Can We Simultaneously Oppose Bayer/Monsanto’s Biotechnology and Support Cuba’s Interferon Alpha 2B?

Don Fitz

Genetically engineered crops are a form of food imperialism.  This technology allows mega-corporations like Bayer/Monsanto to patent seeds, lure farmers into buying them with visions of high yields, and then destroy the ability of small farmers to survive.

Genetic engineering produces an artificial combination of plant traits which often results in foods with less nutritional value while introducing health problems to animals and humans who eat them.  It increases costs of food production, pushing millions of farmers throughout the world into poverty and driving them off their land.
Agricultural corporations get control of enormous quantities of land in Africa, Latin America and Asia which they use to control the world’s food supply and reap super-profits from the cheap labor of those who work for them, sometimes people who once owned the same land.  These crops can be developed in open-field testing which allows the novel pollen to contaminate wild relatives of the engineered crops.

Agro-industries which dominate this process have the resources to lobby two sections of governments.  They tell one government agency that their plants do not need to pass safety tests because they are “substantively equivalent” to already existing plants.  Yet, out of the other side of their mouths, corporate lawyers argue that, far from being equivalent to existing plants, their engineered ones are so novel as to deserve patents, patents which allow companies to sue farmers who save seeds for planting during the next season.

As a resident of St. Louis, a veritable plantation of Monsanto (now Bayer), I have participated in and organized dozens of demonstrations at the company’s world headquarters, as well as forums and conferences. It is necessary to compare the use of biotechnology by food corporations with that of Cuba to decide if they are the same or fundamentally different.

Medicine in Cuba

John Kirk’s Health Care without Borders: Understanding Cuban Medical Internationalism (2015) provides a wealth of information regarding Cuba’s early use of biotechnology in medicine.  It is a poor country suffering effects of a blockade by the US which interferes with its access to materials, equipment, technologies, finance, and even exchange of information.  This makes it remarkable that Cuba’s research institutes have produced so many important medications.  Even a partial list is impressive.  The use of Heberprot B to treat diabetes has reduced amputations by 80 percent.  Cuba is the only country to create an effective vaccine against type-B bacterial meningitis, and it developed the first synthetic vaccine for Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib), which causes almost half of pediatric meningitis infections.  It has also produced the vaccine Racotumomab against advanced lung cancer and has begun clinical tests for Itolizumab to fight severe psoriasis.

By far, the best known efforts of Cuban biotechnology followed an outbreak of dengue fever in 1981 when its researchers found that it could combat the disease with Interferon Alpha 2B.  The same drug became vitally important decades later as a potential cure for COVID-19.  Interferons are signaling proteins which can respond to infections by strengthening anti-viral defenses.  In this way, they decrease complications which could cause death.  Cuba’s interferons have also shown their usefulness and safety in treating viral diseases including Hepatitis B and C, shingles and HIV-AIDS.

A Tale of Two Technologies

There are marked differences between corporate biotechnology for food and Cuba’s medications for health.  First, corporations produce food that fails to be healthier than non-engineered food which it replaces.  Cuba’s biotechnology improves human health to such a degree that dozens of nations have requested Interferon Alpha 2B.
Second, corporate food production drives people off of their land while making a few investors very  rich.  No one loses their home due to Cuban medical advances.

Third, food imperialism fosters dependency but Cuba promotes medical independence.  While corporate biotechnology drains money from poor counties by monopolizing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Cuba strives to produce drugs as cheaply as possible.

Patents for its many medical innovations are held by the Cuban government. There is no impetus to increase profits by charging outrageously high prices for new drugs – these medications become available to Cubans at much lower cost than they would in a market-based health care system like that of the United States. This has a profound impact on Cuban medical internationalism. The country provides drugs, including vaccines, at a cost low enough to make humanitarian campaign goals abroad more achievable.  Its use of synthetic vaccines for meningitis and pneumonia has resulted in the immunization of millions of Latin American children.

Cuba’s other phase of medical biotechnology is also unknown in the corporate world. This is the transfer of new technology to poor countries so that they can produce drugs themselves and do not have to rely on purchasing them from rich countries.  Collaboration with Brazil has resulted in meningitis vaccines at a cost of 95¢ rather than $15 to $20 per dose. Cuba and Brazil worked together on several other biotechnology projects, including Interferon Alpha 2B, for hepatitis C, and recombinant human erythropoletin (rHuEPO), for anemia caused by chronic kidney problems.

In Perspective

The bigger picture is that technology of all types is not “value free” – it reflects social factors in its development and use.  Nuclear plants require military forces for protection from attack, making them attractive in any society dominated by those who employ a high degree of violence to suppress dissent.

Market forces within capitalism select technologies that are profitable, even if they are destructive to human welfare.  Of course, medicine such as antibiotics benefit humanity even if their original goal was profits for pharmaceutical giants.

At other times, products that damage society as a whole are pursued because they augment corporate profits by weakening labor unions.  Planting and harvesting equipment have been used to undermine organizing efforts of agricultural workers.  In the mid-1880s Chicago McCormick adopted new molding machines which could be run by unskilled workers.  The company used them to replace skilled workers of the National Union of Iron Molders.
Expensive technologies can destroy small competitors so that large companies with more capital can better control the market. No case is clearer than the use of GMOs in agriculture.  By use of market control (making non-GMO seeds unavailable), financial terrorism (such as lawsuits against resistant farmers), and the pesticide addiction treadmill, GMO giants such as Bayer/Monsanto have increased the cost of food production.  This destroys the livelihood of small farmers across the globe while transforming the large farmers who remain into semi-vassals of these multinational lords of seeds and pesticides.

Though a century separated them and they affected different types of labor, actions by McCormick and Bayer/Monsanto had something in common.  They both utilized novel technology which resulted in less desirable products but increased profits.

Because they were an invaluable weapon against the union, McCormick used molding machines that produced inferior castings and cost consumers more.  GMOs in agriculture result in lower-quality food.  Since two-thirds of GMOs are designed to create plants that can tolerate poisonous pesticides such as Roundup, pesticide residues increase with GMO usage.

GMOs are also used to increase the production of corn syrup which sweetens a growing quantity of processed foods, and thereby contributes to the obesity crisis. At the same time, food engineered to be uniform, survive transportation, and have a longer shelf life contains less nutritional value. The use of GMOs in corporate agriculture is one of the largest contributing factors to the phenomenon of people simultaneously being overweight and undernourished.

