Editorial: The Coronavirus has global political implications

The following is the latest editorial from the UK website Left Horizons. For the U.S. reader, the TUC is the Trades Union Congress, the UK equivalent of the AFL-CIO. When the term "Labour" is used it is referring to the Labor Party.

Image source: India Times

Editorial: Coronavirus has global political implications

March 11, 2020 

Capitalism is an economic system that has instability and turbulence built into its foundations, but it is often unexpected, accidental factors that lay bare its fundamental character. Few would have anticipated, even three months ago, the enormity of the impact of a coronavirus outbreak across the world, yet it may prove to be a political and economic earthquake unprecedented in modern times.

Every national government will be judged in the coming months on how it responds to the Covid-19 pandemic and it will have revolutionary implications in many parts of the world.

In many cases, the first response of governments has been to minimize and play down the dangers of an epidemic and keep the facts from the public. It is as if politicians have learnt nothing from the last world pandemic, Spanish Flu in 1918-19. This flu was only given its name because in wartime conditions governments suppressed news of the outbreak and it was only in neutral Spain that the press was able to publicize it.

Chinese whistle-blower arrested

In China, where the outbreak began, the local Communist Party leadership in Wuhan initially attempted to suppress news of the outbreak. A doctor in the local health service, Li Wenliang, attempted to raise the alarm about what he thought was a new strain of the Sars virus and for his pains he was arrested and made to retract. Doctor Li later contracted Covid-19 and died, leading to a public outcry among millions of Chinese users of social media.

China has probably the world’s tightest state control of social media, but that has not stopped a wave of on-line opposition to the government. A cack-handed attempt by the Communist Party to elevate the role of President Xi now seriously back-fired, as a high-up official in the Communist Party suggested that the people of Wuhan needed “education” in “gratitude” for Xi’s role in limiting the outbreak. This produced a new wave of outrage on social media. “What should I be thankful for?” someone wrote on Weibo, the main social media platform in China. On the same platform, footage has been circulating showing residents of flats in Wuhan shouting at the state vice-president when he visited a quarantined area. Leaning out of their windows, they were shouting, “It’s fake, it’s fake!”

Little trust of Iranian Islamic government

In Iran, there is little public trust of the Islamic government. This follows the widespread public outrage over the denial and then later admission that Islamic Revolutionary Guards had shot down an airliner, after the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani.

Iran is suffering one of the highest infection rates outside of China, despite the government’s initial claims that the outbreak was under control. One doctor in the province of Khuzestan told the Financial Times (March 4), “Officials did not confirm the virus had reached Iran for one month, and then underestimated the impacts of the disease by telling people it was like flu”. For consecutive Fridays (and for the first time since the Islamic revolution of 1979) Friday prayers have been cancelled in the main cities.

The official figures for deaths in Iran appear to show a mortality rate far higher than anywhere else, including China, but this is probably a result of the government’s failure to record the correct number of infections across the country. Here, at least 20 MPs have become infected, including a vice-president and – as in the UK – a health minister.

In the USA, an estimated one quarter of workers currently do gig work and nearly half of these rely on it as their primary source of income. It is only as a result of these insecure, low-paid and low-skill jobs that the unemployment rate appears on paper to be the lowest for 50 years. They are the majority of the 30m or so without any health insurance and they will not be in a position to pay for treatment or even to manage self-quarantine.

Gillian Tett, writing in the Financial Times (March 6), pointed to some of the sky-high health bills that American workers might have to pay. “A Miami man says he received a $3,270 bill for a voluntary coronavirus test; an American evacuated from the outbreak’s epicentre in Wuhan China received a $3,918 bill for mandatory quarantine in San Diego. The lack of sick pay may encourage unwell gig workers to keep working.”

Bumbling, ignorant and laughable Trump

This epidemic, which Donald Trump first tried to pass off as a “Chinese hoax” will have a profound affect on US politics and on the forthcoming presidential election. This is Trump’s “Katrina” moment, a reference to the hurricane which caused nearly 2000 deaths and massive devastation in 2005, while the reaction of president George W Bush, by common consent, was woefully weak, massively undermining his political support. The most hardened Trump supporters might be impressed but a huge majority of American workers must have been dismayed and embarrassed by Trump’s ignorant, bumbling and sometimes laughable comments on coronavirus widely circulated on social media.

Here at home, the further development of the epidemic will be a severe test of the Tory government and, judged by the budget, it will be found seriously wanting. As we pointed out in our editorial immediately after the election, Labour had a clear majority among younger voters and among those in the least secure and least well-paid jobs. “Faced with five years of Tory rule,” we wrote, “they will become increasingly angry at the economic and social outcomes they face.” Like everyone else, we did not expect an outbreak of coronavirus as a trigger for opposition to the government, but adding this virus outbreak to the dismal long-term prospects of the British economy, “we may well see a move of workers and youth into struggles on the industrial front and on the streets.”

NHS will be unable to cope

Workers learn from concrete experience. As Robert Shrimsley writes in the Financial Times (March 10), ultimately, the government’s response to Covid-19 “will be judged by the population’s direct experience. Were the desperately ill denied respirators or hospital beds? Did the National Health Service care for our mothers? Did shops run out of food? An NHS unable to cope will do Mr Johnson damage.” He might have added, “Have the two million gig workers been given some access to finance if they are expected to self-quarantine?” 

