COVID-19 has thrown capitalism into crisis. Day after day the stock market tumbles; already facing the prospect of a recession, capitalists are scrambling to protect their investments. Millions have suddenly been thrown into unemployment. Millions more have had their hours and wages reduced. Seeking to capitalize on the crisis, right-wing governments have launched anti-people offensives: throwing out collective agreements, overturning established social programs, and making even deeper cuts. Big corporations have been offered billion in bailouts. In many ways, the COVID-19 has simply exacerbated the trends that were in place beforehand.

Every advance has an opposite reaction. In the face of an all-out offensive by the capitalist class and a wholly inadequate response from the capitalist state, hundreds of thousands of workers are being exposed to the reality of class society for the first time. Many workers, especially the lowest paid, have been deemed “essential” and are required to work without proper protective gear. Others have been discarded by their bosses in a crisis as part of cost-saving measures. Something as simple as the cruelty behind the government imposing a mortgage moratorium without rent relief reveals the fundamental truth underlying the crisis: we are not all in this together. Many workers will get sick and die from the virus. Many bosses will continue to make a killing.

Workers are not taking this sitting down. There has been a marked increase in spontaneous job actions from wildcat strikes to walkouts. This has taken place in both organized and unorganized shops. Some actions have been small, but others have been massive: a wildcat strike by autoworkers forced the closure of the big autoplants on both sides of the border. Workers at GE walked off the job demanding that their factory be repurposed from producing jet engines to producing ventilators. There have also been widespread calls for a rent strike, explicitly targeting the parasitic nature of landlords. The reality of capitalism is again pushing class struggle to the forefront.

It is the position of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party that these lessons will not be quickly forgotten by the working class. We expect that the period following the pandemic will be one of heightened class struggle.

And what of the left’s response? It has been, unsurprisingly, wholly inadequate. The traditional social-democratic parties like the NDP have pushed (ineffectively!) for mild relief without targeting the root causes of the crisis. The unions have not taken the initiative to use the crisis to push back against decades of neoliberalism and austerity. Much of the radical left, anarchist and communist alike, has defaulted to mutual aid initiatives. While we think mutual aid is a good thing, giving your neighbour your groceries will not fundamentally transform the nature of our society. The left is struggling to organize through the new reality of increasingly state-enforced social-distancing and self-quarantines: the informal affinity group is not capable of withstanding social isolation. What is telling is that most of the spontaneous outbursts of class struggle that have happened in the past weeks have been completely outside the traditional organizations of the left. The left faces a contradiction: class struggle is on the upswing, yet its organizational forms are incapable of intervening.

For us, our work has largely gone unchanged. When the RWP was founded we made the conscious decision to “dig in”: our work was to be aimed at building power among workers at the point of production. Given the social composition of our membership, many of our members have been declared “essential” workers and are still at work on pre-existing organizing drives. Rise continues to be published, though without physical distribution for the time being.

However, we have made some changes due to the current context. Seeing the possibility for spontaneous class struggle, we have asked all of our members and supporters to attempt to find work in “essential” industries with the goal of exacerbating the spontaneous struggles already taking place. The radical left has been given a unique opportunity to teach workers about not only the cruel reality of class society, but also how to fight back against it through our collective power as workers. To this end we will also be ramping up the production of Rise, with a focus on spontaneous struggles as they emerge.

The period ahead of us will be difficult. All of us, especially those most precarious and marginalized, will feel the effects of COVID-19 and the coming recession. It is only through the concerted and organized action of the working class that we will be able to not only fight back against the capitalist offensive, but finally overthrow this wretched system and build a world that is truly just. While we may have to adapt to the new reality of organizing through a pandemic, we will make it clear: class struggle will not be put on hold!

-Central Committee, RWP

Check out our Workers’ Demands for COVID-19.

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