This text was written in April 2020 after a series of discussions held at our meeting on the issue of the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to put a class point of view on the issue of pandemic and to oppose the prevailing logic and propaganda of the state. We want to share our thoughts with as many people as we can about this and we have translated it into English in order to share it with non-speaking Greek comrades.

Convoys of trucks with coffins that leave the hospitals and the emergency centers, where triage is applied in order to decide who is worthy of treatment and who will be left to die. Curfews and military on the streets of many European countries. Campaign “we stay home” (to rot with our own furniture) and a humdrum repetition of the role of “individual responsibility” by all those that have made sure to abdicate the political responsibility for the downfall of the public health system, which they have caused over the years, and an all- pervasive fear that covers everything and threatens to paralyze every form of critical thought. It might seem abominably conventional but it is remarkably apt: this reality makes every science fiction dull and mundane.

LET’S CALL A SPADE A SPADE.

Nevertheless, if we are in great need of something these days, it is to sharpen that critical thought which will dare to question the monopoly of the only lawful opinion, i.e. the propaganda of the political staff of the capital, the prestige and the value of the word of its “experts”, the babbling of the 8 o’clock news, the newspapers and the social media.

The COVID-19pandemic, which has spread far and wide the last three months across this futile world, is not an “accident”. It’s not a Jewish conspiracy, neither a ploy of the Americans. It’s not a plan of the Chinese secret services, neither the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Apocalypse. It’s a product of the capitalist relations of production, of the improvident exploitation of the human labor and of the nature by the global capital.

Despite its name, the corona virus is not blue- blooded¹. It was “born” in the heart of the steam engine of the global capitalism, in the inland of the Chinese domain and in fact to one of the most industrial districts, where for two decades the

“miracle” of the steady increase of the growth rates is produced. A miracle that causes the triumphalism of the regimental financial papers and till today remains the crown jewel of the global capital. Apart from high-tech products for the citizens of the first world, apart from crooked and exhausted bodies for the workers, apart from air pollution by the greenhouse gases and climate change, there (and in all other equivalent districts- hellholes of the capitalistic world) are also created those conditions which have favored the mutation of a virus. Under normal circumstances, this virus

would have only caused a mild cold to a human but it’s transmission from human to human, its quick spread have evolved into an extremely dangerous disease for elders and vulnerable groups. What are those conditions? They are the inconceivable intensification of animal and vegetable production, the plunder of the natural environment and the fiercest exploitation of human labor.

1. In Greek language the word corona (κορόνα) means crown so the corona virus sounds like crown virus.

TO QUESTION THE EXPERTS “TRUTH”

At this juncture is more crucial than ever to be able to distinguish the real threat that the corona virus poses for the public health from its political management by the state.

The COVID-19 epidemic is a serious situation. It constitutes a real threat to public health, because there are real deaths by the virus. The vast majority of them are coming from our class. Let us not be fooled by the many bosses, politicians and stars who are posing with their mild disease symptoms in the media, since they are the only ones who can afford to get tested in the private clinics. To acknowledge all this doesn’t mean that we consent to the political management of the outbreak by the state and it’s experts, which day by day establish their incapability but also their ability to pose a danger. When the National Organization of Public Health (NOPH) gave advice to the doctors of the Amaliada hospital that the patients with an abnormal pneumonia, who had travelled to Jerusalem², were not sick from the corona virus because they didn’t fall under the definition of a suspected outbreak, or when patients with high fever were advised to stay home until they develop dyspnea³, the NOPH didn’t just question the guiding principles of a 2500 year old field of knowledge (medicine from its dawn till today is relying on the clinical examination and the medical records of the patient and not on tele-examination), but have also acted either as a criminal organization that spreads the virus and rises its mortality rates, or as a bureaucracy and incapable to play its institutional role. [Should we listen to the experts and the“science community”, coworkers and comrades?]

