The definitive scientific, social and political account of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on investigative reports, interviews with scientists and workers, and historical analysis, COVID, Capitalism, and Class War presents a Marxist explanation for the social catastrophe of the pandemic. The World Socialist Web Site has produced a damning and irrefutable indictment of global capitalism and the murderous policies pursued by the ruling elites around the world.
COVID, Capitalism and Class War makes the case that the pandemic, as a result of its deliberate mismanagement by the ruling class who subordinated human lives to private profit, became a trigger event in world history, intensifying the crisis of world capitalism and setting in motion processes that would lead to immense social struggles and the outbreak of war. Class relations and geopolitical tensions have been irreversibly changed.
This work is unparalleled in its comprehensiveness and depth of social insight and political foresight. Anyone seeking to understand the social impact and political implications of the pandemic must read this book, currently available as an ePub.
BOOK ENDORSEMENTS
Nicolas Smit, engineer and expert on masks from Ontario, Canada
The WSWS has consistently exposed major scandals that mainstream news media are often unwilling or too afraid to cover. They have interviewed top experts from around the world and have written this book to let you know what went wrong, when it went wrong, and how the pandemic could have taken a much different trajectory had the science been followed instead of ignored. While workers have been the ones to feel the brunt of the pandemic’s effects and negligence by the government, politicians and billionaires have taken this suffering as an opportunity to increase their profits. The WSWS has been a very vocal champion for workers’ rights, and this book helps show you what workers have had to go through at the hands of corrupt leaders.
David Berger, remote area general practitioner from Western Australia
You don’t need to be a dyed-in-the-wool socialist to see that the pandemic evolved rapidly into a war on the world’s poorest. By allowing, and even encouraging, the illness to spread throughout the population, the lives of the poor have been devalued into nothing more than their value as disposable units of production, units from which the wealthy continue to make huge profits. This book offers a detailed analysis of the pandemic from this sociopolitical standpoint, and I commend it to anyone who wishes to develop a broad understanding of why we are where we are and how control of the pandemic is fundamental to relieving the burden on the very poorest.
Greg Travis, health care expert and data analyst from the United States
Like the bodies exposed on the lakebed of a drained reservoir, the pandemic made stark every nuance of class oppression. Whether the rationing of healthcare, the lack of basic income replacement and rent support, or the lived experiences of our parents and children in our educational systems: all was laid bare. Instead of pointing to the bodies and saying, “it doesn’t have to be this way,” the capitalist class and its captive media said, “We need to fill the lake again, hide these bodies and urgently return to the old inequities. We need to return to the status quo before anyone figures out what’s going on.” The WSWS has been an indefatigable voice of the opposition. Thoroughly documenting every grift, every subterfuge and every deception thrown out in service of capital. I am proud that the WSWS gave me the opportunity to be, in however a small way, a contributor to the right side of history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
January 24 – March 14
1. Initial outbreak and global spread of COVID-19.
March 14 – March 26
2. The working class forces global lock-downs
March 20 – April 1
3. Ruling classes internationally exploit the crisis
April 6 – May 2
4. The role of the media, the unions, and the far-right in the back-to-work campaign
May 1 – May 30
5. May Day 2020 and the deepening back-to-work campaign
May 30 – August 5
6. The pandemic and escalating social conflict
July 19 – July 24
7. The global pandemic, the class struggle, and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party
August 5 – September 30
8. The global struggle against school reopenings and the back-to-work campaign
October 1 – November 30
9. “Herd immunity”: A policy of social murder
December 1 – 31
10. Capitalism’s winter of death
Supplementary Chapter 11. The Cover-ups
Supplementary Chapter 12. Vaccine Profiteering and Nationalism
Supplementary Chapter 13. Science and Pseudoscience