How the COVID-19 crisis has brought out the worst side of capitalism

With the COVID-19 pandemic pushing the world into a global catastrophe, it has brought out the worst side of capitalism – extreme inequality, hunger, hasty bailout of the wealthy, mass unemployment and a severe healthcare crisis. Capitalism essentially rides on inequalities of power and wealth. It didn't take effect early as lockdowns would hurt business and disrupt their 'globalisation model'.

It needlessly subjects employees and contract workers to infection just so that their 'business as usual' remains unaffected. It lays them off or sends them on a furlough whenever it wants to because of severely flawed workplace policies. It cuts off their health care and medical insurance and wouldn't care less. It can't provide ventilators and other protective gear to save lives yet boast of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It makes it easier for the affluent class to get tested without any symptoms, while the poor must go through a "laid process".

The story is same just about everywhere. There have been multiple reports of people being denied urgent care and treatment due to lack of health insurance.About 47 million people in the United States alone have no health insurance due to which an estimated 18,000 people die every year . Developing countries such as India and other South Asian nations don't even have a proper healthcare system, where around 6 million people die every year due to poor healthcare . These countries spend billions of dollars on defence and military, but the investment in healthcare is stupendously low.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thoroughly uncovered the broken state of public health management across the world. Healthcare is not a luxury, but a fundamental human right as enshrined in the'Universal Declaration of Human Rights'. However, the commodification and privatisation of health care services and the mushrooming of private insurance markets infringe upon basic human rights and lead to inequalities compromising with the health of the populace.

Despite capitalism's promise of the "state-of-the-art healthcare" services, it has utterly failed in developing vaccine for coronavirus, because pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research. Furthermore, lack of proper hospital infrastructure and equipment such as ventilators and protective gear highlights the shortcomings of our healthcare systems, thus taking a severe toll not only on the patients but also on the frontline healthcare professionals. Over 27,000 healthcare workers in Spain alone have contracted the virus after weeks of pleading for protective gear and better planning .

This is even worse in India and Pakistan where they are forced to wear raincoats and bin bags putting themselves at high risk .Additionally, the hegemony of IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights)makes it difficult, particularly for the developing countries to afford life-saving medications and equipment.

The COVID-19 crisis has also exposed the social disparities in healthcare services, where around 80 percent of the world population lacks comprehensive social protection. Institutionalised patterns of social discrimination have been observed against people with socioeconomic disadvantage. As per a NHS (National Health Service) report, one-third of the critically ill corona patients in Britain are reported to be from black and ethnic minority communities.

Unarguably, capitalism doesn't care about lives since it places profit over people. It is inherentlyexploitative and dehumanizes the working class. It seeks 'appetising opportunities' in the midst of a pandemic, at the cost of human lives. Today, millions of workers across the world are vulnerable to the virussince they are neither entitled to paid sick leave,nor can they afford to be absent from work. Forced into lockdown, the capitalist economies are now gettingrestless and seeking to reopen the soonest.

With the fallout of this pandemic still uncertain, it's high time that the relevance and expediency of capitalism is questioned. To that end, no amount of charity can hide its flaws. However, we also must move on from the over-simplistic "capitalism versus socialism" debate, learn from experiences of both capitalist as well as socialist worlds and work towards a more humane, just, egalitarian, and democratic world order.