Coronavirus & Capitalism: How a System Built Around Profit is Making Us Suffer by Carolann Jane Duro

 There has been a lot of criticism and political discussion regarding the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic. Largely left out of these conversations and dialogue in the mainstream media is how the pandemic is exposing a deeper issue that has plagued our society: capitalism and its nature to value profit over humanity. In many ways this public health crisis is making vulnerable the ills of our economic relation and how at nearly every level of our society, the crisis of profit is ruling our ability to effectively respond to this moment. The first most obvious way that this public health crisis is revealing the error of our system is by looking at the way our healthcare system is run more like a business. 

Our healthcare system is run by private insurance companies that generate a majority of the profits to keep hospitals running, doctors and nurses employed, and Americans’ paying exorbitant prices for their healthcare. Instead of valuing healthcare as a human right in this country, healthcare is seen as a luxury. Oftentimes we hear stories from working class Americans that have to make the challenging decision to get the care they need or put food on the table, pay for their housing, or schooling. There are countless stories of working class Americans suffering from their illness before ever reaching a hospital because they were critically aware of the extreme cost of care. Insurance companies and hospitals are ran like for profit industries, the only way they justify keeping their doors open is if they can prove to the market they are generating a profit. But that kind of system is not ready for the global crisis of a pandemic, as the hospitals across the country are losing money, cutting the wages and furloughing of doctors and nurses in the middle of a pandemic, who are working harder than they ever have in their lives. Hospitals are in more pain economically than they have ever been. But it makes you wonder: how did we get to a point where the first result of a public health emergency is the concern over whether we can generate capital? This is the cost of a system of capitalism where private industry and the market responds to human crises. 

Not only is our healthcare system bleeding as a result of this pandemic, another vital industry is suffering under the economic weight: our food system. Our food system is suffering under the extreme amount of unemployment and lost incomes resulting in what experts are saying could lead to acute hunger for 265 million people globally. Experts are pointing to the global financial and public health crisis: oil price shortages, loss income for millions of people, the destruction of climate change, humanitarian disasters, and more. However, there is another crisis on our hands that can be the root explanation for food shortages: food is another industry is a business and when profits fall, crops, agriculture, and meat industries crumble under the weight. When there is a crisis, prices surge leaving the working class, low income, and the poor to suffer the most when trying to feed their families. Images of potato farms and major agriculture business leaving their crops to rot or be destroyed tells us the issue is not that there is not enough food to go around, but rather the economic relation we have built our food system around is not conducive to a nationwide health crisis. 

This public health emergency is also also forcing us to be extremely aware of how the entire structure of capitalism is reliant on the working class labor force to run the world. As massive unemployment skyrockets to over 30 million people and approaching 20%, loads of industries across America are falling apart without workers. Suddenly Americans became aware that the fabric of our society is not being held together by CEOs, celebrities, and the ridiculously wealthy, but the post office workers, grocery store employees, nurses, sanitation workers, delivery drivers, teachers, and countless others. Some say that America’s economy was booming just months before this pandemic took hold, but it makes you think that if our entire economic system collapses as workers are unemployed, then hasn’t the entire system depended on their labor to generate such an economic boom then? In response to the pandemic and the surging profits of major companies, workers have organized mass worker strikes in the past several weeks and on May 1, International Workers Day, to get their demands of paid sick leave, personal protective equipment, higher wages and hazard pay, and more. Workers have come to realize as Amazon, Target, Wal Mart, Trader Joe’s, and other countless companies see the largest profits in their industries than ever before, that their labor is what is generating said profit. Yet, instead of bailouts for the workers keeping the country running and alive, major industries are seeing historic economic relief. 

Not only are workers suffering, but governors and politicians tasked with responding to this crisis are facing supply shortages and extreme competition of resources to deal with the pandemic. As healthcare professionals became aware they were in need of ventilators and protective personal equipment, the only way to get those supplies under capitalism was to look to the market. And on the market, prices were soaring for ventilators, masks, personal protective equipment, and other medical equipment. Governors were literally competing with other states and paying up to 15 times the normal price for necessary supplies to meet their healthcare needs in this crisis. We operate in an economic relation that is dictated by supply and demand and the market, so instead of a time where humanity could be coming together to generate and produce the supplies needed, we resort to providing for only the highest bidder. Even in a public health emergency, we cannot escape the doomed competition of resources that we are forced into. Instead of ordering the immediate production of necessary supplies under the wartime powers act, states were left to competition. Which again, is the only response when the prime focus of our system is to generate a profit, which refuses to cease even in the largest human crisis many have seen in our lifetimes. 

Certainly there is an alternative to this system we have found ourselves in for the past couple centuries. Humanity has not always lived in a world dominated by markets, profit, and capitalism. And if we were to compare our outcomes to the socialist countries outside of the West, we can witness very different results and outcomes. The question is now if we are going to emerge from this crisis demanding for a better, more humanitarian economic system or if we are going to continue to fall ill to the greed and exploitation of capitalism.