Cuba’s use of biotechnology to create medications is in sharp contrast to both McCormick and Bayer/Monsanto.  Its drugs, especially Interferon Alfpha 2B, are used to help people overcome illnesses.  They are created to share throughout the world rather drive people into worse poverty.  Making a distinction between the biotechnology of Bayer/Monsanto and Cuba requires understanding the difference between bioimperialism and biosolidarity.  Imperialism subdues.  Biosolidarity empowers.

Australian Labor Party exploits pandemic to scapegoat foreign workers

Max Newman

The Labor Party’s shadow immigration minister, Senator Kristina Keneally, called for a “restart” of Australia’s “migration program” in a recent opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age.

“The post-COVID-19 question we must ask now is this: when we restart our migration program, do we want migrants to return to Australia in the same numbers and in the same composition as before the crisis?” Keneally asked. “Our answer should be no.”

Keneally’s call for immigration cuts was approvingly retweeted by Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus, making clear the trade unions’ support for Labor’s divisive demagogy.

This lines up the Labor Party and the ACTU directly behind the drive by governments around the globe, personified by US President Trump, to promote toxic nationalism and blame refugees and immigrant workers for the mass unemployment and poverty that governments and big business are imposing in response to the pandemic.

It also feeds into the promotion of far-right and fascistic groups that demonise “foreigners.” Senator Pauline Hanson, the founder-leader of the anti-immigrant One Nation party, claimed vindication. She tweeted that she had called for years for reduced immigration and had been labelled a racist for her “strong stance on jobs for Australians first.”

Keneally criticised the Liberal-National Coalition government from a right-wing nationalist standpoint, saying: “Letting lots of migrants come to Australia is an easier way to drive economic growth than increasing productivity or investing in skills and training.”

This same government has already demonstrated its own bid to scapegoat and punish foreign workers by excluding all 1.2 million temporary visa holders, together with international students, from its JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme, leaving them financially destitute.

Keneally embraced the federal government’s reduction of permanent immigration from 190,000 to 160,000 in 2018, under the pretext of stopping congestion in major cities, and scolded it for not likewise cutting the number of temporary visas.

Keneally claimed that temporary visas encouraged employers to bring in low-skilled and underpaid workers, and this was to blame for declining wages. “We must make sure that Australians get a fair go and a first go at jobs,” she declared.

This serves only to split the working class along nationalist lines, and divert attention from the true cause of the global corporate offensive against workers’ wages and conditions—the rapacious drive by the financial elite for private profit and the accumulation of vast wealth.

Exploiting the COVID-19 crisis, Keneally wrote that the government “will soon have an opportunity to do something we have never done before: restart a migration program.” She praised Conservative Party UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson for slashing immigration.

“Last year Boris Johnson restricted low-skilled, temporary migration,” Keneally wrote, and “coming out of the COVID-19 crisis, Australia can seize the opportunity to do something similar for our citizens.”

In truth, Johnson’s attack on migrant workers borrows from the Australian playbook. His Tory government is introducing a draconian points-based system, which discriminates heavily in favour of wealthy applicants, a system that was formalised in Australia by the Hawke Labor government in 1989.

Reportedly, there were some initial concerns among some Labor MPs that Keneally’s article was too blatant in its “Australia-first” rhetoric, particularly after Hanson’s endorsement. But Senator Penny Wong, Labor’s shadow foreign minister, defended her colleague on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Q&A” program.

Wong said: “I think the proposition Kristina Keneally was putting was that we need to rethink the balance between permanent and temporary migration and I think that’s a sound point to be making.”

The Labor Party has a long history of vilifying overseas workers, using xenophobic rhetoric to divide workers along racist and nationalist lines. The Labor Party’s founding program formulated the White Australia Policy, which promoted the reactionary illusion of creating a “workingman’s paradise” by banning “coloured” labour.

The Labor Party has revived its anti-immigrant policy during every period of capitalist economic breakdown. Amid the destruction of workers’ jobs and conditions following the global financial crisis of 2008-09, the Gillard Labor government proposed cutting immigration and resumed indefinitely detaining refugees on remote Pacific islands, Nauru and Manus.

In run-up to the 2013 election, Labor’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared: “As of today, asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia.”

Since another historic electoral defeat last year, the Labor Party has gone even further down this road, as part of the explicitly pro-big business program of new leader Anthony Albanese. As soon as he appointed Keneally as Labor’s immigration spokeswomen, she began denouncing the Coalition government for supposedly allowing too many refugees to arrive by plane. Last August, Keneally accused the government of “losing control” of the country’s borders because 80,000 people arriving at airports had sought asylum from persecution.

New Zealand’s Labour Party, which has a similar dirty history, is pursuing the same path. Labour Party-led coalition government has slashed immigration, including by imposing wealth-based restrictions.

Keneally’s latest comments come in a definite context. On behalf of big business, the federal, state and territory governments, Coalition and Labor alike, are pushing workers back into workplaces, despite knowing this will trigger further dangerous COVID-19 outbreaks. Mass unemployment and under-employment also is being used as a weapon to compel workers to accept cuts to wages and conditions, which the unions have agreed to enforce against millions of workers, pledging to give employers “everything they want.”

The Socialist Equality Party opposes all forms of racism and nationalism, which pit worker against worker, fuel war tensions and blame the most vulnerable layers of the working class—particularly immigrants and refugees—for the social crisis created by capitalism. As part of the fight for the unity of the global working class, we unconditionally defend the basic democratic right of refugees and immigrants to live, study and work in Australia, or anywhere in the world, with full citizenship rights.

As unemployment soars to Depression-era levels, Canada’s unions endorse reckless back-to-work drive

Roger Jordan

Canada’s official unemployment rate has risen to its highest level in over four decades, after almost 3 million workers lost their jobs during March and the first three weeks of April.

Released last Friday, the latest employment figures from Statistics Canada revealed that 1.9 million workers lost their jobs in April alone. A further 1.1 million people were not included in StatCan’s official jobless total because they have stopped looking for a job. Had these “discouraged workers” been included in StatCan’s calculations, the jobless rate would be 17.8 percent rather than the current official figure of 13 percent.

As horrific as these numbers are, the scope of the social disaster produced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the manifest failure of Canada’s big business governments to prepare for it is even greater. Nearly 7.6 million workers—equivalent to one-third of the country’s total labour force—have applied for the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), the utterly inadequate, temporary $2,000 per-month stipend that Ottawa is providing to workers who have lost their jobs or are unable to work due to the pandemic.

Certain regions of the country have been especially hard hit by the job losses. In Quebec, unemployment more than doubled from 8.1 percent in March to 17 percent in April. The greater Toronto region lost over 500,000 jobs, while the jobless rate in British Columbia rose from 7.2 percent to 11.5 percent. More than one in four young people are now out of work, with the official jobless rate for 15 to 24-year-olds surpassing 27 percent.

