https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P43wDpKQxaM&ab_channel=act.tv
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Surge in coronavirus pandemic produces deadly situation in hospitals throughout Europe
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/05/hosp-n05-1.html
Markus Salzmann
15 hours ago
The massive increase in COVID-19 infections is pushing hospitals throughout Europe to their limits. In Germany, the number of intensive care patients grows daily. Doctors’ representatives and other experts are increasingly warning of the consequences of a shortage of nursing staff and intensive care beds.
The Robert Koch Institute reported 1,700 coronavirus patients in Germany’s intensive care units on Friday morning. By Saturday, the figure had risen to 1,830 and by Monday to 2,243. The number of cases subject to intensive care treatment has almost tripled in the past two weeks.
Despite these figures, the federal and state governments have not imposed a necessary lockdown, but only highly inconsistent restrictions on contact. Schools and daycare centres remain open so that work can continue in the factories and other workplaces.
The German Hospital Federation expects the number of intensive care patients to reach a new peak soon. The head of the organization, Gerald Gass, assumes the previous peak of April will be exceeded in two to three weeks and can no longer be prevented. “Anyone who is admitted to hospital in three weeks is already infected today,” Gass told the Bild newspaper.
Due to the extreme shortage of intensive care specialists, Gass announced that nursing staff from non-intensive medical areas would be deployed in intensive care units, which was “not optimal.” This is highly dangerous for patients. The fact that it is nevertheless being considered shows how desperate the situation is. Due to the complex equipment and procedures in intensive care, the use of untrained personnel poses considerable risks. At the same time, training and instruction can hardly be provided adequately due to the stressful situation in the clinics.
“There is not much leeway left in some federal states. Berlin has only 14 percent free intensive care beds, Bremen 17 percent,” warned Uwe Janssens, president of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine (DIVI). This was also since most clinics are still carrying out their “routine programme.” For many clinics, the urgently needed conversion of capacities to coronavirus cases means financial ruin. While in the spring there was a flat-rate payment to hospitals for keeping a certain number of beds free for coronavirus cases, this no longer exists.
At the same time, the care of other acutely ill patients is also at risk. According to a report by broadcaster NDR, a second intensive care unit has now been opened at the University Hospital in Essen. Ninety patients with COVID-19 are being treated there, 27 of whom are receiving intensive medical care.
The director of the Eye Clinic, Nikolaos Bechrakis, reports that he and his team operate on 400 people every year, many with serious tumours, where every day counts to prevent the threat of blindness. “In the first wave, we already had to lose 25 to 30 percent of our capacity. I am afraid that when the second wave comes it will be more severe,” said Bechrakis.
Saarland’s State Premier Tobias Hans (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) admitted the severity of the crisis this week. “The situation is frightening and alarming: soon many of the 1,900 hospitals in Germany may collapse,” he said. Wards and emergency rooms may have to be closed due to missing or sick staff. “Triage and Italian conditions threaten if we don’t take countermeasures now.”
It is becoming more and more obvious that claims that the lessons from the situation in spring had been learned and that care in German hospitals was stable, which Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) repeats like a mantra, are nothing more than deliberate misinformation intended to lull the population into a false sense of security.
The federal and state governments have done nothing to prevent the impending collapse in health care. Although experts have been calling for it for a long time, there is not even a proper record of how many nursing staff with intensive care training are available in Germany. Also, as the number of infections increases, a growing number of doctors and nurses are becoming ill. There is no uniform testing strategy to effectively protect employees in hospitals, nursing homes and similar institutions.
Instead, the precarious situation is at the expense of doctors and nursing staff, who are already working at the limits of their ability to cope with stress. Lower Saxony has again increased the maximum working hours for employees in clinics and nursing homes to up to 60 hours per week and up to 12 hours a day. The other federal states will follow suit. The measure had already been decided at the beginning of the pandemic. Now it will remain in place until May next year.
“For months, the country has been asleep rather than preparing medical facilities for the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic,” Nadya Klarmann, president of the Chamber of Nursing Care, noted. “Now it is up to the employees in the systemically important professions to again save the situation at the risk to their own health.”
The situation is alarming throughout Europe. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against overloading the health care system. “Many countries in the northern hemisphere are currently seeing a worrying increase in cases and hospital admissions,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said recently in Geneva.
In Austria, the situation is worsening day by day. The government has stated that with 6,000 new infections per day, there is a risk of overloading intensive care beds in hospitals. In extreme cases, doctors would then also have to decide who would be treated and who would not, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (Austrian Peoples Party, ÖVP) noted.
