critical-mass.net

Youth and Covid-19.

The incredible unity and diversity of young people in the May and June 2020 George Floyd demonstrations around the world protesting police violence are to be welcomed in spite of the risks to life posed by Covid-19. (Would anything change without mass demonstrations?) There is an explicit and implicitly correct recognition by these multi-ethnic protestors that the present socio-economic system poses a greater existential threat to their present and future lives than a virus. The primary demand is for an end to targeted police violence motivated by ethnic prejudice, but there is also an understanding that police violence is not the only form that ethnic discrimination and wealth disparity takes.

In all countries, large sections of humanity find themselves at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid erected upon the capitalist mode of production. They are the current slaves and wage slaves of the system. Their lives are only deemed important by the elite when they are needed to do ‘essential work‘ for the good of the wealthy upper and middle-classes. Consequently the bottom layers of capitalism, have always had the lowest incomes, the poorest housing, the worst education, the shortest life expectancy, the most precarious existences, highest unemployment and the most brutal forms of control imposed upon them.

Modern wage-slaves are predominantly the sons and daughters of former slaves, conquered peoples or home-grown workers – all used and abused in earlier wealth creating periods of capitalism. However, young people, highly educated or not, find themselves living during a stage of capitalist development where the forms of production need less numbers of them due to automation, artificial intelligence and outsourcing. When not needed for work, (by unemployment or lock-down) wage-slaves and potential wage-slaves, are expected to remain unemployed, patient, docile and obedient until needed again.

Therefore, demonstrations against the death of George Floyd in 2020 are also implicit protests against the entire system of elite control of citizens by economic, financial, social and law enforcement mechanisms. Will young Afro-Americans multi-ethnic women and gay men demonstrating in such great numbers – at such great risk to themselves and each other – be satisfied with a few jail sentences and the introduction of anti – racist training for new and existing police officers? Will a fantasy scenario of polite, sensitive, humane interactions between poverty stricken, desperate citizens and a re-educated state law-enforcement agency, be realisable or end discrimination in general?

Of course not! Young people, sooner or later will be forced by the circumstances of their lives during the ongoing crisis of the capitalist system to press on for a wider range of reforms than one narrowly aimed at preventing ethnic beatings and deaths in police custody. The problems facing young people are many and include issues of class, gender, sexuality, disability and age. The challenge for young people will be to maintain and develop the present and future unity of struggle to include and campaign for a wider range of transitional demands which address fundamental issues of how wealth is created, who controls it’s production, how it is shared out and how its detritus is re-cycled.

In any transition between partial and more radical reforms other serious problems will be encountered. In this regard, we should not allow ourselves to be confused by those who simplistically lump together those who are opposed to violence against property because they wish to preserve capitalism and class discrimination and those who are opposed to such violence for different reasons. Some of us advocate a disciplined and humanitarian approach to struggle in order to ensure a path toward ending the domination of capital.

Statues of historically toxic men may be fair targets for democratic pulling down, but buildings and equipment from a revolutionary-humanist perspective are the products of scarce natural resources and working peoples labour. They should be considered community resources to be protected and re-purposed if necessary.

To introduce a new mode of production which fully respects and celebrates all humanity and the other life forms on the planet, an entirely different mode of community engagement, than burning and looting, will be required. The contradictions within the ruling class and it’s armed supporters, (and there are many) need to be studied and worked upon. Blanket condemnation and aggression by anti-capitalist opposition will only cause elite unification. Understanding and communication will expose contradictions, which will only become serious divisions when a genuine alternative becomes visible and available.

Of course there will be a minority whose anger, frustration and lack of understanding will result in acts of violence and desperation. They should be understood as inevitable, but not defended as acceptable or as natural. They are neither. The humanist perspective on real transformative change requires a longer and more measured determination – alloyed with humanitarian concern and generosity.

Good examples are a far greater threat to ruling elites future stability than bad ones. So much so that an astute ruling elite will attempt to place its agents of provocation into oppositions and trigger counterproductive actions. Such ‘agent’ infiltration’s are a classic elite reaction. Causing fires, explosions, outrageous acts and confusion within movements for change is intentional. Such toxic acts will be easier to counteract, within a movement not driven by anger, impatience and dualistic reasoning.

