The lesson of #Covid-19 is that its labour that makes our economy work, not capital.

So here we are. The Coronavirus pandemic rumbles on and we haven't reached the peak yet. Our incompetent and malevolent government still hasn't managed to source and distribute to NHS staff the protective gear they need. Daily, we see shocking scenes of NHS staff struggling to cope with improvised masks and gowns. In addition, they still haven't managed to provide any real support for the five million self-employed people in the UK, and the Universal Credit system is in crisis with a backlog of 500,000 applicants. 

Many nonessential workers such as construction workers and workers in call centres are being forced to continue working putting themselves and others at risk.

The latest scandal is that the government, instead of cooperating with other EU states to source ventilators has decided to go it alone and instead of sourcing them from the UK manufacturers has approached Dyson the hoover maker which has decamped to Singapore!

The big news yesterday was that Prince Charles has tested positive for the virus at a time when NHS staff still can't get tested. And so it goes on, a catalogue of failures which is going to cost more lives.

But this crisis has taught us an important lesson. It's not capital or capitalists which makes our economy function its workers - nurses, cleaners, deliverers, postal workers, supermarket workers, care home workers and more. What do all these people have in common? They're all low paid and under-valued.

And that's the nub of it. In the 2008 crash governments bailed out the banks but would we have missed them? No. The government could have nationalised them and let the 'investors' go to the wall. Instead, it made the rest of us pay for the banks' misdeeds through austerity. You can run an economy without private sector banks but you can't run it without workers and consumers.

James Meadway's thoughtful article for Novaramedia is worth reading on this. He says:

"Once people are too sick to work, or forced to self-isolate, the conventional operation of the labour market begins to break down. The division of labour – the secret to capitalism’s immense gains in productivity, as Adam Smith pointed out 250 years ago – itself is called into question: the present allocation of work between different parts of the economy is suddenly and, of necessity, forcibly altered."

What's clear is that, as James says, our economy needs to be fundamentally reworked for the benefit of those that make it work. I'm not as optimistic as he is. I have no doubt that when the crisis has passed the government will work hard to return to Brexit and business as usual - as if nothing happened. It will point the finger in any direction it can to avoid blame and will be supported by propagandists in the BBC and the media.

Whatever the outcome it's clear that thousands will die but it's unlikely that the death toll will exceed the 130,000 victims of Tory austerity.