The article was written yesterday, on May Day. On a day of unity, struggle and solidarity for the working class and workers. On the second day of a bizarre practice called "full lockdown", between four walls, but with the verses of one of the most wonderful anthems in the world ringing in our ears: "The things that we see today are oppression, persecution and blood..."

Regardless of language, religion, race and nation, the great day that the most international class that history has ever seen has added to our lives... It is the class which is ignored that it plays the most important role in the reproduction of social life.

Even in the days of full lockdown against the pandemic, millions trapped in workplaces, factories, stalls is the most concrete evidence of that vital role and a despotic order that disregards the right to life. According to DISK's (Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey) calculation, 16 million people, or 61 percent of the country's workers, are 'exempt' from the lockdown. It's nonetheless called 'full lockdown' or 'fighting the pandemic'. How can 16 million people going to work be seen as an 'exception' except that the life of these workers is ignored?!

That's been happening since the beginning of the pandemic for over a year.  Some facts are much more striking in this period, which has already passed into human history as the 'corona days'. It's impossible to hide. The reality of the capitalist system, which can survive by maintaining and managing the inequality in the division of resources, is much more revealed in such periods. Turkey, on the other hand, is one of the most ruthlessly turned cogwheels of this system. 16 million people who have been handed over to the cogwheels of the pandemic so that the wheels of the system can turn... They’re not even vaccinated. This is a system one of whose representatives is a minister, whose statements during the pandemic account to a huge 'wind of lies' and who is likely to eventually say that "a second dose of the vaccine is harmful to health". Do you really think that it’ll tell the workers "Here's your minimum wage and stay home for a month?​”  

There is no food, there is no vaccine. The underestimation of the situation like "eat molasses and you won't catch the virus" in the beginning, populisms like "the Turkish gene is strong, we will overcome this scourge as a nation",  etc., fancy slogans like "life fits into the home"...  It's all pointless. According to the official figures, 300-350 people die while suffocating every day.

You just can't fit life into the home. Whose obligation is it to 'fit home' the life of the worker at the counter, the labourer in the workshop? When it comes to commenting on people who have to leave their homes, we can’t hear anything.

The class stance here is so striking... The only reason millions of people are being pushed into the grip of the pandemic in the name of 'the wheels of the economy must turn' is the same classism that makes them say that it is our basic duty not to give up on investments while fighting the pandemic... What's called an investment is the functioning of the scam that pours money into certain cohort of the government. For example, let the tycoon who "swore at the mother of the people" turn the green of Ikizdere to concrete so that the wheels turn! "Before, our ancestors used to climb up on trees to protect themselves from wild animals. Now we're climbing on them to protect them. Isn't life strange?" asks an Ikizdere resister. Standing guard on the tree he wanted to protect against the excavator and bulldozer of the insane capital...

It is the same class split that makes the protection of trees and nature, the pandemic and the fight against the pandemic a class issue. The reason for avoiding a full lockdown with social and financial support that covers everyone is the same.

Even in these life-or-death conditions, it is abstained from being relatively 'welfare-oriented'. The rift is so widened. While people are being advised to 'social distance', the 'class distance' put in between is so striking. "The coronavirus affects everyone, no exceptions, we're all in the same boat..." Yes, the virus is really 'fair' under the microscope. But when it infects people and socializes in a way, it takes on the characteristics of the class split in question. The classism of  corona arises in the struggle against it. There is no equality when it comes to self-isolation conditions or treatment opportunities.

It's not the virus that is undemocratic, it's the social-political-economic order.

That's the point. It is the establishment of a democratic, egalitarian order.

How? There's no need for long analysis. Even in the face of the deadly pandemic, those who are ignored should understand that they are the backbone of social life, realise their power, and enter politics 'for themselves' for the class politics that the capital and their government do not forget for a moment even under the conditions of the pandemic...

And yet, let's keep our hopes up for the May Day anthem:

One day the tyrants won’t be here to stay and will have to leave / It will melt like a sheet of paper on the glorious path of the revolution...