Coronavirus
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This is quite an interesting development..
“In the past 48 hours across the UK, over 500 new mutual aid groups have been set-up to take action against the pandemic. These mutual aid groups have been set-up to ensure no one is left behind, that those who are self-isolating can call upon others to help them. Primarily using Facebook and Whatsapp Groups to coordinate, from a ward to constituency level, hundreds of people across the country are informing their neighbours of the new initiative.”
and
“To survive coronavirus we need to look at creating new commons through the expropriation of private assets, including private hospitals and hotels without financial compensation. If we cannot work due to the public health risks posed by coronavirus, then regardless of the law enshrined in employment contracts we must have money to live without work. If we cannot pay our rent or mortgages then regardless of our tenancy or mortgage agreements we should stop paying.”
Here in Spain we are in lockdown. Very few people seem to be working. Only those in the medical profession, the police, army, some functionaries or civil servants, supermarket workers and those working in the chemists. The great majority of retail establishments are completely shut down. The tourist and entertainment industries have been completely mothballed.
I look around the deserted streets of Granada and the literally thousands of little shops, bars , restaurants and kiosks , all shuttered up, and ask myself : how on earth are these people going to survive financially? Not just the 15 days “state of alarm” but the months and months ahead. Because the problem is not going to be solved by the time the state of alarm comes to an end. Its going to get worse and its going to get worse for many more months ahead until it starts getting better.
In the meanwhile something has to give. Capitalism cannot function on the basis of “business as usual”. If people cant pay their rent or mortgage because they have no, or only a little, income then their rent and mortgage wont be paid. Its as simple as that. You cant get blood from a stone.
What is the state gonna do? You can’t turf people out of their homes at a time like this. You will have a civil war on your hands which will completely mess up the government’s strategy of containing the virus and make matters far worse.
We are at the start of something very unusual. Where it will end up I dont know. But it is a period bursting with the potential of a future socialist society
” In fact they may have to do this to compensate the pubs, restaurants and places of entertainment whose business will be ruined by the government’s policy.”
Reports this morning are stating that pubs and restaurants are complaining that as the government hasn’t formally ordered them to close, they cannot claim on their insurance policies. It is said that the government are looking at a bail our for some small businesses This shown the government pecking order, big business and finance before small business and sole traders, and small businesses before the workers.
“Prof Jonathan Van-Tam told the BBC, he could not rule out the strict measures having to last for a year but predicted they would last at least “several months”.”
Bad news for Summer School, bad news for ADM, bad news for EC and branch meetings.
We’ll have to come up with a plan and that may well mean spending money on alternatives, not just the equipment and the software but if we cannot do it ourselves, we might have to consult professional specialists to help out.
Cde. Mike Foster it seems if there is no change will now have the added weight and responsibility of re-arranging Summer School and re-negotiating with Fircroft College so we all wish him well and will understand and support his decisions.
One positive it gives us a big incentive to update the way we engage the general public, I’m sure the evolving nature of this will give birth to new and interesting ways of getting the Socialist message across. I think there should be even more fertile ground as a result.
In the meantime, comradely best wishes to all of the comrades out there from all of us at the Salman Rushdie World of Adventure, Whitley Bay.
Some revealing ideas coming out. Today’s Times reports Julian Jessop, of the free-marketeer thinktank The Institute of Economic Affairs, as suggesting:
“that the government introduce ‘some sort of temporary universal basic income’ in the form of a £,1000 handout per person ‘to make sure people can afford essentials during this crisis.”
More here. Free handout to the workers to allow them to buy essentials.
Where will it end, die-hard supporters of capitalism must be asking.
Also, this scientific advice as a pretext for the government abandoning its previous mad “herd immunity” plan:
“More than a quarter of a million people would have died under previous plans to control the spread of coronavirus, according to the government’s own advisers.”
Advisers other “mad professor” Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s Chief Scientific Officer, that is. Fortunately, the Chief Medical Officer seems ok.
