Concerning...

> Le 12 févr. 2022 à 14:43, David Garcia <d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk> 
> a écrit :
> 
> Actually Joseph I think quite a lot is new… going as far back as November 
> 2020 I wrote post which pointed to the proposition that before the pandemic 
> if anyone had suggested that under conditions, other than war, that wealthy 
> technologically advanced states were capable of shutting down 80% of the 
> global economy, furloughing large swathes of the workforce along with 1.4 
> billion students as well as bringing mass air transportation to a grinding 
> halt, the proposition would not just have been dismissed.
> 
> As the usually sober and measured political economist Helen Thomas declared  
> “We have to face up to the fact that we have been through something, as a 
> world,.. that in some sense was beyond our imaginations in the west at the 
> beginning of this year.” The appearance of this degree of agency led the 
> other participant in the discussion, Adam Tooze to declare this to be -THE 
> shock discovery of 2020- “hands down, flat out, the most extraordinary thing 
> that has ever happened in modern economic history.” 
> 
> http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/blog/the-unthinkable-has-to-be-thought-sean-cubitt/
>  
> <http://new-tactical-research.co.uk/blog/the-unthinkable-has-to-be-thought-sean-cubitt/>
>  Re-reading this article reminds me that at the time Brian was already 
> deploying the concept of an eco-state..
> 

David, I see your point about the newness, but I must be cautious about both 
the altruism that "awareness of mutual dependency and the collective agency" 
seems to suggest (all working together to face a mortal threat), and the agency 
itself.

What happened in France (my example) was entirely top down, there was no 
collective agency. There was no sudden altruism on the part of political 
leadership. They reacted out of fear of the chaos that would be caused (1) when 
the hospitals could not cope with the tsunami of patients and (2) when people, 
who were confined in order to stop the tsunami, ran out of money.

Macron's releasing billions with his policy of "whatever it takes" was not 
altruistic at all - he was just stepping in to substitute for the economy until 
things could return to business as usual. Negative interest rates made this 
economically viable, and Macron knew full well that the alternative, austerity 
and poverty, would lash back at him and his government. Today, with the French 
economy flourishing and low unemployment, they are bragging about how what they 
did made brilliant economic sense, however "unorthodox" it might seem to 
neoliberal economic doctrine.

What is notable is that even though the first wave revealed in France (and 
elsewhere) how the hospitals had been whittled down in the interests of 
profitability and could not cope because of lack of beds, personnel and 
equipment, they've done nothing about it. Of course, at first, they said that 
they would revigorate the system, but they did not, once the pressure dropped. 
They negotiated raises and better working conditions as minimally as they 
could. The contrast between helping businesses and hospitals is in the fact 
that for a neoliberal like Macron, businesses represent value and hospitals 
represent a cost. Which justified pouring money into the former, and minimising 
resources given to the latter.

As for "collective agency", I am not sure how much of this there has been 
during the pandemic, more than simply being in the same boat together. Or more 
accurately, the Western boat was relatively well furnished, and did not come to 
the rescue of those from Africa or Latin America who were far less well 
equipped.

The only collective agency offered French citizens during the lockdown was to 
applaud healthcare staff from our balconies at 8 PM.

Joe Rabie.



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