The Big Fascists, the international finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class, is in disarray—and the working class is paying the price. With more than 350,000 workers killed by the pandemic, including more than 100,000 in the U.S. alone, the capitalist bosses are pushing forward with a chaotic “reopening” of the economy that may kill millions more. Meanwhile, capitalism has plunged into a severe international economic crisis that rivals the Great Depression of the 1930s. As imperialist rulers fight for their threatened profits on the road to fascism and World War III, hundreds of millions of workers worldwide are faced with joblessness, hunger, and a siege of preventable illness. Racist inequality has murdered untold numbers of Black and Latin workers, from Detroit to Tanzania to Ecuador.
In the U.S., many of the domestically oriented Small Fascists are going bankrupt. Their racist front man, Stooge in Chief Donald Trump, has called for an immediate reopening of worksites, churches, schools, and other public places, even though most states are failing to meet basic public health benchmarks. Trump has censored recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and ignored the watered-down guidelines that the spineless agency finally released.
The governors, both Republicans and Big Fascist Democrats, are falling in line as they send workers to their deaths. As he reopened New York City’s stock exchange, the bosses’ blood-money headquarters, Governor Andrew Cuomo called for “supercharging” the economy (New York Daily News, 5/26). He also acknowledged that the rate of positive test results in some New York communities is as high as 40 percent, and at 20 percent in New York City (cnbc.com, 5/26)—which means that not nearly enough testing is being done to control the virus’ spread. (The Trump administration’s own benchmark is 10 percent.) Case rates are rising in much of the South and Midwest. According to Imperial College London, the easing of lockdown regulations could lead to another 100,000 Covid-19 fatalities in the U.S. by July: “[T]here is strong evidence that the epidemic is not under control” (imperial.ac.uk, 5/21).
How would communists handle this pandemic differently? To begin with, we would win the population to a scientific approach to healthcare and economics. As communists, we believe in science. We know that an important aspect of revolution is smashing anti-scientific ideas. After the Chinese communist revolution of 1949, "barefoot doctors" were able to wipe out medical plagues from syphilis to schistosomiasis to drug addiction (Away with All Pests, by Joshua Horn).
Covid-19 and racism
Covid-19 has disproportionately killed Black and Latin and immigrant workers, the same people who are forced by racism and capitalism  to live in overcrowded households throughout the world. Available data shows that “on average, the rate of fatalities for Black workers is 2.4 times that of white workers  with Covid-19. In states including Michigan, Kansas and Wisconsin and in Washington, D.C., that ratio jumps to five to seven black people dying of Covid-19 complications for every one white death” (New York Times, 5/25).
In the U.S., Black and Latin workers are also at greater risk for infection because they’re concentrated in job sectors with high exposure to the virus: cleaners, groceries, hospitals and nursing homes, slaughterhouses, and food processing plants.
As Trump rallies his swastika-badged racist base to lay siege to state capitols with automatic weapons, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is paving the way to free businesses from any liability for the workers they’re about to slaughter. Meanwhile, the Big Fascists are offering no coherent plan to keep workers eating while saving their jobs and protecting their health. From racist nitwit Joe Biden, very possibly the next president, to lifelong hack Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, the Democrats are following in the footsteps of Barack Obama and his craven bank bailouts of 2009. They’re presenting the same profit-driven, corporate-friendly, and pathetically inadequate "relief" to workers today.
With the federal bosses both incompetent and divided, workers' lives depend on small-time stooges like Cuomo or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, both of whom resisted sheltering people in place until it was too late.
The true fascists: Congressional Progressive Caucus
In April, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and her social fascist compatriots, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, introduced the Paycheck Recovery Act to have the federal government keep workers on the payroll, as bosses are doing in several European countries to make their reopenings more efficient (vox.com 4/17). They understand the necessity of a loyal and patriotic working class to fight the next global war. But Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, ever loyal to their Big Fascist corporate donor base, refused to include this provision in the Heroes Act (theintercept.com, 5/19). Instead, they are supporting an extension of unemployment benefits and another one-time stimulus check, leaving workers unemployed and at the mercy of the fractured state unemployment systems.
Republican or Democrat, liberal or right-wing or phony “socialist,” all bosses need to mislead workers away from the communist understanding that the profit system can never meet our class needs. Or that fighting racism is a class question, and that only by eliminating capitalism can we truly eliminate racism.
China on the rise
With both sections of the U.S. ruling class in disarray as they flounder in response to the pandemic and resulting economic crisis, inter-imperalist rivalry between China and the U.S. has intensified (Yahoo Finance, 5/14). Richard Haass, a Big Fascist mouthpiece as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that China should be held accountable for its role in causing the pandemic, while warning that the U.S. and China were heading toward a new Cold War (Wall Street Journal, 5/7).
Where the Small Fascists would be content with a smaller white military, the Big Fascists know they need to win more workers to believe in a multiracial U.S. that can sacrifice and go to war when needed. Most of all, they need to deceive workers into thinking they have a stake in U.S. capitalism, and into fighting for the rulers’ profits. But China is winning the Covid-19 war with a unified ruling class, a top-down government, and full-blown fascism to discipline both bosses and workers.
No matter which group of bosses comes out on top, workers will be sickened by the disease of capitalism until they rise in revolution and seize state power. Fight for communism! Join Progressive Labor Party!