The (Ongoing) Coronavirus Crisis...

 This article was originally posted on this blog in April last year, but is no less relevant today.

Brooks & Wolff realise the Current Dangers

for Workers and COVID 19 and consider a call for 

A General Strike

In a key episode of The Michael Brooks Show on YouTube we see a significant critical-&-political Turning Point has suddenly emerged. Instead of focussing all the usual diverse criticisms of the way the Pandemic has been addressed by Governments worldwide (and in the USA in particular): it is alternatively conceived of, for the first time, as a clear Pro-People and Anti-Capitalist Combined-Agenda for a General, Co-ordinated Action of the Working Class, against the inhuman Economic System and instead consider an alternative one, for the benefit of Ordinary People!

First, Brooks himself, in a remarkably energetic contribution, reacted to the currently increasing pressures from Big Capital, to try to get all workers back to work, in spite of the still raging Pandemic, and, to instead propose, via a bottom-up organisation, of what Brooks termed "localist solutions" - wherein the people in a well-defined local district, would organise, for themselves, their own, democratically-elected committees to control both the safety and provisions for their locality.

And only the very day before, the writer of this paper (in England) had suggested very similar "Special Local Councils" with the same purposes to Brooks' suggestion, along with a very different plan to, when the time is ripe, release small areas from the Total LockDown, along with appropriate & essential Testing of the contained population, adequate Personal Protective Equipment deployment, and the instituting of freedom of movement, within such enclaves, for those proved to be clear of the virus, by prior population-testing.

While, the shops and essential services, within the enclaves, along with both employing organisations and Firms there, should be a priority for Testing-and-release from shutdown as soon as possible. And, the small sizes of such enclaves would make this majorly effective, and new co-operative services of all kinds could easily be self-organised and made safe! And the evidently necessary discipline, on all fronts, wholly organised solely by the locally-elected Councils for the enclaves. Such organisation, alone, would allow a gradual and reliable extension of Released Areas with ensured safety!

Second, Brooks then brought in Economics Professor Richard Wolff (one of the founders of Democracy-at-Work) into the discussion to contribute his political ideas of "What is to be Done!" And, he immediately changed the emphasis, by suggesting that the pressure of a return to Work by the Big Capitalists, should be countered by what would amount to A General Strike!

Sent home workers would NOT return, without the guaranteed provision of full and adequate safeguards for the workers involved, with the Pandemic still raging! And, if the Government failed to do it: they would do it all for themselves!

With the colossal death figures still appearing daily, Workers would NOT expose themselves, their fellow workers. and their own families and children, to the risk of catching the virus!

Thirdly, Chris Smalls, a worker within Amazon, was included in the Discussion, for he had been suspended by Amazon for organising his fellow workers against the conditions in which they were being expected to work - with fellow workers working well within the generally-set inter-personal limits of 2 metres, and in which some were actually falling ill with the Coronavirus, while actually still working.

Chris had little trouble getting the agreement of fellow workers upon what should be acceptable conditions of work, and in the midst of all this, he was sent home by the management as a "danger to his fellow workers!". But his still energetically-pursued objective has remained to get his fellows to go home until acceptable conditions are provided. 

This single YouTube video has changed the game in the USA among ever-larger sections on the Left, and if Trump, which seems likely, joins the Big Capitalists in attempting to hurry People back to work, it is clear that this Turn, could become an Ever-Growing Flooding Wave of Dissent!

Indeed, in spite of its terrible death figures, the Italian Government is already getting sections of workers back to work even now.

So, it appears likely that many will refuse to do so, to protect themselves and their families! If this happens, it will be a key moment in the long fight against Capitalism's exploitation of the Working Class.

Who is to Blame?

Billionaires. Whether we blame them directly, or the system that creates them, they still have to go....

Who do we immediately identify as the perpetrators for our despair?

On studying the evolution of Capitalist Economics today - some 140 years after Karl Marx's magnificent effort to explain it ended with his death - the many major crises, the World Wars and the increasing acceleration of mounting state and personal debt, have elicited various (although always temporary) "solutions", that simply defer, but never solve, the ever-mounting problems with the economy. And these "solutions" constantly construct innumerable extra barriers to ordinary Workers being able to see any kind of solution of their own!

And, the protectors of that System, have compounded the felony, with their Divide-and-Rule policies, involving their loudly apportioning blame to some different, and hence easily-identified, section of the population, as well as diverting the problem, again purely temporarily, by facilitating a vast increase in the Debt Mountain, to finance some kind of apparent alleviation.

