For a Proletarian Pandemic Policy!

(Updated: 11/3/25)

For a Proletarian Pandemic Policy!

(This brief statement concerning the Covid-19 pandemic is an adaptation of a piece written by an ICFI (1953) Supporter in 2022, in the shadow of and as a rebuke to the perspective put forward by WSWS. Significantly, this piece pushed forward an independent policy for the working class as against the approach of the ICFI, which had veered into outright uncritical political support for factions of the bourgeoisie that undertook measures against the pandemic such as lockdowns.)

        The breakdown and failure of the "zero-covid" to “herd immunity” and “let it rip” policies of the bourgeois states showed the need for a proletarian policy for the Covid-19 pandemic. Everywhere policies were implemented in an attempt to contain or eliminate the pandemic, they were accompanied by reactionary measures or non-measures (such as insufficient support to those affected). On the other hand, "herd-immunity" policies and "vaccine-only" approaches led to mass sickness and death, particularly for the most vulnerable populations such as the disabled and elderly. It has been estimated that over twenty million excess deaths can be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic, while masses of people are suffering the lingering effects of “Long-Covid.”

        The failure of the bourgeoisie’s pandemic measures (and non-measures) exposes the key error of all reformist logic: the idea that the capitalist state can be pressured to carry out policies inimical to the class forces on which it is based.

        Insofar as they had no control over the drafting or implementation of the packages of haphazard public health measures carried out by capitalist governments and bore the brunt of their worst sides, many sections of the working class were vulnerable to skepticism and right-wing opposition to lockdowns and related policies. These policies found their strongest support amongst various upper-middle-class professionals able to maintain their livelihoods by working from home and able to withstand or avoid any of the financial or other impacts faced by other sections of the population. It is from this layer that uncritical support for the measures of the capitalist states was drawn and on the basis of which they were (temporarily) sustained. Expressing the inconsistent and fleeting "progressivism" of these middle-class segments, this support gradually gave way, especially with widespread vaccination and increased availability of treatment options, to support for the mass social murder of “herd-immunity.”

Chinese protesters against China's onerous policies singing "The Internationale" and "March of the Volunteers"

        In the wake of mass protests in China against its onerous zero-COVID policies, the last stronghold of pandemic "eliminationism" fell as the government moved towards a herd-immunity regime. In China's case, imperialist governments ratcheted up the campaign for China to abandon its program of elimination, and it also responded to this pressure. As communicated by Chinese Trotskyist contacts, fiscal concerns also played a key role in the perilously abrupt shift away from its previous policies. The imperialists' and Chinese bourgeoisie's drive to lift the grueling program China had been pursuing had nothing to do with concern for any blowback encountered by the masses of workers and oppressed; instead, they hoped the implementation of herd-immunity policies which would bring mass death would open up a larger arena for profitable investments by global finance capital. Nevertheless, the attempt at "elimination in one country" was always utopian, and the measure’s implementations were always "deformed" by the class nature of the authoritarian capitalist Chinese state.

        Despite their "deformation," public health measures undertaken by various capitalist governments around the world pointed to the techniques that could be used by workers’ governments to save lives and tackle pandemics on an international scale. It is necessary to wage war against pandemics such as Covid-19, but such a war can only be carried through under the leadership of the working class! In the wake of China and the rest of the world opening themselves up to the virus, leading to a rise in the death toll there and globally, and as the world faces the ever-present threat of new pandemics emerging, the international working class faces recognizing the need to develop its own policy to address pandemics - a proletarian pandemic policy. The starting point of such a policy would be the fight to place enforcement of the entire arsenal of necessary public health measures - such as lockdowns, testing, contact tracing, masking policies, vaccination etc. - under the control of safety committees subject to the democratic control of the working class. These committees would need to elect a world council of workers' representatives able to coordinate these efforts internationally, beyond the limits imposed by the nation-state and its system of borders.