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Five years later : Capitalism, wars and pandemics, 2020 (translation from French)

Publié le 13 Décembre 2024 par PB Pantopolis, december 2024

4 avril 2020. A Guayaquil, en Equateur, les hôpitaux saturés ne peuvent faire face à l’afflux de malades. Les corps sont laissés dans les rues et les maisons durant des jours en attendant de pouvoir être inhumés.

4 avril 2020. A Guayaquil, en Equateur, les hôpitaux saturés ne peuvent faire face à l’afflux de malades. Les corps sont laissés dans les rues et les maisons durant des jours en attendant de pouvoir être inhumés.

Version française, juin 2020 : téléchargement de la brochure :

Capitalisme, guerres, pandémie : La crise mortelle de 2020 ?

Publié le 27 Juin 2020 par PB/Pantopolis in histoire et théorie

Brochure sur la pandémie de coronavirus (covid-19) replacée et relativisée dans l'histoire destructrice du capitalisme. TELECHARGER.

capitalisme, guerres, pandémie (format pdf)

http://pantopolis.over-blog.com/2020/06/capitalisme-guerres-pandemie-la-crise-mortelle-de-2020.html

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Pantopolis, Ph.B, Summer 2020

(translation from French: December 2024 by deepL, reviewed and proofread)

Capitalism, wars and pandemics

 

XI /IN PING, 10 /February 2020: «This is a war that we must all wage together». MACRON, 16 March 2020: «We are in a state of war».

TRUMP, 18 March 2020: «I am a wartime president».

MERKEL, 18 March 2020: “This is serious. Take it seriously too. Since German reunification, indeed since the Second World War, there has been no challenge to our country that has not depended so much on our common solidarity.”

MODI, Prime Minister of India, 19 March 2020: «From 5 p.m. on 22 March, Indians MUST stand at their window to thank all those who continue to work to enable the nation to fight the virus: health staff, municipal staff, the army...»

BERLUSCONI, former Italian Prime Minister, 20 March 2020: «We are at war. Let’s stay close to those who govern».

No more than the class societies before it, based on trade and commerce, capitalismdespite its formidable technological and medical advancescan stop the spread of epidemics, which it has moreover encouraged by destroying the natural environment, by seeking immediate profit-pleasures (like that of DRUGS), by inexorably allowing the entire health system to collapse through «budget cuts», insofar as it is a reality for the two-thirds of humanity living in poverty, by turning housing into chicken cagessimilar to BATTERIES OF CHICKEN FATHERS – where billions of human beings are crammed together in the worst promiscuity, raised, trained, fed, ideologically subjected to the «power and glory» of Capital’s media war machine, often suppressed in blood, sometimes thrown into wars where they serve as cannon fodder for opposing camps, but united by their thirst for power and profit.

Since time immemorial, war has been a multiplying factor, encouraging the spread of epidemics. Epidemics, in turn, give rise to wars against the internal «scapegoat», condemned to be eradicated, like rats and fleas in the days of the plague and typhus. Worse still, epidemics can be used as a weapon of war against the «enemy within» or «without».

I.       Merchandise, trade and containment

Pandemics, or «plagues» as they were known under the Old Regime, have always existed, spreading at lightning speed through the major urban centres of ancient empires. This is how the epidemic known as the «Plague of Antoninus» – a combination of different diseases (exanthematic typhus, smallpox, etc.)reached Italy and then Gaul, killing millions of inhabitants between 165 and 180 AD. In Rome itself, in 167, up to 3,000 people died every day. War was indeed the cause of this «plague». When the Roman army returned from Syria victorious after the capture of Seleucia (165), the Senate gave General Lucius Aurelius Verus and Emperor Marcus Aurelius a triumph, which was attended by a huge crowd. This huge gathering was the trigger for the epidemic.

The case of the REAL plague (in its two forms: bubonic and pulmonary) illustrates the political, economic, social and ideological reality of a pandemic in developed commercial societies.

In the case of pulmonary plague, the incubation period is very short and the grim reaper does its work in two or four days. The first known pandemic of this magnitude, which originated in Ethiopia and was known as the Justinian plague (after the Byzantine emperor), devastated the shores of the Mediterranean between 541 and 767, spreading by coastal and river shipping without penetrating too far inland. People died in a matter of hours, plague sufferers having already infected their loved ones by coughing and sneezing. The confinement of entire families was a death sentence. The expression «God bless you» dates from this epidemic, because if someone sneezed, they often gave up the ghost...