The ruling elite expects high unemployment to remain a key feature of the economy for the remainder of the year and beyond, even as it recklessly forces workers to return to their jobs amid a raging pandemic.

The increased competition for jobs, combined with the desperate social and financial crisis facing workers and their families, will be used to intensify the exploitation of the working class. “(W)e forced this on the economy,” Economics professor Mikal Skuterud told CTV News, “but that’s going to have permanent ripple effects, specifically on manufacturing and the construction sectors. There’s serious concern that this isn’t going to be just a quick bounceback; there could be long term effects.”

The jobs massacre and social misery triggered by the pandemic are the inevitable product of the policies pursued by the Trudeau Liberal government, with the support of the entire political establishment and corporate elite. The government did nothing for almost two months to prepare the health care system for COVID-19, yet it proved able in March to rush through bailout measures for the major banks and big business totalling more than $650 billion. Meanwhile, workers and their families have been placed on rations. The health care system has likewise received only a pittance. No more than $4 billion in additional funding has been made available to fight the pandemic and develop hospital surge capacity.

Yesterday, the federal Liberal government announced yet another measure to bolster big business—a multi-billion-dollar program that will enable companies with annual turnover of more than $300 million to access loans or loan guarantees of more than $60 million.

Having orchestrated the greatest heist of public funds in Canadian history, the federal government and its provincial counterparts—led by the hard-right governments of Quebec and Ontario—are spearheading a back-to-work campaign, prioritizing big business profit over workers’ lives. They are doing so even as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases approaches 70,000 and the death toll reaches 5,000. More people have now died from the coronavirus in Canada than in China, which has a population more than 35 times larger and where the pandemic first erupted.

The twin threats of economic destitution and the cut-off of CERB benefits will be used by big business and their political servants in government to pressure workers to return to work under unsafe conditions. Although the Trudeau government has said it is considering extending the CERB beyond its original June 15 end date, powerful sections of the ruling elite are urging that the benefit be scaled back or made conditional on recipients proving they are looking for work. Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister and Conservative federal leader Andrew Scheer have denounced the meagre benefit as “too generous” because it provides low-paid workers, including many “essential” long-term care, grocery and logistics workers, more than they are paid in a month of full-time work.

Quebec’s Labour Minister has bluntly declared that workers who refuse to report for work when summoned by their employer will lose their entitlement to the CERB, even if they fear for their safety.

Under these conditions, the trade unions are continuing to expand their corporatist collaboration with the Trudeau Liberal government and big business at the expense of workers’ interests, and indeed their very lives.

The same day Statistics Canada revealed record job losses in April, the CLC published a lengthy document on its website endorsing the ruling elite’s reckless back-to-work campaign. Cynically entitled “Health and safety conditions for reopening sectors of the economy,” the statement accepted without question the right of the bosses to put the lives of workers and their families at risk by organizing a precipitous return to work that flies in the face of all medical and scientific advice.

A return-to-work, said the CLC statement, is a “monumental challenge in the era of COVID-19, but it is a challenge we must meet.”

The “challenge” the union bureaucrats have set themselves is to use bluster about ensuring a “safe workplace,” to suppress the growing worker opposition to a premature return to work and thereby ensure that Canadian capitalism can resume raking in massive profits.

The CLC and Unifor, the country’s largest industrial union, committed last month to partnering with government and employers to ensure that Canadian businesses “come roaring back.” In a statement issued jointly with the federal Labour Minister, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Canadian Bankers Association, they declared, “We agreed that as the situation continues to evolve, we must remain flexible and adaptable … and, above all, we must continue to work together. Our meeting reinforced the fact that we have common goals—to protect the health, safety, and well-being of Canadian workers and keep Canadian businesses ready to come roaring back and ensure the economy can recover by getting people back to work quickly and in a safe manner after the crisis ends.”

Workers have no “common goals” with the corporate elite, who have thrown millions of workers onto government rations, while gorging themselves on vast state handouts.

The capitalist elite is exploiting the coronavirus crisis to intensify the class war it has been waging for decades. This has included: the gutting of health care and other essential social services through round after round of austerity; massive tax cuts for big business and the rich; the effective abrogation of workers’ right to strike; and the diversion of massive resources from meeting social needs to funding Canadian imperialism’s participation in a long series of predatory US-led wars and a massive rearmament program.

The unions’ plea to “work together” with the bankers and bosses who have cashed in with hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout funds is, as they themselves admit, focused on helping businesses “come roaring back.” That is helping them corral workers back on the job amid the pandemic and to step up the exploitation of their workforces so as to produce bumper profits for investors and shareholders.

Workers must reject this course with the contempt it deserves. They must advance their own class program to deal with the crisis—a program aimed at meeting the health and social needs of the vast majority, not bolstering corporate profits. All nonessential production must be shut down until the pandemic is contained, and all workers laid off or unable to work must be provided full pay. Society’s resources must be mobilized to strengthen the health care system and ensure that health care and other essential workers have personal protective equipment and all else that is needed to ensure their safety. To finance this program, the vast sums of wealth hoarded by the banks and major corporations must be seized and directed toward meeting social needs.

These necessary demands will only be realized through a political struggle—the mobilization of the working class against the capitalist profit system and its institutions, and the fight, alongside workers in the US and around the world, for a workers government committed to socialist policies.

Nigeria: COVID-19 compounds economic recession provoked by oil price slump

Stephan McCoy

President Muhammadu Buhari has eased Nigeria’s lockdown put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19 and ordered a return to work. “No country can afford the full impact of a sustained lockdown, while awaiting the development of vaccines,” Buhari declared.

His announcement came even as the rate of new infections has grown and the risks of asymptomatic cases and untested infected persons spreading the disease remain.

Buhari imposed the lockdown on March 30, one month after the first case was confirmed on February 27. Nigeria has so far recorded 4,399 cases and 143 deaths, mostly in Lagos, the commercial centre and Abuja, the capital. These figures are widely believed to be a gross underestimate, with experts saying that the true spread of the virus is unknown, as Nigeria, with a population of 200 million, has conducted fewer than 20,000 tests and has no official system for recording deaths.

The reports of “mystery deaths” or “strange deaths” of 150 people in the northern city of Kano have called the government’s figures into question. While the state and federal governments continue to deny that the deaths were from COVID-19, the cases have now officially been linked to the coronavirus, according to Africa News.

