Dog Breath in the Year of the Plague

[Lurdan]

Despite the great toilet paper famine people are producing political texts about the pandemic and its consequences. A thread for texts and links.

Here's a short piece by Santiago López Petit. Published last week first in Catalan, then in Spanish. Someone at autonomies.org had a go at an English translation. I've taken that one and given it a bit of a seeing to.

Spoiler: Coronavirus as a declaration of war

Coronavirus as a declaration of war

In the morning I conscientiously wash my hands, then I can forget the eyes gouged out by the police in Chile, France or Iraq. Before I eat, using a good disinfectant, I wash my hands so I can forget the migrants crowded onto Lesbos. And at night I wash my hands again, to forget that in Yemen, every ten minutes, a child dies from bombs and hunger. Then I can fall asleep. The thing is, I don’t remember why I wash my hands so often, or when I started doing it. Radio and television insist that it is a measure of self-protection. Protecting myself, I protect others. The silence of the deserted street enters by the window. Everything that seemed impossible and unimaginable is happening right now: schools closed, a ban on leaving home without a justifiable reason, entire countries isolated. Everyday life has been blown to pieces and all that is left is a period of waiting. It was nice last night to hear the applause that people gave health workers from their balconies.

We remain locked inside a gigantic fiction with the objective of saving our lives. It is called a total mobilisation and, paradoxically, its extreme form is confinement. “The greatest contribution we can make is this: do not meet others, do not provoke chaos,” said an important leader of the Chinese Communist Party. And yesterday a mosso [Catalan regional police officer] who was guarding Igualada added: “Remember, if you enter the city, you can never leave again”, while remarking to his colleague: “Fear achieves what nobody else can.” But people die, right? Yes, of course. Nonetheless, the current naturalisation of death cancels out critical thinking. Some delusional individuals even believe in the “we” that is invoked by the very power which declares the state of emergency: “We will stop this virus together.” Only those who urgently need money go to work and are exposed to it on the metro.

Each society has its own diseases, and those diseases express the truth about that society. The interrelationship between capitalist agribusiness and the etiology of recent epidemics is all too well known: runaway capitalism produces the virus that it later reuses to control us. The side effects (depoliticisation, restructuring, layoffs, deaths, etc.) are essential to impose a normalised state of emergency. Capitalism is murderous, and that statement is not the product of any conspiracy theory. It is simply the logic of its functioning. Police drones and controls on the streets. The militarised language is reminiscent of counterinsurgency manuals: “In modern warfare, the enemy is difficult to define. The boundary between friends and enemies is located at the very heart of the nation, within the same city, and sometimes within the same family ” (Colombian Army Manual, Bogotá, 1963). Remember: the best vaccine is yourself. There is nothing strange about this resemblance, since total mobilization is above all a war, and the best possible war—because it remains invisible—is that which is fought in the name of life. Behold the deceit.

If the mobilisation is deployed as a war against the population, it is because its only objective is to save the algorithm of life, something, of course, that has nothing to do with our personal and irreducible lives, which matter very little. The “invisible hand” of the market set everything in its place: it assigned resources, it determined prices and benefits. It humiliated. Now it is Life, but Life understood as an algorithm, comprised of ordered sequences of logical steps, responsible for organizing society. The skills necessary to work, to learn, and to be a good citizen have been unified. This is the real confinement in which we are held. We are terminals of the algorithm of Life that organises the world. This confinement makes feasible the Great Confinement of populations that are already taking place in China, Italy, etc. and which, little by little, will become common practice due to their uncontrollable nature. Government is renationalized and political decision-making returns to the spotlight. Neoliberalism shamelessly puts on the apparel of the warfare state. Capital is afraid. Uncertainty and insecurity challenge the very need for the state. Dark and paroxysmal life, incalculable in its ambivalence, escapes the algorithm.

Santiago López Petit

 

[Lurdan]

A rather more straightforward piece Angry Workers World have posted over at Libcom

Empty supermarkets: The food supply-chain from a workers’ perspective - Angry Workers World blog

Everyone is complaining about empty supermarket shelves. Lots of people are now asking themselves how they get filled in the first place. But hoarding and panic buying is a relatively minor issue - with highly calibrated ‘just-in-time’ production, shelves can be bare with only take a £6-10 increase in the normal shopping spend per household. Even if people are buying much more than this, it’s not just ‘selfish individuals’ who are to blame. We have to look at the political issues around the individualisation of working class communities over the last few decades, as well as rational responses to a government recommending self-isolation for 14 days if a family member has symptoms. More importantly though, we have to look at the structural constraints of the food supply-chain. Below you can find a few thoughts about this in particular.