Another lesser-known «plague», the «yellow plague», ravaged Ireland and England in the 6th and 7th centuries. Perhaps imported from Gaul, it ravaged Ireland. Chroniclers of the time speak of half the inhabitants.

In the Late Middle Ages, the ignorant and delirious multitudes who saw the accumulation of mountains of corpses, quickly thrown into mass graves, no longer gathered in churches, as noted in the introduction to Boccaccio’s collection of short stories, the Decameron. Their ignorance, often reinforced by the fiery rhetoric of the lower clergy, helped to fuel all kinds of hatred: the aim was to find SORRY BULLSHITTERS, to DIABOLISE religious and national minorities. For four years (1348-1352), unbridled mobs attacked the Jews. The Jews of Basel were confined and then burnt in a barn. Jews in Strasbourg and the south of France were mercilessly slaughtered. Synagogues were burnt down, despite the fulminations of the Avignon pope Clement VI against such senseless acts4. Neither lepers nor

Neither the «heretics» (Waldesians and others), nor the «vagrants» (the migrants of the time), nor the women judged as witches, all condemned as «sowers of the plague», were spared. The plague victims were «confined» in barns and finally burned. They were all massacred as agents of the  «devil5.

When it wasn’t an explosion of hatred or fanatical delirium, it was, particularly in the «land of Islam», an apology for martyrdom, rich in the promise of «paradise», requiring the believer to resign himself to his fate, and therefore to the SOCIAL ORDER, that of merchant societies already subject to MERCHANDISE: «The plague has the value of martyrdom for Muslims and mercy is granted to those who die of it. For infidels, it is nothing but a calamity... [We must] turn to God, asking him for healing, resignation and thanksgiving”6.

At the time of Covid-19, when ancient medieval hatreds against ‘the foreigner’, ‘the other’, the

«In the cauldrons of national capitalism, the broth of hatred is simmering, a hatred carefully cultivated by ultranationalist parties of all stripes. Xenophobic feelings are growing in Europe against anything resembling Chinese. The atmosphere of racism in Donald Trump’s America, where the coronavirus has been dubbed the «Chinese virus», could quickly turn pestilential. Viktor Orban thunders at migrants who test positive and threatens to deport them. Rebels against confinement could face up to eight years in prison7. In countries such as China (but also in many other so-called «democracies», such as Scott Morrison’s Australia)8 all migrants or repatriates suspected of being carriers of the virus.

As a result of the «new plague», political and social opponents may find themselves in concentration camps, where the coronavirus will strike with far greater force than in European old people’s homes9. Capitalism in the age of the coronavirus is announcing with great media fanfare that containment measures will transform the glorious homelands of Capital (from China to the USA) into internal prisons for each block of flats, places of detention or concentration camps, if necessary. Capitalism in the age of the coronavirus no longer promises a «rosy future»with economic collapse on the horizonbut a return to the good old social Darwinism of the 19th century bourgeoisie, the selection of the «fittest» to ensure the survival of the system and its watchdogs.

 

  1. The precedent of the Spanish flu: s e c r e c y , brainwashing and war economics for a better production of cannon fodder

Spanish flu was named after the scissors of Anastasia, the patron saint of military censorship. As Spain was neutral during the First World War, its newspapers appeared without being reviewed and corrected by the military censors. In 1918, the Spanish press was the only one to talk openly about the disease. The name Spanish flu came from this revelation in the press. From then on, France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States became accustomed to referring to the disease as Spanish flu. A name that will go down in history.

Spanish flu, with its H1N1 virus, affected between a third and a half of the world’s population. A combination of a human flu strain and an avian flu strain, it was a precursor to the

3 Le Monde, Friday 3 April 2020, p. 4.

4 See Dominique Lecourt (ed.), Dictionnaire de la pensée médicale, PUF, 2004 (article: «Peste»).

5 Jules Baissac History of Christian diablerie. I. Le Diable, la personne du Diable, le personnel du Diable, 1882. Now available as an e-book (BNF).

6 Jean-Noël Biraben, «La peste noire en terre d’islam», L’Histoire no. 11, April 1979.

7 «Le premier ministre nationaliste hongrois Viktor Orban a lié immigration et pandémie», Le Monde, 25 March 2020, p. 10.

8 «Coronavirus: evacuated from China, Australians quarantined in a migrant detention centre», Le Monde, 4 February 2020.

