https://themilitant.com/2020/03/07/only-working-class-can-protect-humanity/
‘Only working class can protect humanity’
article
EDITORIAL
Vol. 84/No. 10
March 16, 2020
No capitalist government on earth, including Washington, has made the
preparations necessary to deal effectively with the spread of
coronavirus. The capitalist
class — and the parties and governments that protect their class rule
and their “right” to wrest profits from our labor power — always
consider it a waste
to put resources toward the care of working people.
The government’s own 2005 report on preparing for a sizable outbreak
urged stockpiling 740,000 ventilators, but today they stock less than
10% of that
number. Health care is available only to those who can afford it.
Our unions should demand the government allocate the funds needed to
provide ventilators and other diagnostic and medical equipment needed to
treat those
with the virus, at no cost. Medical workers should be organized to
service more rural areas and working-class neighborhoods where
for-profit hospitals
have been closing. Guarantee that health checks for all who need them
are widely and freely available along with treatment for those diagnosed
with the
disease.
But no capitalist government looks to the voluntary and disciplined
mobilization of the working class to solve pressing social problems and
advance the
protection of humanity, whether in response to the impact of hurricanes
or the outbreak of new diseases.
There is a government that does — revolutionary Cuba. Today the Cuban
government has mobilized the resources necessary to offer medical
attention to anyone
who gets the disease. Everyone entering the country, visitor or
resident, is asked if they have symptoms of the virus on arrival, and
they’re contacted
by health care providers wherever they’re staying.
The mosquito-born Zika virus struck Cuba in 2016. The revolutionary
government mobilized soldiers, health workers and student volunteers to
educate people
on their doorsteps and convince them to do what was necessary to prevent
the disease. It prepares beforehand for the impact of hurricanes that
hit the
island, sets aside sufficient reserve materials and then mobilizes
volunteers to rebuild what has been destroyed. And when the Cuban
government asked for
volunteer medical workers to go to West Africa in 2014 to fight the
spread of Ebola, 12,000 stepped forward.
Such measures are possible because workers and farmers are in power in
Cuba, with a different set of values than the capitalist exploiters who
rule in
the U.S., for whom the only morality is the dollar.
There have been tremendous scientific and medical advances since
influenza killed over 50 million people worldwide in 1918. The question
is whether working
people have a government that will use them for all.
A course of revolutionary struggle to bring workers and farmers to power
is presented by the Socialist Workers Party. Join the SWP campaigning
for Alyson
Kennedy and Malcolm Jarrett in 2020!
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
“God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson
