This IGAF (Is Goodness a Fashion) series explores, from a non-expert point of view the social, economic and narrative ramifications I see developing from the COVID-19 crisis, worries, but also hopes for a future that the current shock to the system may result in.
For years, the question when it comes to many hollowed-out state-run social welfare or even social support programmes, the question of "how do we pay for this??" has been raised. There are some very simple answers to that question, but it seems they required a radical suspension of "business as usual" to be temporarily implemented- as emergency measures that will drain whatever state coffers are left over to a point that, once business returns to its usual, which it will, the question will remain, as, at that point, a lot of the cash reserves will have been expended on supporting "The Economy".
The economy is currently comprised of a number if branches, some of them, like stock markets and some tech startups, figments of financial imagination, others, like construction, service work, nursing, remain very real- they still involve billions of people who go to work and do labour that, even if it is not physical, does require physical bodies and human minds to be in a common geographic location.
Most of these people have not been included in the last thirty years of neoliberalism, even as they put in the hours, and in a Data* Capitalist society, have become human resources whose experiences are exploited, even when they are not working, without seeing any of the massive profits that are accumulated by recycling data overheads into targeted ads and actual surveillance. This assumption of a mass of people blind to the market mechanisms that underpin their way of life extends to physical workspaces, and the ubiquity of commodified spaces demands a total subjugation of values, self-image and personal interests to whichever part of the market you happen to find yourself in.
I personally blame a lot on the way the internet and social media have been hijacked to serve these mechanisms, from technical methods, such as manipulation of news feeds, the upholding of filter bubbles, algorithmically enforced confirmation bias and news censorship, and the manufacture of mass consent, and a level of political correctness that infringes freedom of thought through self-censorship, if not external censorship and the commodification of opinion and news as entertainment, rather than as a necessary societal debate.
We are past the point at which we can blame new technologies for upheavals in the ways labour shapes society. History shows that we have been dealing with an ever-increasing number of disruptive technologies and concepts for millenia- whether it be the idea to settle permanently, rather than lead a nomadic life, or that the earth is round, and not the center of the universe, or that a wine press can be repurposed to produce printed pages, or that it is possible to break down production into its constituent parts, or that sound can be transmitted through wires, or the techno-magic that makes computers possible. Technological progress seems to happen, no matter how dark and backwards the age may seem. Humans think, innovate, improve and develop. Progress is a fact. How "we" use this progress is up to "us".**
A second facet to technological progress is that it creates a new boundary, which is outside the scope of current societal and legal understanding and regulation- something that has not yet been paid attention to, and can therefore be temporarily implemented in ways that serve the interests of the few that are paying close attention to the possibilities within this boundary. By the time the gap between new progress and some form of regulation or societal awareness is closed, a mode of production or exploitation is usually already in place, posing the challenge of integrating this progress into established models, or creating effective counter-models of resistance and regulation. Failing that, wait for the next disruption, or create it.
There are events that transcend both boundaries, such as a global crisis, that should, theoretically, cause a critical examination of existing infrastructures and modes of production- with all that entails- and the current state of "progress". In theory, events such as the current global Pandempanic caused by Covid-19, can be a catalyst for the adjustment of these infrastructures to the benefit of more, if not all "we's" they affect- economic, cultural, labour and health care "we's".
Since we have the time, I'd like to highlight a few points that I have been following:
Currently, governments and central banks are trying to stablise things with billions, if not trillions. The main reason they have to do this is that economies have been overinflated, many social support programmes hollowed out and privatised. These are not sustainable societies that can- with much less emergency aid- navigate such exceptional states of emergency not with ease, but with less difficulty, disruption and far less mellophobia*** than we are currently experiencing. In spite of an ongoing and ever increasing awareness of the impossibility of infinite and exponential profits, absent equally infinite or renewable resources, unfettered, neoliberal capitalism has snuck into almost every corner of our lives, attempting to extract profit and circumvent regulation or lobby for an absence of real regulation or limitation on the scope of its extraction.
Since the spending of money has become a form of self-expression, and currency seems a better arguement than words or even facts, what we understand as democracies, or even political participation has been subverted- rather than count votes, most politicians count money and weigh that against the interests of their constituents.
We see this, for instance, in the way health care infrastructure is not equipped with the critical supplies or personnel required to deal with a pandemic. By prioritising the interests of the pharmaceutical industry and their profit motive for decades, health infrastructures and services have been eroded to inadequacy, even in countries with some form of universal health care, or a mix of public and private insurance. Countries with socialised medicine programmes are not faring better, due to decades-long economic struggles, authocratic or ever-changing regimes or sanctions for refusing to enter the neoliberal fold, reducing their ability to provide decent health care for their populations. And all that without considering that there is still a war and forced migration crisis ongoing- which state will consider itself responsible for the currently stateless?
