Socialist Alternative Issue 62 - April 2020

CAPITALISM

IS SICK

S I S I R C E H T T H G I F O T N A L P T S I L A I C THE SO

ISSUE #62 l APRIL 2020 SUGGESTED DONATION $2

Criminal Inaction

The world has been turned upside down.

Millions of working people are now facing a risk to their health and livelihood because of the deadly COVID-19 epidemic and a collapse of the capitalist economy on a scale even bigger than the Great Recession of 2008-9.

The twofold crisis of the pandemic and economic collapse are presented as the result of an unpreventable “act of God.” But in fact epidemics have increased fourfold globally in the last fifty years due primarily to environmental destruction. This pandemic was entirely predictable and in fact was predicted by scientists. What was certainly not inevitable was the total lack of preparation.

What has really been exposed in the U.S. and in Europe is the devastating effect of cuts to public health care resources combined with privatization. Neoliberalism which massively increased social inequality is now set to take an even bigger toll.

And while coronavirus is the trigger for the economic crisis it is also exposing the enormous fragility of the world economy which was already teetering on the edge of a recession with none of the underlying problems that caused the 2008-9 crisis resolved. Now Trump and the capitalists are being forced to pump hundreds of billions into the economy including directly into the pockets of working people. This is not because of a sudden concern for our fate but to save their system from complete collapse. And their measures will only slow down the crisis not solve it This is a crisis created at all levels by the diseased system of capitalism where the needs of the vast majority are subordinated to the dictates of profit for billionaire hoarders.

China is now presented as the “model” for how to contain the virus, but the truth is that the brutal state capitalist regime covered up the virus in late December and early January while persecuting whistleblower health care workers thus losing the opportunity to contain the outbreak at the start.

Trump has matched the criminal behavior of the Chinese regime by denying that there was any threat for weeks on end and doing nothing to ramp up testing or prepare the health care resources necessary if this could not be immediately contained. He seeks to deflect by whipping up xenophobia, calling coronavirus the “China virus.” As a result of the criminal negligence of this delusional egomaniac, thousands and probably tens of thousands will needlessly die.

Trump is now considering “reopening the economy” and urging people back to work in April in order to prevent a deeper collapse on Wall Street. This is against the near unilateral advice of health experts. In response to this, as we went to press the hashtag #NotDying4WallStreet went viral on Twitter as people expressed outrage at a system that would so blatantly put profits before people.

But it’s not just Trump. The Democrats in Congress, and at the state and local level, with honorable exceptions, have been complicit in maintaining what is dangerously close to a code of silence about the true scale of the impending crisis, while physicians and epidemiologists globally have gone hoarse ringing the alarm bells.

Even now, as we go to print, the U.S. has only tested 125 people per million, compared to 5,000 per million in South Korea which

had the first outbreak after China and where it has been relatively contained at least for now.

Immediate Overhaul of Health Care!

Decades of capitalist policies, designed to maximize profit with no concern for consequences for society or workers, are responsible for the vulnerable state we are now in.

Long supply-chains and cuts in public hospitals have left us totally unprepared to deal with this crisis.

We now face an immediate, severe shortage of safety equipment in hospitals, a woeful lack of testing equipment, and a complete lack of any preparedness for this pandemic.

J We demand the government immediately direct national resources to produce medically necessary equipment, ensure fast testing of the whole population, and equip medical staff and the public with necessary safety equipment.

J Re-open closed hospitals, immediate construction of new hospitals to care for

subscription address box

Tony Wilsdon

the coming influx of patients. For a massive accelerated hiring and training of medical staff. All with union rights and pay.

J Establish free medical clinics in all neighborhoods. Take over empty buildings when necessary.

J For a massive expenditure of public resources to be directed to develop a vaccine. Oppose Trump’s plan to privatize the vaccine. We need a public entity to ensure transparency and speedy production of a vaccine, free for all.

Establish Safe Working Conditions Workers across the country have been pressured by their bosses to step up despite a drastic shortage of safety equipment.

Front-line workers like nurses, supermarket cashiers, truckers, warehouse, and delivery workers should not have to compromise their health in order to help society and receive a

continued on p. 2

C O N T I N U AT I O N S

The Socialist Plan to Fight the Crisis paycheck. We need strong unions to fight for safety measures, rights on the job and increased pay for workers at risk.

J All workers have the right to a safe workplace. No one should have to choose between income and safety.

J Workers have the right to strike and refuse work until safety policies are in place. We call for the creation of elected worker committees to protect the needs of workers on the job.

J Stop the attacks on union rights! No suspension of collective bargaining or the right to form a union.

J For “hazard pay” to all essential workers. All essential workers should be paid at least “time and a half” during the pandemic.

J Companies that refuse to operate under these rules should be taken into public ownership with democratic workers control and management of the economy.

Full Pay for the Unemployed J All workers to be paid full wages if they lose their job due to the pandemic or the recession. This includes the millions of workers who are falsely labeled “independent contractors” or work in the gig economy.

J All workers without paid work should be eligible for monthly federal payments equivalent to a living wage of $15 an hour or $600 per week.

J For a freeze on all rent and mortgage payments. For an emergency plan to house the homeless.

Protect People, not Profits Working people are not to blame for these twin crises. However, under the logic of capitalism, it is workers who will face the greatest hardships, while the super-rich CEOs and billionaires, whose policies provoked this crisis, are given trillions in government bailouts. And now it is being revealed that senators were

dumping millions in stock when they got early warnings about the scale of the coming pandemic.

Neoliberal policies promoted by capitalist politicians have gutted public education and public services generally in past decades.

As Bernie Sanders has pointed out, the lack of a Medicare for All system has left the public unprotected from this pandemic. Half of working-class families do not have the resources to deal with a $400 emergency.

These capitalist politicians deserve nothing from us. We need to be prepared to take decisive measures against those who got us into this mess.

J Free health care for all. End private profit decision making in medicine. For public ownership of medical facilities, the pharmaceutical industry, and medical device companies.

