Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Tue Mar 31, 2020 11:14 am

Thursday, April 2
@ 7pm EDT/4pm PDT
Register to participate via
Zoom Video conference

Rent strikes. Instacart and Amazon strikes. Prisoner strikes. General strikes. The global impact of the COVID-19 Coronavirus has united the workers and oppressed in a common, worldwide struggle for health, safety, jobs and full pay during closings and layoffs. Rank-and-file resistance by workers — with or without unions — has closed schools, factories and workplaces in the interest of community health and called out bosses who are mistreating workers in the process.

Join Workers World Party as we discuss the growing worker resistance to the capitalist response to COVID-19. Speakers from the front lines will share experiences and strategize on building a united working class fightback.
https://us04web.zoom.us/webinar/registe ... eGe_BADpMw

Might be interesting if they can hold back the Trot shit, but do I want to sign-up for this?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:10 pm

US unemployment rises
03/31/2020

Capitalism is killing

In the USA, as well as around the world , the number of unemployed is growing . According to the US Department of Labor, more than 3.2 million applications for unemployment benefits were filed at the end of last week.

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For the week ended March 21, the rate of initial applications for unemployment benefits, seasonally adjusted, amounted to 3,283,000, the statement said.

Some blame the rise in unemployment for the coronavirus pandemic, others for the economic crisis, and others both. A similar situation is not only in the United States, but throughout the world. It was precisely Europe and the USA that became the epicenter of the pandemic, as well as rising unemployment, where, as it seemed to many, capitalism was already developed and strengthened. Where the power of capital is experiencing any downturn in the economy from time to time. The situation in Russia is no better. According to a study by the Center for Strategic Research (CSR), 29% of Russian companies have already reduced their employees or payroll, and about 40% of companies intend to do so in the near future. In fact, everything turned out to be much simpler. Capitalists, so as not to waste money, simply reduce or throw workers to the streets.This is the most beneficial solution for the owner.

Everyone understands that the crisis will pass. Quarantine will end and everything will return to its previous mode. However, not everyone can survive the crisis without serious consequences. Workers will lose their jobs. Small business goes broke. The representatives of big business are least afraid. They are the best protected. They will hire new workers replacing the laid-off ones, and they will absorb the bankrupt small business.

What conclusions will workers make for themselves? They will forget and live on, hoping that this will not happen again? Or this crisis will be an indicator that capitalism is not ready for serious upheavals and should start looking for a replacement.

https://www.rotfront.su/v-ssha-rastet-bezrabotitsa/

Google Translator

I'm seeing speculation that this crisis may mark the beginning of the end for US empire. Roland Boer and MoA have posted as much. No doubt there are others. Perhaps. But looking back thru the archives I am reminded of the last crisis of capitalism, a mere 12 years ago. Back then there was a lot of talk like this:
John Gray
The Observer
Sunday September 28 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... omicgrowth (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... omicgrowth)

Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.

With the nationalisation of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.

Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.
or
"Twilight's last gleaming": The disintegration of the USA

by
Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de Aztlan

Los Angeles, Alta California - September 26, 2008 - (ACN) The most powerful empire that ever existed is collapsing. The collapse began when the USA armed forces were humiliated in Vietnam and the world witnessed the extraordinary event that took place in Saigon on April 30, 1975. That day saw the defeat of the mighty US military machine by a humble but extraordinarily courageous and intelligent people that US drill sergeants in boot camps called "the gooks". That day saw the disorganized evacuation of all Americans along with hundreds of South Vietnamese collaborators from the rooftop of the US Embassy in Saigon.


To our beloved community in Aztlan, prepare yourselves. The US Empire is going down but their is no reason we should go down with them. The US system may be already too decayed to save. I agree completely.I truly hope the collapse of America we all know is coming,brings about a new spirit pan-American unity,and a newfound solidarity.
It didn't happen that way, though there are cracks in the foundation it continues to be shored up by the war machine, fracking & funny money. Now it looks as though the hideous practice of hydraulic fracturing is going into the shitter: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/03 ... fraud.html. They've gone mad with the funny money which is metastasizing like the cancer it is. This is the modern equivalent of debasing the currency, the last resort of totally bankrupt regimes. Which leaves them with the guns. Oh boy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddnDuR8QG-s

The 'funny money for them and austerity for us' helped to set up the current tragedy by starving medical care and investment, emergency services, neglect of stockpiles...And of course nothing was solved finance wise, they just set up a bigger crash, compounded by disease and oil price war. Trots and anarchists may rub their hands in glee anticipating the spontaneous revolt of their wet dreams. But #19 will not do our work for us, it does prepare the ground for fruitful work. Work, work, work....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Tue Mar 31, 2020 5:50 pm

A missing calculation: COVID-19 infections in terms of percentage of population
31 MARCH, 2020 ~ LEAVE A COMMENT
In this article by John Ross, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, he points out that a missing calculation of the numbers of the COVID-19 pandemic is in terms of percentage of population. For those of you like me who keep checking the figures, they are normally listed in terms of absolute numbers (let us leave aside the question of inaccurate numbers in bourgeois states due to limited testing and inept regimes)..

