The King is naked: George Mavrikos (WFTU General Secretary)

The whole world is in the grip of the corona pandemic. The situation on every continent is very sad. The WFTU declares its solidarity with all those around the world who have suffered the consequences of the pandemic. Monopoly companies are using this opportunity to dismiss workers and seize their rights. Many governments are trampling on democratic rights and workers' rights.

Under cover of the pandemic, governments are taking an approach that destroys even basic human freedoms. The pandemic has brought out the brutality and exploitative character of today's social system, and has proved that this system cannot deal with such crises in human society. However hard the capitalist system tries, it cannot hide this truth. They cannot quarantine people's minds. Ordinary people see the events around them, judge them and draw their conclusions.

From the situation we live in today, we can draw the following clear conclusions.

1) The moral superiority of the working class over the parasitic character of the capitalist class has been proved once again. While the parasites speculate, workers stand in the front line to fight the pandemic and supply the people with essential goods.

While powerful industrialists and cardinals hide in their palaces, workers and those who do intellectual work labour day and night to meet the people's urgent needs.

2) Who has taken on the whole burden of health care and treatment, the private sector or the public sector? It is the public sector, abandoned in the neoliberal era, that has come to the people's rescue today.

The private sector is still exploiting the people.

3) This time of hardship has further proved another truth: that honest, true relations can develop only between peoples and workers. This was proved when Cuba sent 60 doctors to Italy. Yet Germany, in Europe itself, did not give medical equipment to Italy, and California, a state in America, would not give masks to New York. Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog world like this. But this time has proved that humanity, compassion and cooperation are the hallmarks of socialist society.

4) The death figures of this pandemic strip American policies bare. Even the admirers of the policies of America, at the head of the imperialist camp, are disappointed today. America has countless missiles, warplanes, submarines and soldiers. But what is the situation with masks?

Where are the ventilators? Where are the public hospitals? Where are the hospital beds for ordinary people?

There is a great shortage of everything.

They are asking China for medical equipment and masks. Everything in American private hospitals costs a great deal, which ordinary people cannot afford. Even in this situation, Trump follows a policy of helping the monopolies.

5) The conflicts among the imperialist powers can also be seen at this time, in the fierce competition to make a vaccine. While they all unite to exploit workers, there is fierce competition over the vaccine. The reason is that whoever makes the vaccine first can reap huge profits, not saving people from death. From this one thing is clear: we are not all equal before the pandemic. It is clear that even now the capitalist class will seize democratic rights and exploit workers. What the working class must understand is that the capitalist system causes pandemics and that exploitation will intensify.

The capitalist system is barbaric. It cannot become humane.

No vaccine can make capitalism humane.

The pandemic has stripped capitalism and pulled off its mask.

So what revolutionaries must do at this time is organise all workers to win freedom from capitalism and capitalist exploitation. We can do it.