COVID-19: What Happened to All the Money?

F-35 Lightning II Fighter Bomber, Cost: $1.5 Trillion

By Steve Halpern

Today there are quadrillions

of microscopic viruses invading

the lungs of people living in

every nation of the world.

These viruses have travelled

on jet aircraft at speeds of 500 miles per hour.

They traveled on ships, cars, trains,

and rest on doorknobs.

The government says that their top priority

is to keep us safe.

Yet, there are shortages of face masks, respirators,

COVID-19 test kits, and all kind of medical supplies.

However, the government in the

richest nation in the world,

has plenty of money for other things.

They say they use this money to keep us safe.

There is the F-15 Fighter Bomber

that has a cost of $1.5 trillion.

The problem is that the F-15

isn’t designed to battle COVID-19.

Then, there are 2,821 atomic bombs.

These bombs do have the ability

to end the COVID-19 pandemic

by doing away with the species known as the human race.

However, eliminating the human race

will not create a safe environment for people.

So, the government invested in federal,

state, and city police with SWAT teams.

But the President feels that all this protection is inadequate.

So, he used his powers to build a 2,000 mile wall.

This wall separates COVID-19 patients

from other COVID19 patients on the other side of the wall.

The President feels that these initiatives

will “Make America Great Again.”

In fact, those initiatives have made this country

the epicenter of the pandemic.

When we turn on the television, we see advertisements

arguing that our lives might be better

if we purchase lucrative investment funds

drugs incapable of treating COVID-19,

new cars, cosmetics, jewelry, or mufflers.

Well, it’s not so easy to buy or use these things

when politicians tell us to stay at home,

and the so-called news media

isn’t interested in pointing out these obvious contradictions.

So, while government officials deny

they have made colossal failures,

they tell us we need to wash our hands, stay at home,

and wear masks that aren’t available.

That’s right. They have spent obscene amounts of money

on the military allegedly to keep us safe,

yet they don’t have the resources to give us facemasks.

I’m 67 years old.

Yes, I’m concerned,

but I’m not living in fear,

because a coworker once told me:

“Don’t worry about things we can’t control.”

Who knows who will and who will not survive this plague?

There is one thing I do know.

Humanity will survive this.

The immense majority of the world’s population are not billionaires.

We are the working class of the world.

This pandemic is teaching us that

we are the ones who produce all the wealth.

We are the ones who provide the food, clothing, housing,

transportation, communication, health care, and the arts.

The billionaires and their managers produce nothing.

Yet, they have the audacity to say that they give us charity.

We are learning this basic fact.

We have better things to do than to spend our entire lives

working so a tiny minority can have more

than they could ever use in 100 lifetimes.

The Criminality of Capitalism and the Alternative

By Steve Halpern

Ernesto Che Guevara:

“To be a revolutionary doctor, there must first be a revolution,”

“Let’s be realistic. Let’s do the impossible.”

As we continue to witness the unfolding crisis that is being exacerbated by the capitalist system, something interesting is happening. Over the years, I’ve noticed that when there are periodic crises of capitalism, the news media exposes some of the routine horrendous practices of the system.

We can start this story with the history of the owners of Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia.

The Owners of Hahnemann Hospital

Allegheny

Years ago, the owner of Hahnemann was the so-called non-profit, Allegheny Health & Education Research Foundation. That organization became the largest bankruptcy of a non-profit health care service in the country as of 1998.

The Board of trustees at Allegheny and the board of directors at Mellon Bank were the same people. At that time, Allegheny was in debt to Mellon to the tune of about $100 million. Because of this relationship, Mellon was the first to be paid when Allegheny went bankrupt. This meant that workers, vendors, as well as federally funded research programs lost significant amounts of money.

As we might imagine, the government went along with this legalized thievery.

Tenet Healthcare

Allegheny sold Hahnemann to the for-profit corporation, Tenet Healthcare. Tenet owned hospitals in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005. Memorial was one of those hospitals.

For three days, meteorologists predicted that Hurricane Katrina would strike New Orleans. Tenet responded to this information by refusing to evacuate patients from Memorial Hospital. Apparently, Tenet wanted income from all the beds in their hospitals every day.

