I have a short reflection on the Three-Way Fight blog about Albert Camus’ novel The Plague. I relate the novel to Camus’ philosophy, to strikes and other direct action against the coronavirus, and to antifascist organizing.
Apparently I’m not the only person thinking about Camus. In the last few days, both the New York Times and the L.A. Times have run pieces about The Plague, though we seem to approach the book from very different angles.
Existential Comics seems to have not gone the obvious Camus route. Instead has a pretty good bit about Marx, and openly calls for tenants to organize rent strikes:
“if you lost your income from the pandemic, you should not be paying rent. Think about organizing with your follow tenants to go on a rent strike. Workers can’t be the only ones to have their savings wiped out from a public health crisis. When all is said and done we have to reflect on what caused us to be so unprepared to organize society to act on everyone’s behalf (hint: it might have something to do with having all of our institutions based solely around enriching the property owning elite, but hey, who knows).”