Shaenah said in a comment from this podcast that she was interested in this notion of covid as a tactic to avert a crisis. The following is my way of making sense of this.
I admit that although I’ve read a great deal of Marx and various other economists, much of the discussion of economic processes is, to say the least, obscure to me. I struggled to comprehend the transformations of capital as described by e.g. David Harvey. But I know that the banking crisis of 2008 led to the theft of vast reams of public funds to bail out the bankers – which led to immense rage. And the orchestrators of this knew they couldn’t risk such a manoeuvre again. But one of the glaring scandals of the covid years – once you had recovered from the ceaselessly pushed viral fear porn over the issue – is that yet another transfer of wealth was facilitated through the covid “crisis” and, in this case, not only was there no outcry from the public but there was even a popular sentiment to eagerly propose more to be transferred. The message from the public – as related through the media of course – was “Take more! Take it all! But just save us from this deadly virus!” It resembled nothing less than a protection racket.
Marx somewhere noted that capitalism produces a crisis which, at any earlier time, would have been an absurdity: a crisis of overproduction. The solutions to this tend towards the drastic. One such being war. Marx noted that the effect of this could be replicated by dumping vast resources into the sea. A process “legitimised” as “creative destruction”. I’m guessing that this is what we saw with covid.
But Simon Elmer has written much more perceptively on this matter. Unfortunately he has written so much that I don’t know where to locate the relevant comments. The following link refers to a comparison between what is happening in the UK with what happened in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet system. Elmer is aware that the comparison cannot be straightforward but goes into the complexities involved. I have inserted an excerpt from the link:
“Today, across the neoliberal democracies of the West, national governments in thrall to the new forms of global governance formed on the justification of addressing multiple manufactured ‘crises’ are implementing equivalent programmes of managed economic collapse devised by the same international institutions of global macro-economic management. Instead of Perestroika, Glasnost, Voucher Privatisation and Loans for Shares, these programmes of economic and political ‘reform’ are called Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals, Universal Basic Income and Central Bank Digital Currency. And although these are being implemented not on the collapse of a centralised command economy like that of the Soviet Union but in neoliberal economies facing the second Global Financial Crisis in twelve years, the aim of these programmes is the same: impoverishment of national populations, bankruptcy of independent businesses, expropriation of national land and resources, instalment of puppet governments to present a facade of democracy to technocratic rule, and an economic and political power-grab by a financial ruling class.”
Since I know that Shaenah likes a challenge, I also include the following links to other Elmer articles. The bottom one is the first of an immense series on the resurgence of fascism in what he calls the Biosecurity State:
Shaenah said in a comment from this podcast that she was interested in this notion of covid as a tactic to avert a crisis. The following is my way of making sense of this.
I admit that although I’ve read a great deal of Marx and various other economists, much of the discussion of economic processes is, to say the least, obscure to me. I struggled to comprehend the transformations of capital as described by e.g. David Harvey. But I know that the banking crisis of 2008 led to the theft of vast reams of public funds to bail out the bankers – which led to immense rage. And the orchestrators of this knew they couldn’t risk such a manoeuvre again. But one of the glaring scandals of the covid years – once you had recovered from the ceaselessly pushed viral fear porn over the issue – is that yet another transfer of wealth was facilitated through the covid “crisis” and, in this case, not only was there no outcry from the public but there was even a popular sentiment to eagerly propose more to be transferred. The message from the public – as related through the media of course – was “Take more! Take it all! But just save us from this deadly virus!” It resembled nothing less than a protection racket.
Marx somewhere noted that capitalism produces a crisis which, at any earlier time, would have been an absurdity: a crisis of overproduction. The solutions to this tend towards the drastic. One such being war. Marx noted that the effect of this could be replicated by dumping vast resources into the sea. A process “legitimised” as “creative destruction”. I’m guessing that this is what we saw with covid.
But Simon Elmer has written much more perceptively on this matter. Unfortunately he has written so much that I don’t know where to locate the relevant comments. The following link refers to a comparison between what is happening in the UK with what happened in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet system. Elmer is aware that the comparison cannot be straightforward but goes into the complexities involved. I have inserted an excerpt from the link:
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2023/02/16/the-western-oligarchy/
Excerpt:
“Today, across the neoliberal democracies of the West, national governments in thrall to the new forms of global governance formed on the justification of addressing multiple manufactured ‘crises’ are implementing equivalent programmes of managed economic collapse devised by the same international institutions of global macro-economic management. Instead of Perestroika, Glasnost, Voucher Privatisation and Loans for Shares, these programmes of economic and political ‘reform’ are called Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goals, Universal Basic Income and Central Bank Digital Currency. And although these are being implemented not on the collapse of a centralised command economy like that of the Soviet Union but in neoliberal economies facing the second Global Financial Crisis in twelve years, the aim of these programmes is the same: impoverishment of national populations, bankruptcy of independent businesses, expropriation of national land and resources, instalment of puppet governments to present a facade of democracy to technocratic rule, and an economic and political power-grab by a financial ruling class.”
Since I know that Shaenah likes a challenge, I also include the following links to other Elmer articles. The bottom one is the first of an immense series on the resurgence of fascism in what he calls the Biosecurity State:
https://peopleslockdowninquiry.co.uk/articles/stay-at-home-lockdown-laid-bare-britains-housing-crisis/
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2022/04/20/the-road-to-fascism-for-a-critique-of-the-global-biosecurity-state-1-the-return-of-fascism/
Ooh, I’ll check those articles out. It was good to actually get a chance to talk to you today.