May Day 2020: The Youth will not pay for Capitalism’s Crisis

YCL-LJC Central Executive Committee, May 1, 2020

This statement was originally published on the Young Communist League of Canada - La Ligue de la jeunesse communiste du Canada homepage

On the occasion of May 1st 2020, International Workers Day, the Young Communist League of Canada salutes healthcare workers who are on the frontline in the struggle against the COVID-19 Pandemic. We also wish to express our solidarity with those who must continue to work despite the risks of the Pandemic. To all these workers, we reiterate our demand that they be provided at no cost all personal protective equipment and that their health is guaranteed on their workplace. Would that not be the case, their right to refuse to work has to be enforced. We also the more than 10 million people who have lost their job or seen their work hours slashed.

This year, the first of May comes at a time when the masses and particularly the youth face a fundamental question. Either we accept a “return to normal” and the inevitability of capitalist exploitation once the pandemic is over, or we fight to ensure that neither the youth, nor the oppressed, nor the workers pay for this crisis . It is up to employers and big companies who plunder our wealth, destroy our environment, snatch the fruits of our labour, and engage in criminal imperialist wars of aggression, in order to keep their profits afloat to pay the costs of this crisis for which they are responsible.

We know that the return to the status quo that is advocated by the ruling class is not synonymous with a better life. The federal emergency deficit of more than $250 billion will undoubtedly be used to justify austerity measures that will result in job loss and larger cuts to social services including an already overwhelmed health care system. Student and other consumer debts will continue to accumulate, tuition fees will continue to increase while wages fall overall. Finding affordable housing will become increasingly difficult. Many small businesses file for bankruptcy. Conversely, large transnational companies will take advantage of the situation to take control of the competition and thus increase their concentration of capital.

It is this normal that the ruling class and its spokespersons refer to. Now, if there is one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has been able to reveal to the world, it is that no capitalist system was ready to face this health crisis. The people in capitalist countries were left exposed as a consequence of the commodification of healthcare. In Canada, the various austerity measures and the privatization of several sections of the public health service, in particular through so called Public-Private ‘Partnerships’, have made the health network vulnerable.

Conversely, in socialist countries and other states that try to develop in a different way than that dictated by the law of the market, the situation is quite different. In Venezuela, the number of people infected with COVID-19 is in the hundreds, not the thousands. In Cuba, despite the blockade reinforced by the Trump government which prevents the delivery of health equipment, doctors are on solidarity brigades in 21 countries and this, without impacting the country’s public healthcare system. In China, the pandemic was taken seriously from the start, effective quarantine measures were applied which allowed this country not only to get out of this crisis, but also to bring aid to countries (including Canada), in particular by sending medical equipment.

Meanwhile, the imperialist countries continue to impose criminal economic sanctions against more than 40 countries and engage in a smear campaign against the countries that are doing best in this crisis.

Examples like that of Cuba should give us hope that another world is both necessary and possible. It is with this message of hope that we must approach this May 1st.

In this particularly difficult times, we must uphold our demands for an emergency universal childcare system for people at work despite the pandemic and for a $20 minimum wage. It is unconceavable that minimum-wage workers, most of which are young and racialised, get less money than what is allocated through the CERB despite them having to face health risks.

We must also make sure that the coming weeks are marked by youth’s struggle for the expansion of public services (of which free education is a part), for a universal health system in which no one is left behind, for a single-payer employment insurance system which guarantees 90% of income – including for young precarious workers, for the right to a dignified and secure job.

It is through these struggles that, in the immediate future, we will be able to make the exploiters pay for the crisis and thus lay the foundations for a new society without crises, exploitation or wars.