From Aurora Roja, the blog of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico

Unnecessary COVID-19 Deaths Show This System Is Obsolete—Revolution Is Needed

June 29, 2020 | revcom.us

 

Editors’ note: The following was translated by revcom.us from Aurora Roja, the blog of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico.

In Mexico and the world, the operation of the system and government policies have resulted in a tragic and criminal number of unnecessary deaths by COVID-19. Under the world capitalist-imperialist system, it is not possible to mobilize all the necessary resources, consistently apply the latest advances in medical science, or mobilize people to grapple with the challenge of the virus. This system is obsolete, we need to overthrow it and create a much better new system, a socialist system.

Scientists have long been warning that this was not a question of whether there would be a pandemic but of when it would occur. However, there was no adequate preparation anywhere, because in this system investments tend to go to what is most profitable now. Short-term calculations are guided by the needs of the capitalist economy, based on competition among capitalists for profit. The unscientific or in fact anti-scientific approaches of many rulers also contributed. A program to develop a SARS vaccine—triggered by a coronavirus much like the current virus—was abandoned after that epidemic ebbed in 2004. Had it continued, we would be much closer to getting a vaccine now against SARS-CoV-2. Nowhere were reserves of medical equipment created remotely close to what was needed. In fact, many governments have cut their health care budgets in recent years. Mexico, despite current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s promises to get a health care system “like in Denmark,” remains one of the Latin American countries that spends the least on health care per person.

In the socialist society we are fighting for, the priority will be the health of the people, not the profits of the big companies—in fact, these companies will have become the property of all the people and the new economy will be at the service of the needs of the people and of all humanity. Health care policy will be guided by the most advanced scientific understanding and will include, importantly, preparation for pandemics and other disasters.

It is frankly criminal that health care workers here and in many other places have not had the personal protective equipment and the testing for COVID-19 necessary to protect themselves. In Mexico, cases of medical personnel represent a fifth of infections by COVID-19. Protests due to the lack of equipment and in favor of “transforming the health care system” throughout the country are just and deserve our support. The dedication of health care workers is inspiring, who, despite these criminal shortages, risk themselves to save lives. This is a seed of communist morality, of caring for others and putting the interests of humanity first.

In the future socialist society, oriented to the needs of the people and not profits, in a pandemic, production will be immediately reoriented to produce any lacking medical supplies, as well as food and other needs of the population. Instead, the response of many capitalist companies has been predictably guided by their immediate profits, such as in the plants in Ciudad Juárez of the U.S. company Lear, which forced, under threat of firing, its workers to continue producing seat covers for luxury cars, with the result that at least 30 workers have died from COVID-19. Due to the demands of the companies and governments of the United States and Canada, the Mexican government has classified, among others, automotive production and mining as “essential,” instead of insisting on redirecting production towards the necessary medical supplies.

The “stay at home” measures applied in Mexico and many other countries are necessary, but by themselves they only serve to “flatten the curve” of infections to avoid oversaturation of hospitals. They distribute the number of deaths over a longer period of time, but the contagion continues, with its toll of more deaths, as even the Mexican undersecretary of health, Hugo López-Gatell, has admitted. To contain the contagion and prevent deaths, it is also necessary to apply massive testing and the tracing and isolation of infected people. Even a few capitalist governments, such as South Korea and Iceland, have implemented this policy and the number of deaths has been greatly reduced. However, the vast majority of countries have not implemented this policy on time on the scale needed, resulting in a large number of unnecessary deaths.

The Mexican government has rejected the need to apply massive testing and contagion tracing, arguing that it would be a “waste of resources and effort.” Thus, guided by narrow capitalist financial calculations and an unscientific approach which refuses to learn from international experience in this regard, they are condemning many more people to unnecessary death in order to save money. This is completely criminal. And to top it off, several investigations have shown that the official figures in Mexico, as in many other countries, omit many deaths caused by COVID-19.

The pandemic has highlighted the reality that we live in a world system, the capitalist-imperialist system. In this globalized world, contagion has spread rapidly to virtually all countries. Although many scientists advocate international efforts, the imperialist powers are in a race to develop the first vaccine or cure to gain advantages over their rivals, and transnational corporations are in the same race, seeking profits in competition with each other, while taking advantage of the lack of health care supplies to force prices to skyrocket. The future socialist society will practice internationalism, and will put all scientific advances in health care at the service, not of narrow national interests, but of all humanity.

The pandemic is impacting the current society divided into antagonistic classes, marked by big inequalities and the oppression of women, indigenous people and others. More people are dying in poor neighborhoods, such as in Ecatepec and Iztapalapa in the Valley of Mexico, and among people working without the necessary protections. Migrants and prisoners are in deplorable conditions and very vulnerable to contagion. Indigenous people and peasants are particularly vulnerable due to the lack of medical services and health care facilities.

The necessary confinement measures, combined with the growing weakening of the capitalist economy, even before the pandemic, have resulted in the sudden impoverishment of millions of people in Mexico and billions worldwide. In Mexico, 12.5 million have become unemployed and the economy is projected to plummet 7.5% this year. Instead of mobilizing resources to ensure food and housing for all, priority is given to promoting megaprojects with plundering and environmental destruction, such as the so-called “Maya” Train and the cross-isthmus corridor to attract more investment from big imperialist and domestic capital.

The future socialist society will undertake a profound struggle to eliminate exploitation and uproot all forms of oppression of women, indigenous people, LGBT people and others, overcoming step by step the inequalities inherited from the capitalist past. Such a society will be born out of the conscious revolutionary struggle of millions, and will mobilize the conscious participation of people, with increasing access to science, to cope with pandemics and other disasters and fight to ensure that no one lacks essential needs. When important mistakes are made, they will be raised publicly so that the people themselves can help find solutions. In today’s capitalist society, dominated by the big capitalist exploiters and governed by the capitalist state, most people are denied access to scientific knowledge, they tell us what to do without clearly explaining why, they keep people in a passive role, just telling us to obey the authorities. And they lie and lie and lie to us, that this is no big problem, that everything is prepared and under control, that the pandemic has already been “tamed,” hiding the true dimensions of the crisis.

Many believe that all the injustices, misery and suffering we face are due to the bad intentions of such and such rulers, businessmen, etc. The pandemic has been showing, in many ways, that the underlying problem is the capitalist system, governed by competition for profits among the large private owners of the wealth produced by millions of workers. The solution is revolution, with the guidance of the new communism, to establish a new socialist system governed by the needs of the people, guided by science and dedicated to the emancipation of all humanity.

—June 20, 2020

Aurora Roja, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Organization, Mexico

aurora-roja.blogspot.com | auroraroja.mx@gmail.com

Protest at the ISSSTE [Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers] due to lack of supplies. The banner “Todos somos Miguel” (“We Are All Miguel”) refers to a healthcare worker who died from COVID-19 due to lack of adequate protective equipment.