KAZ

zurück zur Erklärung in deutscher Sprache

English translation

Statement of Kommunistische Arbeiterzeitung (as of 28 March 2020)

Remarks on the Political Economy of the Plague
or
The Virus and the Class Struggle

  1. The disease is real and dangerous because of its unusual and novel infectious potential of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, commonly known as Corona virus. Everything has to be done to combat the rapid spread of the Covid19 plague.
  2. Once again, the economic and political rulers of our country proved to be incapable of preparing for this case and acting accordingly. For many years, they have ruined the health care system, brought it down by economizing, privatized it, and turned it into a profit-making system instead of a patient-based one.
  3. Now that things are getting serious, not the working people but "the economy" is at the centre of their efforts, the big corporations first. Hundreds of billions of euros are being spent to "save" the clans of Porsche and Piechs (VW), the Quandts (BMW), the Schäfflers, Siemens and all the others. Their billion-dollar fortunes remain untouched, which they are now allowed to manage in their home offices, in their villas turned into fortresses, spoiled by servants and cared for by personal physicians. That is what the money is for now, while the Hartz IV recipients are still on starvation rations. But at VW, the dividend/share from the 2019 business year is expected to increase by 40%.
  4. Now that things are getting serious, leading representatives from politics and capitalist circles propagate apparently harmlessly a fast "herd immunization" and thus consciously accept the death of millions worldwide, only to start up the "economy", i.e. the profit machine, as quickly as possible. "The German economy is calling for a departure from the latest protective measures in the fight against the Covid 19 pandemic. An influential German financial manager believes the measures would hit the economy hard: the 'acute crash of the global economy' is 'the far greater and more dangerous stress test than Sars-CoV-2'. One has to ask 'whether it is right that ten percent of the really threatened population should be spared, but 90 percent, including the entire national economy, should be extremely hampered with the possibly dramatic consequence that the basis of our general well-being is massively and sustainably eroding? (German Foreign Policy quotes Handelsblatt 20.3.2020). The "influential financial manager" is Mr. Dibelius, great-nephew of the infamous Protestant bishop, the zealous anti-Semite and anti-Communist, Otto Dibelius, owner of, among others, a 10-million Villa in St. Tropez, a 16-million-palace near Kitzbühel, he was a partner in McKinsey and for many years head of Goldman Sachs Germany, advisor to the German government. He defends the approach taken in England: "While the aim was to isolate extreme risk groups such as the elderly and the pre-existing conditions, the majority of the less susceptible population should continue to live their everyday lives. The result would be a kind of herd immunity, which would soon appear from 50 percent "contagion" and in turn protect those who are particularly at risk. Actually a relatively reasonable strategy." And in a nutshell, "better a flu than a busted economy." Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer SE, judges that the "consequences of fighting the virus" could "be worse... than the consequences of the virus itself". Mr. Linnemann, deputy chairman of the CDU faction in the Bundestag, obediently plays the same horn, which comes along with the melody of the fast "exit", i.e. the unchecked spread of the epidemic. So: Give me the barbarism, let hundreds of thousands die in Germany and watch from a safe distance how the rich survive.
  5. The whole thing expresses the contradiction between single capitalists and total capital (or capital as a whole). The interest of the total capital must assert itself by coercive law against the interests of the many individual capitals, as Marx describes it for example with the introduction of the 10-hour day in England. With the help of its state, total capital must secure the basis of exploitation, even if this temporarily reduces the possibilities of exploitation for the individual capitalist. The total capital does not want catastrophes. It wants to exploit in peace and order, and it does not want sick workers because they do not yield profit. If they become sick on a large scale and threatened by the epidemic, then something must be done to restore the labour force, as cheaply as possible and with all kinds of harassment and reprisals, with showing the instruments of power and restricting civil liberties, but at least to restore the "human material". - The individual capitalist is on the brink of disaster as a capitalist, especially if he is not one of the big allegedly systemically relevant monopolies. Then they cry out for the preservation of "the economy" that the wheels must roll without brakes. But that means nothing other than driving the workers without protection and precautions to the machines, as is still the case with us (effective 27 March 2020). This is also the catastrophe course shown by the AfD (right-wing Party with fascist elements), whose members of the Bundestag are supposedly calm, but in reality sit like lemmings together in their parliamentary herd.
  6. Exemplary can be learned from the VR China. Not only that they are exemplary there in combating the spread of the virus: They are taking extensive measures: New intensive-care hospitals are being built at a gigantic rate, huge test capacities (equipment and, above all, helpers!), protective masks and devices, right down to the small measures of markings, are being made available quickly in order to keep distance from shops, establishments, lifts, etc. In addition, the state-organized generous supply of food and medicine to those who are in quarantine. But this is only the small visible part. The basis is that to a large extent security is created for jobs and thus income, for the home. That the threat of homelessness, unemployment or hunger is largely eliminated, there is no reason to fear loneliness despite isolation. Of course they are integrated into social contexts in which no one is left alone. Despite all the difficulties that have arisen in detail, socialist China has taken up the fight against the epidemic with flying colours and will hopefully soon overcome it. After all, South Korea was quick to provide testing capacity, which made targeted measures possible quickly. The People's Republic of China, like the incomparable Cuba, is extending its hand to all peoples, offering support in terms of materials and personnel, as poor as these countries themselves still are. On the other hand, the rich imperialists from Germany, France, Great Britain and the USA, who cannot or do not even want to protect their own people, are bursting with war rhetoric. Exceptions are always to be emphasized here. For example, when China was in need, at least the City of Duisburg.
  7. This was not predominant here with us. How the "rulers in Beijing" have been reviled for their "undemocratic, human rights violating measures" for the "forced regiment" etc. Instead of helping China, or at least learning from it, people here in this country have been downplaying the consistent measures too derisively and from the top down, not even acknowledging that China too was surprised by the virus and could not yet assess its danger at the beginning. The banker Jens Spahn, our Minister of Disease, rejects the offered help from China in a snooty way. However, the district of Heinsberg/NRW, which has been severely affected by the virus, was not impressed by this and officially asked the PR China for support. Does it have to come as far as Italy, not to mention many underdeveloped countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America? In the case of the EU members Italy, Spain and Greece, the situation is also so dramatic because in the course of the financial crisis from 2008 to 2011, the so-called Troika, acting for the leading power in the EU, Germany, dictated brutal bleeding programmes to these countries, which led to drastic savings in the health system. And it is precisely these countries that are left in the lurch concerning the reception of refugees who are crammed into camps under brutal conditions, breeding grounds for the pandemic apparently approving infections and mass mortality. And it is criminal to maintain sanctions or embargoes against Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and Russia.
  8. And with us: Hesitant establishment of the necessary test facilities, lack of protective clothing, lackof disinfectants that even doctors' surgeries that are responsible for the normal supply of the population have to close, etc. But now there are hundreds of billions in aid programs for the big corporations. So the virus came just in time. The crisis has been going on since the 3rd quarter of 2018 - not because of Brexit, or trade war, or now the plague. It is the cyclical crisis of capitalism with its excess of goods, of cars, of machines, but also of food, which can be produced but not bought, because wages and social benefits have not grown with the production possibilities. The crisis intensifies the already chronically existing crisis phenomena: unemployment, the gap between rich and poor, the insecurity of existence, the expropriation of savers through negative interest rates. Now the stock market crash is added, the extent of which even exceeds the last big slump of 2008. But our people in Berlin do not have patients and working people in mind, but the financial oligarchs like Quandt, Porsche etc. There is no guarantee of a job or a home, no secure domestic care with the necessities of life, but shameful abandonment of the poorest and most needy - if there would not be the admirable commitment of the many, many volunteers and unpaid, who, however, make the failure of the state allegedly committed to the common good and its real class character all the more visible.
  9. The endeavour of some parts of the government and capital to use the disease and the economic crisis for emergency exercises and war preparation is obvious and must be strongly rejected. It is useless and even harmful if the pandemic is trivialized as scaremongering and generally - without asking the class question - any measures to contain the pandemic are opposed. This would only mean to run after the above-mentioned big-capitalist "herd-immunizers".
  10. What is the difference between health protection and emergency exercise? The difference lies in the deliberate violation of the principle of equality, the basis of democracy. When double standards are applied, when the measures are unilaterally applied to the working class and other labourers, while the big capitalists remain unscathed, it is clear that it is no longer a question of combating the pandemic, but it is about emergency training and war preparations. Take our colleagues in hospitals and doctors' surgeries, who are praised on all sides, but who are mercilessly burned as cannon fodder at miserable wages. On the other hand, the owners of the private hospital chain Asklepios, for example, try to cook on the back burner as long as the flat rate per case for the treatment of corona patients is not right. So it says in the South German newspaper (Sueddeutsche Zeitung) of March 15th: "The Asklepios Clinic (in Gauting) has the largest department for infectious lung diseases in Bavaria, but has no emergency room. For this reason, all eight coronavirus patients who are monitored as in-patients are currently in the (municipal) Starnberg Hospital. Or: the colleagues in the public sector, who, for example, are now having to cope with the run for short-time work benefits, and who are still largely without protective equipment, safety devices, hazard permits, etc. On the other hand, there are the large companies, which are unhindered in maintaining even non-essential production and making a profit - also without adequate protective measures for wage earners. Why is this not established by force? Why not do the same for the colleagues at the cash register at Lidl, Aldi and Co. and in companies which are actually vital to supplying the population? While the police are always on duty in public places to prevent accumulations, where is the monitoring of protective regulations for the workforce in companies by health authorities, trade inspectorates or professional associations? Obviously, this will first require a strike (which has not yet been banned), like the colleagues from the Fiat plant in Pomigliano d'Arco near Naples, Italy. Why are no collective agreements pushed through by force, for example at Amazon? Why there is no emphasis on the demand that work in times of epidemics be paid at least 4,000 euros per month? Why not finally reintroduce property tax and increase other taxes for the rich? And while the mass of the population is expected to suffer considerable losses, stock exchange speculators are betting on profit, this time from falling stock market prices. Why not use them and use the profits and dividends to fight the epidemic?
