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<h1 class="css-1z36ek">The COVID-19 Conjuncture</h1>
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<div class="css-7kp13n">By</div>
<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-acjdas">Dimitris
Givisis</span></div>
<div class="css-8rl9b7">leftvoice.org</div>
<div class="css-zskk6u">6 min</div>
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<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.”</span></p>
<p><span>Interview by</span> <span>for the
Greek publication,</span> <a
href="http://epohi.gr/an-xreiazeste-tin-epohi-sas-xreiazetai-ki-ayti-to-idio/"><b>Εποχή</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p>1) What is your view on the current
situation? Would it be an exaggeration to
talk about a complete failure of neoliberal
capitalism?</p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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</span> <i><span>Kairos</span></i>
<span>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.</span></p>
<p>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?</p>
<p><span>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</span> <i><span>laissez-mourir</span></i>
<span>(letting die) that accompanies the
practice of</span> <i><span>laissez-
faire</span></i><span>, using their
right, not to kill, but to expose
populations or parts of populations to the
risk of death without any obligation to
intervene.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><b>3</b><span>)</span><b>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.”</b></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span><i>This is a <a
href="https://www.leftvoice.org/category/guest-posts">Guest
Post</a>. Guest Posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of the
Left Voice editorial board. If you would
like to submit a contribution, please <a
href="https://www.leftvoice.org/who-we-are#contact">contact us</a>.</i></span></p>
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