Capitalism and the Pandemics of 1918 & 2020

By Steve Halpern

Few people living today experienced the pandemic of 1918. Being a student of history, I’ve learned that in order to make judgements about the past, we need to look at the almost unimaginable reality humanity experienced in previous years. Clearly there are lessons we can learn from the pandemic of 1918. However, in order to learn those lessons, I believe we need to look at the unvarnished reality of what life was like 102 years ago.

The events leading up to the 1918 pandemic

The First World War was winding down in the year 1918. The armed forces of the European powers became disgusted with the war. Literally millions had died. Those who survived lived in filthy fox holes that lacked sanitation, and became the perfect incubators for disease.

Czarist Russia suffered literally millions of deaths because of the war. Russia has large areas of fertile land, but because of the war famine gripped the country. Because mothers didn’t have enough food, they weren’t able to breast-feed their children. Under those conditions, workers mobilized and overthrew the Czar.

The new provisional government promised to make changes, but there were no fundamental changes. So, workers supported the demands of the Bolsheviks that included: Peace, Bread, and Land.

Ministers in the provisional government argued that those demands constituted acts of treason and moved to arrest the leaders of the Bolsheviks. Then, a growing consensus of workers and farmers supported the Bolshevik demands.

As a result, a new revolution erupted, and the Bolsheviks took power. The new Soviet government immediately redistributed the vast landholdings to the peasants who worked the land. They did everything in their power to insure the people had food. They negotiated for peace with Germany, even though this meant giving up large tracts of land.

By the year 1918 the pandemic struck the Soviet Union. At this same time, fourteen nations invaded the country in an attempt to overthrow the revolutionary government. Workers and farmers knew what was at stake. They had experienced the routine brutality of the Czar as well as the loss of millions of soldiers in the First World War. Now the masses of people had a government of their own, and they were determined to defend it.

The 1918 pandemic caused the deaths of about 2.7 million people in the Soviet Union. However, the Red Army successfully defended the country from those who attempted to reimpose the horrendous reality of the past. 

President Wilson had different ideas

Frank Macfarlane Burnet was a Nobel laureate who lived through the 1918 pandemic and spent his life studying influenza. Burnet concluded that the evidence was “strongly suggestive” that the 1918 pandemic started in this country. The likely source was Haskell Country, Kansas. However, there is no doubt that from Kansas the influenza spread to Europe and then the world.

Loring Miner was a prominent doctor in Haskell County. In late January of 1918, Miner observed that many of his patients were dying of a disease he diagnosed as, “influenza of a severe type.” Miner wrote to public health officials in the United States about this influenza.

At this same time, soldiers from Haskell Country travelled to Fort Funston in Kansas where 56,000 soldiers lived. They were all preparing to go to Europe to battle in the First World War.

President Woodrow Wilson was well aware of the anti-war sentiment in the world. When he ran for President, he promised that he would keep the United States out of the war. After Wilson became President, he went on the most sustained and vicious war drive this country has ever seen.

All the industries in the United States mobilized for war production. Literally everyone was brow-beaten to do their part in supporting the war effort. This included the purchase of war bonds used to finance the slaughter.

Why did Wilson argue that the United States needed to go to war? He claimed this was to “Make the world safe for democracy.” There were a few things Wilson forgot to mention when he made that argument.

In all the major industries at that time including: coal, steel, and rail, thousands of workers died as a result of preventable industrial accidents. Upton Sinclair wrote his book The Jungle that exposed the horrendous conditions in the meat packing industry. Certainly, the workers who toiled every day in those industries didn’t feel that their jobs were in any way safe.

Then, there was the fact that while Wilson talked about making the world safe for democracy, women in this country didn’t have the right to vote. That reality was too much for the suffragettes under the leadership of Alice Paul.

So, Alice Paul organized a picket line in front of the White House arguing that the United States couldn’t experience democracy when half the population didn’t have the right to vote. The government responded to this demonstration by arresting the suffragettes and placing them in prison.

The suffragettes demanded to be treated as political prisoners. The government was determined to make any opposition to the war a criminal offence. They refused to recognize that the women were in jail merely for advocating for the right to vote and in opposition to the war.

The suffragettes protested their treatment in prison and went on a hunger strike. The authorities restrained Alice Paul and inserted a tube into her throat in order to force feed her.

Thinking about these extreme measures, we might question why President Wilson was so adamant about organizing to go to war. First, I think it is useful to look at what the war was all about.

Working people have nothing in common with the capitalists who profit off of our labor. While they profit off of dangerous working conditions, workers have an interest in having safe working conditions. Workers in other countries have essentially the same interests as workers in this country. Workers all over the world want and need food, a place to live, health care, and education. So, President Wilson’s order to go to war, was in essence an order to murder millions of workers who happened to be born in other countries. As you might imagine, there were many who didn’t like that idea.  

On the other hand, the British empire was in a state of decline. The capitalists in Germany and the United States both wanted to replace the British empire and rule the world. Both world wars, as well as the many subsequent wars were about making the capitalist system in the United States dominant in the world. While it was the workers who died in the war, the working class would merely be used as tools to advance the capitalist drive for profit after the war. 

In June of 1918 Eugene Debs gave a speech against the war in Canton, Ohio. He explained that the Wilson’s call for a war for democracy was nothing more than a myth. He exposed that myth by pointing out how the government compromised laws aimed at defending children from the horrors of factory labor.

At his trial, a government prosecutor read a transcript of Debs speech. That transcript was the only evidence against Debs. In his defense Debs argued that he wasn’t the one on trial, but the Constitution of the United States. Debs was then convicted and ordered to spend ten years in prison. There were many others who opposed the war who also received sentences of ten years in prison.

