It is suicidal for the working class to rely on the capitalist state to take care of us. We must do it ourselves. As the Coronavius pandemic rages across continents, the bosses’ state is designed to protect only the capitalist’s own interests. It’s plainer than ever that “national unity,” the idea that a country’s capitalists and workers share common interests, is a dangerous myth. There is no “we” here—it is only us and them, our class versus the rulers, the people who produce value against the people who own value. The bosses are unleashing their state apparatus, from local cops to the federal Centers for Disease Control, to come to the aid of their class. Big and Small Fascists across the globe are releasing unlimited resources to prop up their failing economies. They may or may not succeed. But once thing is clear: The bosses’ state can never serve workers’ needs.
PLP is calling on all workers to take responsibility for the international working class in this urgent period. At the same time, we must respect the limits of the moment. Our challenge is to fight for the needs of our class and a communist society while still taking the precautions necessary to guard the health of our members, friends, families, and class.
The bosses’ self-serving state
The cost of keeping capitalism afloat drains the lion’s share of society’s resources. In caring for the most vulnerable worker, the bosses’ state is missing in action. The responsibility is left to charities, non-profits, and members of our own class.
As we enter the eye of the pandemic, instead of ensuring that people get decent health care, enough food, and a safe place to live, the bosses are focused on business loans, tax breaks, and profits. Crumbs are passed out to the working class as the rulers’ broken health care system builds morgues.
Do they have enough ventilators or even enough one-dollar respirator masks? No. President Donald Trump and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are busy blaming each other for shortages that are killing health care workers and forcing involuntary DNRs. But the fact is that every president and every governor for the last 20 years has been warned about these shortfalls. Instead of investing in adequate stockpiles for a pandemic they knew was coming, they decided to let people die instead (Intercept, 3/24).
Do they have enough hospital beds or ICU beds? No. To preserve capitalist profits, liberal governors like Cuomo cut beds with a vengeance. In New York City, now the world’s Coronavius epicenter,  20 hospitals have been closed since 2003.
Essentially, the bosses are giving workers two options: Stay home and lose your job and possibly die alone, or ignore the pandemic and risk your life to keep working.
Bosses’ crisis response: fascist genocide
As they scramble to try to save their system, the bosses are looking to abandon or kill the unprofitable segments of the working class: children, the disabled, the elderly. Trump’s buddy, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, proposed that people in their 70s and up should “take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves…” (vanityfair.com, 3/24). In other words, older people can and should be sacrificed to restore the capitalists’ profit machine and return to business as usual.
This is the essence of fascism, the Nazis’ Third Reich formula: fostering unity with the ruling class to slaughter those groups the bosses no longer need. It’s how workers in Germany came to look the other way as concentration camps were built and became slaughterhouses. Today, Franklin Graham’s tents are going up in New York’s Central Park to warehouse the sick and dying. Tomorrow, it’s not a stretch to envision them as a prototype for U.S. death camps. The German fascists’ Final Solution wasn’t the product of Hitler’s madness. It reflected the cold and calculated needs of the German capitalists to preserve their system in an existential economic crisis.
If we continue to go along with this genocidal agenda, eventually the whole working class will be consumed.
Workers met with confusion and violence
As the Coronavius rages, workers are being forced into confusing and contradictory situations.  Many are still expected to commute to work, pay their bills, and care for their families, despite the rising rate of infection and government mandates to stay home or stay socially distanced.
Instead of taking responsibility for the failures of their system, the bosses unleash violence against our class. In New York City, the subways are crowded in working-class neighborhoods because many people have no paid sick leave and can’t feed their families if they shelter in place (New York Times, 3/30). In India, baton-wielding police are beating workers in the street who violate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 21-day lockdown (3/25, NY Post). Around the globe, stiff fines and jail time are threatened against workers who don’t comply.
The working class is fighting back
The positive news is that the working class is rebelling against bosses throwing us into the fire. Workers at Trader Joe’s are unionizing after being denied gloves on the job (Buzzfeed, 3/18). Instacart, Amazon, and Whole Foods workers are striking for Coronavius protections and hazard pay (USA Today, 3/30). Black sanitation workers in Pittsburg are refusing to do pick-ups without better safety protection (Vibe, 3/25).  Many of us have no choice but to work during these dangerous times, whether it’s to pay our bills or serve other workers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fight for safety protections or protest on behalf of our class.
The capitalists chose not to prepare for a crisis they knew was coming. Now they’re giving us advice—or police-enforced orders—that presume that everyone lives in a small nuclear family in a spacious home with an ample financial safety net. “Shelter in place”  is a death sentence for those whom the profit system has already failed: the homeless, multiple families crowded into small apartments, elderly poor living alone or in unsanitary old age homes, low-wage workers in single rooms in cut-up houses, immigrants who fear deportation if they seek medical care, incarcerated workers penned up by the racist criminal injustice system. The millions of refugees and migrant workers around the world who have no homes at all are completely abandoned. For the working class, capitalism is truly hopeless.
How communists would handle a health crisis
A communist society serves the needs of the people. It develops its greatest resource: the power and knowledge of the international working class. Once the profit system is smashed, all resources will go toward workers’ needs.
In a communist society, the state would protect the most vulnerable. In extreme circumstances, the healthiest people would enlist to care for the sick. Child care would be a collective task, along with distributing food and necessities—without cost.  
We can do some of these things right now. Organize friends and neighbors to take care of those in need. Organize protests against unsafe conditions and attacks on the working class. But keep safety in mind at all times. Do everything possible remotely. If you must go out to work or to serve our class, keep a safe distance.  Otherwise stay in. Covid-19 is dangerous, and the bosses’ health care system can’t be trusted.  
The working class can seize this opportunity to progress toward communist revolution and a workers’ state. But it will require our placing more confidence in our class and our Party, and breaking with the bosses’ state once and for all. Our choice is clear: Either face mass death under capitalism, or fight for communism.