№37 / SPRING 2020 R E A S O N I N R E VO LT J A C O B I N M A G .

C O M
Under capitalism the workers have
always been compelled to live in
unclean quarters of the towns,
where epidemic disease is rife. It
was only owing to the dread that
they themselves would suffer from
these epidemics, that the capital-
ists introduced certain measures to
improve the sanitation of the areas
in which their wage-slaves dwelt ....
Capitalism was only interested in
the protection of public health in
so far as this was necessary for its
own safety.

— Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni

Preobrazhensky, The ABC of Com-
munism, 1919
Citoyens
E D I TO R & P U B L I S H E R E X E C U T I V E E D I TO R
Bhaskar Sunkara Seth Ackerman

C R E AT I V E D I R E C TO R R E S E A RC H E R
Remeike Forbes Jonah Walters

D E P U T Y E D I TO R D E V E LO P M E N T Jacobin is a leading voice

Micah Uetricht Roz Hunter of the American left,
offering socialist perspectives
M A N AG I N G E D I TO R C I RC U L AT I O N
on politics, economics,
Amelia Ayrelan Iuvino Hadas Thier
and culture. The print magazine
AS S O C I AT E E D I TO R S R E A D I N G G RO U P S
is released quarterly.
Emma Fajgenbaum Julia Damphouse
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE
Shawn Gude
A DV E RT I S E M E N T
$29 US (print)
G RA P H I C D E S I G N Pardise Amirshahi
$39 Canada (print)
Benjamin Koditschek
$59 international (print)
Lauren Traugott-Campbell E D I TO R I A L B OA R D
Nicole Aschoff $19 (digital)
AS S I STA N T E D I TO R S Alyssa Battistoni Solidarity $59
Aqsa Ahmad Mike Beggs Institutions $69
Alex Press Megan Erickson Lifetime $295
Peter Frase
E U RO P E E D I TO R
388 Atlantic Avenue,
David Broder C O N T R I B U T I N G E D I TO R S Brooklyn, NY 11217
Bashir Abu-Manneh
jacobinmag.com/subscribe/
STO RY E D I TO R Nicolas Allen
[email protected]
Connor Kilpatrick Loren Balhorn
Daniel Bessner © 2020 Jacobin Foundation
F E AT U R E S E D I TO R Jonah Birch ISSN: 2470-6930
Daniel Finn Sebastian Budgen
Ronan Burtenshaw B O O K STO R E D I ST R I B U T I O N
STA F F W R I T E R S Sabrina Fernandes
Meagan Day Belén Fernández Central Books (Europe)
Dawn Foster Benjamin Fogel Disticor Direct
Branko Marcetic Hilary Goodfriend Media Solutions
Luke Savage Eileen Jones One Source
Matt Karp Small Changes
C O LU M N I ST S
Cyrus Lewis tng
Liza Featherstone Daniel Lopez
Abi Wilkinson Chris Maisano C I RC U L AT I O N ( A P R I L 2 0 2 0 )
Ben Burgis Gavin Mueller
Karen Narefsky Circulation: 49,238
AS S O C I AT E P U B L I S H E R
Catarina Príncipe Web Visitors: 2,320,000
Jason Farbman
Kate Redburn
Corey Robin
Miya Tokumitsu

Jacobin (ISSN: 2470-6930) is published quarterly by Jacobin Foundation Ltd., 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217-3399.
Periodical postage paid at 1050 Forbell St., Brooklyn, NY 11256-9602 and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address
changes to Jacobin, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217-3399.
Features

J ISSUE 37 • SPRING 2020 30 MEAGAN DAY 36 DANIEL FINN

Pandemic Politics No Act of God The Black Death

Helped Bring
About the Modern
World

62 JACK CHADWICK 69 NICOLE ASCHOFF 76 MIKE BEGGS & BECK PEARSE

When the Is This the End Viral Socialism Now!

“Unskilled” of Neoliberal
Become Globalization?
“Essential”
Contributors
cover art by
María Medem

Seth Ackerman is Jacobin's Mike Davis is the author of several Connor Kilpatrick is the story
executive editor. books, including Planet of Slums editor at Jacobin.
and City of Quartz.
Nicole Aschoff is on the editorial Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff
board at Jacobin. She is the author Meagan Day is a staff writer at writer and the author of Yesterday's
of The Smartphone Society: Jacobin. She is the coauthor Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.
Technology, Power, and Resistance of Bigger than Bernie: How We He lives in Toronto, Canada.
in the New Gilded Age and Go from the Sanders Campaign
The New Prophets of Capital. to Democratic Socialism. Francesco Massimo is a Paris-
based labor researcher and
Mike Beggs is an editor at Jacobin Ellen Engelstad has an ma in coeditor of a report on industrial
and a lecturer in political economy comparative literature from the relations at Amazon published
at the University of Sydney. University of Oslo and is editor by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
of the left-wing online magazine
Alexander Billet is a writer, artist, Beck Pearse is a lecturer in the
Manifest Tidsskrift.
and cultural critic living in Los department of political economy at
Angeles. He is an editor at Locust Marta Fana is the author of Non the University of Sydney.
Review and blogs at To Whom è lavoro, è sfruttamento (“This Isn't
It May Concern. Work, It's Exploitation”) and an Leigh Phillips is a science writer a
editor of Jacobin Italia. science writer for Jacobin. He is
Grace Blakeley is a staff writer the author of Austerity Ecology &
at Tribune, and the author of Daniel Finn is Jacobin’s features the Collapse-Porn Addicts.
Stolen: How to Save the World editor. He is the author of One
from Financialisation. Man’s Terrorist: A Political Cole Stangler is a Paris-based
History of the IRA. journalist writing about labor and
David Broder is Jacobin’s Europe politics. A former staff writer
editor and a historian of French Owen Hatherley is Tribune’s at International Business Times
and Italian communism. culture editor and the author and In These Times, he has
of Militant Modernism and also published work in vice, the
Jack Chadwick is a graduate
A Guide to the New Ruins of Nation, and the Village Voice.
student at the University
Great Britain.
of Cambridge researching the
political economy of socialist Eileen Jones is a film critic at
planning, and a member of the Jacobin and author of Filmsuck,
Labour Party. USA. She also hosts a podcast
called Filmsuck.
Departments

FRONT MATTERS MEANS OF DEDUCTION READING MATERIEL

07 11 19 20 43 48
party lines the soapbox vulgar vulgar canon fodder canon fodder
empiricist
If Neoliberalism Letters The Market Is Millions Die, Every Economic
Were to End, Leaving Us Virulence and But They’re All Question Is
How Would We Unprepared for Contagiousness Liberals a Question of
Know? a Pandemic Power

12 14 23 26 52 58
the soapbox struggle session uneven & transitions dossier field notes
combined
Celebrities “We’re Not We Need Interpreter A Pandemic
Speak Heroes, It Takes a Herd Better Drugs of Maladies Foretold
We’re Health
Workers”

CULTURAL CAPITAL THE TUMBREL LEFTOVERS

84 88 106 108 115 118

red channels red channels versailles thermidor popular front popular front
Beautifying the Jacobin’s Corona The New Krona Virus We Set
Apocalypse Quarantine C.R.E.A.M. Thatcherites Amazon
Movie List on Fire

98 102 121
ways of seeing bass & means and ends
superstructure
It Came From An Urgent
Canada! Pretty Faces Appeal for
Who Care Your Support
 Front
Matters
MASK ON
FRONT MATTERS
PARTY LINES BY SETH ACKERMAN

If Neoliberalism
Were to End,
How Would We
Know?

What will decide the fate of

neoliberalism today is not the extent
of the economic damage the virus
wreaks — it is the extent to which
the virus transforms popular
expectations.

PANDEMIC POLITICS 9
Has the coronavirus doomed much faith in the self-correcting genteel weeklies: you’ll find a whole
neoliberalism? power of free markets.” Go back genre of essays musing on “what
another decade, to the 1997 Asian Marx got right” from the pens
You could be forgiven for thinking
financial crisis, and thumb of decidedly non-radical writers —
it has, given the disorienting
through the op-ed pages and the a journalistic trope we’ve since
stream of bizarro-world news
grown accustomed to in times of
headlines washing over us. Right-
financial panic.
wing Republicans eagerly rush
to hand out freshly printed money Every decade or so, it seems, the
to the same hapless masses they economy seizes up, central bankers
once derided as “takers.” The go into overdrive, and commentators
Financial Times calls for “radical temporarily converge on the view
reforms — reversing the prevail- that the neoliberal era is over. Then
ing policy direction of the last everything goes back to normal, only
four decades,” including a “basic worse. The recurring crisis of neo-
income and wealth taxes.” liberalism has proven to be a central
“High neoliberalism already had feature of neoliberalism itself.
a preexisting health condition,”
Of course, this time could very well
observes a writer in the National
be different. But if we want to assess
Review, “and this global pandemic
neoliberalism’s prospects for
may be fatal for it.”
survival, we shouldn’t yet go looking
On the other hand, it also feels for clues in, say, the fluctuations of
like we’ve seen this movie before. the junk bond market or Eurogroup
After the 2008 financial crisis, communiqués. It’s too early to
Richard Posner, the preeminent know what the long-run effects of
ideologue of the laissez-faire those machinations will be once
Chicago School, published a tract the acute phase of the pandemic is
acknowledging the crash to have behind us.
been “a failure of capitalism,”
Instead, we should start with a more
while the New York Times wrote
basic question: If neoliberalism were
of a “humbled” Alan Greenspan
to end, how would we know?
who “admitted that he had put too

Image Credit
DEA / G. COZZI / Contributor
To imagine what the death of In retrospect, the shift was momen- In his speech of August 15, 1971,
neoliberalism might resemble, we tous, and in time, it would spawn Nixon also unveiled a companion
can look to the demise of its the fully financialized world of policy: a comprehensive system
predecessor: the New Deal order, free-flowing capital and seamless of wage and price controls. An
or social democracy, or “embed- globalization we know today. Thus, astonishingly interventionist
ded liberalism.” The more one the move now looks to many as scheme, the program led to nearly
examines such moments of if it were the creeping advance of two years during which the bulk
historical transition, the more a sort of proto-neoliberalism. of the US economy operated
they seem to confirm Hegel’s But that is not how it looked at under detailed pricing dictates
dictum that the owl of Minerva the time. from bureaucrats in a newly
flies at dusk — that a historical formed Cost of Living Council.
epoch is only intelligible after
Nixon was, by temperament, a
the fact.
genuine believer in free markets,
Let’s take just one example. A and specifically an opponent of
notorious milestone on the path to price controls. But as a practical
the New Deal order’s extinction politician, his concern was not
was the dismantling of the destroying the New Deal order; it
Bretton Woods system of fixed was winning reelection. And in
exchange rates, a process that the inflationary United States of
began in August 1971 with 1971, price controls were, in the
Richard Nixon’s surprise declara- words of Herbert Stein, chair
tion that the United States of Nixon’s Council of Economic
would no longer redeem dollars Advisers, “the most popular
for gold. Demolishing that economic move made by a
scheme had been the long- president since Roosevelt closed
cherished goal of Milton Friedman the banks.”
and his clique of Chicago School
The popularity of price controls is
acolytes, several of whom had
hard to fathom today, but at the
been seeded into the upper levels
time, the American electorate still
of Nixon’s administration.
lived in the grip of a New Deal
The more one examines such moments of
historical transition, the more they seem
to confirm Hegel’s dictum that a historical
epoch is only intelligible after the fact.

mentality that held the govern- in a move that brutalized the the price of one of the economy’s
ment to be closely, almost world’s poor while permanently most vital production inputs.
intimately, responsible for the shifting the balance of class forces Likewise, central banks today
material security of citizens. In in favor of capital. have spent the past decade
the ’70s, as the labor activist desperately trying to prop up a
It was the grinding course of those
Mark Dudzic has put it, “if meat chronically low inflation rate,
years of stagflation that finally
prices were too high, somebody only to find huge portions of the
destroyed the public’s New Deal
better damn well do something economy’s aggregate demand
mentality, replacing it with a new
about it.” obliterated by a virus that came
expectation of government impo-
seemingly out of nowhere.
That is what changed after opec’s tence in the face of private profit-
1973 quadrupling of oil prices. seeking. Just as the Friedmanite What will decide the fate of neo-
Although Nixon’s price-control apostles of free markets had liberalism today is not the extent
program was successful in its first always claimed, the state proved of the economic damage the
two years, the oil explosion incapable of controlling the virus wreaks; it is the extent to
injected a powerful inflationary economy. Only a fool would now which the virus transforms our
shock into the global economy expect the government to “do expectations about cause and
that seemed to nullify all further something” about meat prices; effect. Central banks and treasuries
attempts at economic fine-tuning. that was for the market to decide. around the world, regardless of
Now, especially after the shock’s their ideological preferences, may
1979 sequel, there would seem now find themselves forced, in
to be only one politically feasible Forty years later, the coronavirus one way or another, to socialize
option remaining to contain has struck the global neoliberal vast swaths of the economy and
inflation: bludgeoning the world regime in ways that eerily parallel assume far more direct responsi-
economy senseless with the the impact of the oil shocks on bility for the welfare of their
blunt instruments of high interest the New Deal order. Policymakers citizens.
rates and mass unemployment. in the ’70s had already spent the
Once the boundaries of the
better part of a decade struggling
That is what Paul Volcker finally possible visibly shift, it’s hard to
to contain inflation, only to suffer
accomplished six years later as get people to forget what they
an overnight quadrupling in
the new Federal Reserve chairman, have seen.

12 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 FRONT MATTERS
THE SOAPBOX [email protected]

You’ll Like Our Summer Edition

Letters
Your last issue, “Political
Revolution,” was impressive in
every way (you should do more
so that your legion of online fans
knows that there’s a substantive
print edition to read). Email us letters — we’ll share
Most of the articles focus on the
them with the world (i.e., 50,000
dangers that will befall a Left subscribers).
government once it gets to power.
It seems, however, that it’s worth
reassessing the challenges that “After Bernie” Issue Coming votes, the largest vote for a
face us now that Bernie Sanders July 2020 socialist in US history.
has been defeated. Right now,
our main issue is assembling the It seems to me the underlying In 2020, a couple of months ago,
politics that can win, not weighing assumption of the excellent Bernie was the front-runner in
the dilemmas of state power. articles in the Winter 2020 the Democratic primary. Once
Jacobin is that Bernie Sanders again, he got the lion’s share of
Yes, the two are related. But I would win the presidency the youth vote. This time, he
hope for, perhaps, an entire future and we would have to navigate won the Latino vote and a lot of
issue assessing the post-Bernie the resistance of capital to labor votes. He has always been
moment and our strategy going a democratic socialist in the a strong ally of workers, but this
forward. I have some issues White House. time he made unions his theme.
with some of the prescriptions, Unfortunately, we did not get the
but Jared Abbott and Dustin Unfortunately, we did not get a
brass ring.
Guastella’s “Blueprint for a chance to confront such a
Political Revolution,” as well as situation. Bernie, the Democratic The good news is that the move-
Seth Ackerman’s “A Blueprint Socialists of America, and our ment Bernie Sanders helped birth
for a New Party,” are what we allies did amazingly well. From is not going anywhere. From
need more of. starting out at 3 percent in the Congress to down-ballot, we will
polls in 2015, we rose up to cap- be electing Berniecrats. While
Perhaps you should get a bit ture 43 percent of the vote in it is way too early to speculate, it
more original with your headline the Democratic primary in 2016. is fun and inspiring to do so —
titling, though. Bernie got more than 13 million aoc 2028?
— Marilyn Hansen, Decatur, GA —Lewis Grupper, New York, NY

PANDEMIC POLITICS 13
 FRONT MATTERS
THE SOAPBOX

Celebrities Speak

Life is better if you own a yacht.

