crisis

In the UK, the coronavirus crisis has brutally exposed the significance of the endless cuts to the NHS as well as the incompetence of the Johnson government. From failure to organise protective equipment for medical staff to the catastrophic decision to return elderly COVID-19 patients to care-homes, the shambles of the bespoke track-and-trace scheme and shipwreck of the scheme to re-open schools in England, the government has lurched from fiasco to debacle.

Section from Robert C. Tucker's Marx-Engels Reader entitled "Crisis Theory", taken from Marx's Theories of Surplus Value manuscripts, in which Marx deals with capitalist crises.

By any rational measure you might assume that a dominant sentient species when faced with global threats would pull together, pool resources and information and search for a mutual solution to the problem. But the coronavirus pandemic has confirmed what the climate change crisis already told us: that capitalism, even in its “globalised” form, is fundamentally unsuited to producing a coordinated response to tackle anything.

This short reflection is a synthesis of ideas common to various comrades, from different areas, with whom we frequently discuss. In fact, some of the considerations here are now becoming an integral and shared perspective beyond that of any one organisation. This gives us hope that in the near future the most politically aware elements will recognise that we are all travelling in the same direction.