J Rapidly re-tool industry to produce medical supplies, masks, hand sanitizer and other necessary items in the quantities actually needed.

J Any corporations looking to exploit this crisis for profiteering should be brought into public ownership with democratic workers and community control. Confiscate the wealth of the billionaire hoarders with compensation to be given only on the basis of proven need. Use these resources to fund emergency medical supplies, food, and necessary services for all working people.

J End mass incarceration and the inhumane detention of immigrants. Immediately release all non-violent offenders and those charged with minor crimes.

Provide immediate safe public space to house the homeless where they can have access to free medical resources.

Capitalism has Failed – For a Socialist Society The 2020 Wall Street crash and attacks on living standards and social programs for workers are a direct result of the logic of

Capitalism Can’t Solve This Crisis!

Socialists Need Your Help

DONATE TO

SOCIALIST

Subscribe to our publications!

ALTERNATIVE Make a one time donation!

WWW. SO CIAL IS TALT ERNAT I VE .OR G/D ONAT E

SocialistAlternative.org/join

info@SocialistAlternative.org

continued from p. 1

capitalism. We can’t expect the capitalist system to do anything other than maximize the wealth of the billionaires who hoard resources and aim to make money from our misery. This crisis has exposed who really keeps society running: nurses, warehouse workers, grocery store workers, delivery drivers. We demand that the resources of society be democratically planned by those of us that do all the work – the majority. This means challenging the rule of the billionaires and taking the levers of power from their hands.

This can only happen through public ownership of the wealth of the largest banks and corporations and for the economy to be democratically planned by elected representatives of the working class in the workplace and the community. The need for a socialist transformation of society has never been more urgent.

lives. This didn’t prevent economic collapse.

The only reason they’re now giving workers some assistance is to try to prop up the capitalist economy. Trump is posing as a populist strongman, and we oppose any attempt to militarize society or whip up nationalist hate against people of color or immigrants. The enemies of working people are the billionaire hoarders and their representatives from both parties, not immigrants or workers from other countries. We can’t let the rich demonize the sick and vulnerable and let the billionaires who created this crisis off the hook.

We will need to depend on our own strength, commitment, and organization to get through this crisis. The Democratic Party blocked Bernie Sanders, the only candidate with a program and a movement that could seriously address the crises working people face. Their backing of Biden gives Trump an opening to pose again as the more anti-establishment candidate addressing this situation despite the fact that he suppressed testing for months and has overseen the capitalist recklessness that intensified this tragedy.

J Turn the Bernie Sanders campaign into a movement to address the pandemic with online, workplace and community organizing to win our socialist demands.

J Bernie should not put his efforts behind the billionaire-backed Biden and instead launch a new party for working people.

J For immediate online conferences of Sanders supporters to organize together to address the crisis and lay the basis for a new party by, of and for working people with no donations from corporations or billionaires.

J For a Green New Deal that benefits working people. Take the fossil fuel companies into public ownership to immediately address climate change. Hire and train tens of millions of workers to help build a new democratically planned economy based on non-carbon energy.

For people and the planet, not corporate profits! J

We Need a New Party to Address the Crisis Working people can still take action to change things! Online petitions, strikes, workplace organizing, and other efforts have drawn concessions from the Democrats and Republicans at the federal, state, and local levels. The more we demand and fight for, the more they will be forced to concede. At the same time, both parties’ leaderships are bought and paid for by the billionaire class, and they will do what it takes to prop up the same billionaires who put us in unsafe workplaces, refuse to pay their taxes, and aim to profit from our death and suffering.

As we go to press, the Senate has passed a massive stimulus bill that includes $1,200 one-time payments to most adults and a significant extension of unemployment insurance. But it also includes a $500 billion bailout for corporate America. At the same time the Federal Reserve states it is prepared to pump literally $1 trillion a day into the financial markets if necessary.

The government has already given trillions to prop up Wall Street which gambles on our Socialist ideas are needed now more than ever. The coronavirus pandemic is exposing the complete inability of a profitdriven system to meet the needs of workers who are in many instances being left to die.

Rather than backing down, Socialist Alternative is stepping up our work during this pandemic.

In Seattle, we have launched a series of online petitions for free doctor visits, free transit, and a tax on Amazon to pay for urgently needed relief for working class families. We have already won a number of these demands!

We have launched a national blog called Workers Speak Out to give real voice to workers on the frontlines of this crisis. We post daily the experiences of nurses, grocery workers, airport workers, pharmacists, warehouse workers, and more.

Two million people have signed a Rent

@SocialistAlt

Strike 2020 petition initiated by socialist truck driver Josh Collins who is running for Congress in Washington State! We are working with others to transform these millions of signatures into a network to fight for what working people need.

All of these bold initiatives require money and resources. In the midst of this pandemic we have to sustain our full-time organizers, our publications, as well as investing in new digital organizing tools.

As an example, we are hoping that some of our members and supporters may be able to contribute some or all of their government check to Socialist Alternative.

But we are asking everyone who wants to see a clear socialist voice continue to organize even under the Coronavirus lockdown to help us with this work. Even small donations will make a big difference. Please make a donation to Socialist Alternative today. J

/SocialistAlternative.USA

/c/SocialistAlternative

2 S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N A T I V E . O R G

POLITICS

Bernie: Don’t Drop Out or Endorse Biden!

We Need Bernie’s Movement More Than Ever Bryan Koulouris We live in a time of extreme crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic is reaching every corner of the globe. As thousands of people perish, the world economy is collapsing. Millions in this country are faced with crippling uncertainty for their health, their jobs, their social services, and their loved ones. Yet we have a delusional narcissist occupying the White House who – for crucial weeks – denied the threat we face from the pandemic. What’s the alternative to him being put forward by the Democratic Party establishment? Joe Biden showed his true colors when he said, in the midst of this health crisis, that he would veto Medicare for All legislation if it were to reach him in the Oval Office. Now, Biden’s gone missing in this crisis, and #WhereIsJoeBiden trended on twitter.

