(From _Intransigence_ https://intransigence.org/, publication of Internationalist Communists in North America.)

== The Disease

By now any material on the COVID-19 pandemic will seem like old news. Over the course of nine weeks, the number of cases has exploded from a reported number of a little over 500 cases to nearly two million worldwide, and over 600,000 active cases in the United States alone as of writing this. Life before the crisis seems like a distant memory. For those who are lucky enough to be trapped indoors, time appears to fluctuate between incredible tedium and panic amid isolation. For those of us who are deemed “essential” workers by the necessity to treat sick patients, to provide food and medical supplies, or to transport other workers to their work sites, every day is a gamble with one’s life, with innumerable potential contact points with infected individuals who could be spreading the virus asymptomatically. The phrase “this has no precedent” brings a false sense of relief, as there is plenty of precedent for historically significant mass deaths due to uncontrolled pandemics. The last pandemic that was of the magnitude to leave governments with no recourse but to enforce widespread “social distancing” measures was just over a century ago. The 1918 H1N1 pandemic left tens of millions dead, not just in one wave, but in two, where the second wave had even more dire consequences than the first. Like the 1918 Flu Pandemic, no vaccine exists, and the mortality rate is high. Children are largely spared this time from severe illness or death, but the numbers of severely affected patients over 60 are immense, and the numbers under 60 increase as hospital systems grow stressed by lack of ventilators and intensive care beds. The hardest hit country, Italy, experienced thirteen thousand deaths by the beginning of April, and still has many weeks to go as the curve has begun to “flatten”, bringing the rate of new cases down albeit with a potential for reversal if impatient states and corporations demand workers return to crowded worksites, travelling in crowded buses.

The current predictions for the outcome of this pandemic vary greatly, due to the fact that epidemiology is based on estimating radically different outcomes depending on the actions taken. In the worst of predictions from the team at the _Imperial College London_ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida…, 2.2 million people would die in the United States alone, although this now seems extremely unlikely due to slow and staggered, but still efficacious, shelter-in-place orders. However, the likelihood of a low number of deaths is also effectively ruled out, given that there have already been hundreds of thousands infected, and the rate of infection has yet to subside. The best outcome epidemiology can offer is an alternative where hospitals use contact tracing to identify all persons who interacted with an infected patient and attempt rapid and aggressive tactics to reduce all networks of infected patients from social contact. This type of intervention is extremely powerful, and is overall the least invasive, requiring a shorter period of lockdown and fewer people to quarantine themselves. Given the exponential growth of infections from COVID-19, these tactics are only effective when the number of infections is extremely low. As we have seen in South Korea, where medical professionals acted quickly in isolating patients and tracking down all people they have interacted with, the infection’s spread can be diminished. When the number of infected patients jumps to one hundred, then one thousand, then ten thousand, such intervention becomes possible only through increasingly authoritarian state measures, such as the enforced quarantines and surveillance that China took to identify and isolate COVID-19 patients. South Korea has demonstrated that early intervention has an effect, and China demonstrated that heavy-handed state control also has an effect, but it appears that there is a small window of opportunity to act, and that even strict state measures may bear no fruit when resources become strained, and medical workers themselves become infected or burnt out from impossible work hours and the trauma of participation in a failing system.

== The “Cure That’s Worse”

The prediction industry has since been unable to provide a coherent future narrative. While some right-wing commentators have held stronger than others, it appears that a large swath of the political punditry think denial is a prophylactic against respiratory infection. Most of the remaining political pundits, political scientists, economists, and other standard-bearers for capitalism have been timid in their prognostication. Like any other crisis, this appears unforeseen, and the defenders of capitalism will never neglect an opportunity to claim this is not the fault of their system, but rather it is pure misfortune, leaving for-profit medical systems—including the “socialized” or single payer systems in the world that have the marks of profiteering all over them—as effectively blameless. Some _politicians_ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-restri… and _pundits_ https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/489064-kudlow-says-us-will-… have argued that the treatment is worse than the disease, but this is wishful thinking among leaders who know that lifting lockdowns would mean catastrophe. Economic devastation is not a certain outcome, and it is possible that the economy could come back with blazing speed under circumstances where normal life could resume. However, when you examine assessments by economists from all over the bourgeois spectrum, one cannot help but conclude that not a single one of these schools of economics has an answer. The reason for this is not that they lack a potential answer, but rather that they simply have never had to formulate a response to a crisis like this one.

