The global economy is caught in a contradiction — intensified but not entirely caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemiology and climate science demand that we stay home in the short run, and that we demobilize and retool vast sectors of the economy in the long run. Yet capitalist economic models predicated on profitability and endless growth are impossible to reconcile with these human imperatives.
What has changed in the present pandemic is that the urgency of this contradiction has become more apparent. With every day that passes, as the case counts rise, it becomes less and less plausible that we will ever return to a pre-2020 “normal” after a period of quarantines and social distancing. Instead, figures like the president of the St. Louis branch of the Federal Reserve warn of 30 percent unemployment hitting the United States within months, a figure that would surpass even the Great Depression.
Into this breach rushes the Left, which is capable of at least attempting to deal with the crisis at an adequate scale. Now is the time for “disaster socialism” of a sort — our counterpart to the “disaster capitalism” identified by Naomi Klein, in which an immediate crisis is used as the pretext to push through fundamental structural changes.
This task is particularly urgent because it is not the only radical solution on offer. Rising among the ruling class — centered on the Republican Party, but not found only there — is what we might call the Party of Death.
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