Marxist economist, Michael Roberts has outlined in an article elsewhere, that the first Tory budget since the election is an admission – as Labour argued all along – that austerity never was an economic necessity, but a (Tory) political choice. But in terms of infrastructural investment, it is too little too late and where it does offer anything to working class people, it is a case of jam tomorrow.

Gig workers? – “apply for ESA”

The Budget reduces National Insurance payments, but as the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out, “only 8% of the gains would accrue to the poorest 20% of working households”. The increase in the national minimum wage is pushed back to 2024. The measures to have statutory sick pay given on day one of sickness has already been announced, but the maximum that is given is just over £94 a week, and not enough for most household budgets.

Besides, as the TUC has pointed out, it leaves out of account the more than 2 million workers who do not qualify for statutory sick pay. Asking these workers to apply for Employment Support Allowance, a complex arm of Universal Credit, will mean most workers will gain nothing. Even if it is given, there is a five-week wait and it is far less even than statutory sick pay.

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has supposedly introduced emergency measures to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. “We will get through this together”, he says, in an echo of David Cameron’s infamous remark, as he embarked on the most vicious decade of austerity for generations, that “we’re all in this together”. The fact of the matter is that the Tories’ policies are going to make sure that it is working people who will bear the onerous costs of the coronavirus outbreak.

Targeted support – but none for workers

Mortgage lenders are offering mortgage ‘holidays’ for better-off workers who are buying their own homes – but there is no relief whatsoever for rent-payers, overwhelming low-paid workers. Businesses have been offered relief from business rates, but there is no relief for workers having to pay council taxes. There is “targeted support” for businesses, but nothing “targeted” for low-paid workers.

If this really is a national health emergency – and we believe it is – it should be treated as such. The NHS is facing its most severe crisis since its foundation over seventy years ago. The NHS staggers on from month to month only because of the hard work (really, the over-work) and the dedication of its staff. It is completely unprepared for a massive health emergency. Every PFI hospital has had fewer beds that the hospital it replaced. Britain has the lowest number of acute beds available than in any comparable country. The government has utterly failed to offer any sign of re-financing the NHS is such a way that it can deal with the greatest public health crisis in a century.

River of money still flows out of the NHS

The British Medical Association has been warnings that the impact of Covid-19 on the NHS would be “grave”, given that the service was already “under intense strain”. As a result of massive cuts over the last ten years, the NHS has been cut to the bone. There is still a river of money flowing out of the NHS into the hands of private operators who have picked up ‘out-sourcing’ contracts and who are wallowing in the flood of cash being made from PFI hospitals.

Labour must demand that this “emergency” has to be treated with “emergency measures”. PFI contracts must be cancelled; privatized services and workers brought back in-house. Private hospitals need to be integrated into the NHS to make their beds available.

If the lock-down in Italy is a sign of likely future policy in the UK, then we too are facing compulsory quarantines, bans on movement and travelling and other measures. If workers are compelled to stay at home without any financial resources to sustain them, it will be a recipe for social unrest. It remains to be seen if the three or four-week national quarantine in Italy will pass off peacefully and without upheaval, but we doubt it.

Measures to benefit the majority

Labour and the TUC must demand that working class people are not made to pay for this coronavirus outbreak. Emergency measures need to be introduced that can help the big majority of the population to deal with the epidemic. Labour and the TUC should demand policies for the Many and not the Few:

*The immediate restoration of local authority and NHS cuts so that there are adequate finances to manage a crisis.

*All NHS contracts related to the coronavirus outbreak must be in-house contracts, as a preliminary to bringing all NHS services back in-house. Cancellation of PFI payments.

*Private hospitals should be integrated into the NHS

*All workers quarantined, including self-quarantined, must be guaranteed normal, full pay.

*In the event of any lock-downs or quarantines, that rents, mortgage payments and utility bills must be suspended (not just postponed) for the duration

*NHS, education and other workers must be protected from excessive workloads and the appropriate numbers of staff must be employed and trained to provide an adequate service.

*Labour should use the crisis to campaign for the nationalisation of the whole of the health sector, including pharmaceuticals, so its work-force and technological resources can be managed for the benefit of public health and not for profit

*All those on welfare benefits should have benefits maintained, irrespective of missed interviews or appointments. If the worst comes to the worst, the government should foot funeral bills for any Covid-19 victims who were on benefits.

*There should be no redundancies in any field of work, arising from trading conditions during the coronavirus outbreak. Any companies threatening job losses should be nationalised and run democratically by its workforce for the benefit of society as a whole.

*The organisations of improvised quarantines and emergency deployments of staff should be democratically managed by the workforce and by trades unions in the workplace.

It was relatively easy for Boris Johnson, a man who has made a political career out of lying, to win an election with a simplistic three-word slogan like “Get Brexit Done”. But faced with the complexities of a serious health emergency, he will not be able to hide his incompetence, partiality and above all his class bias. In good health or ill, his prime aim is always to protect the interests of the millionaire class to which he owes his position.

In the fullness of time, this national health crisis will be seen as a significant turning point internationally and the trigger for large-scale social and political upheavals. We can but hope that it can also be the beginning of the end of the Johnson government.