9 Nicolas Cheviron, «Si le coronavirus atteint les camps du Xinjiang, beaucoup de Ouïghours vont mourir», Mediapart, 9 March 2020.

influenza that appeared in the early 2000s. As is often the case with this type of pandemic, it spread in three waves: March and October 1918, and early 1919. The international death toll was terrifying: 50 million or more. This toll, largely concealed by a muzzled press, became clearer thanks to the meticulous work of demographers and historians more than 70 years later.

This influenza was particularly virulent, taking pulmonary forms as virulent as those of the Black Death:

One morning, a pneumonic patient was left in good condition with one or two condensation sites, and in the evening, he was found dyspnoeic, worried, restless in bed, with cyanotic lips. The man turned blue, broke out in a profuse sweat, started moaning and died 10.

Where does the Spanish flu virus come from? It seems to have appeared in China in 1917, passing from ducks to pigs and then to humans (a now classic animal/human chain for pandemics in the 21st century). A particular mutant of extraordinary virulence made a dramatic appearance in the United States in 1918, probably among workers who had been employed in slaughterhouses. Spanish flu spread rapidly to military camps, where troops were being trained to intervene in Europe on the orders of President Wilson. At the end of the summer of 1918, a virulent mutation of the virus appeared in several places. In North America, the Fort Devens military camp, just outside Boston (Massachusetts), quickly became a human slaughterhouse. Around 45,000 soldiers lived there, crammed together. Hygiene was non-existent for the future cannon fodder. In the huge dormitories, the sheets were rarely washed. The disease spread rapidly. On 1 September, four soldiers fell ill. A week later, the number had risen to 1,543. By mid-September, more than 6,000 soldiers were bedridden. More than 100 men died every day, victims of what resembled fulminant pneumonia.

Between 1918 and 1919, influenza killed 550,000 Americans, both civilians and soldiers, more than the two world wars and the Korean and Vietnam wars combined 11. Life expectancy was much lower than on the battlefields: four months after infection, 90% of sufferers died.

 

The medical profession was totally powerless to stop the pandemic and recommended: simple bed rest, cupping, repeated bloodletting to purify the «humours» (as in the days of the Mo- liere doctors), subcutaneous injections of oxygen, cardiac tonics (caffeine, foxglove, camphorated oil, adrenaline, turpentine), administration of anti-thermals (anti-malaria : quinine, cryogenics, citro- phene), cold chest wraps, a liquid and light «therapeutic» diet that a policy of restrictions has already put in place. The health authorities recommend prescription rum, just as the French health authorities today advise dispensing protective masks in pharmacies, on prescription. In 2020 (as in 1918), some doctors were recommending a quinine anti-malarial drug, of which chloroquine was the synthetic substitute, and which could prove dangerous in high doses12. This could be a «gift from heaven», according to the ignorant doctor Donald Trump, who wants to see «churches full at Easter» and factories running at full speed, with or without masks, even if it costs 200,000 deaths13.

 

In April 1918, the patriotic Allied press claimed that the disease «came from Germany», that it was a Hun desease: «There were rumours in the public that the disease had been caused by tinned food from Spain into which German agents had introduced pathogenic bacilli».

 

10 Olivier Lahaie, «L’épidémie de grippe dite «espagnole» et sa perception par l’armée française (1918-1919)», Revue historique des armées

[Online], no. 262, 2011.

11 Olivier Lahaie, loc. cit.

12 «Didier Raoult, la nouvelle égérie des complotiste», Le Monde, 30 March 2020, p. 11. Dr Didier Raoult, who is the darling of the conspiracy theorists and sovereigntists, will soon be the object of their ire. Raoult, who firmly denounces the concept of «The ultra-right called him «cosmopolitan scum» and an «agent of Mossad». For the toxicity of antimalarial drugs, see Dorosz (Vidal-Durand & Le Jeunne), Guide pratique des médicaments, Maloine, 2019, p. 1706, which stresses the possible side effects: «dizziness, blurred vision, hypotension, possibility of cardiac and respiratory arrest», if the ambulance is called: «infusion of epinephrine, thiopental after intubation, diazepam». However, other drugs (Remdesivir, Kaletra combined with Interferon) are at the top of the list for reducing the impact of the disease. The promising research carried out since the SARS crisis has been more or less neglected for lack of sufficient funding...

