Trotskyists on Reopening

Reopening?

Generally they're against it.

The case is succinctly made by Socialist Action in a piece by Steve Johnson entitled Reopening schools: A dangerous threat to children and teachers. The lede paragraph:

Plans to reopen schools are being questioned by the international working class as the novel coronavirus COVID-19 continues to spread across the world. These plans are part of the mad rush of capitalist nations to re-open their economies, disregarding the health of the children and the working class of their respective societies.

Absent perfect safety and the once-and-for-all defeat of the virus, nothing should be allowed to reopen. Anything less than that "demonstrates the lack of scientific planning these nations possess in tackling the pandemic."

Despite claiming to represent the "international working class," not even the teachers' union (AFT) agrees with Mr. Johnson.

AFT president Randi Weingarten announced the union’s “Plan to Safely Reopen America’s Schools and Communities” wherein the AFT linked the re-opening of the economy to the re-opening of schools. The AFT’s proposal repeated the false notion that “To gradually reopen, we need to maintain physical distancing until the number of new cases declines for at least 14 consecutive days.” ...

The AFT’s criteria, essentially matched by the Trump administration’s and major U.S. corporations, for “gradually re-opening” public schools and businesses more generally, would undoubtedly place teachers, other school workers, and students in unimaginable danger.

I think the AFT understands that closed schools mean unemployed teachers, and most teachers are willing to take some risk to go back to work. (It's not like by staying home they're necessarily at lower risk.)

Socialist Resurgence (SR) holds a similar position. Author Andy Barns comes down hard on Elon Musk for opening the Tesla plant in Fremont, CA. In the process he defends such august, bourgeois institutions as the Alameda County health department--presumably because they're "scientists." But Mr. Musk opened up anyway, daring the petty fascists to come and arrest him. Needless to say they backed down.

To which Mr. Barns responds:

Supervisor Haggerty seems confused. That Musk is actively endangering 10,000 people during a pandemic should present cooler heads with the obligation to arrest Mr. Musk! And this should be easy since he is literally breaking the law!

Mr. Musk didn't endanger anybody--no Tesla employee was forced to return to work, and some undoubtedly stayed home. But like teachers, most autoworkers need jobs and want to go to work. It's bizarre that a supposed tribune of the working class is so keen on enforcing bourgeois law against them.

SR's Adam Ritscher is the only comrade on my Beat who's done some actual reporting. In a post entitled COVID-19: Farmers slaughter hogs as pork-processing plants close down he tells us how the meatpacking supply chain actually works. I learned something--the article is well worth reading. He points out that meatpacking facilities have gotten much bigger as the process has been relentlessly optimized. Obviously that benefits consumers in normal times.

But these times are not normal. If one link breaks then lots of other things go haywire as well. "And many processing plants are so huge that they alone process a couple of percentage points of the nation’s pork. So when just one of these plants closes down, it has a huge impact." For all its efficiency, the supply chain has become increasingly brittle.

And he does have a point. But his closing paragraph makes no sense.

Today’s industry was designed around the sole goal of maximizing profits. What we need is an industry that is designed for human needs, and that takes the environment into account. Let’s use this horrible crisis to redouble our efforts to help make such a more just and rational society a reality!

Wrong! The industry's goal of "maximizing profits" also includes getting as much meat into consumer's mouths as quickly and as cheaply as possible. That's meeting human needs! "Redoubling our efforts" to solve hopelessly vague, hypothetical, and very expensive problems will simply keep people hungry.

Better is the solution at the Smithfield Pork plant (also reported by Mr. Ritscher), which offered $500 bonuses to employees willing and able to come to work.

Shifting gears a bit, Socialist Viewpoint reproduces an article by James Dennis Hoff, entitled Get Militant or Die: Labor unions in the age of crisis. The piece originally appeared in something called Left Voice, published by a collective of New York City college professors virtue-signalling their revolutionary socialism.

While Mr. Hoff's article was published on April 3rd--too soon to pass judgement on any reopening--he was staunchly in favor of the shutdown.

However, it is most important, in the short term at least, that unions fight to protect the immediate health of working people by demanding that all non-essential production be halted and that productive resources be repurposed in order to face the crisis, ...

So much for the lower-middle class--waitresses, retail employees, beauticians, hotel maids and flight attendants should all be thrown out of work because they're "non-essential." But no fear--they can all be "repurposed," just like recycled garbage.

Meanwhile, college professors--e.g., Mr. Hoff--who have never been laid off because they're apparently "essential", should now urge their unions to be more militant. No more playing footsie with Mr. Cuomo--the professoriate should demand "adequate funding for public services," even to the point of going on strike.

"Adequate funding," in Mr. Hoff's view, requires taxing the rich.

Meanwhile the Governor has made it clear that he has zero intention of raising taxes and has repeatedly argued that any new taxes on the wealthy or on Wall Street would lead to capital flight, a claim that doesn’t seem to be supported by any actual evidence, but which nonetheless shows where the governor’s priorities are and just how much political power capital wields in Albany when compared to working people.

There is plenty of evidence of capital flight. New York state lost more than 180,000 people to net domestic migration in 2019. Those weren't poor people--those were middle and upper middle class folks who don't want to pay New York taxes.

Because of the virus, the billionaires have already fled Manhattan for their second and third homes in Florida. Will they ever return as New York residents? Maybe not--there's no income tax in Florida. If the billionaires leave, then the millionaires leave, too. Indeed, many of them are already working from home in New Jersey. Will they return to Manhattan so they can pay more taxes? Probably not. And when the millionaires leave, so do the restaurateurs and the Uber drivers--people who need to work near their customers.

The only people left in Manhattan will be college professors, the welfare crowd and homeless people. All fine people, to be sure, but none of them pay taxes. Piss poor future that will be. But go for it, Mr. Hoff. Have fun on your strike--just don't count on having a job when it's over.

I'll close with an official statement from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) entitled Fight for gov’t-funded public works program to create jobs. They have two demands: one (apropos nothing in particular) is for full amnesty for undocumented workers. The second (relevant to jobs) is

A massive government-funded public works program to put millions to work at union-scale wages to build the hospitals, schools, affordable housing and all the other things we sorely need. We need to get workers back to work to strengthen our class consciousness and fighting capacity.

We have more than enough hospitals--they weren't even full during the height of the pandemic. We surely don't need any more schools--birthrates continue to decline, along with school enrollments. There's plenty of affordable housing--just not in places like Manhattan or San Francisco. The solution is to move more jobs and people to the suburbs. (For an interesting take see this article by John Sanphilippo.)

I'm all for getting workers back to work! But why can't they do useful things instead of stupid, make-work projects? What's wrong with restaurants, hotels, airlines, churches, beauty salons, meatpacking plants--hell, even college campuses? Why is it that Democrats and Socialists alike are so much against people being allowed to earn an honest living?

Down With Poverty!

Further Reading:

• Trotskyists on the Pandemic
• The Pro-Poverty Crowd
• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl