In November 2019 the coronavirus was detected in China; many doctors tried to announce its rapid expansion and lethality and were silenced by the CCP bureaucracy with repression or even killed in dubious circumstances. The mandarins of the Chinese CP , after enslaving the working class for years, left them to their fate, dying like flies, falling down the streets while the true scope of this disease was hidden from the world.
When the coronavirus arrived in Italy, the government of Conte and company ordered the confinement of the people, but kept the large industries open with the workers working without any security measure, even in production lines that are not essential. Only to guarantee millionaire profits for capitalists!
In the Spanish State, which, along with Italy, are the countries with the most cases of contagion and deaths up to now, they applied partial measures fulfilled only by workers in some sectors, while others continued producing as in Italy, without any security measure.
In several countries an alarm status, generalized lockdown, confinement or curfew has been applied to people who work out off the books and live with the money they daily earn and to the rest of the population. IT HAS NOT BEEN MADE MANDATORY FOR THE BOURGEOISE EITHER OF CONFINDUSTRIA IN ITALY OR OF THE IBEX 35 IN THE SPANISH STATE. With the absolute complicity of the different union bureaucracies, both UGT and CCOO in the Spanish State, and CGIL, CISL and UIL in Italy, the factories and shops have continued working without the minimum protection measures, putting the lives of millions of workers at risk. At the expense of the workers, who are infected on the production and assembly lines without any protection, the bourgeoisies do not give up even an euro of their profits.
The 2008 crisis already demonstrated once more that capitalists always discharge their crises on the working class with cuts in their gains, layoffs, evictions and also with budgetary cuts in education and mainly in health; that left a hospital system that cannot face this pandemic. This was the case in almost all the countries of the Europe of Maastricht, but mainly in Italy, Greece and the Spanish State. In Italy, all the bourgeois politicians aprooved the privatization of the health system that during Berlusconi government disposed in the last ten years of 200 hospitals, 45,000 beds, 10,000 doctors and 11,000 nurses. In Greece the retrenchment was brutal and left healthcare clogged. In the Spanish State, Law 15/97, which was approved more than twenty years ago by the PP, PSOE and right-wing nationalist parties, was the fundamental tool for the Autonomous Communities, which powers over Health have been transferred, to have a free way to privatize public health.
So today we can see, both in Italy and in the Spanish State, the situation is getting worse every day and the hospitals are collapsed, with doctors, nurses and auxiliary personnel without the necessary protection, with patients crowded in the corridors on the ground without even a mattress, much less a respirator.
This is what the cuts to healthcare, plus outsourcing, subcontracting and privatization have left in the different countries; in Italy there is an average of 3.2 beds per 1,000 inhabitants and in the Spanish State only 2.5. Today, doctors have to "choose" whom to care for or not, since there are no means to attend every seriously ill patient; therefore, only people with a higher life expectation are admitted and cared for. The elderly or individuals compromised by previous pathologies cannot be assisted.
Neither the governments, nor the treacherous union bureaucracy or the left of the regime ...
Only the working class is interested in their own and their families' lives
In each of the countries where the coronavirus pandemic has started to arrive, we hear the same from governments, union bureaucracies, "opposition" parties and the various reformist lefts: "Let the government resolve the pandemic, we advise, but do not criticize, loyalty and unity are needed now. "
The reformists' true modus operandi is to propose the suspension of class struggle; therefore they give the governments a long list of what the latter should do. They are plenty of advice for those who are not interested in the life of the working class but in the profits of the capitalists.
However, with the absolute complicity of the union bureaucracy, the capitalists are holding open and working factories that are not essential to cover basic necessities, even without security conditions for the health of workers; they allow overcrowding in the subways and buses as long as the workers arrive to their jobs; they lay off millions both of short-term contracted and out-of-the-books workers; they exploit migrants in the fields for harvests; etc.
Should we leave the solution of this pandemic to them? Should we entrust our lives and our families' bread to them?
In northern Italy they have had hundreds of thousands of industrial workers working in factories that were not for essential production, and today those workers are dying like flies. In the Spanish State, while the number of infected were increasing, thousands of factories such as Mercedes or Airbus were still open.
Due to these circumstances, the working class has rebelled in Italy first by means of partial strikes in Pasotti and several other factories in Brescia; Whirlpool in Varese; Electrolux in the province of Treviso and in thousands of other factories until they reached a general strike on March 25 against the terrible health conditions in hospitals and also because employers continue to force tens of thousands of workers to work without the minimum security conditions.
