The Internationalism

This article is taken from Intervenção Comunista — the journal of our Brazilian comrades We wrote in May last year that the ‘tropical Trump’ causes a perfect storm . This first quarter of the year seems to demonstrate this clearly: GDP decline (-4.1%) and increased unemployment (14.2%); an end to emergency aid and a delay in the resumption of a new, much leaner aid plan; a record number of deaths and Covid infections. With 2.7% of the world’s population, the country accounts for about 12% of Covid-19 deaths. In March alone, Brazil recorded an increase of about 33% in its daily deaths. The pandemic crisis, coupled with historical imbalances, is shaking up the dysfunctional government of Jair Bolsonaro, who has just appointed his fourth health minister in a year. Increased dependence on the Centrão The second half of Bolsonaro’s term began — for their politics — with the election of Arthur Lira (Progressive Party-Alagoas) as president of the Chamber of Deputies, and Rodrigo Pac...

The pandemic of the century is a storm that does not subside; it returns to its rampage after 40 million infections and more than a million official victims, perhaps two million according to estimates on the excess deaths. In the contention between powers, China stands as the winner: it seems to have tamed the virus, and industry and services are up and running; the USA and Europe, on the other hand, are moving towards a new wave of infections that casts yet more shadows on the economic cycle. Political structures and health systems are at the height of tension. In America, the elections have judged Donald Trump’s rash demagogy on the basis of the opposite reasons for containing the pandemic and the intolerance of small and large producers; in Europe the executives are attempting to steer between the surge in infections, increasingly stringent confinement measures and the threats of fiscal jacquerie in the tourism and catering sectors. Almost everywhere, in the Old Continent, governm...

Bacteria and viruses know no frontiers. The attempts to infect public fear of the coronavirus epidemic with xenophobic and racist superstition would be pathetic, if it were not for loutish electoral speculation. Today the Chinese confront it, but should it be a pandemic tomorrow the hunt for those infected will point to migrants, who will once again be scapegoated on the pages of Facebook. Yet the bourgeoisie, in the centuries during which it still remained a revolutionary class, knew how to shed a light of clarity through the mist of thousand-year-old superstitions. Renaissance men founded the scientific method; the intellectuals of the Enlightenment changed the view of the world; pioneers of science and technology accompanied the industrial revolution in mechanics, steam energy, chemistry and electricity; heroic doctors founded modern medicine, going so far as to experiment with vaccines on themselves in order to make it possible to face terrible diseases. Finally, science married l...