Meanwhile it should also be remembered that some anti-capitalists have inherited the virus of past sectarianism, and carried it into the present. These ‘lefts’ arrogantly presume there is only one valid version of strategy and tactics on how to secure change – their version. Equally they assume there is only one view of how to defend against viruses (biological and intellectual) – their view.

Prior to (and during) this capitalist crisis, such intellectual virus carriers can become strangers to genuine solidarity against capitalism and all it stands for – and so weaken that struggle. They fail to understand that genuine solidarity means accepting that people in struggle will have different methods and views (as well as different skin colours, genders and sexual preferences etc.) on how to proceed in collective forms of solidarity.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2020)

Toxic masculinity during lock-down.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has starkly exposed three of the most fundamental contradictions within the capitalist mode of production. They are contradictions which are ripping apart the already tattered fabric of capitalist socio-economic relations. First, the suspension of many economic activities by order of governing elites; second the almost complete fragmentation of social relations by their policy of lock-down; and third, anti-social violence by toxic forms of masculinity. All three problems are products of capitalism combined with the lack of preparations by its elites.

The pandemic has also revealed elite willingness to become more and more authoritarian in restricting choices. The pro-capitalist elites by granting themselves emergency powers, dictated who was allowed to work, who was allowed to associate together and included how far people could travel. Powers were sought to enforce restrictions, if they were resisted, but in fact most people understood the need to self isolate in order to save lives and did so. But of course it didn’t.

Millions were infected and hundreds of thousands died prematurely. The heterosexual male-dominated elites in most governments were exposed as self-serving incompetents who had ensured that weapons of mass destruction costing billions, were stockpiled, but couldn’t ensure the availability of sufficient aprons, masks and swabs for nurses. Elites clapping front line staff who were actually dying from lack of PPE was both patronising and cynical.

Men at the top of most 2020 governments – even those at their best – have been at least mildly toxic toward humanity by also failing to provide adequate PPE, to care homes, by flouting lock-down recommendations and ignoring social distancing. These omissions and commissions helped the virus to spread – and thus increased the numbers of dead. That is bad enough, but we know that forms of masculinity can (and may) get even more toxic than this. Historically, Biafra, Bosnia and Armenia proved that toxic forms of masculinity were indifferent to suffering and vicious to the point of genocide,

Toxic masculinity in history.

From Genghis Khan, to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and hundreds more, forms of toxic masculinity have been to humanity what poisons are to the human body – fatal! And the toxic brand of masculinity pops up everywhere – even on the left! Recall how the leader of the Bolshevik political sect, Lenin addressed those members of his own party who opposed his views at the 10th Party Congress.

“Comrades:…Either you are on this side, or the other, but then your weapon must be a gun and not an opposition.” (Lenin collected works. Volume 32)

The most powerful, so-called revolutionary left politician of the 20th century, was addressing the political situation within a dualistic and weaponised framework. An oblique parallel with Donald Trump’s recent verbal treatment of critics, cannot be avoided. Lenin effectively threatened ‘critics’ with the prospect of settling differences with guns instead of discussion. Toxic Trump verbally threatened looting with shooting.

And Lenin’s toxic masculinity was no conference rhetoric, for it is on record that this type of solution to disagreements became routine within the Soviet communist party and reached a pinnacle of depravity under Lenin’s successor, Stalin. Moreover, simple-minded, male thinking – at the time – countered criticism of aggressive left violence by asserting that killing people during revolutions is similar to breaking eggs when making an omelette. (!!)

There is also evidence that left sectarian Bolsheviks killed and tortured rival Mensheviks and Anarchists and visa-versa without a morsel of remorse anywhere. Unfortunately, the viruses of extreme prejudice and a toxic urge to disrespect and punish those who differ, exists within many members of the human species. In particular, a combination of pent up anger, prejudice, ambition and simplistic thinking in the brains of some men, can produce toxic forms of masculinity on the left as well as on the right in politics.

Toxic masculinity under capitalism.

Toxic masculinity really is the elephant in the drawing rooms of bourgeois society. From there it infects all the other environments that it is allowed to seep into. Sadly it is everywhere, from board room, to locker room, to bar room. Not only Harvey Weinstein, but many men rape, sexually assault and kill women. Even young men kill other young men and women in their school classrooms. The capitalist system undeniably produces environmental and social forms of toxicity.

