The cultural theorist Mark Fisher coined the term “capitalist realism” for the feeling that there’s no imaginable alternative to the murderous political-economic system that shapes our lives. Today we’re drowning in a COVID-era version of the same ideological bog. Call it pandemic realism: the way capital and the state have convinced so many of us that there’s no alternative to the eugenics of mass infection. Yet that realism is a kind of capitalist fantasy made real by capitalist power. Not inevitable, not necessary; the experiences of the COVID Zero territories prove it. Who knows what impossibilities we might make real – human survival on this planet, even – if we manage to build a counterpower that’s equal to the challenges we face now?Hopefully, I'll have some time to reflect on this in the not-too-distant.
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18 comments:
I stopped reading after the first para which was egregiously wrong - yes China, NZ etc have had a Covid Zero policy but only so they can roll out mass vaccination programmes as swiftly as possible.
Then I went back and scanned through the rest - probably the most unadulterated load of delusional bollocks I have read in a long time.
About as dispiriting as reading a right-winger bang on about how Brexit is a huge success.
Why must debate be dominated by 'the worst, full of passionate intensity"? I suppose it's the culture of click.
Intelligent debate is being naturally selected out of existence.
«yes China, NZ etc have had a Covid Zero policy but only so they can roll out mass vaccination programmes as swiftly as possible.»
Please, please enough with idiocy: the goal of COVID Zero is to roll out vaccinations as slowly as possible, while minimizing deaths, the impact on hospitals and on jobs and businesses. Indeed many "COVID Zero" governments have been in no hurry to vaccinate (let other "fatalistic liberalism" countries be guinea pigs).
There is no question that the end-state will be most people vaccinated artificially or naturally (by surviving an infection) or dead; the big question is what to do until that time, and there are four main options:
#1 Short hard local lock-down to setup test-trace-isolate, then only the infected and the suspected are isolated. Consequences:
* Mass vaccination can be very late or highly selective.
* Small precautions (masks, ventilation, distancing) optional.
* Very modest impact on hospitals from the very few infected.
* Very low death rate.
* Negligible impact on businesses and jobs.
* Small impact in terms of state deficit. Higher impact in case of fast-spreading variants, as bigger and faster test-trace needed.
* When variants arise, repeat the short hard lock-downs.
#2 Let the epidemic spread, as the death rate is "only" 1-3%. Consequences:
* Mass vaccination not needed or can be very late or highly selective.
* Small precautions (masks, ventilation, distancing) voluntary.
* Hospitals gets overwhelmed.
* "Only" 1-3% dead.
* No impact on businesses and jobs.
* Almost no impact in terms of state deficit.
* When variants arise, do nothing too.
#3 Long-ish hard national lock-down. Consequences:
* Mass vaccination needs to be very early because the lock-down needs to be as short as possible.
* Small precautions (masks, ventilation, distancing) mandatory.
* Low impact on hospitals from the few infected.
* Low death rate.
* Huge impact on businesses and jobs.
* Huge impact in terms of state deficit as the tax base shrink and (optionally) the state supports closed businesses and workers who have lost their jobs, and the cost of mass vaccination.
* When variants arise, repeat the long-ish national lock-downs and re-vaccinate.
#4 Long cycle of half-baked national lock-down and vaccination. Consequences:
* Mass vaccination needs to be very early because the lock-down needs to be as short as possible.
* Small precautions (masks, ventilation, distancing) also on cycle of voluntary and mandatory.
* Big periodic impact on hospitals from the many infected.
* Significant death rate.
* Big but less huge impact on businesses and jobs.
* Big but less huge impact in terms of state deficit as the tax base shrink and (optionally) the state supports closed businesses and workers who have lost their jobs, and the cost of mass vaccination.
«there’s no imaginable alternative to the murderous political-economic system that shapes our lives»
Since nothing lasts forever (except possible neutrons and electrons, even protons may decay in 10^35 years), obviously "capitalism" at some point will be replaced. The question is "when?".
A lot of "lefties" have been persuaded since the 1850s that the end of "capitalism" is nigh, "one last heave"; and many "capitalist" writers have been expecting the same, apparently the term "late stage capitalism" has been in use since the 1890s. So the question becomes "What to do before the end of capitalism, which may be several centuries hence? Bend over, say 'Please sir may I have some more', or negotiate hard?".
«Today we’re drowning in a COVID-era version of the same ideological bog. Call it pandemic realism: the way capital and the state have convinced so many of us that there’s no alternative to the eugenics of mass infection.»
