The new year begins with reflections on the hard lessons of 2020. Countries such as China, South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Vietnam, which all-but-eliminated the threat of COVID-19, imposed rigorous national lockdowns and ensured testing and contact-tracing strategies. They paid a price upfront and began a return to normal within weeks.
By comparison, the United States ended the year with a race between a vaccine rollout and the progress of a disease that’s reached more than 22,000,000 Americans, spreading at more than 200,000 new cases a day, with over 375,000 Americans dead. Compare that number to the 4,634 who’ve died in China, or the 659 in South Korea or the 35 in Vietnam, the 25 in New Zealand, and the seven who died in Taiwan.
What goes a long way toward explaining the difference is how the United States government spent our money. As the independent global news organization, The Conversation reports, New Zealand spent one-fourth of its GDP, the vast majority supporting workers and their businesses through the lockdown and almost half again as much specifically focused on seniors and low-income workers. By comparison, the United States only spent one-fifth of its GDP, over half of it going to businesses and only one-fifth going to workers.
While 40 million Americans continue to face eviction, Business Insider reports that America’s ruling class made $845 billion off the first six months of the pandemic. The pandemic in the United States was an exploited opportunity. Our lives were sacrificed for the sake of private property.
This is happening because the basic formula that made capitalism work has been automated out of existence. Digital technologies are rapidly replacing human labor, creating a new class of workers who are being thrown out of the economic system. Because this new class can no longer sell its labor in the marketplace, it can no longer buy from the market, disrupting and destroying the buying and selling that makes capitalism what it is. The new class has no stake in the system, and if it were to become conscious of itself as a class, it would threaten the future of the private property system.
History is on our side. We are the class being created by new technologies that beg to be set free of a system that hobbles what these technologies can do. With today’s technology, we can take care of everyone, and we can redefine human life as a society to fit our moral standards.
We can recognize human life as inherently valuable, far beyond any concept of material wealth. We can remove any incentive to destroy our planet or each other and repair the damage we’ve done to our environment. Once the human mind and spirit are free of the constraints of an outdated system, we can then work together to achieve goals that reach beyond the limits of human imagination. RC
January/February 2021. Vol31.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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