In the global response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Anthony Barnett sees an epoch-defining moment as governments are forced to put people’s health and wellbeing before market fundamentalism
Surprisingly Good News
Before COVID-19, most of us thought that the global system of power and interest put profits before life. I certainly did. How could this not be the case when so many are sacrificed for an international capitalism that drips with inequality, filling the harbours of the Caribbean with yachts as many millions go without basic necessities, let alone healthcare?
Yet, when it came to the crunch, leading governments put the health of their citizens first, generating the sharpest worldwide recession ever known.
The right believed the market came first, and approved. The liberal centre believed it did and wanted it moderated. The left was sure it did and opposed its priorities. At the end of 2019, all of us thought that market values ruled and democracy had been hollowed out, or even captured by authoritarians, and that human wellbeing came a clear second to financial and corporate interests. We were all wrong.
That is the good news. Bad news will certainly follow.
The right is already reasserting the domination of corporate priorities. Vulnerable people are being forced to work in unsafe conditions. Many in the centre have returned to far-sighted hand-wringing. Too many on the left are agreeing with each other over how correct they were about the past.
But the response to the Coronavirus pandemic shows that we can create a different way of governing life on earth. Not because there is a new ‘answer’ to which we can turn in our predicament, or an old one waiting to be finally collected from left luggage. But because the potential of far-reaching change has been created all along, under governments of all political stripes, and has now taken us by surprise.
It has become a claim, as the Cameroon philosopher Achille Mbembe puts it, for a ‘universal right to breathe’. A principle that means, unless others everywhere can breathe, my ability to do so is at risk.
And I mean everyone. Along with capitalism as we currently know it, socialism in its familiar form is also being discarded, as the rise of radical and democratic forces are accompanied by the defeat and marginalisation of the traditional left.
Much is being written about the new direction needed when it comes to capitalism. A Green New Deal, ‘Doughnut economics’, distributive welfare, the ‘economics of belonging’, universal basic income, a ‘fiscal constitution’ – there are many far-sighted plans and proposals. All argue that democratic government, not the market, should determine the architecture of a more equitable and sustainable future.
Despite their growing influence, these proposals lack political traction. The surprise of the current crisis is that it creates an opportunity to overcome this weakness.
It will be a stormy transition. The pandemic of COVID-19, the unprecedented shutdowns it has forced governments to implement, the willingness of people to accept the sacrifice of lockdowns for the common good (excepting some in the US along with Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Dominic Cummings), the singular worldwide economic crisis, the ongoing mobilisations – Black Lives Matter, for freedom in Hong Kong, against Muslim persecution in India – and above all the climate emergency, tell us that an epoch is coming to an end.
Now we must roll up our sleeves to decide how it will be replaced.
Fifty Years of Globalisation
In part, the outcome will be decided by those who have a better understanding of recent history and don’t impose pre-existing assumptions upon it.
We are living through the end of a complex 50-year period. One that began in 1968, seen for good reasons as a left-wing moment. But it triggered a right-wing response that was to dominate the next half-century.
In Britain, 1968 was the year that Enoch Powell issued his racist call to arms against immigrants, that Margaret Thatcher made her first trademark speech at a Conservative conference attacking government regulation, that Rupert Murdoch acquired the News of the World. Above all, in the US, it was the year Nixon became President. In 1971, he broke the Bretton Woods system of financial exchange and unleashed market-driven globalisation.
Ten years later, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher fixed the reorientation of the world economy with the mantra that ‘the market knows best’. It became the success story of an era. In 2020, their approach would have meant treating the Coronavirus as another market force until the public achieved ‘herd immunity’; to “take it on the chin” as Boris Johnson said when he first addressed it as a major issue. This is also what the US President wanted.