Some (heterosexual) men beat up gay men and some seriously hurt women who resist their demands. Toxic masculinity in charge of high-tech weapons callously direct bombs or shells on wedding parties and school bus trips. Other carriers of toxic masculinity order the mass bombing of innocents knowing exactly what they are doing and exactly who will be shredded into fragments.

Other men ensure that crimes against humanity cannot be brought against their toxic masculine troops rampaging on foreign lands. Those atrocities perpetrated at My Lai, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, provide examples of the depths to which toxic masculinity can descend when they are part of institutions built entirely on that form of masculinity.

And yes in 2020 men with toxic masculinity syndrome can even kneel on other men’s necks until they are almost dead. Others, within days of such deliberate inhumanity, baton and pepper spray those who protest against it. Unfortunately, this is no marginal issue. Like the intellectual viruses they manufacture and spread, toxic masculinity in charge of economies, governance, finance, politics, law enforcement and armed forces is a fundamental problem facing humanity.

Toxic masculinity is currently at the head of every activity which pollutes, destroys ecological balance, starts wars and perpetrates civil violence against anyone who protests too much. Some are even in the support networks necessary for these destructive activities to occur. And, as noted above, there is even a version of toxic masculinity on the left, which thinks there is only one suitable version of maleness to enable and secure radical change. It is the one that is prepared to kick ass – physically or polemically. More on that version in the next article.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2020)

To mask or not to mask?

The surgical mask became one of the visible signals outside of China announcing the emergence of the virus we now know as Covid-19. As more countries recommend the wearing of these basic masks in public, they have failed to provide scientific evidence in support or to mention that this still leaves eyes and hands exposed to aerosol droplets, particularly on trains, planes and in workplaces. I suggest this PPE item has become a visual metaphor for massive public health contradictions.

Considered practically, the surgical mask is more effective at hiding the wearers identity than it is of completely filtering out a spray of particles bearing 1 to 4 micron sized Covid19 virus. These particular masks were only designed to shield the patients body by restricting bacteria-containing moisture droplets from a surgeons mouth during operations. Any particle smaller than its 100 micron sized mesh is factually able to pass through them.

Consequently, there is varying opinion over the purpose and effectiveness of wearing the basic nose and mouth covering. My preferred version is that wearing a mask at least acts as a symbolic reminder that the pandemic is not over and everyone should remain careful and alert. The other version is that wearing masks will give wearers a false sense of security who may then relax other measures such as isolation, social distancing and washing hands.

Yet the opinions of the political and governing elites around the world seem to be coming down on the side of advising or compelling citizens to wear masks. Good news for the manufacturers of masks and disposable gloves who will make huge profits out of the threat facing everyone on the planet. Good also for the incompetent elites because advice (or compulsion) will give them the appearance of doing something positive – even when they aren’t.

Yet, PPE itself can become the source of viral transmission. Even single-use N95 mask, (95% effective) need to be properly fitted and removed, to limit the spread of the virus. A mask which is contaminated – when removed – can pass a potential viral load to the hands (or gloves) and to any surface they are placed upon.

Since Covid-19, can remain potentially active for up to three days on some surfaces, wearing PPE does not solve the contamination problem as front-line, full-kitted visor-wearing medical staff have tragically found out. At best ‘protection’ has merely placed an extra stage in the viruses path to reproduction. After leaving intensive care, even fully kitted medical staff are not safe until a rigorous removal and disposal procedure has been undertaken. It is similar for the wearer of any form of mask, visor, plastic apron or gloves.

Indeed, the more successful personal protection equipment is at trapping Covid-19, the more lethal it’s viral load can be. So a general use of masks etc., is not as simple or as effective as made out by some knee-jerk, pro-mask commentators. Unless the ‘routine’ includes a flawless cleaning (or disposal) of PPE, the virus passenger remains ready to be picked up. This need for protection and a rigorous cleaning/disposal routine is the weak link in any policy of prematurely returning to workplace, leisure, or educational groupings.