This is misleading, since we need to calculate in terms of the percentage of the population. If we take China’s 82,000 infections (of which more than 75,000 have recovered) and then take into account China’s population of 1.4 billion, we get the following comparisons:

United States of America: 160,000 infections in a population of 330 million becomes, by comparison, 679,000.

Italy: 100,000 infections in a population of 60 million becomes, by comparison, 2.3 million.

UK: 20,000 infections in a population of 68 million becomes, by comparison, 412,000.

Australia: 4360 infection in a population of 25 million becomes, by comparison, 244,160.

Clearly, the pandemic is already much worse in such places. Earlier, I did another comparison between China and Australia, relative to populations. If Australia wanted to contain the pandemic to the same level as China, Australia would have needed to limit infections to a little below 1,500 people. The current level of infections, which is still rising, is already 3 times higher than it should have been.

One qualification: China was the first to discover the new virus, so it had a more difficult task. By contrast, a country like Australia was warned and given valuable time by China’s openness and transparency. In this light, the infections in Australia should have been even less than 1500.

https://stalinsmoustache.org/

I was thinking alone these lines last week and did some 'back of the envelope' calculations(I can still do long division!) and for the US to have matched China's response infections would have to be limited to around 21K. Massive fail.
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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:39 am

Capitalist eugenics compared with socialism’s ‘no one is left behind’
2 APRIL, 2020

To add to the earlier diagram of comparisons between capitalist and socialist responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, another stark difference is emerging: capitalist eugenics versus socialism’s ‘no one is left behind’.

Capitalist eugenics:

‘Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long-term by disproportionately culling elderly dependants’. This quotation comes from a certain Jeremy Warner in the UK. In other words, COVID-19 could be ‘beneficial’ from an economic perspective since it will remove those who are a ‘burden’ on the system. Social Darwinism at its worst.

Warner has expressed an unwelcome truth in capitalist countries that have experienced four decades of neoliberal approaches, which have gutted – ‘cutbacks’ they call it – government capability and health services. But doctors too in such places face the grim reality – in light of inadequate resources – of deciding whether an elderly and frail person should receive crucial treatment or whether someone with a better chance of ‘survival’ should receive such treatment. They may frame it as an ‘ethical choice’, but it boils down to forced eugenics.

Compare socialism’s ‘no one is left behind’:

Perhaps the best example is a 103 year old woman in Wuhan, who successfully recovered and was discharged in the middle of March. She has multiple ailments and is unable to manage on her own, and yet the doctors in Wuhan provided her with full treatment, including Traditional Chinese Medicine (used with all patients).

According to capitalist eugenics – whether explicit or implicit – this woman would not be worth the care and attention. But according to the socialist system, no-one is to be left behind. This phrase is repeated again and again by Xi Jinping, with an initial focus on the poverty alleviation program. But it applies equally to health, where it becomes a case of ‘putting people’s lives and health in the first place‘.

As I write, there remain in China less than 500 severe cases of COVID-19. The vast majority of them are elderly and may not have many years left in their lives. But this reality makes no difference: they receive full care. Each day I watch the numbers, noting that severe cases keep dropping at about the rate of 50-70 each day. At the same time, the number of deaths per day is usually less than 10.

Of course, you need to have the medical resources and capability of the government to enable this focus – precisely what a socialist system can do.

https://stalinsmoustache.org/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:00 pm

SLAUGHTER IN THE NURSING HOMES

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No, it’s not less serious when old people die. Not when such deaths were perfectly avoidable, at least in these proportions. We are living a real massacre in which nursing homes take the place of punishment battalions . When entering them to disinfect them, the soldiers from the emergency soldiers are witnessing nightmarish scenes of death and abandonment . A nursing home costs a lot more per month than the median Spanish salary ; paying for it is a family effort. And yet, families are now finding out that the companies which bled them every month were not able to provide a minimum of protection to their parents and grandparents when the epidemic broke out, to establish a protocol for hospitalizing them, and in many cases not even to provide medical care when they became ill. The truth is that almost nothing seems to have been done to prevent contagion, and in many cases the sick were left to die first and then the bodies were left to rot on the beds . There is something obviously wrong, very wrong, criminally wrong with this.


Who runs the nursing homes?

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RESIDENCE OF VITALIA INTERVENED BY THE REGIONAL GOVERNMENT OF MADRID.

Residences are a multi-billion euro business. Hidden behind the residences in which we have seen deaths pile up these days lie large groups of capital. You only have to look at the ownership structure to see that. At the ” Vitalia Home ” in Leganés, 60 people had already died by 30 March. The military emergency unit found 11 abandoned bodies there . The company had received 57.5 million euros from the European Investment Bank to build 19 residences . The property was acquired two years ago by a British venture capital fund, shareholder of Naturgy and owner of the Alfonso X el Sabio University and Deoleo – the monopoly of olive oil distribution.