On the other side, there is something that all those experts (epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists etc.), who have got the chance to be in the spotlight so they can sell fear in order to earn recognition and status (that they will later cash in visits to their private practices or in university and ministry positions), can admit: the fact that we are dealing with a serious disease, especially for the elderly and the vulnerable groups, doesn’t detract from the fact that almost 80% of the diseased will only show mild discomfort. The fact that we should be careful, we should follow with caution the basic hygiene rules, in order to protect those who are more vulnerable than us (the rest 20% of the diseased), is neither a ceasefire agreement with the state, nor a reason to forget the political responsibility of its employees for the management of the COVID-19 epidemic.

2. A group of Christians has travelled to Jerusalem in order to visit the holy grounds. As they returned from their trip, many of them showed symptoms of the corona virus. As the Orthodox Church plays an important role in the Greek society and state, there has been an effort to hush the fact that the spread of the virus might have started from these travelers.

3. There has been an incident that a 41-years old woman who had high fever was advised to stay home by a COVID-19 Helpline, when she has started to feel dyspnea it was already too late, unfortunately she passed away on the way to the hospital.

TO REGAIN OUR CLARITY BY LOOKING THE BEAST IN THE EYES

If anything else, this situation has proved that we truly live in a small world and that human labor, products and money can travel from one end to the other extremely fast. It has also proven how futile borders are in front of the universality of the problems that humans are facing. Lastly it has pointed out, in the most astonishing way, the ruin of the existing global capitalism in all of its forms. The state of emergency and the curfew are not an attempt to impose a dictatorship (it’s true that “only a fool would attempt dictatorship by tanks while SMEs exist”). They are not an experiment to get our absolute control. They are not a diversion of democracy. They are the form of the capitalist state in times of crisis that cannot be handled by normal means.

It is the depreciation of public health care systems around the Western world, which has been happening for the last 20 years, that has forced states to adopt the authoritarian method of collective restraint of the entire population and the stifling of all economic and social life as a precautionary measure. What would be their other choice? Certainly not to do nothing and let fate decide, as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson suggested and did for a few days, ostensibly to gain «herd immunity» from 60% of the population, but to implement a mass laboratory test of the population where it is needed, based on the epidemiological experience and the selective restriction of the virus carriers with simultaneous care of those who are ill, i.e. a serious reconstruction and reorientation of the public health care system.

Refusing to do so, the state chose to make public health a matter of public order so that today it can point the finger of individual responsibility at each and every one, and if things get out of hand tomorrow, it has all the tools and mechanisms ready to strike any collective protest. It is the state of emergency in this place, the national consensus of a political staff that collectively voted on all the memoranda, which closed hospitals or allowed every level of public health to gradually wither away. It is the cynicism and hypocrisy of a government that speaks of «armored public care» and has not recruited any new permanent nursing or medical staff during the epidemic, but is asking for volunteer students to go like pigs to slaughter. It is the nonsense of NOPH officials who send instructions to health workers on how to handle suspicious cases when they do not have (because the Greek government has not taken care to procure ), not only special uniforms, but not even masks or gloves, in order to be protected from infection. It is the servitude and the transactions under the table of a political staff that buys ICU beds at double the price, from the “shops of private health”, (or allows them to charge the tests for the virus at 200-300 euros), instead of ordering them without compensation. It is the decay of an authority that dictates a curfew and at the same time allows workers to work in desks that are really close to each other, as it happens in telephone exchanges, or stacked side by side in production chains.

WE SHOULD NOT PAY FOR THE CRISIS OF THE EPIDEMIC

Thousands of lay-offs globally, (43.000, always according to official data, have taken place in Greece during the first half of March), changes in work relations (spread of remote work, unilateral changes in employment contracts, undeclared overtimes, etc.), wages cut in half due to shift-work, ruination of whole sectors of the economy like tourism, air-transports, catering( restaurants, bars, etc.), retail, etc. They say that every crisis has side-losses. Only that those always seem to be to the same people, the exploited of this world, those that have to sell their labor for a living. Because after all, apart from the reshaping of work relations to the benefit of the capital, at the same time bosses, both large and small, are being offered any support necessary ( from France nationalizing industries in the brink of collapse, to businesses receiving tax relief in every European country).