“Instead of asking for one or two “It’s a virus, I get it. Like, I take your child in the pool. I give
steaks on a tray, a customer respect it. But at the same time, an incredible amount of thanks
will buy the whole tray. Then like, even if everybody gets it, to the people that we have who
they’ll move on to shrimp, and like, yeah, people are gonna die, still want to be here with us.”
buy all the shrimp, and then which is terrible but, like, Chrissy Teigen, model
they’ll buy all the salmon steaks.” inevitable?”
Joe Gurrera, founder of upscale Vanessa Hudgens, actress
supermarket chain Citarella “I’m getting 75 calls a day, asking:
‘Do I quarantine myself in the
“That’s why whenever I get asked Hamptons? Do I stay in the city?’”
“One family has taken a yacht for like, ‘How are you doing?’ Bernard Kruger, cofounder of
nine weeks, and we have also I’m like, I can’t say anything but Sollis Health
had two long-term bookings for ‘Great’ because we have so
yachts of 130 ft and 230 ft ... much help. We have really
Clients are arranging for their wonderful people around us who “The demand [for private jets]
children to be schooled on board, are helping our world still go is ridiculous. It is Super Bowl
with cooking lessons from the round, where we’re still able to times 10!”
yacht’s chef and time with the work and take meetings — do Ricky Sitomer, chief executive
crew in the engine room learning these interviews — and get that of Star Jets International
about technology.” break where someone else can
Jonathan Beckett, yacht broker

14 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 “Sunset last night ... isolated in the
Grenadines avoiding the virus. I’m
hoping everybody is staying safe.”
David Geffen, film studio executive

about technology.”

Jonathan Beckett, yacht broker

“That’s why whenever I get asked

like, ‘How are you doing?’ I’m
like, I can’t say anything but
‘Great’ because we have so much
help. We have really wonderful
people around us who are helping
“En route to Paris. Paranoid? “The coronavirus panic is dumb.” “Let me be completely clear:
our world still go round, where
Prudent? Panicked? Placid? Elon Musk, Tesla ceo There is a level of guilt, almost,
we’re still able to work and take
Pandemic? Propaganda? from capitalizing on this
“Instead of asking for one or two meetings — do these inter-
Paltrow’s just going to go ahead much demand.”
steaks on a tray, a customer will views — and get that break
and sleep with this thing on
buy“Our clientstray.
the whole are stocking up their where
Then they’ll Jerod Davis,else
someone ownercanof private
take your jet
the plane.”
move on to shrimp, and buy all like
wine cellars, buying things childcharter company
in the pool. I give Southern
an Jet
Gwyneth Paltrow, goop hustler eight bottles
the shrimp, of a good
and then $200
they’ll buy Napa incredible amount of thanks to
burgundy,
all the instead of one bottle.” the people that we have who still
salmon steaks.”
Joel Kaye, Hamptons liquor “Word
want to beup, can
here youus.”
with handle the truth
“I had this nightmare that Joestore
Gurrera,
ownerfounder of upscale
my brother ... maybe we don’t
somehow in Davos, all of us who supermarket chain Citarella Chrissy Teigen, model
need a vaccine, Maybe need to
went there got it, and then we “One family has taken a yacht for “It’stake this Itime
a virus, of isolation
get it. Like, I from the
all left and spread it ... The only nine“Iweeks,
even bought
and wethe drugstore
have also hadout respect
distractions
it. But atof the
the world
same and
time,
good news from that is that it two of all its dental
long-term floss. for
bookings I wanted like,have
evenaifpersonal
everybody revival
gets where
it, we
might have just killed the elite.” yachtsto make
of 130sure I had
ft and 230enough,
ft along like,focus
yeah,on the ONLY
people thingdie,
are gonna in the
Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan with extra
...Clients toothbrushes,
are arranging soap,
for their whichworld that really
is terrible but, matters.
like, Jesus.”
Chase ceo children to be schooled on board,...
toothpaste and body lotions inevitable?”
Hulk Hogan, professional wrestler
withIfcooking
I have to be quarantined,
lessons from the
I better Vanessa Hudgens, actress
yacht’s cheflook nice.”with the
and time
crewJean
in the engine room
Shafiroff, learning
philanthropist “I’m getting 75 calls a day, asking:

PANDEMIC POLITICS 15
 DEPARTMENT
FRONT MATTERS
NAME
SUB-DEPARTMENT
STRUGGLE SESSION
NAME BY AUTHOR
COLE STANGLER
NAME

“We’re Not
Lorem
Heroes,Ipsum
We’re
Dolor
HealthSit Amet
Workers”

DEK:
WhileNammostaliquet,
politicians
ipsum
quarantine
et wine
Unlike cellars,
them,buying
however, things
Fiatlike
chose
semper
in safety,
convallis,
La France quam
Insoumise’s
lacus luctus eight
not tobottles
publicly of announce
a good $200 thatNapa
burgundy,
she was donninginstead of one bottle.”
a protective mask
nisi,
Caroline
ac cursus
Fiat isenim
risking
diam
herutlife
leo.on and heading into battle. (After
Joel Kaye, Hamptons liquor store
the front lines as a health worker. news of her effort leaked, she
owner
issued only a brief statement, prom-
ising
“I evento bought
inform the drugstore
public in out
further
of all itsdetail
dentalonly after
floss. the illness
I wanted to
has peaked.)
make sure I had Doing so prema-
enough, along
turely,
with Fiattoothbrushes,
extra said, would risk soap,
bringing attention
toothpaste and body tolotions —If I
herself...
‘Do I quarantine myself in the Paltrow’s just going to go ahead and distract
have from the more
to be quarantined, I better
Hamptons? Do I stay in the and sleep with this thing on the important
look nice.” job of treating those in
city?’” plane.” need. It wasn’t exactly easy to
Jean Shafiroff, philanthropist
Bernard Kruger, cofounder of Sollis sign up, either: after having
Gwyneth Paltrow, Goop hustler
In 2017, Caroline Fiat made
Health “It’s where I belong,” the deputy trouble
“Let mewith the officialclear:
be completely reserve
history when she became the first from
“I hadthe left-populist
this nightmare that party website,
There is aFiat
leveldirectly
of guilt,contacted
almost,
health aide ever elected to La Francein
somehow Insoumise
Davos, all(lfi)
of ustold
who regional
from health authorities
capitalizing and
on this much
France’s
“The National
demand Assembly.
[for private But
jets] is went shortly
there
Jacobin after
got it, andstarting
then we all local hospital officials, who
demand.”
in recent weeks, the forty-three-
ridiculous. It is Super Bowl times work
left in spread
and the hospital. “We’re
it ... The onlyin supplied her with a work contract.
Jerod Davis, private jet operator
year-old has been back at her old
10!” the middle
good of a health
news from that iscrisis,
that it
Public health is a field that Fiat
job, as she joins the front lines of and wehave
might needjust
people.”
killed the elite.”
Ricky Sitomer, chief executive of knows well — and from the
the fight against covid-19. Since
Star Jets International Jamie
At leastDimon, JP Morgan
three other Chase
legislators ground up. After a series of odd
late March, the left-wing mp
ceo
with medical backgrounds in jobs, including work as a telemar-
has worked full time in a corona-
France’s National Assembly and keter, executive assistant, and
virus ward at a public hospital “The coronavirus panic is dumb.”
“En route to Paris. Paranoid? Senate have signed up to help emergency medical technician,
in her native département of
Prudent? Panicked? Placid? Elon
fightMusk, Tesla ceomobilizing
the pandemic, Fiat began her career as a health
Meurthe-et-Moselle, in eastern
Pandemic? Propaganda? through the government’s aide in 2009. This is a job in
France — one of the country’s “Our clients are stocking up their
“health reserve” force. which average net monthly pay
hardest-hit areas.

16 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 “We’re Not Heroes, We’re Health Workers”

hovers around a paltry €1,400,

“For the last two decades, we’ve tried to
below that of nurses. And, like
many in the profession, Fiat transform hospitals into a corporation.”
worked largely short-term employ-
ment contracts. Her longest stint
at a single job came at a retirement
home, where she worked for
her modest background, which her critiques — something she
three years. “They always told us
lay firmly outside the standard believes was linked, in part, to her
to do more with less,” she told
mold of French mps. working-class background. “They
me. “I saw the crisis firsthand.”
looked down on what I had to
Since reaching parliament in
But Fiat was also politically say,” Fiat said. At one point, “the
June 2017, Fiat has spent much
engaged from an early age. Born health minister went so far as
of her time focused on public
into a family of union activists to say, in the chamber, ‘I under-
health issues. Under President
and Communist Party supporters, stand, Mrs. Fiat, that you don’t
Emmanuel Macron and his drive
she joined the Communist youth understand.’”
to limit state spending, that has
fraction when she was just sixteen
often meant calling for more fund- This repeated inaction makes
years old. “We talked a lot of
ing. Serving on the Assembly’s today’s crisis all the more painful
politics at home, and they voted
social affairs commission, Fiat in Fiat’s eyes. Health workers
Communist, so it was part of
notably coauthored a critical across France have suffered from
my family education,” Fiat says
report in 2018 on her former field. a shortage of masks and proper
with a laugh, though she stresses
protective equipment. Many
she “was convinced by the ideas,” To address what she deemed a
hospitals have been overwhelmed
too. This commitment soon “crisis” in retirement homes,
with patients, especially in the
extended to the workplace: as a she called for doubling the ratio
east and in the Paris metropolitan
health aide, she served as a of health aides per resident —
area. The death toll in retirement
union delegate with the militant a demand that ultimately went
homes is staggering. And there
General Confederation of unheeded, supposedly for
is a worrying lack of beds: before
Labor (cgt). And after she became budgetary reasons. While Fiat
the crisis began, Germany had
involved with left-winger recognized that her proposal
five times as many in intensive
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s presiden- came with a hefty price tag, she
care units than France. Despite
tial campaign in spring 2017, said it was justified because
France’s reputation for its rela-
his party, La France Insoumise, it aimed to address a “health
tively generous welfare state, its
asked her to run for a parliamen- emergency.” Later, when rank-
medical system has suffered
tary seat in her native region and-file strikes swept across
in recent years from cost-cutting.
of Lorraine. emergency rooms in 2019, Fiat
relayed worker demands in “They never took me seriously
A working mother, Fiat often
the National Assembly, calling when I was saying it, and yet,
campaigned with her baby stroller
for more funding, more hiring, everything I was saying is now
(she says she couldn’t afford
and higher pay. During a question- happening,” Fiat told me. “By
a babysitter). But she qualified for
and-answer session with the killing our hospitals — by remov-
the second round, where she faced
health minister last fall, she ing material and human support —
off against a candidate from the
memorably defended the strikers if a crisis happens, well, there you
far-right National Front. In what
and slammed the government’s go, we have nothing to manage it.”
one local paper dubbed a “clash
“austerity” policies.
of the extremes,” Fiat went on As such, Fiat hasn’t been all too
to an easy triumph and began Still, she bemoans the fact that moved by the government’s
generating national attention for Macron’s majority cast aside recent shift in rhetoric. President

PANDEMIC POLITICS 17
 STRUGGLE SESSION

Macron has praised French hospitals to do more with less “I think there’ll be a before and
citizens for their nightly applause resources. Deemed number one an after covid-19,” she said. “It
of health workers during the globally by the World Health remains to be seen — will they
crisis. And, in a marked contrast Organization in 2000, France’s listen to us? I don’t know. But
from his infamous call to forge health system has since then when we return to the National
a “start-up” nation, he has instead been under growing pressure, Assembly, I’ll feel very, very
hailed France’s “welfare state,” dealing with a string of cost- legitimate, given that I was
saluting doctors, nurses, and cutting reforms and a funding raising the alarm for two and
hospital staffers on more than one squeeze that ramped up consider- a half years.”
occasion as “heroes in white coats.” ably under right-wing president
Crises can often rally support
Nicolas Sarkozy.
“No, no, we’re not heroes,” Fiat behind existing leadership,
said. “We’re health workers. We “For the last two decades, and the first polls during the
just want to be valued for what we’ve tried to transform hospitals covid-19 outbreak showed
we are. A hero is someone who into a corporation,” Fiat com- a notable uptick in support for
wears underpants over tights. It’s ments. “Hospitals needed to make Macron and his prime minister,
not someone who wears a lab a profit, and the health system Édouard Philippe. And yet,
coat. If they had done what was is continually targeted for savings. at the same time, criticism has
needed for at least the last two We’ve gone from a health system grown over the official response
years, we wouldn’t need ‘heroes’ that was envied by all of the world to the pandemic. Fiat hopes
today. We would be properly to a system that’s not at all envied.” it might result in authorities
informed, with enough numbers, listening more closely to what
Still, like many on the French
and with the material necessary health workers have to say.
left, Fiat hopes the virus might
to manage this crisis.”
shake up the country’s political “In France,” she said, “there’s a
Fiat also echoes a criticism shared landscape. saying: mieux vaut prévenir que
by many in the public health guérir — prevention is better
system: the state’s push to force than a cure. Voilà.”