We need to learn the painful lessons of 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost the election.

Having Biden as Trump’s main opponent would give Trump an opportunity to pose as an “anti-establishment” strong man against a bumbling lifelong politician. We can’t afford to take this risk, and poll after poll shows Bernie would resoundingly defeat Trump. We also can’t let our movement behind Bernie become scattered and disorganized. A fighting movement is needed now more than ever to bail out working people from the double calamity of economic devastation and the pandemic. Tens of thousands of activists in the Sanders campaign need to stay organized and pull together online petitions, workplace solidarity, mutual aid, virtual organizing, and political education that can give us the tools to minimize this crisis and pave the way for fundamental change of the broken system that got us into this calamity.

We need bold leadership for working people in these trying times, and Bernie Sanders should not drop out of this race. We have built a powerful movement together to not only get Bernie elected, but to win Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, tuition-free college, and a society in which billionaires do not exist. This movement would be dealt a blow if Bernie were to endorse the dishonest servant of big business, Joe Biden. Now more than ever, we need a determined struggle to demand socialist policies to address this global pandemic and economic catastrophe facing working people.

A Sick System Working

people

APRIL 2020

face

unprecedented

uncertainty, a lack of available virus tests, mass layoffs, reduced pay from reduced hours, ongoing workplace safety violations, and the threat of eviction from being unable to pay mortgages and rent. At the very same time, the federal government has given trillions of dollars to billionaire investors, big banks, large corporations and Wall Street.

These big business hoarders and price gougers should instead be taxed to pay for working people’s needs, not given this grotesque level of “corporate welfare.”

Socialist truck driver and candidate for Congress Josh Collins initiated a petition calling on governors across the country to provide a moratorium on rents and mortgage payments. Over two million people have already signed on! Now Socialist Alternative is working with others to organize those who signed this petition into a force to fight for the far-reaching relief we need. The same can be done with the vast networks of volunteers that have been fighting to get Bernie into the White House as an “organizer in chief.”

During this crisis, Bernie’s strength has been clear: his videos on how to deal with the pandemic have been excellent and showed some of the bold policies necessary. At the same time, we’ve seen Bernie’s weak approach of refusing to go on the attack against the corporate-controlled Democratic Party establishment. At the March 15 debate, Bernie exposed some of Joe Biden’s most flagrant lies, but this was “too little, too late.” For months, Bernie has been calling Joe Biden his “friend.” This obscures the reality of the situation: Biden is the servant of billionaires, warmongers, and polluters who are hoarding the resources of society.

These corporate crooks are the enemies of our health and progress.

How Did We Get Here?

In 20 straight primaries, including in states where Biden won by a landslide, exit polls showed that, a majority of people support Medicare for All, and in Texas a majority said they prefer socialism to capitalism!

As John Nichols of The Nation put it, “The voters did not favor the centrist stances of the former vice president. They preferred the ‘radical’ ideals of the candidate he was defeating: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.”

How did the establishment pull this off?

There was a campaign of mass psychological manipulation by every major media outlet saying only Biden could defeat Trump and resorting to out and out red baiting when

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden at the first head-to-head debate of the Democratic Primaries on March 15. polls show that Bernie would fare far better against the Predator in Chief. Voter suppression with massive lines in working class communities also helped Biden in some cases.

The Democratic Party establishment all united against Bernie with a slew of candidates dropping out to endorse Biden. Elizabeth Warren refused to unite the “progressives” by supporting Bernie, instead having a Super PAC wage a failed last-ditch effort to give her a viable campaign. In reality, the whole primary process in the Democratic Party is rigged against genuine progressive, pro-working-class candidates like Bernie.

Unfortunately, most union leaders refused to support Bernie, the most pro-labor viable Presidential candidate in history. Despite some notable exceptions like National Nurses United and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), most union leaderships either sat out the election or played a bureaucratic role in backing Biden without votes by the members of their unions. Both the leaders of the powerful Amalgamated Transit Union and the National Educators Association said that they conducted a poll of their members before endorsing Biden, but thousands of workers in these unions say that no such poll took place.

This is particularly tragic because our labor unions are at a crossroads. Union activists can provide leadership in this crisis by fighting for all working people against the hoarding, price gouging billionaires who profit from our misery. If we fight back and organize with a class struggle approach, then we can win safer working conditions, hazard pay, and more resources to address the pandemic. On the other hand, if we try to snuggle up to the ruling class and beg for the diminishing

crumbs that fall from their table, then the COVID and economic crises will only deepen.

Where Should We Go Now? Now, instead of putting our organizing efforts behind Joe Biden, we need to show socialist leadership and help lay the basis for a new party that fights unambiguously in the interests of working people. We hope Bernie will join us in this effort. The desperate situation cries out for a working-class movement that stops at nothing to break the power of the billionaire class.

Four years ago, when the DNC was handing the nomination to Hillary Clinton, Socialist Alternative initiated a petition for Bernie to run all the way to November and launch a new party. Over 140,000 people signed this petition to continue a strong working-class movement. If he would have taken our advice, then Bernie could have defeated Trump and Hillary both in 2016. Even if Trump were to have won in 2016, a new party could have been an organizing center against the agenda of the right wing and the billionaire class.

This would have helped us win more victories against Trump’s agenda and could have put us in a position to defeat him now without having to go through the rigged Democratic primary.

Right now, people are extremely worried for our loved ones, health, and economic livelihoods. Together, we can organize for the relief we so urgently need and build the movement in our workplaces, communities, and campuses to fight for a world with rational, democratic planning rather than the profit-driven misery of capitalist crisis. J

3

World Recession Marks th Tom Crean As working people around the world face the threat of the coronavirus pandemic which is massively exacerbated by decades of cuts to healthcare systems and the lack of serious international coordination, we are facing a parallel economic catastrophe.

