance companies and others. This is a new, more dangerous, level of privatisation. Capital will be able to profit while hiding behind the structures of the public sector; absolutely indirectly. The same holds for the health app Modi is promoting.
It’s not enough to have a public sector. It must be one that truly serves the people. That will be possible only when it becomes part of a transition towards a society that eliminates the divide between the private and public in the economy and infrastructure. If this is to be revived in any country in the world, not as a shadow of socialism but as a transition to communism, as a continuing revolution, it must be guided by the current heights of communist theory.
* A deal made with a US based data analytics company by the CPM-led Kerala government during the current pandemic.
C’est dans les pays développés, censés avoir de
meilleures installations de traitement, que le taux de décès par
Covid-19 est le plus élevé. Bien que l’on puisse penser à de nombreuses
raisons expliquant cela, le principal coupable est les politiques
néolibérales qui ont attaqué les services de santé publique. L’absence
de traitement rapide est l’une des principales causes de décès aux
États-Unis et en Italie. Beaucoup de patients n’ont reçu aucun
traitement. Pour la grande majorité des pauvres qui n’ont pas
d’assurance maladie aux États-Unis (la majorité des Afro-Américains et
des hispanniques), même les soins primaires sont impossibles.
Il en va de même pour la classe moyenne sans emploi. Par conséquent,
beaucoup de personnes atteintes par le Covid-19 ne se sont pas rendues
chez le médecin lors de l’apparition des symptômes. Au moment où ces
patients sont obligés d’aller consulter un médecin, la maladie est bien
souvent déjà incontrôlable. Le manque d’équipement ou de personnel
adéquat a aggravé la situation. Trump et d’autres dirigeants
impérialistes ont montré au début une irresponsabilité égoïste. Plutôt
que de prendre soin de la santé des gens, leur souci était de maintenir
des activités économiques de routine et à but lucratif. Cela a également
contribué au taux de mortalité galopant observé aux États-Unis. Une
perte aussi énorme a été causée par une maladie qui a un taux de
mortalité d’à peine 2%. Cela met clairement en évidence l’incompétence
et le caractère anti-populaire du néolibéralisme et de son géniteur, le
capitalisme.Le rôle de ces criminels ne s’arrête pas là. Il y en a qui soutiennent que l’arrivée de tels agents pathogènes est fortuite, et que donc personne ne peut l’arrêter. Ensuite, il y a ceux qui pensent que les lacunes peuvent tout au plus être identifiées dans les mesures prises pour y faire face. Il y a ceux qui décrivent le Covid-19 comme une punition infligée par la nature et ceux qui s’y opposent. La nature
n’est certainement pas venue comme une sorte de pouvoir transcendantal pour nous punir, et elle ne le fera pas non plus à l’avenir. Pourtant, quelque chose de ce genre s’est sûrement produit, au sens des mots d’Engels.
Engels a écrit que même si l’homme peut se vanter d’avoir conquis la nature, il finira par recevoir un coup dur de la nature, lui rappelant qui est vraiment le vrai maître. Ce qu’il voulait dire, c’est que les actions humaines ont des conséquences. Ces mots, qui révélaient le vide des prétentions capitalistes, faisaient également allusion au danger de son approche destructrice du développement.
Cela se voit bien dans les origines et la propagation de la pandémie de Corona d’aujourd’hui. Certains ont réduit la question aux seules causes génétiques. Ils cachent ainsi le rôle joué par les relations impérialistes qui lient le monde. Ce rôle est analysé scientifiquement et argumenté dans le prochain article principal du numéro de mai de la Revue mensuelle (rédigé conjointement par Rob Wallace, Alex Liebman, Louis Fernando Shaw et Roderick Wallace).
Eux aussi partent du marché de produits de la mer à Wuhan. Mais ils ne s’enlisent pas dans les habitudes alimentaires des Chinois, vues comme étranges dans le regard orientaliste du monde impérialiste. Au contraire, leur essai entre dans les relations sociales et économiques qui sont révélées par ce marché. “Comment le secteur des aliments exotiques est-il arrivé à un point de vente où il pourrait vendre ses marchandises aux côtés de produits plus traditionnel sur le plus grand marché de Wuhan?” – c’est de là qu’ils commencent.
Ils soulignent: « Bien au-delà de la pêche, la nourriture sauvage mondiale est un secteur de plus en plus formalisé, toujours capitalisé par les mêmes sources qui soutiennent la production industrielle. » Une chaîne remonte du marché de Wuhan aux arrière-pays où les aliments exotiques et traditionnels sont élevés par des producteurs bordant une contrée sauvage. Et puis un certain nombre de chaînes de commerce/transport relient ces centres à différents pays et grandes villes. Le virus corona est arrivé, voyageant là dessus, un peu comme le SRAS qui l’a précédé.