Photo by Claudio Schwarz

@purzlbaum on Unsplash

18 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

Means
Frontof
Deduction
Matters
NO
THELYSENKOISM
POPULIST FRONT
HERE
 MEANS OF DEDUCTION BY LEIGH PHILLIPS

ILLUSTRATION BY
MARCO MICCICHÈ

The Market
Is Leaving Us
Unprepared
for a Pandemic

in january, before the novel coro- As we face down what the World
navirus covid-19 had achieved Health Organization calls “a new
official pandemic status, when it
was still prompting little more than normal” of high-impact epidemics,
below-the-fold news articles about researchers and public health
the outbreak in Wuhan, one spicy officials find themselves at war
little quote in Nature from one of
the world’s leading experts on this with for-profit pharmaceutical
family of viruses, structural biolo- companies.
gist Rolf Hilgenfeld, nevertheless
stood out.
“The total number of people
infected, if you combine sars,
mers [previous related corona-
virus outbreaks] and this new virus,
is under 12,500 people. That’s not a
market. The number of cases is too He had been asked how quickly is ready to go, by that point, an out-
small. Pharmaceutical companies preclinical testing could be com- break may be over.
are not interested,” he told the sci- pleted, and ultimately, assuming Why would any company make
entific journal. positive results, how soon such a such a huge investment in drug dis-
Hilgenfeld was on his way to response to the disease might be covery, only to find at the end that
Hubei province even as the Chinese ready for deployment. But Hilgen- there were no patients?
government was placing the popu- feld’s answer suggested that this There is the possibility of per-
lation of 57 million in Wuhan and question sort of misses the point, forming research on coronaviruses
surrounding cities under lockdown, because by the time an effective drug in general and developing antiviral
or fēng chéng, to test early-stage drug might be ready, it would be too late, therapies for many coronaviruses —
candidates on animals infected by not just this time, but whenever which are also responsible, along
the new coronavirus, now desig- these sorts of events happen. The with other viruses, for the illness
nated sars-cov-2. problem is that once a compound we collectively call the common

PANDEMIC POLITICS 21
 VULGAR EMPIRICIST

cold — instead of just this par-

ticular one, well ahead of such an
Virulence and
outbreak, so as to have a decent head
start when a novel coronavirus event Contagiousness
does occur.
Indeed, this sort of preparative
work is precisely what Hilgenfeld
Primary
and his colleague Malik Peiris, a Transmission
University of Hong Kong microbiol- Method Airborne Vector-Borne Bodily Fluids
(e.g., bites from insects
ogist, argued was necessary in a 2013 or mammals)
review paper on lessons learned
from ten years of research into
highly pathogenic coronaviruses,
in particular from the sars and NOT VERY QUITE CONTAGIOUS VERY
mers outbreaks. In that paper, he 100%
Rabies (untreated)
cheered the huge progress that had
been made in gaining insight into
90%
the function and structures of the
sars coronavirus, including some
CASE FATALITY RATE

research into vaccine development 80%

and evaluation on animal models. HIV (untreated)

But after the outbreak waned, by 70% Ebola

2005, there was “no incentive to fur-
Avian Flu
ther develop sars-cov vaccines.” 60%
Tuberculosis
Bubonic Plague
No money, either, for the develop-
ment of antivirals (for people who
50%
have already been infected by the
virus). That is, there is no money
to be made. 40% MERS
DEADLINESS

But it’s not just the private

Syphilis
sector. While coronavirus research 30%
C. difficile
has continued largely at univer-
sity and government laboratories, Polio
20% Typhoid
Hilgenfeld took funding agencies to
MRSA Smallpox
task as well. He did not explain why,
10% E. coli SARS
but we might: it is not surprising Diphtheria
HIV (treated)
that a neoliberalized public sector Dengue
Campylobacter Fever
in which tax cuts to corporations 1%
COVID-19 Hepatitis B
and the wealthy are prioritized over Salmonella Scarlet
Swine Fever Lyme Disease
human need will also find that the Flu
0.1% Seasonal
cupboard is bare when it comes to Flu
diseases that only kill a few tens of Norovirus
(vomiting bug) Rhinovirus
thousands. 0% (common cold)
And perhaps that’s fair enough. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
For any given pie, there are only so R₀ = 1 (disease not likely to spread)
many decently sized slices to go
around. Hilgenfeld conceded that
CONTAGIOUSNESS

22 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 The Market Is Leaving Us
Unprepared for a Pandemic

Deadly pathogens may kill their host before

virologists themselves likely failed
the host has a chance to pass on the pathogen.
to take the threat of the reemergence
That’s why there tends to be a trade-off of a sars-like virus sufficiently
between virulence and contagiousness. seriously.
But then the mers coronavirus
hit in 2013, killing some 850 people.
Researchers and public health
officials were now increasingly cog-
Fecal-oral Food Sexual Contact Surfaces nizant of the potential threat from
this family of illnesses.
In 2016, Alimuddin Zumla,
a professor of infectious diseases
and international health at Uni-
HIGHLY VACCINATE NOW
versity College London, argued in
a paper that the continuing threat
of coronaviruses in the wake of
the mers outbreak presented a
“golden opportunity” to overcome
Source: Centers for Disease EXTREMELY DEADLY the obstacles to the development of
Control, World Health anti-coronavirus drugs. He called
Organization, CIDRAP, for the creation of an international
Information Is Beautiful collaborative network combining
clinicians, virologists, and drug
developers backed with political
commitment to carry out clinical
trials on anti-coronavirus drugs
that have already been shown to be
safe and effective in vitro (popularly
described as “test-tube experi-
DEADLY

ments”) and in animal models.

Zumla echoed Hilgenfeld’s con-
cerns that the waxing and waning
in numbers of new patients made
recruitment for clinical trials dif-
SOMEWHAT

ficult and “reduced the incentives

DEADLY

for pharmaceutical companies to

Whooping Cough develop antiviral drugs,” adding that
Mumps (infants)
mers cases being predominantly
confined to the Middle East didn’t
NOT TOO

Measles
DEADLY

Malaria
help. There is also a “lack of indus-
trial incentives to develop antivirals
Chicken Pox Rotavirus
for mild infections for other, less
(stomach bug) pathogenic coronaviruses” — the
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ones that cause the common cold.
To be sure, there are other
significant challenges specific to
coronaviruses that make drug
NUMBER OF PEOPLE ONE PERSON WILL LIKELY INFECT

PANDEMIC POLITICS 23
 How Vaccines Work

development difficult. Above all, development, the relatively low

they are one of the most diverse numbers of cases of an emerging
and rapidly mutating groups of infectious disease initially, and the
viruses, and new strains emerge chance that the epidemic will end
unpredictably. Coronaviruses are with no further cases, pharmaceu-
rna viruses, which means that they tical companies would be unlikely to
do not have the same genetic proof- even initiate the discovery process
reading and error correction during without government intervention
replication that dna-based viruses or incentives.”
do. These high mutation rates mean The great news is that Hilgen-
that drugs that target existing coro- feld thinks he and his colleagues
naviruses may not be as effective might have figured out a way around
against new ones. this indifference of market actors. WEAKENED OR DEAD DISEASE
In addition, for sa r s and They have developed compounds PATHOGENS INTRODUCED INTO
PATIENT, OFTEN BY INJECTION
mers, experiments using animal that are active against not just coro-
models such as transgenic mice naviruses, but also a large family of
and nonhuman primates can only enteroviruses. Some five hundred
be performed in a few biosafety level thousand children catch one known
3 (high-containment) laboratories, as enterovirus 71 annually, causing
and they are technically exacting to hand, foot, and mouth disease.
boot. But Zumla wrote that the lack And if something wins approval
of industrial incentives was the most for treating these diseases, the
important obstacle. researchers reckon that they can
Writing in a 2009 book on quickly deploy that same drug when
disaster medicine, the associate we are hit by the next coronavirus
director of the National Infectious outbreak.
Diseases Service at the Veterans Half a million cases? Now
Health Administration, Shantini that’s market-attractive. “We can
Gamage, and her colleagues also get pharma involved,” he told the WHITE BLOOD CELLS TRIGGERED
noted the unique challenge of coro- journal. TO PRODUCE ANTIBODIES
TO FIGHT THE DISESASE
naviruses, given that information is Let’s hope he’s right. Three
learned about the pathogen and the cheers to Hilgenfeld for figuring out
disease as the epidemic progresses. a potential way to make coronavirus
And even if, despite this, research therapeutic development coincide
is successful, it is still the case with the profit imperatives of large
that it generally takes about eight pharmaceutical companies.
years in the United States to march But why should researchers
through clinical trials, approval, and have to bend themselves into knots
marketing. attempting to make their work
But once again, Gamage empha- synchronize with the demands of
sized the unavoidable challenge that profit-making, especially if such
the market just doesn’t work here. work is in the realm of public health?
Referring to coronaviruses such as And what do we do when, for a par-
sars and mers, she argued that ticular area within public health
we cannot win this fight unless research, development, and deploy- IF PATIENT ENCOUNTERS DISEASE
the public sector leads the charge: ment (rd&d), there just isn’t any LATER, ANTIBODIES NEUTRALIZE
THE INVADING CELLS
“Factoring in the high cost of drug way to shoehorn in profit-making?

24 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

UNEVEN & COMBINED

It Takes a Herd Simply put, vaccination saves lives.

How Herd Immunity Works

NOT IMMUNIZED
BUT STILL HEALTHY

NO ONE IS IMMUNIZED CONTAGIOUS DISEASE SPREADS THROUGH

THE POPULATION

IMMUNIZED
AND HEALTHY

SOME OF THE POPULATION GETS IMMUNIZED CONTAGIOUS DISEASE SPREADS THROUGH

SOME OF THE POPULATION

NOT IMMUNIZED,
SICK, AND CONTAGIOUS

MOST OF THE POPULATION GETS IMMUNIZED THE CHAIN OF INFECTION IS BROKEN, WITH THE
VIRUS LACKING SOMEONE NEARBY TO SPREAD TO

PANDEMIC POLITICS 25
 And, of course, now, with 60 In addition, in the wake of difficulties, the next step, mass pro-
percent of humanity at risk of being the sars outbreak, and following duction of a vaccine, would present
infected with covid-19 if it had the challenges faced in dealing a fresh challenge that cepi does
been left unchecked, there is plainly with Ebola in West Africa, a raft not have the resources to tackle.
a substantial market. But now is too of new global partnerships have According to the journal Science,
late, and everyone is scrambling to been established that straddle the Inovio’s facilities could produce one
catch up. And, as deadly as covid-19 public-private divide, explicitly hundred thousand doses a year, the
is, it appears not to be the much recognizing that the market, left to Queensland researchers four times
more deadly pandemic — likely its own devices, is insufficient for that, and Moderna 100 million
an influenza — that we have been dealing with these threats. These doses. That sounds like a lot, but,
fearing. It is inevitable that, at some include the International Severe as the author of the piece reports,
point in the future, there will be one Acute Respiratory and Emerging in a worst-case scenario, this would
that is more virulent and infectious. Infection Consortium (isaric), be far from sufficient for the world’s
Alongside this, public health the Emerging Diseases Clinical population.
officials and researchers are cheering Assessment and Response Network Moderna and Inovio stocks may
what they describe as unprece- (edcarn), the Global Research have gone through the roof after the
dented cooperation: freely sharing Collaboration for Infectious Disease announcement, but as Mark Fein-
sequence data, setting aside egos, Preparedness (glopid-r), and the berg, the head of the International
and using social media (for once World Health Organization (who) aids Vaccine Initiative and former
playing a positive role!) to facilitate r&d Blueprint. The establishment chief scientific officer of American
communication among researchers of such partnerships, networks, and pharmaceutical giant Merck’s vac-
in real time. Scientists are working mechanisms has long been one of the cine division during the last Ebola
around the clock. Journals have primary recommendations of public outbreak, warned medical news
opened (some) access to relevant health officials. This is undoubtedly outlet Stat: “The prospects and the
papers. Researcher-pirates have a massive step forward. amount of work involved will neces-
used the illegal open-access web- Another of these networks, the sarily take [a small biotech company]
site Sci-Hub to make more than five nonprofit public-private Coalition away from their core business and
thousand scientific articles relating for Epidemic Preparedness Innova- the interest of their investors in get-
to coronaviruses fully searchable tions (cepi), was launched in 2017 ting a return on their investment.”
and free. The initiators of this effort to develop epidemic-preventing And it’s not just coronaviruses
declared: “Dividing the world’s sci- vaccines and antivirals indepen- or other emerging infectious dis-
entists with a paywall in the middle dent of this market failure. Last eases that confront this problem.
of a global humanitarian crisis is an week, cepi announced some $12.5 As covered elsewhere in these
unacceptable and unforgivable act million in funding for a University pages, the crisis of bacterial anti-
of criminal greed.” of Queensland lab, the National biotic resistance that humanity
As paleontologist and author of Institute of Allergy and Infectious faces — which has the potential to
The [R]evolution in Open Science Jon Diseases, and two small US biotech undermine much of modern med-
Tennant put it: “Open Science saves firms, Moderna, Inc., and Inovio icine because so much of it, from
lives.” All this extra-market cooper- Pharmaceuticals, to look at three surgeries to catheters, injections,
ation — or solidarity, the term we on different pathways to develop vac- and even many diagnostic proce-
the Left use to describe such self- cines for 2019-ncov. They aim to dures, depends upon a background
less, deep humanism — offers a hint have a vaccine ready for human of antimicrobial protection — is
of the better world to come, where testing in sixteen weeks, down from primarily a problem of insufficient
no one does anything for profit any the years that such efforts normally profitability. If successful, a course
longer, but simply works in service take. of antibiotics is taken for a few
of one another and of the collective But even if the cepi-coordinated weeks or months at most, and then
advance of freedom. strategy confronts no unexpected the patient stops purchasing those

26 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 The Market Is Leaving Us Unprepared for a Pandemic

drugs. But with chronic diseases, Infectious diseases, in particular, would be the best solution to the
the patient has to purchase medica- pose a challenge to profitability antibiotic-resistance crisis, com-
tion on a regular basis for the rest of because “curing existing patients paring the current situation to the
their lives. For this reason, most of also decreases the number of car- 2008 financial crash that forced the
the large pharmaceutical companies riers able to transmit the virus to nationalization of the Royal Bank
got out of the business of antibiotic new patients.” Cancer, thank god, of Scotland.
research and production more than the report concluded, does not pose And, as with that emergency
three decades ago. this problem (the unsaid corollary, nationalization within the financial
Antifungal therapeutics face an of course, being that we damn well sector more than a decade ago, we
identical profitability challenge. An better not find a cure for cancer). don’t have a lot of time to wait today.
extensive 2019 feature in the New As odious as all this appears, the We already confront a crisis of anti-
York Times by science journalists problem, therefore, is not immo- microbial resistance.
Matt Richtel and Andrew Jacobs rality or evil, as we often hear, but The executive director of the
investigated the spread of Candida amorality. The market can only who Health Emergencies Pro-
auris around the world over the last ever provide what is profitable. It gramme, Michael Ryan, said last
five years, a fungus that is resistant is utterly indifferent to human needs. summer: “We are entering a very
to some or all antifungal medica- So, in the end, these rd&d new phase of high-impact epi-
tions. Half of all those infected die networks that are heroically demics.” At the time he spoke, the
within ninety days. As a result, this responding to what they acknowl- who was tracking some 160 dis-
fungus has forced even a renowned edge is a market failure are just very ease events around the world, nine
British medical center to shut down advanced forms of charity — a sort of them at the organization’s highest
its intensive care unit. The paper of well-intentioned, warmhearted emergency level. “I don’t think
on the scale of the problem that the corporate subsidy that addresses we’ve ever had a situation where
reporters relied on for the back- the symptoms but not the systemic we’re responding to so many emer-
bone of their story unsurprisingly cause of the problem. It is akin to gencies at one time. This is a new
lays the blame for the “sparse dis- offering drugs to ease a patient’s normal, I don’t expect the frequency
covery pipeline” on “a chronic lack emphysema without telling them of these events to reduce.”
of investment in novel antifungal to quit smoking. The situation is a product of
agents” because “most major phar- Instead, pharmaceutical rd&d the confluence of increased travel
maceutical companies are not should be entirely freed from the and trade through the advent of
investing in antifungals, preferring limitations imposed on it by market globalization, rapid urbanization,
to focus on other, apparently more amorality. The sector should be and rising wealth in economies like
lucrative areas.” taken into the public realm and China and India, as well as climate
In 2018, the financial giant employ the postal delivery model, change, deforestation, and the con-
Goldman Sachs issued a report in which profitable routes cross- solidation of food animal produc-
that asked, “Is curing patients a subsidize money-losing routes, tion. In addition to tackling these
sustainable business model?” The but in this case, unprofitable drug ecological challenges that contribute
analyst thought that Gilead Sci- discovery and manufacture would to the risk from infectious disease,
ences’ treatment for hepatitis C, be paid for by their profitable we need a pharmaceutical sector fit
which produced cure rates in excess counterparts. for the twenty-first century.
of 90 percent, offered a cautionary This is not the predictable ram- The free market is holding back
tale. While US sales hit as much as blings of a democratic socialist. It the advance of science, medicine,
$12.5 billion in 2015, they slid to is, rather, the recommendation last and public health. It’s an outdated
a mere $4 billion three years later year of the UK’s “superbug tsar,” Jim system of allocation that is no
because its “hepatitis C franchise O’Neill, a former chief economist longer up to the task of protecting
has gradually exhausted the avail- for Goldman Sachs. He suggested humanity from disease — if it
able pool of treatable patients.” that nationalizing drug companies ever was. ■

PANDEMIC POLITICS 27
 MEANS OF DEDUCTION
TRANSITIONS

We Need We’re in a race with bacteria to

develop new classes of antibiotics.
Better Drugs The free market isn’t helping.