But most COVID-zero governments have been hardcore "capitalist" ones. Those that have chosen "fatalistic liberalism" just more pragmatic and with some sense of state more than the hardcore neoliberal "Washington Consensus" ones.
However the australian government, the PM Morrison, have decided to change direction dramatically and go full on neoliberal "Washington Consensus" on COVID policy too, "fatalistic liberalism" style, just like USA, UK, etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/04/a-shambolic-mess-the-only-example-australia-is-giving-the-world-now-is-how-not-to-manage-covid
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/05/scott-morrisons-dereliction-of-duty-over-rapid-covid-tests-is-a-threat-to-australians-public-safety
NB: I am very disappointed that Germany and Switzerland in particular, unlike most scandinavian countries, have adopted the "fatalistic liberalism" approach, even if less brutal than in the USA, UK etc.; I had thought that those countries had establishments more committed to doing the right thing even if it were not neoliberal-compliant.
the alternative to capitalism doing great work at the moment in Kazakhstan, Belarus, China's Uighur areas. Non-capitalist free Africa really showing us how bad capitalism and imperialism is etc etc.
Blissex: "Please, please enough with idiocy: the goal of COVID Zero is to roll out vaccinations as slowly as possible, while minimizing deaths, the impact on hospitals and on jobs and businesses. Indeed many "COVID Zero" governments have been in no hurry to vaccinate (let other "fatalistic liberalism" countries be guinea pigs)."
Where is your evidence for this? Certainly not 'Nature'.
NEWS
09 June 2021
China is vaccinating a staggering 20 million people a day
Scientists are impressed by China’s juggernaut of a vaccination drive, through which it is currently administering nearly 60% of all COVID-19 vaccine doses globally.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01545-3
Its not that letting the pandemic spread has no impact on jobs or businesses.
As seen in UK social mobility data people begin to withdraw from mixing as soon as infection rates increase and before any government restrictions. In these circumstances the economy contracts irrespective on any lockdown measures.
The public would react to a 1-2% death rate with a massive withdrawal from the economy causing the same impact on business as any lockdown. The right like this idea because it wouldn't mean the government was responsible for furlough payments, etc.
There has been no pandemic in history that has not lead directly to economic disruption, irrespective of any measures the government at the time has taken to curtail the extent of that pandemic.
The free market extremists behind the Great Barrington Declaration and the Covid Recovery Group peddle the myth that the economic crisis of the last two years was caused by lockdown measures. In fact the health and economic crisis are both the direct result of the pandemic.
Dipper,
The capitalist system encompasses every nation-state on planet, including Kazakhstan, Belarus, every part of China and every African country. There are no non-capitalist nation-states or areas within nation-states.
We certainly have an economic system that is not fit for purpose and is literally on life support.
It is a system that is incapable of dealing with a pandemic, and is also killing the living environment. When an economist is asked to come up with a blueprint for an economy in lockdown they simply say, erm, can we just open everything up and pretend the virus isn’t there! They literally have no answers to the problem and fall back on outdated ideological dogmas.
This is certainly reflective of it being a system problem. A planned system, where exchange is abolished, would resolve these issues. It wouldn’t be perfect, no system can be, but it would resolve them, as the reason this pandemic has struck so hard economically is because of exchange and all the anarchical imperatives that flow from this: need to be paid wages, need to cover bills, need to make profit, short termism etc etc etc etc. However, I still think the UK has been staggeringly criminal in its response and some capitalist nations have not done badly considering the insanity of the capitalist system.
China has done an incredible job limiting the impact of the Pandemic, just compare their deaths to that of the average Western capitalist nation.
Now, China has a tradition of bottom up democracy, whereas the West is all about top down democracy. In China, policy making, policing and health provision etc is from the neighbourhood level up. In the West we hand over, lock stock and barrel, our power to so called elected representatives to make decisions on our behalf, and what we get is Boris Johnson and his sociopathic crazies. We abdicate all responsibility.
The point here is that China is hard wired into the capitalist system and is to all intents and purposes capitalist. The same applies to Kazakhstan and Belarus, and Russia, which Dipper missed off for some reason. Maybe dipper is stuck in 1982 or something and hasn’t been told the news about the collapse of the Soviet system. Well let me be the one to bring the happy news Dipper.
So it isn’t only capitalism that distinguishes which covid strategy is being pursued but is a combination of culture, the kind of capitalism a nation has (this also affects culture) and where you stand as a nation in the capitalist world market (this also affects culture).
The UK’s let covid rip, lets prioritise Weatherspoons opening above Public Health measures, is the product of a toxic combination of: neo liberalism, tabloid cesspit culture, colonial chauvinism.
