Though the two major parties have argued since late March about the nationalization of healthcare as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, private interests have won out because the system is built to serve those interests. We are told the story in ways that serve the ruling class. That narrative offers examples of division to breed despair, while our real hope for a way out of this crisis and others is an understanding based in class unity.
Mainstream news talks about disparity using every measure but economic class. Some stories report that Black workers have been dying at exponentially higher rates than other Americans, while others note that Hispanic workers have died at a higher rate than any other ethnicity in New York. Navajo workers in New Mexico have more cases of the virus than eight other states, and it has lost more of its people than 13 other states. Although the death rate for white workers is lower than for those groups, they are the largest number of COVID-19 fatalities.
The COVID-19 statistics show that class is the common denominator among the vast numbers of people who have died of this disease, and class consciousness is the way forward. The Americans who are getting exposed to this disease at the highest rates are those who keep our groceries on the shelves and sell us what we need, those who deliver our mail and other goods and fix our electricity and plumbing, and especially those who fight on the frontlines in health care. The vast majority of all these groups are low wage workers. It is no coincidence that the employment group hit hardest by COVID-19 in New York City worked for the Manhattan Transit Authority, 33 bus drivers alone having died by the week of April 21.
The ones who are dying of this disease are those who don’t have the luxury of staying home. Also, the underlying complications that lead to higher death tolls with this pandemic—diabetes, asthma, and heart disease—are all diseases of poverty. Add to that the horrifying statistics of outbreaks in assisted living facilities, jails, prisons, reservations, and immigrant camps, all places where our class is warehoused when the system has no use for us.
With over 800,000 Americans diagnosed with the disease (four times that of any other country), and 43,000 dead (20,000 more than any other country in the world), Americans can’t help but question the role of the federal government if it can’t meet the needs of its people at a time of national and global emergency. So, we know better than to believe our interests are at heart when nationalization gets talked about by those in power in our country.
Though some senators and governors called for the nationalized distribution of health care supplies, the Trump Administration rejected the idea, and the government did very little to help most Americans over the next month. Twenty-two million Americans filed unemployment by mid-April, and America’s foodbanks saw all-time-high demands they are often not able to meet. Revolutionaries recognize this as an opportunity to talk about how and why the system works as it does.
The American government has a history of nationalizing industry when that was needed to hold the country together, but the private-public partnerships that the ruling class is using to fight this virus have abandoned millions of Americans to poverty, sickness and possible death. In World War I and World War II many essential industries were nationalized for the war effort. In the 2008 financial crisis, the ruling class partially nationalized banks and took over General Motors and Chrysler. All of these examples allowed the American ruling class to maintain its power, and the ruling class is today again arguing that over nationalization as a way to protect private property. Without a national debate about whose interest nationalization will serve, the real problems highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic will go untouched.
Though the disease is incapable of discriminating based upon class, our ruling class certainly is. The vulnerability of our working class due to capitalism leads to the kind of discrimination that always takes place under this economic system — private property protects the few and lets the great majority fend for themselves. Americans can see this problem and are open to ideas like nationalization. Nationalization has to be in the interests of the workers. Otherwise, nationalization by itself will not protect our interests any more than it did during our past wars or when we bailed out companies who turned around and fired their employees.
The revolutionaries’ task is to fight for nationalization in the interest of the workers, not private property. The America we want — a country that will no longer sacrifice its essential workers and its sick and its homeless for the interests of private property — can only be achieved by a working class that understands its interests as a class. Our working class must recognize nationalization as a tool to take control of our lives and, in the process, protect all of those most vulnerable in the current system, including our friends, our neighbors, and all those we hold dear.