Stock markets across the world have seen trillions of dollars of share value wiped out. The Dow Jones has lost all the gains it made since Trump entered office and the losses could well continue. But most consequential for working people is what is happening in the real economy where mass layoff have begun and whole sectors including the airline industry and tourism are in a massive downturn.

According to official statistics, Chinese industrial production fell by 13.5% and retail sales by 20.5% in the first two months of this year. This on its own has massive ripple effects on the world economy since China imports huge amounts of raw materials and exports components that are key to industrial supply chains around the world.

Estimates of the scale of the downturn in the U.S. economy for the second quarter (April-June) range from 12% to 30%. While that would only be one quarter it would still be the biggest downturn in the U.S. economy since World War II. The International Labor Organization estimates 25 million will lose their jobs worldwide but this seems like a drastic underestimate.

Tourism alone accounts for 325 million jobs worldwide, 10% of the world economy, and it is very hard to believe that tens of millions of jobs will not be lost in this sector alone.

Deeper Causes than Coronavirus It is beyond question now that we are at the start of a global recession, very likely more serious than the crisis of ‘08-’09. Much of the analysis in the corporate media focuses on coronavirus as the sole cause of the current situation, ignoring the mountain of evidence that was already pointing to a global downturn.

In 2019, 90% of the world economy was slowing down, with some countries on the edge of recession. China was experiencing the biggest economic slowdown in 29 years. Manufacturing shrank in the U.S. by 1.3% and in Germany by 5.3%.

The immediate trigger for the slowdown was the mounting trade disputes especially between the U.S. and China, weakening global trade. This along with the undermining of international capitalist institutions like the World Trade Organization as well as Brexit point towards “de-globalization,” a partial reversal of a key feature of the world economy over the past 40 years. Now with coronavirus-related travel bans including within the allegedly border-free European Union and a rapid “de-coupling” of the U.S. and Chinese economies you

4

have “de-globalization on steroids.”

As International Socialist Alternative (ISA) – with which Socialist Alternative in the U.S. is in political solidarity – has explained, the slowdown and the looming recession were rooted in the failure of capitalism to address any of the underlying issues that led to the Great Recession a decade before. Instead we saw a massive growth of corporate and individual debt over the past decade and new bubbles developing in the financial markets. And, as even financial commentators admit, there is a longterm decline of productivity growth which alongside the massive growth of inequality, points to declining capitalism’s inability to develop the economy and society.

It is precisely the way the new crisis has exposed these underlying weaknesses which has many in the ruling class so worried. As an article in the New York Times (“Zombies Could Kill the Economy,” 3/13/2020) explained, the corporate debt market in the U.S. is now valued at $16 trillion annually, or 82% the size of the country’s entire real economy. According to the Bank for International Settlements, “zombie” companies which are able to pay the interest on their debts but not the principal, now account for 16% of all the publicly traded companies in the United States, and more than 10% in Europe. We are rapidly heading

toward a financial meltdown rooted in capitalism’s colossal addiction to debt coming on top of the massive decline in economy activity.

A Quick Rebound?

This is one of a number of reasons why all the talk about the economy in the U.S. and internationally rebounding back to “normal” in the second half of the year is likely to be proven false. Another is that mass unemployment on a global scale will significantly reduce consumer spending leading to a further spiral of manufacturing decline and layoffs. The danger of this becoming an L shaped depression where there is a long term decline in economic activity as opposed to a V shaped short recession is very real.

A broader problem facing capitalism today compared to ten years ago is that the formula they used to “save” the world economy then will not work now. This relied heavily on monetary policy – lowering interest rates and pumping money into financial markets otherwise known as “Quantitative Easing” – combined with the role of the so-called BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, in pulling the world economy out of the ditch.

The key part of this equation was China, the “factory of the world.” But China, facing

its own massive corporate debt bubble, is in no way able to play this role today. In fact all the BRIC countries are facing serious economic difficulties. The inability to have any type of coordinated international response as was the case in ‘08-’09 is reinforced by the growing inter-imperialist divisions between the U.S. and China and between other powers (like Russia and Saudi Arabia whose dispute is contributing to a collapse of oil prices).

Nor are the tools of monetary policy favored by the ruling class for many years working. For one thing, as many have pointed out, “the toolbox is depleted” given how low interest rates are in many countries, effectively negative in a number of cases. But the problem is worse than that. When the Federal Reserve poured the astronomical sum of $1.5 trillion into collapsing financial markets on March 12, the net effect was a half hour of calm before the selling frenzy resumed.

It has dawned on policy makers in the U.S. and internationally that to have any chance of preventing a complete meltdown they will have to put money directly into the pockets of working people. This is not because they have suddenly decided they feel sympathy for the plight of working people but this is the only thing that will slow the process down. Of course they will only do this under severe pressure and in as S O C I A L I S TA LT E R N AT I V E . O R G

he Beginning of A New Era limited a way as possible while doing everything to bail out the capitalists who got us into this crisis in the first place as they did in ‘08-’09.

In reality what is needed needed now as we outline in the front page article is a set of measures to decisively cut across the interests of the capitalists through fully funded unemployment insurance, $600 per week to every adult in the country, cancelling rent and mortgage payments, and the state taking control of sections of manufacturing to produce needed medical supplies.

Going forward we will need a massive program of public works to put millions back to work which should be focused on building the infrastructure we need to transition to a fossil fuel free economy.

Front Line Nurse Speaks Out

The End of An Era The increasing protectionism and de-globalization as well as the rise of nationalist figures like Trump on the right and Bernie on the left in recent years pointed to a profound crisis facing discredited neoliberalism, the dominant paradigm for 40 years.

This phase of capitalist history which followed the collapse of the postwar boom included the relentless promotion of “free trade,” privatization of public services and the ever-growing dominance of financial institutions. But as the Italian magazine Limes recently stated, referencing the event that triggered World War I when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Austrian archduke Frank Ferdinand, “the bullet is the pandemic and Franz Ferdinand is neoliberalism.”

