Capitalist Governments’ Policy of Neglect
by Aaron Byrne
In December of 2019, a new virus appeared in Wuhan, the capital city of the Hubei Province in China. In the months and weeks since it was first identified it has gone on to infect over 1.5 million people with cases in nearly every country on the globe. On the 12th of March, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had officially declared the virus a Pandemic.
This crisis seemingly appeared from nowhere, with cases increasing at an alarming rate throughout the month of March. However, Scientists have been warning that the world was completely unprepared for a pandemic for many years. In 2018, Sylvie Briand, a specialist in infectious diseases at the World Health Organisation, stated that “Humanity is more vulnerable in the face of epidemics because we are much more connected and we travel around much more quickly than before”.
Around two-thirds of all infectious diseases in humans have their origins in wild animals. The risk of these viruses and diseases transferring to humanity will only increase in the coming years, as more and more ecosystems and habitats are destroyed in the name of profit. Dr. Peter Daszak, a professor at Columbia University and President of the EcoHealth Alliance, and his team studied every known emerging disease over the past 60 years in order to determine its most likely point of origin and analysed changes happening in these places that could potentially cause a pandemic to occur. Dr. Daszak stated, “Our analysis shows that land use change — the conversion of tropical forest into agricultural land and livestock farms — is associated with around 30% of known emerging diseases”.
What has been the impact?
The impacts of COVID19 on the globe have been wide and far-reaching. In little over a month, Ireland has been placed in a more or less state of lockdown, with restrictions on movement and essential services only being allowed to operate. One major impact of the crisis can be seen in the skyrocketing rate of unemployment as entire sectors are forced to close to prevent the spread of the virus. At the end of March, 513,350 people were receiving unemployment benefits. Best estimates of the level of unemployment place the figure at around 17-18%, which is still higher than the 16% recorded at the peak of the last financial crisis. This figure is likely to rise even higher with the construction industry, which employs 147,000 people, also being told to shut down.
The crisis is also exposing how underfunded and unprepared the Irish healthcare system is to face such a pandemic. Between 2008 and 2014 the Irish health system had suffered over 2.7 billion euros worth of cutbacks because of austerity imposed as a result of the 2008 financial crash. This trend continued beyond 2014, with the situation only worsening. In 2014, Ireland had 260 beds per 100,000 people. This was far below the EU average and the figure and this problem was sustained in the years following. This policy of austerity in order to force working people to suffer and pay for a crisis that they did not create crippled the Irish healthcare system and the consequences of this are now in full view.
As a result of pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, we can now clearly see the workers that are essential to the function and operation of our society. Healthcare workers, shop workers, delivery drivers, cleaners, factory workers, most of which would previously be considered unskilled or worthy of only minimum wage have now been shown to be vital to our society. It is clear now that it is not the upper class of our society that is essential, but it is the “unskilled” workers cleaning our hospitals, working on shop floors or delivering our goods.
The Impending Crisis of Climate Change
Another crisis that has not been adequately prepared for and is as equally ignored by the ruling elite is climate change. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today, of which frequent pandemics could potentially become a part. Warnings of the impact of climate change have been coming from as far back as 1959, when physicist Edward Teller informed the American Petroleum Institute that a 10% increase in CO2 would be enough to melt the Ice caps and submerge New York, saying “I think this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe”.
In 2019, 11,000 Scientists issued a statement stating that “To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. This entails major transformations in the ways out global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems”. This is a clear warning that the current capitalist system, that looks upon the natural world as little more than a means to make profits, cannot make the needed changes in order to combat the climate crisis. The same can be said for crises caused by pandemics.
The technologies of renewable energies have come far, with global investments between the years of 2010 and 2018 totalling around $2.3 trillion. However, it is highly unlikely that renewable energy would grow fast enough to match fossil fuels and avert a climate catastrophe. Ireland is an island nation with access to a huge coastline. The technology exists for offshore wind power but the unwillingness to pay for such an endeavour by the capitalist elite hampers Ireland’s ability to transfer to green energy. Our closest neighbours, the UK, are an island and have seven of the ten world's largest offshore wind farms. This could easily be replicated in Ireland on a similar scale.
Factory farming is another example of the capitalist drive to generate profits at the expense of the environment and our health, rather than operate on a basis to provide only what is needed. For example, the majority of antibiotics in the United States are not given to humans but to animals, in order to make them grow bigger and to prevent illness in harsh and cramped factory farming conditions. This complete misuse of medicine in the name of capitalist greed is directly contributing to the growing resistance to antibiotics around the world.
Policy of Neglect
Seemingly, the current strategy of the ruling class is to simply ignore the warnings until they are completely unavoidable. Then, as can be seen with the coronavirus, they borrow massive amounts of money to hurl at the crisis in the hopes that it will go away and they can return to making and hoarding profits. After the crisis is over, the politicians of the ruling class will congratulate themselves on a job well done and then hand the bill to working people, telling them to pay for a crisis that they did not create and could not avoid. This was seen in the last financial crash, when a policy of austerity was imposed in countries around the world to force the working class to pay for the mistakes of the ruling class.
Capitalism was, and still is, woefully unprepared to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Shortages of PPE, ICU beds and medical equipment can be seen everywhere. This is because successive governments refused to invest in the staff and equipment necessary to defend our health and welfare. Under capitalism, the profits of the few always come before the needs of the many.
We have a choice
After this is all over, we will be presented with a choice. It will be a choice of how we should reorganise our society to prevent future epidemics and future crises and to ensure our needs are not sacrificed for profit.
It will take radical change, with policies similar to that of the Green New Deal proposed in America, in order to prepare our society to face the future crisis of climate change. This needs to start by taking the power away from the tiny few who use the Earth as a means to make profit, and giving it to the working masses. We need a society where plans and changes to combat climate change are democratically discussed and implemented in all areas of the economy, in order to shift our system from one of profit to one of need.