In consequence, the real causes of these crises become ever more opaque and impenetrable, and an increasingly worried population begins to look round for identifiable culprits, which, in addition, to the everywhere identified "foreigners" which are blamed (use Brexit and Trump as case studies, if you must), they were also directed to other targets, much-closer-to-home, such as their own personal inadequaces, for example, or those of their spouses! For, a brief check upon the men of their extended family, by financially-harassed wives, could reveal the severely curtailed abilities of them all to provide what is needed for their respective families: "they become the problem, and are told so in no uncertain terms!"

Families are decomposing everywhere! But, in doing so, it only compounds the difficulties, multiplies the problems, and hides the real causes ever more effectively.

These problems are not due to the personal failings of workers. Ordinary people are not to blame.

In the past, the immediate causes-and-consequences used to be much more easily identified, and the solutions were equally obvious: workers were organised in Unions, and could act together in a Strike. In some circumstances a whole Industry could be involved, or even a nation-wide General Strike of all workers.

But successively, every Capitalist downturn was cleverly used by employers and their political allies, to dismantle, bit-by-bit, the power of the Unions, by both exporting jobs abroad, as well as bringing in various Anti-Union Laws, so that today, what jobs are available are low-paid and usually un-organisable by Unions.

The situation is rapidly becoming insurmountable economically.

And, the old ways of fighting against this exploitation no longer work. 

Even the British Labour Party, in spite of its current Left Wing Leadership (AND Party Membership) is being dismantled by the pro-Capitalist Labour MPs in Parliament, who increasingly side with the Tories against their own movement.

The only old way left is agitation in the streets!

Bring the People out in Mass Demonstrations - BUT crucially they must be well-armed with an understanding of what is really wrong, along with a supported programme to end it!

There will be very strong opposition to this but

WE are the MANY

&

THEY are the FEW

The time has come to go onto the streets

Inequality

Is taxing wealth the answer?

or 

Nationalisation without compensation?

or 

perhaps it requires a Revolution?

Listening to Michael Hudson's on-going analyses of the current Capitalist Crisis, it becomes crystal clear that a rejuvenation of Trades Unions to fight on behalf of Workers' wages would never be enough to dismantle the towering wealth and power of the Capitalist Class.

For, the absolutely crucial task is to take back their wealth completely to use solely for the benefit of the people.

Now, the historical means of achieving this is absolutely clear: and it wasn't and never could be the task of Trades Unions. And yet, the only applicable power of the Working Class has always been the withdrawal of their Labour in strike action. And, strikes are organised by Trades Unions! Thus purely-Trades-Union type activity can never produce that essential transformation of the system, which is, and always has been, through Revolution.

And, even when that happens, and it is carried through to a successful conclusion, as it was in Russia and China, the transfer of that wealth to a State Bureaucracy was not sufficient to secure those gains permanently.

Could you ever achieve such a Revolution by strikes alone, no matter how big? Even General Strikes usually fail to achieve any fundamental change.

To separate the Ruling Class from their wealth involves Force, but, primarily, it also requires the winning of the leadership of the masses by a political party with the Theory and Organisation to achieve it. The Question is, "Are there such parties currently in existence anywhere?"

The answer is, clearly, "NO!"

I watched the "Not One Day More" demonstration though London on the eve of the British General Election. It was truly magnificent, and those loudly voiced demands, by working people, for a Labour government, would indeed be a necessary first step.

But, who was there, among the masses, spelling out what had to happen next? Nobody - we only got slogans! There were different tendencies in evidence. And, they were co-operating in a United Front, but the participating parties seemed to believe that softening their policies was necessary. Anything more radical than shouting for a Labour Victory was clearly seen as "rocking the boat"... NO, they were wrong!

Indeed revolutionary demands within such a magnificent show of Solidarity, would not only be possible, it would demonstrate to those involved alternative ways of going forward TOGETHER, ways that might actually address the root causes of inequality.

To Serve and to STRIKE!

There is a great deal bandied about these days concerning the duty to serve.

Currently, the Tory Government is considering a new Law to jail people in the caring services, who “wilfully neglect” any patients in their care.

It is, of course, a major attempt to blame the servers for a quite evident decline in the quality of services during this particularly parlous current state of Capitalism, and, of course, the cuts meant to remedy the situation. You would think from the rhetoric that they, the Tories, are doing all they can to “serve” the community, but are being traitorously let down by the “soon-to-be-criminal” actions of our professional carers.

But surely, we have to ask, “In considering the provision of services to the mass of the people in general, we need to define who is best equipped to provide them, and why?”

Of course, to answer this we must first ask, “Can a service be provided effectively on the basis of delivering that service having to generate a worthwhile profit?"

Note: A profit is not wages! Over and above the payment of wages to those delivering the service, there is an added margin, paid to the owners of the facilities, which is The Profit!

The proponents of the Capitalist System do not only insist that it can, but they actually also say that it is the only effective way of doing it. Are they right? 

