In a recent comment to a post on the Irish Marxism blog, Paul Flannigan wrote that we have an assessment of the truth of Marx's claim set out in his Letter to Kugelmann, that if any society stopped working for even a few weeks it would be destroyed. Flannigan claimed that Britain and Ireland had now stopped working for a few weeks, but had not been destroyed. It is of course, a totally facile comment. The truth is that, nowadays, if any country stops working for even a few days, its economy is destroyed, because the rate of turnover of capital, today, is many times more than it was in Marx's day. The very fact that economies have not collapsed is simply an indication of the extent to which supposed lockdowns are merely a sham. The only real lockdown is a lockdown of social activity, of free movement, and, in large part, free thought.
Its only necessary to use your own eyes to see that the so called lockdown is an almost total fabrication when it comes to people engaging in work. Saddiq Khan complains that the government should introduce measures to force people to wear face coverings to protect drivers and other passengers on London buses and tubes, but, of course, if there really were a lockdown in place, there would be no buses and tubes running! And, the buses and tubes, along with the trains that continue to run, are themselves still full of commuters, and what is the definition of a commuter? It is someone travelling from their home in to work! The reality, is, of course, that if you are one of those commuters travelling in to work by train, bus, or tube, you have probably long since contracted COVID19, because of its ease of transmission. If you have had no symptoms that you have contracted it, its because, like 80% of the population, you are in that cohort of people at no serious risk from it that does have no symptoms, or only very mild symptoms. In fact, even if you are in the 20% at risk from the virus, you may still have had no or only mild symptoms, because the virus still only badly effects a small proportion of that group too, just a very much larger proportion than those in the other 80%. Overall, the virus kills perhaps 0.1% of those it infects, and probably as few as 0.01%. Its just that these people are highly concentrated amongst the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems. The average age of people dying from COVID19 is 81, whilst less than 1% of people, not in the at risk 20%, die from it, and they too probably have some undiagnosed condition, or are subject to other factors that led to them succumbing to it.
The reality is that the vast majority of people have continued to go to work, so that the lockdown is a total sham, and simply part of the widespread propaganda campaign that the government has conducted, assisted by a compliant media. About half a mile away from me there is a sizeable industrial and commercial estate. It has a range of businesses on it, from precision engineering firms through to producers of kitchen worktops and so on. The businesses currently not operating on it, are the exception. The bank on the edge of the industrial estate continues to operate as normal, with a steady stream of people queuing inside it every morning. Further away, there is an animal foods mill that continues to operate, and on the same industrial estate a brickworks continues in operation, judging by the smoke coming from its chimney that I have observed when walking the dog at night. And, on the same estate, lorries continue to flow out of the Fedex depot every 20 seconds, the same as they have always done.
The bin men continue to come around and collect the bins, which means that an even larger number of council admin staff will continue to be working, buying necessary materials, processing timesheets, paying wages, keeping the books, and operating the computer department through which all of this administration is enabled. Grass has continued to be cut, either by the Council, or by private contractors, and so on. There is no lockdown when it comes to work. The only real lockdown is that which has been imposed on social gatherings, and other social activity. That means that some business activity, and so work will have stopped. If people can't go to the gym, to restaurants or the pub, they can't spend money in those places, and those activities have closed down. But, undoubtedly supermarkets will have gained by selling more booze that people then consume in their homes instead. Amazon, Netflix and others will have benefited as people take out subscriptions, having been forced to stay in the house when they get home from work.
The real extent to which people have continued to work is shown by the GDP data. GDP is a measure of the new value created by labour. In other words, it is a direct measure of how much new labour has been undertaken by workers. The value created by that labour is then divided up as revenues, paid out as wages, profit of enterprise, interest, rent and taxes, i.e. National Income. According to the latest estimates, GDP has fallen by around 30%, in the current quarter. That means that 70% of all labour is continuing as normal. The 30% of labour that is not taking place is the labour of workers in pubs and restaurants, hairdressers and so on that have been closed down.