As a result, flood waters surrounded Memorial, and the hospital was cut off from water and electricity. This meant that there was no way to flush toilets or provide electricity in 110 degree heat. After several days, the patients were evacuated, but there were 45 fatalities.

The District Attorney in New Orleans charged a doctor and two nurses with euthanizing patients. The doctor was interviewed on the news program 60 Minutes about those charges. A jury decided to drop the charges against the doctor and two nurses.

Tenet Healthcare set up a trust fund of $25 million to settle with all non-employees who were affected by this disaster.

Joel Freedman

Joel Freedman used to own Hahnemann before he declared the hospital bankrupt. That move caused the layoffs of 2,500 health care workers and the shuttering of the hospital. Freeman then had ideas of selling the centrally located hospital to a real estate developer. He felt that if he could pull off that kind of deal, he could make a financial killing.

Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, city officials want to use the former Hahnemann building to treat the overflow of patients. Freedman says that this can happen only if he gets a $910,000 monthly rental fee.

I don’t think Freedman has commented on how that rental fee is more important than using the money to treat patients.

Bill Ackman of Pershing Square investments

Recently Bill Ackman, and his Pershing Square investment company, began to understand that the COVID-19 pandemic would have a devastating effect on the economy. So, he invested $27 million in a fund that shorted the market. That fund paid $2.6 billion.

A similar story was portrayed in the film The Big Short about how a few investors shorted the housing market in 2008 and made financial killings. Jeffrey Bezos the CEO of Amazon also profited to the tune of billions by selling off Amazon stock before the market crash.

Ackman is using this money to buy back stocks that lost money. I don’t believe that he has commented on how that money might be better used by purchasing surgical masks, respirators, and hospital beds.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin

Today, the Treasury Secretary is Steven Mnuchin. In 2009 Mnuchin took over the bank OneWest. We might consider that, at that time, the government spent literally trillions of dollars purchasing worthless mortgages. They called this massive funding quantitative easing.

Many workers visit casinos where we oftentimes loose money. However, I’ve never met a worker who expected the government to award compensation for loosing money at a casino. However, those rules don’t apply to capitalists.

When the capitalists lost massive amounts of money in 2008, the government adopted legislation to give them back that money, to the tune of trillions of dollars in quantitative easing.

However, Steven Mnuchin wasn’t satisfied with that award. He organized to evict 36,000 homeowners because they failed to make their mortgage payments to his OneWest bank.

One of those evictions went to court. Judge Jude Jeffrey labelled Mnuchin’s evictions as, “Mortifying abuse.”

Why were those evictions “mortifying abuse“? OneWest evicted 90 year-old Ossie Lofton from her home for non-payment of 27 cents. No, there is nothing wrong with your eyesight. The bank run by the Treasury Secretary evicted a 90 year-old woman for non-payment of 27 cents. This story was reported by Bess Levin in a December 1, 2016 Vanity Fair article.

I don’t think Mnuchin has commented on how that 27 cents was so important that he needed to evict Ossie Lofton from her home.

Recently the stimulus legislation passed by the government enables Mnuchin to wire trillions of dollars to banks because they have lost vast amounts of money. Working people are speculating as to whether or not we will receive any money.

President Donald Trump

The following are a list of quotations from the President of the United States of America about COVID 19:

January 22—“We have it totally under control.”

February 2—“We pretty much shut it down coming from China. It’s going to be fine.”

February 24­—“The coronavirus is very much under control in the U.S.A. . .Stock Market starting to look very good to me.”

March 10—“It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

March 13—President Trump instituted a National Emergency Declaration.

While epidemiologists have predicted that this pandemic will last eighteen months to two years, President Trump made a statement that he wants people back to work by Easter.

I happen to have received a letter from President Trump that was part of a mass mailing. When we look at the above quotations by the President, Trump has the audacity to argue that “the Liberal mainstream media—who is spreading their fake news 24 hours a day—they are doing everything they can do to defeat me.” The above quotations indicate that if the President is interested in the source of “fake news” all he needs to do is look in the mirror.

When we think about these statements, we might conclude that the President doesn’t have much going on between his ears. However, when we look at all the capitalists listed in this blog, they all have something in common. This is the idea that profits are more important than human life.

