By Misión Verdad – Jan 25, 2022
Recently, media outlets have reported that Nike has begun to fire employees who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 in the United States. Certainly, one must doubt whether the measure corresponds to a policy to take care of employees or whether it is intended to serve a disguised corporate agenda.
However, this is not the first company to make a similar decision. At the end of last year, Google took the decision to put pressure on its employees who were not vaccinated, even threatening to fire them. Up to that point, it was an extreme measure that no other tech company had taken to “slow the pandemic’s advance.”
“Our vaccination requirements are one of the most important ways we can keep our workforce safe and keep our services running,” said a Google spokesperson.
What last year was a simple request by capitalists for workers to get vaccinated has morphed into an obligation, a decision which was covered by an Executive Order from Joe Biden mandating that workers at private companies employing more than 100 people must be vaccinated or tested weekly.
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A new world order?
Undoubtedly, the emergence of new variants has led companies to find the justification they needed to take certain radical measures. However, there are also indications that there are intentions to readjust the economy, as well as the broader system in general, towards a new dynamic. This process seemed to have accelerated with the arrival of COVID-19, as part of the plan called The Great Reset.
This is attested to by the World Economic Forum, also known as the Davos Forum, which brings together the world’s ruling and business elites. During the event, policies which significantly impact the global population are defined.
Therefore, it is not surprising that this forum, designed to “improve the state of the world,” is attended by world leaders, important UN figures, heads of large transnational corporations, as well as billionaires such as George Soros, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, and others with “altruistic” vocations.
However, so far there are no indications that solutions to the structural problems that society is facing have been addressed at these meetings. On the contrary, it has been pointed out that it is the elite attendees who are the cause of the systemic crisis humanity is going through. A reflection of this can be seen in the way the forum is organized: high-level attendees have no contact with other low-profile attendees. That is, the class division in favor of the 1% is reflected in this event.
In recent years, there has been talk of profound changes in society, which range from the struggle for equality, to climate change, to new forms of labor relations.
In December 2019, when the first cases of COVID-19 were appearing in China, the Forum launched the Davos 2020 Manifesto, which focused on how companies should not operate only for their shareholders, but as a society where all its participants are important. In this way, the company would be defined not only as a unit generating wealth, but also as a government with responsibilities to society.
Basically, the premise of the manifesto is not to question capitalism but to reformulate it. According to the hopeful logic of the billionaires participating in Davos, the world will change structurally because employers will have a “more humane” relationship with their workers, and because they will work for the environment. This model was given the name “multistakeholder,” a theme explored in depth in a report by the Samuel Robinson Institute.
Virtually no basic component of our collective existence, such as vaccines for example, escapes the interests of the multistakeholder scheme.
Prácticamente ningún componente básico de nuestra existencia colectiva, como la vacunación en tiempos de pandemia, entre otros, escapa de los intereses promotores del esquema multistakeholder.
Siga el enlace para descargar el informe en PDF https://t.co/TkPxKFUQJj pic.twitter.com/oidXHQJDgq
— Instituto Samuel Robinson (@isrobinson_) November 19, 2021
The 2021 agenda was marked by the “search for trust” and its sessions focused on critical issues such as COVID-19 vaccination programs, job creation, and climate change.
Renewing capitalism
“In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to readjust priorities and to reform systems has been growing around the world,” said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the Forum.
According to the concrete and forward-looking policies for 2021, the agenda was organized as follows:
• Design cohesive, sustainable, and resilient economic systems.
• Drive responsible industry transformation and growth.
• Improve the management of the world’s patrimony.
• Harness the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution.
• Advancing global and regional cooperation.
Regarding the fourth item, the relevance of layoffs is worth mentioning. Specifically, the pandemic, which imposed social isolation and remote work, may be an accelerator in the implementation of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is marked by the confluence of digital, physical, and biological technologies that are already changing the world as we know it.
An increasingly virtual world, where labor is replaced by robots and artificial intelligence prevails as the organizer of production, may be an attractive futuristic scenario for many. But in reality it would be carried out to the detriment of a huge mass of labor that would be left unprotected—that which Karl Marx called the “industrial reserve army.”
“There are three reasons why the current transformations do not represent an extension of the third industrial revolution, but the arrival of a different one: their speed, scope and impact on systems. The speed of today’s developments is unprecedented in history… And it is disrupting almost every industry in every country,” said Klaus Schwab.
The 2021 Davos Forum served as a great hall where nanotechnologies, neurotechnologies, robots, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, energy storage systems, drones, and 3D printers (technologies which may leave some five million people unemployed in the most industrialized countries), were on display.
In this context appears the Metaverse, driven by Mark Zuckerberg (accused of selling the information of Facebook users), which projects a futuristic scenario in which by 2025 it will be possible to visit a supermarket, hold meetings, attend parties, and travel around the world, among other activities, without leaving the comfort of home or spending any money.
They also argue that most jobs will be in the Metaverse, and therefore companies will not need physical spaces to operate. There is even talk of nanotechnology implants, so that it will not be necessary to use current technology to immerse oneself in this reality.
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The current space race, carried out by several of the participants in the Davos Forum, runs counter to the discourse of environmentalism. For example, the launching of a rocket emits 100 times more carbon dioxide than a commercial flight. However, this fact has not been an impediment to space tourism, to which only a few billionaires will have access.
What is certain is that the Davos Forum is proposing a reality that is not within everyone’s reach. While virtual and futuristic scenarios are being projected, the same structural problems of society will continue, with no early exit from the crisis in sight.
Thus, we are faced with mechanisms of social control and a kind of Apartheid 2.0, imposed on the unvaccinated population in the capitalist core, which serves the corporate agenda. While in the periphery (especially in Africa and other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean), simply accessing vaccines is still difficult for many.
Featured image: The Fourth Industrial Revolution radically affects the employment market. Photo: Gurusoft
Additional translation by Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
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