Zika: A Bloody Imperialist Disease

The bosses are blaming nature (the climate change by El Niño) on the Zika virus epidemic. Zika has become an international working class crisis not by nature, but capitalism. Poverty, inadequate water supplies, viciously racist and sexist health care systems, neighborhoods littered with rubbish, polluting river systems, and more are the real causes. The Zika virus is expected to infect as many as 4 million workers throughout Latin America (see map, page 5). These millions are victims of capitalism’s sexist and racist neglect.
In such a setting, it is virtually impossible to establish a public health infrastructure that might help contain the Zika outbreak. Workers understandably do not trust the governments, and the governments put a low priority on public services.
Bosses’ Main Concern: Dip in Profit
Medical access for pregnant women and babies are the least of the capitalists’ concerns. What they are really worried about are its impact on their businesses.
“Containing and managing an outbreak is expensive, as is dealing with large numbers of dead and infected. This can lead to severe disruptions in trade…And then there is the loss of productivity resulting not only from sickness but those refusing to work and those taking time off to care for the infected” (Stratfor, 2/1).
And so, in the interest of capitalism, Obama will request $1.8 billion in emergency funding to fight Zika in the U.S. and internationally. If Ebola, Cholera, and Hurricane Katrina is any indication, “humanitarian aid” translates to fascist policies, ramping up of the military, and practicing for controlling the working class. Obama has responded to Ebola with increased military presence in West Africa (Washington Post, 10/26/14).
Women Workers Hit the Hardest
The Zika virus is linked to birth defects in babies born to infected mothers. Over 4,000 babies have already been born with microcephaly, a congenital disorder associated with an abnormally small head and impaired brain development.
Even the health ministry in Brazil, where the disease has hit 1.5 million, admits, “most mothers with children with microcephaly have come from poor communities” (The Guardian, 2/6).
The governments of El Salvador, Colombia, Jamaica and Honduras have a solution: abstinence. They are telling women to delay pregnancy until the virus is under control. Working-class women are criminalized for abortions and have little access to contraceptives, not to mention pathetic maternal healthcare.
When the UN’s World Health Organization labeled the Zika outbreak an international health emergency, it was one more reminder that the world’s working class must move swiftly to overthrow the perversity of the capitalist profit system by building a revolutionary Progressive Labor Party for communism.  Communism will empower the masses, build social infrastructure to cope with any challenges, and crush the sexist, racist structures that murder and demobilize the working class. With the leadership of Progressive Labor Party, it is time to build on that history and smash capitalism once and for all!