So what is the alternative?

Daniel Hoan, Milwaukee Mayor from 1916-1940

Daniel Hoan was the Mayor of Milwaukee during the pandemic of 1918 that cause the deaths of about 675,000 people in the United States. Hoan was a member of the Socialist Party. In that same year, the socialist Eugene Debs gave a speech in opposing the United States participation in World War I. Debs served three years in prison for giving that speech.

John M. Barry is the author of the 2004 book: The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. In this book, Barry reported that the so-called Spanish Flu actually originated in Kansas. The 1918 influenza was named “Spanish Flu” because the Spanish press were the first to report on the pandemic.

Barry also reported that the pandemic was spread to Europe by soldiers because the United States government transported them from Kansas. A new and more deadly strand of the virus returned to the states with soldiers who returned from the war. In the world about 50 million people died from the 1918 pandemic. That is about five times more deaths than all the soldiers killed in the First World War.

Although Debs and Hoan both were members of the Socialist Party, Hoan supported the Government decision to send U.S. troops to fight in the war. However, because of his socialist background, Hoan had a different approach to dealing with the 1918 pandemic.

He made the Health Commissioner George C. Ruhland the person in charge of dealing with the pandemic. Ruhland issued printed material that explained the measures needed to be taken in the city. Those handbills were printed in English, Russian, Lithuanian, Yiddish, and Italian.

Saloons were open, but patrons were only allowed to have a drink and then leave.

All those who had been infected were isolated.

Factories staggered work schedules to prevent overcrowding on the streetcars.

Because of these and other measures, Milwaukee had fewer fatalities than other cities.

In his letter to me, President Trump argues that “Socialist Democrats” are running against him. Had the President initiated similar measures as Milwaukee in 1918, perhaps fewer people would have died.

The gold standard in fighting against the pandemic – Cuba

In the year 1959 a new revolutionary government came to power in Cuba. One of the first measures of this government was to go on a literacy drive to teach everyone on the island how to read. Young and old Cubans went to all corners of the island and taught some of the least affluent people how to read.

The new Revolutionary government also made health care a right for all citizens. In the past, Cubans who lived in remote locations might need to walk for two days in order to receive medical care. For the first time, many Cubans who never had access to health care, began to see that they would be cared for when they became ill or injured.  

Another initiative of the Cuban revolutionary government was that in 1962 Cuban health care workers traveled to Algeria to give assistance to the medical community in that country.

When the HIV/AIDS pandemic spread throughout the world, Cuba took extraordinary measures to isolate those who had the disease. Those patients received significantly more resources than other Cubans.

Because of those measures, Cuba was able to limit the number of people who contacted HIV/AIDS on the island. The World Fact Book is published by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. According to this World Fact Book, Cuba has about one sixth the number of HIV/AIDS patients per capita, as the United States. The news program 60 Minutes reported on this story.

Starting in the 1980s Cuba began doing research on an interferon drug. This drug stimulates the immunological system to fight disease. The new Cuban drug was developed to treat hundreds of thousands of Cuban patients who were suffering from the disease dengue. Because of the Cuban interferon injections, the lives of many Cubans were saved.

Today, the Cuban interferon drug Alpha 2B has been shown to be effective in preventing COVID-19 patients from getting the potentially fatal disease of pneumonia. This drug is being mass produced in China by a Cuban-Chinese team. Newsweek Magazine reported on this story.

In the year 2014, the deadly virus of Ebola was spreading through three nations in West Africa. Those nations asked the Cuban President Raul Castro to send health care workers.

About 12,000 Cubans volunteered to be a part of the team that would treat highly infectious Ebola patients. 256 highly qualified health care workers were part of the team that succeeded in beginning to eradicate Ebola in West Africa.

Enrique Ubieta Gómez is a Cuban journalist who wrote the book Red Zone – Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa. This book was published by Pathfinder Press in 2019. Gómez’ book documents the immense challenges the Cubans faced, and how they persistently worked to effectively care for Ebola patients.

