Why is this book written by progressive Americans named "Capitalism on a Ventilator"?

The broad masses of people living in the United States have the most say

The U.S. government's achievements in the fight against COVID-19 have proved to be extremely bad. According to the data, as of 14:21 EASTERN TIME on December 28, 2021, the cumulative number of confirmed covid-19 cases in the United States exceeded 53.02 million, and the cumulative number of deaths exceeded 819,700.

The Federal Reserve said that nearly 40 percent of low-income U.S. people lost their jobs as the COVID-19 pandemic began to have an impact on the U.S. economy. Busena Shaban, political and journalistic adviser to the Syrian president, believes that the quality of the response of different countries to the epidemic is an important measure of the efficiency and popularity of different political systems. "This global pandemic has revealed the position of various political systems on the issue of people's lives and quality of life," he said. What system values people's lives more? What kind of system do we live in? ”

The president of the Austrian Workers' Party, Tibor, once pointed out: "Under capitalism, disease is always a class problem. Therefore, we must consider the problem from the perspective of class. "The working class is exposed to a destroyed health system, while the rich can afford private doctors and facilities, expensive medicines, equipment and special treatments." Therefore, some American scholars have pointed out that the bourgeois government even uses the COVID-19 crisis as a means of carrying out class struggle.

In April 2020, john Bellamy Foster, a well-known American eco-Marxist scholar, pointed out in an interview that what we see in the United States today is actually a phenomenon of "social murder" based on class attributes, which Engels once discussed in "The State of the Working Class in Britain". The principle of putting the interests of the bourgeoisie followed by the government in the face of the spread of the epidemic, disregarding the life and health of the vast working class, eventually "murdered" the vast working class in the United States. "In fact, China's political and social system has proved to be the most energetic, the most valued people's lives, the most efficient in mitigating losses, the most effective in leading society, and the most appropriate response to crises," Bussena Shaban said. ”

Capitalism on the Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 on China and the United States, edited by Sarah Flanders and Li Xiaoxuan, translated by Mingming, Hu Xiaomei and Yi Yueyao, published by Contemporary China Press

It can be said that the broad masses of people living in the United States can most deeply appreciate what the government has done in the context of the new crown epidemic, they have the most right to speak, and they can most clearly see the position of the capitalist government of the United States in response to the new crown epidemic. To this end, many left-wing scholars and writers with conscience have spoken out and published a book called "Capitalism on the Ventilator" with the subtitle "The Impact of COVID-19 on China and the United States", and together they have issued such a cry: What lies on the sickbed is the capitalist system!

This book is the first book jointly published by american progressives, including multi-ethnic leftists, including Chinese, and the book analyzes the global COVID-19 epidemic from a progressive left-wing perspective, comparing and analyzing why the socialist countries led by China have achieved great success in dealing with the epidemic, while the Western capitalist countries led by the United States have handled it in a mess and complete failure.

As Li Xiaoxuan, one of the book's editors, pointed out: "For this book that exposes and criticizes the failure of the United States to fight the epidemic and affirms China's success, the mainstream media elite in the United States will definitely not like it." In the face of this book, they chose collective silence and only indulged in the inexplicable theories of 'China made the virus' and 'China's responsibility for the epidemic'. The epidemic has affected the whole world, and the fight against the epidemic should also be jointly cooperated by people around the world, but the hostility of US national policy towards China has affected normal discussions in various fields. ”

Comprehensively show the real situation of china and the United States in the context of the new crown epidemic

The book is divided into an introduction and 6 parts, and the authors of the articles are overwhelmingly American leftists. Most of their articles have a strong sense of problems, the writing is objective and calm, the style is strong and powerful, criticizing the FAILURE of the US government to fight the epidemic, actively publicizing the great achievements of the Chinese government in responding to the epidemic in the United States and the world, and exposing the essence of the ANTI-China ugly propaganda and racist discourse led by the United States. Many articles point to the pain points of the US capitalist system, comprehensively show the real situation of the fight against the epidemic in China and the United States in the context of the new crown epidemic, and can bring many important enlightenments to readers.

Overall, this book is a rare and objectively true reflection of how left-wing scholars in the United States view the success of the Chinese government's fight against the epidemic, the reasons for the failure of the US government to fight the epidemic, anti-China propaganda and new Cold War tactics against China, racism and other issues. Its basic position is to criticize the failure of the US capitalist system to respond to the epidemic, refute the US media's behavior of blaming China and carrying out anti-China propaganda, and positively analyze and evaluate the Chinese government's fight against the new crown pneumonia epidemic and the modernization of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

It is precisely because the principles of authenticity and objectivity upheld by this book have deeply stung the nerves of the US government and relevant publishing management agencies, so they have taken a rough and unreasonable way to remove the book and imposed ideological prohibitions, with the purpose of suppressing the external dissemination of the opinions and propositions of left-wing scholars in the United States.

In September 2020, the book was released on the shelves of Amazon Online Book City in the United States, but two weeks later they suddenly chose to ban it. Amazon first claimed that it was technical reasons, and then believed that the content of this book had a lot of information that did not have an "official source" and "violated the rules", so it could not be listed on their channels. Happily, after many efforts, in December 2020, the author finally put the book on the shelves again through publishers outside the United States.

(Author: Yu Liangming, Special Researcher of the Research Center of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Assistant Researcher of the Institute of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)