"And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition of the working class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the capitalistic system itself." Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845)
The IMF and World Bank have for decades pushed a policy agenda based on cuts to public services, increases in taxes paid by the poorest, and moves to undermine labor rights and protections
- This has resulted in 52% of Africans lacking access to healthcare and 83% having no safety nets
- even the IMF has shown that neoliberal policies fuel poverty and inequality
- The closure of the world economy has triggered an unprecedented process of global indebtedness
- Governments are now under the control of global creditors
COVID-19 raises the question: what was COVID really about?
- If it was indeed about public health, why close down the bulk of health services and the global economy knowing full well what the massive health, economic and debt implications would be
- Millions have been asking this since lockdowns and restrictions began in early 2020
Why mount a military-style propaganda campaign to censor world-renowned scientists and terrorize entire populations and use the full force and brutality of the police to ensure compliance?
- COVID was a crisis of capitalism masquerading as a public health emergency
- Capitalism needs to keep expanding into or creating new markets to ensure the accumulation of capital to offset the tendency for the general rate of profit to fall
- When the capitalist is unable to sufficiently reinvest, wealth (capital) over accumulates, devalues, and the system goes into crisis
COVID provided cover for a multi-trillion-dollar bailout for the capitalist economy that was in meltdown prior to COVID
- Lockdowns and the global suspension of economic transactions allowed the US Fed to flood the ailing financial markets with freshly printed money while shutting down the real economy to avoid hyperinflation
- In addition to helping to reboot the financial system, closing down the global economy deliberately deepened poorer countries' dependency on Western global conglomerates and financial interests
With the global economy now open again, inflation is rising and causing a 'cost of living' crisis
- With a debt-ridden economy, there is limited scope for rising interest rates to control inflation
- Current inflation is not only induced by the liquidity injected into the financial system but also being fuelled by speculation in food commodity markets and corporate greed
Resistance
- Trade unionism is coming to the fore led by media savvy leaders like Mick Lynch
- Millions of people face lower living standards and the stripping out of occupational pensions
- Teachers, health workers and others could follow in the RMT’s footsteps and strike action
"COVID has been a smokescreen for the rich and powerful in this country to drive down wages as far as they can."
- The trade union movement should take a leading role in resisting the attack on living standards and further attempts to run-down state-provided welfare and privatize what remains
- If a mass labour force is no longer deemed necessary, there is no need for mass education, welfare and healthcare provision and systems that have traditionally served to reproduce and maintain labour that capitalist economic activity has required
Philip Alston, UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, accused British government ministers of the "systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population" in the decade following the 2008 financial crash.
- "As Thomas Hobbes observed long ago, such an approach condemns the least well off to lives that are'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'. As the British social contract slowly evaporates, Hobbes' prediction risks becoming the new reality." Post-COVID, Alston's words carry even more weight.
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