Since the year 1962, Cuban health care workers have treated some of the poorest patients in 109 nations throughout the world. We might consider that one of the primary causes of death in the world is poverty. When people don’t have consistent access to food, water, electricity, transportation, housing, and education, they are at risk of a short life expectancy. Providing health care to some of the poorest people in the world has been a priority for the Cuban government.

Today Cuba continues its tradition of sending its doctors and health care workers all over the world to treat patients with COVID-19. 

So, what conclusion can we draw from all this information? As humanity faces the COVID-19 pandemic we have a choice. In this blog, I’ve shown how capitalists have made a priority of profits over human lives. We can also question why hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the military allegedly to defend us. How can those expenditures be justified, when today there are shortages of surgical masks, respirators, and hospital beds.

The Polish born socialist Rosa Luxemburg once argued that humanity has a choice of “socialism or barbarism.” That choice is becoming more and more clear every day.           

  

99 Pounds of Heart - Josia Thugwane

By Steve Halpern

He lived in a place where he had no rights.

Living away from his family,

so he could earn a living.

The place was South Africa.

The people didn’t like that arrangement,

so they dedicated themselves

to making a change,

and begin to live with dignity.

He worked with the miners,

who toiled to take

gold and diamonds out of the ground.

But he never made much money,

so he ran.

He ran to take his mind off the oppression he faced.

He ran to make money so he could be closer to his family.

He ran because he could do it well.

He ran, and ran, and ran.

His people did what few thought possible.

They liberated Nelson Mandela,

and made him President

of the new South Africa.

Josia Thugwane could now

compete all over the world.

He won the marathon,

and some prize money in Hawaii.

He used the money to buy a car,

so he could spend more time with his family.

But there were many who wanted that car,

and Josia was shot when they tried to take it.

He recovered,

and ran again.

He ran, and ran, and ran.

Then, came the Olympics.

No person from South Africa,

with a dark skin color

had ever won a medal in the Olympics.

But the times, they were a-changing.

It was a hot day.

Marathon runners like to compete

when it’s cool.

So after twenty miles no one wanted to make their move.

But Josia Thugwane and his people

had waited for this day for a long time.

It was time to get some of the gold

his people took out of the ground.

It was time to show the world

that the Black people of South Africa

were just as good as everyone else.

Yes, it was time to take a step into history.

So Josia Thugwane took the lead

in the Marathon and didn’t look back.

He ran away from the oppression of the past.

He ran, and ran, and ran.

He measured five feet, two inches.

He weighed ninety-nine pounds.

And when he accepted the gold medal,

his ninety-nine pound frame

carried the hopes and aspirations of South Africa and the world.

One day dealing with the new reality

By Steve Halpern

Our lives have completely changed from just one month ago. Last month, we freely went out whenever we wanted, and went to wherever we could afford. Now, the authorities and medical experts are telling us to stay at home. In various places, they are actually talking about enforcing their stay-at-home guidelines. So, this is a blog about how I dealt with this new reality in one day.

I woke up and made breakfast of an omelet with onions, mushrooms, parsley, and mozzarella cheese. I had this with a bagel, two oranges, and coffee. Then, I read the newspaper and checked-out the internet.

In the past, I clearly didn’t like reading the newspaper. While there were interesting stories, the mainstream pro-capitalist media is almost always indifferent to the routine lives of working people all over the world.

Now, the news reporting appears to have deteriorated considerably. The banner headline in Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer is: The Coronavirus – From Bad to Worse. I find myself uninterested in most stories reporting on doom and gloom, without giving a rational perspective for dealing with this crisis.

Marc A. Thiessen

There was a column that made me laugh. This was by Marc A. Thiessen who was a speech writer for President George W. Bush, as well as an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump. In previous columns Thiessen argued that it is no longer necessary to “Make America Great Again.” In Thiessen’s opinion, the President has already made America great, and now all we need to do is: “Keep America Great.” The Inquirer published a letter of mine critical of that perspective.

Then, Thiessen gave us more evidence of his stark raving lunacy. He not only argued that this is a “Chinese Virus,” but he wants the United States government demand that China pay for all the damage caused by this virus. That perspective, for me, makes as much sense as the idea that COVID-19 be renamed: The Disease of the Donald.

