The latest Ebola outbreak is the result of centuries of racist neglect and imperialist plunder of Africa. The Bundibugyo strain of Ebola is spreading like wildfire in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and has made its way into neighboring Uganda. This is the 17th outbreak of Ebola over the last 50 years! With no vaccine yet available for this new strain, the crisis exposes the deadly consequences of a capitalist system that treats the lives of the working class as disposable.
The outbreak is unfolding amid intensifying imperialist competition for the DRC's gold, cobalt, and copper—all critical for electric vehicles, AI, and military technology. Over the last two decades, a rising imperialist China has gained control over an increasing share of these minerals amid reports of child labor, horrific working conditions, and wholesale evictions of residents from mining concessions (Africa Defense Forum, 10/23/25).
Now a declining U.S. empire is scrambling to claw its way back. None of these capitalist bosses cares one bit about our class beyond how much profit can be squeezed from our labor.
The old colonial powers’ racist contempt for Black workers persists today. One result is a complete neglect of healthcare infrastructure that’s needed to confront crises like Ebola. Capitalism has created a world where gold and cobalt can move from mines to markets, but lifesaving healthcare cannot reach the mineworkers.
A system that puts profits over workers’ lives does not deserve to exist. We must organize to smash capitalism and all of its racist and sexist inequities. Join Progressive Labor Party and our commitment to fight for a communist future worldwide, a future organized not around profit, but around workers’ health and well being.
A racist disgrace
Over 1,100 suspected Ebola cases and more than 250 deaths have already been reported in northeastern Congo, but the true scale of the outbreak is much larger. Though it wasn’t officially detected until mid-May, the virus has been spreading for up to three months (The Daily, 6/3). The Bundibugyo strain has a mortality rate of up to 50 percent (New York Times, 5/18).
The outbreak’s epicenter lies roughly 50 miles north of the provincial capital of Bunia, a region made difficult to access by seasonal rains, muddy roads, and armed militias (NY Times, 5/18). But decades of exploitation and neglect left healthcare systems fragile long before this latest strain of the virus came on the scene.
The conditions facing patients and healthcare workers are a capitalist disgrace. Patients’ families are forced to provide food and water because hospitals cannot, yet they receive no equipment to protect them from infection. Bodies in treatment wards lie covered only by sheets, with relatives and other patients nearby. Health workers are courageously showing up for their patients without the most basic resources to do their jobs or keep themselves safe (The Daily, 6/3).
Money for mines, not healthcare
The Congo’s response has been crippled by decades of global neglect. There is little testing capacity, no rapid diagnostic tests, and next to no contact tracing. The response has also been hampered by workers’ justified distrust of government authorities. For years scientists warned that better tools were urgently needed to fight new Ebola strains. But private companies have little incentive to invest in low-profit diagnostics, vaccines, or treatments in the world's poorest countries (NY Times, 6/2). Capitalism delivers what it is designed for: profits for corporations and abandonment of Black workers.
Most cases to date are linked to Mongbwalu, a gold mining hub for labor migration. Billions of dollars are extracted from the Congo's mines, yet basic healthcare infrastructure remains woefully inadequate. What little response that does exist has been weakened by recent U.S. cuts to global health programs (NY Times, 5/18). The result is a preventable catastrophe for the working class..
U.S. bosses have blood on their hands
The Ebola crisis exposes a capitalist contradiction. Never has the world had more scientific knowledge or technological capacity, and yet our class remains vulnerable to mass sickness, suffering, and premature death. We have the abundant capability to map viruses, develop and distribute lifesaving tests, build hospitals, and train masses of healthcare workers. But capitalist science is driven by competition and profit, not workers’ needs.
Before Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, the U.S. funded a bare minimum of frontline workers, disease surveillance, medical supply chains, and emergency response systems in Africa (Rescue, 5/19). Don’t get it twisted—these programs were never acts of generosity. They were part of an imperialist strategy to expand influence via programs like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Health Organization, both created during the Cold War to counter the Soviet Union and the old communist movement.
Today, without a socialist state or an international working-class movement to pressure the U.S. capitalist bosses, they are free to cut back on aid and reserve their resources for the wider wars to come.Trump took a chainsaw to global public health by slashing tens of billions. Last year, health experts warned that these cuts would “likely result in more than 28,000 new cases of infectious diseases like Ebola…each year" (NY Times, 3/7/25) and lead to “14 million deaths” (NPR, 7/1/25). With cuts to USAID and other public health programs delaying detection and treatment of the spreading Ebola, workers in the Congo have paid with their lives (NY Times, 5/20). At the same time, Trump has barred U.S. travelers testing positive from returning home for decent care and ordered them dumped in Kenya instead. Clearly, the health of miners in Mongbwalu, nurses in Uganda, and workers from the U.S. are all tied together.
Communism is the cure
Profit and health are fundamentally opposed. Under communist leadership, workers have shown the power to organize health care around collective needs instead of competition. When China was led by communists in the 1960s, mass public health campaigns trained “barefoot doctors” to serve workers in the countryside. For the first time, snail fever was eradicated in a county in Jiangxi province. That's what’s possible when millions of workers are mobilized under a communist outlook.
That working-class potential still exists today. Capitalism digs its own grave by wrecking healthcare and creating crises it cannot solve. Diseases know no borders and neither should workers’ resistance. If capitalist-spawned Ebola is the disease, communist collectivity is the cure. Fight back!
What is Ebola?
Ebola is a viral disease spread through contaminated body fluids. The new Bundibugyo strain is distinct from the outbreak that killed 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016. Early symptoms resemble malaria and thyroid disease, which can delay detection and treatment. What begins as fever and muscle pain can quickly escalate into uncontrolled bleeding and organ failure. Scientists are scrambling to find a vaccine, but capitalism’s profit motive and disarray continues to hinder them.
