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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/17-2020-socialism-and-coronavirus/?utm_source=Tricontinental+subscribers+single+list&utm_campaign=4bd499cc9d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_21_04_52&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bb06a786c7-4bd499cc9d-190726266">https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/17-2020-socialism-and-coronavirus/?utm_source=Tricontinental+subscribers+single+list&utm_campaign=4bd499cc9d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_21_04_52&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bb06a786c7-4bd499cc9d-190726266</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Either Socialism Will Defeat the Louse or the Louse Will Defeat Socialism: The Seventeenth Newsletter (2020).</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">April 23, 2020</div>
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<span><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/es/newsletterissue/17-2020-socialismo-y-coronavirus/"><span>Español</span></a></span></p>
<p>Dear Friends,</p>
<p>Greetings from the desk of the <a href="http://thetricontinental.org/">Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research</a>.</p>
<p>The International Monetary Fund (IMF) <a href="https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/14/the-great-lockdown-worst-economic-downturn-since-the-great-depression/">says</a>
that the Great Lockdown, which has no end date, could very well lead to
a loss of $9 trillion to global Gross Domestic Product over the
entirety of 2020 and 2021; this number is greater than the combined
economies of Japan and Germany. This scenario, the Fund’s managing
director Kristalina Georgieva <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52326853">admits</a>, ‘may actually be a more optimistic picture than reality produces’.</p>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/258308f6-6e94-11ea-89df-41bea055720b">calls</a> within Europe for the mutualisation of debt, there are <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8f76a4c6-7d7a-11ea-82f6-150830b3b99a">calls</a> on the global stage for debt moratoriums, and there are <a href="https://cepr.net/press-release/g20-should-call-for-imf-to-issue-3-trillion-sdrs-cepr-economists-say/">calls</a>
for the IMF to issue trillions of dollars of Special Drawing Rights
(SDRs). But old habits do not die. Germany and the Netherlands <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d19dc7a6-c33b-4931-9a7e-4a74674da29a">do not want</a> to bail out the southern European economies, while the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/9cb75566-bfd2-4f25-81f7-55780ebdaa3d">US Treasury</a> and the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4b9266ad-df46-454c-b31f-40b6b7c70fbb">creditors</a>
are not keen on debt relief or the issuance of SDRs. In fact, in the
midst of a catastrophic pandemic, the United States government has <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-briefing/">decided</a> to withhold its financial contribution to the World Health Organisation (WHO).</p>
<p>There are now over 2 million people infected by SARS-CoV-2 across the
world, with deaths increasing, a general sense of gloom falling like
heavy winter snow on our human capacity for optimism.</p>
<p>But then there are sparks of hope, mainly coming from parts of the
world committed to socialism. At the end of January, when most of the
world was cavalier about the news from Wuhan (China), Vietnam’s Prime
Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc assembled a team and began to create measures
to tackle the spread of the virus. ‘Fighting the epidemic is fighting
the enemy’, he <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0cc3c956-6cb2-11ea-89df-41bea055720b">said</a> at that time. Vietnam’s government <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/04/vietnam-winning-new-war-invisible-enemy/">began</a>
to trace those who might be infected, test their contacts, quarantine
anyone who interacted with them, and bring in the entire medical
establishment – including retired doctors and nurses – to deal with the
emergency. Vietnam’s Military Medical Academy and Viet A Corporation
developed a low-cost test kit based on WHO guidelines, which allowed the
country to begin testing people with symptoms. Crucially, the
government repeatedly cautioned the population against xenophobia. A
clever campaign for public information by Vietnam’s National Institute
of Occupational Safety and Health about the virus and about basic
hygiene included a song and video, which then spawned numerous
imitators.</p>
<p><span class="gmail-caption">Ghen Cô Vy, February 2020.</span></p>
<p>Until now, there have been no deaths from COVID-19 in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Last week, Vietnam <a href="https://www.vietnam-briefing.com/news/vietnam-business-operations-and-the-coronavirus-updates.html/">shipped</a>
450,000 protective suits to the United States and 750,000 masks to
France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United
States. Within living memory, the United States, with assistance from
its European allies, dropped seven and a half million tonnes of
explosives, including chemical weapons (napalm and Agent Orange), which
devastated Vietnam’s society and poisoned its agricultural land for