Let’s continue with some nursing homes that have been intervened in extremis by the state. It was in one of them, owned by Orpea, where some of the first alarms went off after workers reported that the company was hiding deaths. The company, a French multinational with a book value of 6 billion euros, is the vehicle of a dozen large pension funds.

These are not individual cases. The history of large companies in the sector is a a href=”https://elpais.com/economia/2018/11/21/ ... html”>soap opera of mergers, acquisitions and capital flows up and down. The biggest of them all in Spain, DomusVi, a party of French, British and Spanish capitals dancing in corporate operations, had in Espartales the most serious case – the residence has been intervened now due to the magnitude of the disaster – it is also the owner of the residence in Aldán, Pontevedra, where yesterday they had 5 deaths in a single day and 108 elderly people are infected.

Of course, even if the lion’s share of the market is in large funds, there is always room for an enterprising petty bourgeoisie sufficiently connected to regional politics to raise public funds. Their results have not been shown to be any better. Just look at the headlines about companies like Aralia which manages the Isabel la Católica residence, a cruel disaster these days, or the “los Miami”, owners of the Monte Carmelo residence where first 19 and then 26 deaths – and more to come – were followed by reports of abandoned bodies, lack of hygiene and an investigation by the public prosecutor’s office.

Why are neither large nor small companies working?

Image
SOLDIERS FROM THE MILITARY EMERGENCY UNIT ENTER A NURSING HOME.

It is clear that neither large nor small companies, nor the contracting of one or the other for management have produced anything other than abomination. But it is that once again, under the lying and narcotizing language of the “caring” industry, the reality of a basic contradiction between the logic of capital and human needs is hidden . A company is as good for a fund as it is capable of using more capital profitably. What are the residences? Real estate investments – which require large volumes of capital – with a statistically calculable return, low default and secure occupancy. A “candy for funds” :

Investors see in senior centers a golden opportunity because they are “recurrent businesses” or fixed or periodic income that, in addition, have a low default rate (less than 1%, when the bank exceeds 10%), and because of the existence of a growing demand according to the figures of almost full occupancy shown by the sector. The estimate of the Spanish growth curve is negative, so the proportion of elderly people in the population will become increasingly higher.

A great way to increase your average rate of profit. Capital is happy to go back. Especially if the business itself is well known: a particularly safe and highly profitable real estate investment in a hotel business. Both dimensions are well known. And as in every hotel and catering business, they come with a certain amount of precarization, lack of personnel and calculated negligence to save costs by not considering the unexpected. No, the lack of workers, the lack of protection measures and their disqualification to face the epidemic was not something “unpredictable” but routine to the point of being incorporated into the calculation of the rate of profit: before the arrival of the Covid, the ratio of personnel was 0.47%, when in France for example, where it is already clearly insufficient, it was 0.61%. The over-exploitation of workers and the lack of sufficient resources in care were commonplace and served to accelerate the return on investment.

With capital being in command, and it is obvious that its own need is only for its own clients as long as these needs lie within the statistically calculable – everything else is bad for profitability – the state systematically disregarded the risk of spread and did not bother to make a contingency plan to help some residences representing the highest concentration of people at risk in the whole country. Moreover, only today, after two weeks of confinement, in the midst of daily complaints and nightmarish situations, there is still no plan of action, only the intervention of the residences by several (regional) autonomous communities means that they take over the responsibility and take the management away from the companies.

The massacre of the residences is a very clear expression of how the objectives and incentives of accumulation are opposed to the most basic human needs. The result is a bloody incompetence from the point of view of something as basic as the protection of human lives, but in reality, it has been “exemplary” from the point of view of the placement of capital and its profitability. Covid has spread and swept through them precisely because they were efficient for the purposes for which they were created.

The point is that, for something as obvious as protecting the lives of our families, we cannot allow basic services such as care in the last years of life to be organized from these criteria or directed by a class for whom saving lives is less relevant than saving investments.

http://communia.blog/slaughter-in-the-nursing-homes/

"punishment battalions", fucking Trots....
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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 04, 2020 1:51 pm

WILL THE POOR BE POORER AFTER CONFINEMENT?

3 APRIL, 2020 · NEWS> GLOBAL SITUATION> WEEKLY REPORT

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The world bourgeoisie is becoming nervous. In Spain, where confinement for non-essential activities has been in place for only four days, Botín (the head of one of the main Spanish banks) is already calling on the government to reinstate young and immunized people. In Italy, more than 40,000 companies are already asking to be allowed to reopen. In France, the CEO of Michelin says that “the world cannot live in isolation” and the steelworks will reopen no matter what. Capital needs its pound of flesh. It craves the same labor that until now it only recognized as “one more factor of production”. But are or will the effects of confinement be so terrible? How will the economy be after Covid?


Capital becomes more centralized and concentrated…

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VON DER LEYEN IN THE SPANISH TV.

