German Communist Party
Capitalist economic crisis and “coronavirus” crisis
What is often referred to by the ruling media as 51 the “coronavirus crisis” is in fact, regardless of the pandemic, the world’s deepest economic crisis for at least one hundred years. It is a cyclical crisis of overproduction combined with structural crises in various economic sectors, with the coronavirus pandemic and related government action adding a special feature to this crisis. One peculiarity could be that the pandemic has led to the fact that the crisis processes worldwide have become more closely linked in time than it would have been the case without it, and that they have therefore taken effect more quickly. In this context, government action or the actions of corporations and banks are designed to use the coronavirus pandemic to justify measures that benefit the economic and political interests of the ruling class. This is also reflected in the lockdown measures in Germany. A consistent lockdown of all non-essential processes would have been quite appropriate. But it was not implemented in Germany. With the exception of a few corporations with direct, major state influence, such as Deutsche Bahn and Lufthansa, direct influence in the direction of a lockdown was avoided. Orders to close down companies were only issued when a scandal could not be covered up, such as in the meat industry. Even there, however, operations were not completely shut down. And the epidemic spread particularly violently there, because unbearable working conditions, especially for migrants, had been existing there for decades. Not much will change in the future, however, and there are already loopholes in the new legislation, as it only applies to large companies, which can now be split into smaller ones in order to escape the new regulations, which is already happening. Other sectors, such as the automotive industry, have used and continue to use the extended short-time working regulations with state funding of wage replacement benefits to mitigate the consequences of the crisis and secure their profits. In Germany, short-time work is understood to be a regulation under which entrepreneurs can, under certain conditions, reduce the working hours – and thus the wages – of their workers entirely or partially if, for example, orders are lacking, in order to avoid dismissals. The workers then receive a state benefit, the short-time work allowance. Since this amounts to only 60 % (67 % for workers with children) of net wages, workers suffer a considerable loss of pay, even though there are collective bargaining agreements in some areas for partial top-up payments. Although the short-time work allowance was temporarily increased during