Which all adds up to a truly horrifying population, from old folk down to its venal and decadent teenage population. It affects all classes and all creeds.
This brings us back to the end of exchange, in order for this system to be implemented then it is clear that politics itself would have to be eradicated. In other words the state would have to wither away. You simply can’t set a 10 year plan and then have the population every 4 years vote in a government that would rip it up. So the end of the system of exchange would at the same time sound the death knell for top down democracy, and have the added bonus of rescuing a large proportion of the population from the idiocy of consumerist life.
“the alternative to capitalism doing great work at the moment in Kazakhstan, Belarus, China's Uighur areas. Non-capitalist free Africa”
Other than being an incredibly moronic statement (it should be noted that when all else fails the far right are prone to moronic statements like this as they feel it plays well to their incredibly ignorant base), this also shows why Lord Boffy and Dipper are from the same political block, i.e. the ultra ultra right.
They both believe those nations that are ‘successful’ are ones that have adopted capitalism and the ones that are ‘unsuccessful’ are ones that have decided not to adopt capitalism. And if only the ‘unsuccessful’ adopted capitalism they could live at the same level as the ‘successful’ nations. This is the macro version of why some people are rich (hard working, thrifty, industrious) and some are poor (lazy, feckless and thick).
Of course the science tells us that to live at the same resource usage as the average American would need 4 planet Earths and physics tells us that it is literally impossible for everyone to live at the average US energy usage of 11.2kw. The world average is 1.8kw incidentally. The steps needed to get everyone to 5kw is monumental, yet the ultra ultra rightists continue to peddle their anti science propaganda. No wonder dipper and his ilk are so keen to rubbish the science around covid!
«Those that have chosen "fatalistic liberalism" just more pragmatic and with some sense of state more than the hardcore neoliberal "Washington Consensus" ones.»
Oops, that come out wrong, I meant to say: Those that have [not] chosen "fatalistic liberalism" [are] just more pragmatic and with some sense of state.
@ David Parry. Of course. Silly me. Every bad thing is 'capitalism' and socialism is that entirely good thing, over there, that no-one anywhere has managed to yet reach.
«The capitalist system encompasses every nation-state on planet, including Kazakhstan, Belarus, every part of China and every African country. There are no non-capitalist nation-states or areas within nation-states.»
All these discussions are polluted by bad terminology that usually arises from deliberate obfuscation from political propaganda, I would rather make some finer distinctions:
* The industrial mode of production has been dominant in the "developed" parts of the world in the past 2 centuries, evolving from the artisan model of production.
* The industrial mode of production involves a change from the personal property of the means of production by labourers (e.g. artisan carpenter owns his own workshop and tools) to the separation between labourers and shared means or production (hundreds of workers in a shared furniture factory). Note: one of the obfuscations is the confusion by anti-Marx propaganda between personal property and private property of the means of production (it is the latter which is objected to by Marx).
* Strictly speaking the separation between labourers and means of production in the industrial mode of production is called "capitalism", where there are employees who own just their own labour and employers who own just the shared means of production, regardless of who owns the shared means of production.
* In "capitalism" the ownership of the means of production can take many different forms: in "private capitalism" they are owned by private individuals, in "corporate capitalism" they are owned by corporations owned by shareholders, in "financial capitalism" they are (ultimately) owned by the owners of finance capital, in "managerial capitalism" they are effectively controlled by a cooptative oligarchy of top executives, in "cooperative capitalism" they are owned by workers groups, in "state capitalism" they are owned by the state (or whoever controls it, which is not necessarily labourers), in "social capitalism" (a.k.a. socialism) they are owned collectively by all labourers, in "communal capitalism" (a.k.a. "communism") they are owned collectively by everybody.
* For marxists the specific type of capitalism, and the political and cultural system it engenders, depends on the stage of the evolution of the industrial mode of production ("historical materialism").
* While most regions of the world have some form of industrial mode of production involving the labour-capital split, many others are still pre-industrial and organized politically and culturally in feudalistic or other historical ways (e.g. "primitive communism" or completely different structures).
@Dipper.
@David Parry is correct - it IS all capitalism, simply with different degrees of consent - some societies believe their form of capitalism works best with 'free speech' (though with limits - don't say you've ever been a member of the communist party if you want to visit the US) because this creates a more dynamic capitalist environment, others (China, Russia) pursue a form of capitalism which eschews free speech, which it doesn't deem central to enrichment.
Personally, this is why I view wokesism as a tendency to shift capitalism from a free speech to an unfree speech model - Leftists are not damaging capitalism, which embraces wokeism, simply attacking the liberal model of capitalism, with the end result of replacing it with illiberal capitalism.