Medical and other experts in the country are against the easing of restrictions, with the National Medical Association and the Federal Capital Territory Youth Task Force on COVID-19 both asking Buhari not to ease the lockdown. Chairman of the Youth Task Force, Ango Suleiman, condemned the easing of restrictions, warning that the government would face criticism and backlash should the situation spiral out of control. Insisting that public health must come first, he cited examples around the world where the loosening of restrictions had led to the resurgence of the virus, adding that it was necessary to have a strategy based on scientific principles.

Once again, the streets of densely populated Lagos are busy with cars, buses, tricycle taxis and large groups of people often gathering by the road waiting for public transport packed tight with commuters, largely ignoring social distancing rules.

The lockdowns in Lagos and Abuja have caused untold hardship in a country where tens of millions work as day labourers in the informal economy, leaving many without money to buy food, particularly as the cost of food and transport has skyrocketed since the lockdown began.

Many declared to be “essential workers” have been forced to make the commute during the lockdown even as transport prices have more than doubled. A petrol filling station worker, Teslim Salami, told Premium News, “Transport fares have increased, prices of food stuff have increased too. All my salary has been spent on transportation. The moment I collect this month’s salary, it will be used for paying back debts.”

The spiraling cost of food and transport has led to unrest. Riots broke out in Lagos, where hundreds of workers at a construction site and refinery protested the lockdown and the economic fallout. Police spokesman Bala Elkana reported that at a least 51 protesters were arrested, while five policemen were injured and two police posts burned.

The authorities enforced the lockdown with the greatest violence in the world. Security forces killed 18 people, while hundreds reported abusive treatment. A report by the National Human Rights Commission stated that “most of the violations witnessed during the period arose as a result of excessive or disproportionate use of force, abuse of power, corruption and non-adherence to national laws.”

Health care facilities for the majority of Nigeria’s population are appalling or non-existent. The country has some of the worst health indicators in Africa, including low doctor to patient ratios, and high rates of malaria and infectious diseases, as well as health problems related to road accidents and increasing social conflicts. Even as the lockdown started, doctors were on strike to protest unpaid wages. Most of the population cannot afford professional health care. Fake medications abound. Those who can afford it often travel abroad for health care. Many struggle to follow basic hygiene guidelines to combat COVID-19’s spread.

The death of President Buhari’s chief of staff, Abba Kyari, exposed the double standard existing in the country, sparking outrage. Kyari contracted COVID-19 while on presidential business in Germany and died on April 17. Unable to leave the country, as is typical for the Nigerian ruling elite, he received treatment at the private First Cardiology Consultants Hospital. According to the hospital website, the VIP hospital was prepared over “three months when we saw what was happening elsewhere,” reconstructing and equipping it with “air filtration/purification systems,” while staff received “IPC training [Infection Prevention Control]” and are required to receive testing for the coronavirus twice a day.

Doctors and nurses were furious, citing ministry of health guidelines that private hospitals are not allowed to act as treatment centres for COVID-19. Kyari made the cynical argument that he had been admitted to the hospital to “avoid further burdening the public health system, which faces so many pressures.”

The economic fallout from the pandemic has caused the price of oil, Nigeria's main export that provides about 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings and more than half of government revenue, to plunge, compounding the country’s already weak economy. In March, the government seized the opportunity to slash petrol subsidies, a move that will only fuel mass opposition as the low prices that masses of people rely on rise in line with “market forces.”

The government secured a loan of $3.4 billion from the International Monetary Fund, while the central bank devalued the naira from 305 to 360 per $US. But last week, the naira black-market rate was 427 to the dollar, indicating that the currency remains over-valued.

Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed said that the budget would have to be trimmed further in line with the slump in oil prices, now around $25 a barrel, on top of the 15 percent cut made in March. With the economy expected to contract by 3.4 percent this year, even as the population grows by 2 percent, she said that Nigeria was in talks to defer debt servicing, which accounts for approximately 58 percent to 60 percent of the government’s revenues, to “2021 and beyond.”

The Buhari regime sits atop mounting levels of inequality and explosive social tensions. Nigeria is one of the most socially unequal countries on earth, with just 10 individuals controlling a total net worth in excess of $26 billion while 82.9 million, or 40 percent of the population, are classified as poor, existing on just over one dollar per day. More than 23 percent of Nigerians are unemployed.

Nearly 8 million people need humanitarian assistance in Borno and two neighbouring states that have been devastated by the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency that has caused many to flee their homes. There are now 2.6 million internally displaced people. Some 52 percent of people in rural areas live in poverty, compared with 18 percent in urban parts of the country.

As criticism has mounted of his failure to suppress Boko Haram, end the violent conflict over land between the herders and farmers in Nigeria’s Middle Belt and resolve the mounting poverty, Buhari has responded by clamping down on all opposition, attacking or intimidating the judiciary, the media, the National Assembly and protesters. At the end of last year, the Nigerian Secret Service stormed the Nigerian High Court and kidnapped Omoyele Sowore, the human rights activist and founder of Sahara Reports, after he was released on bail.

Polish government forced to call off presidential elections at last minute

Clara Weiss

The far-right Polish government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) was forced to call off the May 10 presidential elections just days before the scheduled vote to prevent its fall. The Polish ruling class is now scrambling to find a solution amidst the deepest crisis since the collapse of the Stalinist regime in 1989.

The elections were not canceled until May 7. PiS and especially its leader Jarosław Kaczyński had insisted for months that the election not be delayed even though the country was under virtual lockdown and mired in crisis as COVID-19 cases continue to rise unabated.

The main rival of incumbent president Andrzej Duda, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska of the liberal Civic Platform (PO), had declared a boycott of the election back in March, and the government’s push to go ahead with the election was deeply unpopular, with 73 percent of the population opposing it in polls.

The PiS government sought to push ahead, hoping that Duda would be reelected in the first round. Since PiS has only a slim majority in the Polish parliament (Sejm), it needs a president who is fully aligned with its agenda to continue its rule without opposition from other factions of the ruling class. However, the government was thrown into deep crisis when Jarosław Gowin, the head of PiS’s main coalition partner, the Agreement party, stepped down as vice president and science minister on April 9 to protest the May 10 elections.

Gowin, a far-right politician, aligned himself with the demands for a postponed election of the liberal opposition and declared publicly: “I’m entirely scarred by my participation in this government. This can no longer continue. The May elections will cross all [red] lines and [signify] the end of democracy.” The PiS government, the conservative Rzeczpospolita noted, faced a choice of either having its government coalition blown apart by the conflict or losing the presidency, since Duda is unlikely to win in the first round at a later date.