13 «Coronavirus. Donald Trump sees chloroquine as a gift from heaven if the treatment works», Ouest France, 24 March 2020. Interview with Foxnews, a far-right channel, in which the billionaire states: ««We have to get back to work, much sooner than people think».

Fake news is being used to revive a patriotic spirit already shaken by the strong international echo of the Russian Revolution. The French propaganda service claimed that Bayer, the inventor of aspirin, had introduced the influenza agent into acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) tablets. Some very imaginative people claimed that German submarines surfaced near the «allied coast and brought vials full of the flu virus, which were poured into water tanks or into the atmosphere, as in France and the USA, where «good patriots» were gathering to buy war bonds 14. German propaganda, like that of the Allies, deliberately played down the impact of the virus on the troops, who would have to keep their morale high in order to be better mown down by shells and machine guns. The Kaiser’s press claimed that the flu had arrived in Western Europe with battalions of Indochinese colonial troops. In the sculleries of imperial propaganda, a toxic broth of racialism was simmering, that of the «yellow peril» (Gelbe Gefahr), all the more so as Japanese imperialism had committed itself to the side of the Allies, the better to raid Germany’s colonies in Asia and the Pacific.

Today, the current authors of these lies, the «sovereigntists» of all stripes who are ready to do battle with anything that is «foreign» – the Jew, the Muslim, the Asian, the refugee or the immigrantare having a field day. Their «conspiracy» paranoia is being used as a tool for warmongering propaganda, to drum up support for a war against the «China virus», in other words Chinese exports. We can currently read in a certain section of the press or on certain so-called «social» networks that SARS-CoV2 (Covid-19) was manufactured in the Wuhan P4 laboratory, and that patents were filed by major pharmaceutical laboratories to profit from the sale of the life-saving vaccine, which would only be available on the market once its price had reached Himalayan heights after millions had died 15.

 

The First World War saw the establishment of a form of war capitalism in every country, known as «war capitalism». It was a «war economy», in which death machines, shells, bullets and chemical weapons had to be produced for more than 12 hours a day, at least six days a week, at the expense of the consumption of the already starving and particularly weakened working masses. Except for the allied bloc, supported by the ferocious exploitation of their colonial empires, this implied strict autarky, tempered by ruthless banditry by the big capitalist groups: on every continent, the sources of energy, the metals needed for the arms industry, the precious metals, the foodstuffs produced and exported had to reinforce the war effort, a war that was as much military as it was economic.

In the coronavirus crisis, political leaders, particularly in France, are advocating a war economy, whose virtue, like that of Caesar’s wife, should be unsuspected. The idea is to wage a «sanitary war», while ignoring the visible reality of an exacerbated trade war, leading in the long run to war at all costs against the external enemy. This is how, on Sunday 22 March, in an open letter to his former «party comrade» Emmanuel Macron, the First Secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure demanded the introduction of a «war economy», advocating massive requisitions of companies to produce masks or screening tests for the coronavirus 16.

French social democracy has a wealth of experience of the war economy. The Socialist Party, which is the successor to Guy Mollet’s SFIO, was able in the past to set up a war economy to arm the regular troops in Algeria and mobilise a contingent of millions of young people sent to work in the djebels.

Attali is careful not to admit it18.

The rest of Attali’s speech on the war economy is a grotesque incantation for a «happy economy», knowing full well that capitalists (their owners and officials) can only create an economy of unhappiness: «To avoid the return of these misfortunes, to ward off this virus as much as the next ones, we must finally admit that a society could function perfectly well, and be happy, by devoting well over half of its wealth-creating activities to the industries and services of health, food, hygiene, education, the environment and culture. And to the technologies they require.

All these politicians and other bourgeois henchmen, flapping their gums in front of the microphones of the media, know full well that the proclamation of warwe are at war») implies a real preparation of the population for the idea of a world war, WHERE EVERYTHING WILL BE PERMISSIBLE: FROM CHEMICAL AND BACTERIOLOGICAL WEAPONS TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

  1. Capitalism, imperialism and the germ war

In 1913, on the eve of the war, Rosa Luxemburg forcefully emphasised that the rise of capitalism was nothing other than the history of its crimes, of its violence on a planetary scale, which it was plunging into irreparable convulsions:

Capital is not only at its birth ‘dripping blood and mud from every pore’, but throughout its march through the world; in this way it prepares, in ever more violent convulsions, for its own collapse 19.