R Staphylococcus

R Pneumococcus

R Streptococcus
R Shigella
Antibiotic
Resistance
Identified

Antibiotics
Introduced

Tetracycline Methicillin
Penicillin

Erythromycin

Gentamicin

Vancomycin
1940 1950 1960 1970

Ketoconazole
Antifungal treatment
Resistance failures
Identified

Antifungal
Introduced
Amphoceterin B

Flucytosine

Polyenes Antimetabolites

Azoles Echinocandins

28 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 R Enterobacteriaceae

R Enterobacteriaceae

R Staphylococcus
R Staphylococcus

R Staphylococcus
R Pneumococcus
R Enterococcus

R Enterococcus

Linezolid Ceftaroline
Imipenem and
Ceftazidime

Levofloxacin

1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Clinical
Aspergillus identification
Reports of resistance to of Candida
fluconazole Aspergillus voriconazole in auris
resistance resistance to agriculture
in Candida FKS mutations
itraconazole
infections identified in
echinocandin-
resistant Clinical isolates of
Candida voriconazole-
resistant Aspergillus
fumigatus
Ketoconazole

Fluconazole

Liposomal
Amphotericin B

Itraconazole

Caspofungin
Voriconazole

Micafungin
Posaconazole
and Anidulafungin

Isavuconazole

PANDEMIC POLITICS 29
 TRANSITIONS

Source: GAO analysis of FDA data and a 2016 collaborative study

by Biotechnology Innovation Organization, Biomedtracker, and Amplion.

Clinical Trial Phases

Preclinical Clinical Trial: Phase I Clinical Trial: Phase II

Testing on animals for toxicity. Clinical trials test for safety Clinical trials test for efficacy in
and dosing ranges. Number the patients that the drug
of patients: 20 to 80. is intended to treat. Number of
Approximately 63.2% moved patients: a few dozen to
to Phase II. hundreds. Approximately 30.7%
moved to Phase III.

Investigational New
Drug Application
Describes the manufacturer’s
plans for testing the drug in
clinical trials. If approved, the
manufacturer becomes the
sponsor of an “existing IND.” Clinical Trial: Phase III patients: hundreds to
Clinical trials test for efficacy in thousands. Approximately
the patients that the drug 58.1% moved to the new
is intended to treat. Number of drug application process.

New Drug Application Review FDA Approval

After successfully completing the Phase III trials, Results
the manufacturer submits a new drug application FDA either approves or
to FDA. Approximately 85.3% are approved. denies the drug or
biologic for sales and
marketing in the United
States.

30 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

32 ILLUSTRATION BY BEN O’NEIL
 No
Act
Hurricanes,
pandemics, and
droughts are acts of
God. Private

of
markets in housing,
health care, and
food — and the
resulting deaths —
are not.

BY MEAGAN DAY
God
toward the end of my first semester in college, voucher system for private housing. Housing officials
some older student radicals I admired announced they and real-estate developers had discussed this vision for
were driving down to New Orleans. Two and a half years years, and the fact that the Bricks were now vacant —
after Hurricane Katrina, they were going to protest the their residents scattered to the winds — provided the
demolition of public housing. I was elated when they perfect opportunity to realize it.
agreed to let me tag along. I didn’t know much about Proponents of this plan said the new housing would
the political context, but I trusted them. be nicer. But, structurally speaking, New Orleans public
Our caravan arrived in Louisiana from Ohio late housing — built by dedicated reformers during the New
at night, and we settled onto some friendly activists’ Deal — was hard to match. According to New York
couches. In the morning, we reported for duty at a Times architecture critic Nicolai Ourossoff in 2006:
meeting assembled by local organizers and public-
The city’s public housing projects have little in
housing residents. From there, we deployed to New
common with the dehumanizing superblocks and
Orleans’ vacant projects, known as “the Bricks.”
grim plazas that have long been an emblem of urban
It was only after standing in front of the buildings
poverty. Modestly scaled, they include some of the
themselves that I understood the nature of the injustice
best public housing built in the United States . . .
that had brought us to New Orleans. I’d seen Spike Lee’s
Solidly built, the buildings’ detailed brickwork, tile
When the Levees Broke, the iconic footage of wooden
roofs and wrought-iron balustrades represent a level
structures reduced to splinters. But the Bricks didn’t
of craft more likely found on an Ivy League campus
look anything like that. The city, which planned to tear
than in a contemporary public housing complex.
them down, had declared them uninhabitable — but
from what I could tell, they were basically unscathed. Decades of disinvestment and neglect left the Bricks
New Orleans planned to replace the Bricks with with some wear and tear, but those problems could have
scaled-down, mixed-income, public-private develop- been fixed with money and attention. The city chose
ments, which would be supplemented by an expanded austerity instead. “This is a government-sanctioned

PANDEMIC POLITICS 33
Meagan Day

diaspora of New Orleans’ poorest African American

citizens,” said Bill Quigley, a lawyer who represented
residents in their attempts to legally stop the demolition.
“They are destroying perfectly habitable apartments
when they are more rare than any time since the Civil
War.”
The lawsuit failed. The protests failed, too. The
Bricks were torn down. The new housing was erected
in their place.
Before the storm, the city had seven thousand units
of public housing. Ten years later, it had only two thou-
sand units. Public-housing residents were forced out of
New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, and their homes
were razed in their absence. Only a handful of them
moved into the new units.
It was all according to plan. Days after the storm,
the Wall Street Journal reported that Louisiana Repub-
lican congressman Richard Baker had been overheard
telling lobbyists in Washington, DC, “We finally cleaned
up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it.
But God did.”

The Neoliberal Virus

i saw how, in times of disaster, the powerful will That’s not the result of nature but of medical device
swiftly pursue their preexisting agenda at the expense companies promising to build them — even signing
of those who’ve already lost the most. I also learned government contracts and taking public money — then
another valuable lesson that winter in New Orleans: the failing to deliver, with zero consequences, leaving exec-
forces of profit are quick to blame the forces of nature. utives richer and the public in peril.
When the world comes crashing down, it suits the The coronavirus didn’t cause our understaffed
ruling class to allow the public to believe that the pri- and under-resourced hospitals — “lean production”
mary cause of the collapse was something organic and in hospital management did that. It didn’t cause an
intractable — God, the weather, natural fluctuations in unemployment rate that rivals the Great Depression —
the market, the unique savagery of a virus, the incom- the United States’ unwillingness to protect workers’
prehensible perversity of a foreign culture. Displacing jobs did that. The coronavirus didn’t cause millions of
responsibility onto abstractions allows the powerful to newly unemployed people to lose their private health
evade criticism for creating and maintaining such an insurance during a public health crisis — the United
unstable state of affairs. States’ stubborn refusal to implement a single-payer
The way the coronavirus pandemic in the United system did that.
States has been presented is a case in point. covid-19 What allowed each of these systems to atrophy to the
is a novel coronavirus that causes fever, fatigue, and a point where they could be knocked over with a feather
dry cough. In severe cases, it causes respiratory distress. is the brazenly pro-corporate disposition of American
In some cases, it causes death. But the coronavirus can’t governance, and the successful suppression of a working-
accurately be said to have caused the upheaval happening class mass movement that might reverse it.
all around us. The mainstream media has so far demonstrated
A virus can make a person sick enough to need a little curiosity about the social and economic processes
ventilator — but it can’t create a shortage of ventilators. that have facilitated the virus’s spread. Likewise, the

34 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 NO ACT OF GOD

Republican
congressman
Richard Baker had
been overheard
telling lobbyists in
Washington, DC,
“We finally cleaned
up public housing
in New Orleans. We
couldn’t do it. But
God did.”

politicians of both parties are hard-pressed to acknowl- between 20 and 50 million people dead in India and
edge the deeper problems that led to this point, nor the China. Given their scale, it’s astonishing how seldom
protracted crises that presaged this acute one. To the these famines are acknowledged. Their obscurity no
extent that they acknowledge human causes, Democrats doubt owes partly to the notion that famines are inevi-
restrict blame to the aberrant and inexplicable phenom- table, since they are usually the result of natural events
enon they call Donald Trump, while Trump himself lays beyond human control — a tragic footnote with no
it at the feet of the increasingly vilified Chinese people. villains and no lessons.
But mostly, our leaders speak in reverential tones But in countries like India, the origins of the famine
of the awesome power of the virus itself, and of the at the end of the nineteenth century were directly attrib-
strength of the American spirit in the face of misfortune utable to British imperial policy. Of course, natural
and calamity. Neoliberalism is the road we traveled to disturbances came first: an El Niño event brought
get here, but those who paved it would have us believe about a monsoon failure. But the unavoidable causes
we arrived at our present destination by teleportation. stop there.
Humans had been practicing agriculture in India for
more than ten thousand years and had developed sys-
The Black Book of Capitalism
tems for responding to variable rainfall. These methods
i first watched something like this play out in New weren’t perfect, but they were important safeguards.
Orleans in 2007, where the waters were blamed for the They were violently disrupted by the British Empire’s
deeds of the wealthy. But it’s much older than that. integration of India into the global capitalist order,
In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis recounts when, as Davis writes, “the reluctant peasantry was
the late-nineteenth-century famines that killed tens forcibly married to the world market.”
of millions across the colonized world. Two waves of Where previous generations had built irrigation
starvation, from 1876–9 and 1896–1902, left anywhere infrastructure to conserve water, the British let it fall

35
Meagan Day

Britain’s
politicians and press
preferred to think
of these famines
as Malthusian
inevitabilities. On
the contrary, they
were acts of
man — and they
were barbarous.

into disrepair. Where grain had previously been grown did not prompt them to intervene in grain speculation
for consumption, cotton and indigo were now grown for and export. On the contrary, they were averse to the
export. Grain itself was then increasingly grown for sale idea of price controls and other economic interventions.
and exported, too, largely to England, depleting India’s They were devotees of the free market, apostles of Adam
grain stores — reserves that had historically been relied Smith, who had written in The Wealth of Nations that
on to tide people over in times of crop failure. “famine has never arisen from any other cause but the
When the British began building railroads in India, violence of government attempting, by improper means,
they bragged that famines would become a thing of the to remedy the inconvenience of dearth.”
past — grain could simply be imported via rail. But when For a time, British authorities did nothing whatso-
the starvation began, that’s not what happened. In fact, ever as people dropped like flies and wild dogs tore at
the railroads were used to take grain out of drought- the corpses of children in the streets. Indeed, so strong
stricken regions. Grain was now a commodity, subject was their opposition to price controls or regulation, so
to hoarding and speculation, and ultimately for sale to steadfast their faith that the market would correct itself
the highest bidder. Often, the highest bidder was in in due time, and so enduring their belief that interfer-
a less-famished region of India, or all the way over in ence would only make matters worse, that the colonial
London. government disciplined those in its ranks who orches-
Among themselves, British administrators acknowl- trated relief.
edged that “the famine was one of high prices rather than One official did the unthinkable and imported
of scarcity of food,” Davis writes. But this understanding grain, directly providing sustenance. He was accused

36
 NO ACT OF GOD

Guilty
powerful capitalists, the free-market ideologues
who applaud their dominance, and the political oppor-
tunists who cater to their preferences will always join
forces to exploit emergencies. From the moment the
term “crisis” enters the conversation, they will attempt
to muscle through their dream agenda, rationalizing it
by pointing to circumstances out of anyone’s control. It
only took a few weeks after the United States understood
the severity of the coronavirus pandemic for Congress to
pass a multitrillion-dollar, no-strings-attached bailout
of business, the largest ever in American history.
And the predation doesn’t stop when the crisis
is over. Then begins a period of so-called recovery
in which influential actors — usually the same ones
responsible for creating the crisis and for profiteering
as it unfolded — endeavor to bend society further to
their will in the name of reconstruction. Politicians
will clear the red tape for their friends in business and
call it a public-private partnership to restore society
to its former (exaggerated) glory. But as Naomi Klein
observed in The Shock Doctrine, “disaster capitalists have
no interest in repairing what was,” only in “finishing
the job of the original disaster.” That’s what happened
in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and, absent
of “extravagance,” “Fourierism” — as in Charles Fou- serious opposition, it’s precisely what will happen after
rier, the founder of utopian socialism — and, worst of this pandemic passes.
all, encouraging Indians to believe “it is the duty of the The ruling class’s capacity to exploit the aftermath of
Government to keep them alive.” disaster depends in part on the public’s continued will-
So shamed was this official that, in order to rehabili- ingness to tolerate their hold on power. Even if the public
tate his reputation, he built labor camps where starving loses confidence or its patience wears thin, deposing the
Indians were meant to work in exchange for food, partly existing political and economic elite will remain a formi-
in the image of Dickensian English workhouses. But dable task. But nothing of the sort can be attempted if
people whose bodies are undergoing a process called people continue to believe that their leaders are trying
“skeletonization” cannot perform physical labor. The in good faith to shepherd society through the aftermath
relief camps inevitably became extermination camps. of an unavoidable tragedy for which the ruling class itself
All of this, writes Davis, was a British sacrifice bears no responsibility.
“to their savage god, the Invisible Hand.” They were A virus can infect a human body and cause it to die, as
murdered “by the theological application of the sacred this particular virus has proved in abundance. But it can’t
principles of Smith” and the other prophets of free- cause the degree of social chaos we’re witnessing today.
market capitalism. Systematic collapse of this magnitude is a judgment on
Britain’s politicians and press preferred to think of that system’s viability. And in the end, no matter how
these famines as Malthusian inevitabilities. On the con- convincingly they plead innocence, it’s also an indict-
trary, they were acts of man — and they were barbarous. ment of those who diligently maintain it. ■