The European Commission has attempted to whitewash the voracity of the German bourgeoisie with a program of guarantees of up to 100 billion that does not even cover the guarantees already promised by the Spanish government. The Spanish government, in turn, is putting the burden of the shutdown on the weaker -autonomous- petty bourgeoisie and on the workers who suffered from precarization in the form of dependent self-employed and false self-employed people, urging them to run up debts to pay the fees for the period of inactivity in which they are not earning any income.

The roars of protest reach the confidential press, a terrain generally undermined by its dependence on institutional communication and advertising agencies. Just today we saw headlines like ” why don’t they want to save the self-employed and the small and medium enterprises ” telling us that the government policy, dictated by the big companies, will serve to devour the market share of the small ones and concentrate economic power. Yesterday, in another confidential article, we could read :

There is no excuse for a limit on public spending that can justify the lack of financial resources to deal with this crisis. On the contrary, what prevails is the state’s eagerness to collect taxes as a means of financing an exceptional critical situation. The Spanish tax pyramid is built on the weakest, i.e. the lowest income taxpayers, who make up the majority of the population. This is equivalent to saying that the pyramid is supported by the workers.

They are right. The crisis will concentrate and centralize capital within each country. If we take a look, the aid they have promoted for workers – the ease of making temporary redundancies – is actually aid from which medium and large companies will benefit. The aim of the Spanish government, like that of the German government , is to put the employment contracts of the most capital-intensive companies into “pause mode”, because the cost both to the companies and to the state of laying off today and re-hiring tomorrow would be much greater.

In fact, large companies will not only obtain the bulk of state aid – even that which is allegedly dedicated to SMEs through subsidiaries and partnerships -, they will gain market space at the expense of the financial difficulties of smaller competitors – by buying or letting electricity traders go bankrupt, for example. In very monopolistic environments, such as those of practically all the main vehicles of national capital, those of the IBEX and some others, this means that a horizon of rising prices for basic services is opening up. Something like an indirect tax directly set on the accounts of the main companies.

In France, the government could not wait. In the midst of the epidemic, the Macron government continues with the privatization of French public health . It wants to expand the consortiums with the private sector to ensure its “sustainable development” and to restructure the debt of the hospitals. In other words, the health crisis is going to be used to convert hospitals and opportunities for capital placement while further developing a health system that was already saturated before the Covid. Another sign of things to come. The fact that Sánchez stressed today that “the national industry must be strengthened”, without mentioning this time the public health system, gives food for thought.

…with stagnant regions and “light” sectors dismantled…

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IMPACT OF UNEMPLOYMENT DURING THE MONTH OF MARCH BY MUNICIPALITY. DARK RED REPRESENTS MORE THAN A 30% INCREASE, GREEN BETWEEN 3 AND 10%.

In the US, 10 million people registered for unemployment in the last two weeks . The vast majority, having lost their jobs, have also lost their health insurance. And more will come in the coming days and weeks . To give you an idea of the scale: the 2008 recession caused nine million unemployed.

The Spanish data give us some more information to interpret the incidence on unemployment and how the epidemic and confinement are going to modify the labor market. Yesterday the Minister of Social Security presented the unemployment data for March . There is a predictable and clear correlation between the organic composition of capital and the impact of unemployment. Where it is greater, that is, where investment in equipment and machines is greater for the same amount of hired labor, the impact of unemployment is lower. The historically less capitalized areas, such as southern Spain, are more affected.

Something similar will happen in the United States, with the aggravating circumstance that many of these less capitalized states are also the ones that are suffering the epidemic the most , with particularly high rates of death among those under 70 as well.

And what is true for territories is also true for the productive sectors . The sectors that historically have shown less capacity to absorb capital, such as most services – tourism, hotels, etc. – are today those that send more people into unemployment. The large industrial company opts for temporary layoffs because the cost of not laying off workers is less than the cost of reorganizing the workforce, the retail chain lays off workers directly because it does not want to commit to maintaining contracts for six months when everything is over, given that the cost of finding and training personnel is very low.

…with lower salaries, even more precarity and groups permanently excluded from work

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EVOLUTION OF SALARIES IN SPAIN BY DECILES (GROUPS REPRESENTING 10% OF THE TOTAL) BETWEEN 2008 AND 2014. THE LOWEST DECILES, THOSE WHO EARNED THE LEAST, ARE THOSE WHO LOST THE MOST IN THE CRISIS.

It is striking that even liberal think tanks are calling for “insertion incomes” for young people, the long-term unemployed and the unemployed over the age of fifty. The prospect is that the combination of the effects of greater industrial concentration with those of greater regional inequality will create very large pockets of workers who are less attractive to companies.

These are, in particular, the long-term unemployed without benefits, who will again be relegated to the unemployment queue, as happened in the Great Recession, newcomers, who will find the labor market severely weakened or simply fail to enter, and finally, older workers, who are likely to be separated from the labor market on a permanent basis.