  11. Why deploy the German Armed Forces internally? Why reconvene civilian forces and put them in uniform, instead of letting soldiers take off their uniforms and do their service in civilian hospitals, under the command of the structures there? Instead: "Bundeswehr mobilizes 15,000 soldiers" who are to be deployed to protect "critical infrastructure". (Spiegel, 27.3.20) Possibly even so to monitor the subjugation of citizens to the regime of the state of emergency. The "Information Office for Militarization" (IMI) reported: "Inspector General Zorn further placated the situation by claiming that the Bundeswehr would not patrol or dissolve 'corona parties'. Through a report in the Stuttgarter Zeitung on March 26th, it became known that the Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Wuerttemberg is in discussion with the German Armed Forces about whether soldiers could support the police who are weakened by a high level of sick leave could. This means that joint patrols of police officers and armed soldiers are also in the public eye”. (IMI-Standpunkt 2020/010, 27.03.2020) Thus, a strategy of tension is being forced internally, which should make a call for "strong man" louder. To the outside it would have been a sign of the "good neighborhood" that is being boostfully conjured up, the government would have ordered an arms freeze. Instead, the procurement of 90 Eurofighters and 45 F18 fighter planes is being tied up.
  12. State decrees that override the rights of the unions and elected workers' representatives, thus giving the capitalists a free hand to abolish all restrictions on working hours, working conditions and pay; restrictions for the working people, no restrictions for the capitalists – by this the difference between measures to fight the pandemic and on the contrary emergency drills can be seen.
  13. The so-called solo enterprises, the small booths and small agricultural enterprises are now - for lack of capital alone - really not capitalists, but bogus self-employed people who work for the bank and are more in need of trade union protection. Their fixed costs have to be paid by the state, which forces them to close down.
  14. The winners of the pandemic, not the taxpaying working people, must be called upon to finance the crisis measures: the big retail groups headed by Aldi and Lidl with their oligarchic clans Albrecht and Schwarz, the online retailers with the online platform Amazon at the top, the food companies, the manufacturers of other food products, not least the manufacturers of toilet paper, which seem to be particularly important in Germany, the manufacturers of medicines and medical equipment, the logistics companies, which keep their drivers and subcontractors on duty until they are exhausted and think that they are able to fob them off with a clammy handshake.
  15. How should these demands be emphasized and who should do that? In the struggle for wages and working conditions, but also in the struggle for democracy, the trade unions are of particular importance. But some trade union leaders seem to have forgotten this. In NRW, the IGM has just concluded a collective agreement on the quiet, which guarantees the capitalists everything, no guarantees for the colleagues. No measures are provided to protect colleagues from the pandemic. And thus dividing the whole working class, taking out of the upcoming struggles those who can still make ends meet. The rest of the class may see how it goes on, the colleagues with Hartz IV, in precarious conditions, homeless, who are now dependent on the crumbs that fall off the rescue table prepared for the rich. Will the other trade unions put up with this? Will the middle level of trade union officials put up with this, increasingly feeling the growing indignation of their colleagues, who are worn down or condemned to inactivity in companies receiving reduced wages? Organising this protest now within the trade union using the possibilities of modern means of communication is the order of the day. This will also create structures that can be used after the epidemic to take up the fight again openly and with new strength. An important sign has been set, for example, by the "Networking for combative trade unions" with their protest against the mentioned collective agreement of the IGM in NRW (see UZ 27.3.)
  16. The most reactionary parts of the German capital and their political representatives, above all CSU, take advantage of the need to combat the epidemic by further grinding down bourgeois democracy. The Bavarian state government is once again playing a pioneering role in this. Söder, the new "strong man", has advanced to become the supposedly "most popular politician" in Germany and is accordingly already being considered by some as a future candidate for chancellor. The preparations for the replacement of bourgeois democracy by the open reaction, fascism, require the erosion of bourgeois democratic law by more and more arbitrariness, which is in sharp contrast to it. The CSU can cast arbitrariness into laws in order to give them a touch of legitimacy, so that even a constitutional court is not willing to stop them. It has proven this several times in recent years. For example with the so-called "Bavarian Integration Law". For example, with the amendment of the Bavarian police task law (PAG) and the renewed introduction of protective custody against so-called “Gefährder (dangers people)" etc. Since March 20, leaving one's own home has only been allowed if there are "good reasons" which must be made "credible" to the police. A "good reason" to leave the apartment, this depends in case of doubt - with some exceptions - from arbitrary police discretion.
  17. In Munich and Berlin, so-called "infection protection laws" were passed in a rush, which undermine "elementary principles of the constitution". (SZ, 25.3.2020) In the meantime, more and more critical voices are being heard who do not want to accept without contradiction the far-reaching powers that the laws give to the governments: "I could never have imagined that a German parliament would again adopt such a Hindenburg clause. (...) In any case, I consider it unconstitutional for a ministry to be able to change laws of the Bundestag by emergency decree without the Bundestag having a possibility to prevent this. (Thorsten Kingreen, expert in constitutional law and professor of public law in SZ 26.3.2020)
  18. All forces must be supported that are resistant to emergency exercises, civil war preparations, etc. and the use of the military internally and the attack on our democratic rights. In Berlin and other cities, anti-fascist and democratic forces have dared to take to the streets - with mouth guards and at a proper distance from each other - to give a first warning signal to the authorities that we have not disappeared and do not only want to win victory over the pandemic, but also over those responsible in economy and politics, government and capital.

