Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bourgeoisie has been using warfare terminology: “we are at war, we must remain united in the fight against this virus in the best national interest, production must resume, economy cannot stop”.

The war of the proletarians is against this system of production, against the senseless and limitless exploitation of natural and human resources which is at the basis of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The jump in species carried out by the virus was made possible due to the over-exploitation of intensive animal breeding and the poor labour conditions. The virus runs as fast as capital produces goods. It propagates following the frantic circulation of goods along the silk roads.

The spontaneous strikes of March, against the obligation to work in unsafely, have been an important signal: the institutional unions, attempting to contain the protests, agreed on a protocol that effectively endorsed Confindustria and Government’s decisions regarding the conditions according to which production could have continued and those in which production should have temporarily stopped. The list of companies authorized to continue production is limitless and production will soon be entirely resumed.

Capital needs its dead, wants the scalp of the proletarians. Once again, the bourgeois veil of democracy falls, the true face of power is revealed: using of emergency decrees, limitations on freedom of movement, demonstrations, strikes, authoritarian management of holidays, obligation to return to work without effective safety guarantees, extension of the working week and shifts, unregulated work from home.

What can we still expect?

In Portugal, following protests and strikes against layoffs and demanding safe working conditions, the “state of emergency” was decreed on March 18 (the last time was on 24 October 1975, when the provisional military government feared a coup by supporters of the former dictator Salazar). In the Parliament, the decree was voted by right-wing parties, the socialist party and the left bloc (Trotskyite formations, anti-capitalist left) whereas the greens and the Communist Party abstained. The decree suspended the right to strike, the right to assembly and to demonstrate. It authorized the kidnapping of workers and allowed police to repress the recalcitrant. The head of the government, the socialist Costa, said that a state of emergency is indispensable to force companies to function.

The Covid-19 pandemic occurs in a phase of crisis in the capitalist production system. It exacerbates the contradictions within the production system, slows down production, causes national GDP to collapse, puts the bourgeois brothers-knives in ruthless competition for survival. Therefore, here there are all political forces and institutional unions united in appealing to the national union.

For proletarians the defense of human life is the first objective. Claiming is salary for everyone.

No “union sacreè” to restart the national economy.

The struggles do not stop, because the need for class struggle has not ceased.

The war of the proletarians is the war against the capitalist system of production and against the class that benefits from it, the bourgeoisie and its governments. The war of the proletarians is against the capital’s devastating need to produce just to produce. It erupts like a volcano in full active phase an immense quantity of goods that does not responds to real human needs. These are goods that flood global markets and at the same time remain unsold in the swamp of the markets themselves. The capitalistic production system does not contemplate species and natural beings. For this reason, with its devastations, it endangers the very existence of mankind and the planet.

The proletariat is the class that will bury the capitalist corpse that is still walking, absorbing humanity with its thirst for surplus-value, profits, destruction and wars.

The limits of the capitalist system are evident: the formidable production capacity of the associated work and the level of technological development achieved (which would allow to drastically reduce work – the length of the working day – and human fatigue) are offset by the misery of most of the population across the planet.

The scientific knowledge, being at the service of capital, is not able to counterbalance the devastating effects of the capital’s thirst for profit, the waste of natural resources and the mineralization of the planet.

Human race is now facing the alternative between communism and barbarism.

The proletariat, established in class for itself and led by the world Communist Party, will break down the power of the bourgeoisie and establish its class dictatorship. It will abolish salary labor as the exploitation of man over man. In the society of the species, men will live in harmony with nature and with his fellows, they will not know frontiers because the proletariat has no nation.