Fear, anxiety, and isolation grip us as we reckon with the rapid spread of COVID-19. It isn’t just the virus, though, causing us to spiral. Workers worry about the safety of their loved ones as well as the leaking roof, the rent check, and that ever-growing stack of bills. Our lives didn’t stop when the world shut down.
Millions of us already carry unmanageable debt, but the crisis at hand will now force us further into the pit. Those of us with inadequate healthcare coverage have massive deductibles to hit and may soon see our insufficient coverage slashed entirely by our employers. All of us whose labor belongs to the company are at risk of being kicked-to-the-curb to save the profits that we created.
More than a million workers (and counting) have lost their jobs as businesses shut down across the country. Even the jobs that felt secure may now disappear.
Certainly, COVID-19 presents new and scary problems for all of us. “Fear not,” say employers and their politicians, “we will keep you safe!” They tell us that the stimulus package of $2 TRILLION is generous and just. Small payments to workers and large ones to companies will put everything back together. The wealth will trickle down to our families, our leaking roofs, and ever-stacking bills.
Do you buy it?
What if the stimulus package is not a lifeline for workers and families after all, but instead a sleight-of-hand trick, redirecting power and wealth to capitalist elites at the expense of workers?
Sickness or Servitude?
Then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them. -Luke 4:39
Early in Luke’s gospel, we come across a story about Jesus healing Simon’s mother-in-law who suffered from a high fever. It’s a text easy to pass over on our way to the more dramatic portions of the Jesus story. The whole encounter consists of only two verses—so short we might be tempted not to ask questions.
Simon’s unnamed mother-in-law suffers from a debilitating fever. In the first century, a fever was serious business. So, Jesus gives the fever a stern talking to and it leaves her—she is healed—and then what?
The first thing the woman does, after being miraculously healed, is serve the men gathered in her home. In other words she returns to her predetermined place as a servant in the house. Perhaps it isn’t helpful to blame the writer for holding views about women as servants which are consistent with their time and place. Maybe the writer was emphasizing the importance of hospitality for the people of Israel. Whatever the case, what stands out to me is that this woman is healed and then immediately returns to her place of servitude. No one else in the story seems to see a problem here...but perhaps we should.
The takeaway?
Sometimes what looks like healing is an oppressive system reasserting itself.
Deja-Vu?
Do you remember the economic crash of 2008? That was the last time national and global markets were failing to the extent we see today. Workers lost jobs, incomes, and homes at astounding rates as debts soared. As the Obama Administration gifted massive bailouts to Wall Street, we were promised a recovery. While new jobs did eventually emerge, they were lower paying and less secure—mostly hourly positions with little to no benefits. A decade after the recession, the majority of U.S. Americans found themselves to be worse off than they had been prior to the crash. The bailout simply returned things to the status quo with workers’ belts strapped a little tighter.
Immediately workers returned to work, creating profits for their employers. While many working people were evicted or lost their homes, corporations quickly seized and consolidated land and property for the pursuit of further profit. In the aftermath of the crash, those on the top became more powerful and the rest of us, the working majority, caught a sucker punch to the chin.
All working class communities were negatively impacted, but black and brown communities fared the worst. Hispanic households lost 66% of their wealth and black lost 53% between the years 2005 to 2009.
So are we ready to do it all over again?
COVID-19 and the abysmal response of the Trump Administration have created the conditions for another episode of market failure. The state has shown its hand, passing an unprecedented $2 trillion stimulus bill that allocates most of those funds to large corporations and their wealthy financiers. While corporations will pocket billions, workers will receive payments of marginal amounts for all the wages we’ve missed while the virus has yet to even hit its peak.
While many of us worry about paying our bills in the upcoming months, feeding our families, and ensuring their safety, capitalists plot future profitable endeavors. They will seize foreclosed properties and turn them into trendy apartments. After the pillaging we will all return to something close to normal.
Just as Simon’s mother-in-law returned to her place of servitude after being healed of the fever, those of us sidelined by COVID-19 will return to our subservient role in the structure of capitalism. And unfortunately, the “bailout” that is on its way may give many working people just enough cash to forget how unstable capitalism is and how expendable they are to their employers.
Bailouts intended to put the majority of us in our place and consolidate power among the capitalist class won’t do. If the best capitalism can do in the wake of catastrophe is reproduce the inequalities and hierarchies under which workers live, then we must do better than capitalism.
Even though capitalism cannot produce the world we long for, perhaps we can be healed by another way. The kind of healing that will truly liberate workers from both the immediate threat of COVID-19 and our societal place of subordination to capital will come not from capitalist politicians and employers, but from workers standing in solidarity with one another.
It’s time to imagine how workers can re-make the economy and even society itself.
Never Going Back
Eventually, the dust will settle. When the stay-at-home orders lift, we will have difficult choices to make.
Will we return to our places of work grateful we are not among the unemployed and homeless? Will we continue to pray for more prosperous times? Will we resign ourselves to this fragile system that has shown itself unable to manage the crises that continue to come our way?
For me, the choice before us is clear: We reject the merry-go-round of capitalism that produces power, profit, and pleasure for the few at the expense of the rest of us. We form unions in our places of work and get strike-ready. We form tenant and community organizations to wrestle power from the grips of the wealthy, and put it back into the hands of working people.
May the tale of the unnamed woman rising from her sickbed only to return to servitude warn us that workers, too, are subservient to capital. For us to be truly healed, we must begin to question the systems that order the masses to serve the whims of the few wealthy elite.
I believe that God desires more for us than business as usual. Already, God is stirring up courage and hope among laid off workers, the housing insecure, and the masses of poor folks to transform the world.
Questions for Reflection:
How has COVID-19 affected you and your loved ones (i.e. economically/socially/emotionally)? How might the global poor be affected differently?
What do you think about the responses of your employers, local politicians, and national & international leaders to the crisis?
If capitalism creates and compounds the problems facing us, what can we as individuals, communities, and churches do about it?