Those venues have been closed down supposedly on the basis of preventing the spread of COVID19, but its only necessary to consider the reality to see how ridiculous that is. If 70% of workers continue to go to work, as before, be they bin men, council office workers, bus drivers, engineers, animal food producers, brick makers, or whatever, then, in the buses and trains going to work, they are in close social contact with dozens of other people, when they get to work, they are in even more prolonged close social contact with dozens of people. The idea that the vast majority of these people have not already contracted COVID19 is simply not tenable. The only reason this fact is not showing up in the number of reported cases is because, a) only an infinitesimally small number of tests are being undertaken, and b) the vast majority of people who contract COVID19 have no symptoms or ill effects from it.
What sense does it make telling people, who have been in close social contact with dozens of people, on their way to and from, and at work, that they cannot go out to the pub at night, because they must avoid social contact with others, so as not to spread the virus! It is idiotic. Meanwhile, this very fact that there is no real lockdown, when it comes to the majority of the workforce continuing to go to work, has not resulted in any large increase in reported infections or deaths amongst that section of the population. That is because, the vast majority of the population is not at serious risk from the virus, and because, by now, as the Oxford study suggested, the very fact that these large numbers of people have continued to be in close social contact, by travelling to, and being at work, means that a significant proportion of the general population will have acquired herd immunity to it.
The one section of the population actually locked down, is that section trapped in hospitals and care homes, along with all of those elderly and sick people who are reliant on care workers coming to their homes. That is where the data shows that nearly all of the new infections, and where the vast majority of deaths are occurring. Its in those areas, as a I said from Day One, the attention should have been placed to ensure that each of these people could have been properly isolated from the risk of infection.
The governments handling of this situation has been criminally negligent. They failed to act to protect the 20% of the population that is at serious risk from COVID19, instead collapsing to the pressure of a moral panic whipped up by the media to idiotically close down the whole economy, in a ridiculous attempt to isolate the whole population, a goal that was never achievable to begin with, and which they have been forced to paper over by a propaganda campaign that talks about a lockdown that exists in name only, other than a lockdown of social contact of people outside work. It has turned workers, even more, into compliant drones acting to service the needs of the Queen Bee of Capital, whose thirst for profits continues unquenched. It has not only ended free movement, but also free thought, with an incessant and pernicious propaganda campaign demanding compliance with government diktat. It is reinforced with ridiculous, hyperbolic claims about the need to open mass graves, undertake mass cremations and so on. Deaths from COVID19, represent just about 1.8% of normal annual deaths in Britain, of 500,000. In the worst year in recent times, that rose to 623,000, or 123,000 more than the average, so its hard to see why, when no such mass burials and so on were required that year, they should be required for just 14,000 deaths from COVID19. This is just an indication of the scale of the persistent propaganda campaign that the government is launching, backed by a compliant media, that has itself whipped up a moral panic in order to sell sensationalist headlines.
The government failed to provide health and care workers with adequate PPE to prevent them contracting and spreading the virus to those in their care. At the same time, they have collapsed the economy, even without actually closing it down. We no longer hear the hysterical stories about people “panic buying”, and yet the supermarkets continue to operate limits on what can be bought. Its impossible to get delivery slots from Sainsbuy's, TESCO has imposed an 80 item overall limit, and so on. That reflects the fact that, despite what the government and supermarkets have said, there are no adequate supplies, and if there really had been a lock down of the economy, that situation would have been much, much worse in a matter of days.
A look at the fact that supermarkets have removed multipacks of various items shows the extent both to which supplies have been reduced, and the extent to which they are using the opportunity to raise prices. Cheaper options of goods are also disappearing. A look at recent ONS data shows the extent to which prices are rising, as money demand for goods and services continues whilst supply is contracted. When the lock down is lifted, the increase in demand is going to send prices much higher, fuelled by the massive amount of liquidity that has previously been put into the economy to inflate asset prices, and that has currently been put into circulation to bail-out businesses, by the state nationalising the payment of wages. That together with the rise in interest rates resulting from a phenomenal increase in borrowing is going to create a financial crisis that will make 2008 look like a minor blip. Once again we see the usual historical pattern of incompetent Tory governments wrecking the economy.
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