IV543 - April 2020

As of April 11, the Netherlands is suffering the fifth highest per capita Covid-19 death rate in the world, reporting 24,413 confirmed coronavirus infections and 2,643 Covid-19 deaths in a county of just 17 million. Center-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte was slow to respond to the crisis domestically and has pushed harsh loan conditions for emergency financial measures to aid other member states in the European Union.

The current situation in Russia has reached “a perfect storm”: the pandemic here coincided with the collapse of the national currency, as well as the political crisis caused by Vladimir Putin’s proposals to change the Constitution. At a time when every world political leader seeks to show himself as a sovereign capable of declaring a state of emergency and winning the “war” against the virus, Putin demonstrates a complete unwillingness to take responsibility for what is happening. At the national level, the danger of the coronovirus was recognized only a week ago, on March 25, when the president addressed the nation. By that time, the number of officially infected people in the country was close to one thousand, but it was clear that with the current deplorable state of the Russian health care system, the burden on it could become catastrophic.

Belgium is no exception to the rule: here too, the arrival of Covid19 has changed social, political and daily life. The first days of March were punctuated by demonstrations and strikes by women, the stagnation of negotiations for a federal coalition and by the wrath of the PTB (radical left), pending other annual demonstrations (notably anti-racist). In a few days everything accelerated. On 10 April, Belgium officially counted 3019 deaths from the corona virus and 5610 people hospitalized, including 1268 in intensive care, out of 1900 places available in the country. So 58 % of beds are occupied, with saturation in certain hospitals in Brussels, Hainaut et Limbourg.

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change,” Milton Friedman, main torchbearer of neoliberalism, once claimed. The ongoing crisis is no exception. Working people will face a cannonade of attacks, over wages and working conditions, equality and democracy, as well as over environment and climate issues. But the double crisis of the epidemic and economic also opens the possibility of winning support for climate conversion. Market forces, which seemed so sacrosanct and inviolable, have failed.

A spectre is haunting the world – not, unfortunately, that of communism, but that of a corona pandemic that is spreading apace.

“This pandemic can, and should, be a moment when the left puts forward a concrete agenda for how to support life over profit in a way that will help us move beyond capitalism.”

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread rapidly around the world and remains out of control – other than in those countries, led by China, that had (crucially) moved early and decisively to control it, and had prepared for such a situation in advance. The biggest governmental failures, on the other hand, are by administrations led by right-wing populists like Johnson and Trump who started, in effect, as virus deniers, but were forced belatedly to recognise Covid-19 as a serious threat after their actions had ensured that hundreds of thousands of people would lose their lives unnecessarily.

This week l’Humanite (newspaper of the French Communist Party) has been asking representatives of the left about their vision for the "day after” Today we interview Olivier Besancenot, of the NPA, who argues for a “shock of solidarity”.

This statement was issued by the European organizations of the Fourth International on 8 April 2020.

South Africa has the highest number of coronavirus infections in Africa, topping 1200 as of March 30, including the second Covid-19 fatality. More than twenty-five years after the ANC’s triumph and Nelson Mandela’s election, how well-prepared is post-apartheid capitalism to confront the contagion? Unfortunately, the answers are not pretty, nor are they promising. Instead, South Africa is “long over due for a socialist transformation” argues Patrick Bond. Bond is Bond is a professor at the University of the Western Cape School of Government. and co-editor of BRICS: An anti-capitalist critique (published by Haymarket, Pluto, Jacana and Aakar). This article is part of No Borders News ongoing international coronavirus coverage.