alanjjohnstone
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Get back to work and business as usual except we’ll have masks
“We know the protocols to keep people safe,” Gerald Johnson, GM’s executive vice president for global manufacturing, told Reuters
Because
GM has studied and adapted measures taken by Amazon to protect warehouse workers
Despite “positive signs” from some countries, it is too early to scale back measures aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus, the World Health Organization said.
“Now is not the time to relax measures”
https://www.france24.com/en/20200408-now-is-not-the-time-to-relax-measures-who-warns-europe
An upbeat optimistic report on the economy
Things ain’t that bad…capitalism can recover
Officially global confirmed cases have passed 1.5 million
https://www.dw.com/en/millions-of-coronavirus-infections-left-undetected-worldwide-study/a-53066134
However, researchers from a German university have said countries have only found on average about 6% of coronavirus infections. The real number of infected people globally may have already reached tens of millions of people. Germany was likely to have actually had 460,000 infections. Based on the same method, they calculate that the US probably had more than 10 million, Spain more than 5 million, Italy around 3 million and the UK about 2 million coronavirus infections.
Germany has identified around 15.6% of all its cases, compared to only 3.5% in Italy or 1.7% in Spain. Detection rates were thought to be even lower in the US (1.6%) and the UK (1.2%).
The risk is that the “the virus might remain undetected again for an extended period of time and a new outbreak is likely in just a matter of time,”
Yes, the letter is expressing the message that we ourselves should be actively promoting, Dave.
Hopefully, others are picking up on the repercussions of the responses to COVID-19 and will recognise the potential for revolutionary change.
In many blog posts I apply the description “cooperative commonwealth” for our post-capitalist society which was often used in early socialist literature and in some Socialist Standard articles
No matter what term we use – association or whatever – we still have to define it. And once we do that – our critics return to their customary dismissive disparaging remarks, from the Right that all we are is “a bunch of red commies” and from the Left “a bunch of utopian idealists” .
I think we will always have the need to use a qualifying adjective with the word socialism (majoritarian socialist, for instance)
We can’t win.
But we should in our literature use many more synonyms for socialism. Social Democracy – Industrial Democracy – Economic Democracy and the context they are used in should give their meaning more clarity.
We should also remember that our flagship video Kids Stuff, doesn’t even use the word “socialism” and some ex-members did the same – The Movement For Free Access, for instance.
Wildlife and Viruses
More background reading, confirming earlier articles
Indeed because he is still in the Senate (unlike Biden), Sanders is acting “presidential” with definite proposals.
If the time-line had been different, I wonder if those states that voted in the primaries for the very obvious inept Biden would do so again.
The main plank of Sanders’s platform, Medicare For All, is resonating even stronger now.
Nationalism asserts itself
Trump invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act giving the government “any or all authority” to stop 3M exporting N95 respirators to Canada and Latin America.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/us-blocks-face-masks-canada-n95-protection-equipment
And in the EU, protectionist restrictions over movement of health supplies may well put its unity at risk far more than Brexit.
What’s possible
Some might say it is a sinister plot but socialism is all about data and planning
This news report reinforces what I posted earlier that the pandemic offers opportunities for some capitalists to profit from
“…assets in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia were cheap following the recent heavy falls in global stock markets….”
“I sincerely doubt that we will ever get back to “business as normal” after this” – Robbo
2008 Great Recession should have been a wake-up call but it wasn’t. Casino capitalism resurfaced very quickly.
I’d suggest there will be an increased concentration of capital later on as those who have weathered the storm, pick up the wrecked businesses in take-overs and mergers at rock-bottom prices and capture the vacant markets that bankrupt companies have provided the “Big Boys” with.
But unlike 2008, we now know who the essential key workers are that keeps society running. It ain’t those in the stock-exchange but those stocking the shelves in the supermarket. We have discovered the frailty of the capitalist supply chain and the weaknesses of globalisation.
We have also re-discovered our sense of community and cooperation. Social solidarity and mutual aid has sprung up everywhere. Despite social distancing, we have grown so much closer, understanding the bonds we share with one another.
These must be the lessons workers should all be learning and it is what we must be explaining in our politics, as I hope our blog has been striving to do with its posts.
Of course, it is ok for the Queen safely ensconced behind the thick walls of Windsor Castle, to bring back the Blitz Spirit and that is the desperate message of the politicians are presenting to us – even the Prince and Prime Minister were victims of the pandemic, we’re all in it together
But they suffered only the health aspects not the economic meltdown of livelihoods being taken away and the empty fridges and larders, that even some of the “well-to-do” have now suffered.
That is the stark inequality fact they cannot disguise any longer but it will be the focus of their future class camouflage, trying to hide it from us. They may well succeed if it is not challenged.
We have an opportunity, and it has been long time in coming, to directly relate the benefits of socialism to the realities that working people are experiencing right now.
People are feeling the pain of capitalism but are also discovering what unites us as human beings, the relationships of family, friends, neighbours and co-workers. Some may not like the terminology and reject its use – but our class identity has been getting expressed more and more.
But perhaps I’m not the doom and gloom pessimist many thought I was when I look for the silver lining in this crisis.
One of the America’s early industrial barons, Jay Gould, famously said
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
Whether he did say that or not, i’m not sure but whether he could do it, i’m pretty sure he couldn’t.
So much for planning exercises
“The Event 201 pandemic exercise, conducted on October 18, 2019 co-hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, World Economic Forum, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, vividly demonstrated a number of these important gaps in pandemic preparedness”
http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/newsroom/center-news/2020-01-17-Event201-recommendations.html
Richard Wolff says co-ops are the cure