This shows that, in order to defend their lives, the working class had to impose their methods of struggle such as the stoppages and the strike. Only in this way, the workers of the Mercedes Benz in Vitoria, or of Balay in Zaragoza in the Spanish State have saved their lives, because they stopped production.
That's how to fight! The working class save their lives through stoppages, struggle and strike!
In the two countries suffering the worst numbers of the pandemic, the working class have taken the resolution of the problem in their own hands by walking out, because in order to quarantine and save their lives and that of their families, they have had to stop working.
Italy and the Spanish State demonstrate that, in order to live, you have to stop production from the capitalists. The pandemic is fought with the methods of the class struggle.
While thousands of workers do not have a roof and others are fired, the state finances the capitalists so that they do not lose their profits and the union bureaucracy guarantees it
For the bourgeoisie, after quarantine and confinement the main measure is to guarantee the profits of the capitalists and NOT the work and livelihood of the working class. Hundreds of thousands have already lost their jobs in the last ten days, like migrants who survive selling things on the street (called "manteros"), those who work off-the-book like domestic workers or caregivers, etc.
Millions of working-class families live in overcrowded shanties and do not have anything to pay the rent because they do not have a job, hundreds of thousands more do not even have a roof to shelter themselves. Tens of thousands of refugees live in inhumane conditions, in open-air concentration camps like in Greece, or in shacks made of four plastic sheets in the middle of the field like day laborers, while thousands of migrants are still imprisoned in terrible conditions in the CIEs (Internment Centers for Foreigners) as in the Spanish State.
In the Spanish State, the government of PSOE-Unidos Podemos has launched a plan called "social shield", which is nothing more than a bailout of large companies listed on the IBEX 35. The first measure is to inject liquidity into companies, defer payment of taxes, give credits to those who request it and finance the ERTEs with public money.
An ERTE (Temporary Employment Regulation File) is a temporary authorization for a company through which you can suspend one or more employment contracts for a certain time. With this measure the government subsidizes the Social Security quota, and the worker begins to collect the unemployment subsidy losing 30% of his salary. In other words, the companies save the costs of the workers, the state finances them and when the dire situation ceases, the different employers will be able to fire at will. To date, hundreds of companies have submitted ERTEs, such as SEAT, Mercedez, Inditex, etc. for a total of almost 800,000 jobs.
Precisely the hatred expressed in the pot-bangig against King Felipe VI, which have occurred throughout the country on March 18, has been generated by the fact that it is the workers and the people who are paying with life and work for the pandemic while the need emerged that King emeritus Juan Carlos received a "commission" from Saudi Arabia for the construction of the AVE (rapid train) to Mecca worth 100 million euros.
In Italy, the Conte government has issued a decree called "Cura Italia", by which it will inject 25,000 million euros into the economy; following are the priorities expressed by the president in his speech: "The Government is close to companies, businessmen, the self-employed, the families, the grandparents, the mothers and the fathers who sacrifice themselves for the health of all," Conte said. Companies first; that's why today despite the record deaths per day about 80 economic areas will remain open, which means dozens of factories, and thousands and thousands of workers exposing their lives in non-essential productive sectors. Precisely for this reason, several minority unions called for a strike on March 25 to defend the health and living conditions of workers throughout the country and in Friuli-Venezia Giulia in particular.
Before such a crisis, there are two strategies and two policies in the workers movement.
One, that of the union bureaucracies and the reformist left parties, which call on the working class to postpone the fight against the social crisis and advise the bourgeoisie on how to confront the pandemic, leaving in the hands of the bourgeois governments and regimes the solution of the humanitarian crisis.
And there is another, that of the revolutionaries who call on the workers to confront this policy of truce to capital. We call them to face the pandemic with the method of class struggle, so that the working class and the exploited are the ones who lead the fight against the social crisis and the pandemic.
If the humanitarian crisis remains in the capitalists' hands, it will be solved with more exploited's deaths, more dictatorship and repression.
The fight is class against class. The workers of Italy, the Spanish State, and United Kingdom have guaranteed the quarantine with strikes and fighting. That is the path that the working class in Europe must follow from the Iberian Peninsula to the Russian steppes!
We must take the crisis into our hands! For a Public Health Committee, led by trade unions and workers' organizations across Europe, from the Iberian peninsula to the Russian steppes!
