The Post-Corona world necessitates a structural change in global economy.

The COVID-19 global pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities and the systematic inefficacy of the capitalistic world order better than any other event in the history of capitalist economy. The main reason has to do with the fact that the pandemic has become more or less a universal experience. It has affected a vast majority of people regardless of which country they belong to, their social class, race or any other form of identity. That is not ignore that some groups or communities have been affected disproportionately more than the others, but to highlight its inescapable nature of the crisis, just as a famous joke on the internet circulates, ‘the virus does not discriminate, a human may’. Ignoring or snubbing the discourse on the pandemic isn’t an option anymore. This makes it so that governments, unlike other atrocities committed by global capitalism, cannot brush the issue under the rug. There is a conglomerate of historical factors that have made this crisis possible, and it is pertinent to discuss some of these and other effects of free market economies that have exacerbated the crisis to an extent that bewilders our conscience.

In the absence of a vaccine that can cure the patients effectively, the most talked solution is isolation and self-quarantine. Media, all across the world have been running a mass advertisement campaign advising the populace to stay at homes and cut down on social interactions. Trends like Stay at Home have been circulating across the social media. However, the absurdity or rather the insensitivity of the notion goes criminally ignored. Quarantine at homes implies the assumption that everyone can afford a home in the first place. For millions of people who belong to the poor strata and form the majority demographic of our society, the word home either means a slum dwelling made of mud and roofed by rusted iron panes or a road pavement where they have somehow learnt to find peace at night amidst the noise of metropolitan traffic. Who are these people? Humans, of course. But more importantly these people are the victims of the capitalistic economic system. A system where a minority on the top of the food chain has accumulated massive amounts of wealth making the majority feed on the left overs. These people are the wage workers, sweatshop laborers, coal miners and the refugees. These are the people that construct the artifice of the metropolises which features in magazines symbolizing development and economic success. Only to have their ‘homes’ concealed from public view when foreigners visit the countries or to have them encroached so that the elite might live in gated communities. These are the dwellers of an open sky and they barely have the luxury of affording the shelter. The idea of quarantine thus in and of itself, is a matter of privilege affordable by only a few.

The main focus of attention at this time are the healthcare systems all around the world. Healthcare systems in terms of their access are a better representation of the class divide perpetuated by our system than other sector. Healthcare is a basic human requirement that is simply inaccessible for many. Healthcare system around the world has been handed over to private corporations through a system of privatization. The only incentive of private corporations is the maximization of profit. Consequently, even in the most developed economies like US, people have to pay hefty amount of money to cure even the mildest of diseases like influenza. Furthermore, the global economic order has been set up in a way that is massively conducive to these private multinational corporations. The third world, which has not yet recovered from the parasitic effects of colonialism, always has to bear massive consequences as a result. The moment any third world country goes to a supra national institution like IMF, the immediate trade-off occurs in the form of structural adjustment plans, which necessitate the denationalization of important sectors including healthcare, widening the market space for these companies so that they can infiltrate in the systems and multiply their profit making mechanisms in these countries. As a result, the access to healthcare also becomes largely Utopian, and for the vast majority of the people who need it the most, have to make a choice of either becoming indebted or simply to do away with life. The massive amount of interest rates on foreign debt, that continue to spike with time, are also culpable for making life miserable for the ‘wretched of the earth’ as the majority of what they produce, goes in debt servicing. Life, thus no longer remains an inalienable right, it becomes a commodity affordable by only those can afford it.

Since the outbreak of the crisis, the industries and other employment sectors have been either partially or completely locked down. As a result, mass unemployment has occurred making it difficult for millions to each even make the ends match. Very few countries have a well settled and institutionalized system of social security to help people out. The capitalist system has always been contemptuous of governmental role in social security. Strong corporate lobbies have emerged that trample down on any effort to enforce any kind of social security benefit like universal healthcare. The reason is simple that if governments transform their niche to become saviors of people’s basic rights, corporations lose out on massive opportunity to commercialize these sectors and earn hefty profits. This shows the cruelty and in-humanness of a system that deems profit a bigger end than life. Even in the field of medicine, medicines and solutions that can help save the lives of millions are legally patented making them inaccessible to the market, leaving millions at the wish for mercy and at the expense of acute suffering. The advantages of social security are often demonized through populist and racist narratives so that refugees and immigrants might not be able to access any. Since the outbreak of the pandemic however, the issue has been sensitized to at least a greater degree than before. Some little and fragmented progress is visible. Spain has recently introduced a universal basic income system, a solution that will potentially save millions from corporate exploitation. In addition to this, global philanthropy and projects of altruism have also increased. Such enterprises can at best only solve a short term harm. They are extremely marginal in their effect. The issue is hand is structural and rooted in the very economic system that feeds on inequality.