The period we are going into will look quite different to the past 40 years and more like the period between the World Wars when the economy was stalled and borders hardened. As today, capitalism and its institutions were deeply discredited after World War I and there was fury against the political establishment. This led to revolutionary upheavals and vicious counterrevolutionary pushback from the ruling class. Even on the eve of this crisis, at the end of last year, we saw a global wave of revolt against austerity, corruption and oppression stretching from Ecuador to Iran to Hong Kong. This is the harbinger of what is to come.

As terrifying as coronavirus is, it is orders of magnitude less of a threat to human civilization compared to climate change. As the new generation lives through this crisis and sees how diseased capitalism is, they will look towards a socialist system based on a global planned economy as the only way forward. The working class, while initially stunned by the twin shocks of coronavirus and a global recession, will turn to the road of struggle far more rapidly and decisively than after the 2008-9 crash including in the U.S. Nothing will be the same again. J

SUBSCRIBE TO

SOCIALIST

ALTERNATIVE

WWW. SO CIAL IS TALT ERNAT I VE .OR G/SUBSCRIBE

For only $3.50 a month, subscribe today to Socialist Alternative, our newspaper that comes out 10 times a year, and Socialist World, our political journal which comes out three times a year.

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349 CO-EDITORS: Tom Crean and Keely Mullen EDITORIAL BOARD: George Brown, Eljeer Hawkins, Joshua Koritz, Ty Moore, Kailyn Nicholson, Calvin Priest, Tony Wilsdon Editors@SocialistAlternative.org

APRIL 2020

The following comments were made

by Marty Harrison, a nurse in Philadelphia and member of PASNAP, at Socialist Alternative’s national virtual town hall on March 22. They graphically illustrate how the disaster of coronavirus has been exacerbated by capitalism and neoliberal policies. Another health care worker from New York City, Eljeer Hawkins, on the same call made the point that across the country 120 rural hospitals have been closed since 2005 while in New York City, no less than 20,000 hospital beds have been lost since 2000 due to budget cuts, a staggering 27% reduction in capacity.

The for-profit health care industry cannot provide safe quality care to all those who need it on a good day. And today is not a good day.

COVID-19 is a tipping point in this debate – the health care equivalent of the Greenland ice sheet falling into the sea. Socialists’ argument that capitalism cannot and will not provide any service no matter how necessary unless it is profitable has become the concrete experience of millions around the world. We need to be taking action to change that reality and save lives.

COVID-19, the novel coronavirus is, as its name indicates, new, a variation on a well understood theme. It was first recognized half a world away at the end of last year so that by the time it reached the U.S., we knew some critical basic facts about it. Namely, the virus caused respiratory infections which spread person to person through the air, in droplets and by contact with contaminated surfaces.

Health care workers are very familiar with the standard precautions for

all of these transmission routes, the difference is COVID-19 isolation requires a combination of all three protocols.

Health care workers need gown, gloves, face shield/goggles and a respirator, a close fitting N95 mask or a PAPR, a battery powered air purifier.

Ventilators, in contrast, are machines that draw air in and out of a patient’s lungs. COVID19 positive patients develop pneumonia requiring mechanical ventilation.

The need for an increased supply of both respirators and ventilators was easy to anticipate. in January and February, as more and more information about the virus was in the media, Administration at my hospital – and I’ve heard variations of this story from nurses across the country – repeatedly assured us that they had a month’s supply of N95’s stashed away under lock and key.

Once we started admitting symptomatic patients, that stock disappeared in thre days.

There is no uncertainty in the science, if the microbe is airborne, we need at least the N95 level of protection. Without it, health care workers will inhale the airborne virus, if we become infected, we can spread it to others, including our patients and if we get sick, we cannot care for anyone else.

There is a lot of uncertainty about who is positive, because of the extreme limits on the availability of test kits. Health care workers want this level of protection when they’re giving care to patients with symptoms because there’s no going back. Once you’ve been exposed, you are exposed.

The failure to test widely further exacerbates the demand for the N95’s at a time when supply is limited.

The Trump administration has done irreparable and unknowable harm by downplaying the dangers. Two weeks ago, in an act of truly criminal negligence, the Centers for Disease Control relaxed its standards related to the N95, allowing the substitution of a surgical mask IF the N95 was not available. The virus did not read the CDC memo and did not change its mode of transmission. We need N95’s

to protect ourselves.

President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act which gives him the ability to tell corporations to manufacture N95’s, but he hasn’t acted on this authority.

His administration has found trillions of dollars for banks, cruise ship lines, and the stock market, but no money has been released for hospitals struggling to pay for added staff, equipment and supplies.

Health care workers are skilled and we know what we need to do our jobs well. A socialist solution for health care must include direct caregivers having democratic input and control over how care is delivered, our supply chains and how our inventory is warehoused for emergencies.

All of that Personal Protective Equipment is time consuming and exhausting to put on and take off and it must be done correctly to avoid cross contamination. We need more nurses to care for COVID patients at a time when staffing was already tight in part due to budget cuts resulting from the Trump administration’s attacks on Obamacare.

Those of you who don’t work in health care will find this difficult to believe, but a significant minority of health care workers are currently without work. In many regions of the country, hospitals and clinics are cancelling elective procedures--not just plastic surgery, but preventive care, diagnostic, therapeutic and palliative procedures which are necessary, but not urgent.

In my view, our employers must be providing any and all training we will need to back fill for our exhausted, quarantined, or sick coworkers. Direct caregivers over 60 years old or who are at higher risk for any reason must be offered paid leave or retrained to fill a need away from the bedside.

Socialist response to this crisis would include an assessment of the skills we have collectively and then a plan to use those skills most effectively in the service of patient care. It’s not rocket science, it may even sound simplistic, but it will not be possible as long as profit, not patient care, is driving decision making. And that’s what needs to change. J

5

STRUGGLE

Italy’s Coronavirus Crisis Based on reports from Resistenze Internazionali (ISA in Italy) in March With over 5,476 dead in just under a month and over 60,000 people officially infected, Italy is the country currently at the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. On Saturday, March 21, 793 people died from coronavirus and on Sunday, March 22, a further 651. Unfortunately, the figures for those infected only partially reflect the situation.

