From CrimethInc.

Some things are worth risking death for. Perpetuating capitalism is not one of them. Going back to work—at risk of spreading COVID-19 or dying from it—so that the rich can continue accruing profits is not worth dying for.

If the problem is that people are suffering from the economy being shut down, the solution is clear. People were already suffering as a consequence of the economy running. The inequalities it created are one of the reasons some people are so desperate to go back to work—but in a profit-driven economy, the more we do business, the greater the inequalities become.

Practically all the resources people need exist already or could be produced by voluntary labor on a much safer basis, rather than forcing the poorest and most vulnerable to work for peanuts at great risk of spreading the virus. Rather than going back to business as usual, we need to abolish capitalism once and for all.

Why Do Some People Want to Let COVID-19 Spread?

Supporters of Donald Trump are calling for the economy to resume immediately at any cost: they are gambling that, like Rand Paul and Boris Johnson, they won’t be the ones to die.

It’s easy to understand why the beneficiaries of capitalism would welcome a pandemic that could kill off a part of the unruly population. The distinction between “essential” and “inessential” workers has laid this bare for all to see: a large part of the population is no longer essential to industrial production and the logistics of international distribution. In a volatile world, increasingly affordable automation has reduced the angry and precarious to a mere liability for those who hold power.

We are not yet desensitized enough to this notion that those who govern us can speak openly about it, but there have been attempts on Fox News to shift to a discourse that takes millions of additional deaths in stride as a worthwhile price to pay to keep the economy functioning. Aren’t we already desensitized to workplace accidents, air pollution, global climate change, and the like?

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

–A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

---

But why would workers call for the reopening of the economy?

If the logical result of a large part of the population being superfluous to capitalism is a greater willingness among the ruling class to sacrifice our lives, it is not surprising that workers who cannot imagine anything other than capitalism would also be more willing to see other workers die.

Discussing the economic impact of the bubonic plague in Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici argues that “the scarcity of labor which the epidemic caused shifted the power relation to the advantage of the lower classes.” Federici meant to call attention to the powerful labor movements at the end of the Middle Ages, but today we can derive grim implications from this analysis. In the same way that bigots wrongly imagine that shutting down immigration will secure high-paying jobs for white citizens, they might conclude that the smaller the working class, the better the deal for the survivors.

This is the same segment of the working class that has always welcomed wars and championed unthinking obedience to authority—the ones who accepted white privilege as a bribe not to show solidarity with other workers. Lacking longstanding bonds or a deep-rooted tradition of collective resistance, workers in the United States have always been especially willing to play the lottery when it comes to questions of survival and economic advancement. Many conservative whites seem to have given up entirely on realizing the dream of economic security that their parents sought, settling instead for seeing others suffer even worse than them. As we argued early in the Trump era, Trump did not promise to redistribute wealth in the United States, but rather to redistribute violence.

This willingness to risk death in hopes of seeing other (likely less privileged) workers die might be disguised as conspiracy theories about the virus, or even as outright denial of its existence—but at base it is schadenfreude of the worst kind.

Defending Liberty?

Yet there is something else going on here, as well. To some extent, those who have protested the lockdown over the past few days have understood themselves as defending their “rights” as citizens—though, senselessly, they are serving as shills for the reigning authoritarian government of the United States to intensify the control via which it will go on exposing them to risk. Their slogan might as well be “Kill all the immigrants and prisoners—set yourself up as dictator in the name of freedom—just let me die of COVID-19 in the comfort of my boss’s workplace!”

In this regard, in a confused way, the protests against the lockdown are part of a worldwide pushback against state authority in response to lockdown measures during the pandemic.

In Russia, demonstrations in response to the quarantine conditions have led to open confrontations, something rare indeed in Putin’s totalitarian regime. In France, riots have broken out in several cities and suburbs, such as in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, in response to the police taking advantage of the lockdown to murder five people and injure many more, the latest victim being a motorcyclist ; during the ongoing repression, officers shot a 5-year-old girl with a LBD40 rubber bullet, fracturing her skull. In Peru, police have attacked crowds of impoverished refugees attempting to flee the capital to their home villages, having run out of resources during the lockdown.

