Classism

Sunflower field in Hudson — Photo by Larry Goodwin
Suffering in numbers

Throughout history there has been only one thing that ruling interests have ever wanted — and that’s everything.”
— Michael Parenti, Dirty Truths (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996), p. 46.

On April 27, the Wall Street Journal reported about the creation of a “Manhattan Project” for Covid-19.

The prophecies are here and it is a foregone conclusion: the post-coronavirus world will look fundamentally different from anything that we have seen or experienced, at least since the end of World War II.
Even before the ‘curve flattened’ in many countries that have experienced high death tolls — let alone economic devastation — as a result of the unhindered spread of the COVID-19 disease, thinkers and philosophers began speculating, from the comfort of their own quarantines, about the many scenarios that await us.

In the backdrop of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, Michael D. Yates, decades-long union activist, director of Monthly Review Press and former Associate Editor of Monthly Review magazine, discusses condition of the working people and steps required. The interview of Professor Michael Yates, whose academic fields include labor economics and the relationship between capital and labor, was taken on March 28, 2020.

Madness engulfs the planet. Hundreds of millions of people are in lockdown in their homes, millions of people who work in essential jobs – or who cannot afford to stay home without state assistance – continue to go to work, thousands of people lie in intensive-care beds taken care of by tens of thousands of medical professionals and caregivers who face shortages of equipment and time. Narrow sections of the human population – the billionaires – believe that they can isolate themselves in their enclaves, but the virus knows no borders.

This year was already off to a fast start, beginning with Ricky Gervais’ scathing social commentary at the Golden Globes, preceded by Greta Thunberg’s UN address and the mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein not to mention the run up to the 2020 election. But all that seems to have been sidelined by the global pandemic/lockdown which itself has been eclipsed by a global economic recession if not depression, if not collapse, and all this only months before the big election push.

When discussing politics, or listening to pundits in the mainstream media in the run up to the 2020 presidential election, you’ve probably heard a common refrain: certain policies are “not realistic.” It’s similar to the close-minded remark that certain politicians, such as Bernie Sanders, have issues regarding their “electability”. What are these elites and people who continually parrot these media narratives actually saying?