In response to “The COVID pandemic and the supply chain crisis” by Nick Beams:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/05/supp-o05.html

But as with the situation in hospitals around the world, impacted by decades of cuts, the crisis was foretold. In 2015, regulators warned: “Congestion at ports and other points in the nation’s intermodal system have become a serious risk factor to the relatively robust growth of the American economy, and to its competitive position.”

But wherever there is a problem, there is a profit to be made. The seven largest ocean carriers have reported $23 billion in profits for the first half of this year, compared with $1 billion for the same period last year.

The congestion of ports has threatened the economy since at least 2015. The ocean carriers and transportation industry increased their profits during the lock down. The profits did not decline but increase, contrary to the assertions of the WSWS economic theory of the lock-down: less production equals less profit. This theory holds very dangerous implications for the socialist movement.

If the capitalists have ended the lock-down, this has nothing to do with increasing profits by getting the workers back into the factories. They increased their profits far more by holding back production in order to raise their rate of return. Ignorance of these facts does not strengthen the WSWS position but mires it in contradiction, raising various defenses for the capitalist system and the capitalist state.

The eruption of a supply chain crisis, however, is not going to bring about a course correction to deal with its underlying cause—the COVID-19 pandemic—through a program of global eradication.

The underlying cause of the economic disruptions should not, in a Marxist’s theory, trace back to the pandemic. The pandemic itself arose as part of a conscious policy of the ruling class to disrupt production and destroy productive capacity, a necessary activity under capitalism. Only the working class seeks to remove the old relations of production which now hold back production or destroy it in order to increase the rate of profit for the ruling class. The eradication of Covid-19 actually depends on improving production and distribution of the necessities of every day life as well as specific commodities necessary for the treatment and prevention of infection.