Bernhard, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the Covid-19 experience provides a confirmation through experience that the working-class character of these states, while bureaucraticly deformed and weakened, has not been lost. The decisive factor here is not the collectivized economic per se but the capacity of the working-class in their masses to work together with the governing authorities to bring the situation under control.

In this sense, I see a parallel with the situation in the Soviet Union at the moment of the Hitlerite invasion in 1941. There is evidence of a momentary hesitation in some sectors. But then the working masses joined forces with the repressive Stalinist apparatus in an all out struggle to preserve their society. They thereby confirmed in action that their working-class state, although degenerated, had not been overturned.

I discuss this in my article “Reassessing Leon Trotsky’s biography of Stalin” on this blog.