If President Wilson made good on his campaign pledge to keep the United States out of the war, the effects of the pandemic would have been minimized. Instead, the soldiers at Fort Funston travelled by railcar, then by boat, then into foxholes where they spread the pandemic to the rest of the world.

When the 1918 pandemic came to Philadelphia

In September of 1918 soldiers were returning from their service in the First World War. These soldiers returned with an unwelcome guest. This was what was then known as the Spanish Flu.

Spain was neutral is the First World War. All the other powers that were at war made it a practice not to report on the pandemic. The people who had power in those countries felt that if the pandemic was reported, this would demoralize the soldiers. Why would a soldier want to fight to keep the world safe for democracy, when there was a pandemic that would cost the lives of tens of millions all over the world?

So, while medical experts knew that the pandemic was killing many people in this country, most workers weren’t aware that this was happening. What people did know was that the people who had power in Philadelphia were sponsoring a huge rally to promote the purchase of war bonds. Those bonds would be used to finance the murder of workers in Europe.

Medical experts pleaded with Philadelphia city officials to cancel this demonstration. They argued that the demonstration would be the perfect way to infect thousands of people in the city.

The city officials demonstrated their routine indifference to the lives of the working class in Philadelphia. They allowed the Liberty Loan parade to happen. Within just a few months about 12,000 people died in the city.

We might consider that the population of Philadelphia increased because of the need to increase production to support the war. Workers might sleep in a bed, then leave so another worker might sleep in the same bed. Perhaps 100 people might use the same outhouse that had no access to running water.

While 12,000 people died in the city, a much larger number became sick for about one week. Faced with this reality, most workers stayed at home. They did this, at times, while they lived with a corpse of someone who recently died. 

Eugene Debs was placed on trial in the fall of 1918. While he was on trial, the pandemic was beginning to take the lives of 675,000 people who lived in the United States. In the world, the estimates are that between 50 and 100 million people died of the pandemic of 1918. Most people who contacted the influenza were sick for a week and then recovered. So, we might estimate that the majority of the human race contacted the influenza of 1918.

The German government finally sued for peace in 1918. They did this at a time when hundreds of people in the United States passed away because of exposure to influenza. President Wilson responded to this state of affairs by continuing to send troops to Europe. The ships those troops travelled on became floating graveyards. This was because of Wilson’s decision to continue the war when there was absolutely no reason to continue the slaughter. 

While he served time in a dungeon of this country, Eugene Debs ran for President. He received close to one-million votes.

By 1919 the worst effects of the pandemic subsided. In Seattle 65,000 longshore workers went on strike. Aside from their demands for improved working conditions, they refused to load ships with arms that were to be used to support the armed forces aimed at overthrowing the revolutionary government in the Soviet Union.

In the year 1920 the United States followed the lead of the Soviet Union, and adopted the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, that gave women the right to vote. The revolutionary government of the Soviet Union gave women the right to vote shortly after it took power in 1917.  

 When we look at Eugene Debs’ election campaign from prison, as well as the strike of 65,000 longshore workers, as well as the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, we see how the consciousness of the working class of the United States was moving in a different direction.

People began to realize that President Wilson’s war drive was nothing more than a declaration of war against the working class of the world. By the year 1934, in the middle of the depression, millions of workers began to join unions and organize independently of the capitalists.    

How are things different with the pandemic of 2020?

Clearly the medical technology has advanced in the last 102 years. While the pandemic of 1918 lasted just a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to last for an extended period of time.

What clearly has remained the same in the last 102 years, is the total indifference of capitalist governments to the interests of working people. In the year 1918, the government supported the drive of capitalists in the United States to dominate the world. In the year 2020, the capitalist governments in the world have organized to ensure that the drive to maximize corporate profitability will be the top priority.

We see this in the delay of the response to the pandemic. Clearly the government didn’t want to stop production while capitalists were gouging out profits. Now, the government is desperate to get workers back to work.

Banks depend on loans for their assets. Without continual payments on those loans, the assets of banks vaporize. This is why the United States government voted unanimously to give corporations trillions of dollars, while hospitals are in dire need of supplies. Even with that massive investment, the unemployment rate is about 20%.

It is becoming clear to more and more workers that the government knew that a pandemic was coming for a long time. It is also becoming clear that while the government was aware of this, they made massive investments in the military, while cutting back on medical research, and the storage of medical supplies. There is only one reason for those seemingly insane actions. Capitalist governments routinely value profits over human needs.

The pro-capitalist press routinely argues that the pandemic caused the hardships workers face today. That is a bold-faced lie. The pandemic never eliminated a single job. The pandemic didn’t give corporations trillions of dollars, while many workers don’t have enough food to eat. The pandemic isn’t asking workers to work in unsafe conditions. The people who have power in the capitalist system are the ones who are doing all of these things.

When we look back at the pandemic of 1918, we see how the attitudes of workers began to change all over the world. This is going to happen again.

There is something that is different today from the pandemic of 1918. That pandemic only lasted a few months. Today’s pandemic might last years. The world capitalist economy isn’t capable of sustaining a downturn for that long a period of time.

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is Jerome Powell. Powell argued that the economy in the United States would begin to rebound, if there isn’t a second wave of the pandemic. Epidemiologists are predicting a second wave of the pandemic.

All of this means that in order to rationally respond to the effects of the 2020 pandemic, we need a new political economic system. A worker’s government would ensure that all workers work in safe environments. A worker’s government would ensure that everyone would have all of the things we need. A worker’s government would state clearly that the needs of workers who create all wealth are more important than the drive to maximize profits for corporations. In my opinion, this is the only rational way to deal with our current reality.