Danger Days 3: A Beginners Guide To Covid Exploitation

Trump continues to destroy mankind's chances of ever making it out of the 21st century. Here he is throwing his toys out the pram; pouting that the WHO are to blame for his colossal failings and thus deciding not to fund them until they can be 'investigated'. Whatever that means.

This lunatic is more dangerous than Covid to human life.

But what is more dangerous is the capitalist class will - and are - using this crisis as a stalking horse for the continued destruction of the social fabric. Rights and progress repealed - China is already cutting back on environmental gains in order to kickstart the economy. This will happen throughout the capitalist world. In the US the black community (and doubtless other minorities) are being disproportionately affected by the crisis; they are over represented in the kind of underpaid work now deemed essential. Their exploitation puts them at greater risk of catching the virus or being exposed to greater viral load, making the disease harder to handle. No doubt when an individual, in somewhere like an Amazon gulag, gets sick he'll be cast aside: capital always has a reserve army of labour. It's an effective way to keep wages low.

Sooner or later this initial period of apparent welfare 'generosity' will give way to something much harsher. It will flip: people laid off will have fewer choices but to enter Moloch's den of 'essential' work, where, precisely because of the swollen reserve army, they can be just as easily exploited. Prices are likely to increase - I'm surprised that hasn't already happened (or that I haven't noticed).

When the curve flattens and enough of a sense of normality returns, this is what I believe will happen. We're living in the shadow of multiple crises. I have no idea when the Corona Crisis will lift. It may stay with us for a long time given we don't have a vaccine on the horizon (forget the papers telling you one's due in September that's psychedelic levels of optimism). The new normal is - if we're sure of nothing else - an opportunity the elite will take to increase exploitation. At the very least we know austerity will be ratcheted up or otherwise rebooted. As if it ever went away (it didn't).

Boris will cry his crocodile, Covid infused, tears as he sells off the NHS to some shoal of sharks, teeth freshly filed, from the US. Cuts will be made in the form of services 'streamlined' (removed) and users kicked off unless both they and the service they need are profitable. I'll bet my last shiny copper covid-free penny on it.

We are going to have one shot to survive this.