Well, in Thiessen’s column today, a bit of clarity has penetrated his mind that appears to be allergic to reason. According to Thiessen: “China supplies more than 90% of antibiotics used here.” Thiessen then quoted an expert on Chinese medical exports to this country:

“If China shut the door on exports of core components to make our medicines, within months our pharmacy shelves would become bare and our health care system would cease to function.”

After this brief moment of clarity, Thiessen returned to his usual nonsensical arguments. How do we deal with the U.S. dependence on China? For Thiessen, this in no way means working with China to organize an international response to the pandemic.

No, according to Thiessen, corporations need to invest in Nokia and Erickson because they are developing 5G internet service. So, Thiessen is no longer interested in Making America Great. Now, he feels our priority will be to make Finland and Sweden great because those counties are not China.

Thiessen does have one talent. His columns are so absurd they are actually funny.

The rest of my day

Since I retired about a year ago, Judi and I have been working out regularly a neighborhood recreation center. Well, those activities are over.

Initially I tried to jump rope to compensate for the time I used to work out. The problem was that I am a human being who is capable of making serious mistakes. I have a herniated disk in my lower back that is a job-related condition.

Jumping rope is probably the worst thing one can do with a herniated disk. After jumping rope, my body informed me that this was a serious mistake. Fortunately, I didn’t cause serious damage from jumping rope, and I feel fully recovered.

So, now I go for long walks with our dog Rosie twice a day. We live about five minutes from Fairmount Park and there are extensive trails that few people take advantage of.

After returning from a walk, I took a nap. Then, I made my banana bread. The bananas weren’t as ripe as I would have liked. However, there was another ingredient that isn’t mentioned in recipes. In order to cook meals, we need to have time. Now, I have the time to make my banana bread.

A springtime walk

After making my banana bread, I went for another walk with Rosie. Judi was busy doing work she has at home.

This time, I walked along the Wissahickon Creek. This was a spectacular springtime day, and I was stunned by the natural beauty of the park. My photos don’t do justice to that natural beauty.

Many people had the same idea and there were a lot of people on the trail. I attempted to keep my distance and took several photos included in this blog.

At one point, a young woman noticed that the word Cuba is prominently displayed on my hat. I spoke with her for about two or three minutes, while she walked with her friend. She walked slowly backward, while I walked slowly forward, keeping about ten feet between us. Last month, perhaps we might have had a longer discussion, and I might have shown her my Cuba photos.

My time in Cuba last year.

That encounter caused me to think about the two weeks I spent in Cuba in the months of April and May last year. I purchased my Cuba hat in the picturesque town of Trinidad. Someone said that, had I bargained for that hat, I might have paid a lower price. Today, that argument is less than insignificant. 

While I was in Cuba, I was treated by a medical doctor because of blisters on my feet. I spoke to that doctor about the fact that the Cuban infant mortality rate is lower than it is in the United States. He informed me that the reason for this has to do with the fact that women and children get routine medical checkups that diagnose any potential problems.

On May 1 of last year, I viewed about one-million Cubans enthusiastically celebrating their government in Havana. Why is there so much enthusiastic support for the Cuban government?

From my observations, the Cuban government has been obsessed with making sure that every Cuban has their basic needs provided for. Because of that consciousness, every Cuban knows how to read. That reality has been the basis for the Cuban health care system that has three times more doctors per capita than this country.

When I returned to the United States, I learned that Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia would be closed down. This meant that about 2,500 health care workers would be laid off. In all, according to information I’ve seen, about 400,000 hospital beds have been eliminated in this country since 1980. During those same years, Cuban doctors, nurses, and technicians have gone all over the world to treat some of the least affluent patients.

Today, many people are demanding that the shuttered Hahnemann Hospital be reopened to deal with the overflow of COVID-19 patients.

Returning home

Normally, we rarely ever get food delivered. For me, it isn’t a bother to drive five minutes to pick up food when we call ahead. However, dealing with the new reality, we ordered pizza to be delivered. We are also planning to get our groceries delivered, and our neighbors are doing the same.

This morning I read conflicting articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer. One article reported that the Italian government would be issuing fines of over $5,000 for walking outside. Then, I read two other articles recommending that people take walks in the park in Philadelphia. I guess part of our new reality is to read conflicting stories.

