coviD-19 & Disaster capitalism
Covid-19 Disaster Capitalism & the urgent case for socialism
T
he world entered a new period in history in 2020 with the onset of the coronavirus. What kind of world will exist after this pandemic is anyone’s guess, but how we got here and how we can get out of this mess withot fear of a recurrence are burnig questions that have to be grappled with. EDDIE MCCABE & KEISHIA TAyLOR argue that the capitalist system itself is the central problem, and a socialist alternative has never been more urgent. Capitalism must go. Virtually everything about the world today screams this. Take for example that in the midst of a global pandemic, when 1.6 billion people are in “immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed”, according to the International Labour Organisation, the billionaires of this world have found a bonanza. Over four weeks in April, the 621 billionaires in the US increased their wealth by $308 billion!1 At the same time 30 million workers in the US lost their jobs.2 2 l SocialiSt altErNativE l SuMMEr 2020
This fact exemplifies the insanity as well as the cruel injustice of the capitalist system. COVID-19 is a menacing disease and a serious threat in and of itself, but it must be stressed that the destruction being inflicted on the world today is not just the result of the virus – in many ways it could have been prevented. Rather, as we’ll go on to explain, it is the result of an economic and social system that is constitutionally incapable of responding to a global health emergency in the manner required to safeguard the health and lives of the public. Perhaps it’s not surprising that a call for the overthrow of capitalism is the first thing you read in a socialist publication. It’s true that for socialists the innumerable horrors in the world today – all forms of poverty, violence, oppression – can more or less all be attributed to the capitalist system that’s dominated the world for the past 200 years. It’s the system that puts profit-making before literally everything else, and socialists have long argued for it to be done away with. What’s more interesting and much more important, however, is that the realisation that “capitalism must go” extends far beyond (active or conscious) socialists. It’s a conclusion that’s dawning rapidly on millions of people. What other conclusion can really be drawn from the series of crises – nay catastrophes – that impend for the world we live in? Writing in a period of