It only needs one or two per group of early returners to the currently pro-capitalist prescribed suited-up ‘dystopian normality’ to become too tired, careless or unconcerned, for contagion to begin again among the vulnerable majority. That is why fresh outbreaks have occurred in China, Italy, South Korea and North America after easing restrictions, despite mask wearing and having testing, tracing and tracking in place.

Within a commuting radius of ill-prepared factories, businesses and schools Covid-19 contagion is begining again.

The ‘masking’ of incompetence.

It has become apparent in a number of countries around the globe that many governing elites have also simultaneously tried to ‘mask’ their own half-baked suggestions, incompetent preparation and management. In the UK, as elsewhere, they have done so by claiming that ‘making things up as they go along’, has been doing the ‘right thing at the right time’. Their decision to privatise the warehousing of medical equipment, for another example, resulted in more confusion, chaos and lateness in issuing PPE to UK hospital staff.

In the rest of Europe and North America, there has been nothing less than a three month masquerade of pretence by many governing elites that they have everything under control. This suggests that the cheap disposable mask also stands as a metaphor for the cover-up of general incompetence by ‘officialdom’. Yet the masquerade of concern for people’s health and well-being during these months of pandemic has now worn thin.

The overiding concerns of the economic and political elites is now clearly revealed. They are the survival of the neo-liberal capitalist mode of production, from yet another near death experience. The primary concern of pro-capitalist elites in 2020 is on giving the capitalist mode of production a ‘kiss of life’ delivered by the agency of working people now desperate enough to risk their lives (and others) in exchange for wages and salaries.

Despite over 300,000 global deaths, and more to follow, not one of the governing elites in any country is prepared to consider an alternative mode of production to the one that benefits them. Yet this is not really surprising for they and their ‘business’ partners in the finance-capital sector are poised to make billions out of this current tragedy. The resulting Covid triggered bankruptcies in the production and distribution categories of capitalism will provide opportunities for those who buy-out struggling businesses cheaply.

Masquerading as ‘saviours’ the financial vultures and masked pirates located in investment banking will slim-down business purchases by staff reductions and sell what is left at a profit. Alternatively, after boarding stricken enterprises they will asset-strip them (pick the bones clean) and sell-off what can be sold. Unless they are stopped from doing so, tax relief and astronomical consultancy/management fees, along with tax-haven secrecy will effectively ‘mask’ their continuing plunder of surplus wealth produced by working people.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2020)

Of three important questions concerning the current pandemic of Covid-19 two have attracted little attention and one has received a great deal. They are 1) Where on the planet did this latest Zoonotic virus come from? 2) How did it spread so quickly? and 3) which groups in society enabled it’s spread? These are increasingly important questions because it has become clear that its effects are so severe, in terms of deaths from infection and the collapse of economic activity, that scapegoats are eagerly being sought by those who wish to avoid responsibility.

1 Where did the virus come from?

This has been the most discussed and answered question and it has helped that it is almost universally accepted, as the Chines elites eventually admitted, to have originated in the Chinese province of Wuhan. The only disagreement concerning it’s origin in Wuhan is whether it was from a wet – market or from a laboratory researching viruses of the corona type. This question has been elevated to importance because it has become part of a campaign by politicians and governments around the world to shift the blame for a lack of preparation away from themselves and onto someone else.

This focus is an attempt to redirect blame for the many deaths onto the source of the virus, rather than the lack of anticipation and preparation. A subsidiary element of this blame deflection has been to correctly suggest that the Chinese Government did not reveal the problem quickly enough. For this tactic to fully work it depends upon ignoring the following. 1. On January 3, China informed the USA and others. 2. In addition to this pre-February warning, all countries had at least five years warning (some ten) of a likely pandemic and most, if not all, had strategic plans to meet it, but waimed until March to partly (!) implement them.

And novel viruses, like Covid-19 are not simply products of far off locations, but of a particular mode of production, supply and consumption. One which, moreover, stirs up infections by disturbing indigenous people’s and wild – life habitations. Multi – national agri-businesses funded by Investment Banks in Europe and America, are part of this de-stabilising, viral-spreading, global supply chain which connects one side of the globe to the other.