Certaines sociétés multinationales, telles que Johnson & Johnson, ont préparé une carte de faisabilité indiquant où de nouveaux germes pourraient apparaître à l’avenir. La vision géographique qu’ils ont adoptée pointe vers les pays du tiers-monde. L’essai de la Revue Mensuelle critique cette approche. Il souligne que «se concentrer sur les zones d’épidémie ignore les relations partagées par les acteurs économiques mondiaux qui façonnent les épidémiologies». Lorsque ces relations sont prises en considération, ce ne sont pas les pays du tiers monde, mais les principales sources de capital mondial – New York, Londres et Hong Kong – qui se révèlent être les pires points chauds. Ces nouveaux virus nocifs pour l’homme se sont propagés depuis la vie sauvage. Une grande partie de cela se produit aujourd’hui aux frontières du capitalisme, autrement dit, dans les zones forestières restantes. La déforestation détruit les habitats des animaux sauvages porteurs de maladies, créant ainsi des conditions propices à sa propagation. En quelques jours, les nouveaux agents pathogènes qui ont commencé leur voyage à partir de forêts peu peuplées, se sont répandus à travers le monde, à l’abri d’une mondialisation à cheval sur le temps et l’espace.
Le nœud de cet essai peut être résumé ainsi : les virus qui avaient été largement contenus à travers la complexité des forêts tropicales sont entrés dans le courant dominant à travers la déforestation causée par le capital et les déficits de santé publique et d’assainissement de l’environnement.
En bref, les changements dans les conditions de vie et les conditions environnementales de la grande majorité, causés par la mondialisation et les politiques néolibérales, sont à l’origine de la tragédie actuelle. Sa principale solution est la destruction du système impérialiste et le succès du projet communiste. C’est le seul chemin pour réaliser une humanité qui valorise la vie humaine et la nature, dont ces vies aussi font partie.
En fait, Cuba et le Vietnam soulignent cette possibilité. Ce ne sont pas des pays socialistes aujourd’hui. Ce sont des pays qui ont été ré-emmêlés d’une manière ou d’une autre par les relations impérialistes, par la restauration du capitalisme. Lorsque la Chine a augmenté ses salaires, les monopoles mondiaux ont déménagé au Vietnam. Cependant, certains vestiges de l’ère socialiste persistent.
Le secteur de la santé est encore largement public. Il existe des organisations qui peuvent contribuer à grande échelle au service volontaire. Ces pays ont été aidés par ces facteurs dans la lutte contre la pandémie. On peut voir comment les réalisations de l’ancienne ère socialiste ont également profité à la Chine, aujourd’hui un pays impérialiste. Le Kerala, où le secteur de la santé publique a été largement défendu par des luttes de masse, a pu mieux combattre Corona que d’autres États indiens. Pendant ce temps, les grands hôpitaux du secteur privé refusent inhumainement les personnes qui les approchent avec un rhume ou de la fièvre.
Il reste à voir combien de temps cela durera. L’impact que le Corona a créé est sûr de provoquer une résurgence des soins de santé publics. Cependant, sa subordination à la dynamique du capital imposera des barrières. La mémoire du capital est plutôt faible. Il y a de fortes chances que les exigences de profit obligent à nouveau le secteur public à céder à la privatisation. Même si le système de santé publique est conservé, il pourrait être utilisé comme une excellente source de données au service du capital. C’est ce qui a été constaté dans l’accord de Springler*, qui a permis à la collecte de données de ne pas se soucier de la vie privée des individus.
Les données collectées sous prétexte de servir la santé publique pourraient devenir une matière première pour les entreprises pharmaceutiques, les compagnies d’assurance et autres. Il s’agit d’un nouveau niveau de privatisation, plus dangereux. Le capital pourra profiter indirectement de cela tout en se cachant derrière les structures du secteur public. Il en va de même pour l’application de santé que Modi (NDLR : le 1er ministre indien) promeut.
Il ne suffit pas d’avoir un secteur public. Celui-ci doit vraiment servir le pueple. Cela ne sera possible que s’il s’inscrit dans une transition vers une société qui élimine le fossé entre le privé et le public dans l’économie et les infrastructures. Si cela doit être relancé dans n’importe quel pays du monde, non pas comme une ombre du socialisme mais comme une transition vers le communisme, comme une révolution continue, alors cela doit être guidé par les enseignements de la théorie communiste.
*Un accord passé entre une entreprise états-unienne d’analyse de données et le gouvernement du Kerala durant l’épidémie en cours.
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