Last Wednesday, Kaczyński and Gowin met and discussed for two hours behind closed doors and arrived at an agreement to delay the vote. The agreement provides for the Supreme Court to declare the elections null and void—even though they have not taken place yet. This will give all the parties the opportunity to choose new candidates and force them to resubmit signatures for the latter under conditions of a lockdown. Several Supreme Court judges have been fired and replaced by PiS-aligned figures in the last four years. Experts on Polish constitutional law have argued that the decision of the Supreme Court to cancel an election that never took place is unconstitutional.

Right after Kaczyński and Gowin reached their compromise, the Sejm pushed through a new bill sponsored by PiS, which relied on the votes of the Agreement party, that provides for the next presidential election to be held through mail ballot alone.

The agreement reached by Kaczyński and Gowin also specified that no state of emergency be declared even though state of emergency measures are de facto in place. An official state of emergency would make elections impossible until 60 days after the measure is lifted. It remains entirely unclear whether the elections will take place as early as May 23, or as late as July. Duda’s term officially ends on August 5.

Polish media reports suggest that panic and chaos now reign in Warsaw. Gowin’s party is deeply divided over the crisis and it is unclear whether it will back his agreement with Kaczyński, or whether he will be able to retain his position as party head. Jadwiga Emilewicz, Gowin’s closest co-thinker and protégé, opposed his decision to step down in April and replaced him as deputy prime minister, fully supporting the positions of Kaczyński and his prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

PiS and especially Kaczyński have emerged extremely weakened. Kaczyński had been the main figure pushing for the May 10 election day and had, according to the liberal Newsweek Polska, an “emergency plan.” Polls now indicate that Duda would not have won an election on Sunday in the first round anyway, and it is generally believed that his chances of winning will grow slimmer the later it takes place.

While the liberal Polish media has hailed the deep government crisis as a chance for the liberal opposition, that opposition too is in a crisis. In the eyes of masses of workers, the Civic Platform (PO) and its coalition partners are, above all, associated with many years of brutal austerity. Not a single opposition candidate who was advanced before the called-off elections stood a chance of winning even a third of the vote in the first round. The candidates that are now being discussed, most notably Donald Tusk, who has been a close ally of Angela Merkel in the European Union (EU), stand for a continuation of the unpopular policies of the PO-governments that preceded PiS.

During the five years that PiS has been in power, pushing through massive attacks on democratic rights and passing far-right legislation, such as a law censoring free speech on the Holocaust and Polish anti-Semitism, the opposition has focused on questions of foreign policy and on appeals to privileged layers of the middle class. The liberal opposition speaks for a faction of the Polish bourgeoisie that regards PiS’s almost exclusive focus on an alliance with US imperialism as dangerously one-sided, and favors a much closer cooperation with German imperialism, in particular, and the EU more broadly.

Another candidate who is not officially running for the opposition, but is viewed as having good chances in the presidential election, is the journalist Szymon Hołownia. His positions on foreign policy closely align with those of the PO and Tusk. His main advisor, Jacek Cichocki, was interior minister in the Tusk government, as well as the chief of the chancellery under both Tusk and Ewa Kopacz.

The conflicts within the Polish bourgeoisie over foreign policy have been enormously exacerbated as the coronavirus pandemic has heightened tensions between the EU and Washington. German imperialism sees the coronavirus pandemic and the crisis of the Trump administration, in particular, as an opportunity to reassert its imperialist ambitions all the more aggressively.

No faction of the Polish ruling class has anything to offer the working class under conditions of the most far-reaching breakdown of world capitalism in history. While the official unemployment figures are still quite low, many workers have, in fact, been laid off. The three-month notice requirement for layoffs that many workers have in their contracts will run out in June or July, raising the likelihood that the elections will take place under conditions of the highest unemployment levels in decades. Inflation now officially stands at 4.5 percent, six times higher than anticipated.

The virus continues to spread in the country at an alarming rate. Poland’s confirmed cases now stand at 16,326, and 811 people have died. However, less than half a million tests have been performed. The region hit hardest now is Silesia, a predominantly industrial and working-class region in the west of the country, on the border with Germany. As elsewhere, essential workers have been hit the hardest. According to official statistics, those dying most often from the virus are industrial workers, taxi drivers, transit and construction workers, as well as cooks.

EU supports Orbán’s dictatorial measures in Hungary

Markus Salzmann

At the end of March, the Hungarian government passed an Emergency Law giving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán extensive dictatorial powers. Although similar to Hitler’s “Enabling Act,” which consolidated the Nazi dictatorship in Germany in 1933, the law enjoys the support of the European Union.

The law allows Orbán to govern by decree for an unlimited period. He has the right to “suspend the application of certain laws by decree” and to “introduce other exceptional measures to guarantee the stability of life, health, personal and material security of citizens and the economy.” Parliament is effectively suspended. The law does not place a time limit on the state of emergency; the government can extend it at will.

The Emergency Law is supposedly to enable a fight against the coronavirus pandemic, but from the very beginning, it was clear that this is only a flimsy pretext. As the Hungarian newspaper Magyar Közlöny has pointed out, it mainly affects areas that have absolutely nothing to do with the fight against COVID-19.

In the judicial system, for example, the rights of defendants or convicted persons are drastically restricted. Civil and criminal proceedings can be postponed indefinitely by judges or prosecutors. The same applies to court applications by persons in custody. Actions for compensation may be dismissed as inadmissible without justification.

The rights to data protection and privacy, which in any case only exist on paper, have now also been formally abolished with the Emergency Law. The Minister for Innovation and Technology, that is, the government, now has the right to access all available personal data. Similarly, parts of the European data protection regulation have been repealed. The right to access or delete one’s data has been removed, as has the right to appeal against it. The decree also exempts government agencies from the obligation to provide information on the collection and processing of personal data.

The entire law is directed against the Hungarian working class. This can be seen from the fact that provisions of the labour law can be completely repealed. Some professional groups can now even be obliged to work 24 hours a day. This regulation marks the climax of the Orbán government’s attacks on labour protection rights.

At the same time, EU subsidies can be paid out without requiring a risk analysis or on-site inspections. This benefits large companies, most of which are under government control or belong to people politically close to Orbán. Over 140 “system-critical” companies have been placed under military control with reference to the fight against the pandemic.

To enforce all this, even against resistance from the population, the army has been given police powers. Government critics are threatened with draconian punishments under the law. For example, the dissemination of so-called “false news” is punishable by up to five years in prison and violations of quarantine regulations by up to eight years.