 

The crucial imperative in a capitalist system is that it is financed by people with large financial resources, who will invest the necessary wherewithall to allow businesses to be set up to provide various services, but only if they get both a regular dividend on their investment, and in addition can sell that investment for a different kind of profit too.

Clearly, the motivations of these crucial investors are by no means a philanthropic desire to “serve” society. It is a group of people who already possess quite considerable resources, but who ideally want those to provide a substantial income, without reducing their extractable initial investment, and without them having to actually do anything, apart from observing their investment carefully to ensure its profitability.

They are scarcely imbued with ”service to the community”!

They may interpret a current excitement or concern in the population as likely to produce a sufficient demand to allow investments in those areas to deliver what they are exclusively interested in – unearned income in as large amounts as possible, while still maintaining the value of their original investment for return when they think fit.

Some time ago I decided to look into the question as to how these people came to have such large disposable wealth, that they could then invest in the capitalist way. And it turned out that the main way had always been Theft! My researches turned into a rather long paper on the SHAPE Blog entitled Primitive Accumulation, and it was to become the most accessed SHAPE paper in the last five years.

Not one single capitalist accumulated their wealth by either saving earned wages, or by just making things and selling them. It always was, and still is, impossible to accumulate the vast sums involved by such means.

And, there is another kind of stealing, which is regarded as entirely legal.

It is acquiring what you know to be valuable, from people who are unaware of that value, by paying ridiculously low amounts to the owners, and then selling what you have acquired at something like its true value.

[Unsurprisingly, when negotiating to buy such things, they still force down the price as far as they can. Is that not stealing? Yet, it is not only regarded as entirely legal, but also both very clever and meritorious. So, “dishonest trading“ is a very good method too!]

“Conning the ignorant” is generally considered to be “good business”, and when coupled with bribes and “transactions of mutual benefit”, can also fleece public organisations in the very same way.

So, quite apart from explaining where investable capital was acquired, this investigation also demonstrated how very inappropriate such people are to provide services for the general population. They couldn’t be more in appropriate!

And, of course, to do it without a problem, you have to cultivate an extremely low opinion of the people you are conning. So these “dealers” are scarcely the group of people likely to conscientiously serve the community, are they?

Indeed, they also can have zero grasp of what services should be, and how much they should cost ordinary people. That is never really a major consideration, “For these are the people we con everyday for our wealth and status. Our only really important consideration must be how lucrative will an investment in such an undertaking be!”

Not quite the same is it?

They will be concerned... but it will be, “How can we organise it so that the return on our investment is satisfactory – that is – will it be big enough!”

No! No! No! No! No!

You can never trust such people to provide a Service!

They may deliver something passable to initially secure the deal, but as soon as possible it will be modified with the only important principle taking over “How do we milk this for maximum profit?”

Now, you may well wonder how they get away with it, but once such a division of society has been established, with all the wealth and influence on one side, and everyone else on the other, how can things be changed? Well, initially they certainly couldn’t! No one had the wherewithall to counter the power of the wealthy. For they not only owned the businesses, but also the means of disseminating the News. 

They quickly gained owning-possession of the newspapers, and then later, the Radio stations and even the Television stations too, so the public were only told what the owners wanted them to be told.

Making a difference seemed impossible!

But, who actually produced everything? Surely, that was what ordinary people did for a wage? And, if they didn’t produce, the owners would find themselves in dire straights. Investors would sell their shares in the affected company, and the value of the company and of the investments within it would plummet!

So, workers slowly began to build defensive organisations to counter the power of the rich. They first built Unions and then political parties.

How do you think the Labour Party got its name?

By acting together, pooling their meagre resources, but most of all by using the power of the Strike! 

They could withdraw their labour – refuse to work, and stop anyone else from stepping in and doing their jobs. The picketed Strike was born and was breathtakingly effective!

Yet, how would these same people be in service jobs?

They were certainly fully aware of the vast majority of the people they would have to serve. Before the Welfare State they did ALL the Service of ordinary people, and they did it for nothing!

In my street I had half a dozen “Mams” (or “Aunties” as they were called). If any family had some sort of calamity, people were round immediately asking what they could do.

Do you even have to ask who make the very best people in service jobs?

It is surely obvious.

And these are the very same people who went on Strike, who put out fires, and protected us from the criminal classes (who were NOT workers, by the way, but the lower end of the owning class, who were still accumulating in the original way by straight theft)

Indeed, perhaps the reason for the title of this paper is becoming clear. For, in providing an appropriate service, you have to fully appreciate what service should involve, when thinking about those being served. While being ready to strike when defending yourself against those who are usually in charge of such provision.

Yet, the Tories love to contrast these as incompatible opposites – claiming that workers strike because they ignore the service requirements that will be lost by such actions. But, of course, the real ignorers of those needing to be served are those who only see them as a means of making ever-larger profits.