The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed, amongst others, two inter-related issues. First, capitalism has exhausted itself as an economic system, incapable of providing in the basic needs of humanity and rapidly destroying our planet. Secondly, the sustained uprising and protests against police violence revealed the crisis of leadership of the US revolutionary left, always trailing behind the masses.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resultant social crisis that has gripped the US labouring classes and oppressed layers of society, are pushing the Federal government increasingly towards authoritarian rule. Historically, for capitalism to resolve a debilitating crisis it tends to move toward totalitarian rule, in some cases to outright fascist rule. In response to this acute crisis a new wave of strikes and social protests unfolded, reaching its high point during the coronavirus pandemic.

The condition of the labouring classes is teetering on the edge of a catastrophe. So far in the US the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center reported 194,836 COVID-19 deaths. In terms of infections and deaths, strikingly, the pandemic is disproportionately devastating black, indigenous and Latinx labouring classes. This is compounded by job and wage losses worsening and aggravating an existing housing crisis. It is estimated approximately 40 million US citizens could face eviction due to a lack of rent payment. As of July 2020, nearly 50 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance with an unemployment rate ranging between 11.4% and 14% between March and July 2020 respectively.

Amid the crisis, technology giants Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Tesla Inc, reported windfall profits. The New York Times reported their market value surpassed a trillion dollars, with Apple valued at $2-trillion, making it higher than the GDP of Brazil, Canada, Russia and South Korea.

Since the start of COVID-19 the Payday Report recorded 1000 labour strikes. Strike rates and social protest are considered important indicators of mass radicalization. Although measured from a low base, these strikes signify a growing clamouring for fundamental change against capitalist barbarism. As an example, Amazon workers, who are known to work under the most inhumane working conditions, led some Amazon warehouse workers to engage in a nationwide protest. New York City public-school teachers, the largest school district in the US threatened to go on strike against the unsafe reopening of public schools. This action forced  the Mayor and others to reach an agreement with the teachers.

The brutal murder of George Floyd by the police in the city of Minneapolis sparked a national uprising against the brazen police violence in working class communities across the US. Labour strikes in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests was an important feature of the uprising. Unionized bus drivers of Minneapolis for example refused to drive protesters arrested by the police to jail facilities or to transport police officers. What the BLM protests have systematically exposed is how the state and political elites is policing a deep social crisis in working class communities in the most violent and despotic manner, akin to a militarized neocolonial force. Men and women including children are wantonly murdered or seriously injured by the police for the most minor violations and offences. Unsurprising, the protests that erupted in working class neighbourhoods are calling for sweeping changes. Some of these demands are unable to be met under capitalism. The labouring classes are the only revolutionary force that can take the American society out of the current crisis.

A section of the radical left, mistakenly, dismiss these protests as simply identity politics. At the same time the black petty bourgeois ‘leadership’, beholden to the capitalist Democratic Party has been trying everything to break the radical impulse of the protests. Their singular objective is to maintain the system and channel the rage of the labouring classes against the capitalist system into feverish electioneering campaigns. If anything, it is this decadent class, the prizefighters for capital, that has reduced the uprising to a simple matter of identity politics and racism, concealing the fact that racism is tied to exploitation and cannot be resolved under capitalism. Nevertheless, an important demand of the protests is to defund or abolish the police. To place these demands and new experiences in its proper context requires the full weight of our theoretical and historical tradition to bear on the current conjuncture. In this period the steadfast application of the critical and scientific method of transitional demands is surely needed. In this context the demand for the defunding or abolishing of the police provides a bridge to connect the immediate demands (as they emanate from the uprising) and the programme for eco-socialist revolutionary change. Along the  west coast of the USA, record high temperatures  and high winds have resulted in wildfires that has already ravaged 1.2 million hectares of land. There has been uninterrupted protests for more than 100 days in cities like Portland.  Moreover, the global resonance of the US uprising signaled the ever importance of internationalism and solidarity. The struggle for worldwide eco-socialist democracy is a necessity.