The criminal offences are so vaguely formulated that any dissenting opinion or oppositional action can fall under them. “Viktor Orbán now rules as a dictator,” commented Hungarian constitutional law expert Gábor Halmai. With the Emergency Law, Orbán’s system had also lost its formal democratic nature.

While the Emergency Law, which was passed under the pretext of fighting the coronavirus, remains in force, the few protective measures for the population, initiated too late in any case, have largely been revoked. As in most other European countries, the safety of the population is subordinated to the interests of the corporations—in Hungary, mainly Western car companies.

Since the beginning of the month, there have been hardly any restrictions, such as social distancing, outside the capital city of Budapest. Meanwhile, there are already plans to relax the regulations in Budapest as well, where the majority of confirmed coronavirus cases have been reported. According to official figures, there are 3,263 infected persons and 413 fatalities in Hungary. But these figures say very little. In hardly any other European country are so few people tested.

In addition, the government deliberately does not publish data. The mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, recently demanded this from the government. He complained that, above all, data on infections in hospitals remained under wraps, although it was sufficiently known that clinics and medical facilities are coronavirus hotspots. He also criticized the fact that people who are discharged from hospitals are not tested as a matter of principle.

The coronavirus crisis has also brought to light the scale of the social catastrophe in the country. Of the approximately ten million inhabitants, over one million live below the poverty line, a number that is now continuing to rise rapidly. Despite the loss of income due to the crisis, there is no additional state support being provided. The situation is particularly precarious for the approximately 300,000 Roma, who live in ghettos under sometimes inhumane conditions. After the easing of restrictions, they are exposed to even higher risks. “If the virus gets into the slums, it will be brutal,” Reuters quotes Krisztina Jasz of the European Anti-Poverty Network.

While opposition to Orbán is growing in the country, his establishment of a dictatorship is gaining support among Europe’s ruling classes. The EU Commission expressly declared that it would not take action against the emergency laws. According to a report in Die Welt, confirmed by Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, there are “no concrete grounds indicating the violation of fundamental democratic rights” and therefore “no immediate countermeasures from Brussels are necessary.”

On top of this, the Hungarian government is receiving massive EU funding, not a single cent of which goes towards the expansion of ailing public health facilities or benefits affected workers. Hungary receives €5.6 billion in emergency EU aid, which corresponds to 3.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Italy, the country worst affected by the coronavirus in Europe, receives only €2.3 billion, or 0.1 percent of its GDP. The EU Parliament has expressly approved this.

Even the European Stability Initiative, a left-wing Berlin think tank, commented, “The EU is giving Victor Orban almost four percent of its economic output while he rises to dictatorship. This severely damages the Union, which wants to be a democratic community of values.”

In fact, the EU is deliberately supporting Hungary’s path to dictatorship. Governments across Europe are preparing similar steps to implement their murderous “back to work” policies. While banks and corporations receive tens of billions of euros overnight, money is supposedly lacking for the simplest of safety measures for workers. This is incompatible with democratic rights. For this reason, the states of the EU are moving ever more openly in the direction of dictatorship and fascism.

Building on this, Orbán is openly revealing his fascist sentiments. Last week, Orbán used Facebook to wish Hungarian schoolchildren good luck for their upcoming exams. He posted a section of a globe on which the so-called Greater Hungary is clearly marked. Until 1920, this included parts of what is now Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Slovakia. Since then, fascist forces in the country have been demanding the re-establishment of Greater Hungary.

UK COVID-19 death rate far higher in working class

Simon Whelan

Two reports by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that working-class people are most likely to die from COVID-19 in England and Wales, particularly in the most deprived areas.

“Deaths involving COVID-19 by local area and socioeconomic deprivation: deaths occurring between 1 March and 17 April 2020” reveals that those residing in the most deprived communities are more than twice as likely to die from the coronavirus than those in the wealthiest districts. Impoverished working-class communities tend to be located within inner-city districts devastated by decades of government cuts and austerity imposed by Labour Party-run councils.

The research analyses all deaths that occurred in England and Wales up to April 18, 2020 where the COVID-19 virus was involved. London had the highest number of deaths at 4,950, 42 percent of the 11,922 total deaths in the city from all causes. The lowest proportion of deaths involving COVID-19 was in the south-west with 1,051 (13 percent of 8,389 total deaths).

The poorest districts have suffered a massively disproportionate average of deaths. The mortality rate for the most deprived areas in March and early April was 55.1 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 25.3 deaths per 100,000 in the least deprived areas. According to the ONS, the death rate progressively rises from the least deprived areas to the most deprived.

The deprivation levels used by the ONS are based on the index of multiple deprivation, which measures a range of factors including income, employment, health, education, crime, the living environment and access to housing.

Districts with higher housing density were found to be experiencing a higher rate of death from the virus than areas with a lower density of housing. Inner city districts and public housing estates characterised by densely packed terrace housing and multi-occupancy high-rise properties suffer a higher tendency for casualties than middle-class suburban and semi-rural residential districts.

Many workers in these communities are employed within key services who cannot work from home, such as bus drivers, National Health Service staff and supermarket workers.

Such inequalities have been exacerbated by chronic residential overcrowding and the prevalence of multigenerational households. This is a contributory factor towards ethnic minority populations suffering such high virus death rates. Overcrowding has been exacerbated over the last decade by Conservative-led governments charging a punitive tax on unused bedrooms, forcing many poorer families into smaller properties.

Seven of the 10 local authority districts with the highest levels of income deprivation among older people are in London. According to 2019 data, Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Knowsley, Hull and Manchester have the highest proportions of neighbourhoods among the most deprived in England outside London.

The highest COVID-19 death rates in England and Wales were all located within the capital. Inner London working-class boroughs with the highest levels of poverty, deprivation and poor social services are the worst affected. The east London borough of Newham, which incorporates Stratford, West Ham, East Ham and Canning Town, has suffered the highest overall mortality rate in the country, followed closely by Hackney and Brent, 144.3, 142 and 127 deaths per 100,000 respectively.

Seven other London boroughs—Tower Hamlets, Haringey, Harrow, Southwark, Lewisham, Lambeth and Ealing—make up the 10 local authorities with the highest death rates. London’s mortality rate of 85.7 deaths per 100,000 population is according to the ONS “statistically significantly higher” than any other area of the country—almost double the next highest rate.

Death rates were high in all the major cities, but especially those cities with the highest poverty rates—Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. Other local authorities—some in the deindustrialised north like Salford and Middlesbrough, others in smaller towns like London satellites Watford, Luton and Slough—had rates above 65 deaths per 100,000 people.

