Corporations Make Billions off Pandemic
It didn’t have to be this way. The world’s largest economy rivaled only by China, the United States put private corporations in charge of the COVID-19 crisis and wound up with the worst pandemic spread in the world. China, a country with 42 times the population of the United States, suffered 86,000 cases and less than 5,000 deaths, a tiny fraction of what we’ve experienced.
Eight months into this crisis, Americans have been conditioned to accept the worst. Approaching 16 million who have had the virus with nearly 300,000 dead, the COVID-19 pandemic has reached every corner of rural America, cases leaping by 2,000-3,000 a day. Ruling class media has begun to shift our attention to a vaccine made by five competing pharmaceutical companies about the time the worst of the spread is likely to ease up in the spring. On the news, they always mention the brand names—Pfizer or AstraZeneca or whatever—as if the very corporate power that caused this mess to escalate is now the hero coming to save the day. This is aggressive capitalist propaganda to keep us from thinking about the true causes behind the scope of this catastrophe and the effects of corporate control over our government.
With automation replacing labor worldwide, the ruling class has seized this opportunity to accelerate the elimination of easily replaced jobs while abdicating responsibility for the people’s well-being. It’s vivid in the numbers. Before the pandemic, the richest 20 percent of Americans made half of our national income. Since the pandemic, the number of billionaires has grown, and billionaires in health care have increased profits by 50 percent. According to a report by Baruch College’s The Ticker, in 2020, “the combined wealth of the billionaire class in the United States has increased by over 80 percent all due to the coronavirus pandemic.”
This is a war on the over 40 million Americans who face permanent unemployment and the 45 million more Americans the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates to be underemployed. This new class of American workers, which is growing close to one-fourth of all Americans, will continue to grow larger as the technological revolution advances. All of us in that class will have to continue to fight for our basic needs. In the process, some are articulating a vision of a new America where we all have not only the right to our survival but also our other founding dreams of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U.) president Mary Kay Henry testified in USA TODAY, “Workers are demanding unions and fair contracts in a way I have never seen in my 40-year career in the labor movement. They include public school teachers from West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Los Angeles. Amazon workers. Stop & Shop workers. Child care workers. Cooks and cashiers at McDonald’s and other companies across the $200 billion fast-food industry.”
Tenants unions are organizing and fighting nationwide to stop the 40 million evictions facing American families, and the homeless are organizing like never before. Mutual aid organizations fight nationwide to meet people’s daily needs and combat a crisis that threatens to force 50 million Americans to go hungry in the face of the pandemic.
Concerned for their future, youth organizations like Dream Defenders, March for Our Lives, United We Dream, and Sunrise have joined forces, Tallahassee leader Marie Rattigan declaring, “Our generation is at the forefront of the fight for democracy!” Tiana Caldwell of KC Tenants told the People’s Tribune about her vision of a new America, where “everyone would have housing,” communities would solve problems as collectives, and “success would be measured from where people are on the bottom.” In fact, a new class that truly understands its potential could eliminate the concept of a “bottom” altogether.
All of this activity and this vision is exciting and inspiring, yet we have to collectively grasp a new understanding of our situation for any of these dreams to become a reality. Yes, the American people are fighting like never before, and in the process, they are developing an awareness of their alliances as part of a growing social force. But they are up against the most powerful ruling class the world has ever seen, and this ruling class will not simply give up its control. In fact, as we have seen with this pandemic, that ruling class will let us die first.
When we realize that as a new class outside the system it is possible to distribute the output of society according to need, only then will we also understand how to win. The ruling class not only has no political will to solve our problems, it can’t do so and maintain its power. With a clear understanding of the situation we face, and the practical solution to that problem, the 85 million people struggling to have our basic needs met have more than numbers on our side. We can, and will, change the world.
Published: December 8, 2020
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