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COVID-19: U.S. 170,000 Deaths, 5.5 million infections; Socialist Vietnam, 26 Deaths, 989 infections

by Z Petrosian

The United States has only 4% percent of the world’s population but the highest number of cases and deaths in the world. “It is what it is,” Trump said in August. Meanwhile socialist countries around the world have pursued a different path: “We have a responsibility to protect human lives and the entire social fabric with serenity, realism, and objectivity,” said Cuban President Díaz-Canel.

Socialist States Put People Over Profits

The U.S. government’s COVID-19 policy is geared towards protecting the profits of billionaires. Meanwhile, socialist states have taken a scientific approach aimed at protecting life and avoiding social trauma and desperation.

Vietnam, population 96 million, has had only 26 deaths and 989 infections due to swift, scientific measures instituted immediately by the Vietnamese Communist Party, including a country-wide lock down, information campaign, mask mandate, free hand sanitizer, early closure of schools and religious institutions, and extensive testing. At the same time, they continued to meet the needs of the population.

While certain parts of the U.S. have enacted preventive measures such as mask mandates, free testing, contract tracing, and the closure of all but essential businesses, these policies are doomed to fail if people are not guaranteed essential means of survival such as housing, food, and healthcare. U.S. residents have to weigh potential financial ruin (and for some of us, deportation) against the need to self-isolate or to seek out medical care.

Socialist states showed another way. The Indian state of Kerala— governed by the elected Communist Party of India (Marxist)—made testing and treatment free and available to everyone in the state. For those unable to safely quarantine at home, centers were set up, and temporary housing was constructed for migrant workers needing safer housing and healthcare.

Socialist countries provide cash assistance, food, housing, and medical care. There are no evictions. This is in stark contrast to the U.S. policy of providing temporary and partial relief to some while showering private corporations and banks with trillions of dollars.

PPE, Health Care for the Public Good Not Profits

At the onset of the pandemic, the U.S. flat-out rejected test kits from the World Health Organization. Socialist countries, including China and Vietnam, directed their public sector to produce PPE and healthcare equipment for their own people and also sent these products around the world. China built hospitals in as few as ten days.

Socialism: A System of Solidarity and Internationalism

In Kerala, government employees, trade union members, youth and student activists, participate in relief efforts. Through government sponsored and civilian organized Social Volunteer Forces, hundreds of thousands of youth identify needs and coordinate the provision of goods and services to communities and hospitals.

Socialist countries demonstrate solidarity at home and internationally. Cuba has dispatched doctors around the world, as has China. Vietnam sent hundreds of thousands of units of PPE to the United States. These countries understand that if humanity is going to survive this pandemic and future disasters, worldwide cooperation is required.

Workers Must Get Rid of the Murderous Capitalist System

The causes of the high rate of deaths and illness in the U.S. predate the virus. We must reject the centuries-old U.S. policy of sacrificing workers at the altar of capitalist profit, with the worst harm falling on our Indigenous and Black siblings. We must stand up and get rid of a system that says our lives and our families are disposable. Together, we must dispose of the capitalists for the sake of all humanity and the planet.

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Defend Socialist Cuba, End the Blockade!

By Ashlee Pintos

Those of us organizing and fighting for revolutionary socialism need to be constantly aware of the lies of the rich ruling class. We need to solidly defend all people fighting for their right to self-determination and tell the truth about all the gains that people have made in their struggle to build socialism in the face of constant imperialist attacks.

The people of Cuba have maintained a revolutionary culture which has made strides for humanity over the last 60+ years despite violent attacks and embargoes by U.S. imperialism. Recently the Trump administration tightened the sanctions and embargo placed on the Cuban people as imperialist punishment for having a peoples’ government and providing free health care and education.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba was isolated, and the United States and other imperialists renewed a vicious attempt to suffocate the country. This led Cuba to enter what is known as the “Special Period,” where Cubans were faced with extreme economic hardship with no help from the outside world (limited access to imports, the global market, oil, etc.). They lost 80% of their imports as well as exports. The Cuban people were faced with the immense task of building up production from within, using all that they had on their small island in the Caribbean to feed, house, educate all human life.