Real estimates are difficult to make, but it is certain that the virus has already infected hundreds of thousands of people in Italy. The real situation is not clear, because the use of tests is not universal. Suffice it to say that hospital staff who come into daily contact with Covid-19 patients are not tested, while footballers, VIPs and politicians don’t seem to have any difficulty in getting checked.

The spread of the coronavirus in Italy proves that the dismantling of the public health system over recent years by the main political forces in Italy was deeply dangerous and ill-advised. The neoliberal euphoria and reactionary regionalism of the last two decades were the backdrop for the dismemberment of public healthcare, depriving it of resources and breaking it into autonomous regional health services which are unable to act collectively and decisively, as a unified National Health Service could have done, in response to this crisis.

In particular, the cuts in recent years have resulted in the loss of no fewer than 70,000

A protest of Fiat workers in Pomigliano, Italy.. beds – a net loss of 17% compared in the context of a growing vulnerability to epidemics of this type due in part to the aging of the population and the increase in life expectancy. This situation has meant that, compared to the European Union average of five beds per thousand inhabitants, Italy now has just over three.

In order to contain the spread of the Coronavirus, Italians are asked justifiably to stay

at home and limit contact to a minimum.

To leave home, they must sign a declaration certifying their health. If they leave home without good reason, they risk a fine and a criminal charge. Hundreds of people have already been reported by the police for violating the ordinance. The police stop people in the streets to check whether there are serious and well-founded reasons for leaving home.

In addition to this, and cleverly taking

advantage of the climate of fear and collective psychosis, the government has decreed a strike ban that has been extended until March 31. In spite of these draconian measures, workers in dozens of companies have developed and are developing spontaneous strikes to demand the right to health.

Strikes and mobilizations have already taken place at Fiat in Pomigliano, Pasotti in Brescia, Piaggio in Pontedera, Electrolux in Susegana and Bonfiglioli in Bologna. Other strikes are scheduled at Fincantieri in Palermo and Vitesco in Pisa. Probably these strikes will spread further. The three main metalworker trade unions, FIM, FILM and UILM are demanding that production is completely ceased until March 22. The Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) has, for its part, announced a plan of 32 hours of strikes in non-essential industrial sectors.

To stop the spread of the virus, all unnecessary work must be stopped. Air, rail, sea and road transport, unless essential, must now stop. Faced with the seriousness of the situation, with a national health system that is in danger of collapsing, dragging hundreds of lives with it, we must immediately stop production, just to make profits, and close unnecessary public offices, factories and companies. This is the only sensible decision to take at this time.

For more analysis of how this crisis is unfolding internationally and how workers are fighting back to defend their interests go to InternationalSocialist.net. J

Coronavirus Lockdown: Socialist Organizing Continues Joshua Koritz While states and cities firm up restrictions and generally fumble to prevent the spread of COVID-19, working class people are looking for ways to fight back. Despite “social distancing,” workers who remain in workplaces are organizing and fighting for safer work environments, adequate safety supplies, and a say on the job. Reacting to this changed situation means organizing in different ways and Socialist Alternative is pushing forward with virtual town halls, online petitions, and the political education of our members.

To tell the stories of the workers who are organizing for safety and to share the struggles of working during the Coronavirus crisis, Socialist Alternative has launched a blog: “Workers Speak Out: Coronavirus Lockdown” at WorkersSpeakOut.com. We invite you to read, watch the testimonies, and share your story as well! It shows that everywhere bosses

are still making decisions based on what is profitable instead of the health and safety of workers, clients, customers, or the community. It is a graphic and visceral reminder that this system of capitalism makes pandemics worse and causes health care and economic crises.

Thanks to video meeting technology, we can continue meeting each other without risking spreading COVID-19. On March 22, Socialist Alternative organized a “virtual town hall” that brought together 6,000 people to talk about a socialist response, featuring speakers from Seattle to New York City and as far as Italy and Hong Kong.

Seattle City Councilmember and Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant kicked things off by talking about the clearing out of some stores, “You wanna talk about hoarders? Let’s talk about the billionaire class.

That’s not an isolated example, this is a feature of capitalism.” New York State Senator

and Democratic Socialist of America member Julia Salazar pointed out that “In NY state we have the most positive cases of covid-19 of anywhere in the country. This crisis is generating popular support for socialist policies and economic justice.” Initiator of the #RentStrike petition, and a socialist candidate for congress in Washington State Joshua Collins spoke to the reasons over two million people signed his petition.

For those of us who are still going into work, the lack of safety supplies and regulations are angering workers everywhere.

Amazon warehouse workers in many locations have gathered signatures on petitions asking for readily available hand sanitizer. The back page of this paper details the struggle at Amazon. Nurses and hospital employees are begging for the proper safety equipment, not to mention ICU beds and supplies. Testimony to this effect was powerfully given by Socialist Alternative members Marty Harrison

(Philadelphia nurse) and Eljeer Hawkins (NYC physicians assistant), you can read more of Marty’s analysis on page 5. Socialist Alternative aims to help build these fightbacks in our workplaces and communities through online petitions and public meetings to discuss the way forward.

Even though we can’t meet in person, there’s still space to win! Pressure through petitions and organizing forced Seattle to be one of the first cities to declare a moratorium on eviction for the extent of the crisis. Now, Councilmember Sawant is pushing to pass an emergency tax on big business to fund COVID-19 emergency response.

Socialist Alternative is hosting regular virtual meetings in cities all over the country. We’re organizing study groups on topics from the economic downturn to the history of workers struggles. If ever there was a time to get involved with Socialist Alternative, it is now. Reach out and get involved today! J

6 S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N A T I V E . O R G

POLITICS

Joe Biden – Servant of Wall Street Erin Brightwell Joe Biden’s history as a loyal servant to corporate interests is well documented, and has come at an enormous cost to working people, both in the U.S. and internationally.