In Liverpool, 2.7 out of every 1,000 residents have been confirmed as contracting COVID-19. This is the same rate as central London on a per-head basis, and higher than east or north London. Liverpool recorded an age-standardised death rate of 82 for every 1,00,000 residents until April 17, more than twice the 36 deaths for every 1,000 people in England and Wales. Neighbouring Knowsley and St. Helens both witnessed 3.3 cases for every 1,000 residents, and on the Wirral the rate was 2.9.

Parts of the north-east have even higher confirmed case rates; Sunderland has 3.9 per 1,000 residents, second only to the London borough of Brent, and a death rate of 63 in every 100,000. The data reveals a cluster of high case rates in the Black Country, with Walsall witnessing around three cases per 1,000 residents, as well as 0.7 deaths, and Wolverhampton suffering a relatively high death rate of 68 in every 100,000.

The more affluent rural south-west of England, the Home Counties, including Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset and Gloucestershire, have only slightly over one in 10 of total deaths caused by COVID-19—making them the regions with the single lowest proportion of virus deaths.

Other areas of the country, some with major cities like Yorkshire, the Humber, the east Midlands, Wales and others without them—like southeast England—all containing more affluent upper-middle-class areas, had significantly lower rates than the national average.

A second ONS report, published yesterday, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by occupation, England and Wales,” found that males aged between the ages of 20 and 64, working in jobs such as cleaners, security guards and drivers are four times more likely to die of coronavirus than university graduates working in professional occupations such as accountants, lawyers and engineers.

The report analysed 2,494 registered deaths involving COVID-19 in the working age population, up to and including April 20.

Millions of workers employed in what the ONS terms “elementary” jobs, including cleaners and low-skilled construction workers, had the highest risk of death. It found, “men working in the lowest skilled occupations had the highest rate of death involving COVID-19, with 21.4 deaths per 100,000 males (225 deaths); men working as security guards had one of the highest rates, with 45.7 deaths per 100,000 (63 deaths).”

Men in “professional” occupations died at a rate of 5.6 per 100,000—four times lower than those in “low skilled elementary occupations.”

It notes, “The major group with the next highest [death] rate was Caring, leisure and other service occupations (17.9 deaths per 100,000 males, or 72 deaths), which include occupations such as nursing assistants, care workers and ambulance drivers.

“Other major occupational groups with high mortality rates of death involving COVID-19, when compared with the rate among men of working age in the population” include “Process, plant and machine operatives occupations (15.5 deaths per 100,000 males; 242 deaths) Sales and customer service occupations (14.3 deaths per 100,000 males; 54 deaths) Administrative and secretarial occupations (13.9 deaths per 100,000 males; 66 deaths)”

Over 200 National Health Service and social care workers have died during the pandemic, with not being provided with the necessary personal protective equipment a central factor. The ONS report notes, “A total of 131 deaths involving COVID-19 among social care workers were registered up to, and including, 20 April 2020, with rates of 23.4 deaths per 100,000 males (45 deaths) and 9.6 deaths per 100,000 females (86 deaths). In this group, we included occupations such as care workers and home carers, which accounted for most of the deaths (98 out of 131 deaths, or 74.8 percent), social workers, managers of residential care institutions and care escorts. Of the individual occupations, we were only able to calculate a reliable rate for care workers and home carers … significantly raised [death] rates for this occupation were found among men and women.”

Dozens of bus, rail and other public transport workers have died during the pandemic. Among the other occupations where workers have “raised rates of death involving COVID-19” are “taxi drivers and chauffeurs (36.4 deaths per 100,000); bus and coach drivers (26.4 deaths per 100,000); chefs (35.9 deaths per 100,000); and sales and retail assistants (19.8 deaths per 100,000).”

Rising number of COVID-19 deaths in Germany’s retirement and care homes

Elisabeth Zimmermann

As the German government is effectively ending the coronovirus lockdown measures, reports about people dying of COVID-19 in retirement and care homes are increasing.

Over the weekend four people, three men and one woman, died of the coronavirus in the Protestant retirement and nursing home of the Inner Mission in Planegg, Bavaria. On Friday, the health department of the city of Mönchengladbach confirmed the death of an 82-year-old resident at the St. Antonius retirement home.

German nursing homes have become death traps in the coronavirus pandemic, making clear that is not only in the United States, Italy and Spain where COVID-19 has rampaged out of control.

According to figures from the Robert Koch Institute released on April 23, around 1,500 residents of retirement and nursing homes had died of a coronavirus infection. At that time, this amounted to almost a third of all COVID-19 deaths in Germany and the number of unreported cases is certainly much higher.

There are no official statistics on confirmed coronavirus cases in homes for the elderly and there is no proper register of cases in outpatient care. Around 800,000 people live in retirement and nursing homes in Germany.

Conditions in some of the homes are nightmarish. For example, 23 people died of COVID-19 in the Maternus retirement home in Cologne, according to a report in Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) on April 29. The WDR had received information from staff at the home. The Cologne retirement home cares for 140 people in assisted living quarters and 75 in the care sector. The home is operated by the Berlin-based company Cura GmbH.

A few weeks ago, more than 50 residents of the home and about two dozen staff were infected, including the head of the facility. Employees reported anonymously on their shocking experiences at the start of the coronavirus crisis. Staff brought residents with clear symptoms of the virus to surrounding clinics, from where they were sent back to the nursing home without being tested.

As in almost all nursing homes affected by the coronavirus outbreaks, the lack of sufficient personnel and protective equipment is the main reason for the rapid spread of the virus and subsequent high death rates for residents already in poor health. Staff and residents of the home told the WDR that they were highly fearful for the future.

Dramatic scenes also took place the week before Easter in the Sankt Monika nursing home just a few kilometers away. The home near the city of Bonn is run by Caritas. Thirty-seven of the 70 residents and 38 nurses tested positive for the coronavirus. Infected residents were transferred to hospitals.

The national civil protection department had to temporarily take over care of non-infected residents because most of the nursing staff in the home had been infected. Subsequently, some infected nursing staff were forced back to work from their home quarantine after just one week instead of the prescribed two in order to maintain operation of the nursing home. The procedure has been officially allowed for a few days.

The reprehensible behavior of the care home management and local authorities is not an isolated case. In other regions, care home operators and authorities have also shown indifference to the health risks confronting care workers and residents.

In mid-April it was revealed that 21 out of 104 residents and 15 employees in a home for the elderly in Duisburg were infected. Four residents were taken to hospital and three have died of COVID-19 in the past few weeks. After further tests, the number of infected residents and employees increased to 46.

