Among these Rights are…

I’ve read a few comments on posts saying, in effect, that those protesting against Safer at Home restrictions should give up their right to health care should they become infected. After all, by ignoring physical distancing, they are endangering others.

I agree the protesters are thoughtless and dangerous, yet we can’t allow our response to them to fall to their level — that is, to devalue their lives as much as they appear to devalue to the lives of others.

If we allow that to happen, if we indulge our own anger, then far more than our economy or even our republic will be in jeopardy. The foundation of Western civilization and the Judaeo-Christian tradition (however imperfectly and hypocritically both are lived) is based on valuing the lives of individuals.

Capitalism, the economic system the “open up” protesters support, is a more recent component of Western civilization (only about 500 years old). It claims to value individuals, but it does not. Capitalism values “impersonal” market signals (hint: they’re rarely impersonal, but that’s another story), economic power, and the commodification of everything, including human beings and the ecological requirements for life on earth. Everything must have a price tag.

Yes, a few people act as “free individuals” within capitalism (the wealthy), but the individualism and freedom of the vast majority of people is constrained by the need to sell their labor to survive. They are not truly free, because the majority of their waking hours are spent in undemocratic workplaces in which they have little or no control over their activities, and the “rewards” of their labor may not, in fact, be adequate to ensure their survival (the result of the exploitation of labor).

The “capitalism equals freedom” equation is the result of a brilliant marketing effort by libertarian and conservative economists and philosophers since the 1930s. See Frederick Hayek, Milton Friedman, and many others.

The equation is a lie.

The protesters are acting under the illusion that the elimination of government constraint on individual economic activity is the only definition of freedom. Clearly, they are mistaken, as an examination of their own lives would attest. Freedom from government is, at best, a partial definition of freedom.

1. The elimination of corporate constraints — non-worker-controlled constraints — on their productive activities as workers (and even as small business owners) is a component of freedom.

2. Freedom from economic want (food, housing, medical care) is a component.

3. Possessing critical thinking and associated skills, along with internalized “content” to use as a foundation for critical thinking, is a component of freedom.

Sadly, the “open up” protesters seem to lack an understanding of three of the four basic components of freedom, so they’re reacting against the one constraint they can see and understand. Ironically, since the precipitous elimination of the temporary government constraint on their economic activities may result in their deaths, they are demanding the freedom to die.

Since many of the protesters recognize the risk (or, at least, claim with bravado to understand the risk), perhaps they believe that the “freedom to die” is the only true freedom available to them in the world of corporate capitalism.

Capitalism and right-wing libertarianism are a death cult.

The “open up” protesters may believe they are advocating for economic freedom, but that’s not why governors in states like Georgia are easing restrictions on Safer at Home requirements. The governors (and Republican legislators in Wisconsin) are ending restrictions because they don’t value workers as individuals enough to help them survive a crisis that’s not of their making; in other words, the governors simply don’t want to pay unemployment benefits to struggling workers and their families.

The governors are using semi-pious language like “helping small businesses to survive,” but they don’t really mean it. A ten second analysis of what’s likely to happen shows this to be a falsehood. The governors are forcing small businesses to open and recall their workers. Small businesses will no longer be able to claim loss of business through their insurance companies. But, since most people support Safer at Home restrictions, the door of small businesses will be open and staff will be waiting to serve, but few, if any customers will appear. In a month or two, the businesses will be forced to lay off their workers and close their doors.

We’ll be back at square one, with only an increase in misery to show for our efforts.

What can we do for them?

• Recognize their very real economic fears.
• Demand that legislatures (state and federal) provide a guaranteed minimum income for the duration of the pandemic plus six months.
• Demand an end to evictions and foreclosures for the duration of the pandemic plus six months. Financially support small landlords.
• Demand economic support for small businesses for the duration of the pandemic plus six months.
• Demand free health care.
• Demand adequate daily PPE for all workers who cannot remain at home.

These are solutions to the “real” proximate reasons for the “open up” protests. Ideological differences won’t vanish, of course, and those who benefit from the existing system of artificial scarcity (finance capitalists) will object, but we will have fulfilled our responsibilities toward our republic, our civilization and, most importantly, to our fellow human beings, however obnoxious we may find some of them.

Then we can move onto the real work of dismantling that destructive upstart, capitalism.