‘Take it on the chin’<\/h3>\n
The second lesson follows from the first. Despite everything we have been told for four decades or more, western capitalist societies are far from the most efficient ways of organising ourselves. That will be laid bare as the coronavirus crisis deepens.<\/p>\n
We are still very much immersed in the ideological universe of Thatcherism and Reaganism, when we were told quite literally: \u201cThere is no such thing as society.” How will that political mantra stand the test of the coming weeks and months? How much can we survive as individuals, even in quarantine, rather than as part of communities that care for all of us?<\/p>\n
Western leaders who champion neoliberalism, as they are required to do nowadays, have two choices to cope with coronavirus \u2013 and both will require a great deal of misdirection if we are not to see through their hypocrisy and deceptions.<\/p>\n
Our leaders can let us \u201ctake it on the chin\u201d, as the British prime minister Boris Johnson has phrased<\/a> it. In practice, that will mean allowing what is effectively a cull of many of the poor and elderly \u2013 one that will relieve governments of the financial burden of underfunded pension schemes and welfare payments.<\/p>\n Such leaders will claim they are powerless to intervene or to ameliorate the crisis. Confronted with the contradictions inherent in their worldview, they will suddenly become fatalists, abandoning their belief in the efficacy and righteousness of the free market. They will say the virus was too contagious to contain, too robust for health services to cope, too lethal to save lives. They will evade all blame for the decades of health cuts and privatisations that made those services inefficient, inadequate, cumbersome and inflexible.<\/p>\n Or, by contrast, politicians will use their spin doctors and allies in the corporate media to obscure the fact that they are quietly and temporarily becoming socialists to deal with the emergency. They will\u00a0change the welfare rules<\/a> so that all those in the gig economy they created \u2013 employed on zero-hours contracts \u2013 do not spread the virus because they cannot afford to self-quarantine or take days\u2019 off sick.<\/p>\n Or most likely our leaders will pursue both options.<\/p>\n If acknowledged at all, the conclusion to be draw from the crisis \u2013 that we all matter equally, that we need to look after one another, that we sink or swim together \u2013 will be treated as no more than an isolated, fleeting lesson specific to this crisis. Our leaders will refuse to draw more general lessons \u2013 ones that might highlight their own culpability \u2013 about how sane, humane societies should function all the time.<\/p>\n In fact, there is nothing unique about the coronavirus crisis. It is simply a heightened version of the less visible crisis we are now permanently mired in. As Britain sinks under floods each winter, as Australia burns each summer, as the southern states of the US are wrecked by hurricanes and its great plains become dustbowls, as the climate emergency becomes ever more tangible, we will learn this truth slowly and painfully.<\/p>\n Those deeply invested in the current system \u2013 and those so brainwashed they cannot see its flaws \u2013 will defend it to the bitter end. They will learn nothing from the virus. They will point to authoritarian states and warn that things could be far worse.<\/p>\n They will point a finger at Iran\u2019s high death toll as confirmation that our profit-driven societies are better, while ignoring the terrible damage we have inflicted on Iran’s health services after years of sabotaging its economy through ferocious sanctions. We left Iran all the more vulnerable to coronavirus \u00a0because we wanted to engineer “regime change” \u2013 to interfere under the pretence of “humanitarian” concern \u2013 as we have sought to do in other countries whose resources we wished to control, from Iraq to Syria and Libya.<\/p>\n Iran will be held responsible for a crisis we willed, that our politicians intended (even if the speed and means came as a surprise), to overthrow its leaders. Iran’s failures will be cited as proof of our superior way of life, as we wail self-righteously about the outrage of a “Russian interference” whose contours we can barely articulate.<\/p>\n Those who defend our system, even as its internal logic collapses in the face of coronavirus and a climate emergency, will tell us how lucky we are to live in free societies where some \u2013 Amazon executives, home delivery services, pharmacies, toilet-paper manufacturers \u2013 can still make a quick buck from our panic and fear. As long as someone is exploiting us, as long as someone is growing fat and rich, we will be told the system works \u2013 and works better than anything else imaginable.<\/p>\n But in fact, late-stage capitalist societies like the US and the UK will struggle to claim even the limited successes against coronavirus of authoritarian governments. Is Trump in the US or Johnson in the UK \u2013 exemplars of “the market knows best” capitalism \u2013 likely to do better than China at containing<\/a> and dealing with the virus?<\/p>\n This lesson is not about authoritarian versus \u201cfree\u201d societies. This is about societies that treasure the common wealth, that value the common good, above private greed and profit, above protecting the privileges of a wealth-elite.<\/p>\n In 2008, after decades of giving the banks what they wanted \u2013 free rein to make money by trading in hot air \u2013 the western economies all but imploded as an inflated bubble of empty liquidity burst. The banks and financial services were saved only by public bail-outs \u2013 tax payers’ money. We were given no choice: the banks, we were told, were “too big to fail”.<\/p>\n We bought the banks with our common wealth. But because private wealth is our era’s guiding star, the public were not allowed to own the banks they bought. And once the banks had been bailed out by us \u2013 a perverse socialism for the rich \u2013 the banks went right back to making private money, enriching a tiny elite until the next crash.<\/p>\n The naive may think this was a one-off. But the failings of capitalism are inherent and structural, as the virus is already demonstrating and the climate emergency will drive home with alarming ferocity in the coming years.<\/p>\n The shut-down of borders means the airlines are quickly going bust. They didn’t put money away for a rainy day, of course. They didn’t save, they weren’t prudent. They are in a cut-throat world where they need to compete with rivals, to drive them out of business and make as much money as they can for shareholders.<\/p>\n Now there is nowhere for the airlines to fly to \u2013 and they will have no visible means to make money for months on end. Like the banks, they are too big to fail \u2013 and like the banks they are demanding public money be spent to tide them over until they can once again rapaciously make profits for their shareholders. There will be many other corporations queuing up behind the airlines.<\/p>\n The banks that nearly tanked the global economy had to be bailed out because they were 'too big to fail'. Now we're about to do the same with airlines, even as they help to destroy the planet. Time to rethink our profit-driven priorities? https:\/\/t.co\/kDjqSsITC1<\/a><\/p>\n — Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 16, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Screenshot-2020-03-17-at-11.58.52.png\")
\nPermanent crisis<\/h3>\n
Valuing the common good<\/h3>\n
Nowhere to fly to<\/h3>\n
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