On November 4, a record 6,901 new infections were reported in the Alpine republic. The measures in force since Tuesday, such as a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., are unlikely to prevent an increase in cases and deaths. Despite the seriousness of the situation, businesses, daycare centres and the majority of schools—all drivers of the pandemic—remain open.
In Belgium, the health care system is already collapsing. A growing number of clinics can no longer deliver intensive care. According to the trade unions, dozens of doctors and nurses are on duty despite being infected with coronavirus. They receive no protection or support from the government or the trade unions.
“We have to choose between a bad or a very bad solution,” said Philippe Devos from the Federation of Medical Unions. The very bad solution was not to treat patients at all, broadcaster Deutsche Welle quoted the union official.
In terms of population, Belgium is the European country with the most new infections. By November 2, 1,074 out of 100,000 inhabitants had been infected with the virus within the previous seven days.
Switzerland also has an extremely high seven-day incidence, with 588 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. On Monday alone, almost 22,000 new infections were registered in the country with almost 9 million inhabitants. According to media reports, the government in Bern estimates that all intensive care units will be occupied by the middle of the month. In some cantons, such as Geneva and Valais, the treatment limit has already been reached. In Valais, 2,530 out of 100,000 inhabitants have been infected in the last 14 days, in Geneva 2,373 out of 100,000.
The government of the richest European country, whose pharmaceutical industry has an annual turnover of €80 billion, quickly lifted the initial protective measures in the spring, took hardly any precautionary measures and is now sacrificing the lives of countless people. More than 2,400 people have now died of COVID-19 in Switzerland, with 80 each day last Friday and Monday alone.
The situation in Eastern Europe has been extremely tense for weeks. COVID patients from the Czech Republic have already had to be brought to Germany for treatment. The Ministry of Health in Prague has ordered the postponement of all elective surgery.
In the Czech Republic, there were 782 infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the last seven days. According to the doctors’ medical association, more than 13,000 employees in the health care sector have become infected with coronavirus. If they did not continue to work when they showed no symptoms, providing treatment would no longer be possible. In the meantime, the government has imposed a night-time curfew. But that will hardly be enough to avert the complete collapse of hospitals.
In Poland, hospitals are completely overwhelmed by the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 patients. The hospital in the border town of Slubice, which has been reconfigured for coronavirus patients, recently reported four deaths from the disease within 24 hours, according to broadcaster rbb. On HTS local television, managing director Lukasz Kaczmarek spoke about the catastrophic situation. “There is a lack of cleaning agents, body-care products such as cream and shower gel. That is bad. Also, our hospital has an infrastructure from the 1960s. We have to cope with this situation.” There was also a lack of disinfectants, food and garbage bags.
The situation in France and Britain is similar.
After delayed and inadequate lockdown measures, COVID-19 second wave overwhelms France
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/05/fran-n05.html
Jacques Valentin
17 hours ago
With the Macron administration’s latest coronavirus lockdown measures that are both inadequate and too late, epidemiologists now predict a second wave of the pandemic in France even larger than the first. But the Macron government is determined to maintain economic activity, with no regard for the safety of the population.
The disastrous and criminal impact of these policies can already be seen in the accelerating death toll in France. On Tuesday alone, 854 people died from the virus, the highest number since April, and up from 416 the day before.
In an October 28 speech announcing partial lockdown measures, Macron emphasized the European character of the second wave of the pandemic in order to minimize his government’s responsibility. “We are all, in Europe, surprised by the evolution of the virus,” he said. It is as though the continent’s population was bound to a fate independent of any of the actions taken by governments, which, according to Macron, have all been made on the basis of the best available information.
This is a clear lie, since a renewed upsurge of the pandemic was noted weeks ago by epidemiologists. But nothing has been done. If the upsurge is now taking place across the continent, it is because every European government has followed essentially the same policy of returning the population to work at all costs.
As the virus began to accelerate rapidly, Macron announced curfews in some regions on October 14. Not only did these measures fail to stem the spread of the virus, but it accelerated from a 38 percent increase from October 12 to 18 to an additional 52 percent the following week.
Revealing his contempt for the safety of workers and the social interests standing behind his policies, Macron criticized working from home as harmful to the functioning of business.