We can imagine what comes next because we have already experienced it on a couple of occasions: a new wave of precarization measures and a greater drop in wages the lower the wages earned so far. As we can see from the data for 2008-2014 in the graph above. The coming offensive, like all the previous ones, seeks to revive big capital at the cost of a new massive transfer of workers’ income since the “Moncloa pacts” that the Spanish government is now taking again as a reference .

The decisive factor

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MADRID DURING CONFINEMENT.

So much for the economic look. That is, society seen from the interests of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. For them, the situation can be summed up as one in which capital is being devalued and must be revived as soon as possible by reducing the total cost of the labor power – which includes wages, public health systems, social cohesion costs, training and in general the costs of keeping exploitation going. This is the idea we hear every day on the radio and television: recessions automatically “bring abou”‘ unemployment, lower wages and pauperization among the workers. There would be no “other way”.

We have to start asking ourselves why capital is so devalued by a few weeks of confinement. Machines and productive capacity do not disappear, sites do not disappear, and the balance sheet of companies is not brutally damaged. And yet many companies are now worth a quarter of what they were worth on 1 January.

The reason is that capital, in reality, is not a pile of machines or bundles of banknotes, capital is nothing but a right to exploit labor power. This right allows for the use of machines, materials and equipment (dead labor) and the labor power of people (living labor) to produce. If production is successful and can be sold on the market, the result is that capital will grow. The appearance is that the money from which it departed – to buy living and dead labor – has become a greater amount of money, has grown. In practice: success in using the exploitation rights will have produced even greater exploitation rights. That’s all the magic under capital accumulation. What the media calls “economic perspectives” is nothing more than the overall expectation that accumulation will be successful and that capital will “grow”.

What is happening? There are simply far fewer hours of work to be exploited because workers are confined to their homes. The accumulated rights are obviously not worth much. Even less so if the consumption of certain goods is falling because of the confinement and stocks cannot even be sold. So capital is devalued at the rate at which the available labor force is reduced and sales fall.

But when confinement is over, workers will be available again, machines and computers will continue to operate, and demand will recover. Even if the figures show a brutal drop in production in the preceding weeks, there is nothing to prevent production from resuming. However, capital will already have been devalued. If the epidemic had occurred all over the world at the same time and affected all places and sectors equally, the only profit lost by companies, the only real devaluation of capital, would be that corresponding to the days not worked.

However, as we saw earlier this week when we were discussing agriculture , profits are distributed in proportion to the total capital invested. And all capital is deeply intertwined with each other through capital markets. The more relative weight a national capital has lost, the less profit it will have to distribute to its companies, the more weight a sector of national capital has lost to others or a company to others, the smaller its share of profit will be. Both the national capital as a whole and each of its specific applications “need” to recover the positions lost as soon as possible. Hence the fury.

What does this mean? Compensate the profits that were not taken with more profits in the next periods. It is a question, at least, of recovering the relative place they already had… or improving it, because the truth is that the crisis was leading to an agonizing situation even before the epidemic . The way to revive profits is to increase exploitation. The ideal means, by increasing relative exploitation, that is, by producing more with less work. But it requires having capital ready to be invested and having gained access to new markets in order to be able to place the new higher amount produced. That path is, to say the least, unlikely. The path to which everything points is to increase absolute surplus value, that is, to pay less per hour worked. As we have seen, this is what they consider to be “unavoidable”: in a global way, national capital will try to lower the cost of maintaining the conditions of exploitation by reducing, for example, state health and education spending and by reducing the costs for companies of hiring, firing, etc. One by one, the big sectors and companies will try to lower the total wages they pay, laying off people and overburdening those who remain, firing those with higher wages and re-hiring for the same real job at lower wages, etc.

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METAL WORKERS STRIKE, TURKEY.

This is what we are sold as “inescapable” in the face of a crisis. But is it? Not really. If it were so, Bolsonaro, Botín, the CEO of Michelin and so many others, would have us already working and with a wage cut in the name of “solidarity”. What is preventing it is all those strikes that occur every day all over the world and that really only represent the tip of the iceberg of the real movement that is taking place. Even if the media is trying to blur them out and only occasionally report them in order to disqualify them, these strikes say something very important about the world that is coming after confinement. As the flyer distributed the other day by our comrades in Argentina said :

Today the demands are marked by the coronavirus, but if we face the pandemic as workers, tomorrow, when the quarantine and the epidemic are over, in the battle against the attacks on our living conditions that will follow, we will become stronger.

http://communia.blog/will-we-be-poorer- ... nfinement/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 04, 2020 2:20 pm

Nor will this be forgotten: USA hijacks facemask shipments bound for France, Germany and Canada
4 APRIL, 2020 ~ 1 COMMENT
In contrast to China’s assistance in terms of medical experts and equipment to more than 100 countries, along with assistance given by Russia and Cuba to a smaller number, the United States has been stealing medical shipments bound for other countries. As a German politician put it, this is ‘modern piracy’.

First there was the planeload bound for France. At the last minute a bunch of Americans turned up on the tarmac in Shanghai and paid double for it by cash – ‘Wild West’ style. The plane went to the USA. As one writer put it, this type of act is almost like holiday shopping in some US malls. Apparently, this is not the only time shipments bound for France have been hijacked (see here and here).