generations; this is 100 times greater than the power of the atom bombs
that the US dropped on Japan. Yet, it is Vietnam whose government and
people have used science and public action to tackle the virus and who
sent – in solidarity – equipment to the United States, where the absence
of science and public actions has paralysed society.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_18330" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Vladimir-Lebedev-Yesterday-and-Today-1928..jpg" alt="Vladimir Lebedev, Yesterday and Today, 1928." width="600" height="775"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-18330" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Vladimir Lebedev, Yesterday and Today, 1928.</span></p></div>
<p>A hundred years ago, in 1918-19, an influenza pandemic swept the
world, traveling on ships carrying troops to and from the battlefields
of Europe in the throes of World War I. At least fifty million people
were felled by what was erroneously called the Spanish Flu (the virus
was first detected in Kansas, USA in March 1918). This influenza
followed another pandemic – in 1889-90 – whose swift diffusion has been
blamed on the rapid movement of humans by steam transportation by sea
and land. While the 1889-90 influenza mainly killed children and the
elderly, the influenza of 1918-19 also killed young adults for reasons
that are still not fully explained.</p>
<p>Troops, who, in the words of the poet Isaac Rosenberg, ‘Drained the
wild honey of their youth’ in the mud, lice, and mustard gas of the
ghastly trenches now had to confront the infectious flu at home. As the
war ended, the belligerent countries set up the League of Nations, which
created the Typhus Commission, quickly renamed the Epidemics
Commission. Disease was the close cousin of war, with a volt of diseases
– such as typhus, typhoid, dysentery, smallpox, cholera, and influenza –
aflame amongst the demobilised soldiers. The Epidemics Commission
visited Poland, where it recommended the establishment of a cordon
sanitaire to prevent the diseases from spreading further and worked with
the government to create emergency hospitals and clinics. It was this
Commission that would be folded into the Health Organisation of the
League, and – after World War II – the World Health Organization (WHO).</p>
<p>The young Soviet Republic, established after the October Revolution of 1917, faced the wrath of what was known as <em>ispanskaya bolezn</em>,
or the ‘Spanish Disease’. By late 1918, the Soviets saw 150 cases per
week, although it was not as much of a problem as typhus, which brought
1000 cases per week to the hospitals. It was because of typhus – caused
by lice – that Lenin said, ‘Either socialism will defeat the louse, or
the louse will defeat socialism’. The young Soviet Republic inherited a
broken medical system and a population in poverty and ill health; civil
war, disease, and famine threatened the total collapse of society. It
was in light of this that the Soviets hastily <a href="https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2020/0419_pd/remembering-lenin">acted</a> in several keyways:</p>
<p><strong>Create a commissariat for public health</strong>. On 21 July
1918, the Soviet Republic centralised the various health agencies and
put Nikolai Semashko in charge; this was the first such institution in
the world (by comparison, the US did not create a Department of Health
till 1953). The Commissariat was charged with ensuring that health care
was a right and not a privilege; therefore, medical care had to be free.</p>
<p><strong>Expand and democratise the health sector</strong>. The Soviet
Republic hastily built hospitals and polyclinics, trained doctors and
public health experts, and expanded medical schools and bacteriological
institutes. Dr. E. P. Pervukhin, Commissar of Public Health of the
Petrograd Commune, said in 1920, ‘New factories for medicines have been
erected, and great stocks have been confiscated from the speculators in
medicines’. The profit motive was removed from the medical sector.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_18321" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Lithograph-to-illustrate-the-distribution-of-the-Soviet-budget-1930..jpg" alt="Lithograph to illustrate the distribution of the Soviet budget, 1930." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="451" height="334"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-18321" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Lithograph to illustrate the distribution of the Soviet budget, 1930.</span></p></div>
<p><strong>Mobilise the population</strong>. Health care could not be
left in the hands of the doctors and nurses alone; Semashko made the
case for the mobilisation of workers and peasants into the struggle to
build a healthy society. The Workers’ Committees to Combat Epidemics
were established in 1918 in both cities and villages; the
representatives of these Committees – workers and peasants themselves –
communicated scientific information about health and sanitation, ensured
that the public baths (<em>banyas</em>) were clean, and monitored their
communities to ensure that any sign of disease would lead to
professional medical care. In 1920, Semashko wrote, ‘We may say without
exaggeration that the epidemics of typhus and cholera were stopped
chiefly by the assistance of the workers’ and peasants’ committees’.