All of these examples show how poorly capitalist governments founded on coercive violence are equipped to maintain the sort of quarantines that can prevent a pandemic from spreading. In a society in which almost all wealth is concentrated in a few hands, in which state edicts are enforced by violence, a large part of the population lacks the resources to ride out a disaster like this in isolation. Most people who have maintained social distancing have done so out of concern for all humanity, at great cost to themselves, not because of the force employed against them by the state. State enforcement of the quarantine has been uneven, to say the least, with the governor of Florida declaring professional wrestling an essential function and police around the world turning a blind eye to conservatives who flout the shutdown.

In the absence of a powerful movement against rising authoritarianism, people who are concerned about the power grabs of the state may join “protests” like the ones encouraging Trump to lift the lockdown. This is one of the hallmarks of an authoritarian society: that people have no options to choose from other than to support one of the factions of the government, all of whom are pursuing totalitarian visions.¹ Rather than choosing between subjugation under a technocratic state and risking death to continue our economic subjugation, we have to pose another option: a grassroots struggle against capitalism and authoritarianism of all kinds.

To some extent, the protests in favor of reopening the economy are an astroturf phenomenon, aimed at expanding the Overton window in order to make it easier for Trump to restart the economy at whatever cost. Both Trump and his Democratic rivals share the same fundamental program. They only disagree about the details.

There was never any plan to protect us all from COVID-19. The Democrats just wanted to pace the impact of the virus on healthcare infrastructure for the sake of maintaining public order. They, too, take for granted that the capitalist market must continue—even as it impoverishes and kills us in greater and greater numbers. They won’t revolt against Trump’s ban on immigration any more than Trump will object to the surveillance measures they aim to introduce. Supporting either party means accepting the arrival of a totalitarianism in which it will be taken for granted that workers will risk death simply for the privilege of letting capitalists earn a profit off their labor.

To protect our lives and the lives of our neighbors, to gain access to resources, to attain freedom—there is only one way to accomplish all of these things. We have to revolt.

---

Capitalism Is a Death Cult

Nothing matters to the market but profit. Forests only have value as timber or toilet paper; animals only have value as hot dogs or hamburgers. The precious, unrepeatable moments of your life only have value as labor hours determined by the imperatives of commerce. The market rewards landlords for evicting families, bosses for exploiting employees, engineers for inventing death machines. It separates mothers from their children, drives species into extinction, shuts down hospitals to open up privatized prisons. It reduces entire ecosystems to ash, spewing out smog and stock options. Left to itself, it will turn the whole world into a graveyard.

Some things are worth risking our lives for. Perpetuating capitalism is not one of them. If we have to risk our lives, let’s risk them for something worthwhile, like creating a world in which no one has to risk death for a paycheck. Life for the market means death for us.

---

Further Reading

• Cholera revolts: A Class Struggle We May Not Like
• From the Cholera Riots to the Coronavirus Revolts—The more punitive the approach to public health, the fiercer the backlash.

From Archives Révolutionnaires

Inspired by the Black Panther Party and other groups of revolutionaries organizing to meet the health and educational needs of their community, members of the Latin American Young Lords Party set up a drug treatment centre in 1970. On November 10, 1970, about 30 activists occupied the then vacant sixth floor of the nurses’ residence building at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, New York. He quickly set up checkpoints and erected a barricade; the hospital administration was forced to negotiate and finally give them the space. In partnership with health care workers, addicts and community members, the Young Lords then established The People’s Drug Program, a community-run detoxification program. The following interview, conducted by Molly Porzig, was published on March 15, 2013, in the American magazine The Abolitionnist. Vicente “Panama” Alba, a member of the Young Lords Party and counselor at Lincoln Detox Center during the 1970s, recounts his experience.

/ / /

How did Lincoln Detox incorporate grassroots organizing into its ongoing work?