Next there was the planeload seized in Bangkok, on a stopover from China and en route to Germany. These were manufactured by 3M in China, where the company does nearly all its manufacturing. But the company, like all other US companies engaged in manufacturing medical equipment (usually in other places in the world), has been banned from supplying other countries. Hijack, piracy, global thief – all apply.

Third, there was the shipment to Canada. The plane was diverted to Ohio while en route to Montreal. After arrival in Montreal, 10,000 facemasks were missing.

Let me add the case of Cuba. A planeload of crucial medical equipment donated by the Jack Ma Foundation (from Alibaba, the largest online retailer in the global) was cancelled by its carrier at the last minute due to barbaric US sanctions against Cuba. I have not been able to find out whether another carrier has been found for the shipment.

Why facemasks? Initially, the regimes in some other countries – like Australia – advised that facemasks were basically useless in protecting oneself from a virus. My friends in China are aghast at such an approach. But now other places are starting to realise that they do indeed help (along with other precautions) given the relatively low infection levels across East Asia. So now there is a scramble for them and China makes by far the most facemasks.

So, some donate medical equipment like facemasks to other countries, while the USA not only bans assistance outside its borders but literally steals them from other countries. As one wit put it, the place should be called the ‘United Snatchers of America’.

https://stalinsmoustache.org/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 06, 2020 11:34 am

No one is left behind: 88 percent of critically ill patients now recovering in China
6 APRIL, 2020 ~ LEAVE A COMMENT
A signature feature of China ‘smashing the curve’ of the COVID-19 epidemic is that no one is left behind.

This including hospitalising all people who have this type of coronavirus and then locating them in a hospital (or section thereof) in terms of whether they have mild, moderate, severe or critical symptoms. At the height of the outbreak and especially in Wuhan, tens of thousands of patients were all hospitalised.

Further, the socialist system in China was able to mobilise 42,000 medical professionals from across China to go to Wuhan. These ranged from crucial nurses to leading medical academicians, and included a massive mobilisation of the military’s medical resources. Most of them have returned home now, to heroes’ welcomes (for example, see here).

However, a few hundred critically ill patients remain in Intensive Care Units. A few thousand nurses, doctors and leading medical experts (for a description of the key experts, see here) remain in Wuhan and are focused on ensuring as many patients as possible recover.

As this article points out, ‘most ICU patients had underlying conditions and have been hospitalized since January’. The approach is to develop specific programs of treatment for each patient, combining ‘Western’ and Traditional Chinese Medicines.

The result: ‘The recovery rate of patients in severe or critical condition has increased from 14 percent to 88 percent’. At the peak in Wuhan, there were 9000 patients in critical condition. Not all could be saved, since about 3000 of them died. As I write, there are 265 critically ill patients remaining. In the last 24 hours, 30 have recovered and only one has died.

Instead of capitalist eugenics, this is socialism’s ‘no one is left behind’ in action.

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A Unique Chinese Approach: Traditional Chinese Medicine Effective in Treating COVID-19
6 APRIL, 2020 ~ LEAVE A COMMENT
Traditional Chinese Medicine has played an important role in treating COVID-19 patients in China. As part of the socialist system’s mobilisation of all its resources to contain the epidemic, the largest number of TCM specialists – 4,900 – ever mobilised went to Wuhan at the height of the outbreak.

The focus was primarily on ensuring that mild and moderately ill patients did not progress to more severe stages and that they recovered more rapidly. But TCM is also used alongside other medicines for those in Intensive Care, and it continues to be used for the rehabilitation (see here) of those who have recovered.

I am also told by a specialist in China that TCM was used by medical staff working in Wuhan, ensuring very minimal transmission of the virus to the staff.

The article copied below was published in Xinhua News on 23 March, 2020:

Clinical observation showed that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has proven to be effective in the treatment of over 90 percent of all confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland, said a TCM official on Monday.

A total of 74,187 COVID-19 patients, or 91.5 percent of the total confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland, have received TCM treatment, said Yu Yanhong, Party chief of the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, at a press conference in Wuhan, capital of the hardest-hit province of Hubei.

In Hubei, TCM treatment has been given to 90.6 percent of COVID-19 patients.

All TCM prescriptions have effectively relieved symptoms, slowed the progression of the disease, improved the cure rate and reduced mortality and boosted the recovery of patients, said Yu.

Over 4,900 medics from TCM hospitals and institutions across China have been sent to aid the epidemic fight in Hubei, accounting for about 13 percent of all medics dispatched to the province.

“The scale and strength of the TCM aid team are unprecedented,” said Yu.

Zhang Boli, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said at the press conference that TCM treatment has significantly lowered the proportion of patients whose conditions turned from mild to severe.