2. How did Covid -19 travel?

The speed of the physical human to human relay chain which enabled the virus to spread to all countries of the world within weeks, points to the fact that rapid transport mechanisms were involved. This explains the creation of new international hot spots of contagion within a month. Secondary transmission could also have occurred via road, rail and shipping from China to the rest of the world. In all probability some did, but at a much reduced rate.

However, if we consider the scale and scope of air travel that has risen exponentially over the last few decades there can be little doubt that air transport was the main conduit for Covid-19 to spread so quickly from one side of the planet to the other and everywhere in between. Millions of passengers on business and leisure trips are on long-distance journeys measured in hours rather than days and the air circulation on board is notoriously contained and recirculated.

These millions of passengers disembark and pass through airport hubs of thousands waiting to board other aircraft bound for other hubs or by trains, cars or buses to other destinations. The human to human virus transmission via air cargo routes is just as rapid but less in volume from air crew and freight handlers. It only takes a small percentage of these millions of passengers to spread it to dozens of others and for each to do the same for it to be carried into every airport and into every town and city in the world, within days let alone weeks.

3 Which humans carried Covid-19?

If the main means of the rapid spread was indeed the fast moving networks of air travel and the associated transport hubs then obviously the passenger’s on board these aircraft were the primary human transmission conduits for the virus. It follows therefore that the unwitting carriers of this virus throughout the world were those who could afford to pay the air fares and fees necessary to travel on business or pleasure and to eat, drink and purchase things during those journeys.

It was therefore the more privileged sectors of society, not the poorest which initially spread the virus.

A terrible ironic twist to this undoubted fact is that the poorest sectors of societies in each country are those who suffer most from the virus when it reaches them. The low – paid, homeless, poverty – stricken, precarious employed workers, occupants of refugee camps – the ones who are least likely to fly on business or leisure – are the most likely to die in greater numbers than those who spread the virus in the first place. How is that for an injustice?

A second irony is that some of the privileged sectors in a number of countries are mischievously or cynically trying to blame the non-jet-setting Covid-19 victims (Gypsies, asylum seekers, homeless etc.) for actually spreading the contagion. This lack of air-miles self-criticism by affluent travelers is yet another instance of the more privileged sectors of modern capitalist societies avoiding responsibility for their own contribution to the problems humanity faces.

Such attempts to transfer responsibility for viral transmission onto victims of this unequal socio-economic system is nothing short of scurrilous. If this blaming of victims and using them as scapegoats for the ills of the whole system is allowed to go unchallenged, then the real problems humanity faces will never be solved. In fact they will be further compounded. The source, the means and the human agency for this pandemic, is a product of the neo – liberal, supply-chain stage of capitalism.

Now no one can be fully safe from the effects of viruses, floods, fires, droughts, storms or economic collapses until the capitalist system is ended.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2020)

Class conflict over the present lock-down.

The recent media reports of conflict between those who wish to end lock-down asap and those who wish to delay it, has been framed within the dominant dualistic and liberal viewpoint. It has been presented as one between those who care about the welfare of everyone (represented as the good side) and those who only care about their own individual circumstances (represented as the bad side).

Consequently, those who have refused to wear masks, social distance themselves and stay in isolation have even been designated by some on the political left, as right-wing, selfish, reactionary and even anti-social. In contrast, those who have adhered to governmental elites recommendations have been depicted in a more positive light. Yet this dualist framework misses out the class nature of capitalist societies and the ongoing struggle between the classes.

For a start, it has been mostly overlooked that those in government positions and making the recommendations are all doing so from a comfortable position of financial security. Whilst they speak of us ‘all being in this together‘, they retain full salary or pension payments and live in social and physical circumstances of considerable ease. While they are listening, many working people who have no financial security, at best only a percentage of their wage or salary, living in housing with limited comfort and are thinking ‘no we are not’.

It also seems to have been forgotten that less than six months ago, working class disillusionment with the political class and governing establishments was considered widespread and understandable. The experience of a decade or more of austerity, low pay, destroyed hopes and frustrated aspirations, had led to an almost universal working class distrust of their elite ‘leaders’. It cannot be surprising that this distrust has been further compounded by the establishments failure to adequately prepare for and deal, with the Covid-19 pandemic.