When you’re consumed by chasing a bag of drugs, chasing the money to get the bag of drugs, being high, or being in an environment with other people you get high with, it becomes a way of life. When people want alternatives, you have to provide it for them. We did not have the resources to say: Okay, you’re 17, you can benefit from finishing school. Here’s a school with caring teachers, caring counselors and so on to bring people up to speed in education or to direct people to get employment, particularly people who had been out of the work force. Given the natural power of the therapeutic approach, this was all very important that it was voluntary, that it was people’s will to do. If they learned things from our educational program and therapeutic sessions, they wanted to do something about those problems. We would direct them to get involved, to get engaged in campaigns that were going on in the community.

We had people advocating for people in welfare centers, training people on the rights of welfare recipients, and translators who would advocate for people who were Spanish-speakers. We played a part in the founding of a coalition for minority construction workers, because construction work was a good paying job and the industry excluded minorities. Those were a few things we did, in addition to political campaigns. Some people that came through our programs joined the Young Lords, Black Panther Party or the Republic of New Afrika. Some became Muslims and got deeply involved. Some got involved in the campaign to free political prisoners or began building collectives.

We fought everyday—we fought for the right to eat, the right to get paid, the right to be respected, the right not to be fucked with by the cops. We never asked for anything in return.

What were some of the strengths, successes, challenges and weaknesses?

There were strengths and successes throughout, but it wasn’t all glory. There were a lot of challenges and weaknesses. From the first day, November 10, 1970, we had a constant influx of people everyday seeking help. Hundreds and hundreds came—I’m not talking about one or two-dozen people—as the word spread about Lincoln Detox, the opportunity for people to walk in and get effective help from everyday people (not white professionals but their own people) who had a loving heart, developing an understanding of things they needed to articulate. People came from all over New York and Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, too. The Lincoln Detox program became so successful and effective that a United Nations delegation visited and gave us recognition for it.

At that point acupuncture became controversial because it was “non-medical” people providing medical care. Laws then were passed about who could do acupuncture, making it so that it could only be done under supervision of a medical doctor who might not have a clue of what acupuncture is about. Those kinds of political struggles—to maintain funding for the program, to keep the program alive, against the local police as well as the hospital police who continuously tried to make their way into the program (Lincoln Detox was a sanctuary where addicts could go and not be afraid of the police)—were big challenges. Then we struggled with the hospital to provide meal expenses for the program. People were coming off the streets, didn’t have anything to eat and needed treatment. We struggled and eventually figured it out.

We also struggled with developing our skills in treatment, acupuncture and detoxing. At the time we started the program, there was a big push to promote methadone maintenance as a treatment modality. Methadone is a scary drug, originally developed by Nazi scientists in order to furnish themselves with opiates. It’s highly addictive and the withdrawal is different from heroin. People slowly developed a protocol for detoxing off methadone. We could detox somebody from heroin in ten days and they’d be fine physically. Methadone was very painful for many months—three or four sometimes.

The existence of the program was a thorn in the government’s side. We were revolutionaries and radicals doing work, recruiting people to do work the government didn’t want to happen.

One morning in 1979, we went to work and the Lincoln Hospital was surrounded by police checking the identification of everybody walking in. They had a list of names and members of the Young Lords, Black Panther Party, and Republic of New Afrika and other people were excluded from entering the facilities, and were to be arrested if they tried to enter. They dismantled Lincoln Detox. One component they were very interested in was the acupuncture, because it was a money mill. Some people today say the Lincoln Detox still exists, but it doesn’t. There’s an acupuncture clinic at Lincoln Hospital but the program was dismantled.

Was the collaboration between different groups such as the Young Lords, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika and Muslim communities spontaneous, automatic or a more intentional effort in developing the program?

That’s a deep question. There’s the overriding principle of unity and respect and there’s the reality that we were all works in progress. It’s not like you go to sleep one night a junkie and wake up the next morning a revolutionary. There’s a process in growth and change. As products of today’s society, we are not examples of the society we’re building for tomorrow.

Collaboration and solidarity were very important to Lincoln Detox and there were a lot of struggles. We considered the Black Panther Party the vanguard of the revolutionary movement at that time, and there was the reality that the Black Panther Party was disintegrating. There were some people in the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords who were extremely arrogant. We had to struggle against and combat those tendencies. We would always go back to the principle of what is the best interest of the people. The outcome was very positive and we learned so much from each other. In 1973, when the American Indian Movement confronted the FBI at Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, there was no question for us. It was automatically our responsibility to support and engage with that. We developed a philosophy, a practice that made it possible for us to do those things.