And also from them
Thoughts on the Corona regime - Angry Workers World blog

Corona has taken over. Despite the fear and panic (or even denial) that has taken hold, one thing is for sure: the cracks of the system are emerging for all to see. How can the left respond in a way that dodges the minefield of strengthening the state, at the same time as ensuring that people are being put before profits? How can self-organised activity, like the community groups that are popping up to help vulnerable people, be facilitated and crucially, be used as vehicles to get our demands met? It’s all very well to reiterate demands, such as for a universal basic income, as well as push for new ones, such as full-waged sick pay from day one. But the question always is: how do we enforce it?

 

[Lurdan]

From TPTG in Greece :

Report from Greece on the corona-virus dystopian reality - TPTG

As days pass, the restrictive measures in movement become heavier and the propaganda of fear is gaining ground. Even political groups of the anti-authoritarian milieu limit their activities, cancel their events or even approve of the quarantine in the name of public health protection and “(self)-responsibility”.

The isolation or self-isolation imposed at the moment is not very promising as the necessary precondition for any successful struggle is cooperation through physical encounter. At the same time, an attitude of internalized self-discipline and fear (if not even outcry of “irresponsible behaviour’’ on the part of those still gathering in public spaces and social centers) can be very convenient indeed for the state and its repressive mechanisms, as the outcome of a recent antifascist demo in the town of Rethymno showed: 100 people were surrounded by cops, beaten up and taken to court. One wonders what will happen if workers start organizing around demands such as full wages, less work hours or stop altogether, bigger unemployment benefits, paid medical expenses…

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Some articles from the ACG website:

Coronavirus and the Ill Health of Capitalism

The COVID-19 crisis has thrown a glaring searchlight on the state of health of capitalism. Here we analyse in detail the origins of the disease, its global consequences and what we, the working cla…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

And here is a shorter piece:

Class War Not On Pause

It is a common tactic of states and capital to invoke the “national interest” and “we’re all in it together” as a means of diverting attention from the class war. Such cries were heard often during…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

 

[Lurdan]

A long thoughtful article that was linked to on another thread when it was published back in February. Well worth reading.

Social Contagion: Microbiological Class War in China - Chuang

This moment, while full of fear, has caused everyone to simultaneously ask some deep questions: What will happen to me? My children, family and friends? Will we have enough food? Will I get paid? Will I make rent? Who is responsible for all this? In a strange way, the subjective experience is somewhat like that of a mass strike—but one which, in its non-spontaneous, top-down character and, especially in its involuntary hyper-atomization, illustrates the basic conundrums of our own strangled political present as clearly as the true mass strikes of the previous century elucidated the contradictions of their era. The quarantine, then, is like a strike hollowed of its communal features but nonetheless capable of delivering a deep shock to both psyche and economy. This fact alone makes it worthy of reflection.

 

[Lurdan]

Amongst other things the Chuang article refers to the work of Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu (2016).

Here's a short piece by him from the end of January :
Notes on a novel coronavirus - Monthly Review blog

An interview a couple of weeks ago :
“Capitalism is a disease hotspot” - Monthly Review

And a short podcast featuring him (some other links for him at this page)
How Global Agriculture Grew a Pandemic - The American Scholar

(Monthly Review press currently have his book on special offer - link above). For an 'even bigger discount' it has leaked to libgen.

 

[Serge Forward]

Another article from the ACG: The coronavirus long term effect…

 

[ska invita]

From Corporate Watch
CORONA CAPITALISM: SOME OF THE COMPANIES CASHING IN ON THE CRISIS, FROM BEZOS TO BIG PHARMA ..

Corona Capitalism: some of the companies cashing in on the crisis, from Bezos to Big Pharma .. - Corporate Watch

Big Pharma; Crispin Odey; Amazon; Deliveroo; Balfour Beatty; Britannia Hotels; Marshall Wace; Richard Branson Do you want us to look into a company exploiting its workers or profiting from the corona crisis? Get in touch at contact[AT] corporatewatch.org. The corona crisis may have smashed stock...

corporatewatch.org

 

[Lurdan]

Mike Davis wrote a piece at Jacobin two weeks ago Mike Davis on Coronavirus: “In a Plague Year”. In it he said :

A year from now we may look back in admiration at China’s success in containing the pandemic but in horror at the United States’ failure.

