Social Regress under Cover of Pandemic 2020

Social Regress under Cover of Pandemic
We know quite well that historical progress is unavoidable, however, the social development process does not move in linear manner. History, as N.G.Chernyshevsky wrote, is not Nevsky avenue pathway. Restorations and timely throwbacks to earlier stages are possible. By the way, it is well-known for us at the example of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp destruction and capitalism restoration in the countries where socialism had already been generally constructed. There are even harder alterations in modern history, up to slavery incidents, but, until recent time, it was exotic of particular regions. Unfortunately, the year 2020 has turned around notions on many things.
First – it is personal freedom of a human being which is an unconditional achievement of capitalism if compared to previous formations. Certainly, a wage-worker under bourgeois regime cannot be free to full extent as long as he is subjected to oppression by economic methods.
“It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible”, - that is what J.V.Stalin wrote even during the Soviet era. That’s why I’d like to emphasize strictly again – I’m referring to progress only when compared to previous epochs.
Sadly – development cannot stand still. If it is not moving forward – it will move backward.
The year 2020 gave us examples of quite medieval-era savagery – I mean the digital pass system in Moscow and other large cities, under which bosses for several months officially possessed the right to regulate wage-workers’ possibility to go out from their homes, to move along streets and to use public transport – if it is not serfdom elements, then what is it?
Certainly, the “self-isolation” violation is only fined yet, it did not come (yet) to inquisition fires. But, to speak honestly, could you imagine in 2019 this world-scale madness that happened to us in 2020?
Please do not tell us fairy-tales about terrible virus which we, the unreasonable, were saved from in such manner by the authorities. Enough practical experience was collected for the recent half a year which affirms – all those measures have nothing to do with the virus. Just at all. If the virus was really so dangerous as we are told, and only isolation could save from it – i.e., Belarus whose government was not on the bit of the “world community” should have been covered with corpses, as well as Khabarovsk where mass actions counting to dozens of thousands of participants are going on for two months already. However, there is nothing of the kind. As well as mass crowding in Moscow metro in April, 15, 2020 as a result of total check of freshly introduced digital passes had no influence on virus statistics. Numbers do not come along, no matter how you look at them. But mass rallies are still prohibited in our country, and one can see no end to this prohibition – it is very convenient, isn’t it? The virus is very politically conscious, it allows to crowd by hundreds and thousands in metro but not to organize even a picket line of 10 persons. Virus!
For the time being, the economy has overcome, the modern basis did not allow the superstructure to fall finally into the Middle Ages, but it found itself in a crisis as a result of total prohibitions, and it is the second thing to pay attention at. We know that crises are an in-built tendency of capitalism, that all attempts to avoid them are useless and cannot be a success as defined. However, such attempts have been taken one by one, but what happened in this year – the hand-made, conscious downfall of most world economic sectors into a severe crisis – lies beyond of the bourgeois formation logic oriented first of all at profits.
It is difficult to say now who gets advantage of it, but this question is the most important one. Pharmaceutical companies, mask-gloves manufacturers, etc. have got an evident advantage – but are they so affluent to obscure losses of all other sectors? Things seem to be more serious than they appear, and it is highly questionable if we learn the truth once. But the trends are extremely frightening, although some peoples’ resistance emerges – we see it on mass riots in Europe (this is good news – it is impossible to defraud everybody endlessly), but not everywhere, and size and grade of self-organization are not yet adequate to the menace. For instance, the “socialism or barbarity” alternative is no more a theoretical thinking or propaganda expression – it comes into the field of cruel practice. Barbarity has already broke into real life, and taking into account the trends it has brought to the education system (if distance teaching becomes widespread, it would unavoidably pull down the science and technology field, too) – we stand on the verge of further degradation and downfall into the quagmire of Middle Ages. The question is still open whether we succeed to avoid it.

Maria Donchenko
September 2020