PANDEMIC POLITICS 37
 BY DANIEL FINN

The Black Death

Helped Bring
About the Modern
World

38 ILLUSTRATION BY BEN O’NEIL

The Black Death wiped out
a third of Europe’s
population in just a few
years. But the peasants and
laborers who survived
wielded newfound power
From Mass Death to Class Struggle
over their masters.
population levels didn’t recover for centuries.
According to one estimate, England and Wales had a
population of 5.75 million in 1300, but just 3 million a
the black death was the greatest calamity ever to century later; Italy’s population dropped from 12.5 to
have struck Europe, more lethal by far than the destruc- 8 million across the same period, and it had only risen
tive wars of the twentieth century. In the space of a few to 9 million by 1500.
years, the mysterious plague wiped out as much as a Understandably, many of those who lived through
third of the European population. the Black Death without the benefit of modern scientific
Historians coined the term “Black Death” long after knowledge feared it was the end of the world. It was cer-
the great catastrophe had subsided. Most scholars today tainly the end of the world as they knew it: as William
believe it was a form of bubonic plague, although that Chester Jordan has written, the great plague sounded
remains a point of contention. Whatever biological agent “the death knell of medieval European civilization.”
caused the pandemic, it spread from Central Asia to But if you were lucky enough to survive, the Black
Europe and the Middle East in the 1340s, helped along Death had the perverse effect of improving social con-
by the gigantic trading zone that the Mongol conquests ditions for the classes who made up the vast bulk of
had forged during the previous century — a precocious Europe’s population: farmers, artisans, and laborers.
form of microbial globalization. Wages were higher, rents were lower, and employers
This tidal wave of disease struck a population already had to compete for workers instead of dictating terms.
weakened by the famine of 1315–22, the worst Europe There was even an upsurge of social revolt in the late
had known for a thousand years. It kept on resurging fourteenth century that far surpassed anything known
after the initial plague of 1347–51: England alone suffered before the plague. The aristocrats who dominated Euro-
thirty-one outbreaks between 1348 and 1485. The Black pean society must have felt as if the world was ending
Death affected every part of the continent, from the for a second time.
largest cities to isolated rural hamlets. Even the Norse That’s certainly the impression conveyed by the
colonies in Greenland fell victim to its lethal spread. written records of the time, full of complaints about the

PANDEMIC POLITICS 39
Daniel Finn

lazy, insubordinate attitude of the people whose labor

sustained Europe’s aristocracy.
One English chronicler suggested that workers
were exploiting their newfound bargaining power after
the sharp decline in population: “Such a shortage of
laborers ensued that the humble turned up their noses
at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to
serve the eminent for triple wages.” The Italian histo-
rian Matteo Villani described a similar picture in his
native Florence: “The common people, by reason of
the abundance and superfluity that they found, would
no longer work at their accustomed trades; they wanted
the dearest and most delicate foods.”
The poet John Gower, a friend of Geoffrey Chaucer,
elevated such upper-class grumbling to the status of an
art form:

So goes the world from bad to worse when they who

guard the sheep or the herdsmen in their places,
demand to be rewarded more for their labour than “They Took No Notice of the King’s
the master-bailiff used to be. And on the other hand Command”
it may be seen that whatever the work may be, the
that was by no means the only time that the upper
labourer is so expensive that whoever wants any-
classes of Western Europe tried to deploy the law in
thing done must pay five or six shillings for what
defense of social hierarchy. The Ordinance of Labourers
formerly cost two.
passed by the English crown in 1349 is the most famous
Gower looked back fondly on the days of yore, when example. It instructed every man and woman below the
his social inferiors had known their place: age of sixty who didn’t have a trade or land of their own
to accept whatever employment they were offered, for a
The labourers of olden times were not accustomed
wage not exceeding the standard rate in 1346: “If anyone
to eat wheat bread; their bread was made of beans
takes more, let him be committed to gaol.”
and of other corn, and their drink was water. Then
Two years later came another statute, which com-
cheese and milk were as a feast to them; rarely had
plained that laborers were still displaying “exceptional
they any other feast than this. Their clothing was
greed” and refusing to work “unless they are paid livery
plain grey. Then was the world of such folk well-or-
and wages double or treble what they were accustomed to
dered in its estate.
receive” before the plague — an attitude that redounded
According to the medieval historian John Hatcher, “to the great damage of the great men.”
Gower’s complaints, while unusually eloquent, were A similar French law from 1354 claimed that laborers
“broadly representative of observations contained in would only work when it pleased them, “spending the
the literature, chronicles and sermons of their age.” rest of their time in taverns playing games and enjoying
Hatcher quotes from a 1363 English statute that themselves.” According to a 1348 Florentine decree,
raged against the sartorial extravagance of the lower action of some kind was necessary because “while many
orders, whose “outrageous and excessive apparel” was citizens had suddenly become the poor, the poor had
unbecoming for people of “their estate and degree.” become rich.”
The chronicler Henry Knighton believed it was high The content of such laws varied from one country
time for state intervention in this field, as “one person or city to the next, but a common theme ran through
cannot be discerned from another in splendour of dress them all: a desire to control the terms on which workers
or belongings.” were hired, for the benefit of “great men.” As Samuel

40 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 THE BLACK DEATH HELPED BRING ABOUT THE MODERN WORLD

Cohn noted in a summary of post-plague labor legisla- However, there was a real shift during the decades
tion: “With few exceptions and seemingly independent that followed the pandemic. In his book The Great
of each other, the plague spurred governments across Leveler, Walter Scheidel describes a general picture of
Europe suddenly to see a need to regulate wages and fix reduced inequality in Western Europe, based on the
prices with a zeal, territorial scale, and meticulousness latest findings of economic historians:
missing from any state’s legislation before 1348.”
The nobility faced crisis as the value of the agri-
Henry Knighton later complained that these efforts
cultural products of their estates dropped and the
were to no avail, in England at any rate:
wages of those who made them rose. As tenants
The workers were so above themselves and so were carried off by disease, landowners had to hire
bloody-minded that they took no notice of the king’s more wage laborers to farm, in return for better
command. If anyone wished to hire them he had to pay. Those still employed as tenants enjoyed longer
submit to their demands, for either his fruit and terms of contract and lower rents. Society experi-
standing corn would be lost or he had to pander to enced a wholesale reversal of the earlier trend that
the arrogance and greed of the workers. had made the landlord class stronger and richer
and most people poorer: now it was the other way
around as the elite captured less of the surplus and
others received more for about a century and a half.

John Hatcher studied the impact of the Black

Death on wages in England and found that the king’s
legislation proved largely impotent against demands
for higher pay: “At Knightsbridge even the carpenter
who made the stocks with which to imprison those
workers who refused to swear obedience to the Statute
of Laborers was paid at the illegal rate of five and a half
pence per day.” Employers often got around the laws by
making payments in kind to their workers in place of
money wages.

There was a new feeling of

Spreading the Wealth Around self-confidence among the
of course, we shouldn’t necessarily take these com-
lower orders, a sense that
plaints at face value. There’s a long history of rich “commoners could change
spokesmen bemoaning the outrageous demands of the their social, economic and
people who work for them, no matter how modest those
demands might be. Feudal lords were just as likely to
political worlds, the here
indulge in self-pity about their fortunes as today’s cap- and now, in concrete and
italists. Cohn argues that the initial batch of coercive practical ways.”
labor laws came before there had been any significant
increase in wages, at a time when workers who had
survived the plague were scrambling to catch up with
price inflation.

PANDEMIC POLITICS 41
Daniel Finn

motivations were largely absent during the century that

followed, and clerics played a much smaller role. Third,
there was a striking post-plague convergence between
movements north and south of the Alps, which had
previously been developing along very different lines.
Cohn could find no evidence of “joint organization
or communication linking such distant insurgents,”
something that would have been extraordinarily difficult
before the mass production of books, pamphlets, and
newspapers was possible. But the social consequences
of the plague provoked uncannily similar reactions from
people who could never have communicated with one
another directly.
It seems as if the Black Death played a role in medi-
eval Europe that was analogous to the great modern
crises of capitalism. The European economy of the late
Middle Ages was far more complex and interconnected
than it had been a few centuries earlier. However, it
was still dominated by subsistence agriculture, and it
Wave of Revolt
lacked the feedback mechanisms of trade and invest-
these struggles over the division of wealth were ment that can now spread a recession around the world
fought by individuals, not collectives, voting with their in months, weeks, or even days. It took a biological
feet as they sought the best deal. But there was also a crisis of European society to trigger a series of popular
wave of social revolt in Western Europe after the plague rebellions, from the French Jacquerie of 1358 to the
had struck. Samuel Cohn tracks the progress of this wave Florentine Ciompi Revolt twenty years later, when the
in his book Lust for Liberty. He makes three striking city’s weavers briefly seized power.
observations about its general character. According to Cohn, these revolts shouldn’t be seen
First of all, revolts were far more common after the simply as the result of labor scarcity or attempts by
Black Death than they had been before it. In the initial Europe’s rulers to levy new taxes, important as these
years of the outbreak, there were hardly any examples factors were:
of social protest. People who had been traumatized by
By 1355 a new spirit for societal change and a desire
the death toll were more likely to join extreme religious
for liberty had sunk deep roots beneath the bour-
sects, such as the flagellants who became a familiar sight
geois or popolo, the class that, along with the nobility,
in many European cities, or to lash out at vulnerable
had defined liberties as special corporate privileges
scapegoats, especially Jews. But that had started to
since the central Middle Ages.
change by the mid-1350s.
In his sample, drawn from France, Italy, and Flan- There was a new feeling of self-confidence among
ders, Cohn documented 470 revolts between 1200 and the lower orders, a sense that “commoners could change
1348, or 2.7 per year; from 1348 until 1425, there were their social, economic and political worlds, the here and
621, or 8 per year: “If the years 1354–1383 are compared now, in concrete and practical ways.”
with the pre-plague period, the increase is higher: 300 The French monk Michel Pintoin described the
revolts, or 10 per annum.” Cohn’s book doesn’t look at spirit of the age as he perceived it from a bitterly hostile
the English experience directly, but the late fourteenth perspective: “The appetite for liberty was burning ... the
century also saw the greatest challenge to aristocratic lust for new things incessant.” A trace of that spirit has
rule in medieval England, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. come down to us in the saying attributed to John Ball,
Second, while most of the revolts before 1348 were a leader of the English Peasants’ Revolt: “When Adam
religious, or at least had strong religious overtones, such delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”

42 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 THE BLACK DEATH HELPED BRING ABOUT THE MODERN WORLD

and Prussia, the nobility responded to the crisis of feu-

dalism by clamping down hard on their peasants, in what
became known as the “second serfdom.” Walter Scheidel
documents a similar outcome in Egypt, where wages
initially rose before the Mamluk ruling class forcibly
restored the balance of exploitation:

Even the most devastating epidemics cannot by

themselves equalize the distribution of wealth or
income. Institutional arrangements were capable of
blunting the force of demographic shocks, manipu-
lating labor markets by coercive means. One form
of violence could be offset by another: if microbial
assaults were met with sufficient human force to
suppress bargaining, elites were able to maintain or
New and Old Worlds quickly restore high levels of inequality.

western europe’s ruling classes defeated the revolts Historians still debate the role of the Black Death
of the late fourteenth century, often with pitiless bru- in shaping Western Europe’s great transition from feu-
tality. The French nobility answered the Jacquerie of dalism to capitalism. Whether it accelerated trends that
1358 with a bloody massacre of at least twenty thou- were already in motion or shifted development onto a
sand peasants. In England, people like John Ball were different path altogether, the pandemic certainly formed
hung, drawn, and quartered for their defiance of the part of the social matrix out of which modern capitalism
aristocratic order. emerged, especially in the English countryside.
The struggle of the Tuchins in southern France lasted David Herlihy argued that the shortage of workers
for two decades before the royal authorities brought encouraged labor-saving technological innovations,
them to heel. A remission granted to the people of Tou- from the printing press to bigger ships that required
louse, Carcassonne, and Beaucaire in return for a huge fewer sailors. By the end of the fifteenth century, the
fine gives a sense of how troublesome this uprising was monarchies of Western Europe had started to bounce
for the French monarchy. The text of the remission back. The conquest of the Americas opened up a new
accused the local inhabitants of field of predatory exploitation: the European colonists
brought with them a panoply of diseases that were even
forming unions, conspiring, plotting, giving advice,
more devastating for the indigenous peoples than the
forming cells, revolting, behaving abusively,
Black Death had been for Europe. In Europe itself, the
engaging in acts of arson, murder, capturing, impris-
Reformation triggered a new age of religious conflict,
oning, drowning and hanging royal officers, soldiers,
overshadowing the social revolts of the late medieval
and others of our subjects, breaking and mangling
period.
their limbs, creating blockades, engaging in war,
It was left to future generations of radicals to redis-
invading, capturing castles, villages and our forts.
cover that history as a source of inspiration, in a world
The fear of provoking another rebellion may have that had been transformed beyond recognition. In the
discouraged kings and lords from imposing new taxes or 1880s, the great Victorian socialist William Morris
feudal burdens on the peasantry. But it was beyond the composed his work A Dream of John Ball, in which
capacity of peasants and artisans to seize power for any he imagined an encounter with the most eloquent
length of time and impose a wholesale transformation of spokesman for the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Morris
European society. It would be centuries before Europe regretfully explained to Ball that England was still ruled
experienced that kind of revolution. by a class that lived off the labor of others, despite the
The experience of Western Europe wasn’t universal, passage of five centuries: “Mastership hath many shifts
either. Further east, in countries like Poland, Hungary, whereby it striveth to keep itself alive in the world.” ■

PANDEMIC POLITICS 43
 Reading
Reading
Materiel
THE
PATIENT
POPULIST
CHART
FRONT
 READING MATERIEL
CANON FODDER BY MIKE DAVIS

ILLUSTRATION BY
CHRISTOPH KLEINSTÜCK

Millions Die, On the literary destruction

But They’re of Los Angeles and
the nervous breakdown
All Liberals of American exceptionalism.