During his six terms as a Senator from Delaware and two terms as Vice President, Biden has been a reliable and enthusiastic booster of the billionaire class. From the catastrophic war in Iraq which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 2.4 million Iraqis to his championing of a 2005 pro-corporation bankruptcy law that has been devastating to working people. During Biden’s nearly five decades as a leading Democrat, including 20 years of Democratic administrations, income inequality has accelerated to the historic and outrageous level where it is today.

Biden’s total incapacity for leadership for working people, as well as that of the Democratic party establishment as a whole, has been fully exposed during the coronavirus crisis. At the time of this writing, with COVID19 cases skyrocketing, one-in-five Americans living under shelter-in-place restrictions, and millions of workers losing their jobs, Biden completely disappeared from public view for days. When Biden finally released a video statement, he attacked the Trump administration for their lawsuit against Obamacare at a time when it’s obvious that the private health care system is an enormous obstacle to meeting the demands of the coronavirus pandemic.

History in the Senate Biden outperformed expectations in the March 15 debate with Bernie Sanders although Sanders did expose some of his real

record. Take the “bankruptcy reform” legislation in 2005 which benefited the credit card companies headquartered in his home state of Delaware by making it nearly impossible for ordinary people to declare bankruptcy.

This was a years-long focus for Biden. The amendment he wrote to make child support the first priority in bankruptcy proceedings was nothing more than a political stunt over a technicality. Biden’s amendment changed absolutely nothing in practice, yet he uses it to claim he was making a bad law better.

Biden’s son, Hunter, was making $100,000 per year as a consultant for one of the biggest credit card companies, MBNA, at the same time that Biden was pushing to get bankruptcy reform passed in congress.

Among other punishing measures, Biden’s bankruptcy bill made it impossible for student debt to be discharged in the bankruptcy process.

Biden was one of the main architects of mass incarceration during the height of the “War on Drugs” in the 1980s and ‘90s.

Biden authored several bills as a senator to build more prisons, hire more cops, and prosecute drug offenses more harshly. More recently, Biden has shifted in the other direction as consciousness on the racism of the criminal justice system has changed among Democratic voters. But in 1989, Biden criticized President George H.W. Bush’s policies from the right, arguing that the president’s plan “doesn’t include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, not enough prosecutors to convict them, not enough judges to sentence them, and not enough prison cells to put them away for a long time.”

As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden took the side of harassers in his sexist treatment of Anita Hill in 1991.

Instead of calling corroborating witnesses or using his position as chair to defend Hill, he stood by as Republican senators attacked her in vicious racist and misogynistic terms, despite the fact that Biden actually opposed the nomination of arch-conservative Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

It’s All on Tape Video evidence belies Biden’s claims that he has never advocated cuts to social security. In fact, he’s long been a deficit hawk, looking for ways to balance the budget by cutting programs that benefit working people. His chief of staff while vice president was Bruce Reed, a neoliberal technocrat who helped write the Clinton administration’s welfare reform act “to end welfare as we know it” and has been the president of billionaire school privatizer Eli Broad’s foundation.

Reed was a key part of the Simpson-Bowles commission that wrote a plan for cutting the deficit that included big cuts to Social Security. Simpson-Bowles failed in Congress, but Reed was included in Biden’s administration in part to continue working on a bi-partisan deal to cut Social Security.

For all his lies, nepotism, and overnight

reversals of long held positions like his support for the Hyde Amendment which restricted abortion access for poor women, Biden is not all that unique. Just like the rest of the degenerate class of capitalist politicians from which he hails, he’ll say just about anything to try and convince voters that he has working people’s interests at heart at election time.

But once in office, he has a long rap sheet of austerity, wars for oil, and divide-and-conquer oppression that help keep his capitalist paymasters swimming in profits.

From coronavirus to climate change, housing to health care, we are living in an increasingly crisis-ridden society where working people and the poor are bearing the brunt of capitalist chaos. A Biden administration promises more belt-tightening and dysfunction for working people while a tiny elite hoard more of the world’s resources. This will provoke mass resistance and is just one more reason we need to start building an independent working class political force now. J

Tax Amazon: Big Business Needs to Pay for the Failures of Capitalism!

Alycia Lewis As the coronavirus pandemic shuts down normal life, millions of working people faced with lost hours, mass layoffs, and no safety net are left wondering how they will pay for food, rent, mortgages, student debt, medical bills – the list goes on and on. While cities and states – and even the federal government – have begun to accept certain demands for emergency relief, much more is urgently needed.

In Seattle, the call to Tax Amazon to fund coronavirus relief, affordable housing and Green New Deal programs provides an example of the type of demands needed at this critical moment.

Victory – No State Ban on Taxing Big Business Big business’ determined efforts to have the Washington state legislature pass a ban to block Seattle from taxing them have failed!

Big business had been ready to grant

APRIL 2020

King County the authority to tax them a small amount in exchange for a state-wide “preemption” or ban on cities raising any taxes on big business- a direct attack on not only the Tax Amazon movement, but any future progressive taxation efforts state-wide. Tax Amazon made crystal clear that any bill that included a ban would have been a huge blow to working people in a state which already has the nation’s most regressive tax structure.

Our movement mobilized to state legislators' offices and Town Hall meetings, organized a 400-person march to the Amazon Spheres, and collected over 3,000 signatures on a petition for elected officials to stand with working people and publicly commit to vote against any bill which includes a state ban.

As a result a number of state legislators publicly come out against any form of ban or preemption, causing big business to withdraw their support for granting King County limited progressive taxing authority but preserving the right of cities to tax big business.