The “supply-side” economists’ tool-box has already been spent, with interest rates throughout most countries—already at lows that were creating dangerous levels of corporate debt—at or near zero percent. The argument that the market can somehow rebound simply by making borrowing easier for firms is based on the theoretically weak position that confidence breeds prosperity. Even in a normal economic crisis, where the states of the world want nothing more than for consumer spending to continue to increase, this theory has been disproven by the unmooring of prosperity for the corporation from the proletarian over the course of the last forty years. That former model, one where worker productivity appeared to be tied to national growth, was a symptom of the economic recovery of the previous Keynesian expansion after World War 2. But Keynesian economics, which demonstrated its near inability to stimulate economic growth during the Great Depression, proved a false positive during the Post-War Boom, which turned sour by the 1970s, regardless of how much intervention the state attempted. The Keynesians have again had their moment in the sun in the past few weeks as states have attempted bailouts of varying degrees for corporations and the working class, in order to prop them up for however long the world may be on ice. This shocking resurgence of welfare capitalism has been viewed as an avenue to broach socialism to the masses by the more delirious within the left. Of course, this “socialism” by Trump or Boris Johnson’s hand doesn’t prove a new avenue toward socialism is opening. Instead it demonstrates that these measures are nothing more than a means to prop up an ailing capitalism during a crisis, meant to stymie working class rage, or at the very least to prevent a mortal blow to capitalism. The trouble with these policies of redistribution, nationalization of industry, and even war-time command style economic directives, is that they are designed to get the working class to buy commodities, i.e., increase effective demand, in order to inject more money into corporations, thus to increase hiring and push more money into the hands of consumers. Similar to the supply-side model, this demand side model offers no solution to an economy in which going to the store, to a restaurant, or to the movies is being discouraged.

Still, even with near-zero interest rates and the largest stimulus spending bills ever written being the norm across the industrialized world, economists of all stripes see no easy way out. In late November 2019, before news of the first cases in China caused tiny wavelets of concern, Goldman Sachs released a foolishly optimistic (even by pre-pandemic standards) _report_ https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/global-outlook-2020-f/repor… on global growth for 2020, amazingly titled “A Break in the Clouds”. Despite many factors pointing to a downturn, the finance researchers concluded that 2020 would see more growth than 2019. At this point in history, manufacturing was already in recession in Europe and the United States, _an inverted yield curve_ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/08/the-great-yield-curve-in… —an indicator of future economic recession that will arrive within around 18 months of the inversion—had already been sitting on the shelf for three months. Goldman Sachs’ break in the clouds was a prediction for the best of all possible worlds. And clearly this was not the normal prediction for economists as hints of doom lay on the horizon. Corporate debt, which very well could be this era’s mortgage crisis, has been largely underplayed or ignored by economists, since the paradoxical nature of a rapidly growing capitalist economy dictates that corporate debt is very good, where sovereign states will do what they can to increase corporate debt during periods of downturn. The US corporate debt to Gross-Domestic Product (GDP) ratio, by July of 2019 _stood at 74%._ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mayrarodriguezvalladares/2019/07/25/u-s-co… Even if there was room for real growth of capital through hiring or expansion of production, of which there is not, this would be a ticking time bomb. Adding to this the fact that many large corporations are using their debt to service their previous debt, and have been doing this for half a decade or more, all evidence points to economic prosperity in the past few years—what in America has been referred to as the “Trump bump”—being executed through financial gimmicks. These “zombie” corporations have been able to prevent bankruptcy through loans to pay off loans, and to maintain their current employment levels. And of course, to add insult to injury, many of these corporations have been using the additional debt to engage in stock buybacks. Firms that repurchase their own stock are able to artificially boost the share value, which can in turn make the company more appealing for future loans from financial institutions. These new loans are again often used to pay off older loans and to buy more stock back. This problem, having been ongoing _since no later than 2015_ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/kill-stock-buyback…, demonstrates that some share of the “growth” in large publicly traded corporations can be attributed to speculation alone, and is not tied to increased value. Now, Goldman Sachs’ optimistic prediction looks humorous in light of the global pandemic. At this point virtually every economist and think tank feels safe predicting a recession. The question has been reduced to how bad the recession will be. Predicting the future state of the economy is known to be an humiliating exercise. Economists have proven to be useless in foreseeing the crisis in 2020, but have been just as useless in predicting _far more obvious economic crises._ https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/testimony/bernanke20070328a.h… But now that the crisis has already begun, economists are making their best effort to guesstimate a maybe-scenario for economic growth in the next year.