The destruction of Los Angeles one goes back further in the represented first as tragedy (New
has been a central theme or image history of the urban disaster York) and then as farce (Los
in at least 138 novels and films genre, the ghost of the romantic Angeles). The boiling tsunami of
since 1909. The City of Angels is sublime — beauty in the arms of fire and brimstone that pours
unique, not simply in the fre- terror — reappears. down Fifth Avenue is genuinely
quency of its fictional destruction, horrifying, consuming as it does
The destruction of London — the
but in the pleasure that such genuine human beings.
metropolis most persecuted in
apocalypses provide to readers
fiction between 1885 and 1940 — When the aliens turn to Los
and movie audiences. The entire
was imagined as a horrifying Angeles, however, who could
world seems to be rooting for
spectacle, equivalent to the death identify with the caricatured mob
Los Angeles to slide into the
of Western civilization itself. The of hippies, New Agers, and gay
Pacific or be swallowed up by the
obliteration of Los Angeles, by men dancing in idiot ecstasy on a
San Andreas Fault.
contrast, is often depicted as, or at skyscraper roof to greet the
The tidal waves, killer bees, least secretly experienced as, a extraterrestrials? There is a comic
h-bombs, and viruses that victory for civilization. undertone of “good riddance”
occasionally annihilate Seattle, when kooks like these are vapor-
Thus, in Independence Day, a film
Houston, Chicago, or San ized by Earth’s latest ill-mannered
that Republican presidential
Francisco produce a different kind guests. As one of Bob Dole’s
candidate Bob Dole endorsed as a
of frisson, an enjoyment edged senior advisers quipped: “Millions
model of Hollywood patriotism,
with horror and awe. Indeed, as die, but they’re all liberals.”
devastation wreaked by aliens is

PANDEMIC POLITICS 45
 CANON FODDER

Angeles, white fear of the dark anxieties over the inevitability of

races lies at the heart of such future world wars between the
visions. It is this obsession, far imperialist powers. New means of
more than anxieties about mass destruction — microbes,
earthquakes or nuclear weapons, radioactivity, poison gases, and
that leads us back to the real Los flying machines — conquered the
Angeles as well as to the deepest pulp press years, sometimes
animating fears of our culture. decades, before they were added to
the arsenals of the major powers.
In novels written before 1970,
when Los Angeles was still the It is thus hardly surprising that
most waspy of large American Los Angeles disaster fiction was
cities, racial hysteria was typically inaugurated not by earthquake,
expressed as fear of invading flood, or firestorm, but by a
Happy Holocausts hordes (variously yellow, brown, Japanese invasion of Southern
black, red, or their extraterrestrial California in Homer Lea’s lurid
The gleeful expendability of Los metonyms). After 1970, with 1909 account The Valor of
Angeles in the popular imagina- the rise of a non-Anglo majority Ignorance. Lea later claimed that
tion is in no small part due in Los Angeles County, the he had spent several months in
to Hollywood, which, when not city turns from an endangered a painstaking reconnaissance of
immolating itself, promotes its home into the alien itself; and its possible invasion routes and
environs as the heart of darkness. destruction affords an illicit battlefields throughout Southern
No city, in fiction or film, has pleasure not always visible in California. In The Valor of
been more likely to figure as the previous annihilations. Ignorance, the Japanese feint at
icon of a really bad future (or the “worthless” fortifications
present, for that matter). Post- at San Pedro then land unopposed
apocalyptic Los Angeles, overrun at Santa Monica. The next day,
by Terminators, androids, and at their leisure, they occupy Los
gangs, has become as much of Angeles, essentially completing
a cliché as Philip Marlowe’s mean “the conquest of Southern
streets or Gidget’s beach party. California.”
The decay of the city’s old
From this superb base of opera-
glamor has been inverted by the
tions, invulnerable to American
entertainment industry into a new
counterattack, the Imperial
glamor of decay.
Japanese Army is able to move
There is a deeper, Strangelovian vast numbers of troops northward
logic to such happy holocausts. to surround and besiege San
The abiding hysteria of Los Angeles Yellow Peril Francisco. Bombarded by Japanese
disaster fiction, and perhaps of artillery emplaced in Oakland
all disaster fiction — the urge to and Marin, San Francisco’s
Late-Victorian apocalyptic fiction
strike out and destroy, to wipe out hysterical business leaders force
depicted the nightmare side of
an entire city and untold thousands its small garrison to surrender,
the crude social Darwinism that
of its inhabitants — is rooted and the ensuing national political
was the pitiless ethos of the age of
in racial anxiety. From the earliest crisis, amplified by “class and
the robber baron. In such stories,
nineteenth-century examples sectional insurrections,” leads to
growing fears of violent social
of the literary destruction of the imposition of a military
revolution and of the “rising tide
London and New York to the latest monarchy in the eastern states.
of color” accompanied increasing
survivalist fantasies about Los

46 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Millions Die, But They’re All Liberals

With the Hearst press, which It is not surprising, then, that underground pleasure domes for
immediately championed Lea’s the climax of the postwar boom survival.
book, acting as bellows, The Valor in the mid-1960s saw the parallel
New Los Angeles, Howard
of Ignorance ignited an anti- emergence of fictional and
discovers, is a subterranean
Japanese frenzy that consumed nonfictional accounts of imminent
version of the Playboy mansion,
white California. Lea was later ecological collapse, frequently
where a few thousand select
credited by authorities as diverse in tandem with Malthusian fears
inhabitants grope and orgy while
as Clare Boothe Luce and Carey about too many poor people
waiting for the surface to become
McWilliams with being the creator of color.
habitable again. In order to
of the modern “Yellow Peril.”
Ecogigantism soon became the enhance “executive-quality genes”
dominant allegorical device in in the surviving population,
environmental science fiction. The however, reproduction is orga-
giant mutant ants in Gordon nized on strict eugenic principles.
Douglas’s 1954 film Them! may be As Howard’s girlfriend explains,
the products of nuclear testing in the environmental collapse
the desert, but when they move (nature’s “final solution”) was
into the Los Angeles River — now really a providential deliverance
entombed in concrete and from rampant overpopulation,
steel — they become potent mongrelization, and “race decay.”
symbols of the city’s destruction
of nature as well.

Other icky mutants — covered

with slime and oozing toxic
Ecocatastrophe juices — attempt to turn Los
Angeles into a friendly environ-
Ecological self-destruction has ment for fungi in Robert Hutton’s
been a minor but persistent independent film The Slime
theme in urban disaster fiction. People (1963). Eco-crud again rises
The emergence of the modern to the surface in Stephen
environmental movement in the Traxler’s Spawn of the Slithis
late 1960s opened a larger niche (1978), gobbling up aging hippies
for the “ecocatastrophe” novel as and Porsche-set yuppies alike in
a subgenre in its own right. Like Venice Beach. The Big One
the inevitability of nuclear war,
Race and ecology are combined in
the biological unsustainability of
Philip Wylie’s 1971 soft-core If there is an iron law of disaster
the giant city is now firmly lodged
potboiler, Los Angeles: a.d. 2017. in Southern California, it is simply
in contemporary doom
Publishing magnate Glenn that bad news for the region is
consciousness.
Howard awakens from a forty- usually good news for “the
Los Angeles, of course, is perfectly seven-year sleep to discover that industry.” Like one of the inde-
cast in the role of environmental Los Angeles has been destroyed structible parasites of disaster
suicide. Only Mexico City by an omnibus environmental fiction, Hollywood fattens on the
has more completely toxified its catastrophe that features spectacle of natural catastrophe
natural setting, and no other toxic algal blooms, arctic frosts, and racial turmoil. The classic
metropolis in the industrialized and a final exterminating smog. example was the San Fernando
Northern Hemisphere continues Anticipating the worst, big earthquake of February 1971,
to grow at such breakneck speed. corporations and their executives which killed sixty-four people and
have clandestinely built damaged twenty-three thousand

PANDEMIC POLITICS 47
 CANON FODDER

structures. Its aftershocks were MacLean’s Goodbye California Fernando Valley, attack Los
still rattling windows in Universal (1977). In it, the king of Cold War Angeles — the corrupt citadel of
City when mca commissioned macho pulp attempts to conjugate alien races and white race
Mario Puzo to craft a screenplay the Big One with a far-fetched traitors — on the Fourth of July
about the city’s destruction by the yellow hordes conspiracy. Islamic 1993. Concentrating on the city’s
Big One. guerrillas from Mindanao kidnap vulnerable infrastructure, they
leading nuclear physicists and cripple lax, blow up freeway
The huge success of Earthquake
force them to build a dozen overpasses, set the harbor ablaze,
spurred others to emulate its
hydrogen bombs, using plutonium and cut the aqueduct.
combination of terse characteriza-
stolen from California nuclear
tions and a Cecil B. DeMille A Pentagon counterattack is
power plants. To demonstrate
approach to disaster scenes. blunted by mutinous white troops,
their malevolence, the terrorists
Indeed, in the decade following and the guerrillas use captured
detonate one of the devices under
the film’s premiere in 1974, more tanks to crush last-ditch lapd
Santa Monica Bay.
than a dozen novels diligently resistance. A week later, all of
copied this underlying formula Southern California (including the
while diversifying the agencies of intercontinental ballistic missile
doom to include comet impacts, silos at Vandenberg Air Force
tsunamis, landslides, firestorms, Base) has fallen under the control
blizzards, and even giant of the Organization, becoming
alligators. the core of the emergent Aryan
Nation.
Unlike the screenplay for Earth-
quake, however, which The first act of the new regime is
downplayed Los Angeles’s racial the brutal expulsion of 7 million
tensions, subsequent disaster black people and Latinos from the
fictions openly exploited white Los Angeles region. Meanwhile,
anxiety and xenophobia. The hundreds of thousands of Jews and
1970s were a period of transition people of mixed ethnicity (“mon-
in Los Angeles, as the wasp grels”) are marched into the
stronghold became a cosmopolitan Day of the Rope mountains north of Los Angeles,
metropolis with an emergent where they are slaughtered.
non-Anglo majority. The Turner Diaries (1978) has Finally, on August 1 — the terrible
become justly infamous as the “Day of the Rope” — the Organiza-
The city was bitterly divided over
“bible” of Timothy McVeigh and tion turns to the white race
issues of school busing, tax reform,
other neo-Nazi terrorists. It is far traitors. Sixty thousand are hung
crime, and police abuse. Whites
less appreciated, however, that the “from tens of thousands of
were bolting from the public
central drama of the Diaries is a lampposts, power poles, and trees.”
school system in growing num-
bers, and the first gated and walled pornographically detailed After the purification of Southern
subdivisions had started to appear. description of the Los Angeles California, the Organization
There was growing apprehension Holocaust. nukes the “contaminated cities”
that natural disaster might destroy After a federal crackdown on gun of Miami, Toronto, and New
the increasingly precarious fire owners, the “Organization” and York, killing at least 60 million
wall that separated the suburban its internal “Order” of Aryan people. Later, after all nonwhites
“us” from the inner-city “them.” warriors launch a guerrilla war to have been exterminated in North
rid the earth of Jews and non- America, Aryan revolutions in
The first novel inspired by the San
whites. About a thousand Order Britain and Germany complete
Fernando quake that had big-
fighters, coordinated by a secret the construction of a European
screen ambitions was Alistair
field command post in the San Fourth Reich.

48 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Millions Die, But They’re All Liberals

In his 1995 novel, The End of Watergate. A well-paid job in an

the Age, God himself decides to aerospace plant and a ranch-style
flush Los Angeles down the home in a sunny subdivision, only
toilet with a “giant meteor” minutes away from the beaches
and a mile-high tsunami. Divine and Disneyland, was the lifestyle
genocide against Southern against which other Americans
California neatly disposes of measured the modernity of their
a disagreeable population towns and regions.
and allows Robertson to clear the
Now the tables have turned, and
decks for the real action:
metropolitan Los Angeles is a
righteous Texas Protestants
dystopian symbol of Dickensian
battling Satan (now president of
inequalities and intractable
the United States) and his minions
Divine Genocide racial contradictions. The deepest
(a billion demonic Indians,
anxieties of a post-liberal era —
Pakistanis, Persians, and Arabs).
After reading The Turner Diaries, above all, the collapse of American
it is impossible to have a benign belief in a utopian national
attitude toward the survivalist destiny — are translated into a
novels that proliferate like noxious demonic image of a region where
weeds after 1978. The post- the future has already turned
Vietnam right-wing backlash rancid.
provided the impetus for most of
But if some of the deep structures
the serial survivalist novels,
of our culture are ganging up on
published as paperback originals
Los Angeles, making it the
and comprising up to a hundred
scapegoat for the collapse of the
installments. In various episodes
American century, race remains
of Ryder Stacy’s Doomsday
the crucial category. Armageddon
Warrior series, Jerry Ahern’s The
has repeatedly been imagined
Survivalist series, William
as a war of extermination between
Johnstone’s Ashes series, and Symbol and Scapegoat the white and colored worlds.
David Robbins’s Blade series, the
sons of Buck Rogers battle What statistic is more depressing
Historians of British culture have
Russian invaders in the half-sunk, than the 28 million copies sold
had little difficulty arguing a
irradiated ruins of Los Angeles. since 1970 of Hal Lindsey’s raving
connection between the popularity
fundamentalist apocalypse, The
John Carpenter’s delirious Escape of the death-of-London novel in
Late, Great Planet Earth, with its
from LA (1996) manages to sample the 1885–1950 epoch and national
casual incineration of Los Angeles
(in the hip-hop sense) every mean anxieties about the decline of
and an entire chapter devoted to
image and racist undertone of empire. It is tempting to assert
the extermination of the Yellow
survivalist fiction in the service an analogous relationship
Peril? The ritual sacrifice of Los
of an ostensibly liberal plot about between the literary destruction
Angeles, as rehearsed endlessly in
Los Angeles as the reverse Ellis of Los Angeles and the nervous
pulp fiction and film, is part of a
Island of a Christian fascist breakdown of American
malign syndrome, whose cele-
America. The result is a cinematic exceptionalism.
brants include the darkest forces
nervous breakdown.
The dazzling growth of suburban in American history.
The ultimate Armageddonist Southern California was, after all,
fiction, however, comes from the the incontestable symbol of Adapted from Ecology of Fear: Los
eschatological pen of Christian national prosperity in the decades Angeles and the Imagination of
Coalition founder Pat Robertson. between Lend-Lease and Disaster (1998)

PANDEMIC POLITICS 49
 READING MATERIEL
CANON FODDER BY GRACE BLAKELEY

ILLUSTRATION BY
CHRISTOPH KLEINSTÜCK

Every Economic Question

Is a Question of Power

Big finance is sabotaging the real The links between business,

economy — that’s the central
finance, and the state do not
thesis of Anastasia Nesvetailova
and Ronen Palan’s new book, represent a perversion of
Sabotage: The Hidden Nature of liberal democracy — they are
Finance. Far from being a few
an unavoidable feature of
isolated incidents of malpractice,
the lying, cheating, and stealing capitalist political economy.
exposed during the financial crisis
constitute the main source of the
sector’s huge profits. Sabotage is
woven into the fabric of modern
finance — only extensive and
well-designed regulation can
prevent it.