What should be surprising is that, despite a massive amount of disgust and distrust for the establishment, so many working people have independently reasoned that self-isolation, social distancing etc., was needed to save lives in the absence of viable alternatives. Most working people did not comply with such suggestions simply because dodgy politicians passed emergency powers and recommended them. They did so because it made sense.

This ability to reason is also why millions of workers – despite the hardship of lock-down – have not followed the establishments recommendations to return to work, school and leisure pursuits.

This pattern of reasoning shows greater wisdom and intelligence than automatically doing the opposite of what the incompetent establishment suggest. Thinking things through is generally a better process than a simple knee-jerk opposition. But that same wisdom and intelligent reasoning is needed to also understand that some working people are in such dire straits that – in the absence of an acceptable alternative – they have joined the return-to-work-now camp of their class enemy.

Class conflict over future outcomes.

However, the experience of returning to work will probably soon separate the working-class early returners from their equally keen ‘get-back-to-work’ employers, for their class interests are fundamentally opposed. Owners will have profits and efficiency in mind; workers will have safety and decent pay on theirs. The two viewpoints are far from compatible. Patience, understanding and supportive discussions between stayers and returners will expedite a coming together of working people’s class interests in a common, post-pandemic struggle.

The global Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the crisis-riddled nature of the capitalist mode of production, but it has revealed much more. It has underlined the contrast between the low paid front-line workers upon which we all rely for our basic survival and the high pay of governmental, economic, military and financial elites who have hindered our basic survival needs. All other sectors of society have been forced to recognise the importance of those essential workers who worked through the lock-down.

But the rich only did so by a cost-free process of clapping their hands.

Since essential workers risked their lives for the rest of us they will need massive support to ensure they are not left vulnerable to the privatisation, low-pay, and poor working conditions which the neo-liberal elites presently governing countries will try to introduce after this virus has been neutralised and the pandemic ended. The high levels of unemployment, poverty, low-pay and precarious existences for ordinary working people before, during (and after) lock-down will need to be and should be resisted. The fundamental issue becomes;

The need for a more humane, egalitarian and ecologically sustainable mode of production is still the fundamental issue at stake in the 21st century.

The many other issues, important as they are, are not resolvable unless the mode of production creating and maintaining them is addressed. Issues such as climate change, ecological destruction, air, land and water pollution, inequality, poverty, immigration, asylum seekers, pandemics and wars for resources, as deadly and important as they all are, cannot be resolved without changing the way humanity produces and consumes it’s products and services.

Global competition for private greed needs to be replaced by global social cooperation and ecological management for public need. That change in motivation for, and management of, the production of goods and services would allow the other issues to be addressed both individually and collectively. Standing in the way of such a change are exactly the same hereditary managerial and governing class of elites who have been repeatedly exposed as incompetent and self-serving.

As the capitalist class removed the feudal aristocratic elites from positions of power and control of land, in previous centuries, the new new hybrid capitalist/pro-capitalist managerial elites need to be removed from positions of power and control of capital by the working classes, in this century. Since ‘capital’ is nothing more than the monetised value of past – production created by working people it is time working people controlled what is produced, where it is produced and how it is produced.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2020)

The limits of nature.

The 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic has been another demonstration that the natural world has limits and that not every limit can be definitively overcome. However, this microscopic life-form has not ‘caused‘ the crisis. It merely placed a proverbial straw onto an already top-heavy, overburdened, crisis-prone capitalist system. Blaming an invisible virus or China for economic crisis is simply political spin.

The current economic collapse is fundamentally a further result of the faulty foundations upon which capitalism is built. Again (as in 1929, 1939-50 and 2008) capitalist industry and commerce has to be bailed out by a series of public measures. The representatives of privatisation and capitalist society have socialised a capital created crisis by massive grants of state created loans and cash.

This latest socialistic type rescue mission has occurred because pro-capitalists consider not even economic ideology is more important than the capitalist mode of production itself. To them, nature is not more important, family is not more important, community is not more important, human life is not more important; even the planet is not more important, than extracting profits from economic activity.

To maintain profitability the capitalist system and it’s supporters have over two generations; destroyed natural habitats, decimated families, uprooted communities, bombed nations and some plan to colonise other planets once this one is ruined.

The limitations of capital.

