01-05-2021: May 1st – Labour Day or May Day – is the international workers’ day. Not only does it mark the historical winning of the eight-hour day, it honours the struggle of workers and their Unions and all of their victories for more than 150 years. Today, the working class is faced with the largest assault from billionaire finance capital it has ever faced – lockdowns, facemasks and forced vaccines. Workers have been subjected to a mountain of lies about an alleged “pandemic”, which is easily exposed with basic logic. Elementary critical thinking, let alone a smidgen of independent research, reveals that the “Covid-19 pandemic” is a fraud,[1] and there is another political agenda entirely. Far from being a “public health emergency”, Covid-19 is code for civil war against working people.
Freedom is a right
Transparently, the lockdowns imposed by the capitalist state are not about “stopping the spread” of anything, let alone the most “lethal virus in history” – which, if it exists at all, has a laughably low infection fatality rate of 0.15%.[2] Rather, lockdowns are aimed at preventing workers from organising and collectively resisting millions of job cuts worldwide, and the forcible closure of whole sections of economies. With workers and their families confined to their homes, obviously no protest can take place. At one stroke, the ruling class of an extreme minority imposed the harshest political repression ever seen in history. Bourgeois democratic rights – the right to protest, civil rights, freedom of movement – have been removed and only barely returned. Meanwhile, the world’s billionaires increased their wealth by 54%, or 4 trillion dollars,[3] during the year of lockdowns!
The principal aim of lockdowns is to dramatically depress the cost of labour power, i.e., wages and salaries, and to remove basic working conditions won over more than a century of struggle. To do this, the capitalist state reverted to a form of fascism, in which the primary freedoms workers believed were guaranteed under liberal democracy were removed without apology. If workers cannot leave their homes on pain of prosecution by the state, protest is illegal, facemasks become mandatory, and vaccinations are used to set up a divide between the “clean” and “unclean”, fascism has arrived.
Moreover, tracking and tracing the movement of workers hands the capitalist state virtually unlimited power – even the power to detain entirely healthy people indefinitely. Lockdowns cause exponential health problems themselves – up to and including excess death. The psychological torment and despair of lockdowns, unbearable strain on working families, the resulting huge spike in domestic violence overwhelmingly against women is just for starters. This abomination must be fought.
Unions must fight
When finance capital and its government launch an attack on workers, Unions should be the first to lead the fightback. Unfortunately, virtually without exception, Union officials (as opposed to rank and file members) have rushed to the side of the government of the enemy class. From there they assisted the capitalist state impose lockdowns and the entire “Covid” narrative on their own members and all workers. This betrayal of workers has been all but universal. The capitalist state repeatedly dresses up every assault everywhere – including Anglo/US led wars – as justified by the need to “save lives”. These lies are whoppers, especially since these same governments have been shredding the public health system of funds for some 40 years, in the same way as they have gutted education and basic public services. The capitalist state and its government is the bitter enemy of working people – we are NOT “all in this together” against a barely dangerous virus! On the contrary, the “virus” is being used as a disguise so that workers will not blame the government for a crumbling decline into a dystopian hellscape. Union officials who mimic politicians need to be held to account.
One thing is clear – workers and Unions cannot and will not be able to defend themselves from the Covid assault until and unless they make a clear break with Covid ideology. ALL facets of Covid practice – lockdowns, facemasks, vaccines, bans on travel, state border closures, Covid passports, contact tracing, social distancing, bans on protests, gatherings, marches, religious worship etc – must be rejected in toto. Workers must not comply with ANY Covid dictates issued by the bourgeois state OR by conservative bureaucracies in the deformed workers’ states. Nothing about Covid is to do with healthcare, and everything about it is used as a club with which to beat workers and their Unions. Workers must resist individually where possible, but collective resistance is the most effective.
Build the anti-lockdown movement
This is why it is crucial that workers and their Unions join and help build the anti-lockdown movement. Worldwide, the anti-lockdown movement has mobilised millions across Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Europe, and is continuing to do so. It has somewhat stayed the hand of sadistic governments which force lockdowns in order to increase political repression and partially shutdown economies. But to permanently win an end to lockdowns, the anti-lockdown movement must at the very least take on a pro-working class political character. A mass movement of everyone who stands for freedom is an important first step, there is no doubt. Yet for serious gains and to drive back rapacious elite politicians, a movement for freedom needs to arrest the terrible intrusion of the capitalist state by permeating the resistance with working class demands. The demand for a six-hour work day is vital. In this way, the anti-lockdown movement can be infused with much needed political direction.
Fascism arrives at the precise moment when capitalism is driven into an impasse. As history advises, fascism can only be brought to heel via the entry of the organised working class onto the stage of history, via its preparation for the task of establishing its own rule. A vanguard party guided by genuine Marxism is vital for these urgent tasks, to propel the fight for freedom.
WORKERS LEAGUE
E: workersleague@redfireonline.com
[1] https://degraw.substack.com/ (26-04-2021)
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13554 (26-04-2021)
[3] https://inequality.org/great-divide/global-billionaire-wealth-surges-pandemic/ (26-04-2021)
Red Fire 