The capitalists’ goal and ideal outcome would have been (and still is) the starvation, suffering and death of the Cuban people. They have bombed rice fields, blocked shipments of food and medicine, and made travel or trade with Cuba illegal. What was the result?

The result has only been validation that socialism does work. Despite the violence against Cuba, they have achieved a near 100% literacy rate, 85% homeownership (compared to 65% in the US) with no homelessness, and they have built a healthcare system that puts countries like the United States to shame. They have developed a vaccine for lung cancer, virtually eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and have some of the most progressive policies for queer and trans people in the world.

While the U.S. has reallocated over $270 Million from FEMA to Border Patrol in the middle of hurricane season, Cuba holds the torch for the best hurricane preparedness in the world. They have offered hurricane relief to the U.S. (including New Orleans after Katrina) which has consistently been turned away by the U.S. government.

The Trump administration has tightened the blockade heightening a fuel crisis for Cuba as well as terrorizing Venezuela. The democratic presidential candidates are no better: Bernie Sanders bashed socialism in Latin America, calling Venezuela’s President Maduro a “vicious tyrant”. These types of comments are not accidental nor are they a failing of Sanders’ political development: they are distinctly anti-communist, anti-worker, and set the stage for imperialist intervention in Cuba and Venezuela.

Is Cuba perfect? Of course not. We must understand the damage that hundreds of years of colonial terror and capitalist exploitation leaves behind and celebrate all that the Cuban people have accomplished despite the odds. The forward movement of the revolution is how revolutionaries acknowledge issues and empower the masses to find solutions collectively. Cuba’s president has said that the people will not enter another Special Period. Cuba’s response to these attacks is more revolution to maintain and renew the revolutionary culture that has inspired the Cuban people throughout the years. Solidarity with the Cuban People!

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The Time For Socialism is Now

Why can’t we build houses and daycares instead of cages and walls? Why can’t we make insulin for diabetics instead of dope for the Sacklers? We can’t we ship disaster relief to the Bahamas rather than fighter jets to Saudi kings? Because under capitalism, workers have no control over how the machines and the factories that we built are used. When the workers finally get organized enough to take that control from the capitalists, we can reorient production to meet the needs of humanity rather than the profit margins of a few rich shareholders. This is the goal of socialism. Through struggle it can be won.

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Rural Healthcare: United States vs. Vietnam

United States ☒
Vietnam ☑

By Gregory William

There is a crisis of rural health care in the U.S. Since 2005, over one hundred rural hospitals have closed across the country. Many more are on the verge. A study by the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program found that of the 89 hospitals that have closed since 2010, the vast majority (67) were in the South.

The authors of the Rural Health Research study note that the increase in closures coincides with the 2008-2009 recession, meaning that it is tied to the cyclical crises inherent in the capitalist system. Closures also accelerated in states that did not accept Medicaid expansion. In these mostly southern states, people also tend to be poorer, are more likely to be uninsured, and therefore cannot pay for care. Since our medical system is based around corporate greed and not people’s needs, the closure of hospitals and other healthcare facilities is unsurprising. In fact, the majority of hospitals that have closed are privately-owned, that is, for-profit hospitals.

It’s been drilled into our heads that the market always knows best, that if everything is privatized and for profit, things will run more efficiently. However, we see that the profit motive leads to extreme inefficiency and worse, hardship for the masses of people. How is this reasonable?

Communities across the U.S. lack hospitals and even basic clinics, and people cannot afford care. And yet, there is a parasitic class of “healthcare billionaires,” like Thomas Frist Jr., co-founder of the Hospital Corporation of America. His net worth is $11.6 billion, making him the wealthiest person in Tennessee. This is ironic considering that Tennessee had the highest number of hospital closures after Texas!

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. The U.S. has a GDP of about $20 trillion, almost 90 times the size of Vietnam’s GDP ($223.9 billion). Despite having a much smaller economy, Vietnam assures that every ward in the country (including in rural areas) has a clinic. When there isn’t a resident doctor in a village, the Ministry of Health assigns doctors to rotations. Vietnam is also on track to ensuring health coverage to all citizens.

This isn’t an accident. The fact is that Vietnam still has socialist, rational economic planning. Because they had a socialist revolution, the masses of working people have a real say over the direction of the country’s development (even if the government has allowed some capitalism to return).

The state still owns the oil and gas industry, and mostly controls banking, insurance, mobile service, construction, electricity production, ship-building, and many other industries. Land cannot be bought or sold because it belongs to the entire people. Because there is socialist, collective ownership in the economy (without profit being the only consideration), the government can make rational decisions about what to do with social resources. They can say,

“People in this area need a hospital, so we will build a hospital. This clinic doesn’t have a doctor, so we’ll assign one to work there.”

Again, all this is possible because working class and oppressed people fought for these things and won. Collectively, we too have to make the decision that our health—our lives—will not be a commodity. We have to organize to take power and overthrow the capitalist class so that we can pursue socio-economic development that meets the needs of the people and doesn’t destroy the planet.

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We Need Socialism!

By Gregory William

Deep poverty is on the rise. The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world. Every year, police kill nearly 1,000 people, mostly people of color. Sexual harassment in the workplace is commonplace. Both Democrats and Republicans slash every program benefiting working people, while wasting our money on war. We are hit by one economic crisis after another.

We know things don’t have to be this way. We can fundamentally change society by overthrowing capitalism and building socialism. These problems do not come out of nowhere: They are byproducts of capitalism.

But what’s the basic difference between capitalism and socialism? Does it make sense to have a society where there are a handful of mega-wealthy billionaires, and the majority of people are just scraping by? Couldn’t we workers run the society without bosses, and make decisions that benefit the majority? Do we really have a “democracy” or do the rich just buy the policies they want?

We Need Socialism!
Under socialism, ordinary working people like us run the institutions of the society, including the government. Major property (like factories, infrastructure, and hospitals) are owned collectively by the people. There are no billionaires hoarding all the wealth and running things for their benefit alone. When workers make revolution, all of this becomes possible. We wouldn’t have high rents. We could make sure that health care, education, childcare, and housing are guaranteed free human rights! This is not simply a pipe dream. At one point or another in the past century, working people from Russia, to China, to Cuba have taken power, and proved that things can be different.

New Orleans, Cuba, and Hurricanes
In 2018, in socialist Cuba, people are in fact guaranteed to have access to health care, education, childcare, and housing. Cuba is a “poor” country compared to the United States, but there are no homeless encampments like we have here. LGBTQ rights are enshrined in the law. Cuba’s infant mortality rate is lower than ours. All of this is well-documented by trusted global institutions like the World Health Organization. But I want to focus on the issue of hurricane response. The difference between the United States and Cuba couldn’t be more extreme, and it shows the superiority of socialism over capitalism in a way that is important for us in Louisiana. It is a matter of life and death.

All of us are familiar with the failure of the government to respond to hurricanes Katrina and Rita and Maria. Over 1,400 people died during these storms, and millions more were displaced throughout the Gulf Coast. In the aftermath, the city, state, and federal governments colluded with corporations to turn New Orleans into an experiment in the most mercenary forms of contemporary capitalism: public housing demolished, Charity Hospital closed, and public education destroyed. Puerto Rico still has not fully restored electricity, jobs and income

In Cuba, on the other hand, the whole society is mobilized to deal with hurricanes, and the aftermath is about recovery, not greed. Hurricane preparedness drills take place regularly everywhere. The focus is on risk-reduction with an integrated response from local fire departments, health, transportation, and other public services. Before storms occur, government officials, police, and military personnel help people move their personal property to safer locations. The government also guarantees replacement of all lost property.

Cuba has a fraction of the wealth and resources of the United States and is directly in the path of many storms. Almost no one in Cuba dies as a result of tropical storms and hurricanes, gets evicted, or loses pay. The past 17 major hurricanes to hit Cuba only resulted in 35 deaths. When Katrina hit Cuba, only two people died.

The socialist organization of society allows for the possibility of tackling major problems. The Cubans decided to take on the problem of storm preparedness, which is essential for the island. Such a massive reorganization is impossible in the U.S., where people are intentionally isolated from one another and the motives of the ruling class are based in profits. It is socialism which gives to people the means to bring about progressive change.