Dr. Michael Osterholm
The other night I viewed a ninety-minute Youtube interview with infectious disease specialist Dr. Michael Osterholm. Listening to that interview, I began to realize that my life and the lives of the entire working class of the world will change in this coming year. The next day, I read from other reliable sources that the essence of Dr. Osterholm’s argument is reasonable.
While the media is arguing that we must contain Covid-19 (coronavirus), Dr. Osterholm is arguing that millions of us will become infected with this disease. Saying this, the death rate for the disease is about two percent. That would mean that hundreds of thousands of people in this country would have a fatal outcome. The elderly, and that includes me, would have a fatality rate of ten to twenty percent. Dr. Osterholm estimates that all of this will unfold in the next four to seven months.
The captains of the corporate world are afraid
Well, it has been a few days and I’m still trying to begin to absorb this information. As you might imagine, it is difficult to even think about what this new reality will mean. So, in this blog, I will only focus on one part of the interview with Dr. Osterholm.
In that interview Dr. Osterholm mentioned that he had a meeting with representatives of some of the largest corporations. Those executives were interested in how Covid-19 (coronavirus) will affect their businesses.
Dr. Osterholm said that after he reported on the anticipated effect of the disease, those executives acted like “scared six-year-old children” who were afraid to walk in shadows. So, a question to be asked is: Why were these so-called titans of the corporate world panic stricken, when given a rational view of what will be happening in the upcoming months?
We can begin to answer that question with a fact those corporate executives live in routine denial of. This is that workers create literally all the wealth in the world. Because of this disease, many corporations will shut down and many workers won’t be producing wealth anymore. Why is this so depressing for those executives?
Because of the routine functioning of the capitalist system, corporations are driven do be obsessed with three objectives.
They must constantly look for ways to sell more and more commodities. This is why they spend about $200 billion in advertising every year.
Then, they are obsessed with cutting costs. This is why corporations invested vast amounts of money to eliminate manufacturing jobs in this country, and build factories in nations where the prevailing wages are between $1 and $10 per day.
Then, they must go into astronomical debt. Today, from what I see, investments in derivatives are valued at hundreds of trillions of dollars.
In order to enforce those routine policies in the world, the government invests hundreds of billions of dollars in the military every year. One effect of the deteriorating conditions in this country is the skyrocketing number of people living in prison. While the United States government criticizes other governments, this country has the largest prison population in the world.
When we look at the totality of this reality, we might imagine why those executives became panic stricken, when they learned of what the world will face in the upcoming months. The source of the wealth that has given them opulent lifestyles is evaporating. While there have been recessions and depressions in the past, the current crisis is profoundly different from anything we have experienced.
The absolute fear expressed by those executives makes it clear that they have no idea of how to rationally deal with this crisis. On the other hand, I read a report that Italian unions are calling for a general strike of all enterprises except for essential services. That call, in my opinion, demonstrates clearly how the needs of working people are different from the profit drive of corporations.
How would a worker’s government respond to this crisis?
Thinking about the call for a general strike in Italy raises the question: How would a worker’s government respond to this crisis? In my opinion, today Cuba has a worker’s government and their history is worth looking at.
In 1959 the present Cuban government took power. Cuba at that time had about 500,000 sugar cane workers who only had work for about three months every year. Under those conditions, the literacy rate was about 23% and health care was unknown to many on the island.
After the revolution, the government organized a massive literacy drive and every Cuban learned how to read. That literacy drive was the foundation for the Cuban health care system.
Today Cuba has about three times more doctors, per capita, than the United States. Cuban infant mortality is lower than in the U.S. While about 400,000 hospital beds have been eliminated in the United States since 1980, Cuban doctors have been treating some of the poorest patients all over the world.
We can also say that in the United States research for a vaccine or cure for coronavirus was stalled because corporate officers didn’t think this research would be profitable. During these same years, Cuba has been developing their own interferon treatment. Cuban interferon has been shown to be effective in keeping coronavirus patients alive while their immunological systems fight this disease.
What would a worker’s government do today?
In order to answer that question, I believe we need to start with the question of what is needed. First, we need to have an international response aimed at making it a top priority to test every person in the world for Covid-19. A top priority needs to be that the results of all those tests need to be done immediately. Clearly the infrastructure for all of this doesn’t exists, but all of humanity can be organized to make this happen.
A priority would be to provide for the needs of everyone in the world. These needs include food, housing, electricity, water, health care, and communication. I think we need to consider that the workers who will be providing these services will be risking disease and or death from Covid-19.
For these reasons, I think it is rational that no one should be prevented from having the things we need because we cannot pay. There are workers who will be willing to work, and there are resources available to provide for our needs.
Capitalists have different ideas
While medical experts call for people to isolate themselves and practice “social distancing,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kinney has different ideas. This is his point of view: “We can’t shut everything down,” because “we may be healthier, but the economy will tank, and we can’t have that.” In other words, Mayor Kinney thinks that many people need to die so that some of the most affluent people in the world can continue to live in opulence.
The central priority of capitalists is profit. Capitalists need to routinely make payments on exorbitant debts in order to stay in business. The top priority outlined in the City Charter of Philadelphia is to make payments on loans to bondholders. Some of those bondholders are, no doubt, some of the most affluent people in the world.
So, when corporations are not able to afford to keep their businesses open, they will close down and eliminate millions of jobs.
This state of affairs was dramatized in the film, Too Big To Fail about the stock market crash in 2008. William Hurt played the role of Henry Paulson, who was the Secretary of the Treasury at the time.
In the film, there is a scene with the character of Henry Paulson and his wife sitting in their back yard in the middle of the night. Paulson’s wife asks him: What is the matter?
Paulson replied that if the stock market crashes, in two weeks there won’t be milk in the stores.
This is how the political economic system of capitalism works.
In the past, workers toiled for capitalists because the paychecks we received allowed us to get some of the things we need and want. With the economy going into a tailspin, those days are beginning to end. Today workers need to take control over the economy, and this will become more clear every day.
What is our history
How can this happen when the labor movement in the United States has been in retreat for over fifty years? In order to answer that question, perhaps we might look at our history.
For thousands of years humanity lived in tribal societies where we attempted to survive by dealing directly with the natural environment. The basic strategy in those days was to work in communal societies where the labor of everyone was appreciated. Because of that reality, women’s work was essential to human survival, and women were seen as equals to men.
Then, came the hundreds of years of slavery in the Greek and Roman Empires. Work was no longer viewed as a means of sustaining life, but as a form of inhuman drudgery forced on unwilling workers. The goal of the slave was not to make work easier, but to become free.
Then, came the years of feudalism where serfs toiled on the farms of the nobility. Those serfs were not allowed to leave that land throughout their lives. Just as with the system of slavery, feudalism went into a severe decline. Then, it was pushed aside with revolutions.
The birth pains of the capitalist system consisted of genocide against Native Americans, chattel slavery, horrendous working conditions, as well as unimaginable wars. Out of those horrors came the international working class.
Our class has been struggling since the birth of capitalism all over the world. We ended chattel slavery in the Civil War. We then ended Jim Crow segregation with the civil rights movement. The horrendous conditions workers used to routinely experience have been improved. We went on an international campaign to stop the war against Vietnam.
This is our history. I clearly don’t know how we will deal with the current crisis. What I do know is that when we look at our history, we have the capacity to come out of this crisis much stronger. As they used to say in the civil rights movement: “Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on.”
If we can dare to struggle, we can certainly dare to win.
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