While some countries have the ability- or economic power- to deploy temporary and expensive safety nets, I cannot help but wonder, somewhat aimlessly, what a pandemic would look like in a world that did not prioritise profit over people and planet. It is a utopian thought, especially when faced with people whose first instinct is to engineer profits from a crisis.
A second point has been a further rise in nationalist rethoric- there is, apparently, no non- or supra-national effort to stem the spread of Covid- to the point that some countries are apparently trying to acquire exclusive, national rights to vaccines with money- and other countries trying to enforce their national interests with more money. If we read a bit further into the situation, knowing that a lot of government-sponsored research ends up the property of a corporate entity, which then sells the output of the research for their profit, we could extrapolate that both countries are more interested in selling the potential cure to the highest bidder- and what a PR coup to boot! If this Coronavirus is truly a global threat, is it not in the economic interest of all to suspend the profit motive, at least for a while, and seek to heal the world of at least this obvious and visible ill? If this is a global pandemic, it is a time for global solidarity.
This includes borders and the aforementioned war and forced migration crises. Is this really a time to expend personnel and physical resources on the pointless slaughter we see daily in Syria and Yemen? Is it not a time to offer refugees and homeless people refuge in empty hotels, and maybe subsidise the hotels for offering such refuge? Is it maybe time to divert the resources invested in upholding the economy of a military-industrial complex to the urgent task of just keeping things going in a somewhat orderly fashion?
A few years back, during the Q&A of a panel at the Capitalism Tribunal, I argued that there was an obvious solution to many problems: for a year, as a temporary measure, suspend weapons sales, production and war. Reduce the role of militaries to a purely defensive force and don't buy new weapons. Use those trillions suddenly available to many nations to build and sustain social programmes, education and a very wide definition of culture. The money saved up for one year would, levels of financing left unchanged, keep such programmes going for years. It's a good time to try such a bold experiment, and an -in my opinion- logical step in combatting a global crisis. It is up to our collective imaginations to make it possible.
This won't happen, of course. But it would be one clear way to divert resources towards an outcome that is beneficial to all. Governments are cautioning people to keep their distance, not hoard resources and to suspend most aspects of public life- temporarily, we hope- would it not be fitting to ask for a suspension to everything that counteracts an eventual continuation of public and private lives affected by the current crisis?
In stead of trying to make the solutions to this crises proprietary and national, I would rather argue that the solutions have to be as local as they are global- glocal, to misappropriate that term slightly. On the micro scale, communities, quarters and cities need to find their individual approaches to keeping their populations safe and sane, on the macro, nations need to be able to cooperate, rather than compete to find long-term solutions to this and similar crises that are bound to occur sooner or later. If we- all the we's- find it in ourselves to take this opportunity as the beginning point of many solutions, I optimistically believe many challenges facing us today could be resolved with more ease and in less time than they would otherwise.
On an even more macro scale, citizens, for lack of a better term, need to keep watchful- there are many precedents for a traumatising shock that causes populations to act against their own interests, to the benefit of "the Economy".**** So a question to ask is "what is currently being temporarily enacted that may have long-term consequences on civil liberties, press freedom, public opinion, individual choices in "the economy" and human rights". It's a big ask- there is a lot going on, much money and rhetoric is being thrown around, and events are, as is customary in such situations, murky. Independent analysis of current developments is hard to come by outside the realms of "conspiracy theories" and temporary hype. Analysis independent of political bias even more so. For my part, I've been reading a lot of this, watching a bit of that and reading some more. It is hardly enough to paint a full picture, but it does offer a glimpse into the meta levels of the actions currently being undertaken, and the words accompanying it.
The question remains: after the trillions have been injected into economies and markets, after the crisis is over, after everything ceases to be "temporary", in what form will we pay for our continued survival? What will be the price extracted from populations, from the workers, from the wealthy? Will the price of security be- once again- restriction of civil liberties, privacy? Will we be fractured societies of lonely individuals, connected only through heavily mediated platforms, afraid of direct human interaction? Will drones be the only thing allowed on the streets? How ARE we going to pay for more long-term measures? And what will be the price?
Part one of the current IGAF: Staying in touch
* aka Surveillance Capitalism; The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff, 2019
**this particular "we" and "us" has to be defined as those who have the power to implement and influence the infrastructure of progress on scales that affect a second "we", those who operate that infrastructure, usually to the benefit of the former "we". Though there have been attempts to align the interests of both "we's" horizontally, they have not yet been successful.
*** though the term "chronophobia" exists do describe a fear of the future, mellon (future) + phobia (fear) seems more accurate.
**** no examples here. I'd suggest reading Naomi Kleins' Shock Doctrine (2007); The Age of Selfishness by Daryl Cunningham (2015), and a few chapters of the aformentioned "Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (it's a brick of a book that is amazingly dense and packed- it took me weeks to get through it.). There is a lot of further reading readily available. Suggestions welcome.
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