  1. THE MOLOCH OF MONEY

The development of capitalism, initially in its commercial form, was accompanied by the first globalisation. This was largely a policy of EXPANSION, MILITARY CONQUEST, COLONISATION and EXPLOITATION on the scale of entire continents. The «discovery» of America by Columbus ushered in microbial globalisation. Bacteria and viruses that thrived on the Eurasian continent spread everywhere as the conquest progressed. Infections such as measles, smallpox, cholera and tuberculosis destroyed entire populations. In Mexico, the Amerindian population fell from 25 million in 1519 to 1.5 million in 1580. In Peru, the fall was just as brutal: 10 million inhabitants by 153020. The same apocalyptic situation prevailed in North America. Epidemics from South and Central America spread to the present-day United States from the beginning of the 16th century. French colonists settled in Canada and depopulation began immediately as a result of contacts between Indian communitiesboth commercial and warlikeand many communities disappeared even before they learned that foreign ships had reached their shores21. This deadly march of pandemics lasted well into the 19th century: in the early 1880s, when capital built the Canadian Pacific Railway through the interior province of Saskatchewan, the province’s natives, hitherto protected from white germs, died at a rate of 9% a year. 100% per year 22.

In addition, the massive importation of livestock by the European colonists, who lived practically immune to the presence of domestic animals (beef, pork, goats, horses and poultry), also undoubtedly favoured the appearance of infectious epidemics unknown in America.

If this is not a case of deliberate  genocide, where the victor knowingly used the microbial weapon, it is clear that the Conquista, like any large-scale military conquestin this respect it is comparable to the Mongol conquests in the 13th and 14th centuries, which followed the path of the plague 23was a

18 In his book Une brève histoire de l’avenir, Fayard, 2006, the ‘futurologist’ J. Attali prophesises a radiant future for capitalism:

The «men», i.e. the consumer-producers, will be «liberated» and nomadised under the direction of a hyper-elite the transhumans»), driven by the mission of ensuring the triumph of «market democracy» worldwide, under the leadership of an ultraliberal social democracy. The fact that social democracy and the market will be in complete disarray by 2020 does not seem to bother us.

«a seasoned futurologist.

19 Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (1913), Agone/Smolny, Marseille/Toulouse, nov. 2019.

20 Carmen Bernand and Serge Gruzinski, Histoire du Nouveau Monde. De la Découverte à la conquête, Fayard, Paris, 1991; Nathan Wachtel,

La vision des vaincus. Les Indiens du Pérou devant la conquête espagnole, Gallimard, Paris, 1971.

21 Frédéric Dorel, «La thèse du ‘génocide indien’ : guerre de position entre science et mémoire», Amnis no. 6, 2006 (article online).

22 Jared Diamond, De l’inégalité parmi les sociétés, Gallimard, 2000, p. 210.

23 The so-called pax mongolica was marked by the disintegration of khanates and empires and the accumulation of mountains of skulls. The Black Death pandemic from Asia travelled along trade routes, reaching its peak of morbidity in the middle of the XIVe century. Visit

irreversible human disaster. The Dominican Bartolomé de Las Casas, who never mentioned these deadly epidemics, painted a vivid picture of the conquest of the Caribbean and the Americas by iron and fire:

In forty years, as a result of the tyranny and infernal and unjust actions of the Christians, twelve million souls, men, women and children died. And to tell the truth, I believe, and I don’t think I’m wrong, that there were more than fifteen million. [...] During these twelve years, in these four hundred and fifty leagues [of New Spain], the Spaniards killed with knives and spears more than four million inhabitants, women, children, young men and old men, or burnt them alive24.

But it was undoubtedly the use of forced labour by the colonial authorities that dealt the final blow, striking a population already devastated by microbial shock. Thirsty for gold and silver, the Spanish Empire reduced the natives, both free and not, to virtual slavery in the mines, as well as servitude on huge agricultural estates. Relying on the indigenous nobility (the CACIQUES), who had supported Cortes in order to bring down the Aztecs and maintain their caste privileges, the aristocracy of the hidalgos enriched themselves by imposing wage slavery, i.e. a miserable wage set by the colonial state.

The ban on the enslavement of the natives, which came into force in 1542, only served to formalise their reduction to the status of serfs. It was also accompanied by a flourishing trade in black slaves, who were already being used on the plantations in the Canary Islands. Las Casas, who had initially accepted the importation of black slaves for domestic use, soon repented. «Considering himself inadvertently guilty», the Dominican insisted: «Black slavery is as unjust as Indian slavery «25.