Public action was an integral part of Soviet health care.</p>
<p><strong>Strengthen preventive measures</strong>. The Soviet public
health officials believed that more resources had to go towards
prevention, whether towards public health instruction or towards the
improvement of the living conditions of the workers and the peasants.
Dr. Pervukhin told a Norwegian journalist in 1920 that in the Soviet
Republic, ‘all dwellings are nationalised, so no one any longer lives in
the surroundings so dangerous to health which many had to put up with
under the old regime. By means of our grain monopoly, foodstuffs are
guaranteed first of all to the sick and weak’. Better conditions of life
and more frequent medical attention would be able to stop the spread of
disease.</p>
<p>No wonder, then, as Dr. Pervukhin said, that ‘We overcame the Spanish
influenza better than the western world did’. Reading these texts
shines a familiar light on the way that Vietnam and Kerala, China and
Cuba are tackling the coronavirus pandemic today; it underlines the gap
between the socialist order and the capitalist order, one with a
disposition to put people before profit and the other lashed to the mast
of profit. Reading Jessica Lussenhop’s magnificent <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52311877">story</a>
about how the Smithfield pork plant in South Dakota (USA) refused to
shut down when multiple cases of COVID-19 broke out along their
production line, instead pressuring workers who had little choice but to
keep coming to work, tells you something about the compulsions of the
capitalist order in the face of a pandemic. Tim, one of the Smithfield
workers, said he had to keep working because ‘I got four kids to take
care of. That income is what provides a roof over my head’, COVID-19 or
not.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Lenin-150-cover.jpg" alt="" width="825" height="1275"></p>
<p>Wednesday, 22 April, was the 150<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Lenin’s
birthday. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, along with
three publishing houses (LeftWord Books in India, Expressão Popular in
Brazil, Batalla de Ideas in Argentina) released a <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/books-lenin150/">free book online</a>
to commemorate the birthday. The book, available in English,
Portuguese, and Spanish, includes Lenin’s 1913 essay on Marx,
Mayakovsky’s 1924 epic poem about Lenin, and a short essay I wrote about
Lenin’s theory and praxis.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/20200422_Lenin_.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="600"></p>
<p>On 24 March, the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote a poem called
‘Dawn of Darkness’; it was written in response to his neighbour Janet
DiVinceno and offerings by Mukoma wa Ngugi (Cornell University) and
Naveen Kishore (<a href="https://www.seagullbooks.org/">Seagull Books</a>, Kolkata, India). A few days later, he shared the poem, a gift for all of us.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I know, I know,<br>
It threatens the common gestures of human bonding<br>
The handshake,<br>
The hug<br>
The shoulders we give each other to cry on<br>
The neighbourliness we take for granted<br>
So much that we often beat our breasts<br>
Crowing about rugged individualism,<br>
Disdaining nature, pissing poison on it even, while<br>
Claiming that property has all the legal rights of personhood<br>
Murmuring gratitude for our shares in the gods of capital.</p>
<p>Oh, how now I wish I could write poetry in English,<br>
Or any and every language you speak<br>
So, I can share with you, words that<br>
Wanjikũ, my Gĩkũyũ mother, used to tell me:<br>
<em>G</em><em>ũ</em><em>tir</em><em>ĩ</em> <em>ũ</em><em>tuk</em><em>ũ</em> <em>ũ</em><em>tak</em><em>ĩ</em><em>a:</em><br>
No night is so Dark that,<br>
It will not end in Dawn,<br>
Or simply put,<br>
Every night ends with dawn.<br>
<em><u>G</u></em><em><u>ũ</u></em><em><u>tir</u></em><em><u>ĩ</u></em> <em>ũ</em><em>tuk</em><em>ũ</em> <em>ũ</em><em>tak</em><em>ĩ</em><em>a.</em></p>
<p>This darkness too will pass away<br>
We shall meet again and again<br>
And talk about Darkness and Dawn<br>
Sing and laugh maybe even hug<br>
Nature and nurture locked in a green embrace<br>
Celebrating every pulsation of a common being<br>
Rediscovered and cherished for real<br>
In the light of the Darkness and the new Dawn.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This darkness too will pass away. The light that welcomes us will not be, as Ngugi writes, the old light, but a new dawn.</p>
<p>Warmly, Vijay.</p>
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