What lessons were learned that could strengthen work today?

I think that a lot of organizing that takes place today is funded. You don’t hear about many initiatives that are independent efforts. One of the things that Lincoln Detox was very much a part of was support for the Attica brothers during the Attica Prison takeover in September 1971. We did 20-something rallies in 15 days throughout New York City. We didn’t have the Internet or cell phones, or institutions financing copy machines or any of that. We hustled to type fliers, cut and pasted pictures and burned stencils.

Pa’lante (a contraction of Para Adelante, Forward!), is one of the publications of the Young Lords Party, distributed by the New York Chapter.

We built a movement and we looked for ways to make the movement survive without government funding. Nobody could tell us what we were going to do. Today a lot relies on foundation monies, and people focus on the money and don’t engage in campaigns. Even though we forced the government for years to underwrite our work, eventually they had the power and took it out. We didn’t have the power to continue that institution. If we were not in their facility could they have shut us down? I don’t know, but it would have been different.

We need to recognize we can’t have institutions within the institutions. I mean we eventually end up in one way or another in a place where Lincoln Detox ended. We need to think in terms of short range and longer-range efforts. How do you get rid of prisons under imperialism? You have to get rid of imperialism. In the mean time you may take on some struggles that may take on some reforms and that needs to be studied and discussed.

We can look at it from the humanist viewpoint and see that we saved and changed a lot of lives, people who would have been dead from heroin. I’m one of them, one of a lot of people. A lot of people became contributors to progress, but in changing the world the obstacles change too. After heroin came crack. We did not stop the drug scourge in our community.

What are some of the legacies or long-term impacts of the Lincoln Detox center?

Humbly, I don’t think there would be the new Lincoln Hospital without our work. If it weren’t for the struggles that we took on, the new Lincoln Hospital would never have been built, because all political interests had nothing to do with the interests of the people in the community. We had to fight to put the interests of the community at the forefront and demand that hospital be built. When they shut down the old and moved to the new Lincoln Hospital, they made space for every department except Lincoln Detox. The legacy spreads beyond that, too. If you go into any New York City public hospital, you see the Patient’s Bill of Rights on the wall. That came out of the first takeover at Lincoln Hospital. We made it come alive at Lincoln Detox.

What were some of the strengths, successes, challenges and weaknesses?

There were strengths and successes throughout, but it wasn’t all glory. There were a lot of challenges and weaknesses. From the first day, November 10, 1970, we had a constant influx of people everyday seeking help. Hundreds and hundreds came—I’m not talking about one or two-dozen people—as the word spread about Lincoln Detox, the opportunity for people to walk in and get effective help from everyday people (not white professionals but their own people) who had a loving heart, developing an understanding of things they needed to articulate. People came from all over New York and Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, too. The Lincoln Detox program became so successful and effective that a United Nations delegation visited and gave us recognition for it.

At that point acupuncture became controversial because it was “non-medical” people providing medical care. Laws then were passed about who could do acupuncture, making it so that it could only be done under supervision of a medical doctor who might not have a clue of what acupuncture is about. Those kinds of political struggles—to maintain funding for the program, to keep the program alive, against the local police as well as the hospital police who continuously tried to make their way into the program (Lincoln Detox was a sanctuary where addicts could go and not be afraid of the police)—were big challenges. Then we struggled with the hospital to provide meal expenses for the program. People were coming off the streets, didn’t have anything to eat and needed treatment. We struggled and eventually figured it out.

We also struggled with developing our skills in treatment, acupuncture and detoxing. At the time we started the program, there was a big push to promote methadone maintenance as a treatment modality. Methadone is a scary drug, originally developed by Nazi scientists in order to furnish themselves with opiates. It’s highly addictive and the withdrawal is different from heroin. People slowly developed a protocol for detoxing off methadone. We could detox somebody from heroin in ten days and they’d be fine physically. Methadone was very painful for many months—three or four sometimes.