The story told by Nesvetailova and

Palan is not new. Earlier works
like Nicholas Shaxson’s The
Finance Curse, Oliver
predecessors, Thorstein Veblen,
Bullough’s Moneyland, and
a nineteenth-century political
Michael Hudson’s Killing the
economist most famous for his
Host have all made broadly similar
theory of conspicuous consump-
arguments: although the finance
tion, laid out in a book called
sector is not inherently extractive,
The Theory of the Leisure Class.
it has now grown so large, so
monopolistic, and so corrupt that In some ways, Veblen’s analysis
it has become a drain on produc- Keynes and Veblen is more radical than that of
tive economic activity. According Keynes. The latter’s theory of the
Most of these writers base their
to these authors, financial business cycle suggested that
analysis on the work of John
“rentiers” — those who make their the finance sector would exacer-
Maynard Keynes, who famously
money by extracting economic bate the propensity of capitalism
called for “the euthanasia of
rents from the production toward boom-and-bust cycles
the rentier.” Nesvetailova and
process — are enemies of the by lending too much in the good
Palan, on the other hand, draw
healthy functioning of an other- times, and not lending enough
upon the work of one of Keynes’s
wise efficient capitalist economy. in the bad.

50 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Every Economic Question Is a Question of Power

The pro-cyclical tendencies of the chief secretary to the Treasury necessary power, legitimacy, and
finance were, for Keynes, an is reported to have solicited senior resources — needs to take back
inherent feature of any modern advisers from Goldman Sachs to control of financial markets and
capitalist economy. Individual oversee the now-defeated bailout impose regulatory control over the
financiers could not be blamed package put forward by the saboteurs.
for providing high-interest loans Republicans in Congress.
The authors call for a return to the
to businesses or consumers that
How do these saboteurs achieve “pro-market, anti-business”
were clearly unable to repay them:
their monopolistic ends? They approach to regulation pursued in
they were simply responding to
innovate. Financial innovations the wake of the Wall Street Crash,
the incentives that exist in a free
which guards against the monopo-
market regulated by the state.
listic instincts of businesses and
Veblen did not consider capitalist protects the functioning of free
rentiers to be quite so blameless, markets. Such an approach would,
as should be clear from his use they claim, allow regulators to find
of the term “sabotage.” He argued a third way between statists and
that financiers actively sought free marketeers, and “[protect] the
to control and dominate markets consumers of finance from
in order to maximize their sabotage.”
profits — even if that meant adopt-
ing anti-competitive, immoral, Technocratic Illusions
and occasionally illegal business
practices. Like Karl Marx, he Most economists, it appears, are
insisted that capitalism had an terrified that they might be
inherent tendency toward market accused of allowing ideology to
concentration, which would give influence their arguments. To
rise to extreme inequalities of guard against that, they frenetically
wealth and power. like the development of the seek out seemingly neutral,
mortgage-backed security (mbs), objective, technocratic “solutions”
Controlling the Market the collateralized debt obligation to modern policy problems, from
(cdo), and the credit default swap inequality to climate change.
As Nesvetailova and Palan put it, (cds) all dramatically increased
By furnishing policymakers with
financiers “never believed in the profitability of big interna-
an objective understanding of
markets in the first place. They tional banks in the 1990s and early
an issue and providing them with
believed, instead, in controlling 2000s. They also helped cause
a set of neutral tools to solve
the market. By whatever means the financial crisis of 2008.
it, economists claim to facilitate
possible.” Today’s financiers have Nesvetailova and Palan argue that
an evidence-based approach
become expert monopolists; a few these and other financial
to regulation, free from any
huge, international institutions — “innovations” represent nothing
ideological baggage. Such is the
with close links to regulators — more than regulatory arbitrage:
approach of Nesvetailova
dominate the financial market and “technique[s] for sabotaging the
and Palan, who plead with
use their quasi-monopolistic public welfare and government.”
policymakers to “move beyond
power to extract “super-normal
The solution to the problem of the binary dichotomy of ‘market
profits” from ordinary investors.
sabotage is fairly simple, for vs regulation.’”
This tendency has become acutely disciples of Veblen and post-
The trouble is, there’s no such
clear during the coronavirus Keynesians alike. The state — the
thing as an apolitical policy
pandemic: in the United States, only set of institutions with the

PANDEMIC POLITICS 51
 CANON FODDER

intervention — and there’s that compromises the normal it generates — requires more than
certainly no such thing as a functioning of the economy. In just clever economic analysis. It
non-ideological approach to the order to make the economy work requires building a movement to
economy. The authors may again, the state — conceived as a demand a different future.
draw on the work of Veblen, but neutral enforcer of the common
Nowhere has this been clearer
the ideological approach that good — simply needs to step in to
than in the response of capitalist
really underpins Sabotage is the regulate the system and punish the
states to the coronavirus crisis.
liberal Keynesianism described saboteurs.
Many on the Left have welcomed
by Geoff Mann in his book In the
the rise in state spending that
Long Run We Are All Dead. Their State and Ours we’ve seen of late, claiming that it
Like Keynes, the authors believe vindicates the fiscal policies
But the state is not a neutral
that free-market capitalism is a articulated by politicians like
economic actor. Diverse sets of
sound economic system that Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie
competing interests influence the
occasionally malfunctions, Sanders.
decisions made by policymakers,
whether due to uncertainty,
including those of the finance In fact, governments have used
liquidity preference, or — in this
sector itself. The links between these stimulus measures to
case — sabotage. And, like
business, finance, and the state support the interests of the
Keynes, they believe that it’s the
do not represent a perversion of coalition that underpins neoliber-
responsibility of the state to step
liberal democracy, but they are an alism — homeowners and
in and prevent such malfunctions
unavoidable feature of capitalist capitalists — rather than to help
from happening, or at least to
political economy. working people. Mortgage
clean up when they do occur.
holders, but not private renters,
Wealth translates to political
are being offered repayment
power, and power back to wealth,
holidays; businesses are being
so that a small number of people
given tax cuts; and there’s
in modern capitalist economies
widespread talk of bailouts for
control our largest political
huge multinational corporations.
and economic institutions. These
are the very people benefiting We are now entering an age of
from the kind of sabotage Nesve- state-monopoly capitalism, where
tailova and Palan so eloquently the interests of leading politicians,
describe in their book. What financiers, and corporate execu-
possible incentive could they have tives are fused to such an extent
to change the system? that they come to resemble the
“general cartel” posited by Rudolf
There are no non-political
Hilferding back in 1917. In that
solutions to economic problems:
context, the capitalist state is no
every economic question is a
friend of socialists, however large
Nesvetailova and Palan assume question of power. Competing
it becomes.
that the problems generated by interest groups — Marxists call
capitalism are a bug in the system, them classes — must organize in Fighting back against the oli-
rather than an inherent feature order to articulate their demands garchy that will use this crisis to
of it. In part, this is due to the and transform our institutions. In strengthen their grip on political
classic liberal assumption of a a capitalist economy, the ruling power is the central task for
separation between the political classes will always have the upper socialists today. We can only begin
and the economic. Sabotage is a hand. Challenging their domi- to move beyond capitalism once
political — or even moral — issue nance — and the crisis tendencies we democratize the state.

52 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 READING MATERIEL
DOSSIER

Agent
An entity that causes disease.

Interpreter Disease

of Maladies
A disorder that produces consistent symp-
toms but is not the simple result of injury.

Epidemiology
The study of the distribution,
determinants, and control of disease.

Immune System
Here’s a guide to the The bodily processes that defend
words you should against disease.

probably know, even

Therapeutics
if you don’t want Any treatment, therapy, or drug.
to think about them.

Antibiotics Medications that treat or prevent target fungi; and antiparasitics target
bacterial infections. parasites. Antiseptics (applied to
living tissue, as in the case of mouth-
wash or yeast infection cream) and
Antibody A large, Y-shaped protein produced disinfectants (applied to nonliving
in the body by memory B cells to kill surfaces such as countertops and
pathogens. Every invading pathogen doorknobs) are also considered
is shaped differently. An antibody antimicrobials.
recognizes the structures (antigens)
that are unique to a pathogen. The In developed countries in recent Anti-Vaxx or
antibody then binds to the pathogen decades, vaccination refuseniks Anti-Vaccination
and neutralizes it. Memory B cells, have steadily undermined herd Movement
which last for decades, remember immunity protection, resulting in
these structures forever. If a patho- multiple deadly measles outbreaks.
gen’s genome mutates as a result of
evolution, those structures change, Medications for patients already Antiviral Drugs
and the memory B cells may be less infected with a virus that inhibit viral or Antivirals
able to recognize them. development.

Antimicrobials A broad class of medical treatments Single-celled organisms with simple Bacteria
that combat microbial infections. internal structures that lack a nucleus.
Antibiotics are antimicrobials that A single bacteria particle is called a
target bacteria; antivirals target “bacterium.”
viruses; antifungals (or antimycotics)

54
 Interpreter of Maladies

Basic The average number of secondary stigmatization. Hendra virus, for

Reproduction cases of disease per case in a totally example, was named after a suburb
Number (R0) susceptible population, denoted of Brisbane, Australia, and residents
“R0” ( pronounced “R-naught”). The complain it has hurt property prices.
R0 does not tell us how deadly a Donald Trump, however, insists on
pathogen is. Rather, it tells us how calling COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus,”
infectious it is. Influenza has an R0 of a term that may have contributed to
0.9–2.1; measles, which is one of the a wave of violent attacks on Chinese
most infectious diseases humanity and other Asian Americans.
confronts, has an R0 of 12–18. At the
time of writing, COVID-19 appeared
to have an R0 of 1.4–3.9. Any procedure performed to deter- Diagnostic Test
mine the presence of a disease. While
the global diagnostic market is sub-
Contagious Infectious diseases that are spread stantial, few diagnostic products
directly from person to person, such deliver revenues anywhere close to
as influenza, strep throat, HIV, Ebola, those of “blockbuster” drugs, limiting
and COVID-19. All contagious dis- investment interest.
eases are infectious, but not all
infectious diseases are contagious.
For example, the flu is infectious A disease regularly found in a loca- Endemic
and contagious, but malaria is only tion or population. For example,
infectious. chicken pox is endemic in the US
population, but malaria is not.
Malaria was endemic in the United
Coronaviruses A family of viruses that cause disease States, especially in the South, until
in mammals and birds. In humans, the the National Malaria Eradication
viruses include those responsible for Program (1947–51), which involved
about 15 percent of common colds draining swamps, spraying insecti-
(other colds are primarily caused by cides from aircraft, and removing
another family of viruses: the rhino- mosquito breeding sites. The pro-
viruses), and the more lethal SARS, gram led to the creation of what
MERS, and COVID-19. would eventually be called the
Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention (CDC). This is why the CDC
COVID-19 The official name of the disease headquarters is in Atlanta rather than
(coronavirus caused by the virus SARS-CoV2. in Washington, DC.
disease 2019) “COVID.” The WHO’s rationale for
the terminology is that CO stands
for corona, VI for virus, and D for An occurrence of more cases of a Epidemic
disease, and 19 comes from the year disease than typically expected in
the outbreak was first identified. Since an area or population over a period
2015, the global health body has of time. Essentially synonymous with
halted naming diseases after loca- “outbreak.”
tions, groups of people, occupations,
animals, or food in order to avoid

55
 DOSSIER

Fomites Any inanimate objects, such as Resistance to disease either devel- Immunity
doorknobs, coins, or neckties, that oped by exposure to an antigen
transmit a pathogen to a host. from an infecting agent or vaccine
(active immunity), or passed from
Germ An informal word for a pathogen. mother to infant or via injection
of antibodies ( passive immunity).
Immunity is characterized by the
presence of an antibody, produced
Germ Theory The scientific theory that describes by the individual. Lifelong immunity is
of Disease how microorganisms can lead to sometimes conferred, but for other
disease. As far back as ancient diseases, immunity wanes over time.
Greece, some thinkers suggested This is why booster shots are required
that disease might be spread through for some diseases.
contact or spore-like seeds too
small to be seen, and similar ideas
were mooted during the Islamic The establishment of a pathogen in Infection
Golden Age. But otherwise, people a host.
believed that disease was caused
by miasma, a supposed poisonous
vapor in the air that came from rot- Capable of transmitting infection. Infectious
ting matter. In the second half of the
nineteenth century, the founders of
microbiology and epidemiology
such as John Snow, Louis Pasteur, How well a pathogen establishes an Infectivity
and Robert Koch delivered scientific infection in one individual.
proof of the germ theory, marking a
revolution in medical science that laid
the foundation for much of modern How well an infection spreads Infectiousness
medicine. from one individual to another; its
transmission potential. Infectious-
ness is essentially synonymous
Herd Immunity The phenomenon in which the small with contagiousness. The measure
number of individuals who cannot of infectiousness or transmission
be vaccinated ( because they are potential is described by the basic
too young or otherwise immunocom- reproduction number.
promised) are still protected from
the spread of infection. This occurs
when they are surrounded by large Illness caused by germs such as Infectious
numbers of other people who are viruses or bacteria. Some infectious Disease
immune, typically via vaccination, diseases, such as malaria or Zika
and so the pathogen has nowhere virus, are spread to people directly
to spread. from animals, but others are spread
from person to person.

56
 Interpreter of Maladies

MERS An infectious respiratory disease The natural home of a pathogen. A Reservoir

(Middle East caused by the MERS-coronavirus reservoir can be either a population
respiratory (MERS-CoV). The first case, identified of organisms in which a pathogen
syndrome) in 2012, occurred in Saudi Arabia, lives and reproduces, typically
although a large outbreak occurred (though not always) without causing
in South Korea in 2015. There is no harm to the host, or an environment.
vaccine or antiviral treatment. Common population reservoirs
include bats, rats, pigs, and mon-
keys. Reservoirs can include more
Microorganism Microscopic organisms, including than one species, as well as vector
or Microbe bacteria, archaea, most protists, species. Environment reservoirs may
some fungi, and even micro-animals be comprised of water, soil, or air.
like the cuddly tardigrade. There are
about as many bacteria and other
microbes in our body as there are An infectious respiratory disease SARS
human cells, making each one of us caused by the SARS coronavirus (severe acute
as much an ecosystem as we are or SARS-CoV-1. The outbreak was respiratory
an organism. In the human body, declared contained by the WHO in syndrome)
microbes include both those essen- 2004. SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2,
tial for life and pathogens responsible the latter of which causes COVID-19,
for disease. are two strains of the same coro-
navirus species, SARSr-CoV (severe
acute respiratory syndrome–related
Pandemic An epidemic occurring worldwide coronavirus). There is no vaccine or
or over a very large area. The word antiviral treatment. Pharmaceutical
only describes spread, not severity. firms lost interest in finding one when
But many people and politicians the disease was contained.
associate the word with severity,
which is why the WHO was reluctant
to declare COVID-19 a pandemic SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respira- SARS-CoV-2
even after it had crossed continents. tory syndrome coronavirus 2) is the (severe acute
name of the virus that causes the dis- respiratory
ease COVID-19. It is only the most syndrome
Pathogen Any microorganism or microscopic recent lethal coronavirus outbreak. coronavirus 2):
infectious agent capable of causing Public health officials have been
illness. Macroscopic organisms, warning governments of the risk of
such as some worms and insects, a coronavirus pandemic since the
can also cause disease, but these 2003 SARS outbreak and the MERS
organisms are by convention called outbreaks that began in 2012.
“parasites” rather than “pathogens.”
Parasitic infections are responsible
for an enormous burden of disease A process of transmission that Spillover or
in developing countries, but because occurs when a reservoir population Cross-Species
they primarily affect low-income comes into contact with a novel host Transmission
people, there is insufficient market population.
incentive for pharmaceutical firms to
develop drugs or other therapies for
them. Synonym for “germ.”

