by Joe Wright
The pandemic has once again shown us that capitalism is a disease.
Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been once again shown that capitalism does not serve the wishes of those who hold it up, but rather the rich, who steal and leach off of those who labor. During the beginning of the pandemic and still to this day, hundreds-of-thousands of people have been plunged into poverty through job loss and had no help until they had been struggling for months. Capitalism and the interests of the rich continue to be detrimental to working people.
In the Duration of the pandemic, the U.S. billionaire’s wealth has increased by $1.6 trillion. This is parallel to 600k deaths and trillions of dollars being injected into corporations while hospitals were lacking resources and people were forced to work in unsafe conditions. In March of 2020, Congress passed the 2.2 trillion dollars Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), which essentially was bailout money for large corporations to stay afloat while the economy crashed. While trillions of dollars were injected into corporations, it took almost an entire year for a relief fund to come to low-income working people. The American Rescue Plan, a 1.9 trillion dollar relief bill passed in late February of 2021, is still somehow less money as opposed to what the government had done for the rich. This alone is enough to prove whom the U.S. government prioritizes: the rich. But more: During the beginning pandemic, 46% of lower-income people reported that they were having trouble paying bills or paying rent. The rich were prioritized over working people who were in desperate need of help. The lack of effort put into helping those in need once again proves who the U.S government truly cares about.
Many times when people are in contention with socialism, it is the redistribution of wealth that they are actually in disagreement with. There is something important for them to know: that while under the vague definition of socialism there are social programs that could be considered the redistribution of wealth, there is much more to socialism. Being anti-capitalist is much more than advocating for the redistribution of wealth. It is about fixing the systems that made it possible for these large concentrations of wealth to exist in the first place. Many people fail to realize that a social-democrat welfare state does not solve the problems that capitalism brings forth. Our entire economic system has to be rebuilt from the ground up. This is done through a worker-owned means of production; in layman’s terms, this is when workers make democratic decisions in the workplace while simultaneously owning the means in which they produce commodities. A worker-owned means of production allows for the surplus-value of one’s labor to be kept, rather than stolen for profit by an employer.
All of this information is very heavy and at times it may seem like there is no hope, but you have to remember that we: the people, are all in this together. Mutual aid is the idea of helping those in your community via organizing food drives, donating clothing or money directly to those in need, keeping in mind that you are one day going to be taken care of by your community if needed. Mutual aid is different from charity in that there is no moral superiority of those who give to those in need. Mutual aid is such an important part of being anti-capitalist. Lifting people in your community and fighting against the iniquities that capitalism perpetuates: racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and patriarchy to name a few; is a very good way to be anti-capitalist.
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains”.
-Assata Shakur
Cites:
https://time.com/5845116/coronavirus-bailout-rich-richer/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/02/united-states-pandemic-impact-people-poverty
At a Glance 