Capital, Profit and Production have become the real-world trinity for capitalists – the secular and economic equivalent of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost of Christianity. However, the holy ghost of capitalist production has disturbed nature in ever increasing ways. Wide-spread floods, repeated famines, extensive forest fires and new global diseases, have been triggered by missionary work dedicated to capital and profit. The mentality of homo-technophile, (species: profito-sapien), continues to assume that nature’s limits are simply barriers to be overcome.

In overcoming natural and social barriers, science and technology, harnessed to the profit motive, has left large areas of the planet devastated and rendered sections of humanity intellectually impervious to the deteriorating condition of the whole of nature. However, the natural world is not simply a resource to be exploited.

Nature is a complex interaction of organic and inorganic material, which once sufficiently disrupted, has unintended consequences beyond the ability of humanity to control. Yet vested interests still sufficiently dominate the upper and middle sectors of humanity making them unwilling to view what should be increasingly obvious.

The limitations of mainstream media.

Nowhere has this failure of vision been more audible and visible than in mainstream media broadcasts during the Covid-19 lock-down. There has been an unending stream of commentators on radio and television networks who are unanimous in avoiding seeing their own varied – yet crucial – role in this crisis or the others we face.

On TV and radio, presenters, politicians, hand-picked, medical experts and celebrities strut their stuff and enthusiastically promote the myth that lock-down is just a temporary blip before a return to their one-sided form of ‘normality’.

For weeks – as people were actually dying – media appearances by comedians, musicians, documentary producers, film directors, politicians, bankers and sports men and women have glossed over tragedy and expressed their desire to get back to jetting around the world and accumulating their disproportionate slice of annual wealth, derived from their gigs, conferences, festivals and locations.

The equally narcissistic sports fraternity and ‘game’ commentators, voiced anticipation of many international flights to ‘matches’ and ‘races’ staged around the world – when its all over!

During my eight weeks of lock-down listening and watching, not one contributor across many channels, stations and bulletins has shown an inkling that their combined activities based on the extraction and burning of fossil fuels is a substantial part of the problems (including Covid-19) faced by humanity as a whole.

In over two months of mainstream broadcasting and print, it has not, to my knowledge, crossed any of the collective or individual contributors minds that the natural world and humanity may need a permanent rest from all this hedonistic and self-destructive so-called economic activity.

The limitations of celebrity.

It may not be true that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned, but we have a modern equivalent of that possibility in wall to wall, self-absorbed celebrities and politicians ignoring the contribution they have made to the planets many disorders. These battalions of well positioned and intellectually ‘conditioned’ apostles of mammon are an enormous conservative weight upon the efforts to defeat Covid-19 and change the mode of production for a better one.

They manage to ignore the fact that the capitalist system which pays celebrity so handsomely also creates poverty – and poverty kills just as effectively as a virus!

We need to learn to detach our admiration for individual celebrities from their taken-for-granted entitlement to disproportional rewards compared to those who continually supply our food, water, electricity, sewage disposal, transport and heal our damaged bodies. We also need to remove our support for the ‘entitlement’, assumed by celebrity, political, financial, economic and military status, to use their wealth to dis-proportionally damage and pollute land, air and water resources.

The limiting of dissent.

Also to my knowledge, not one seriously dissenting voice or radical pen has yet been allowed on any mainstream media outlet. Mainstream media has been a constant gushing forth of self-obsessed middle-class economic and political mediocrity. The Internet has been the only source of radical dissent and that has meant sifting past the imaginative inventions of those, who only prove that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Being certain of something and repeating it with little or no independent evidence to support it is exactly what the political and governing elites are doing. Being no different in this regard is to be no different in general and a refreshing difference by honesty and humanity is what is desperately needed as we consider the future.

Well honed ‘crap detectors’ and the internet are still important attributes for us to develop and to wield as we survive 2020 and go beyond.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2020)

Despite all their previous mistakes and shortcomings around the Covid-19 pandemic, there are anxious elites around the world who wish to convince working people to go back to work – as soon as possible. They suggest that this return to work is primarily for the sake of the economy. In other words for the same economic system that before Covid-19, treated working people like disposable commodities, whilst promoting increasingly wealthy elites into the billionaire category. In short, they want a return to the type of economy which bolsters the well-being, investments and share dividends of the elite and their hangers on. It is not really about saving lives, for ordinary working people’s lives are considered expendable.

