Lessons from the dockworkers’ strike in Italy against the mandatory ‘Green Pass’

Statement of ‘Le Prolétaire’, October 22, 2021.

Faced with the need to cope with the rising infection and hospitalization rates in the current  “fourth wave” of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a staggering vaccination campaign, some governments in the western hemisphere increasingly take their resort to measures… not so much of strengthening public health services, but rather of increasing repression, like blackmailing wage earners, who are barred from their workplaces and having their wages suspended, if they do not dispose of the required vaccination status, as for instance in Italy.

The following elaborate statement by the Bordigist group around ‘Le Prolétaire’  analyses an attempt initiated by dockworkers in Italy last autumn to thwart off such an attempt by the state to strengthen its control over the workers (via the “green pass”) – one that however was nipped in the bud rather spectacularly, not only by the usual political and syndicalist maneuvers, but also by the poisonous, if not nefarious, influence of the ‘anti-vax movement’. It also proposes some basic lessons to draw from this defeat that merit discussion.

Green Pass, yes – Green Pass, no: It’s the triumph of bourgeois ideology

Covid-19 Pandemic and government measures: I.O.D. on false controversies about the “Green Pass”

As many European governments see themselves forced to take emergency measures to counter the effects of a renewed upsurge of the pandemic, and prevent ailing health care systems from collapsing, a certain populist resistance against measures like the extension of the “green pass”  (or whatever the official proof of health vaccination status is called) has taken a new upsurge as well. This has translated in demonstrations in a number of countries (f.i. in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria), more often than not escalating in rioting and deliberate confrontations with the police. As the following statement published by the Istituto Onorato Damen argues at the hand of the situation in Italy, this wave of upheaval passes completely besides the real issues at stake.

‘Circolo Internazionalista’ on Protests against Covid-19 Policies and a certain ‘radical Left’

With the rapid propagation of the so-called “Delta” variant of SARS-CoV2 becoming dominant, the Corona-virus pandemic has entered a new phase. First discovered in India, it is reported to be more infectious notably than the “Alpha” variant that spread from the South of England at the end of 2020. Faced with this turn in the pandemic, among concerns about the effectiveness of the vaccinations already administered, and confronted with staggering of the respective vaccination campaigns, several governments in the Western hemisphere have been caught in the middle, and were forced to recede from all too “optimistically” lifting their restrictive measures, notably concerning their night-life, tourism and festival sectors during the summer holiday season. Very rapidly, a widespread tendency showed up to intensify state control of social life (e.g. through the application of the “Corona-passport”) and to forcefully lift vaccination degrees by mandatory vaccination for specific professional categories (notably in health care and hospitals, like in France), or even for whole sectors (like in the USA). In Germany, a.o., the government saw itself forced to hastily reintroduce stricter border controls, notably for those returning from holiday travels abroad in “high risk areas”.

The recent measures by the respective governments have led to a resurgence of “Corona-protests” in these countries, habitually mobilizing a very heterogeneous spectrum of discontent, without any proletarian class character or perspective, but with a marked presence of all kinds of openly right-wing extremist groups, manifesting their anti-social character with increasing aggressiveness. The influence of this amalgam with certain proletarian milieus and political tendencies has incited an internationalist group like the Circulo Internazionalista “coalizione operaia” in Italy to take position, as can be read hereafter in translation.

Capitalism, Wars and Epidemics (IV. Conclusion)

To be buried by capitalism or to free the entire Earth from a vampiric system?

In the following we publish the conclusion of this article attempting to situate the corona-virus pandemic and its consequences in a broader perspective and from different angles. The previous three parts are also available on this blog:

Part I: §1 Commodity, Commerce and Confinement;  §2 The Precedent of the Spanish Flu: Defense Secrets, Brainwashing and War Economy to better cut up the Cannon Fodder. (Online: March 31, 2020, ‘AFRD’ Vol.4#2 (April – June 2020) p.9 ff.)

Part II: §3 Capitalism, Imperialism and the War of Microbes.
(Online: July 4, 2020, ‘AFRD’ Vol.4#3 (July – September 2020) p.19 ff.)

Part III: §4 The destruction of health systems and of the ecosystem. The commodification of the world. (Online: September 27 (§4.a). Completed on December 15, 2020)

Capitalism, Wars and Epidemics (III)

4. The destruction of health systems and of the ecosystem. The commodification of the world (Completed)

The outbreak of a violent pandemic, like Covid-19, has seemed to suddenly fall from the sky, like an umpteenth plague of Egypt. The U.S. economy seemed to be thriving, and unemployment was at a low ebb. Virtually everyone (except the homeless or the countless precarious workers) was going from home to work every day, hoping that everything would go well in the best possible of all capitalist worlds.