By January, the International Monetary Fund was willing to predict that the global economy, virus notwithstanding, was headed toward an almost-global-recession with 3.3% GDP growth worldwide. A Bloomberg _prediction on March 10_ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/us-economic-recession-tracker/ placed the likelihood of recession in the United States at 53%, from a comically low 20% likelihood in mid-January. Of course, by early April, it appears that economists and journalists have _accepted_ https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-01/coronavirus-recession… the _title_ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/business/economy/coronavirus-recessi… “recession”, even though by definition a recession requires six months of negative economic growth. The dizzying array of predictions of the impact of the pandemic/financial crisis all point to a shrinking economy, at least in the US and Europe. Some guess the US could be facing nothing more than a 6% decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which would be the largest decline since 1946, but is still a seemingly minor impact of a nation-wide shutdown that has already led to nearly _16 million_ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/business/economy/unemployment-claim-… workers to file for unemployment in three weeks, with estimates for 15% unemployment in April 2020. Others predict a drop in GDP as high as 9%, and with the Depression low of 1932 being 12.9% drop in GDP, this is an extraordinary number that could have devastating effects on all sectors of the economy. It should also be noted here that the largest sector of the US is services, which constitutes 80% of the US economy. The service sector is by far the hardest hit, with restaurants being shut down by state mandates to allow only take-out or delivery. As of writing this, restaurants have already begun shuttering permanently due to the inability to pay bills and rent.

The financialization of the global economy has concealed some glaring problems with the current state of capitalism. Overproduction of commodities globally has been maintained _through various mechanisms,_ https://intransigence.org/2019/10/23/in-defense-of-decadence/ including cheaper labor, cheaper production costs, and a reduction in constant capital in the advanced capitalist countries as capitalists seek to increase surplus value in the face of an ever-declining rate of profit. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, _reports_ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-activity/chinas-slowdo… from China indicated a manufacturing slowdown that served as a prelude to the crisis that was merely uncovered by a momentary pause in the global economy. Manufacturing had already entered a recession in the _United States_ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/upshot/economy-in-a-nutshell-manufac… and in the _EU._ https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/09/26/europes-manu… The weak American manufacturing sector, already reduced to a shell of its former self, has the potential to reach new lows as protectionism takes on new meaning. All that appears to lie ahead is a general sense of dread, although the industrial capitalist class already has a plan of action laid out for the state to _bail it out_ https://www.nam.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/COVID-19-Policy-Action-P… in the event that assembly lines cease and profits dry up.

