So, what would a rational socialist government have done, and what should the labour movement have been arguing. Firstly, a socialist government would not have imposed austerity on the health and social care system over the last ten years. Hospitals and care homes, under the direct democratic control of the workers employed in them, would have ensured that their own health and safety was protected, by having adequate supplies of PPE, not just in preparation for Covid19, but also for the long predicted flu epidemic, or other epidemics that might arise. Those workers would have established their own sets of safety and isolation protocols to protect them against infection or further spread of infection.
Bourgeois governments, of course, would never concede to such a thing, because, despite all of their talk about it being “our” NHS, it is no such thing. It is “their” NHS, the NHS of the capitalist state, which acts on behalf of capital, not of workers. But, that is no reason why the labour movement should not have emphasised that fact. The labour movement itself should have demanded that Health Service unions be allowed to create Committees of Workers Inspection, for every hospital, and care home, overseeing the provision of activities and provision of adequate PPE etc.
Of course, there is no point having such Committees of Workers' Inspection unless their findings and proposals can be implemented. Under socialism, the workers themselves exercise democratic control over production, directly, but, under capitalism, a political struggle, a class struggle, is required to obtain such control. The labour movement should have engaged in such a class struggle to demand that hospital workers and care workers do have such democratic control. The government claims it is “our” NHS, so they should be asked to prove it by handing over control to the workers.
But, the labour movement, including the Left, could not do that, because it had both demobilised and immobilised itself. You can't wage a class struggle if you are sat at home, and have conceded that you can't congregate with your fellow workers! And, even in terms of the provision of PPE, ventilators and other equipment that was in short supply, remedying that situation required workers control of production existed on a wider scale. A socialist government would have immediately diverted resources to the production of face masks, PPE, and ventilators, but, under capitalism, it is only workers that can guarantee that with their own direct action. Workers control of production would have seen every workplace with the capacity to produce such equipment turned over to its production, with the workers liaising with the Committees of Workers Inspection to establish appropriate specifications. They would have ignored patent laws, and so on, so as not to have to reinvent the wheel, as some of those firms that did switch to such production have done.
The model could have been the Lucas Plan where workers at Lucas Aerospace drew up detailed plans of how the company could have been converted from production of weapons to socially useful production. And, as happened in France, in 1968, local committees of workers, which, here, could have been based on Trades Councils, came together to ensure that socially useful production continued, amidst the General Strike. They ensured that supplies went to hospitals, fuel etc. to workers houses and so on. But, again, all this requires that workers continued to work, continued to congregate in their workplaces, the basic organising unit of the working-class. The petty-bourgeois Left might think they can fight the class struggle sitting at home tapping away on Twitter, but they can't.
A socialist government would have ensured an adequately resourced healthcare system could have undertaken the required testing and tracing on an even more efficient scale than S. Korea and Germany, so as to prevent the spread of the virus in the first place, but, in the event it did spread, a properly resourced healthcare system would have had appropriate isolation facilities so that it was not necessary to stop people with other serious medical conditions coming in to hospital. If not through dedicated isolation hospitals then at least through isolation wings, the spread of the virus throughout hospitals and care homes could have been prevented. And, of course, it has been in the hospitals and care homes, where vulnerable populations were locked down, that the concentration of deaths have occurred.
But, a socialist government would focus its attention on preventing people becoming ill in the first place. Capitalist healthcare, as provided by the NHS, is focused only on treating people after they have been made ill. Its on that basis that NHS bureaucrats build their own empires, that pharmaceutical companies and medical supplies companies make their large profits. A socialist government would, therefore, have put resources into the development of vaccines against coronavirus and other viruses, as well as into other antiviral treatments. The drug companies will only develop such products where it is profitable, and that requires a large market. Unless large numbers of people are likely to be affected by a disease, and unless it is serious enough to warrant treatment, the drug companies have no reason to produce such a treatment.
But, even if it were the case that COVID19 had spread, this prophylactic approach would still be the one that a socialist government would take, i.e. to prevent people becoming ill to begin with. The already known facts about coronaviruses, in general, and about Covid19, in particular, from what had occurred in China, actually made that easy to undertake. Coronaviruses, in general, such as those responsible for the common cold, are highly contagious, but for the majority of the population more or less benign. It is only for the minority whose immune system is weak, such as the elderly or those suffering a range of illnesses to whom it poses a serious risk. For 80% of the population not in those categories, Covid19 poses no more, and possibly even less risk than does the common cold. There was little point in engaging in drastic action, therefore, to prevent this 80% of the population contracting the virus, because most of them would not know they had had it, and the rest would think it was just a cold. What is more, having had it they would have developed antibodies against it, making them immune to it, what scientists call herd immunity or natural vaccination.
A socialist government, operating on a precautionary principle of prophylactic medicine, would, therefore, have ensured that everyone in that 20% of the population actually at risk from it, was removed from the potential of contact with the virus. The majority of those at risk are those over the age of 80 (about 53% of deaths) but with a significant proportion (about 39% of deaths) being those between 60 and 80. A socialist government, on the basis of a more rational organisation of the economy, would reduce the retirement age to 60, if not 55, so straight away this large segment of the 20% is removed from the risk of infection in the workplace. The rest of the 20%, i.e. people under 60, but with underlying medical conditions, or who have someone in their household in the 20%, would have been put on sick leave with full pay. On that basis, all of the 20% could have been effectively isolated. Their shopping and other requirements would be delivered to them, as a socialist society created a much more comprehensive and free broadband network, enabling everyone to shop online.
For those in the 20% who required home social care – though its hard to know why that would remain given the provision of high quality communal care – the adequate levels of PPE, and contact protocols, for care workers, who would no longer be precarious workers on zero hours contracts, with inadequate contact time, would ensure that neither was at risk of contracting or passing on the virus. On this basis, the majority of the population would have quickly developed immunity, so that, without hosts to infect, the virus would simply die out.
But, that is also what the labour movement should have demanded the government do now. If all of the 20% were enabled to effectively self-isolate, then the virus would have died out, as the 80% became immune to it. That was the rational scientific approach to have adopted, along with the other demands set out above. In all workplaces, the approach should have been similar to that which should be adopted with nuclear power, and other such hazardous production. We demand workers control, and committees of workers' inspection, so that production only occurs when the workers themselves are satisfied that it is safe.
Instead, the labour movement, and the Left, abandoned any independent working-class perspective; it forgot all about the principle of workers' self activity and self-government, and related demands for workers' control, as part of an overall programme of class struggle, and instead collapsed into rank opportunism, placing a plus sign wherever the populists placed a minus sign. The whole fiasco shows that the ordinary members of these microsects have become mindless drones, unable to think for themselves, as the microsects have become more like religious cults. In the words of Trotsky, they need, once more, to Learn To Think.
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