Contents:

a) New pandemics taking advantage of a capitalist health system adrift (page 2)
b) The agriculture of death: Toxic nutrition, health scourges of “obese capital” (page 3)
c) Commodification, the permanent war of capital against nature (page 4)

Newly added sections: b) and c)

Last updated: December 16, 2020.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Capitalism, Wars and Epidemics (II)

The second part of this contribution opens with a historical sketch of wars and epidemics from capitalism’s early expansion since the turn of the 16^th Century: the discovery of the “West Indies” and the ensuing conquest of the Americas by Europe’s incipient colonialism, as well as its  expansion to Africa and the “East Indies”, until the era of modern imperialism, since the First World War. It focuses on the ‘natural’ spread of lethal diseases and epidemics as a consequence of the interaction of hitherto physically separated populations across continents, under the conditions of a merciless exploitation of slave and forced labor.

It continues by developing on biological warfare that only became systematically developed in the context of modern imperialism by all major rivaling powers, alongside chemical and – after WW-2 – in addition to nuclear warfare. Military-scientific programs for ‘weaponizing’ a diversity of biological agents (bacteria and viruses, like for instance anthrax, botulinum, plague or Ebola) and the yet limited attempts at “testing” and “applying” them in war conflicts are briefly reviewed, including the telling example of the Aun sect in Japan (formally a non-state actor).

This part concludes with some theses for discussion, and a brief rejection of the speculation that the present Covid-19 pandemic would have originated from Chinese military laboratory experiments.

France: Cheerful and quarrelsome 1st-of-May Days?

Some findings on the present

state of emergency

“This May 1^st, 2020 is like no other. Today, no gathering in our cities to celebrate, as we have done for so many years, International Workers’ Day (…). And yet, the spirit of May Day, this spirit of solidarity among workers, has perhaps never been so powerful, so alive. For it is indeed thanks to the work, celebrated on this day, that the Nation holds.”

“Deprived of the rituals (sic) of this day, we feel today all the value, all the meaning. With this strong will: to rediscover as soon as possible the cheerful, sometimes quarrelsome, first of May Days, which makes our Nation. My dear compatriots, we will find them again, these cheerful first of May Days!” (ⁱ) [Little red book of President M. .., to be published?] (ⁱⁱ)

i Tweets section, La Croix, May 1st, 2020.

ii With a little imagination, one can easily give meaning to this mysterious M… The reading of “La P… respectueuse” (The Respectful Prostitute) by Jean-Paul Sartre can be a clue. This play is very contemporary since it is about a dominant class which acts in the name of the “common good” and finds a majority only concerned about its survival, without questioning the acts that are imposed on it.

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Capitalism, Wars and Epidemics (I)

What is behind the calls for national unity against the Corona-virus pandemic?

As the Corona-virus pandemic rapidly extends its devastating effects over the globe, government leaders have successively declared themselves “at war”, and impose “sanitary emergency measures” at different grades of “lock down”, varying from restricting social life and imposing self-isolation (as in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands) up to establishing veritable military curfews (as in Italy, Spain and France). They all call upon “national unity and solidarity” to combat the “invisible enemy”, while trying to enforce state control over the population, as a new global recession is unfolding.

The following contribution develops on the relation between the wars and epidemics of capitalism, drawing some parallels with the plagues in the early stages of its emergence (the 14th Century) and with the Spanish flu during World War 1. It situates the stakes of the present “Corona-virus crisis” in an ideological preparation for a global war.

Revolt to carve out an individual existence within Capitalism?

Some necessary criticisms apropos of “Social Contagion – Microbiological Class War in China” (Chuǎng)

At the end of February, the Chuǎng collective published an elaborate article on the Corona-virus pandemic in China, Social Contagion. Microbiological Class War in China, that develops their reflections on its origins and societal significance along two axes: 1. “how capitalist production relates to the non-human world at a more fundamental level—how, in short, the “natural world,” including its microbiological substrata, cannot be understood without reference to how society organizes production”; “how capitalist accumulation produces such plagues” and 2. on the present state of Chinese society; on how the pandemic itself is “a contradictory instance of political crisis, making visible to people the unseen potentials and dependencies of the world around them, while also offering yet another excuse for the extension of systems of control even further into everyday life.”

Being one of the first publications that invite its readers to delve deeper into the structural and societal questions posed by a rapidly expanding, overwhelming virus pandemic, it has found a widespread interest in certain political milieus, as is shown by the variety of languages in which it has been translated, from Spanish to Russian.

The following statement by the French blog Pantopolis criticizes the group’s conception of the class character of Chinese society and its main contradictions, for showing a remarkable attachment to the state capitalist visions of Maoism.  One that we can find in their “Conversations with Lao Xie” (A State Adequate to the Task” in Chuǎng issue no. 2, 2019) as well.

Corona-virus Pandemic: Legitimate Mistrust of the Governments

A statement by ‘Arbeidersstemmen’ (March 15, 2020)

The sudden succession of emergency measures taken by all governments in the Western hemisphere, presumably to counter or “control” the spread of the Corona-virus pandemic, as the stock-markets repeatedly crash, a recession of the world economy is underway and public life is increasingly disrupted, pose many questions.

In a first statement the ‘Arbeidersstemmen’ blog tries to take up the most urgent of them, relates the first manifestations of workers’ reactions to the state of emergency in crisis- and virus-ridden Italy, and puts forward some points of reflection to encourage workers of engaging in a collective struggle.