GUEST BLOG: Dave Brownz – Eliminating Covid aways meant eliminating Capitalism

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From the outset Covid told us that it was caused by capitalism and that to defeat it we had to defeat capitalism. I wrote about this over a year ago in my post, ‘From the Coronavirus to the Commune’.  

The cause was capitalism’s disruption of the ecology forcing viruses to jump from the wild species to humans. Everything about the origins of SARS CoV-2 proves this. 

Since capitalism’s downward spiral into its End Stage is likely to create the conditions for many more pandemics, we cannot expect it to offer any solution. In fact the opposite is true. 

The progress of the pandemic proves that capitalism will not divert profits to maintain the survival of the working masses. Capitalism does not have the health of workers in mind unless it is vital to keeping their labour-power alive to exploit for profit.  

The proof of this is in the massive reserve army of unemployed used to fill the jobs of those who need replacing due to overwork, starvation and pandemics. We call this form of unnatural selection where the rich and powerful eliminate the poor and weak eugenics. 

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This explains the fate of Covid ‘elimination’ in Aotearoa. Elimination of the virus which threatens most the poorest and weakest of the working class, will always come second when it threatens the elimination of rent and profit extracted from the working class.  

For capitalism, elimination means ending any threat to its existence from the terminal crisis of declining profits, climate collapse and many more pandemics. 

Against these forces, the Labour Government has adapted to capitalist elimination.   We will now all adapt to Delta by means of vaccination, sacrificing the deaths or long Covid of the poor and weak, so that capitalism may live to survive another day. 

But why should we be interested in a return to capitalism as usual, thanks. 

I say, as I did more than a year ago, that for workers to live capitalism must die.  To do that we need a strategy for workers to take power, to end capitalism and its destruction of humanity, and build a socialist society in harmony with nature. 

 

Dave Brownz is TDBs guest Marxist blogger

29 COMMENTS

  1. Perhaps it would be advantages in a future blog posting to paint a picture of what New Zealand society will look like under a communist system. All we ever hear is capitalist=evil. Property owners=evil, workers=saints. How do you see your ideas coming to fruition? Through the ballot box where one person=one vote? Or by the barrel of a gun?

    Maybe start at the most contentious. Will the state own everything? Will the “workers” own nothing and be happy?

    How does the state owning everything fit in with Maori ownership of property. Will they have to forfeit just like the 85% will?

    Never thought I would say this but the TOW will prevent any communist uprising in New Zealand.

  2. Counter view – the virus was manufactured in a lab by a communist state
    Capitalism created the vaccines in record time that have the potential to save billions

    Here’s another good one – Labour NZ, amongst whom some members happily call themselves proud socialists whilst achieving and delivering nothing for the poor and needy despite an unheard of majority in an MMP environment

    • Yeti living the Covid conspiracy in which Xi’s body is taken over by a Yeti to destroy the world.
      China has no interest in germ warfare. It has the most to lose releasing it in Wuhan. Nor is Xi so stupid as to allow the US to do it on China’s soil for the same reasons.
      Plus, China and US are global rivals and China is winning.
      What did you expect that Labour would do in power? It sold out the workers when it was formed in 1916.

    • Trevor – I think you meant Capitalism.
      Capitalisation means turning small letters into capital ones, unless you are talking of capital in financial jargon.
      Of course, the alternative (leaving everything in small letters) would be a terrible disaster..

  4. Socialism in harmony with nature? Hmmm, when has that ever happened? The communisms were as much into the project of rapid industrialisation with all its resource depletion and pollution as the capitalisms were. And with the collapse of the communisms from the period around 1989 it is hard to see any kind of working class solidarity anymore. Consumerism, the neoliberal attacks on the unions and the shift away from manufacturing has certainly destroyed any semblance of working class solidarity in the Western countries. The former communisms of USSR and China are now brutal, authoritarian oligarchies on a dangerous mission of reviving good old fashioned nationalism. So much for the global alliance of the working classes. Will the working classes and peasants of China stop Xi from an egotistical invasion of Taiwan and risking global nuclear war? I can’t see it. And will the working classes of the USA get over their racist/nationalist MAGA madness and stop the GOP from gerrymandering the electoral maps and all the other attacks on democracy aimed to facilitate the corporate bullies to remain in power forever? I can’t see it. Cellphones, Tik Tok, guns, racist resentment and intolerance of difference have all done their bit to squash the socialist dream. And who reads Marx or Lenin for their utopianism anymore? Whereas their critiques of capitalist economics and imperialism, respectively, remain valid and useful.

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