== The Treatment: Stimulus and State Ownership

Not having the luxury of the optimism of economists, the capitalist states across the world understand the deep crisis that they face. They have understood that a crisis was long overdue, especially considering the lack of any real recovery after the 2008 financial crash and recession. Not only do most members of the working class still grapple with the devastating effects of that crash in regards to long hours, low wages, as well as precarious jobs and housing arrangements, but governments themselves have still been dealing in some form or another with the effects of the crash, such as the ever-expanding debt bubble that hangs over the world capitalist system like the sword of Damocles. In line with all of this, the US government has begun to take several steps to prevent itself from descending into a worst-case scenario crash.

One of these steps is the passing of a $2.2 trillion stimulus package, with the goal of pumping enough money into the economy to save it from itself. It is no surprise that it in many ways resembles the stimulus and bailout measures that were taken during the 2008 crash, although there are some notable differences which will soon be examined. Two of the main components to this package are the $500 billion _corporate bailout,_ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/27/washington-coronavirus-… as well as checks that will be sent to every American citizen (excluding millions of immigrant workers, and students who were filed as dependents in the past tax year) which, for most individuals, will amount to $1,200, an amount of money that is only a bit more than the 2008-9 stimulus checks. The $500 billion bailout is capitalism’s life preserver. It is exactly the remedy utilized in 2008, where amidst the failings of practically every large corporation and industry, the government, usually so averse to spending any money on programs that might improve the quality of life of working class people, emptied its coffers to save manufacturing and banking giants from going under and bringing the entire economy with them. That capitalism used such a response should therefore not surprise us. Unfortunately for capitalism, however, such measures can only stave off the inevitable.

The 2008 financial crash saw huge firms and corporate entities that were on the verge of complete collapse and bankruptcy rescued at the last second. Banks that gambled and corporations that were reeling from the effects of their own poorly made financial decisions were bailed out by the Federal government with money from the American working class. After this, little action in the form of any sort of legislation was taken to avert such a situation in the future, which one might think would be logical. The only step taken in this direction was the passing in 2010 of the Dodd-Frank Act (only passed under enormous popular pressure for some type of assurance that the economy would not tumble down again as it had done), which was notorious for its weakness and many exploitable _loopholes_ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedkaufman/2014/07/22/after-four-years-of-… for financial giants (not surprising given the fact that it was written by politicians on Wall Street’s payroll as well as Wall Street itself). As negligible as this legislation is, it was weakened further than it already was in 2018, when _reforms_ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/divided-house-passes-ma… to the act were passed that removed significant parts of the bill such as restrictions on banks with assets below $10 billion, as well as exempting banks under $250 billion from regulations meant to ensure that they would be able to withstand another economic onslaught without taking the economy down with them. Much of the bill remains intact, yet it testifies to its weakness that we are in much the same position that we were in in 2008. That is, that the economic giants which control the economy yet again have proven their incompetence and disinterest in wielding their money and monetary prowess for any other purpose than their own enrichment. This unwillingness to even acknowledge or allay the concerns and fears of America’s anxious, precarious, and insecure workforce has yet again resulted in a situation in which corporate entities that possess absolutely obscene amounts of wealth will have to be saved through the generous coffers of the state. These giants did not make any contingency plans in case of another economic crash or recession, and there were no emergency funds set aside in case of such an event. They knew well beforehand that that is a job reserved for those on whom America’s economy truly runs, the working class.

Having recounted this history, it is quite clear then that measures such as this recent bailout of the largest capitalist giants, as well as any future regulatory measures that may be introduced as a way to restore trust in a very clearly broken system, are dead ends. Capitalism is cyclical and this is a very clear and observable fact to even bourgeois academics and economists. This crash was bound to happen at one point or another, however much it has been expedited by COVID-19. However given the fact that there was no real recovery from the last crash for much of the American (and international) working class, this can only mean that not only will this latest fallout be worse than that of 12 years ago, but that the cycle of crashes will occur with higher frequency, and resulting in even greater hardship for the working class.

As mentioned previously, the stimulus checks that are being sent out to Americans are not something new either. Versions of this, albeit smaller, were carried out in both 2008 and 2009 under the Bush and Obama administrations respectively. In February of 2008 during the Bush administration, the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 was passed and enacted with bipartisan support. This bill sent one-time checks of $600 to most working Americans, or those that made under $75,000 per year individually, with an additional $300 per child, and was intended to be a measure to limit the scope of any impending recession with consumer spending (this turned out to be quite ineffective and most people saved their money). The next year, in February of 2009, the Obama administration passed through the _American Recovery and Reinvestment Act_ https://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/13/bush.stimulus/ of 2009 with Democratic support and Republican opposition. Among a multitude of other provisions, this bill sent one-time checks of $250 to Americans on Social Security, those that benefited from Supplemental Security Income, and disabled veterans. The effects of these cash payments were even more negligible than the former and current working class people across the United States continued to suffer dearly after this act took effect.

What this demonstrates is that the new $1,200 stimulus checks are not new, not revolutionary (_as some claim_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Reu9puZFUms&t=7s ), not enough to restore lost income, and have as their sole purpose the stabilization of capitalism. This time is quite similar to past rescue packages, though the primary purpose is no longer to keep people buying and consuming products so that money continues to circulate (although that certainly is an objective). The capitalists class understands that with so many people laid off from their jobs or simply out of work and a stable source of income (as paid leave practically does not exist in the US), that that is a recipe for disaster and an explosion of the pent-up anger of the working class. If people are deprived of their income and means of paying for rent, food, and other necessities, then not only will doing nothing to ameliorate that situation cause incredible damage to the economy, but people will truly realize how little their lives really matter to the ruling capitalist class. That is a situation that they cannot afford, and so after weighing the costs and benefits, they decided to take this course of action as it would better ensure their grip on their wealth and power.

Even discounting the real purpose of these stimulus checks, it should be emphasized how utterly insulting it is that this is the “salvation” given to the working class. It speaks volumes that after losing our jobs, means of income, opportunities to socialize and have fun with friends and families, and having to take strong precautions in fear of our lives and well-being, that we are given a measly one-time payment of $1,200. It demonstrates the profound lack of any connection between the lives of working people and those of the ruling class, whether they be wealthy capitalists themselves or their representatives in the US government. Most working people in America don’t have _emergency_ https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/most-americans-dont-have-the-savings-to… savings, or at least enough to cover any real event which would warrant emergency spending. For these workers, a single $1,200 check might not get them through May.

The US Federal stimulus with its limited effects is not the full extent of what government intervention will look like as capitalist states desperately throw away their old convictions of austerity and privatization. When all else fails, and the profitability of key sectors of industry become untenable for the foreseeable future, more drastic measures can and will be taken. In the midst of COVID-19 and the shock to the world economy there have been calls for nationalization. In the United States, Trump has stated his hesitations while other state officials argue for various policies. Across the Atlantic, _Germany plans_ https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-09/covid-19-germany-… to “go ahead with robust capital injections into domestic companies, and with outright nationalizations in some industries.” France has declared it will nationalize key industries hit hard by COVID-19, and Italy has renationalized airlines. For the American left-wing magazine Jacobin, arguments for nationalization are not new. In the past few years, they have published articles arguing for the nationalization of General Motors, fossil fuel companies and pubs. In response to COVID-19 they have published articles calling for the nationalization of Amazon, food delivery apps and airlines. Regarding airlines, this Jacobin _author writes,_ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/03/nationalize-airline-industry-coronav… “we need to rethink the role that airlines play in our transportation networks and take them into public ownership so they can be democratically planned to achieve social and environmental goals.” Despite these cheerful words the reality is this is a means to save capital now that profitability appears impossible. Anton Pannekoek a century ago dispelled social democratic confusion of ‘socialization’ when _writing,_ https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1919/socialisation.htm “this socialization replaces private capitalism with state capitalism; the state takes on the task of sweating profits from the workers and giving it to capitalists. For the workers little will change, as before they will have to create an income without labor for the capitalists. Exploitation remains exactly as before,” recognizing, “The suppression of capitalist property and the suppression of exploitation are thus not cause and effect, means and end, they are one and the same thing.” What Pannekoek recognized is that a mere shift into the hands of the state does not do away with the fundamentally capitalist, and thus exploitative, character of production. It is by no means foreign for an industry to be taken over by the state in times of crisis to restore profitability, and this will have to include an assault on the working class. It is not our intention here to argue for or against nationalization, but rather to dispel the dangerous illusion that the state can seize industry to the ends of the working class. Whether managed by state officials, a board of directors, or an individual capitalist, the working class will have to fight for its interests independently.

