Workers pay the heaviest of prices for buying into capitalist ideas, which in every country capitalism tries convincing us are universal truths— in the U.S., schools and movies alike saturate us with ideas like “individual freedom.” But when evaluating the toll of COVID-19, the cost of these ideas is measured in the hundreds of thousands of workers dead and the millions of workers’ lives uprooted and shattered in the U.S. alone: in the belly of the beast of history’s richest and most powerful imperialist power.
And the very first mechanism by which capitalism guaranteed the lethality of the COVID-19 was the infection of the working class with capitalist ideas, starting with individualism.
To be sure, the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party recommends the COVID-19 vaccine, universal mask wearing, physical distancing, and self-isolation when necessary – to protect ourselves and everyone around us. These are common sense mandates. In many countries workers willingly obey these public health mandates and lockdown orders for that reason.
Yet the U.S. leads in the share of people who defy such public health measures. Many refuse to accept these mandates because they regard them as infringements on “individual freedom,” even though this individualism directly harms others. Misled by politicians like Trump and Christian fascist preachers who promote superstition over science, around more than 25 percent of all U.S. workers —rising to 33 percent of Black and 34 percent of Latin workers— believe the pandemic is “probably or definitely” a hoax (Pew Research, 7/24/20), dismissing the one-third of one million deaths and counting. Far too many of our working class sisters and brothers are incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood.
Mimicking Trump’s irresponsibility, many state governors and politicians aligned with the Small Fascist, domestic-oriented “Fortress America” capitalist wing tell people to do what they want. Many small-time capitalists are on the brink of failure, squeezed by monopolies like Amazon on one hand and falling profits on the other.
But it’s not just Trump – it’s capitalism. Such blatant “me-first” disregard for the well-being of others didn’t begin with Trump or any particular faction of the capitalist class. It flows from the entire history and ideology of capitalism, from its early competitive days to today’s monopoly capitalist stage, imperialism.
Politics are primary
Capitalism consists of a relatively tiny class of capitalists at the top: the owners of production and wealth. These capitalists control the lives of the rest of society beneath them—the working class, in countries the world over—control that they exercise through their state power, represented for them by self-serving politicians. And these politicians are (usually!) protected by the bosses’ police and military.
These politicians are a key part of capitalist state power, along with the entire monopoly-owned mass media and educational institutions, who are all represented on think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations. Capitalist state power is supported by and enhances individualism alongside racism, sexism and nationalism to weaken working class-conscious interests like equality, collectivity, internationalism and solidarity.
Communist collectivity vs capitalist individualism
Communist-led workers in China won a revolution and established socialism in 1949. For the period of time that the heroic struggles of workers in China were led by communists, many millions of workers became conditioned with a collective working class consciousness that opposed capitalist individualism.
These movements ultimately failed and came under the leadership of pro-capitalist, fake communists. The old communist movement, for so many achievements and advances, kept many capitalist ideas. They wrongly believed that the international working class could not be won directly to communism, and PLP has analyzed the lessons of these failures elsewhere.
Even so, remnants of that collectivity and solidarity persist. Russia and China have long ago betrayed revolutionary struggle and become fascist states today. And yet China’s success in containing COVID-19 would’ve been impossible were it not for masses of workers selflessly volunteering.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health conducted a study on the “volunteerism” in China (Miao et al, 8/7/20). As the pandemic rose, 85,699 middle-aged worker volunteers interpreted and carried out public health mandates, as public services facing decades of China’s capitalist cutbacks became overwhelmed. Volunteers formed grassroots networks connecting hard-hit cities like Hangzhou, Wenzhou and Taizhou with smaller cities, towns and villages, from running public services to organizing logistics for food and medicine deliveries, to performing invaluable sanitation duties.
Zero praise is due for the fascist “Communist” Party of China or their response to the pandemic; workers in China organized despite their fascist capitalist government, and the bosses found themselves tailing the masses. Tellingly, the survey found that 85.8 percent of these worker volunteers volunteered “on their own initiative,” whereas 10.8 percent stated they were officially mobilized. Tragically, without a mass revolutionary communist party like PLP, these selfless worker volunteers saved lives, but also strengthened the hand of Chinese imperialism.
These volunteers’ parents and grandparents would remember the 1960s when China was led by real communists. Communists organized and channeled working class consciousness to eradicate the disease schistosomiasis, caused by snail-borne parasites that the Centers for Disease Control lists today as both an indication of extreme poverty, and the deadliest of all tropical diseases. Communists mobilized millions collectively, and is documented in Joshua S. Horn’s must-read book, Away With All Pests.
Forward to communism
“Personal choice” and “individual freedom,” are illusions of capitalist ideology, stand in opposition to working class liberation, and under capitalism lead to death-dealing pandemics for which capitalist ideas also have no solutions. Capitalist individualism only tightens our chains. The international working class’ historic task is therefore smashing capitalism and capitalist ideas through communist revolution and communist ideology.
Communism is a new concept of freedom—mass freedom. Where the condition for the free development of each is the free development of all, empowerment of the majority through abolition of the capitalist state, and organization of a working class dictatorship. This collective rule requires mutual responsibility, based on an objective and scientific appraisal of the needs of the global working class. Such an outcome is only possible through a mass organization of millions into PLP and encouraging the full participation of all workers in deliberating, planning, and implementing ideas.
Under communism, the collective power of the working class can be mobilized to solve any problem history and nature presents, from pandemics to crop failures to climate change. Liberating the creative power of each and every worker through communism and dialectical materialism will ensure the survival and progress of all. Join us and join the fight for freedom: to smash the ideological chains of individualism, racism and sexism with communist revolution.