Human Needs Before Profits
By Steven Halpern
At this time last year, how many people would have thought that we would be in the midst of a world-wide pandemic? How many people would have thought that today there would be an unemployment rate of 30%? However, there is one thing that we might have been able to predict. The most affluent one percent of the population in the United States would continue to own obscene amounts of wealth, while tens of millions would not have enough food to eat.
So, understanding that many aspects of our current reality weren’t predicted, we might not like to think about what will be happening for the rest of this year. However, in order to begin to deal with what will be happening, I think we need to look at the dynamics unfolding in the world today.
Before we look at the future, I think it is useful to take an unvarnished look at our reality. There are three issues that I believe will have the most impact on our lives. One is the pandemic. Another is the economy, and then there is the political response.
The COVID-19 Pandemic
For me, the most reliable source of information on the pandemic is Dr. Michael Osterholm. Dr. Osterholm is an epidemiologist who has spent his entire life studying infectious diseases. He predicted the current pandemic in his 2017 best-selling book Deadliest Enemy.
According to Dr. Osterholm, the current pandemic will last 16 to 18 months and will cost the lives of about 1.6 million people in this country. Why does he make this horrendous prediction?
Dr. Osterholm believes the pandemic will end for the following reason. When about half of the population of the United States comes in contact with COVID-19, those who have recovered from that contact will have immunity. This will mean that the virus will have no place to go where it can survive. If one percent of that number die as a result of exposure to COVID-19, that would mean there would be 1.6 million deaths due to the pandemic in the United States.
Dr. Osterholm advises that we practice physical distancing. Why? By supporting the guidelines of isolating ourselves, using facemasks, and staying six feet apart, this would “flatten the curve” of increasing numbers of those infected. So, if we don’t practice physical distancing, the health care system would become overloaded and ineffective.
We might keep in mind that many people who came in contact with COVID-19 are alive today because they were cared for in hospitals. There are also many people who have life-threatening conditions other than COVID-19, who will need health care. If the hospitals become overloaded, many of those people would die unnecessarily.
In other words, in the past government officials and corporate bosses demanded that we “take responsibility” for our problems. They live in denial of the fact that most of our problems stem from the corporate drive to maximize profits. However, the pandemic, as well as the many political and economic problems we face, can only be effectively dealt with by advancing the interests of the international working class.
Understanding that reality, I think we need to look critically at statements by government officials and corporate officers who applaud healthcare workers for their heroic service. What are the facts?
The United States spends significantly more on health care per capita, than any other nation in the world. Yet, since 1980 about 400,000 hospital beds have been eliminated. I attended a demonstration protesting the closure of Hahnemann Hospital where 2,500 health care jobs were eliminated. I’ve also been on picket lines where health care workers were forced to go on strike because of the corporate drive to maximize profits. I’ve also seen the effects of the drive for profits when I worked in health care for twelve years.
We can also say that the problem of the increasing number of pandemics in the world has been exacerbated by unrestrained growth of capitalism. The deforestation of parts of Africa aided the spread of the Ebola virus. The mass industrialization in China, where large populations of bats live, also contributed to the current pandemic. The deteriorating standard of living in the world makes workers more vulnerable to the pandemic.
So, while government officials and corporate officers thank health care workers for their service, they have been advancing a routine, unrelenting war against those same health care workers, as well as all kinds of workers all over the world.
The economy
We live with an economy known as capitalism. Capitalist investment is not about human needs, but about profits for the owners of capital. This is a fundamental contradiction.
Initially capitalists hired workers to produce commodities, as well as to provide themselves with profits. Then, as technology developed, the cost of producing those commodities went down. However, individual capitalists needed to purchase expensive machinery and factories. So, capitalists needed to spend more and more money to produce commodities, while fewer and fewer workers were needed to produce those commodities.
In a rational world, technology would be used to make life easier and more rewarding for everyone. However, in the system of capitalism, the surplus derived from labor is used to enrich the affluent in their drive for profits.
So, as small enterprises are forced out of business, the dominant corporations become larger and larger. As this happens, banks and finance companies took over the financing of most corporations.
This means that when a worker produces a commodity, that worker generates profits for the corporation, as well as interest payments for a bank. We might consider that most of the assets of banks are in its loans. Without continuous payments on those loans, the assets of banks vanish.
In order to maintain this system, capitalists need to do three things that are antagonistic to the interests of workers. This is because capitalists routinely need to invest more and more money to produce a commodity. They do this in spite of the fact that usually the basic costs of production decrease because of advances in technology.