Even in the most conservative estimations, the global economic crisis that is emerging is going to be far more severe than the global economic crisis of 2008 and 1930’s Great depression. It is understandable that the current goal of almost all the governments is minimize the harm and invest resources in the management of the disaster. However precedent shows governments hardly go for a structural reconfiguration of the economic system after a crisis. Their primary effort is largely to restore the status quo and return to the normality where corporations and big echelons of the business world can continue in the same manner largely unperturbed. More often than never, the world that emerges out of a global crisis is characterized by increased austerity and a spree of privatization. In US, massive bailouts packages are still being given to companies on the account of ‘recovering the profit loss’ in a time where US has the highest number of confirmed cases of corona virus. This is reflective of the gross insensitivity of our times when recovering the profit loss takes priority of recovering, say the human lives. Thus the discussion of the post-apocalyptic world that is largely going to emerge must take into account the structural problems rooted in this highly inhumane system, which is deemed normal while it isn’t.

Corona virus outbreak has also revealed a variety gendered impacts shedding more light on to the kind of unequal society we live in. Since the outbreak led to a lock down all across the world, the cases of domestic abuse have plummeted to an alarming degree. Victims can hardly even access litigation as the judiciary and legal system have also been shut down. Transgenders and other sexual minorities are even more vulnerable owing to the historical marginalization they have faced of all kinds. It is an inequality that the system has never been able to mitigate, and exacerbates the already intolerable class divide that exists at such an acute level in our society.

The inability of governments around the world to fight the outbreak can also be traced in their prioritization of policies, along with the nature of capitalist market economy. In the last decade, a number of governments around the world have been using different types of populist narratives to usurp power (which in and of itself can attributed a consequence of 2008 global economic recession). Others have been using the hyper nationalist rhetoric to induce security hysteria (while many of them aren’t at war at all). As a result, sectors related to human resource development have largely been neglected. Negligence is just as morally culpable as anything else. Large part to governmental budgets have been funneled in the development of defense potential. It is very plausible to claim that at least a part of this amount could have been used to invest in healthcare systems. Research could have been incentivized. The outreach of medical facilities could have been increased. Basic health units could have been institutionalized in far flung rural municipalities. Doctors could have trained to a larger degree. All of this would have meant that in times of crisis like the one we are faced with now, or even in general routine, the medical sector would have been far less burdened and far more effective.

For some of us who have been either brainwashed by mass state propaganda of idyllic happiness and eternal development or have been depoliticized to an extent that we hardly even care about the world, this may come as a great shock to learn that our world isn’t as developed and happy as our business magazines would like to have us believe. It may also bewilder us to think that we can no longer pacify ourselves by saying that the magical wand of social mobility does it all for us. For this is time that demystifies the hollowness of this academic lexicon. To use social mobility as an argument to validate the success of capitalism, is only good insofar as the next big crisis doesn’t emerge. For the rest of us, the majority, the ones who have to face the most visceral consequences of class divide, racism and patriarchy, this affirms and validates that the inequalities we are real. This affirmation, in other times can often get blurred by a variety of forces at work. A media which hardly ever questions the structural roots of inequality, and wraps the pain of millions in palatable euphemism. Our religious demagogues which try hard to somehow make us believe that these inequalities are somehow natural. Our academics who are never able to resonate with our problems and are talking an alien language, and we only know that they’re talking about us. It is time we solemnly come to a consensus that a system that prioritizes profit maximization over alleviating human suffering, is neither normal nor natural. This is a time necessitates a historical revisionism of the brutal economic systems we live in. We have had enough of global capitalism.