The government’s policies are dictated by its willingness to tolerate catastrophic levels of death. Speaking on October 28, Macron warned that without a new lockdown, “In a few months we will have to mourn at least another 400,000 deaths.” He added that “even if we could open many more beds, and despite our doubling of capacity, who would seriously want thousands of our compatriots to spend weeks in intensive care with the medical consequences that this entails?”
Yet that is precisely what Macron has done. The government has allowed cases to increase rapidly, only taking responsive measures when the hospital system and intensive care units were already on the verge of being overwhelmed. It is not humanitarian concerns that led him to announce these measures, but fear of a working-class upsurge bringing down his government.
“At this stage, we know that whatever we do, nearly 9,000 patients will be in intensive care by mid-November, almost all of France’s capacity,” Macron said. It is unclear what data Macron was basing this on, since the scenarios discussed by the scientific council and referred to in government defence counsel meetings are kept secret.
Since Macron’s speech, two possible scenarios developed by the Pasteur Institute for the evolution of the pandemic have been referred to in the media. The first foresees “only” 5,400 to 6,020 patients in intensive care on November 15, compared to 7,148 reached at the last peak on April 8. But this assumes that the confinement policies are as effective as those implemented in the spring.
If the current measures are now less effective, the Pasteur Institute predicts the number of patients in intubation to exceed 6,600 (between 6,300 and 7,050) by mid-November, with a peak between 8,200 and 9,100 several weeks later.
The recently announced lockdown measures are very limited. To keep the economy open, and ensure that corporate profits are not damaged, millions more workers are being kept on the job than during the first lockdown. Only businesses that accept customers in person, including in retail and hospitality, must close. Twelve million students are also continuing to attend school, not—as the government cynically asserts—because the well-being and education of the youth is a priority—but to ensure that workers who would otherwise be minding their children are not removed from the labour force.
Schools with overcrowded and poorly ventilated classrooms are particularly conducive to the spread of the virus. Studies show that children over the age of 10–11 are as contagious as adults. There is great uncertainty about the contagiousness of younger children, but even serious studies showing a high risk for young children have been ruled out by the government.
The available data on school contaminations are incredibly sparse. For example, the Public Health France website provides a list of clusters in schools and universities without breaking them down by age group or establishment. It would be simple with current technology to provide mappings of outbreaks in schools and other institutions. This essential information for fighting the epidemic is kept hidden.
The situation is moving towards the most catastrophic scenario, with an overflow of the hospital system that will last longer than in the spring, with a very high mortality linked to COVID-19 and a significant excess mortality for other pathologies that cannot be properly managed for several weeks.
Macron can only carry out this criminal policy because he does not face any serious political opposition. All the establishment parties represent the interests of the capitalist class and have supported the return to work and the reopening of the school system. The trade union apparatuses have also supported the return to work, presenting themselves and acting as reliable partners and advisers to business and the state.
The pseudo-left parties such as the New Anti-capitalist Party did not organize any opposition to the economic reopening. They sought to confuse the issue by demanding only additional resources for the health and education system, to facilitate a reopening. But such measures, even assuming they were accepted by Macron, would not have solved the health situation.
The Socialist Equality Party, founded in 2016 as the French section of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, defends the interests of the working class. Our parties are the only ones that connect the scientific data developed by researchers with a program of action for the organization and defence of the working class. For months, the SEP has warned of the seriousness of the health situation and the developing second wave of across Europe, basing itself on serious and publicly available scientific research. These warnings have been confirmed by the events now taking place.
The SEP calls for the formation of safety committees in workplaces and schools, independent of trade unions, to prepare an international general strike against the ruling class policy of herd immunity. Our youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, is calling for the organisation of a school strike across Europe to close schools and ensure that young people and their families can be protected from the pandemic.
As Boris Johnson’s partial lockdown begins: The working class must intervene to prevent COVID-19 catastrophe
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/05/lock-n05.html
Thomas Scripps
17 hours ago
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been forced to impose a second one-month “lockdown” after his government was confirmed as a cabal of mass murderers.
For months, the working assumption in ruling circles has been that 85,000 more lives would be lost to COVID-19 this winter in a “reasonable worst-case scenario”. New projections leaked Saturday showed this appalling toll to be an underestimate. The UK confronts a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths far worse than the initial wave suffered in the spring.
This catastrophe has been prepared by the policies of the Conservative government and its co-conspirators in the Labour Party and the trade unions. It falls to the working class to take control of society out of the hands of these criminals and prevent a terrible loss of life.