The development of the scourge of slavery in the Americas also had the perverse effect of importing other microbial scourges that did not exist on the continent. The introduction of the yellow fever virus, carried by African monkeys, had the effect of decimating the monkeys and indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Forced labour, like slavery 26 , only spread at the height of the capitalist system, both in Asia (the Dutch Indies, with the system of compulsory cultivation (Cultuurstelsel)) and in Africa. Under Leopold II, the Belgian Congo, which was his personal property, was subjected to ferocious serfdom for the benefit of the big mining companies and the big planters who shared their huge profits with the Crown. The colonial administration also imported more than 44,000 workers from Angola and Northern Rhodesia. These workers died of tick-borne fever (caused by the bacterium rickettsia africae), influenza, pneumonia, exhaustion and repeated mining «disasters».

We know about the human catastrophe caused by the construction of the Congo-Ocean railway line by French capital from the accounts of Albert Londres and André Gide. It claimed more than 23,000 victims.

The historian Elikia M’Bokolo has summed up very well the ecological, demographic and health disaster caused by the brutal introduction of the capitalist system, which transforms human beings into fodder for profit or cannon fodder:

The ecological and demographic disaster caused by the system of concessionary companies in the two Congos was only the extreme form of a much more general phenomenon that affected almost all the colonised regions: spectacular or deadly epidemics in Madagascar (plague) as in Senegal (yellow fever, plague) or Côte d’Ivoire (yellow fever); droughts and famines in areas as different as the Sahel and Angola; epidemics, epizootics, famines, wars and excess mortality mixed together in an infernal cycle in Central and East Africa27.

Entire populations have been subjected to the yoke of ascendant capitalism since the 16th c e n t u r y . Exploited to death, weakened by forced labour or slavery, unable to resist the pandemics that travelled the sea and land trade routes, they were sacrificed to the great Moloch, to the god Mammon, the god of money extending its hold over the whole world:

Money is the executioner of all things, the Moloch to whom everything must be sacrificed. [...] Money effectively appears as the Moloch to whom real wealth is sacrificed 28.

Capital appears as the Moloch who demands that the whole world be sacrificed to him29.

  1. BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS IN THE AGE OF CAPITAL NECROSIS

On the «Silk Roads», the war was no picnic: wells were poisoned, plague was introduced into towns that resisted, and the inhabitants were systematically destroyed (as in Baghdad in February 1258).

24 Très brève relation sur la destruction des Indes, Mouton, Paris-La Haye, 1969, p. 26 and 48.

25 Saint-Lu (André), «Bartolomé de las Casas et la traite des nègres», Bulletin hispanique, vol. 94, no. 1, 1992, pp. 37-43.

26 Elikia M’Bokolo, «Forced labour is slavery», L’Histoire, no. 302, Oct. 2005.

The use of biological weapons (bacteria and viruses) is as old as war itself. Ancient soldiers enhanced the destructive power of their arrows by dipping them in rotting flesh or corrupted blood, making them not only toxic but also infectious. Skythikon, the toxic speciality of the Scythian archers, was made up of both poisons and infectious biological products, simmered in dung: this mixture caused not only envenomation but also gas gangrene, tetanus and other lightning infections 30.

At the very beginning of the expansion of capitalism, the first use of biological weapons was in a commercial and colonial war. It was during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) that smallpox was used by General Jeffery Amherst, Commander-in-Chief of the British troops in North America. He wrote in July 1763, during the Pontiac War, when a revolt was in the air among the native peoples. The use of biological weapons was part of an «ethnic cleansing» plan, a veritable genocide before its time:

Couldn’t we find a way to spread smallpox among these disgruntled tribes of Indians? On this occasion, we must use every stratagem in our power to defeat them31.

And this interrogation’ is followed by a rapid application using blankets contaminated with the smallpox virus. This fine work eventually earned him a seat in Her Glorious Majesty’s House of Lords.

The full development of capitalism and the deadly confrontation between imperialisms on a global scale has led to the scientific study of all biological agents that could be «MILITARISABLE», i.e. be used in the same way as a chemical weapon (and a nuclear weapon since 1945). To maximise its lethality, a biological weapon must meet a number of criteriaknown as the Theodor Rosebury criteria (1904-1976)namely: direct contagiousness, minimum infecting dose, route of infection or intoxication, incubation period or onset of first symptoms, survival in the environment, ease of production and storage, stability of stored products, (possible) therapeutics 32 ...