In Würzburg, 25 residents in the St. Nikolaus retirement home and 19 residents of another retirement home have died of COVID-19. In the district of Fürth, which like Würzburg is located in the state of Bavaria, 23 people died of coronavirus in one home and 18 in another city in the region.

There are similar cases in other cities and states. Hospitals, clinics and other facilities have been repeatedly affected by outbreaks of the pandemic.

Radio Westphalia reported eight infected patients and employees at the Gollwitzer-Meier clinic in Bad Oeynhausen, a rehabilitation clinic for those suffering from heart and vascular diseases. All 170 inpatients and 170 employees are now being tested for the virus.

Radio Berlin Brandenburg reported on April 30 that 81 patients and 70 employees in the Brandenburg Clinic in Bernau have now tested positive for COVID-19. Fifteen have died of the infection.

According to the Barnim district administration, all of the deceased patients suffered from serious and in some cases incurable illnesses. This is a statement which is used by politicians to downplay the dangers of the coronavirus and divert attention from their own negligence. The fact is that the victims would probably still be alive if they had been properly shielded from COVID-19.

While coronavirus spreads, lockdowns lifted across Europe

Will Morrow

Governments across Europe lifted confinement measures yesterday, reopening schools and businesses and returning millions of workers across the continent to their workplaces as the deadly coronavirus continued to spread. The end to lockdown is proceeding even as new reports emerge of an uptick in cases in areas where its spread had been brought under control and lockdown restrictions had since been eased.

In France, where roughly 2,800 people remain under ventilation in hospitals and where 70 people died in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of dead to 26,380, the eight-week lockdown that began on March 17 ended yesterday. Schools reopened for the youngest students, and non-essential businesses resumed, with the hospitality sector restricted to running take-out services.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered an end to the lockdown last Wednesday, with schools and businesses reopening. Restaurants have already begun dine-in service in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Non-essential businesses also opened in Austria, and final-year students had already returned to school last week.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivered a national televised address on Sunday evening, calling for construction and manufacturing workers and others who cannot work from home to return to work. Yesterday, data from the UK Office of National Statistics showed that construction and other low-skilled elementary workers were among the most likely to die from the disease, with a mortality rate of 21.4 per 100,000 people as of April 20, along with social caring workers and machine operators.

Johnson also called for schools to prepare to reopen, declaring that all students should be in school for at least one month before summer. The UK’s coronavirus official, vastly underestimated death toll grew by another 268 yesterday to 32,065, with almost 4,000 new reported cases.

Belgium, which has the highest per capita death rate from the coronavirus in the world, with more than 53,000 confirmed cases and 8,707 deaths out of a population of just over 11 million people, reopened schools and stores yesterday. In Italy, where statistical analysis of the national mortality rate indicates that the real coronavirus death toll is more than 50,000, all non-essential businesses have been reopened since last Monday.

In Spain, people living in many areas of the country have been allowed to go to restaurants, visit family members and attend gatherings of up to 10 people since yesterday. The Socialist Party and pseudo-left Podemos government is implementing an end to confinement even as the country’s military predicts that its policies will lead to a second wave of the virus in the country where it has already killed 26,744 people.

In Denmark, secondary schools are due to open next week, while shopping centres opened yesterday. In Norway, all classes resumed today after classes had already been opened for those aged 6–10. Schools will reopen on May 14 in Finland. Final-year school students already returned last week in the Netherlands. All stores opened in Greece yesterday.

The mass return to work underway across Europe is in line with the criminal policy being pursued by the Trump administration in the United States. It is being carried out hand-in-glove with the trade unions in every country, who are enforcing the return to work and suppressing any struggle by workers against the deconfinement.

The European ruling class, like its American counterparts, is not seeking to carry out a struggle against the spread of the coronavirus. Its policies are driven by the requirement to force workers back into their workplace, regardless of the risk to their lives and those of their loved ones, to continue pumping out profits.

The reopening of classrooms, exposing children, teachers and their families to the disease, underscores the criminality of this policy. Children are being sent to school so that their parents can be freed to work, while scientists continue to issue warnings that schools function as propagation vectors for virus transmission and that children may develop a rare and potentially fatal syndrome, Kawasaki Disease, as a result of the coronavirus.

Even as the return to work is underway, evidence is already emerging that it is leading to a renewed uptick in cases. In Germany, where a systematic campaign has been underway in the media and by the political establishment to minimise the danger of the virus, the Robert Koch Institute reported yesterday that the virus reproduction rate had increased above unity, indicating exponential spread.

In France, two new clusters were detected over the weekend, in Dordogne and Vienne. The cluster in Vienne, in central France, occurred at a school because the teachers had had to come into the building to make preparations for the return of students. The French education minister Olivier Blanquer nonetheless declared in an interview with the Journal de Dimanche the same day that every child in France should be in school at least one day this month.

The criminal character of the ruling class’ policy is epitomized by the Macron administration. For weeks, it declared that it would only order an end to confinement once it had sufficient capacity to conduct mass testing and contact tracing to contain the spread of the virus. It estimated this would mean at least 700,000 tests per week, which it declared would be ready by the time deconfinement was ordered. The director of health Jérôme Salomon had included daily test numbers as part of the government’s briefing.

As the deconfinement deadline approached, this promise was quietly dropped. While the government provides no central tally of the number of tests in the country, an analysis published by the investigative wing of Radio France published yesterday, which tabulated various local sources, concluded that approximately 149,000 tests were conducted in the week from April 27 to May 3, less than a quarter of the government’s supposed required threshold for a deconfinement.

In other words, the deconfinement had nothing to do with satisfying the conditions for a preconceived scientific plan for the combating the virus, but was determined by the government’s economic policy, with a suitable lying pretext invented, and then dropped when even this façade could not be maintained.

From the outset of the pandemic, the European ruling class, like its counterparts internationally, has responded to the pandemic not as a healthcare emergency, but as a market event. It has been engaged not in a fight to save lives, but to protect corporate profits.

While national governments have initiated multi-hundred-billion-euro bailout packages for large corporations, the European Central Bank voted in March to carry out a 750 billion euro asset-purchasing program throughout 2020, buying bonds from both corporations and national governments in order to prop up share markets. The asset purchases have since been raised to 1.1 trillion euros. While the corporate and financial elite has been protected from any losses to their wealth, hundreds of billions of euros in worthless assets are being transferred directly from the books of corporations and banks on to the ledgers of central banks, for which the ruling class will seek to make the working class pay through brutal austerity against its jobs and living conditions.

The lifting of lockdowns across Europe signifies that the ruling class is carrying out policies that will, and that it knows will, lead to the deaths of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.