A Socialist Program to Fight COVID-19 and the Economic Crisis

The following ten-point program—along with the full range of transitional demands in the US IMT’s program—outlines the measures that a workers’ government would implement to address the pandemic and free humanity from all the suffering imposed on the working class by the capitalist system.

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The devastation of the coronavirus pandemic is a product of capitalism, a system that puts profit over the lives of people. Only the working class and a workers’ government, armed with a revolutionary socialist program, can put an end to this nightmare!

• Immediately double the wages of all essential workers on the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19! Quadruple their ranks and fight unemployment by training millions more to help take up the strain. Guarantee safety protections and union recognition!
• For a federally guaranteed national minimum wage of $1,000 per week, including all laid-off workers, the sick, and the quarantined. Large companies that cry poverty should be forced to open their books and nationalized under democratic workers’ control if they cannot pay.
• Workers’ control to suspend all non-essential production for profit to stem the spread of the disease. Where possible retool production toward essential services and healthcare needs. Form workers’ health and safety committees in every factory and workplace to oversee conditions and implement all necessary provisions.
• Any essential workplace that is closed, lays off workers, or requests a public bailout should be nationalized and run under democratic workers’ control! For a rational plan of production that ensures no disruption in the supply chain of food, medical supplies, and other essentials!
• Socialized health care free at the point of service. Nationalize the entire health sector and integrate it into a democratically administered public health provider. Nationalize all essential commercial spaces and convert those most suitable into hospitals and “fever clinics” as quickly as possible.
• For immediate price controls on all essential items, to be enforced by elected committees in working-class neighborhoods. Anyone caught speculating on the misery of others to be immediately relieved of their goods—to be distributed to those in need.
• For an immediate and indefinite moratorium on utilities, rent, mortgage payments, and evictions. Drop mortgage loan rates to zero and renegotiate terms for working families. Nationalize vacant homes and use them to end homelessness and overcrowding.
• No to xenophobia, protectionism, and the lie of “national unity!” The interests of the workers of the world and the capitalists are diametrically opposed—the working class can rely only on its own strength and class-independent organizations. Break with the two-party system—we need a mass working-class socialist party and a workers’ government!
• While we will voluntarily observe social distancing in the interests of public health, we demand that our basic needs be guaranteed and will not accept any limitation of our democratic rights in the name of the national emergency.
• Write off all the debts of working people! Expropriate the major banks and corporations without compensation, to be administered under democratic workers’ control and integrated into a socialist plan of production to meet the needs of society. For an internationalist solution—a worldwide socialist federation and planned economy!

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