The existence of the program was a thorn in the government’s side. We were revolutionaries and radicals doing work, recruiting people to do work the government didn’t want to happen.

One morning in 1979, we went to work and the Lincoln Hospital was surrounded by police checking the identification of everybody walking in. They had a list of names and members of the Young Lords, Black Panther Party, and Republic of New Afrika and other people were excluded from entering the facilities, and were to be arrested if they tried to enter. They dismantled Lincoln Detox. One component they were very interested in was the acupuncture, because it was a money mill. Some people today say the Lincoln Detox still exists, but it doesn’t. There’s an acupuncture clinic at Lincoln Hospital but the program was dismantled.

Was the collaboration between different groups such as the Young Lords, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika and Muslim communities spontaneous, automatic or a more intentional effort in developing the program?

That’s a deep question. There’s the overriding principle of unity and respect and there’s the reality that we were all works in progress. It’s not like you go to sleep one night a junkie and wake up the next morning a revolutionary. There’s a process in growth and change. As products of today’s society, we are not examples of the society we’re building for tomorrow.

Collaboration and solidarity were very important to Lincoln Detox and there were a lot of struggles. We considered the Black Panther Party the vanguard of the revolutionary movement at that time, and there was the reality that the Black Panther Party was disintegrating. There were some people in the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords who were extremely arrogant. We had to struggle against and combat those tendencies. We would always go back to the principle of what is the best interest of the people. The outcome was very positive and we learned so much from each other. In 1973, when the American Indian Movement confronted the FBI at Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, there was no question for us. It was automatically our responsibility to support and engage with that. We developed a philosophy, a practice that made it possible for us to do those things.

What lessons were learned that could strengthen work today?

I think that a lot of organizing that takes place today is funded. You don’t hear about many initiatives that are independent efforts. One of the things that Lincoln Detox was very much a part of was support for the Attica brothers during the Attica Prison takeover in September 1971. We did 20-something rallies in 15 days throughout New York City. We didn’t have the Internet or cell phones, or institutions financing copy machines or any of that. We hustled to type fliers, cut and pasted pictures and burned stencils.

We built a movement and we looked for ways to make the movement survive without government funding. Nobody could tell us what we were going to do. Today a lot relies on foundation monies, and people focus on the money and don’t engage in campaigns. Even though we forced the government for years to underwrite our work, eventually they had the power and took it out. We didn’t have the power to continue that institution. If we were not in their facility could they have shut us down? I don’t know, but it would have been different.

We need to recognize we can’t have institutions within the institutions. I mean we eventually end up in one way or another in a place where Lincoln Detox ended. We need to think in terms of short range and longer-range efforts. How do you get rid of prisons under imperialism? You have to get rid of imperialism. In the mean time you may take on some struggles that may take on some reforms and that needs to be studied and discussed.

We can look at it from the humanist viewpoint and see that we saved and changed a lot of lives, people who would have been dead from heroin. I’m one of them, one of a lot of people. A lot of people became contributors to progress, but in changing the world the obstacles change too. After heroin came crack. We did not stop the drug scourge in our community.

What are some of the legacies or long-term impacts of the Lincoln Detox center?

Humbly, I don’t think there would be the new Lincoln Hospital without our work. If it weren’t for the struggles that we took on, the new Lincoln Hospital would never have been built, because all political interests had nothing to do with the interests of the people in the community. We had to fight to put the interests of the community at the forefront and demand that hospital be built. When they shut down the old and moved to the new Lincoln Hospital, they made space for every department except Lincoln Detox. The legacy spreads beyond that, too. If you go into any New York City public hospital, you see the Patient’s Bill of Rights on the wall. That came out of the first takeover at Lincoln Hospital. We made it come alive at Lincoln Detox.

Harlem, 1970. Young Lords pose in front of an X-ray truck for tuberculosis detection, a service the organization provided seven days a week.

///

To learn more about the history of the Young Lords, read our article about them. It is a pleasure to read the first monograph in French on the organization: Young Lords. Histoire des Black Panthers latinos (1969-1976), published by l’Échappée.

---

[1] Black nationalist separatist organization, founded in 1968.