The left has made its calls for nationalization in the absence of acute crisis and will continue to make these calls if or when the dust settles. There is a storied tradition of leftists viewing the state as a neutral body, completely malleable to the will of the working class, and capable of providing socialism through seizure of private capital and consolidation of said capital into the bourgeois state. Marx challenged these ideas when proposed by Ferdinand Lasalle, and no amount of experimentation with nationalization throughout the 20th century until today, even including recent nationalization _under the command of Tory governments,_ https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/26/northern-rail-to-be-ren… will challenge this dogma. Certainly, the same political commentators who placed all their eggs in the electoral basket will take joy in the compromise that their electoral enemies are now the vanguard of the socialist experiment. Communists would be remiss to wait for the left to criticize these interventions taken by the state, not while the working class, faced with a sense of urgency in its struggle to survive this crisis, fights capital on all fronts.

== Inessential “Essential” Workers

In most places, the response to the current pandemic has included quarantines that shut down any business not deemed “essential”. The idea is to keep as many people home as possible, while still allowing society to function. After all, there are plenty of places that could close for a few weeks without costing any lives. And if those places stay open, more people could get infected–and that would cost lives.

But they can’t just shut down everything. There are some things that you can’t shut down without people dying. So, in every area where a quarantine has been ordered, there is a list of exceptions allowing “essential” businesses to stay open. These include obvious things like hospitals and the businesses that supply them, though there is a lot of wiggle room in that latter category. Transportation and logistics, grocery stores and pharmacies–these are businesses that can’t simply be shut down entirely, so their inclusion makes sense. But there are also some surprising inclusions on the “essential” list. For instance, in Ohio’s Stay at Home Order, dry cleaners are listed as essential. But are they? It’s hard to think of anyone who would die without a nicely pressed suit. Religious institutions are also included in the essential list, for First Amendment purposes. This allows churches to continue in-person services in spite of the rule against large gatherings. Apparently, God wants his followers to spread COVID-19 to each other, so that he can see them all a little sooner.

Another interesting inclusion on the “essential” list is that of financial institutions. Some of the things in that category make sense–people need money, so you can’t just close the banks down. Although it is worth mentioning that people only need money because capitalism works by depriving them of anything that they can’t afford. If we had a more rational society, we wouldn’t need banks at all, much less during a pandemic. But other things that fall under the finance exception are more puzzling. Real estate services are exempt, including appraisers. Is anyone going to die because they can’t get their house appraised right away? It seems more likely that the risk of allowing appraisals to continue is deemed low enough, and the economic harm of shutting them down high enough, that the state considered it an acceptable risk.

In addition to these “essential” businesses that aren’t essential, there are also more subtle cases. For instance, there are many businesses that occasionally do essential work, but spend the vast majority of their time doing work that could be shut down without issue. Many of these businesses have remained open, producing things that are not essential to society, using their exceptions in the Stay at Home Order as a convenient loophole. So, even businesses that are legitimately essential are finding ways to continue doing inessential work. Nor is this limited to Ohio. In New York City, construction work has been deemed essential. And while this might be a reasonable exception, it has allowed some very unreasonable things to happen. For example, there are construction workers building a luxury condominium towe