While admitting to MPs on Monday that deaths this winter could be “twice as bad or more compared with the first wave”, Johnson made clear that the British ruling class has no intention of seriously suppressing the virus. His announcement last Saturday of a month of new national restrictions was coupled with a defence of the government’s record. Plumbing new depths of political cynicism, he explained away projections of multiple thousands of deaths a day and overflowing hospitals as proof of the need “to be humble in the face of nature.”
The pandemic is not a natural disaster. Johnson is covering for his repugnant actions in encouraging the spread of the virus, but he speaks for the whole capitalist social order. More than 1.2 million people are dead because human life is considered expendable in the ruthless pursuit of profit. This fact is so explosive that its consequences must be passed off as the work of irresistible natural forces—in the style of Thomas Malthus’s eighteenth-century assertion that hunger and disease are the inevitable fate of the “surplus” working class.
What is the real record of the past year? From the start, the Tories had no intention of combatting the virus. Their declared policy was one of “herd immunity”, allowing the virus to rip through the population with the pseudo-scientific justification that this would eventually confer immunity to the population—after the death of hundreds of thousands. This murderous plan was only altered by Johnson out of fear of a wave of strikes against unsafe conditions which began to spread across Britain and Europe, and of the threat that popular revulsion at his response to the pandemic might turn into mass political opposition.
Together with similar shutdowns across Europe, the forced imposition of the March 23 lockdown saved millions of lives. But from May to June, Johnson returned to his original strategy, prematurely ending the lockdown and actively encouraging behaviours which spread the virus.
Millions were ordered back on public transport and to work, with no test, track and trace system to speak of and zero health and safety inspections conducted. Johnson reopened the hospitality, entertainment, and leisure industries, with the instruction, “I think people need to go out and enjoy themselves.” Chancellor Rishi Sunak organised an “Eat Out to Help Out” subsidy scheme to encourage millions back into pubs and restaurants. Quarantines were scrapped to encourage holidays abroad, including to COVID hotspots France and Spain.
Schools and universities were fully reopened to millions of pupils, students and staff in September. Johnson and Education Secretary Gavin Williamson shot down any suggestion of online instruction.
A series of farcical restrictions were introduced—including “local lockdowns”, the “rule of six”, and a regional “Tier system” of regulations—whose main effect was to sow confusion and discredit the legitimacy of public health interventions.
The government’s overwhelming priority has been to keep open the economy to ensure a continued flow of profits to the super rich. Deaths, concentrated among older layers of the population considered as an unproductive drain on state finances, are considered an economic bonus.
Once again, it is only the fear of mass opposition which has forced Johnson to enact new measures. The Tories have created the conditions where the spread of the virus threatens mass deaths and a collapse of the National Health Service, raising the prospect of a popular backlash. That is why the government has said protests are no longer exempt from lockdown restrictions, whether COVID compliant or not.
The new lockdown is significantly more limited than the first. All those who cannot work from home—except hospitality, entertainment, leisure, and non-essential retail employees—will be expected to work on-site. Schools, colleges and universities will remain open. These exemptions, leaving millions of people exposed to the virus, will severely reduce the effectiveness of the lockdown. Scientists suggest that the month of restrictions might only reduce infections by as little as 10 percent. The virus will therefore continue to spread exponentially.
Even this limited intervention is opposed by a substantial section of the Tory Party and its allies in Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party—soon to be rechristened the anti-lockdown “Reform” party. Led by Sir Graham Brady, Chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, they are demanding an end to all pretences of controlling the virus.
Opposition to the government is growing, but it can only go forward by developing a new political programme and leadership.
The Labour Party and the trade unions stand exposed by this crisis as accomplices of the Johnson government. In the first days of the pandemic, the unions demobilised industrial struggles and workers’ protests for safe conditions, pledging to collaborate with Johnson “in the national interest.” They oversaw the unsafe reopening of workplaces and education settings, jettisoning all previously declared “tests” and “red lines”. With anger mounting among their memberships, they are now doing everything possible to prevent strike action by supporting the latest measures or at best politely asking for an extension to partially cover education settings.
Labour embraced the Tory government from the start of the crisis, with first Jeremy Corbyn and then Sir Keir Starmer pledging only “constructive opposition”—a euphemism for collusion. Starmer—infamous for his insistence that schools should reopen, “no ifs, no buts”—made a pathetic attempt to cover his criminal record last month by issuing a belated endorsement of a two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown. He did so based entirely on arguments for minimising the disruption to UK businesses by an uncontrolled explosion of the virus. Labour supports Johnson’s limited lockdown, including keeping schools open.