In the course of studies conducted in the greatest secrecy, military strategists from the USA, the UK, Japan, the USSR, France, Italy, etc. noted the «prodigious effect of the anthrax bacillus (Bacillus anthracis). which is stable in the environment and can be packaged in powder or spray form, and had already been used during the First World War33. But also the plague bacillus (Yersinia pestis), the agent of tularemia [a disease transmitted to humans through contact with infected animals or vectors (ticks)]. The scholars of death also noted the «marvels» of viruses, very interesting because of their microscopic size: they can pass through the filtering elements of containment devices and personal respirators; there is no effective treatment apart from prevention by vaccination.

The «darling» of the military may now be the smallpox virusdeclared eradicated by the WHO on 8 May 1980which can be reactivated in the laboratory and spread, with no vaccine to prevent it 34. To these can be added the viruses responsible for encephalitis (tick-borne encephalitis, chikungunya, dengue fever, yellow fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis), transmitted by arthropods. These insects, properly used in military programmes (ENTOMOLOGICAL warfare) 35 , can serve as biological transmitters of plague, cholera, etc.

 

 

this microbial war. The main research centre (UNIT 731), located in Pingfan (Harbin province), comprised more than 150 buildings, five satellite camps and employed at least 3,000 scientists and technicians. These criminal scientists tested cholera, plague and anthrax agents on Chinese prisoners of war on a large scale. Nearly 3,000 prisoners died in atrocious conditions. Biological attacks were carried out 12 times against Chinese cities, contaminating drinking water and food supplies with cholera, plague and anthrax agents. The death toll was in the thousands.

During the Ethiopian War (1935-1936), Mussoliniin addition to using gas extensively against the Negus’ population and armycame very close to experimenting with bacteriological weapons. Marshal Badoglio dissuaded him, not out of «humanism» but out of simple strategic realism.

All these «experiments», after the defeat of Japan and the dismantling of Unit 731, served as a «model» for the «bacteriological engineering» of the USSR and the USA.

The USA conducted research from 1942 to the end of the 1960s. Deadly substances were tested on its population, in particular on prisoners and conscientious objectors. During the Korean War (1950-1953), anthrax, plague and cholera bacilli were spread among the North Korean and Chinese enemy. Flies, fleas, etc. were used, as well as aerosols. In the latter case, the US army used aerosol spraying36. As the results were mixed, and following various incidents leaks» of bacilli and viruses), American biological weapons stocks were (officially) destroyed between May 1971 and February 1973...

Soviet state capitalismdubbed «real socialism» by its ruling classwas not to be outdone in this biological arms race, from Stalin to Gorbachev. The militarisation of a dozen or so pathogenic agents entered the laboratory programmes: anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, plague, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, typhus, Q fever [zoonosis, a disease transmissible from vertebrate animals (cattle, sheep, goats) to humans], botulinum toxin produced by a bacterium. In 1973, a few months after the establishment of an international treaty banning all research into biological weapons (BTWC/BWC, opened for signature on 10 April 1972, entered into force in 1975), a State decree set up an entity (BIOPREPARAT = Preparation of Biological Substances) with 40 research centres and bacteriological weapons production sites. The production of missiles, rockets and ad hoc bombs would be aimed at disseminating pathogenic agents. The programme was officially halted in 1992...

Such programmes can also be aimed at the population of a State, where the dominant capitalist class in a numerical minority is planning mass racial genocide. In white Apartheid South Africa, an ultra- secret projectled in 1985 by «Doctor Death» Wouter Bassonwas put in place. It targeted the black population, using extreme means: the use of Anthrax, the Ebola virus, AIDS, cholera, mass sterilisation and ethnically selective chemical poisons 37.

Iraq is a textbook case of CBRN warfare against «enemies from within» 38. Equipped with an impressive biological arsenal, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq limited itself to the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds. From 16 to 19 March 1988, over the Kurdish town of Halabja, the Iraqi army’s Mig (Russian) and Mirage (French) fighter-bombers sprayed killer gases: mustard, sarin and tabun. The death toll was 5,000. Notably, these weapons «were mainly supplied by French, Belgian and German companies, whose engineers and chemists knew exactly what Saddam was up to... For years, the United States and its allies blocked international campaigns to condemn Saddam for his use of mustard and nerve gases39.

