Labor is the superior of capital

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

- Abraham Lincoln

Without demand for goods and services, businesses would not exist.

Without labor, businesses would not exist.

Without profit from businesses, capital would not exist (unless it's stolen).

See the connection here? Workers are the essential and most valuable piece of the economic puzzle that connects goods and services with customers. Capitalists aren't the creators of wealth. The demand for goods and services is where the wealth begins and the workers turn it into something tangible. This is not what the ownership class wants you to believe, however.

It's been over 30 years since the Regeans and Thatchers of the world convinced us that cutting taxes and regulations would result in better lives for workers. Yet things just keep getting worse and worse for the average person thanks to stagnant wages and skyrocketing housing and education costs. If the lead-up and feckless response to the Great Recession didn't do it, the Covid-19 pandemic is blindingly-exposing just how much of an unsustainable and impractical fantasy trickle-down economics is.

The wealth being siphoned to the top, thanks to the proliferation of neoliberalism and the aforementioned voodoo economics, should instead belong to the collective society and to those who truly created the wealth. If workers were better compensated for their labor and the wealth was kept in the market instead of being stashed offshore by CEOs and other capitalists, it is likely we would be in a better position to weather a pandemic, or climate change, or any other catastrophe. But here we are, yet again on the brink of economic collapse.

It is clear that capital isn't solving any of these problems. And it should be obvious by now that this is by design. It is because of this distinction that capitalism as we see it today must die with Covid-19.

For more on how workers are the ones who make our society run, particularly during this Covid-19 pandemic in America, check out this great article by Mindy Isser at Jacobin.