It is certain that the global capital had expected a recession that has been building up for a long time, but now it will have to face a cataclysm previously unforeseen. It will have to find ways so that it won’t have to suffer the damage of this cataclysm. Every crisis in a sector of social life (hereto, in public health) quickly spreads in every other sector. The indicators for the Greek economy, which until today pointed to a meagre reversal of the situation after a decade of creative destruction, are once again heading downwards: already the predictions of international vultures like Morgan Stanley, still uncertain as long as the epidemic is not placed under control, speak of a 5.3% recession this year.

Let us not be naïve: the so-called “preventive measures” mirror the future of the work and social relations that are being prepared for us. That is, they mirror the transformation of our lives and the tab we’ll be charged with.

LET’S NOT BE AFRAID, LET’S NOT LAY DOWN OUR ARMS.

Yet, this transformation is still under negotiation, just as the tab is still open. For us, the exploited of this world, it is of vital importance to start settling our accounts today. We recognize that we are experiencing unprecedented situations living through a suffocating experience, as the public space, that is, our breathing space, has been surrounded, but even through this condition social struggle cannot be allowed to be put in quarantine.

The global capitalist bloc is once again proved incapable of facing a crisis exactly because it is flesh out of the flesh of this crisis, just like the previous wave ten years ago, during the crisis of mortgage loans and public debt. But experience has taught us that it won’t collapse on its own. What is urgent? There is a series of class and social questions we have to answer right here, right now.

First, we have to understand what is going on, to ask, to inquire, to discuss and socialize this understanding, to break an atmosphere of fear, intensified by isolation and loneliness. There are aspects of this crisis that remain dull and have to be highlighted: for example, what does this lockdown cause to the psyche, especially of the most vulnerable amongst us? How can the retreat to the patriarchal family environment, which has already lead to a surge in domestic violence and sexual abuse, be ruptured?

Second,that we start being taken into account again: the municipal workers that go on strike amidst the epidemic for safer working conditions, the university students that occupy their dorms against the state’s decision to kick them out, the healthcare workers who, under requisition, protest openly against governments that treat them as expendables, the prisoners that demand decongestion of prisons and protective measures against the epidemic, the immigrants that go on hunger strike against the rat’s fate the government has reserved for them. All these acts of resistance point towards routes that open cracks of active dispute of the state of emergency and towards the defense of our needs during this period. We have to try to highlight and connect those struggles, creating a cohesive front against the bosses and the grim reality they impose upon us.

Third,to bring our experiences of coping with the crisis, from our individual workspaces, healthcare centers, even from forced lockdown, out into the public space. To showcase the awfulness of the bosses and of the government policy to all of the exploited, to seek means of individual and collective resistance, open or concealed.

Fourth,to openly pose the question: “who will risk their lives for this?” To demand: safe working conditions for healthcare workers, a stop to any productive labor unrelated to medicine and basic commodities, protection for those that keep working, protection of vulnerable social groups, closing migrant camps, decongestion of prisons, and support for the homeless.

Fifth, to fight for social income during the epidemic, corresponding to the real needs of the lower classes, salary for all those that lost their jobs during the pandemic as well as for all the social composition (precarious workers, freelancers, unemployed, immigrants) that remain left out, invisible to the state provisions.

Finally, but of huge importance: We wrote above that what we have to fight for is the reconstruction and reorientation of the public healthcare system. What do we mean by that? We mean that it is not enough to demand by the state to “hire doctors” and “spend on healthcare”. Through these savage conditions, we can’t be allowed to forget that until now healthcare was prey to systematic bribing of doctors, to corrupt commissions and donations by big pharma.

We have to demand a public healthcare system of universal and free access for everyone, natives and immigrants, without the need for bribes by the users, without doctors receiving gifts by pharmaceutical and medical equipment businesses, a system in which we as users have a say on what kind of healthcare and treatment we want, starting from the development of a widespread network of first- degree healthcare facilities.

In today’s conjecture this practically means demanding free access to testing for COVID-19 for anyone who needs it and for the general population on the basis of the epidemiological experience and the example of the managing of the crisis by other healthcare systems. That is the basic preventive measure for fighting the epidemic today, without at the same time raising the social cost imposed by the general lockdown. That is also a way to break in practice the universal curfew that has been imposed.

MOVEMENTS FOR CLASS AUTONOMY (KTA)

Athens, April 2020