It is too early to fully sum up the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we already know today that the optimists who believed that the pandemic crisis would undermine capitalist legitimacy and restore class solidarity and national states power – were wrong. On the contrary, global neoliberalism is even stronger thanks to the pandemic and has increased its profits. It has obtained it not only through exploitation, but directly through the social murder of the working class and especially older, retired people.
The issue of the reproductive role of activities previously excluded from the analysis of the work-capital relationship – gains additional importance in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Critics agree that it exposed many of the weaknesses of the capitalist system and the free market and the ineffectiveness of states objectified by the Capital. Howbeit, the conclusions and forecasts based on the 2020-2022 experience differ significantly. Only few authors, instead of foretelling the end of capitalism misunderstanding perhaps the last great attempt intended to secure its survival – looked more closely and deeply at the course of the pandemic. Although it has benne noticed (or more precisely – overestimated) the breakdown of the capitalist supply chain, exposing the weaknesses of the care system, subjected to financialisation. However, the detailed analysis shows that the effects of the pandemic in the socio-economic sense are distributed following the inequalities in the labour-capital relations, including the racial and gender factors.
Hidden sacrifices
People of colour are among the most vulnerable frontline workers who have been unable to benefit from homeworking protection or abstention wages. Global inequality has also strengthened. Temporary suspension of part of the labour activity of Northern societies – is compensated by the hard work of exploited workers of the South to maintain the supply of goods. Especially in the US, the few shields against COVID-19 have not covered majority of Black people, Latinx and Indigenous, especially women, additionally burdened with increased household chores, virtual learning, etc. In the UK, under the name of “key workers” simply concealed the sacrifice of the lives of the low waged ones, the modern proletariat: care home workers, sales assistants in supermarkets, cleaners, drivers, couriers and many others. They are often retirees, people with disabilities, and immigrants. With no proper access to the public healthcare they were just sacrificed to make the COVID myth credible. In the UK, procedures are in place to deal with people over 80 who are in care homes. In the case of positively tested COVID nurses were not allowed to give the elderly even a glass of water, let alone medication. It was a planned and organized genocide, only to improve the health of the British pension system.
These deaths add up to the accumulation of the time of the pandemic. And these groups have been pushed even lower than previously. Meanwhile, the fortunes of the top 1% continue to grow. The workload of housework has increased dramatically, especially for women. And the periodic slowdown or even suspension of growth cannot be perceived as a permanent breakthrough, especially considering attempts to restore production and keep consumption unchanged. The pandemic reminded that the policy of capital never hesitates from the Social Murders in Engels’ terms. The gigantic profits achieved by the Amazon or the Tönnies and others are obtained not only by increasing exploitation but also directly risking the lives of workers.
Exploitation home delivered
In turn the situation of many transferred to homeworking should be considered as another example of extending the capital-labour relationship to activities previously unproductive. Work from home imperceptibly exceeds the time frame of office hours. The value of labour is consistently transferred towards capital, and the burden on the worker increases at the expense of other aspects of his life. The pandemic only accelerated and strengthened the tendency to housewifization of women. Social reproduction is financialised and marketised, but value of labour put in – is consequently excluded from the standard wage system. In fact, a person chained to Facebook or Netflix (which was and is the intensified everyday life of the pandemic) – unknowingly becomes an exploited worker of great capital.
In fact, we live and function in times when our pleasures have become imperceptibly addictive, and with it – become our work. And what is even worse – the exploited one. Becoming aware of this is the first step to getting organised, and organisation is the basis of resistance. This unfortunately, will be more and more difficult, as Giorgio Agamben rightly supposes that the alleged weakness of the state is in fact a screen for a paradigm shift, but in the opposite direction to that assumed by the wishful thinkers. Present “state of exception” would henceforth be a permanent formula, increasing inequalities. And since the neoliberal state appears only an agent of capital – any potential strengthening of the Government would not take place at expense of the capital, but for its benefit. If something lasts two years, it has long been no longer an “emergency” or a “transition period” – but a new normality. The new normality of old capitalism, always with workers’ blood on its hands.
Golden Path
The main trends of modern economy work since decades around “Zero-Growth” idea. Whether reaching it as a necessity forced by climate circumstance or considering as an objective result of exhausting the possibilities of capital accumulation. However it is also known that permanent growth is an inherent feature of capital. So, in fact it does not matter much whether the World economy stops by itself or should be forced to it. The shock is indispensable. A shock supposed to manage disruptions in the supply chain (which in fact has not necessarily wanted to occur), as well as deal with weakening of demand, which also has not appeared on a satisfactory degree, so had to be caused intentionally. But anyway – is the World of financial markets really false economy today, and production and services remain real ones? Or is it already opposite?
Maintaining the appearances of Not-Completely-Globalised Capitalism in the North-Western hemisphere seems to have lost its sense. Sooner or later, we will be confronted with the problem of delabourisation anyway. The problem what to do with people whose work is redundant in practice, at least in the present dimension. Until now, however, their consumption was needed. We checked that people can be paid to refrain from working. And where to get for it? By allocating a small percentage of capitalist rent obtained from the turnover of assets, considered optimal, to keep it all going somehow without nominal development and growth. Characteristic changes known from the last two years: greater virtualisation of the remaining work, the almost complete digitisation of money, the mere increase in power of states, but only acting as actors of capital – are just details to complete a picture.
This is why COVID is the most important transformation of our times, a change at the level of the essence of Capitalism and civilization as such. And it is a transition made jointly and inextricably with the use of energy instruments to maximize profits from the energy market and to obtain a specific civilisation effect measurable using energy indicators. And as it happens with transformations – we cannot even imagine their final effect, but we already know that we are led to it. Almost certainly – inevitably.
25. February 2022.