First, they need to routinely drive down their production costs. They have done this by making huge investments to build factories in nations where the wages are between $1 and $10 per day. They also keep wages as low as possible, while demanding that workers become more productive.
In order to maintain their interests in the world, they make massive investments in the so-called “Defense Department.” The armed forces of the United States have gone to war all over the world in order to advance international capitalist interests. So, while workers has the same interests all over the world, capitalist governments demand that we murder one another to protect capitalist interests.
Then, they need to sell more and more commodities. This is why capitalists invest about $200 billion every year in advertising. Entire armies of workers talk on the telephone contacting people in our homes to sell more and more commodities.
Then, they need to go into astronomical debt. Today Bernie Madoff is serving time in prison for violating the laws regulating the sale of bonds. However, there are hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives that are not regulated. Comparing the money Bernie Madoff lost to the money invested in derivatives, is like comparing a flea to an elephant.
So, the interests of workers are antagonistic to the interests of corporations. When workers receive more in wages, benefits, and improved working conditions, capitalists have less in profits. Likewise, when capitalists have more in profits, workers have less.
Understanding this relationship, workers go on strike to force capitalists to grant our demands. Then, there are the general strikes where an entire nation’s workforce goes on strike. These actions can be effective because they stop the flow of money capitalists rely on. However, when those strikes are over, capitalists have gone back to business in their drive for profit.
Today, we are seeing something different happening. The unemployment rate is at about 30%. This state of affairs will continue for an indefinite future. This means that capitalists aren’t receiving those routine flows of capital.
The government has responded by giving corporations trillions of dollars in bailout money. This obscene amount of money is already much more than the corporate bailout of 2008. This is happening while there are dire shortages of medical equipment and hospitals are cutting back on their staff in the midst of a pandemic.
We might consider that no one in Congress or the Senate voted against those massive bailouts. Why? Because in the capitalist system, if banks aren’t receiving routine massive payments, they will simply shut down. However, unlike a strike, the pandemic will continue for the indefinite future.
We also might consider that in other capitalist economic downturns, capitalists wait until the market bottoms out, then they buy up stock thinking they will turn a profit when the stock goes up. This isn’t happening today.
Warren Buffett is the CEO of the investment company Berkshire Hathaway. He has just dumped his stock in the airlines. This is Buffett’s reasoning for selling that stock. “We will not fund a company. . . where we think it is going to chew up money in the future.”
Buffett also argued that the investment fund of derivatives are, “financial weapons of mass destruction.” Today, we are beginning to see the “mass destruction” Buffett was talking about.
Thinking about these statements, some people have argued that today there are corporations that will be going be bankrupt in the course of the pandemic. Some have called these, “zombie corporations” because they are like the walking dead.
Understanding this reality, we can ask the question: Why will corporations hire workers, when they don’t think profitability will be a possibility? We might keep in mind that in normal times corporations need to increase their sales every three months. With an unemployment rate of 30%, that isn’t happening.
Before the pandemic, about one out of every ten people in the United States didn’t have enough food to eat. Today, the numbers of people who lack enough food is increasing dramatically. Yet because there is a decreased market for food, farmers are in the position where they need to destroy their crops. Clearly the pandemic isn’t taking food out of the mouths of anyone. No, today people suffer from hunger all over the world because of the capitalist drive to maximize profits.
Understanding this, we can say that the political crisis in the world is much more devastating than the pandemic. In addition to losing access to food, millions around the world are losing direct access to water and electricity.
Then, what will it mean if and when the banks close their doors? How will anyone get paid or purchase a commodity? This state of affairs means that the consequences of the political crisis of capitalism will be much worse than the effects of the pandemic.
How can the working class respond to this crisis?
Before we answer this question, we might ask the question: How did people who have power respond to the pandemic? When we begin to understand the above facts, we can see how and why this story unfolded.
Because the capitalist system relies on a continuous flow of obscene amounts of money, we might see why capitalists around the world were slow to shut down large parts of the economy. If capitalists depend on about three percent growth, they don’t get this when there is an unemployment rate of 30%.
Understanding that reality we can see why capitalists and people who have power are desperate for people to go back to work. If this doesn’t happen, large amounts of money they have invested will vaporize.
Then, we can see why investors like Warren Buffett are selling off large hunks of their portfolios. They don’t expect the economy to rebound.
So, I think we can say that the capitalists are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are driven to get people back to work in unsafe environments, while they don’t expect that the economy will rebound.