This is why wokeism is so consistent with Marx's view of bourgeois revolutionaries goal to simply replace themselves at the top of the pile: "All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned"
This does not mean that efforts to mitigate the excesses of capitalism are doomed - like a religion, true socialism may never be reached, but trying to achieve it can result, say, in the affluent social democracies of Europe of the 1960s/70s and, who knows, one day something more equal. But removing class from the equation - which is what the bourgeois revolutionary ultimately aims - results in peripheral, identity-driven politics that replaces one exploitative status quo with another. Wokeism specifically ascribes the power to the 'wokier-than-thou' and makes one fear them - and if it's not all about power, then it's about nothing.
Ultimately, human societies will always be unequal. The objective must be to make them less so.
«their form of capitalism works best with 'free speech' (though with limits [...] others (China, Russia) pursue a form of capitalism which eschews free speech, which it doesn't deem central to enrichment.»
That to me seems a rather obsolete view, because probably there is in practice a lot more free speech in contemporary post-Soviet Russia and post-Mao China than in many western countries:
* Both in Russia and China there is a wide, open and public political debate ranging from the far to the far right.
* What Russia's and China's elites don't tolerate is for that debate to give rise to alternative political organizations. In particular in China (and to some extent in Russia) the central principle is the leading role of the governing party; debate can be free and open and public, inside and outside the party, and it can criticize the party as long as it is done individually, and does not give rise to alternative political organizations, which are usually foreign-funded.
* The thing that both Russia and China's elite was to absolutely avoid has a name: Solidarnosc (which was almost entirely funded by the USA and the Vatican), or more recently the "Maidan" coup plotters.
* Conversely in the "Washington Consensus" countries "free" speech is subject to "guardrails", which limit "free" speech to full alignment with thatcherism/reaganism ("whig" neoliberal/neocon globalism) if it is wide and public; "free" speech outside the "guardrails" is only tolerated if it is unpopular, that is has negligible to small impact on public opinion. So for the same reason both Trump (right-wing nationalist tory) and Sanders and Corbyn (centre-left internationalist social-democrats) have been effectively muzzled. So for example books and "trade" and "specialist" media are not as heavily "aligned" as mass media, because very few people read them.
This is what is not allowed in "Washington Consensus" countries:
https://www.ft.com/content/5584b204-079a-11ea-a984-fbbacad9e7dd
2019-11-15 “The Thatcher revolution is coming under threat Labour plans for a nationalised broadband network are misguided Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's pledge to nationalise Openreach is a surprise and symbolic: BT's 1984 flotation was a Thatcher-era flagship”
Questioning thatcherism/reaganism is a bit like was questioning the protestant settlement in England and Scotland.
«the goal of COVID Zero is to roll out vaccinations as slowly as possible, while minimizing deaths, the impact on hospitals and on jobs and businesses.»
«Where is your evidence for this? Certainly not 'Nature'.NEWS 09 June 2021
China is vaccinating a staggering 20 million people a day»
Enough with the repeated idiocy: the "Nature" article indeed confirms the "as slowly as possible", as it is dated "09 june 2021", not "09 december 2020", which is when mass vaccination started in the UK:
https://abcnews.go.com/International/uk-begins-historic-mass-vaccination-program-coronavirus/story?id=74579937
«By Guy Davies 8 December 2020, 09:10 The U.K. has become the first western country to begin a mass vaccination program against the novel coronavirus on Tuesday as hospitals around the country take part in “the biggest immunization program in history.”»
Also 20 million a day on the chinese scale of 1,400 million residents is just 1.5% a day, and chinese state organized public health can test 9-11 million in 5 days as in Wuhan or Wingdao etc., and that was the peak. In any case China-mainland have adopted a "try everything" approach to containing the epidemic, and vaccination as I wrote are regardless eventually necessary too, "COVID-zero" cannot last forever.
Also, to be explicit:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/08/why-the-delay-the-nations-waiting-to-see-how-covid-vaccinations-unfold
“Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Japan are among those that won’t start vaccinating for months, in part to see how other populations react to the jab
[...] Fri 8 Jan 2021 14.30 GMT”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_in_Japan
“COVID-19 vaccination in Japan started later than in most other major economies.[4] The country has frequently been regarded as "slow" in its vaccination efforts.[5][6]”
There are plenty of articles (some of them obscenely biased) on the "Washington Consensus" aligned press attacking the COVID-zero countries, and indeed many of them for having delayed buying large quantities of products marketed by "Big [american] Pharma" usually with fabulous profit margins.
Again, enough with the idiocy.