Wildcat translated the article into German. A comrade of theirs in China wrote a response which has now been translated into English :

The Corona crisis: A letter from a comrade in China – Did China buy time for the west? – Angry Workers of the World

Why does it not seem possible to criticise the miserable conditions in the US without falling over yourself in praise for the megalomaniac police operation in China? The praise for ‘China’s success’ conflates too many things: the country itself, the Communist Party, the police, the population and the working class. Why is Mike Davis, of all people, able to write something like this? No-one has to choose between ‘the West’ and ‘China’, especially when it’s about Corona!

(...)

Against this background we can ask whether China or the Communist Party bought more time for the people of China and the rest of the world. For me the answer is clear: No, the Communist Party didn’t do that. The ordinary working people of China did, because it was them who really tried to delay the spread of the virus. But even they didn’t ‘buy the west more time’. What happened in China after 20th January shouldn’t be viewed as granting ‘the west’ more time, rather it should be seen as self-protection. Self-protection of the ordinary population in their own initiatives – and self-protection of the ruling class to defend their own privileges.

And the Angry Workers of the World themselves have put up another piece :

Corona-crisis: Can workers fight back against the jobs vs. health trap? – Angry Workers of the World

This lack of shop-floor power that leads a disenfranchised and scared workforce to take individual protective measures over and above collective measures needs to change. Whatever potential the Corona crisis could bring to workers to start demanding their worth, this usually doesn’t occur in a vacuum. How can we expect workers in such a precarious situation (even as permanent employees) to stand up and start raising their voices when there is no culture of experience of standing together and winning?

 

[AmateurAgitator]

More from the ACG site-

Capitalist priorities

From a Kent ACG member… Something this pandemic has revealed is just what we do and don’t need. Down here where I live in Kent, Fenwicks (a luxury department store in Canterbury), as we…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

Naked greed: the boss class exposed

Whilst on one hand we see the development of mutual aid networks among the working class, on the other hand we see the obscene slavering greed of our masters. Take Richard Branson (Sir pronounced c…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Naked Greed part 2

The world’s richest man is Jeff Bezos. His net worth is $113.9 billion. In February he gained $3.5 billion in four days by selling Amazon stocks before the stock market crash set off by the coronav…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

 

[Marty1]

Some articles from the ACG website:

Coronavirus and the Ill Health of Capitalism

The COVID-19 crisis has thrown a glaring searchlight on the state of health of capitalism. Here we analyse in detail the origins of the disease, its global consequences and what we, the working cla…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

The author of that article must now be overjoyed that the majority of the ‘demands’ end section have been achieved (without the need for any demanding).

 

[Serge Forward]

Still here, you dick?

 

[Serge Forward]

Haringey Solidarity Group and London ACG: Clap for carers: a statement

 

[Mordi]

Been catching up on mostly shorter pieces this morning. I think Lurdan has posted the ones I found most interesting already.

Freedom's notes on the suspension of eviction proceedings strikes the right note for me in cautiously emphasising the possibilities of crisis. There's some of this to be seen in the recent cracking of AirBnB properties by Berlin squatters as emergency shelter for those without homes. This has helped spur the city government to organise hostel places for rough sleepers (remains to be seen if this will have the same limitations as in London). Crimethinc have a translation of a piece from Barcelona looking at different rent strikes struggles and lessons to be learned.

"Are We All Covid Communists Now?" has also been getting passed around and I've quoted the section underneath that I found most illuminating as I think it ties in with what I've been mulling over, apologies if it gets a little meandering.