Clearly, I’m wishing the best for everyone in the coming year. One of my most sincere hopes is that the international working class will organize ourselves to force governments to provide for the basic needs of everyone. This will be a determined struggle, since people who have power are primarily motivated to gouge out profits. However, if we dare to struggle, we certainly can dare to win.

On the Basis of Sex

2018 – Starring Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Reviewed by Steven Halpern

The other evening, I viewed the film, On the Basis of Sex about the early career of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The film is about Ginsburg’s life confronting the rampant sexual discrimination at Harvard University and in the world of the legal profession.

The film culminates in a trial of an unmarried man who cared for his disabled mother and was denied a tax deduction for giving that care. Had he been a woman, the tax deduction would have been automatic. The case was important because if sexual discrimination could be proven against a man, then there was a legal basis for proving sexual discrimination against women.

The lawyer who argued against Ginsburg’s client gave evidence showing that there was a long record of legal history showing that women were different from men, and that they have different legal protections. He argued that to ignore those differences would undermine the family.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave an eloquent speech where she documented about 100 years of systematic sexual discrimination against women. She successfully appealed to the court to change the interpretation of the law and begin to give women equal rights.

Clearly, women deserve the same rights as men, and many have been inspired by Ginsburg’s story. In fact, advances have been made with respect to women’s rights and these advances benefit the working class in the world.

We might add that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is supposed to guarantee, “equal protection under the law.” If that is the case, then why did the courts rule against equal rights for women for over 100 years? Why did the Supreme Court rule in several cases that Jim Crow segregation was legal? The Jim Crow laws effectively denied Black people citizenship rights in this country.

Well, today women and Black people have more rights than they did in the past. However, on average, both women and African Americans receive less in terms of wages than Caucasian men. Black people are disproportionately represented in the prisons and their education is funded significantly less, than in school systems that are predominantly Caucasian. How is all of this “equal protection under the law”?

Frederick Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Frederick Engels wrote a pamphlet Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin quoted Engels pamphlet in his The State and Revolution. Both Engels and Lenin argued that the state, as we know it, was invented with the birth of capitalism. There was a reason for this.

In the feudal epoch royal families ruled, and they had absolute power. With capitalism, workers began to demand individual rights. However, Engels and Lenin argued that the interests of capitalists are “antagonistic” to the interests of workers. For this reason, they both argued that the state was invented with capitalism to serve as a “special coercive force.” In other words, the state, or the government, routinely works to repress the interests of workers in order to benefit the capitalists who have control of the political economy.

Understanding this point of view, we can look at the film On the Basis of Sex from a different perspective. Clearly Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the truth when she argued that sexual discrimination was written into the law in the United States for about 100 years. However, she could have also argued that the government has been used as a “special coercive force” against the entire working class. This coercive nature of the government was briefly interrupted with the Civil War when workers, famers, and capitalists formed a united front to remove slave owners from political power in this country.

We can trace the history of the special coercive force of the government with the genocide against Native Americans, chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, the exploitation of Chinese, Latino, and immigrant laborers, as well as women and children. Today we see this special coercive force at work by making the United States the nation with the largest number of human beings living in prison.

The family

In Frederick Engels Origin of the Family Private Property and the State, he also argued that the family, as we know it, is a product of the capitalist system. For most of human history people lived in communal tribal societies. In those societies, the idea that sexual relations were the reason for the birth of children was unknown.

For perhaps thousands of years, the people who lived in those tribal societies didn’t believe that fathers were related to their children. The mother’s extended family were the ones who raised children. The primary male caregiver was the uncle.

In the capitalist system, the family and the educational system work to teach children to adapt to a system where a tiny minority gouges out obscene profits. Thinking about this reality, we can see why highly educated judges were completely ignorant of the routine 100-year sexual discrimination Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke about.

We can also argue that Ginsburg’s words were not the only reason why the courts changed many laws. The labor, civil rights, women’s and anti-war movements all changed the political consciousness in this country.

Today, as we face the current crisis, I believe new mass movements will erupt. The logic of those movements will demand and end to the “special coercive force” of the government. Instead of organizing the world for the benefit of capitalists, a new political movement will make the needs of humanity the top priority.