Corbyn and the “Labour left” are just as guilty. Corbyn even admitted in an August interview to having been told of the government’s “herd immunity” plan ahead of time, while he was still leader of the Labour Party. Forewarned of this policy for mass death, he alerted nobody.
Since then he has never once opposed the reopening of the economy. He and his allies, John McDonnell, Dianne Abbott et al, are directing all their energies into getting Corbyn’s suspension from Labour reversed. They are appealing to rank-and-file members not to quit the party witch-hunting them as anti-Semites and colluding with Johnson.
A political break with these organisations is a life and death question for the working class. Wildcat strikes of students and teachers have already broken out in Greece, Poland and France against the unsafe reopening of schools. The same sentiment exists in the UK, but workers and youth must become conscious of the fight they are engaged in.
The tremendous challenges posed by the pandemic cannot be addressed without a frontal assault on the capitalist profit system and the monopolisation of social wealth by the super-rich. This is an international struggle against a global pandemic and a global economic order. It demands an international movement of the working class across all artificial national borders, acting through its own independent organisations.
This is the programme fought for by the Socialist Equality Party (UK) and its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International.
On May 27, the SEP issued a statement calling for the formation of “rank-and-file safety committees in every factory, office, and workplace. These committees, democratically controlled by workers themselves, should formulate, implement, and oversee measures that are necessary to safeguard the health and lives of workers, their families, and the broader community.”
The statement explained, “the pandemic is inseparably linked to a struggle of workers against the ruling class—the corporate and financial oligarchy—and its dictatorship over economic and political life. It is, therefore, a fight against capitalism and for socialism, the restructuring of society based on social need, not private profit.”
On September 25, the SEP in Britain, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Germany), the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (France) and Sosyalist Eşitlik (Turkey) issued a joint call, “For a general strike to halt the resurgence of COVID-19 in Europe!” The task facing such a strike, the article explained, was a “struggle to seize the resources stolen by the ruling class in years of obscene bailouts, bring down the EU governments, overthrow the capitalist system, and replace the reactionary EU with the United Socialist States of Europe.”
Tens of thousands of lives depend on this perspective being taken up and fought for by workers and youth, and on their taking the decision to join the SEP and build the ICFI as the new socialist leadership of the international working class.
Corporations Behaving Badly: Supply Chains in Agriculture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UalRWwU43SM&ab_channel=HardLensMedia
Trump’s refusal to concede sets the stage for post-election crisis
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/05/pers-n05.html
Joseph Kishore, David North
10 hours ago
It appears that Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden is on the verge of winning enough states to be elected president of the United States. Media outlets announced during the day that he had won in Michigan and Wisconsin, and he appears likely to win in Nevada and Arizona, where he is currently leading. This would put him at the 270 electoral vote threshold, even if he does not win Pennsylvania, North Carolina or Georgia. In these three states, Trump is currently leading, but his lead is shrinking as mail-in ballots are counted.
However, what Biden had once described as his “worst nightmare”—that Trump would not accept his defeat at the polls—may, in fact, be unfolding.
In an extraordinary speech at the White House early Wednesday morning, Trump proclaimed himself the winner. “Frankly we did win this election,” he said. “So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.” By an end to “voting,” Trump means a halt to the continued counting of mail-in ballots that were legally submitted.
Trump doubled down yesterday, declaring victory in a series of states that are still contested. “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers), the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead,” he wrote. “Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact, there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots has been widely reported!”
The Trump campaign has already filed lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania to stop the counting of ballots and is demanding a recount in Wisconsin, which could take weeks to complete. He is hoping that legal challenges will end up in the Supreme Court, which now includes his most recent nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, rammed through without serious opposition from the Democratic Party only weeks ago. In the event of contested results, Republican state legislatures in states like Michigan could nominate their own pro-Trump electors.
Trump’s effort to challenge the results of the election is being accompanied by the mobilization of far-right forces. On Wednesday night, hundreds of Trump supporters, some armed with long guns, attempted to force their way into a vote-counting facility in Arizona.
The “Stop the Count” protests organized at Michigan election offices Wednesday afternoon are only a small indication of what is being planned. More demonstrations aimed at stopping the counting of ballots are planned today in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, and pro-Trump demonstrators are expected in Arizona as well.
Whether or not he succeeds in the short term in staving off defeat—through a combination of legal challenges, right-wing protest demonstrations, threats and actual use of violence—Donald Trump, and the anti-constitutional fascistic movement whose growth he has been sponsoring, is not going to disappear from the political scene.