However and perhaps more importantly the authoritarianism also reflects political incapacity too — the inability of states to mobilise their citizens. Neoliberalism hollows out not only state capacity but political capacity, too. Without such political capacity, the only option left is to assert greater state control over the population. What is being offered now is the prospect of a digital Keynesianism in which cash is funnelled directly to the consumer, without the need for even the show of large public works schemes — and without any of the social solidarities of class and nation (let alone the requisite administrative capacity) that were needed to sustain earlier Keynesianism,

This is why, as James Meadway has pointed out, the analogies to war-time economies are false — we are witnessing a massive programme of demobilisation, not mobilization. This reflects the fundamental lack of political authority and state legitimacy: the political capacity for mobilisation simply does not exist except perhaps in China, and even there it is clearly more coercive than voluntary. During the last emergency regime following the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration of the time only mobilized US citizens to the war effort to the extent that it encouraged them to keep on shopping to keep the economy afloat. In today’s emergency regime, we are being demobilized even further, confined at home, not even allowed to carry out our patriotic duties of consumption together in public.

This rings true to me, for me the question becomes; can we begin to attach demands to this extreme situation, and are there any ways to sustain this at the onset of 'normality'. I would like to believe that for many people there is a possibility of new (or rediscovered) social relationships developing through the demands of what is going to be a difficult period ahead of us. My pessimism wonders what will remain in the rush back to normality that I assume will be not just an economical necessity for many but also actively welcomed unless a different form of 'mobilisation' or worthwhile activity fills that vacuum.

 

[Lurdan]

Short piece at the Prole Wave blog in Los Angeles (successor to Ediciones Inéditas)

Essential Work? - prole wave

Splitting proles into the categories of ‘essential workers’ and ‘non-essential workers’ (if they’re employed at all!) is a reflection of capitalist ideology. ALL wage labor is an imposition whether caring for the infirm or filing papers in some business firm. What is today highlighting the role of so-called ‘essential workers’ is the overwhelming risk that they are compelled to enter, via the wage and/or vocational notions, to keep the capitalist world humming along. But it is this non-communal, piecemeal and capitalist approach to confronting the pandemic which ends up over-burdening these ‘essential workers’ with the responsibility for resolving or providing logistical support for a crisis not of their making and of which they have very little say. As it stands, a largely wildcat strike wave is upon us (e.g. Instacart, Amazon, Whole Foods, sanitation workers, bus drivers, etc.). These workers are striking in rejection of their being sacrificed during these times of pandemic. They become another resource, another number deployed by bosses and the State and not a part of a communal social fabric combating something which can effect us all. Capitalist media abounds with stories of the hero-making myth of many workers, but as we see more and more even these workers know when they’re being swindled into believing their occupation is a lofty vocation that somehow exists above capitalist social relations.

Also there an English translation of a piece (originally a twitter thread) from the French Carbure blog.

Health crisis, economic crisis and social crisis are all the same thing - prole wave

 

[Lurdan]

English translations of two articles by the Left Communist Grupo Barbaria

The Pandemics of Capital (Grupo Barbaria) — Malcontent Editions

Against the Holy Family of capital, we defend our lives by means of social antagonism (Grupo Barbaria) — Malcontent Editions

 

[LDC]

Cheers for posting all these, excellent work!

 

[ska invita]

More

#CoronaCapitalism: companies cashing in part 2 - Airline bailouts, Travelodge, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Wren Kitchens ... - Corporate Watch

Here’s a second news round-up of some corporate corona crisis activity, following on from last week’s episode. The corporate handouts begin The big news in #coronacapitalism has been the start of the massive corporate handouts. On Friday 27 March, Donald Trump signed the “largest bailout in US...

corporatewatch.org

 

[Lurdan]

Nearly three weeks ago the 'Monologue du Virus' was published by Lundi Matin, a French journal reportedly close to 'The Invisible Committee'.
It was widely reprinted and there have been a couple of English translations, including an authorised one by Lundi Matin themselves :
'What The Virus Said'.

Non Fides have strongly criticised it, L’abject « Monologue du Virus ». Parts of their article have been translated at Dialectical Delinquents. (You'll need to scroll down the page). I've done a quick translation of the rest and here's the whole thing. The Dialectical Delinquents parts in black, my additions in blue.

Spoiler: The abject 'Monologue of the Virus'

"The monologue of the virus", written in poorly digested post-situationist prose, and published at lundi.am, has already been widely circulated. It invites us to welcome the coronavirus as the Messiah: "See me, therefore, as your saviour". However, as always, it is the most vulnerable, the most fragile, the poorest and the most exploited among us, who are most exposed to it and most threatened by it : comrades locked up in prisons, or in the CRA (immigration detention centres) and homeless people, people who almost no-one cares about, as well as pensioners crammed together, but isolated, in blocks of flats, and all of the exploited of the 21st century, cashiers, delivery drivers, construction workers, preparers of online sales orders (Amazon, La redoute, etc .), without forgetting, of course, the carers of the EPHAD (old peoples homes), and the CHU (Centres Hospitaliers Universitaires), etc., which are deliberately under-resourced… And what about the thousands of lives that will be lost in the camps of war refugees, in the destroyed cities in Syria and elsewhere, in all of the slums of the world, and among all those who are forced to work despite the general lockdown? The response of the editors of this monologue is this : the virus has come to "carry out the punishment that you have long pronounced against yourselves". This abject monologue, forgets (or denies) that not everyone has the luxury of wondering whether to treat the period of the pandemic as a vacation, or as an opportunity to cultivate one's garden and the art of greeting one another. What contempt, what displacement of the real conditions of mass exploitation behind the petty boredom of the gentrified landowners of the neo-rural left.

No, the virus isn’t our saviour. In the midst of this eco-messianic delirium, the Monologue glorifies the so-called strategy of the virus: to wake us up from our voluntary servitude and transform us into conscious gardeners. But the strategy that can actually be seen today is above all the implacable strategy of the State and the bourgeoisie: to keep us under control and to force us to work. The immediate consequences of the pandemic are the unprecedented deployment of counter-insurgency technologies, and more broadly techno-fascism, which we’ve seen has been happening for quite a while. Of course, we do not deny the danger of the virus, but this should not mask the violence of the authoritarian response that is being unleashed today and what is being announced. If China has been a model envied by Western techno-capitalists for a while, the pandemic is an opportunity to imitate it at high speed under the guise of a state of health emergency. In China, drones come to take your temperature on the street and it is no longer possible to go out without a smartphone, because you have to be geo-locatable and have proof of your health on your smartphone. Germany and the United States are working with StartUp on solutions of this type. In France, as in Madrid, drones are out to increase the capacities of police control.

Macron and E. Philippe [France’s PM] have warned: there will be a before and after the coronavirus …. Bruno Lemaire and the president of Medef [organisation representing major bosses] talk about setting up a minimum economic service to prevent workers from exercising their right of withdrawal [ie the right to withdraw their labour in circumstances that are dangerous to health and safety], Edouard Philippe warns that it will be necessary to make great efforts after the crisis to revive the economy, all this by passing the “state of health emergency”, a component of which includes 300 billion euros donated to companies, increased power given to employers who can extend the working time of their employees, force or cancel paid holidays, etc. Edouard Philippe understood this well, the current state of emergency is an opportunity to “profoundly change our habits”. The post-coronavirus is the standardization of new surveillance technologies in the name of our “health” – tele-medicine [ie being ‘examined’ by your doctor through the internet], school and university on digital platforms, generalized tele-work [home working], and therefore even more isolated workers in their work. All this while the workforce that makes all the infrastructure necessary for these isolation and control technologies remain slaving away in the cold or in a heat wave, or during pandemics! “Profoundly changing our habits” also means getting used to police checkpoints in the cities and countryside, drones in the street carrying out all kinds of checks, etc.

After the health crisis will come the economic crisis, it will be even harder than that of 2008. The financial markets, the multinationals and the States (which will still go into debt to “save the economy”) are losing a lot of money, and once the first wave of the pandemic has passed, they will want to charge us. They are going to impose new austerity measures under the guise of national unity, in order to resuscitate the margins of capital’s surplus value and to replenish the coffers of the state.

Rather than getting lost in ridiculous monologues, let's take stock of the situation : for the State and capital, the pandemic is also the opportunity to make a brutal transition to a much more authoritarian regime. The real problem is not the apathy provoked by mass society, the apathy which so grieves the authors of the Virus Monologue, the problem is the mass exploitation carried out with an iron fist by capitalists, the state and its police. Shouldn’t we remember the figures for the repression of the Yellow Vest movement?

So we don’t believe in the Monologue of the Redemptive Virus, or in the Appeal of the Imaginary Party, or in the Prophecies of the Invisible Committee, and we don’t want to take advantage of the disaster caused by the pandemic in order to create eco-villages, or forms of life that are deemed sufficiently worthy in the eye of the Redeemer Virus. As we have just said, at the moment we are witnessing a strengthening of power, which will not collapse by itself - and which will very easily accommodate the rural desertion of those who can afford it, or any enigmatic tiny pseudo-poetic gestures.

