In this situation, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO) states the following:

I.

Humanity, and as part of it, mainly the working class and the people in general, is being impacted by the Covid 19 pandemic; a social fact as well as a health issue, which with unusual speed and geographic breadth has shaken up all kinds of social relationships.

All countries and peoples of the planet have been affected in some way and in various degrees. Rarely have so many countries and peoples been affected to this extent by an event.

John Hopkins University in the U.S. has reported that, as of June 20 of this year, more than 460 thousand people have died from it and 8.7 million have been contaminated. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that millions of people have been confined to their homes in quarantine, many suffering from hunger and other material deprivation, while facing extreme poverty, in many countries without access to public support.

Unemployment has increased by 20% worldwide, exacerbating this problem, such as general poverty, which before the pandemic attack was already reaching alarming figures. The labor force has lost value, precisely because of the growth of unemployment and the constraint on productive activity.

In many countries, even those considered developed, hospitals have been overwhelmed by the demand for urgent care, and funeral homes have not kept up with the demand for funeral services. Mass graves for hundreds of the dead have been dug, reminding one of the worst moments of war and catastrophe. Many families have suffered the grief of losing their loved ones, and of not even being able to organize funerals to say goodbye to them.

States of siege, curfews, the monitoring of individual privacy by the governments through information resources and other forms of control, all of which were protested by the peoples, have become normal measures to combat the pandemic.

Fear, powerlessness and uncertainty about the virus are keeping millions of people alert, mainly the working masses and the people in general. The ineffectiveness of health services and hospitals as a result of neoliberal capitalist policies of privatization, austerity and cut-backs are undoubtedly the reason for this and for the destruction caused by the pandemic. There are not enough hospital beds and facilities, with patients waiting on stretchers in the corridors, inadequate protective equipment for health-care workers, where the elderly and vulnerable were left to die to make room for younger patients. It is a true human tragedy.

II.

In the period before the pandemic, the capitalists were on the offensive against the workers and working people in almost all countries. Particularly in the education and health-care sectors, public services were minimized, with health-care services completely paralyzed. With the predominance of the confrontation between the United States and China, the contradictions in the imperialist capitalist countries are intensifying and the competition is worsening. Breaking out at a time when the international capitalist economy is stagnating, the world is facing the pandemic under chaotic conditions. The world bourgeoisie is unable to establish a joint approach and is not carrying out a unified fight against the pandemic. As with the members countries of the European Union, which is supposedly unified, each country has been left to fend for itself.

This was seen in the conduct of international institutions such as the WHO an UNESCO, as agencies of the UN. For example, Donald Trump accused the WHO of collaborating with China and threatened to withdraw the United States from it. Added to that is the disjointed effort of research for vaccines, which is currently progressing in each country independently of the others, resulting in wasted resources and the inability to use scientific findings. Now there is no doubt that any vaccine that is discovered will be used first of all in the richest countries and classes. Under these conditions, the institutions of the neoliberal world order could not be expected to prevent the pandemic and combat it effectively, and this was the case. As such, it could not even define a general orientation to which national governments would adhere. The multinational pharmaceutical companies have been complicit by commission or omission, so they are left without authority many conscious people and the progressive scientific and health-care community.

The neoliberal capitalist order has no future

Scientific research, which had to be continuous, as previous viruses showed the need to make it rigorous and systematic, was left to the will of capital, of companies that, it must be remembered, make health care into a business and, in fact, the viruses themselves are an opportunity for them to do business and accumulate more capital.

The States use public money to build infrastructure that they hand over directly to private companies, or are privatized under the euphemism of management through "patronage" made up by puppets of the ruling classes.

Public budgets for research have been frozen or significantly reduced, to such an extent that in most countries there are no budgets for this vital arena for social and economic development, to prevent and effectively fight the viruses, diseases and bacteria that affect people and nature. Budgets for public universities have also been restricted, thus preventing them from creating science and contributing knowledge to prevent and overcome problems.

Furthermore, the pandemic came when the majority of health-care services, especially clinics and emergency services, had been privatized, closing off access to the vast majority of the population, while the public hospitals that had "survived" the privatizations are operating with enormous deficits and can barely attend to the health problems of small groups of the people in a minimal way.

The pandemic is both a social and a health-care problem. It affects social relations, economic production and all social and cultural activity.

The pandemic has contributed to the slowdown of the world capitalist economy, which was already stagnant and in the process of accumulating problems before its start, while aggravating the economic crisis that began during it. Combined with the destruction of the environment caused by the capitalist system, the crisis is destroying the productive forces and nature, as Karl Marx pointed out in Capital.

The pandemic is highlighting the need for a new social and political order. It has made this necessity even more urgent, with larger sectors of the working masses becoming conscious of the consequences of capitalism and beginning to question its existence.

Some ideologues of this capitalist system agree in pointing out that post-COVID 19 normality will be different from that before the pandemic.