In response to the urgent need for emergency assistance generated by the coronavirus outbreak, Seattle City Councilmembers

Kshama Sawant, member of Socialist Alternative, and Tammy Morales introduced a petition to raise $500 million in an Amazon Tax on the city’s largest corporations for emergency COVID-19 funding. Immediate services that would be funded include cash assistance to compensate for lost income for working people, urgent funds for testing and treatment, tiny house villages for homeless neighbors, and relief for struggling small businesses. After the crisis is over, the tax would fund our movement’s original demands – social housing and Green New Deal programs.

The Task Ahead: To the Ballot!

The Tax Amazon movement will do everything in our power to fight for Councilmembers Sawant and Morales’ proposal, but we don’t have illusions in Mayor Durkan or the majority of the City Council.

Our growing coalition is prepared to take the Tax Amazon fight all the way to the ballot in November should the City Council refuse to act. A ballot initiative enables us to run an independent campaign to bring a vote on the

Amazon Tax directly to the working people of Seattle.

We need to collect 30,000 signatures to get our tax on the ballot. In the context of a pandemic, we need to fight to demand that Washington state allows us to collect signatures online. Not doing so would be both a threat to public health and a restriction of voters’ democractic rights. We will also collect signatures by mail in case the state refuses to recognize online signatures.

Winning a tax on big business will allow us to provide rapid relief for people in Seattle who are currently experiencing the brutal failure of both the private healthcare system and the housing market, but it won’t be enough.

We urgently need healthcare and housing to be run in the interests of working people and the environment rather than for profit.

Our fight has the potential not only to win a historic tax on big businesses in Seattle, but to inspire the growing layer of working people who are being radicalized around the failures of capitalism to move into struggle and fight for a socialist transformation of society. J

7

ISSUE #62 l APRIL 2020 SUGGESTED DONATION $2

Amazon Puts Profits Broaden the Fight AgainstSafety Trump’s Agenda Before Workers’ Matt Smith As coronavirus continues to spread and much of the country is locking down, Amazon has been ramping up. With more people staying home, delivery is becoming more important than ever, and more lucrative. Demand is soaring for deliveries on everyday necessities, everything from toilet paper to powdered milk.

All these deliveries require an army of workers – drivers, handlers, sorters, and more – at the company’s vast network of fulfillment and delivery centers. I am part of that army, a contracted cargo handler at an Amazon delivery station outside of Seattle, near the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

My coworkers and I are working harder than ever, putting our health on the line to provide an important service to our quarantined neighbors. But the executives and the billionaires at Amazon and its contractors are unfortunately not taking basic steps to protect our health and the health of the public, despite what their PR departments might say.

Unhealthy Conditions at Amazon The Amazon delivery network is a potential hotbed for coronavirus spread. While health officials advise against meetings of 10 or more people, Amazon warehouses have 100, 500, or even 1500 employees working in a single location.

Despite this clear potential for danger, Amazon has not taken many simple precautions to prevent an outbreak. For example, neither Amazon nor our contractor has

provided basic supplies like hand sanitizer for our trucks, to disinfect between deliveries, in spite of repeated requests from workers.

At our delivery station, we have also not seen any increase in our paid sick leave to account for the virus threat. Many of our coworkers would face a difficult choice if they experienced symptoms of coronavirus: go to work and risk infecting your coworkers, or miss as many as five days of pay (the time it can take to get tested for COVID-19 and receive the results).

On top of this, there has been remarkably little communication from Amazon management about precautions and procedures, including the question of what happens if one of our coworkers were to test positive for COVID-19. This question has become even more urgent, after an Amazon associate recently tested positive at a delivery station in New York City. In New York, employees say that it was co-workers – not Amazon management – that informed them of the positive test result, and that workers were asked to come in for their shift after the case was discovered. Amazon should communicate clearly with its employees and contractors about this threat, and they should immediately shut down any facility where a positive coronavirus case is found, with full pay for all affected workers.

Workers and Community Members Need to Fight Back Urgent action is needed, for workers like me who are being put into increasing danger,

and for workers who are losing incomes because they are forced to stay home without paid leave or have been laid off.

To solve this crisis, workers will need to organize and demand change, whether for immediate cash assistance, guaranteed paid sick leave, safe working conditions, or Medicare for All. In Seattle, socialist Councilmember Kshama Sawant is fighting for a $500 million tax on big corporations like Amazon to fund immediate relief for working people. Workers, socialists, labor unions, and activists will need to join in this fight if we want to win.

In another important step, over 1,500 Amazon employees from around the world have signed a public petition calling for action from the company. In addition to urgent safety precautions, the petition correctly calls for Amazon to institute 1.5x hazard pay for all of us who are risking our health to do this work.

Amazon and its contractors should immediately begin negotiations with their employees to discuss and implement these policies.

For this to happen, workers will need to begin forming volunteer committees at each warehouse to facilitate negotiations with management, to circulate petitions to coworkers, and to advocate for the necessary changes at their particular worksite, and at the company more broadly. This will of course have to be done with full recognition of the anti-worker, hostile threats to come from management once committees are discovered.

Deeper Problems Exposed The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the bankruptcy of capitalism. Corporations like Amazon put profits over the health of their workers and the community. In non-union workplaces, when problems arise, employees have little to no recourse through regular corporate structures, where unresponsive bosses have a monopoly on decision-making.

This system, which was already failing the vast majority of working people even before the coronavirus outbreak, has shown its complete inability to deal with the global pandemic as well as the rapidly emerging climate crisis. The model of siphoning off unimaginable wealth to the top, while even the most essential social needs like healthcare are starved, is not working. We urgently need a single-payer Medicare for All system, where the profits of insurance and big pharma are de-prioritized, so that the health needs of ordinary people can be met. Workers will need to get organized and build mass movements to win this kind of change.

But that will not be enough. Ultimately, unless entire sectors like healthcare and energy and housing, and large corporations like Amazon, are taken into democratic public ownership, crises such as coronavirus and climate change will not be addressed.

Instead of allowing massive layoffs and bailing out big corporations like Boeing, we need to take the major corporations into our own hands as workers and democratically run them ourselves. J