Unlike the moralistic and religious slogans of the Monologue, and their sterile guilt-inducing injunctions such as “Ask yourselves rather how you could find it so comfortable to let yourselves be governed”, we lay claim to the history of proletarian struggles and of rural rebels. This contempt for the history of struggles is intolerable, the exploited are never exploited of their own free will, voluntary servitude does not exist, the history of popular resistance is there to prove it.

No one can say what will happen in the coming months, but we will have to be attentive and not remain in the grip of fear and the permanent state of emergency in which the rulers will try to keep us so as to pass their safeguard measures, then boost the economy. With this “crisis”, given that we need to repeat this again, it is we, the exploited condemned to work and misery, that the capitalists will sacrifice again and again on the altar of power and profit. The pandemic affects the whole world. Authoritarian measures to safeguard and then revive the economy will also affect the whole world since our economies are interconnected to an unprecedented degree. We must not allow ourselves to be brought down but to revolt against these measures, the glaring injustice of which will be seen as big as the nose on our face. There may be hope for an international social revolution. We need to understand what we are caught up in in order to free up our margin of manœuvre in the times to come.”

Another article by Non Fides 'Pandémie, autorité et liberté' has been translated into English at the Anarchists Worldwide blog 'France: Pandemic, Authority and Freedom'.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

More from www.anarchistcommunism.org

Domestic abuse and coronavirus

The first coronavirus murder has been reported in the UK. A 67 year old woman was murdered by her husband when they were both in self-isolation. This illustrates the great dangers that women face a…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

Coronavirus, HIV/AIDS and World Hunger

A large number of people are due to die of coronavirus and many countries have mobilised against the spread of the virus. Without in any way wishing to downplay the gravity of the situation, we sho…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

Strikes around the world over Coronavirus

Posties wildcat strike in Alloa Postal workers in Alloa, Clackmannanshire took direct action against unsafe working conditions, a lack of suitable protective equipment and having to deliver junk ma…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

More Coronavirus Strikes

M&S workers strike over coronavirus fears Eighty workers at the Marks and Spencer distribution depot run by the DHL company at Swindon walked out on March 24th and 26th over dangerous working c…

www.anarchistcommunism.org

 

[Lurdan]

Another interesting article at Monthly Review :

COVID-19 and Circuits of Capital by Rob Wallace, Alex Liebman, Luis Fernando Chaves and Rodrick Wallace

If by its global expansion alone, commodity agriculture serves as both propulsion for and nexus through which pathogens of diverse origins migrate from the most remote reservoirs to the most international of population centers. It is here, and along the way, where novel pathogens infiltrate agriculture’s gated communities. The lengthier the associated supply chains and the greater the extent of adjunct deforestation, the more diverse (and exotic) the zoonotic pathogens that enter the food chain.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

The author of that article must now be overjoyed that the majority of the ‘demands’ end section have been achieved (without the need for any demanding).

Showing your ignorance as usual. If you really do sincerely believe that the government response has been satisfactory and that there won't be anymore demands from sections of the public, or that the public are all happy with the govt response, then you are seriously deluded.

 

[LDC]

Homepage - Fever

feverstruggle.net

 

[Serge Forward]

Yep, that Fever Struggle website is ace.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

quite short, for them:

Critisticuffs — Covid-19 and Crisis-20

critisticuffs.org

 

[Lurdan]

Internationalist Perspective :

THE VIRUS AND THE MONEY-TREE – Internationalist Perspective

That is what the capitalist left doesn’t see or doesn’t want to see. The capitalist left decries the excesses of capitalism, it wants to change the system to make it more just, it wants the state to create money to meet the needs of the population, to stop climate-change and much more. It sees in the present crisis a teaching moment, an opportunity to push back against ‘neo-liberalism’. Look, what the state can do! Imagine what it could do under a progressive leadership! They don’t want to see that changing the system doesn’t alter its course as long as it remains capitalist. The underlying base on which capitalism operates implies policies that both the left and the right in any given country share, at least in practice. No matter how much money is created to help the poor, this mode of operation will continue to create more and more disasters. More poverty, more people fleeing hunger and war, more anxiety and despair, more pandemics and environmental calamities, more crisis. Not changing the system but ending it must be the goal.

Critical-Mass :

CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC – 8. Nightingale Hospitals – rhetoric and reality! - critical-mass.net

This latest Covid–19 ‘end of life warehousing solution’ is not simply – or only – the result of callous indifference by the elite for the poor and powerless in capitalist societies. Double standards are the rule. True, as the press say, the elites are also people and get ill, but bear in mind many of them are responsible for the lack of planning and resources and therefore for more deaths than would otherwise be the case. And they won’t be the ones ending their days – alone – in a large–scale, former exhibition hall.

English translation of a leaflet by Proletarios Internacionalistas

Against the pandemic of capital, social revolution! (Proletarios Internacionalistas) — Malcontent Editions

From the Greek SKYA (Assembly for the Circulation of Struggles) blog :

To the Living: Brief report on the Greek pandemic crisis and the social struggles against it - SKYA

 

[Lurdan]

English translation of an article by Léon de Mattis first published at the des nouvelles du front blog :

Corona Capital: part one - Prole Wave

What will therefore dominate after the crisis is the pseudo-critical discourse on the excesses of globalization, with a program of relocation of industries and a more or less chauvinistic neo-nationalism. How far will it be possible to really implement this program? This remains an open question: but what is certain is that the ideology of bringing proletarians back in the line in the name of economic and political nationalism is already here, ready to accompany the maintenance of the authoritarian policies put in place everywhere by States to respond to the health emergency.

English translation of an article from the French insurrectionary anarchist blog Sans Attendre Demain :

Brussels, Belgium: Police are the Worst Virus, Let’s Destroy Them Both - Anarchists Worldwide blog

 

[Lurdan]

A couple of articles at this months Brooklyn Rail take a cold-eyed look at the pandemic and the political context in which it's happening :

Fear is more powerful than facts - Natalie Baker – The Brooklyn Rail

We are not using the body of interdisciplinary science, including the social sciences and humanities, to understand how to deal with this virus in a meaningful way. Instead, we are left with a blanket of performative containment measures, half-baked suppositions masquerading as truth, and downright conspiracy theories. These are propagated by a band of keystone kops ranging from trigger-happy administrators and other higher ups canceling this and that, or by whichever new-found public health expert is expounding on their theories on the news or on social media, making the past two months an almost insufferable shitshow of 24/7 pandemic hysteria. This is after we spent the first part of the outbreak making fun of Chinese people for their “weird” eating habits. We then begin to fear the scratch in the back of our throats is a sign of doom to come. This social paranoia extends beyond bodies and our responses become insidious; the taking away of freedoms becomes excusable. At the same time, we are neglecting the protection of probable victims while performing disease containment, beyond posting on Facebook how “we should take this virus seriously because while it might not make me sick, it could make someone I care about sick.” Why didn’t you care about this when my friend’s 4-year old kid died from flu last year, Becky? You could have given it to him.

and Editor’s Note: End Times Politics – Paul Mattick Jr. - The Brooklyn Rail

So here we are. In the short run, the global recession that was already brewing and is now being hastened by the coronavirus on which it will be blamed, will at least slow down the pace of CO2 emissions. (In fact, the Financial Post has already reported the good news that “global oil demand is expected to decline by the largest volume in recorded history in the first quarter, dealing another blow to fiscally vulnerable Canadian oil producers.”) Capitalism is still powerful enough to generate pandemics, thanks to factory farming, the concentration of people in cities, and inadequate attention to public health, but it does not seem able to escape economic stagnation and social paralysis. The wishful thinking that we could escape that fate without shattering political business as usual showed its poverty in the failure of the Sanders campaign. The choice which was always there is once again made clear: if people wish to avoid the future so brilliantly captured by the slogan of Extinction Rebellion they will have to take social affairs into their own hands, and not wait for another elderly gent or lady to fix things for them.

Franco "Bifo" Berardi has been keeping a diary in Italian.

English translations at the Verso blog. Diary of the psycho-deflation : Part One - Part Two - Part Three

and an article by him : Beyond the Breakdown: Three Meditations on a Possible Aftermath - e-flux conversations

We are passing the threshold that leads beyond the cycle of labor–money–consumption.

Awesome.

Lot of links to articles in various languages, including some in English, at this page - thomasproject.net

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Vaneigem - http://notbored.org/coronavirus.pdf

“Utopia still crawls on all fours”.