The bourgeoisie and its governments are unable to solving this pandemic and the humanitarian crisis that it entails. As it was demonstrated up to now, examples are more than enough, but the main thing is that there is no joint plan of the Europe of Maastricht to fight this virus.
The imperialist governments of Europe speak of unity when they are doing business and filling their bank and offshore accounts with thousands millions of euros at the expense of the exploitation of workers from the colonies, semi-colonies and the European working class. Nobody speaks of unity when it comes to fighting the coronavirus, rather it has been a "save yourself while you can" among the capitalists while the workers who go on producing fall like flies.
The EU governments are only there to defend the capitalists' profits at the expense of the over-exploitation of millions of workers. They take the army, the police and all the brigades and security forces to the streets to repress the workers and prevent an uprising. That is why the repression has increased against migrants, off the books workers who go out to earn their living in order to eat, etc. Not a single bourgeois who continues traveling in his private plane, which keeps factories open without conditions of security for the working class, has been fined, repressed or imprisoned. If we leave the resolution of this crisis to the bourgeoisie, we will only see the different governments applying their methods such as dictatorship, repression against the exploited masses, making the workers die first, while the exploiters rest happily in their homes.
If we let governments like those in the Europe of Maastricht manage the crisis, we will see hundreds of thousands of refugees die locked up in concentration camps in Greece, Turkey, etc.
If it is the US government which must solve this pandemic, the American working class and the rest of the Americas will be in unimaginable danger. While Trump is giving 2 and a half billion dollars to the industrial-military device, the US health system charges $ 34,000 to a patient who has fallen ill with coronavirus. The government will let thousands of children who are imprisoned and separated from their parents die on the border with Mexico.
Only the working class can lead this fight against the pandemic, because it does not pursue any interest of profit at the cost of anyone's life, as does the bourgeoisie that refuses to make a unified plan. The situation in hospitals is inhumane, without beds, with health personnel exhausted from hours and hours working non-stop amid non existent security conditions. Against this, it is necessary to set up a high-level Public Health Committee, with the best scientists, doctors and nurses, promoted and under the control of unions and workers' organizations in Italy, the Spanish State and the entire imperialist Maastricht from the Iberian Peninsula to the Russian steppes.
To put on its feet an Emergency Workers Plan is urgent and necessary so that the people do not pay for this crisis and all the necessary resources are deployed in order to save the working class and the common people. This cannot be done without getting rid of the leaders of the treacherous union bureaucracy that in the midst of this brutal pandemic guarantees the profits of the capitalists and NOT the life and livelihood of working-class families. The union bureaucrats have sold out the workers' gains, the wages and the lives of the workers to the voracity of the capitalists. These traitors are quarantined in their warm homes as thousands of workers continue working without the necessary security measures. Go out! From the factories and workplaces where workers risk their lives, we have to organize to kick them out.
Let’s set up a plan of production stoppage in those sectors not of vital importance for the health and sustenance of the population, guaranteeing 100% of the wage. No layoffs!
Suspension of the repayment of the mortgages and rents that cannot be paid, no evictions!
All electricity, gas, water, heating and telecommunications services, must be free for working families who need it.
Expropriation without compensation and under worker control of any factory that closes, suspends or dismisses, to reconvert it and start producing products according to the needs of the population.
Documents for each and every migrant and refugee and immediate closure of the CIEs and the refugee camps in Greece. No to the Immigration Law!
Expropriation without compensation and under the control of the European Public Health Committee, of private clinics and hospitals to make them available to the entire population. Rich schools and luxury hotels must be expropriate to transform them into hospitals with the best intensive care units. To provide material to hospitals: expropriation of laboratories and high-tech equipment!
So that there are no shortages for the working class, it is necessary to expropriate the large supermarket chains and the hoarding and land grabbing of landowners, and set up supply committees of workers and consumers by neighborhood, to protect distribution in the midst of the pandemic .
Surveillance in the streets and caring for the people must be done by the people themselves. For Neighborhood Surveillance Committees of workers' organizations and unions, along with the neighbors!
The working class leading the fight against the coronavirus has become a matter of life and death, or the capitalists will make us pay for this pandemic with more hunger, layoffs and death.
Democracia Obrera (Workers Democracy) - Spanish State,
adherent to the Collective for the re-founding of the Fourth International / FLTI
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