With the remarkable development of human knowledge, it seems impossible that so many could die from Covid-19. The U.S. is edging toward 800,000 deaths and the world toward 5.5 million. Cases and deaths are again rising, and new strains of the virus are emerging. And how is it that more people in the United States, the second wealthiest country, died of COVID-19 than in any other country?
The outsized share of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. can be attributed to a ruling class willing to let hundreds of thousands of people die who no longer contribute to making profit.
The most devastating pandemic in recent history coincides with the creation of what can only be described as a new class in society. A class that comes from the working class of the country that worked the land, the mines and steel mills, auto and food processing plants, and all parts of the economy supporting industry. This class formed out of those pushed out of all the millions of jobs that paid wages that were enough to buy food, clothe families, pay rent, and buy homes, and out of those who have gone from partial unemployment to permanent unemployment. The pandemic comes as the world is transforming from an economy based on human labor to one based on electronic production and artificial intelligence, a new economy that requires markedly less human labor.
An overwhelming number of us are a part of, or becoming a part of, this new class. The pandemic makes more urgent that we understand the import of what this new class is becoming. The rate at which the new class is being marginalized, pushed out and discarded by the destruction of the economy is alarming. Vast sections of the country are being abandoned as COVID-19 and the changing economy wreck lives.
The workers of America are not only becoming poorer: they are being discarded. Their needs cannot be reconciled with the amassing of wealth by the corporations and a government that more and more openly represents and secures corporate interests. This ruling class owns everything that greater sections of society have no access to, and this ruling class will defend its wealth at all costs.
So, we face a huge question of how to fight for a new future based on controlling the economy in the interests of the whole of society. Let’s unite with the family whose father braided his daughters’ hair before school and died of Covid-19, with the family whose son was gunned down by police because he fell asleep in his car, with those who have lost their loved ones to the opioid crisis, with the mother separated from her children at the border, with those who are homeless—with our class. Let’s join the struggles against police brutality and violence, for homes, education, health care and a cultured existence with a vision of transforming ownership of the technology, the means of producing what we need, from private to public hands. With this unity and vision, the future is ours to win.
Published: December 22, 2021
This article published by Rally, Comrades!
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