Written by Etiandro Costa; ISL-Britain/IWL. August 14th, 2020
Covid-19, as it is now known worldwide, is said to have started in the Chinese city of Wuhan, at the end of November 2019. Several experts have tried to explain its origin, claiming that the virus appeared in a live animal market, as a result of contact with fluids of Bat with Pangolin, and that the latter would have transmitted it to humans. What the bourgeois experts do not explain are how these markets arose!
Maoism never developed the revolution
After the Chinese revolution of 1949, the ruling petty-bourgeois Communist Party, behind the camouflage of a ‘socialism in one country’ policy, sought to reconcile capitalism with socialism. As a result of this policy of class conciliation, China was unable to plan its economy, which meant that the country could not withstand the financial crisis of the 1970s. At that time 36 million people died of hunger. It was then that the Chinese regime decided to privatise agriculture in 1978, which led peasants to lose their land to agribusiness.  Many became landless and unable to compete with the food industry. It is in the capturing and breeding of wild animals that peasants found their way to a source of income.
In 1988, the Chinese government legalised the creation and commercialisation of wild animals. When agribusiness entered this market it expanded and there was a business boom never seen before in the famous animal markets.
It is important to show how the market developed because as we know today in several countries of the world it is normal to eat meat from wild animals, but without any major problems. However, from 2018 to 2020, humanity has been confronted with a panoply of viruses of unknown origin, such as Sars and Ebola. It has become clear that these viruses only arose due to the intervention of agribusiness in the commercialisation of these animals. Therefore the coronavirus is, yes, a “capitalist” virus.
End racist, xenophobic and homophobic attacks
That said, we cannot and should not fall for the deception that the Chinese people are responsible for this pandemic. This pandemic has a cause, and it is called capitalism. That is why we must condemn and combat xenophobic, homophobic and racist attitudes that have shaken the world during this epidemiological crisis. As for example the case of the young Chinese who was attacked in Birmingham, or the racists who proposed who proposed that tests be done on Blacks and Asians, to find out why they do not contract it. But the data on the number of deaths from the coronavirus in the UK are clear, showing that non-whites are the hardest hit!
We reject the suggestions such as that in France by a scientist who suggested African people be used as guinea pigs for experimental vaccines. We reject views of the religious who say that this pandemic is a divine punishment for LGBT+ people.
As members of ISL and IWL-FI we firmly denounce this, because all these forms of discrimination have a single purpose, to divide workers as a class. That is why it is urgent to unite the working class with all the oppressed sectors, Blacks, Asians, women and LGBT people in order to deal a mortal blow to capitalism, because, it was already in crisis, and wants to take advantage of this pandemic to survive at the expense of workers.
That is why, as soon as the virus outbreak in China was barely known, several European governments started pouring public funds into the private sector, without having created conditions to minimise the impact of the pandemic. Some politicians said that it was like a small dose of flu that does not discriminate on race of class grounds. This is a lie, as it is workers, and the poor, who have died the most and, among workers, there have been more death amongst non-whites. The pandemic is a question of race of class. It is a pandemic created by capitalism.
Standing in struggle and unity with all victims of hunger.