Mostrando articulos por etiqueta: pandemic

The global crisis and the pandemic

The development of the crisis opened in 2008 has provided new chapters, showing that capitalism has not been able yet to find a way out to its effects. This has been demonstrated by the coronavirus pandemic, that has exposed and accelerated the processes of the crisis -which have been accumulating over the last years. We must add to this scene the oil crisis, that had begun before the COVID 19 crisis, as a result of the slowdown of global economy, which was heading to a recession with very low growth levels. This is why the pandemic shows how weak the capitalist system and its institution are, amid a scene of imperialist decomposition. Although imperialist powers try to make us believe the fallacy that global economy was doing well and that the proliferation of the virus was the cause of all evil, the epidemic is just a secondary factor within a deeper global crisis.

This does not mean that imperialism will not try to take advantage of this crisis to make the whole of the workers and poor people put up with the effects of it. This is shown in the increasing interference of the State in the control of social relations, not to avoid the propagation of the virus, but to protect the State healthcare systems and their economies from a possible collapse; to reinforce the reactionary centralism of bourgeois States -given their historical weakness- and to avoid -in the worse of possibilities- the contagion of the virus of class struggle.

In the 2008 crisis, the policy of the imperialist powers was to flood the market with more cash flow by central banks, to save big corporation and offer them credit in order to – in a future time- let global economy recover by increasing labor productivity and achieving a more stable growth. A headlong flight that did not reach the expected goals and, even worse, today there is a crisis with similar characteristics and they cannot put into practice the same recipes they used in 2008.

USA and its healthcare system showed the real face of capitalism. Now, the USA are debating if they cut taxes, not only as a measure for enterprises, but also for workers, so they can poor that money in consumption; or to get money into the pockets of the population by increasing unemployment fonds or subsidies to wages, in face of an imminent close down of plants and life shortage. This is statism, performed by the main imperialist power.

In the EU, with epicenter in Italy and Spain, we can see a great crisis in their healthcare systems. For some nostalgic, the cause is the dismantling of the welfare State and a product of the defeat of the workers after the postwar period. It is very important to follow closely the so far incipient strike processes that are taking place, especially in Italy, in many factories and health workers’ sectors.

Any way out to the crisis -that has speeded up- will be reactionary. Global bourgeoisie is aware of its weakness, but also of its counterrevolutionary historical role. That is why, those who believe that capitalism is showing its humanitarian face in the crisis of the coronavirus, because of their demagogic speeches, should know that those are only provocations to our class, that due to its crisis of revolutionary leadership cannot respond in a centralized way; but we will be forced to give that response given the deepness of the crisis. We must support ourselves in the different processes of class struggle opened at global scale. At a regional scale, there are many countries in Latin America where these processes are going on; the most radicalized is Chile.

The anarchy of capital can be seen in all its dimensions. Before the disorganization of economy, revolutionaries must advance -not a demand on bourgeois State and its institutions like the Congress, but- the need to organize economy over new foundations. For this transition it is vital the workers’ control of the most important industries, to show the force of the international working class at the administration of things. We must deploy a transitional program to develop a vanguard within our class.

These are urgent historical tasks.