It is quite clear that the major capitalist powers (including China and Russia) have no intention of stopping their biological warfare programme. Accidental leaks of biological agents and/or

36 Stephen Endicott & Edward Hagerman, The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1998. See also: Gordon Thomas, Les armes secrètes de la CIA, Nouveau Monde, 2006.

37 See : Tristan Mendès France, Dr la Mort. Enquête sur un bioterrorisme d’État en Afrique du Sud, 2002; Chandré Gould, «Armes chimiques et biologiques: leçons d’Afrique du Sud», Politique étrangère, no. 1, 2005, pp. 109-121.

38 NRBC = nuclear, radiological, biological or chemical warfare.

39 Barry Lando, «Saddam Hussein, un procès sous influence», Le Monde, 17 October 2005.
are well documented. The one in Dugway (Utah) in 1968 cost the lives of 6,000 sheep. The outbreak

in Sverdlovsk (Soviet Russia) in April 1969 was much more serious. The epidemic spread to cattle up to 50 km away. The military research centre on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk) was at the centre of the outbreak.

These «leaks» may be deliberate, caused by multiple forms of bioterrorism, involving religious or extremist sectssometimes from states that are secretly arming terrorist groups.

Let’s look at a few facts. In September 1984, the Rajneeshees religious sect, based in Wasco County (Oregon), spread salmonella on salads and raw vegetables served in restaurants in The Dalles, resulting in 45 people being hospitalised. The best-known case is the sarin attack perpetrated by the Aun sect in the Tokyo underground on 19 March 1995, which claimed 5,500 victims (including 12 deaths). The sect, with its

The 50,000-strong sect, with a haul of a billion dollars, had an advanced biological weapons research programme. The sect had acquired and stockpiled anthrax and Q fever bacilli, as well as botulinum toxin. It even sought to acquire the Ebola virus (90% of outbreaks of which are fatal)40.

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At the end of this second part, we can say that :

  1. The spread of microbes (bacteria and viruses) is encouraged by the extreme concentration of the world’s population (50% of the population lives in cities, often in the worst sanitary conditions, in polluted towns where fine particles encourage the spread of epidemics).
  2. Microbes, which follow the path of hyper-commercialisation and the hyper-production of Capital, are proliferating as pathogens with the very sudden demographic explosion (3 billion human beings in 1960; 7.7 billion in 2020). In 2013, there were three billion passengers on all global routes; in 2017, there will be four billion. They travel more slowly but just as inexorably by sea. The merchant navy, which accounts for 90% of world trade, has seen the benefits of globalisation. The number of shipsincluding passenger ships, such as the cruise ships that have now been transformed into super-exodusesrose from 52,000 in 2013 to around 58,000 in 2018.
  3. For the major capitalist states, preparing for and going to war justifies all military means, including the use of CBRN weapons in a generalised conflict. The use of biological weapons, which was carried out on a small scale and on an experimental basis (Manchuria, Korean War), could become a monstrous reality if a global conflict broke out. Bioterrorism would then be the work of the major imperialist powers, subcontracting their operations to mercenaries.

Professional conspiracy theorists claim that Covid-19 came from Chinese military laboratories. This is no doubt to clear their national bourgeoisie of its usual carelessness in spreading the virus. In the absence of serious scientific investigation, the answer is that viruses don’t wait for the self-serving flights of fancy of these ultra-nationalist ‘sovereigntists’ to mutate again and again.

These inescapable mutations are the result of selection in nature, in accordance with Darwin’s doctrine 41. While there may be deliberate or accidental manipulations through genetic engineering, the outcome of which is uncertain (opening new Pandora’s boxes), the best agent of the most fearsome viruses is not «Man» per se but Capital itself.

By spreading virally on a global scale, Capital is exacerbating pandemics, which are becoming increasingly uncontrollable, often through the collapse of health systems (when they exist for half of the world’s population), 

40 Patrick Berche, Une histoire des microbes, John LibbeyEurotext, 2007, p. 258.

41 Cf. Santé blog, 18 March 2020: https://blog.santelog.com/2020/03/18/covid-19-on-avance-sur-lorigine-du-coronavirus/

and by the systematic destruction of the entire ecosystem by a VAMPIRE CAPITAL greedy for immediate profits.

Pantopolis, Ph.B., 2020