The independent political intervention of the working class in Europe and internationally against the reactionary policies of the financial aristocracy is now a matter of life and death. It was only the eruption of wildcat strikes in factories across Italy last week that compelled the Italian government to abandon its opposition to confinement orders -- a policy subsequently adopted in France, and in Madrid and the Basque Country in Spain.
To fight the illness, however, power cannot be left in the hands of the ruling class. EU governments still refuse to organize mass testing of the population to identify those spreading the illness, to organize emergency production of key medical equipment to treat the sick, and to support workers in a period of quarantine and confinement. This undermines the long-term value of whatever quarantine policies have been adopted.
After the European Central Bank (ECB) agreed this week to give a $750 billion-euro bailout to EU financial markets, claims that there are no resources for such policies are absurd. These resources exist, and no consideration of private wealth or profit can be allowed to interfere with the use of this wealth, produced by the working class, to save lives.
The upsurge of strikes across Italy and internationally points to the power of the working class, acting independently of state-controlled trade union bureaucracies, to take control of factories and impound the wealth of the financial aristocracy. Only such a struggle, based on a socialist perspective, can overcome toxic levels of social inequality and provide resources for a coordinated, international fight against the virus.
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