The COVID-19 Global Counterrevolution: What It Is and How to Fight It
A Marxist analysis and strategy for the revolutionary struggle
by Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), April
2020
Contents
I. The peculiar character of the current crisis: a Triple Catastrophe
How severe is this pandemic?
A dangerous moment for the bourgeoisie: The Third Great Depression begins simultaneously with a global wave of class struggles
How did the ruling classes arrive to their decision for a mass lockdown?
The ultimate end of the era of Globalization
A new stage of rivalry between the Great Powers after the end of U.S. hegemony
II. On the nature of the COVID-19 global counterrevolution
Monopolization and state capitalism after neo-liberalism
China as a model?
A decisive shift towards chauvinist state bonapartism
What will be the “new normality”?
A Preventive Counter-Revolution
Do we overestimate the relevance of the counterrevolutionary offensive?
III. Fundamental principles of revolutionary strategy in the new Leviathan Era
A political counterrevolution requires a political strategy by the Marxists
The policy of class truce in times of pandemic weakens our struggle in defense of public health
Adventurism or systematic preparation?
Breaking up the chauvinist bonapartist state machinery
The revolutionary democratic struggle: a key element of the Marxist strategy in the new era
Excurse: the relevance of the strategy of permanent revolution
No revolutionary strategy without internationalism in theory and practice!
IV. Revolutionary tactics and slogans for the class struggles ahead
The current situation and its consequences for the class struggle
The main slogan: Conversion of the State of Emergency into a Popular Uprising
Famine and epidemics: some lessons from Lenin and the Bolsheviks
Reactionary opponents of the lockdown
Allies and opponents in future mass struggles
V. The Lockdown Left: A Critique
Stalinist and left-reformist executors of the state-bonapartist lockdown policy
“Trotskyist” cheerleaders of the bonapartist state of emergency
Excurse: Revisionist misunderstanding of the nature of the capitalist state
“Speech is silver, silence is golden.” Not in revolutionary politics!
“Workers control” over state bonapartist Lockdown?
Social-Bonapartism: an offspring of economism and Menshevism
Spontaneous mass actions against the lockdown conditions: a litmus test for the left
Appendix:
RCIT Manifesto: COVID-19: A Cover for a Major Global Counterrevolutionary Offensive (21 March 2020)
RCIT: A Revolutionary Action Program to fight COVID-19! (April 2020)
RCIT: Open Letter: Act Now because History is Happening Now! (26 March 2020)
RCIT: 2019 Corona Virus: Oppose the Global Wave of Chauvinist Hysteria! (5 February 2020)
Almedina Gunić: Coronavirus: "I am not a Virus"... but WE will be the Cure! (2 February 2020)
List of Tables and Diagram
Table 1. Global Industrial Production, 2017-19 (in Volume)
Table 2. Manufacturing in the U.S. 2017-19 (in percent)
Table 3. World Merchandise Trade, Percentage Changes
Table 4. List of Top 10 Countries with most Global 500 Companies
Table 5. National Composition of the World’s 2000 Largest Corporations, 2003 and 2017 (Forbes Global 2000 List)
Diagram: Practical Consequences of the Differences between Marxists and Social-Bonapartists in the COVID-19 Crisis
Bibliography
About the Author