[D66] The COVID-19 Conjuncture

[R.O.]

  The COVID-19 Conjuncture

By
Dimitris Givisis
leftvoice.org
6 min
View Original 
<https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.leftvoice.org%2Fthe-covid-19-conjuncture>

Warren Montag is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at 
Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. Montag is the author of 
several books and essays on the work of Althusser and his philosophical 
legacy, as well as on Adam Smith, Spinoza, and others.

In this interview, he elaborates on how the COVID-19 pandemic has 
become, in a way, an opening for neoliberalism to secure increasing 
levels of submission to the market. Montag further highlights the role 
of an absent state in upholding the rule of the market, and he 
entertains the possibility of an uptick in struggles led by workers and 
communities of color “in defense of life against a suicidal and 
genocidal capitalism.”

Interview by for the Greek publication, *Εποχή* 
<http://epohi.gr/an-xreiazeste-tin-epohi-sas-xreiazetai-ki-ayti-to-idio/>*.*

1) What is your view on the current situation? Would it be an 
exaggeration to talk about a complete failure of neoliberal capitalism?

Speaking for the moment of the current situation in North America and 
Western Europe, I would argue that this is an (but not the) apocalypse, 
not the end of days but in the original sense of the term, an uncovering 
of what was previously concealed, suddenly, unexpectedly, and with 
enormous consequences. The coronavirus has torn away the veil to reveal 
that the apparent success of the neoliberal regime rested precariously 
on a very specific set of circumstances; it had not yet been tested by 
what Machiavelli called fortune and we might call history. But can we 
speak of the failure of neoliberalism, a notion that suggests that it 
has not achieved its objectives or kept its promises, with the 
implication that the more humane form of capitalism that the neoliberal 
model replaced will return to save us? I would say, instead, that this 
model has been exposed, has been forced to expose itself, its norms and 
assumptions, and to do so in practice as well as in its theory and 
propaganda. What has been revealed to us is what one of the architects 
of neoliberalism, Ludwig von Mises, decided one day to say out loud, a 
truth he insisted every economist knew: that the institution of a legal 
right of the living individual to go on living, a legal right to 
existence, which in the last instance compels the state to guarantee the 
necessities of life, is incompatible with capitalism, above all with the 
operation of the market that distributes these necessities as 
efficiently as possible. This is not a minor point, at least for those 
who wish to go on living.

The pandemic has forced the guardians of the market and the conception 
of property it presupposes to reveal to the populations of Europe and 
North America what they had already proclaimed to the rest of the world 
long ago: the market must be allowed to provide and withhold the means 
of subsistence without interference (such as stockpiling food or medical 
supplies in anticipation of future crises). The material form of this 
revelation, the disease, death, and destitution, in which it is 
expressed, however, represents a /Kairos/ for neoliberalism, an opening 
or opportunity to secure the submission of the peoples of the world to a 
new, unheard-of level of market discipline and subjection, and to 
accustom them to death by disease or starvation as unalterable facts of 
nature. Marx and Engels declared that the ruling class that cannot 
guarantee subsistence to its population does not deserve to rule. Today, 
the unstated slogan of capitalism in its present forms is that the 
ruling class, unable to deny subsistence or protection from disease to 
its population, does not deserve to rule. This should, in principle, 
mark the limit of the tolerable for the laboring masses everywhere, but 
limits exist only when and where these same masses impose them through 
action.

2) How do you see the new upgraded role of the state? What impact do you 
think the strengthening of the state will have due to its centralization 
in crisis management?

Here again, I think we have to be very careful in our analysis, and 
national as well as regional differences are significant. But the case 
of Agamben may serve as a general cautionary tale: he has argued 
repeatedly that the present crisis consists of the state using a 
fictional threat to expand its hold on the bare life of the population, 
and, worse, manipulating even the left into demanding this expansion. 
Agamben’s exclusive focus on a state that in his view seeks constantly 
to increase its control over the population, whose freedom in turn is 
always freedom from the state, even under conditions of hunger and 
disease, is uncannily similar to the positions of the extreme right in 
the U.S. The problem is that an analysis of this type prevents us from 
understanding how states, maneuvering to create the best conditions for 
capital accumulation, exercise power through abandonment, withdrawal, 
and the /laissez-mourir/ (letting die) that accompanies the practice of 
/laissez- faire/, using their right, not to kill, but to expose 
populations or parts of populations to the risk of death without any 
obligation to intervene.

They can do this only under certain circumstances: above all the 
disasters that appear natural, but never are, the famines and pandemics 
for which they think they cannot be blamed, whose effects reduce the 
people’s capacity for mass action, and inspire a level of fear and 
demoralization that weakens the capacity for critique or even the 
ability to propose meaningful alternatives. Such a strategy may appear 
as simple failure or incompetence (and it is undeniable that the world’s 
leaders, as a group and individually, exhibit a level of incompetence 
seldom seen in recent history), but to oppose it, we must recognize its 
coherence as a strategy. States do not always expand; they may well 
contract, denying education, health care, housing, and even subsistence 
to a growing part of the population and in doing so weaken any 
resistance to deprivation. Capital is now maneuvering to take maximum 
advantage of the demobilization.

*3*)*What do you think are the prospects of the class struggle in the 
new conditions? The analyses for the next day range from those that 
posit that an opportunity for “progressive shifts” is opening up, to 
those that observe a dystopian situation and point to an “authoritarian 
danger.”*

The danger of a dystopian outcome to the current crisis is very real. To 
prevent its realization, we need to understand the tendencies at work in 
the attempt to shift the balance of power even further in the direction 
of capital to achieve a relatively stable authoritarian neo-liberal 
regime. We are told that the cost of addressing the pandemic will be 
paid through massive cuts to all social programs, an end to many of the 
regulations concerning wages and working conditions, the protection of 
the environment (and reversing global warming), and the actions of the 
financial sector in general. This very deliberate and long-desired 
shrinking of one part of the state will likely be accompanied by an 
increase in repression (by both state and non-state forces). We can 
expect higher levels of violence, with police freed by declarations of 
emergency to act with impunity, directed above all against workers, the 
unemployed, the racialized, refugees, “illegals,” “sans-papiers,” etc. 
to enforce their abandonment or expulsion.

Political leaders, from social democrats to the far right, are 
everywhere calling for the resumption of economic activity to avoid 
substantial tax increases and other costs for the wealthiest sectors of 
society, without regard to the cost in human life. Increasing numbers of 
workers are facing an impossible choice: work, and risk your life, or 
starve, and face destitution. It is now the organized working class in 
the U.S. that is demanding a continuation of the anti-pandemic measures, 
with the addition of monthly payments by the state, until the safety of 
all can be assured. By virtue of its structural position, the working 
class, together with African-Americans and Latinxs who are 
disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, has become the primary 
defender of medical science against the explicit or implicit denialism 
of the elites. The defense of life against a suicidal and genocidal 
capitalism could be the basis of a new struggle for socialism.

/This is a Guest Post <https://www.leftvoice.org/category/guest-posts>. 
Guest Posts do not necessarily reflect the views of the Left Voice 
editorial board. If you would like to submit a contribution, please 
contact us <https://www.leftvoice.org/who-we-are#contact>./


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