Not that it needed a team of experts to work that out. Anybody could have on the back of an envelope (and did).
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/17/spain_coronavirus?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=4df6307381-Daily_Digest_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-4df6307381-192449069. This is what some persons, and entities in some part of the world call socialism. Nationalization is another fallacy propagated by the left
Naomi Klein is another personality who believes that the problem is Donald Trump instead of the whole capitalist system around the world. Capitalists are doing what they have to do, which is to try to safe their economical system, a bailout is not financed by the so-called taxpayer, the capitalists are saving others capitalists. The state emerged as an institution to protect and defend the interests of the ruling class, it is not a charitable institution, and its other purpose is to suppress, oppress, and dominate the working class. Engels, explained it very clear, and it looks like they skipped that page
“Naomi Klein is another personality who believes that the problem is Donald Trump instead of the whole capitalist system around the world.”
I think you do Klein disservice, Marcos.
We might not agree with her version of radical reformist ideas to re-shape capitalism but she began long before Trump appeared on the scene.
“No Logo” – 1999
“The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” – 2007
I think we can have some sympathy with the view that the status quo establishment politicians will use the present pandemic to extend their reactionary authoritarian policies.
But that it also offers an opportunity for ourselves to expand upon our vision for the future, one of mutual aid and social planning.
Alan, Noami Klein is just another darling of the left who believes that the problems of the world are the leaders, ( before was George Bush, and then Barrack Obama ) just change the name and insert the name of another leader and it would be the same statement. The so-called establishment is the capitalist system. The whole role of the state is to oppress the peoples and it can be done by anyone of its representatives in the USA, in Cuba, Venezuela, Korea, China, etc, etc, The ruling class of China, Italy, Latin America are also using this pandemic to establish reactionary rules
Andrew Killman also began before Trump appeared and he was also blaming the problems of the world in other leaders, and then he switched to Donald Trump. I have known most of the peoples for a long time, and I have read their books, there is another sociologist who is not mentioned too, he follows the same line of thoughts
In certain occasion she was also supporting Barrack Obama promises and then she changed, she has supported the social democrats of Canada, and the NDP leadership, she also has had certain Keynesian views, for her the problem of pollution, and world contamination is due to lack of legal agreement among governments, but she never goes into the roots of the problem which is capitalism
The idea that the leaders are to blame, not the concept of leadership is difficult to refute when the leaders chosen to represent the Capitalist Class are fuckwits like Johnson and Trump.
I think it is a huge danger to the working class movement to be sidelined into the issue of the leaders not the system. This is where Killman and Klein are a real danger.
Trump and Johnson end up being the scapegoats for a failing system. Undoubtedly they are a pair of clowns, but is it not the fact that they are clowns, or even the fact that we have a system that allows clowns like them to be in positions of power that matters, the market system is the issue. This is what we need to get across.
UK doctors and nurses are missing out on having personal protective equipment at this point in time, not because no one had the foresight to order them. It was because the way the system works is that it prioritises Bill Gates’ need to have yachts and Roman Abramovich’s wish to own football teams over the Social needs of the vast majority.This is the message we need to get across, the way the world’s resources are used should be about the needs and requirements of the many, not the foibles of the few.
the Chinese multi billionaire Jack Ma has said he will pay for face masks, etc. For various countries. We need to get the message out that the health and well-being of the world’s population shouldn’t depend on the largesse of one individual, but on the democratic decisions of us all about the resources we all took part in creating.
This is a time like no other to demonstrate the case for socialism
Weighing up nationalisation plans to cope with the economic consequences of coronavirus
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said France might nationalise big companies.
NYC mayor De Blasio on MSNBC and CNN calling for nationalisation
Airlines, rail and bus companies could be temporarily nationalised to protect them from the economic fallout from coronavirus, the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, suggested
It seems that Adam Buick articles of December 2019 is very appropriate for the occasion
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