COVID-19 : SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM

While COVID-19 has exposed the injustices and inequalities of our economic system, the danger remains of a return to the status quo, but worse.

IT WAS the Polish revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg, sitting in a prison cell, who wrote in 1915 that humankind was faced with a stark choice. We could, she wrote, either choose socialism or barbarism. Said Luxemburg:

'Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism.'

Although she was writing during World War One and had been imprisoned for her anti-war activities, her observation was not an immediate commentary on the bloody European war but a warning for the future. That was made quite clear when she dismissed any notion that there was a 'third way' between socialism and barbarism. She was pointedly referring to the social democratic fantasy that capitalism could be 'managed' and 'humanised'.

History has proved Luxemburg to be correct. Post war social democracy has collapsed in face of a virulent capitalism wishing to restore its profitability. Many of the traditional social democratic parties - such as our own Labour Party - have become little more than vehicles for neoliberalism. Others have simply fallen over and disappeared.

At the same time neoliberalism has stripped back the social democratic gains of the post war era to the point that wealth has accumulated in even fewer hands at one end of the spectrum while poverty has deepened and expanded at the other end. Three billion people live on under $2.50 per day. Inequality is increasing between wealthier and poorer capitalist nations, and within these nations as well.

It is this rapacious economic system that is chewing up our planet at such an alarming rate that the global scientific community has repeatedly warned that we have little time left to stem the impact of climate change before the damage done will be irreversible. We will soon, as early as 2030, reach the point of no return.

Capitalism was in crisis before the coronavirus pandemic struck but COVID-19 has only accelerated the crisis, plunging the world into depression. At the same time over 24 million people worldwide have contracted the virus and nearly 850,000 people have died.

Naomi Klein : We must resist a return to the status quo, but worse.

But COVID-19 has also exposed the limits of capitalism and its been suggested that it has expanded the opportunities for socialism to advance. In a recent article published in New York magazine and which tips its hat to Rosa Luxemburg, Eric Levitz writes that while COVID-19 may have 'opened the door to progressivism' it could instead lead irrevocably to barbarism. He writes:

'... as an extraordinary, exogenous shock to a badly broken status quo order, the COVID-19 pandemic has also expanded the spectrum of imaginable futures and political possibilities. And some of those possibilities have been a sight for sore socialists’ eyes.'

But, equally, he warns that if the coronavirus 'has provided cause for bullishness on democratic socialism, it’s offered at least as much reason to believe the future belongs to tribalistic barbarism.' He observes that fighting climate change requires a global solidarity that extends obeyed the nation-state but reaction to COVID-19 has seen an economic and political retreat within national borders.

Also the very high danger remains that after the massive state spending simply designed to prop up an economic system on the point of collapse,  governments will impose further austerity measures that will see the economic burden forced on to the shoulders of a working class already in crisis. It might be socialism for the one percent, but it will be austerity capitalism for everyone else. That's worth thinking about the next time someone tries to tell you that the neoliberal policies of Labour are preferable to the neoliberal policies of National. Unfortunately this 'lesser evil' argument remains the inadequate response of much of the New Zealand left, pretending it has the interests of the working class at heart when all it is doing is seeking to protect the electoral interests of Labour.

Slavoj Zizek : Fears a 'barbarism with a human face'.

While writer and activist Naomi Klein has observed that COVID-19 'is laying bare the extreme injustices and inequalities of our economic and social system” and that it has underlined the urgency for fundamental change, she has also expressed concern that the coronavirus could see us being 'catapulted backwards to a more brutal winner takes all system'.

She says that we must resist a return to what would be 'the status quo, but worse'.

'Are we going to accept pre-COVID normal, only much diminished?' she commented in a recent interview. 'The fact is, we're not 'all in this together' as government leaders have often claimed. If you were disposable before, you’re sacrificial now.'

Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek says that what he fears is not an open and violent barbarism but a 'barbarism with a human face.' He describes this as 'ruthless survivalist measures enforced with regret and even sympathy, but legitimised by expert opinions.'

Capitalism cannot continue on its present course, and if socialism is not achieved, worse forms of capitalism may replace the present one. The choice remains. Socialism or Barbarism.