«China has done an incredible job limiting the impact of the Pandemic, just compare their deaths to that of the average Western capitalist nation.»
Well, I would think that Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China-Taiwan, Canada Atlantic Provinces, Korea-south, Iceland, Finland, Norway are all “average Western capitalist nation”, but their ruling elites have a sense of service to the state and a wider sense of "our own", while the ruling elites of USA, UK, etc. have a more social-darwinist ideology, and that's the main difference.
«Now, China has a tradition of bottom up democracy, whereas the West is all about top down democracy. In China, policy making, policing and health provision etc is from the neighbourhood level up.»
Actually the opposite (except for the chinese Mohists/Mozhists): the chinese have a tradition of top-down benevolence, while the "west" has a tradition of bottom-up assertion of rights. In chinese political theory the central concept is the "mandate of heaven", which differs from the "divine right to rule" of the western elites in one crucial detail: that the "mandate of heaven" is not unconditional as the "divine right to rule", but is conditional on the ruling class achieving the "greater good", and if they don't the people have right to put their heads on poles outside the gates.
«we hand over, lock stock and barrel, our power to so called elected representatives to make decisions on our behalf»
That's not quite what happens, in theory there are checks and balances and justicial review of administrative decisions, and periodic elections. There is however a problem: that as the choice of government has switched from the sovereign king to the sovereign "people", a lot of the unconditional "divine right of kings" attitude has remained. Especially in the UK/England where the PM has been described as an "elected dictator". In the past Parliament, where the King/Queen was the dominant part, had the "divine right to rule", expressed in the famous saying “It is fundamental principle of english lawyers that Parliament can do everything but make a woman a man, and a man a woman” (and even that limitation has been recently removed), and that principle has transferred to current Parliaments where the dominant part if the PM rather than the King/Queen.
«and what we get is Boris Johnson and his sociopathic crazies. We abdicate all responsibility.»
What many people still fail to get is that many, many voters are ”sociopathic crazies“ and to a large extent english democracy works in electing the c*nts/lizards that many/most people want to elect.
Democracy is not designed to ensure that good people govern, but that voters get the government they choose and suffer (or enjoy, if they are property owning southern tories etc.) the consequences of that choice.
«to live at the same resource usage as the average American would need 4 planet Earths and physics tells us that it is literally impossible for everyone to live at the average US energy usage of 11.2kw. The world average is 1.8kw incidentally»
That argument has a "simple" solution, "the markets": it is about winners and losers, and there is no reason why "the markets" should make everyone able to afford 11.2kw, only the winners will, and losers will get 1.8kw. Therefore "the markets" are most ecological mechanism, because they apportion resources according to availability, affordability and preferences, and therefore if 4 planet Earths are not available, only a few will live with 11.2kw, and the many with 1.2kw, their "just deserts".
"That argument has a "simple" solution, "the markets": it is about winners and losers, and there is no reason why "the markets" should make everyone able to afford 11.2kw, only the winners will, and losers will get 1.8kw."
This is a curve ball worthy of Lord Boffy. Those who are the bagmen of the market will claim that the market will solve all these problems, and where there is poverty the introduction of markets will resolve any issues. The bagmen of free markets use this line whenever they want to promote imperialism, claiming imperialism will bring prosperity for all.
So what your statement is saying is that the market cannot possibly deliver what its bagmen, such as Dipper and Lord Boffy claim, which is exactly my point!
"Therefore "the markets" are most ecological mechanism, because they apportion resources according to availability, affordability and preferences,"
Blissex, the "therefore" in your sentence above is a priceless non-sequitur! The market is all about speculative production, production for production sake, anarchy of production. It is not a conscious process which factors in need , available resources, impact on the living environment etc etc. The reason we have a climate crisis is precisely because the world has operated under the rule of exchange and markets and bourgeois ideology.
Your ridiculous non-sequitur can only hold if all the pertinent details of what an exchange system is are left out of the equation.
In the real world what your ecological markets are delivering is an ever greater destruction of the living environment and an ever rapid biological annihilation.
"While most regions of the world have some form of industrial mode of production involving the labour-capital split, many others are still pre-industrial and organized politically and culturally in feudalistic"
This conveniently ignores the history of the IMF, World Bank, colonialism, imperialism, maldevelopment and the fact that whether you are developed or maldeveloped you are caught into the mechanisms and logic of the capitalist world market, and capitalist world governance and rules.
if we are guilty of bad terminology Blissex, you are guilty of woeful theory!
I am getting the growing impression of Blizzex as a Keynesian, with all Keynes ignoble 'insights' into the dark continents!
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