As the World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly warned since his attempted coup d’état last June, Trump’s political strategy has never been limited to purely electoral calculations. During the past three months, he has been campaigning more for the role of Führer than merely president. That fascistic campaign has not ended.
Even if the final vote tally goes against him, Trump and the movement developing around him will continue to play a major role in American politics. In a perceptive editorial published Wednesday, the British Financial Times wrote that Trump’s intention in declaring victory and challenging the counting of ballots “was not just to prejudge the result but to taint a President Biden (if the Democrat is elected as such) as illegitimate. He may yet succeed.”
The FT continued: “In a day of precious few certainties, all that can be said for sure is that America is not done with Mr. Trump (or perhaps it is the other way around). An election that seemed set to purge him from public life as a one-term aberration has given him a lasting and central role in it. Even if he cannot continue as president, he will become the voice of Republican opposition.”
Trump’s aggressive response to the election has been facilitated by the narrowness of Biden’s margin of victory, and that is assuming that the final vote totals give the former vice president the necessary 270 electoral votes.
Given the disastrous conditions that presently exist in the United States, the fact that Biden has barely managed to crawl across the finish line is in itself a devastating indictment of the campaign conducted by the Democratic Party. Not only is Biden’s own margin of victory (again, assuming that the present trend continues) paper thin, the Democrats’ nationwide performance is pathetic. They failed to make any headway in the senatorial elections and actually lost seats in the House of Representatives.
Even with a death toll of nearly 250,000 as a result of the Trump administration’s homicidal implementation of its “herd immunity” policy and unemployment rates at levels not seen since the Great Depression, the Biden campaign was so ineffectual that Trump was able to garner more than 68 million votes. One can only conclude that were it not for the pandemic, Trump would have won the election easily, and perhaps in a landslide.
The Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street, the intelligence agencies and the military, was organically incapable of appealing to the social interests of the working class. In relation to the pandemic, the Democrats proposed nothing outside of a national mask mandate to either stop the virus or deal with mass unemployment and poverty. In states like Wisconsin, which is currently an epicenter of the pandemic, Biden was able to increase his percentage of the vote only marginally compared to Clinton in 2016.
Far from seeking to expose Trump’s demagogy and the fraudulent character of his claim to represent the working class, the Democratic Party doubled down on its relentless promotion of race as the central and defining issue in American society. It did everything it could to encourage the empirically false and politically reactionary narrative that maligned the “white working class” as Trump’s natural and blindly devoted constituency.
Moreover, Biden, in the final weeks of the campaign, chose not to make an issue of Trump’s close association with and open encouragement of fascist violence against Democratic Party officials, including Governor Whitmer of Michigan.
While Trump is doing everything he can to remain in power and incite fascistic violence, Biden is responding with bromides and soporifics. In remarks delivered on Wednesday afternoon, Biden said that it was necessary to “put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us, to lower the temperature.” He added, “To make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies.”
Biden’s comments make clear how the Democrats will approach the political conflict in the coming weeks. Everything will be done to block mass popular opposition to Trump’s conspiracies. The Democrats want to prevent the emergence of opposition to Trump from threatening the interests of Wall Street and American imperialism.
If Biden does come to power in January, the Democrats will oversee a right-wing administration of austerity and militarism. They will immediately seek a political alliance with sections of the Republican Party and adapt themselves to the far right. A Biden administration will create the best conditions for the further growth of a far-right, fascistic movement, whether led by Trump or someone else.
In this situation, the most dangerous of all political attitudes is that of complacency. To believe that the political situation will return to “normal” is as realistic as the Biblical dream that “the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid [young goat].”
Far from having settled the crisis, the election and its outcome are a warning. American democracy is in its death throes. The malignant social ulcers developing on the basis of staggering levels of inequality will not heal miraculously.
The danger that confronts the working class is a form of American authoritarianism, involving the military and police, portraying themselves as the defenders of “order,” in collaboration with fascistic elements.
This real political threat can be defeated, but this requires the development of a mass socialist movement of the working class, absolutely independent of the Democratic Party and its political agents.
The political analysis and program developed and advanced by the Socialist Equality Party throughout the 2020 election campaign have been proven correct. We urge supporters of our campaign and readers of the World Socialist Web Site to draw the essential political lessons of the events of the past year and make the decision to join and build the Socialist Equality Party.
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