The world’s people hoped that new vaccines for COVID-19 would soon defeat the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the biggest capitalists prioritized amassing ever more wealth, while thousands died for lack of vaccine access. In one year, the world’s billionaires grew by 660 to a total of 2,755, and their wealth mushroomed from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion.
Clearly, protecting the health of the world’s working class, especially its most dispossessed section, has become inseparable from eradicating the system that permits such plunder as the people perish. As vaccines dramatically reduce our country’s infection rate, we can’t forget that over half a million Americans have died. Or that our ruling class has helped let the situation be much worse in other countries.
Capitalism developed by fostering unequal conditions between countries, classes, and so-called “racial” groups. No vaccines are produced on the African continent and almost none in Latin America. Even though India produces 20 percent of global generic drug exports, healthcare for the poor is so limited that it has the world’s highest daily infection rates. So, much of today’s healthcare struggle must focus on overcoming inequality, which makes national and “racial” justice key battlefields in the struggle between the world’s working and ruling classes.
Global pandemics are defeated by protecting the global population, not just its most affluent sector. Leaving billions of the world’s poorest people unvaccinated only creates a breeding ground for virulent new variants of COVID-19 or other diseases. It can endanger even those already vaccinated from the known types. Understanding this threat, teams of medical scientists are uniting across national borders to expand access to vaccinations.
“What we need is a simple, easy-to-use, low-cost, some people call it people’s vaccine for the world,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital told Democracy Now! on April 22. “We’re still too dependent on the multinational companies for something to filter down.” His team aims for one costing only $1.50 per dose, which might prove effective, but the richest capitalists preferred investing in more expensive vaccines producing more profits. He said, “if I hadn’t had to spend the first few months of the pandemic going out trying to raise money, we could have maybe had something ready to go right now.”
This need to run to catch up to more privileged sectors is also experienced in the struggle of America’s working class and distorts perceptions of its class essence because it often appears in a color form. For example, thanks largely to the huge mobilizations against police killings of Blacks, more journalists are reporting that people of color also suffer the highest COVID-19 mortality rates. But few compare the rates for different classes within each racial-ethnic group or compare rates for the members of the new class of workers across the color line of racial-ethnic groups.
We must challenge two unscientific approaches that are weakening the fight against the coronavirus. The first is what Dr. Hotez’s new book Preventing the Next Pandemic calls “the anti-science, anti-vaccine movement,” which fascist extremists join to take advantage of other people’s fears and confusion. They claim that fighting against masks and social distancing is a “fight for freedom,” but the divisiveness they promote prevents workers from uniting to fight for freedom from the corporate-controlled healthcare system.
The other harmful unscientific outlook is failing to perceive the key role the new class of dispossessed workers is playing at the heart of what only appear to be struggles for healthcare equality for one country or one group of color. Unless the new class can develop their unity beyond those limits, the fascists wearing a liberal disguise can also successfully keep them separated and weakened.
Both these erroneous outlooks serve the new fascism our ruling class is developing to contain the rising struggle of those increasingly at risk of losing their jobs, housing, and their very lives. When vaccination serves its purposes, such as for maintaining a powerful military, the elite unites to require it. When pitting workers against each other over vaccinations or masks produces political benefits, they take differing positions to promote that.
And everywhere, always, they work to prevent the spread of an understanding of the class nature of American society. Despite their disagreements over candidates and policies, the owners of the means of production make up one class dedicated to ensuring that ownership continues. And despite the differences in the rates at which various sections of the workers experience unemployment, poverty, or pandemic death, the fact is they are all at risk of suffering from the deepening of American fascism.
Published: May 7, 2021
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