Working people have a different perspective. We aren’t motivated by profits, but by human needs. We need food, clothing, a place to live, transportation, communication, health care, and exposure to cultural activities. We also need to work in safe environments because our lives depend on it. We don’t need to work our entire lives so a tiny minority of the population can have more wealth than they could use in 1,000 lifetimes.
When we look back at the time when fascism existed in Germany, we can see how the capitalists organized in the past to deal with an economic crisis. After the First World War, the German economy collapsed. People who lived relatively comfortable lives before the war, suddenly experienced dire poverty. Adolf Hitler and his supporters responded to this crisis in support of German capitalists.
First, they supported those who physically attacked anyone who demonstrated in defense of the interests of workers. Then, when they took political power, they systematically eliminated anyone who did not agree with their criminal program. In order to support capitalist profitability, the Nazis cut the wages of workers in half. Then, they created scapegoats of Jews and others, who they blamed for the ills of society and murdered millions. Finally, they mobilized the armed forces in their attempts conquer the world.
Leon Trotsky was a leader of the Russian Revolution. He was the central commander of the Red Army that successfully defended the Soviet government from invasions from fourteen nations for over two years. After Joseph Stalin and his supporters betrayed the Russian Revolution, Trotsky managed to continue the struggle for the liberation of the working class in the world.
At that time, there was a huge Communist Party in Germany that collaborated with Stalin in the Soviet Union. Trotsky argued that the communists in Germany needed to organize to stop the Nazis from taking power. The German Communist Party had ample resources to resist the Nazis. However, Trotsky noted that the fascists took power without anyone firing a shot in protest. The lack of action by the German communists, convinced Trotsky that there was no hope of convincing the Stalinist movement to advance a revolutionary course in the world.
Today, the pandemic is exposing the routine criminal nature of capitalism. The pandemic never eliminated a single job. Capitalists have done that. The pandemic never prevented anyone from getting the food we all need. Capitalists have done that. The pandemic never gave corporations trillions of dollars in bailout money, while hospitals are in dire need of supplies. The supporters of capitalism in the government have done that.
I don’t see how the international system of capitalism can avoid a complete collapse. If and when this happens, we need to ask these questions: How will anyone be paid a salary? How will anyone purchase the things we need? Under those conditions, why would anyone support the government that is locked into a system that makes a priority of corporate profit over human needs?
There is an alternative to the seeming madness we see emanating from the supporters of capitalism today. Working people have the real potential to advance an international movement aimed at making the needs of workers and farmers the top priority.
Instead of giving trillions of dollars to corporations, a worker’s government would spend that money to ensure that everyone has food, a place to live, medical care, and education. Instead of working to enrich a tiny minority, a worker’s government would make sure everyone has the things we need. Instead of declaring sanctions against many nations in the world, a worker’s government would help to coordinate the international battle against poverty and the pandemic.
That government would work to end the routine discrimination we see in the capitalist world against nationalities and women. That government would also work to reverse the destruction of the environment. They could do this by recycling garbage, planting trees, revitalized soil that has been destroyed, and restoring the oceans.
A worker’s government would be able to hire massive numbers of people to trace all those who have come in contact with COVID-19. By doing this, those who have come in contact with the virus could be isolated and those who need medical attention would be guaranteed all the care they need.
Because we need to organize a movement to put in place a worker’s government, we need to organize. Today, governments all over the world are working to restrict demonstrations of workers. Clearly, when people come together, we are all risking the spread of COVID-19. However, asking a capitalist government to stop the spread of the pandemic is like asking an arsonist to organize the fire department. Workers are the ones who ultimately believe that our lives are more important than the drive to maximize profits. Therefore we are the ones who are organizing to defend our interests and not those who manage the drive for capitalist profitability.
When we see the difference between what the capitalists have in store for us, and the possibility of a worker’s government coming to power, I believe there is a clear choice.
Today the nation of Cuba has medical doctors, nurses, and medical students visiting every Cuban to see if they have symptoms of COVID-19. Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Cuba has sent its health care workers to over 100 nations, treating some of the least affluent people in the world. While people living in the United States need health care insurance, Cuba has established health care as a right for everyone who lives in the country.
The idea that the future will merely be a repeat of the reality we faced in the past, is nothing more than an impossible dream. Working people are learning that we have better things to do than to spend our lives working so a tiny minority can have more wealth than they could use in 1,000 lifetimes. Cuba is an example of how a profoundly better future world is possible.
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