“None of the 564 patients at the TCM-oriented temporary hospital in Wuhan saw their health condition deteriorating into severe,” said Zhang. “We have therefore applied TCM treatment to over 10,000 patients in other makeshift hospitals, and the rate of patients developing into severe conditions were substantially reduced,” said Zhang.

XuanFeiBaiDu Granule can increase the lymphocyte recovery rate by 17 percent and the clinical cure rate by 22 percent in the controlled observation, according to Huang Luqi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Liu Qingquan, head of the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said that two TCM drugs — Jinhua Qinggan Granule and Lianhua Qingwen Capsule/Granule have proven to be effective in the treatment of mild COVID-19 cases, while Xuebijing Injection can help treat inflammation and coagulation dysfunction.

Yu added that China has worked out a unique “Chinese plan” to combine traditional Chinese medicine with western medicine, and several effective TCM drugs and prescriptions have been discovered to treat the disease.

“The epidemic knows no borders, and the virus is the common enemy of mankind. China is willing to share its experiences and effective treatment methods with the world,” said Yu.

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 07, 2020 11:04 am

Medical workers nationally getting laid off by the thousands: ‘It’s quite surreal for all of us,’ one says
Posted Apr 04, 2020

Image
In this photo made on, April 2, 2020, nurse anesthetist Jessica Poole checks for updates on the coronavirus pandemic in her home office in Greensburg, Pa. Poole, until a couple weeks ago, worked for a private anesthesia practice that serves the Pittsburgh area until she was laid off. She is one of the tens of thousands of medical workers across the United States suddenly out of work as operating rooms and doctor's offices go dark, casualties of urgent calls to prioritize coronavirus patients at overwhelmed hospitals and of the economic waves the crisis is churning. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)AP

By Marc Levy | The Associated Press
HARRISBURG — Tens of thousands of medical workers across the United States are suddenly out of work as operating rooms and doctor’s offices go dark, casualties of urgent calls to prioritize coronavirus patients at overwhelmed hospitals and of the economic waves the crisis is churning.

Even as hospitals scrounge for professionals from the industry to treat the burgeoning numbers of people with COVID-19, others are on the sidelines as elective procedures, diagnostics and appointments are canceled or postponed.


For instance, many nurse anesthetists in Pennsylvania have been laid off, even though they are particularly critical to the coronavirus response because they can help intubate patients and manage them on ventilators.

"I certainly never thought there would be a day as a nurse that I would be filing for unemployment, so it's quite surreal for all of us," said Jess Poole, a nurse anesthetist who, until a couple weeks ago, worked for an anesthesia practice in the Pittsburgh area.

Big-city physician and specialist groups, tiny independent hospitals from Oregon to Connecticut, and big multistate hospital systems such as Steward Health Care are seeing big dropoffs in revenue and laying off or furloughing hundreds of workers.

A tally of out-of-work medical professionals is elusive, since the coronavirus began taking a devastating toll on jobs only in mid-March. Many institutions have said nothing publicly, quietly making cutbacks, and the monthly jobs report issued Friday by the federal government showed 42,000 job losses in health care — just a small indication of what's to come, because the government surveyed employers before the heaviest layoffs hit.

more....

https://www.pennlive.com/coronavirus/20 ... -says.html

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Overwhelmed Hospitals Face a New Crisis: Staffing Firms Are Cutting Their Doctors’ Hours and Pay
Multiple private-equity-backed staffing companies have cut hours for thousands of emergency room doctors, physician assistants and nurse practitioners. That means there are fewer medical workers at a time in hospitals and they are receiving less pay.

by Isaac Arnsdorf April 3, 6:23 p.m. EDT

SERIES:CORONAVIRUS
Is the United States Prepared for COVID-19?

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The country’s top employers of emergency room doctors are cutting their hours — leaving clinicians with lower earnings and hospitals with less staff in the middle of a pandemic.

TeamHealth, a major medical staffing company owned by the private-equity giant Blackstone, is reducing hours for ER staff in some places and asking for voluntary furloughs from anesthesiologists, the company confirmed to ProPublica. Multiple ER providers working for a main competitor, KKR-owned Envision Healthcare, said their hours also are being cut.

Even as some hospitals risk running out of room to care for COVID-19 patients, demand for other kinds of health care is collapsing. This irony is straining the business models of hospitals and the companies that staff them with doctors and other medical professionals.

Most ER doctors aren’t direct employees of the hospitals where they work. Historically, the doctors belonged to practice groups that contracted with the hospitals. In recent years, private-equity investors started buying up and consolidating those practice groups into massive staffing companies.

Reduced hours are also hitting doctors employed by SCP Health, another medical staffing company backed by the investment firm Onex Corporation, according to internal memos obtained by ProPublica. US Acute Care Solutions, backed by the private-equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, said it’s cutting hours in some places while increasing staffing elsewhere.

The staffing companies said they’re responding to dropping revenue as non-coronavirus patients avoid the ER and hospitals cancel elective procedures. The companies also emphasize that they’re not cutting physicians’ hourly rates.