Front line expendables.

Already health care workers, plus those ensuring water, power, food, sewage and refuse collection, have had to risk catching Covid-19 and passing it on to their colleagues, friends and families. Their lives have already been treated as expendable by the failure to supply enough protective equipment for them. Many have already died. This failure was compounded by the decision – from the outset of the pandemic – to issue out of date and unreliable equipment. For example in the UK it has been discovered that;

“Around 200 million vital pieces of kit – including respirators, masks, syringes and needles – had all expired in the eight months before 30 January.” (Channel 4 News)

Furthermore, the same news source obtained insider information that much of the equipment, purchased in 2009, only had a five year shelf life. Instead of being renewed, it had been re-stamped with dates of 2012, 2016 and 2019 and delivered to UK hospitals in March 2020. Only an oligarchy of governing elites with an attitude of callous indifference to the welfare and lives of working people would allow such breaches of safety protocols.

Moreover, if this has occurred in one advanced industrial country, we can surmise something similar – or worse – has occurred in many other countries.

Second line expendables.

The next category of working class expendables expected to risk their lives by returning to work, are those who supplement the first tier workers already delivering the basic essentials, noted above. This second group would comprise of transport workers in road, rail and air services. Additionally, those in industry and commerce who make, store and sell commodities and provide services, will be pressured back to work by one means or another.

Since there is still insufficient protective and testing equipment available for these further sectors, this represents a callous disregard for the lives of these two categories of working people. This indifference is further emphasised by the fact that – as yet – there is an insufficient understanding of how lethal Covid-19 is and how quickly it mutates. Workers returning to their jobs risk not only catching the virus but of also spreading it to other workers and their families.

Not only that but the percentage who do get it in a life-threatening form will also take that into hospitals and intensive care units where – even if more doctors and nurses do not die – it will stretch an already overstretched workforce of health care and medical workers. Thus the lives of a percentage of these two categories of workers – which we all depend upon – are to be treated as expendable.

Furthermore, the rest of us self-isolaters may face an even longer period of isolation if (or rather when) such an unprotected, untested return to work causes a second wave of infections as in South Korea. And all this ‘calculated’ risk to workers will be so that economic activity can ‘return’ to producing profits and dividends for wealthy shareholders. Many of whom will pay to protect themselves from Covid-19.

Retired expendables.

All retired working people, who survive to pension age are, with some exceptions, already treated with callous indifference. Despite a life-time of paying taxes on income and expenditure, pensions for many old people are a pittance. Many have to choose between keeping warm or eating enough food. Care homes have, by and large, been transformed into profit-making, low cost centers of containment and now contagion.

Clearly the political and governing elites, with huge salaries, expenses and pensions, display a callous indifference to the end of life experiences of the old and infirm working classes. In the UK just prior to Covid-19 paralysing the world, the Government and the BBC both wanted to stop allowing those over 75 to have a free television licence.

NB.The astronomical salaries and fees paid to the heads and entertainers of this broadcasting establishment were more important to preserve than this small privilege for decades of hard-working, tax-payers.

But the end-of-life period of this third expendable section of the working class could now be made even more miserable by those who govern our societies. For in the current political elite debate about a staggered return to work a revealing suggestion is already circulating. Since those over 70 are vulnerable to severe illness by Covid-19, they could be told to continue in social isolation for an extended period of time.

Having worked hard all their lives, some even having fought in a war (or two), working class senior citizens, many of them living alone, are to continue their lives – and many more will end it – in a form of solitary confinement! Not through their own fault but because the governing classes internationally have proved incompetent in preparing and managing a foreseeable pandemic.

Millions of pensioners through poor pension provision are now living in food and resource poverty and having this misery compounded by not being able to mix with their friends or have visitors. If you are working class and not yet retired, be warned: Capitalist-led forms of society, whose elites organise expensive and complex landings on moons and far off planets, excavate tunnels beneath seas, build themselves luxury mansions and fund weapons of mass destruction, also have the above impoverished retirement outcome in mind for your old age.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2020)