What is to be demanded urgently:

  • Temporary closure of all non-essential businesses in order to reduce the risk of contagion to the workforce. Ensuring the health protection of the workforce in the vital enterprises
  • State prohibition of dismissals in the closed companies and increase of the short-time work allowance to 100% of the full wage!
  • Free provision of disinfectants and other protective measures for the entire population! Mass tests, as urgently recommended by the WHO, and creation of the necessary infrastructure, laboratory capacities and personnel.
  • The "shrinking" of the public hospitals, which is operated and promoted by the state in the interest of the private corporations, must be stopped immediately! End of the separation of outpatient and inpatient care! For a centralized health service with integrated outpatient and inpatient care! For a uniform health insurance system! Already privatized hospitals and other health care facilities must be transferred back into state ownership! Reduction of armaments and use of the funds thus released for health care!
  • No further job cuts in hospitals! Sensible personnel keys that reduce the workload and restore patient safety! Sufficient payment: monthly income of 4.000, Euro/month, at least 500 Euro hardship allowance (net)!
  • The Federal Government must immediately accept the offer of the PR China to supply urgently needed medical aid and give up its hostile propaganda that China is the cause of the Corona crisis!
  • Lift the sanctions that "hinder or make impossible the worldwide exchange of medical equipment, health products, medicines, experiences and procedures" (see petition Patrik Köbele, chairman of DKP (German Comunist Party) https://www.change.org/p/bundestag-alle-sanktionen-aufheben-die-den-kampf-gegen-die-pandemie-behindern?).
  • Protection of the refugees! All measures now demanded by the refugee associations, such as the abolition of the inhumane collective camps ("ANKER centres"), the suspension of all official appointments and an immediate stop to deportation, must be implemented immediately. The misery on the Greek islands must be ended and the right of asylum must be restored!

The so-called "health emergency" must not become an emergency for fundamental rights and civil democracy! It must not be used, for example, to give the appearance of legitimacy to forced labour, further attacks on civil democracy and the use of the military at home!

Publisher: Gruppe Kommunistische Arbeiterzeitung (Group Communist Workers' Newspaper); www.kaz-online.de