But by assigning fewer hours to doctors and other providers such as physician’s assistants and nurse practitioners, the companies are effectively paying them less. It also means that some hospitals have fewer clinicians working in the ER at a time.


“These actions are unacceptable and unnecessary,” Scott Hickey, president of the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians, said in a statement. “This is very likely the ‘calm before the storm’ of critically ill patients entering hospitals with COVID-19 symptoms. Who will be there waiting to save those lives?”

The steepest cuts so far have occurred at Alteon Health, whose private-equity backers are New Mountain Capital and Frazier Healthcare Partners. The company says ER visits are down as much as 40% nationwide. In addition to the benefits cuts that ProPublica first reported on Tuesday, Alteon is furloughing some clinicians for 30 days to six months and won’t guarantee any hours for part-time employees, according to company memos obtained by ProPublica.

more...

https://www.propublica.org/article/over ... ter#182098

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Hospital in Southern Arizona says it's on the brink of closure because of COVID-19 costs
Stephanie Innes, Arizona RepublicPublished 5:00 p.m. MT April 3, 2020 | Updated 7:59 p.m. MT April 3, 2020

Leaders of a small, regional hospital south of Tucson say they are on the brink of closing because of costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We need economic relief to keep functioning," Kelly Adams, CEO of the 49-bed Santa Cruz Valley Regional Hospital, told The Arizona Republic. "There's a revenue problem. ... All hospitals are going to need some economic relief very, very soon."

One of the problems, Adams explained, is that elective surgeries have been canceled as a result of an executive order by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey in anticipation of a surge of patients ill with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

The cancellation of surgeries means less revenue coming in from patients at a time when the hospital is trying to comply with another executive order from Ducey — that all Arizona hospitals by April 24 increase their number of patient beds by 50 percent. Increasing bed capacity is adding additional expenses at a time when the hospital has very little revenue, Adams explained.

Overall hospital volume is down by about 40% not only because of halting surgeries, leaders say, but also because members of the community fear visiting a hospital where they could potentially be in proximity to COVID-19.


Leaders say the hospital is pursuing various funding sources to get relief. But the need is urgent, said Patrick Feeney, a managing director with California-based Lateral Investment Management, which owns the hospital.

"This isn't just about our hospital. Hospitals cannot function profitably in this environment, which is why we're all awaiting money from the government," he said. "If you want me to increase our bed capacity by 50%, how am I going to do that? It's going to cause me to shut our doors."

Unlike larger hospital systems, the Green Valley hospital does not have access to liquidity to manage through the downturn, which is the difference between small, independent hospitals and larger systems, Feeney explained.

"In the absence of immediate government support, whether it's federal or state or whatever, we won't make it past the end of April, and that would be a stretch," he said. "We need help in the next week or two to keep going."

more...

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/lo ... 119264002/

Links courtesy MoA

Unsurprisingly capitalism is failing mightily. But of course it does not function to meet human need but rather the need of capitalists.

So now the typical pattern of accusing others of the crimes which capital itself commits, in this case accusing China of minimising fatality numbers even as the Trump regime does exactly that.

As a side note the paywalls are going up faster than border checkpoints. Talk about capitalist's opportunism...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 07, 2020 1:25 pm

Capitalism provides what is superfluous, while socialism provides what is necessary

Italian Communists send message to Raúl and Díaz-Canel, expressing gratitude for Cuba’s support in the fight against COVID-19 in their country, adding, "Also in Italy it has been understood that capitalism provides what is superfluous, while socialism provides what is necessary”

Author: Granma | internet@granma.cu

april 6, 2020 09:04:12

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Cuban doctors arrive in Italy to join the fight Covid-19. Photo: RT

Expressing gratitude for the assistance being provided by a brigade of Cuban doctors in the Italian region of Lombardy, the Italian region most affected by the new SARS COV-2 virus, the nation’s Communist Party sent a message to the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, and to President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.

The letter notes the great value of the brigade’s cooperation, with the Italian public health system at a time of serious national emergency.

"After years of cuts in public health allocations, our health system is today in great difficulty, despite the selflessness and relentless work of our doctors and health workers, in the trenches fighting the coronavirus today, as well.

Sent "on behalf of the Central Committee and the entire Party", the letter offers thanks to "a small island subjected for many years to a total economic blockade by the world's greatest power. One of the nations that is providing a great lesson in solidarity and humanity. Your doctors have cured the sick in 64 countries around the world. Thanks to the teachings of Comandante Fidel, they testify to the value and superiority of socialist society."

The missive asks that a fraternal embrace be conveyed to the extraordinary doctors, the Communist Party, the people of Cuba, and tall those who have worked to protect the socialist society and country, against all attacks. "For 60 years you have been an example and an invaluable resource for all peoples of the world.”

In the final lines of the message, the Italian Communists insist they are more united than ever in the construction of a world of peace and social equality, and emphasize that today, thanks to Cuba, "Also in Italy it has been understood that capitalism provides what is superfluous, while socialism provides what is necessary.”

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2020-04-06/cap ... -necessary
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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