In this aspect, a theoretical and political dispute has been raised. Whether to continue the neoliberal modality of capitalist exploitation, with dominance of the market as the main organizer of economic and social activity, with finance capital as its main beneficiary; it is not to be ruled out that the system may resort to fascist forms of political rule.

Or capital may resort to neo-Keynesian policies, with an important role for the State in the investment and regulation of economic activity, accompanied by policies of granting social crumbs to the working class and the people in general.

A third possibility is the prospect of growth of a revolutionary solution.

The ICMLPO supports the latter. Let us not leave the economic, social, political and cultural spheres to the bourgeoisie so that this possibility can be realized. As we have seen, the bourgeoisie has proved incapable of confronting the pandemic; it ha appealed to the masses to stay home, but that was only possible for those who had no work. Our human dignity has been violated. Hundreds of thousands, mainly health-care workers, have been forced to work without protection in hospitals, factories, on work sites and in the streets. Social distancing is not relevant for most of them. This has also been a period in which we have seen the value they place on human life and working conditions. Now, in the name of a "new normal" we are forced to work to guarantee the survival of the capitalist system.

Once again we have seen that the capitalists have nothing to offer us. In many countries they do not even distribute face masks. The economic support packets against the pandemic are exclusively for support to the capitalists, which amounted to billions, while the small companies received very little and the working masses were forced to work for profit, and all they received were false promises. The hospitals do not even serve us and we couldn't even get tested. The hospitals have already been shown  to be ineffective.

In each country there will be specific demands on which our unity and struggle will arise. Some demands in which we can come together and unite, despite the specific reality of different countries, are the following:

• Do not accept the imposition of policies and refuse to become national slaves of the capitalists.

• Working conditions against the pandemic must be guaranteed in all workplaces.

• Health care cannot be subjected to commerce and profit. The privatization of health-care systems must end, the people's access to quality health-care services must be guaranteed, free of charge.

• All institutions and hospitals must be under public control, the current state of the health-care system is unacceptable.

• Sufficient financial support must be provided to the family of workers who are out of work, who do not have sufficient income to cover their essential needs. The bills for rent, housing, electricity, water and gas must be covered by the State. The debts of workers in this situation and those of small producers and small business owners must be canceled.

• Despite being called the “new normal”, it is not clear that the pandemic has ended or that it there will not be a second wave. We must fight against those policies of the capitalists and their capitalist system that makes this more possible, that sacrifices us for their survival and profit, while no measures are taken to ensure the future of humanity.

To raise our struggle for these demands against the international capitalist order, which is responsible for the pandemic, we must try to unite everything that is politically possible, to strike a blow against imperialism and the capitalist governments at its service. The spaces where this unity must be developed include massive campaigns, trade union organizations, professional organizations, local initiatives, student, youth and women's organizations, and various popular fronts that bring together these organizations and the broadest sectors of the people.

A revolutionary order is possible and necessary

The ongoing pandemic is a terrible disaster. Hundreds of thousands of human lives have been lost; Millions of people are facing hunger and various forms of deprivation; unemployment is growing and the labor power is being devalued; and the bulk of humanity is living in uncertainty, in fear, on the edge, as under the sword of Damocles.

All adversities invite us to fight against it. In the fight against the pandemic, the best of human beings, solidarity, has been increasingly felt. The pandemic and the positions that the bourgeoisie has taken against the pandemic have also fueled the reaction, discontent and anger of the workers and the working masses against the effects of the capitalist order. This has been expressed in the improved sense of solidarity among the working masses, as well as in the growing tendency to take steps to express this reaction, which has been triggered by a variety of reasons.

The pandemic has contributed to raising the spirit of human solidarity of millions of people in all parts of the planet, against the lie to “save yourself those who can,” imposed by neoliberal individualism. People are sharing the little that they have with others; they are tiring to lighten the material and psychological burden that others bear. Local solidarity networks that support people and public workers, especially health-care workers, have sprung up around the world.

The interest of scientists to do their best to help humanity get out of this calamity is well known; health-care professionals in general are not hesitating to put their lives at risk to care for people in the midst of the precariousness of the health-care systems.

It is also worthwhile mentioning the attitude of celebrities from the world of art and culture, who have been offering their creations and skills to encourage, uplift the spirit of resistance and strengthen hope for a livable future.

These are all tendencies that we need to help develop and base our work on. Amid the physical distancing imposed by the quarantine, popular protests are taking place. Initially, due to the circumstances, they were small groups. But this tendency, which was growing in many countries before the pandemic, reached massive proportions with the murder of George Floyd, which led to mass protests involving hundreds of thousands of people, not only in the United States, but almost everywhere in the world. This wave of struggle that broke out out as the result of the anger of the masses, which developed during the pandemic against the brutality of capitalism, now presents us with the line of struggle that we can pursue.

The ICMLPO calls on the working class and the working masses, on all those discontented with the aggression of capitalism and the lack of a future to which it has condemned us, to redouble our unity, solidarity and struggle. We can achieve our future if we unite and fight against the neoliberal capitalist aggression that has stripped us of our lives and our future.

The future is ours!

June 2020

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