57
 DOSSIER

Vaccine A preparation of an agent — such Infectious agents comprised of Virus

as killed microorganisms, living but genetic material (either DNA or
weakened organisms, parts of such RNA), a protective protein coat
organisms, or living fully virulent called a capsid, and sometimes
organisms — that is administered to an outer envelope made of lipids
prompt active acquired immunity (fats). Viruses can only reproduce
to a particular infectious disease. by hijacking the machinery of living
The agent encourages the body’s cells. Because they do not have any
immune system to develop anti- cell structure, some biologists do not
bodies that will enable it to recognize consider viruses to be living. Other
and destroy any future invasion from biologists argue that because they
the pathogen. In recent decades, have genetic material, reproduce,
large pharmaceutical firms have and evolve through natural selection,
mostly gotten out of the business they should be considered noncel-
of researching and developing lular life. In general, viruses are much
vaccines due to their insufficient smaller than bacteria. A single virus
profitability, preferring to focus on particle is called a “virion.”
therapeutics for chronic illnesses.

The ability of a pathogen to damage Virulence

Vector Any living agent, often an insect a host. Put another way: the propor- (often used inter-
or other animal, that transmits a tion of infected people who become changeably with
pathogen from one host to another. severely ill or die. In plain language, pathogenicity)
Mosquitoes, for example, are the virulence essentially refers to how
vector of malaria, dengue, West deadly a pathogen is. Virulence is
Nile virus, chikungunya, yellow fever, often correlated with the ability of the
and many other diseases. As a result, pathogen to multiply within the host.
mosquitoes are responsible for the
deaths of more than 1 million people
worldwide every year, and they have The spread of a novel infectious Zoonosis
killed more humans than all the wars disease from a nonhuman animal to
in history. humans. HIV, Ebola, and COVID-19
are zoonotic diseases. Zoonotic
spillover events have risen in recent
Ventilator A machine that mechanically moves decades, as deforestation and road-
air in and out of the lungs of patients building into wilderness push animals
who are having difficulty breathing. into closer contact with humans.
A US government effort in the early
2000s to develop a cheaper and
more easily manufactured venti-
lator was dashed when Covidien, a
large medical device manufacturer
that produced a more expensive
competing device, bought out the
company contracted by the govern-
ment to develop the new ventilator
and shut down the project.

58 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 READING MATERIEL
FIELD NOTES

A Pandemic
Foretold

Thirty years ago, an urgent Preface

report about microbial
As the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease
threats to public health was pandemic surely should have taught us, in the context of
ignored by policymakers. infectious diseases, there is nowhere in the world from
which we are remote and no one from whom we are
disconnected. 1 Consequently, some infectious diseases
that now affect people in other parts of the world repre-
sent potential threats to the United States because of
global interdependence, modern transportation, trade,
and changing social and cultural patterns. 2

1 By 1992, an estimated 8–12 million people worldwide The United States currently expends 14 percent of its
had been infected with HIV. The World Health Organi- gross national product on health; the vast majority of the
zation (WHO) now estimates that there have been 75 money is spent on curative medicine to treat people who
million people infected and 32 million deaths, with the are already ill. 3 The major premise of this report is that
majority of cases in Africa. anticipation and prevention of infectious diseases are
possible, necessary, and ultimately cost-effective.

In the battle against infectious disease, drugs, vaccines,

2 A National Intelligence Council report published in and pesticides are important weapons. Because of the
2000 warned that “new and re-emerging infectious dis- evolutionary potential of many microbes, however, the
eases will pose a rising global health threat and will use of these weapons may inadvertently contribute to
complicate US and global security over the next twenty the selection of certain mutations, adaptations, and
years.” The report noted that this growing threat was migrations that enable pathogens to proliferate or
“due as much to dramatic changes in human behavior non-pathogens to acquire virulence. In those circum-
and broader social, economic, and technological devel- stances in which humankind has been successful in the
opments as to mutations in pathogens.” Those changes battle against specific diseases, complacency ( i.e., the
included “rising international travel and commerce that assumption that we have conquered a disease and can
hasten the spread of infectious diseases; inappropriate thus shift our concern to other pressing problems) can
use of antibiotics that leads to the development of micro- also constitute a major threat to health. Such compla-
bial resistance; and the breakdown of public-health cency can extend beyond those infectious diseases that
systems in some countries owing to war or economic have been successfully suppressed to embrace the con-
decline.” cept that all infectious diseases are readily suppressed
because of the advances of modern medicine. Shifting
priorities, therefore, can allow for the reemergence, as
3 By 2018, the United States was spending almost well as the emergence, of diseases.
18 percent of its GDP on health care: $3.6 trillion, or $11,172
per person.

60
Executive Summary A Pandemic Foretold

Most vaccine manufacturers (and policymakers) are

reluctant to make the necessary financial commitment
since few vaccines are highly profitable and strict federal
safety and efficacy requirements make the risk of failure In 1992, the Institute of
a very real possibility. 4 Vaccine developers must also
take into account the extra costs that may arise from Medicine published the
liability claims for injuries or deaths blamed on vaccines.
This concern has forced a number of vaccine manufac-
report “Emerging Infections:
turers out of the marketplace. Microbial Threats to
Industry might be encouraged to assume a greater role Health in the United States,”
in vaccine development if it was asked to participate in
a public/private sector collaboration, similar to NIH’s warning that infectious
National Cooperative Vaccine Development Groups,
whose focus is HIV disease vaccines. 5 Another alter-
diseases were likely to
native might be to offer industry various economic be a growing problem in
incentives, such as minimum guaranteed purchases, to
conduct its own development work. subsequent decades.
Given the various disincentives to vaccine development The authors of the report
for more common pathogens, the development of vac-
cines for emerging microbes is even more problematic. argued that the develop-
There may be potentially catastrophic consequences if
the development process is left entirely to free enterprise.
ment of vaccines could
The committee thus believes that a comprehensive not be left to the vagaries
strategy is urgently needed. To bring a new vaccine rap-
idly from the research laboratory into general use — a of free enterprise: relying
necessary criterion if one hopes to prevent or control an
emerging infectious disease — will require an integrated
on firms guided by the
national process that: bottom line to identify and
• defines the need for a vaccine, its technical require- respond to threats would
ments, target populations, and delivery systems;
have “potentially cata-
• ensures the purchase and use of the developed strophic consequences.”
product through purchase guarantees and targeted
immunization programs;
4 A 2017 Brookings Institution report found that $160
• relies as much as possible on the capability of private billion was invested annually in health-related research
industry to manage the vaccine development pro- and development (R&D): $5.9 billion of that was spent on
cess, through the use of contracted production, if R&D for the Global South, with just $511 million channeled
necessary; into research on “drugs, vaccines, and therapeutics for
35 specific illnesses that primarily impact populations in
• utilizes the capacity of the NIAID to manage and very poor nations.”
support basic, applied, clinical, and field research,
and of the CDC and academia to conduct field eval-
uations and develop implementation programs; 5 According to Gerald Posner, author of Pharma: Greed,
Lies and the Poisoning of America, since the 1930s, the
• is centrally coordinated to take maximum advantage National Institutes of Health have spent over $900 billion
of the capabilities of the public and private sectors; on grants for research that private firms subsequently
used to patent brand-name medications.

61
 • and is prepared for the possible rapid emergence of
FIELD NOTES
novel disease threats, such as occurred in the 1918–
1919 influenza pandemic.

The committee recommends that the United States develop

a means for generating stockpiles of selected vaccines
and a “surge” capacity for vaccine development and
production that could be mobilized to respond quickly to
future infectious disease emergencies. Securing this capa-
bility would require development of an integrated national
process, as described above. The committee offers two
options for implementation of this recommendation:
6 The US Department of Defense (DoD) formerly had
its own vaccine factory, geared to protect soldiers from
1. Develop an integrated management structure within
the threat of bioweapons. But the DoD shut down its
the federal government and provide purchase guar-
plant in the mid-'90s, preferring to rely on contracts with
antees, analogous to farm commodity loans, to
the private sector.
vaccine manufacturers that are willing to develop
the needed capacity.

7 In 1993, the Institute of Medicine called for the US 2. Build government-supported research and develop-
government to set up a National Vaccine Authority that ment and production facilities, analogous to the
could “advance the development, production and pro- National Cancer Institute’s program for cancer ther-
curement of new and improved vaccines of limited apeutics and the federal space, energy, and defense
commercial potential but of global public-health need.” laboratories. 6 The assigned mission of these new
The proposed authority would supervise a government- facilities would be vaccine development for future
owned vaccine-manufacturing plant. infectious disease contingencies.
Institute of Medicine president Kenneth Shine repeated
the call after the anthrax scare of 2001, which exposed
the vulnerability of the US to infectious diseases. Shine Vaccines
stressed that there was “a spectrum of vaccine needs
that cannot and will not be met by the private sector.” The decision to move a vaccine candidate from labora-
tory research to industrial development is in the hands of
His plea was ignored, however. Private vaccine manu- the private-sector vaccine manufacturers. It is based on
facturers lobbied heavily against it. The president of an assessment of technical feasibility, estimated devel-
Merck’s vaccine division, Adel Mahmoud, insisted there opment costs, and market analysis ( including the potential
should be no role for public enterprise in developing for liability problems). In most cases, public policy only
vaccines: “In an open-market society, let the field indirectly influences the decision to pursue vaccine devel-
develop according to the forces that will shape it. The opment and thus has little effect on the character of the
more you regulate it, the more you undermine it.” vaccines that eventually enter the marketplace. 7

Vaccine development may be impeded by economic

factors as well as by inherent mechanisms in the patho-
8 In 2006, researchers from PATH, the Seattle-based
gens under study. The development of vaccines requires
health research NGO, warned that private companies
an extensive, up-front investment in research that most
lack the necessary incentives to develop vaccines for
vaccine manufacturers (and policymakers) are reluctant
poor countries:
to make, since few vaccines are highly profitable and the
“When considering investments, firms evaluate the very strict FDA requirements for proof of a vaccine’s
probability of a market return. Unfortunately, the safety and efficacy make the risk of failure an important
developing-country vaccine market is small ( in revenue consideration. This reluctance of vaccine manufacturers
terms) and often demand can be more difficult to esti- to invest in research contrasts with the attitude of drug
mate, particularly given that the decision to finance a manufacturers, who invest considerable funds in research
vaccine may be made by global donors while the deci- and development. One reason for the difference may be
sion to introduce a vaccine is made by national that, as a group, drugs have a much better record of
governments.” profitability. 8

62
Industry currently lacks economic incentives to stimulate
A Pandemic Foretold
efforts at preventing infectious diseases with vaccines
for which there is little or no foreseeable market. Nor
does the public health sector (with specific exceptions)
have a mechanism for setting development programs in
motion. There are ways in which industry might be
encouraged to assume a greater role in vaccine devel-
opment. A comprehensive strategy is urgently needed.

One approach would be to establish public/private

sector collaborations in vaccine research and develop-
ment, a strategy exemplified by the National Cooperative
Vaccine Development Groups (NCVDG), whose goal
is to address the problem of HIV.

An alternative approach would be to offer industry eco-

nomic incentives to develop vaccines. These incentives
could range from partial or complete “socialization” of
responsibility (government cost sharing and involvement
in development decisions) to long-term guaranteed pur-
chases of minimum amounts of a vaccine at a price that
9 In 2017, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Inno-
would allow the manufacturer to recover the costs of
vations (CEPI) was launched at the World Economic Forum,
development and production.
with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
Emerging microbes offer a different challenge for vaccine the Wellcome Trust, and a number of states, including
development than that presented by a well-established Japan and Germany. Its mandate is to fund research into
pathogen, and there are potentially catastrophic con- vaccines that were neglected by the private sector.
sequences if the development process is left entirely to
In March 2019, Médecins Sans Frontières published an
free enterprise. 9
open letter condemning CEPI’s revised access policy as
It is understandably difficult to promote private invest- “an alarming step backwards” which “no longer guaran-
ment in vaccine development for diseases that may not tees that the vaccines CEPI funds will be made available
materialize for 5, 10, or 20 years, if at all. If a company at an affordable price.” The watering down of CEPI’s
did stockpile vaccines for potentially emergent diseases, access policy came after pressure from companies like
it would either lose its investment if the disease threat Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, which are represented on
never materialized or be forced to charge extraordinary its scientific advisory panel.
prices, when the need arose, to compensate for research
( if applicable — vaccine research often is done by other
than commercial manufacturers) and development costs 10 Testifying before Congress on February 27, Donald
and wasted inventory — a requirement that probably Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar,
would not be tolerated by society. 10 said he could not guarantee that a COVID-19 vaccine,
There is no infrastructure in place today that allows for if developed, would be affordable to all Americans: “We
anticipatory vaccine development in response to future would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable,
pandemics. The current system barely suffices for vac- but we can’t control that price because we need the
cines that have a predictable, established demand. 11 private sector to invest.” Azar previously worked as
The FDA does not have primary responsibility for ensuring a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and
that needed innovations are promptly developed and Company.
marketed; instead, the innovations are expected to
emerge as firms pursue their organizational goals. Vac-
cines against future (some would say speculative) threats 11 Gerald Posner describes COVID-19 as “the ultimate
are looked upon by manufacturers as offering little test case for whether drug firms might at last become full
promise for recovery of the investment needed to drive partners in a public-private partnership to develop as
the system. quickly as possible a vaccine that could save an untold
number of lives.”

PANDEMIC POLITICS 63
 When the BY JACK CHADWICK

“Unskilled” World War II made the economically

Become impossible suddenly possible. As our

capitalist states mobilize for the

“Essential” pandemic, the Left has another golden

opportunity for worker empowerment.

“more of us are dragged into this The consensus forming in the

every day,” a civil servant tells me, columns of papers like the New
white in the face. In Britain alone, York Times expects this moment Unaffordable
tens of thousands of public-sector will cast a shadow darker than the
In the midst of the coronavirus
employees were “requisitioned” Great Depression — the crisis that
crisis, the values governing what
in March: put to work on monu- set in motion the gloomy events that
governments can and cannot do
mental efforts aimed at countering Victor Serge called “the midnight
are evaporating — making public
the pandemic. of the century.” Yet that period of
institutions uniquely malleable.
c ov i d -19’s collision with economic collapse and world war
Already, banks and corporations are
capitalism has forced such recon- also emboldened a generation of
bringing to bear their influence on
figurations of public sectors the socialists, forcing them to think in
these breakneck reconfigurations.
world over. As the fallout spreads radical new ways.
Yet there’s no great strategy at work
through the corridors of power, Born in 1903, the economist
in the responses we’ve seen so far
states are being reordered beyond Joan Robinson was one of the
from the elite.
recognition — sidelining the neo- socialists who took crisis as an
The United States has launched
liberal assumptions that have, for opportunity to better understand
a program of corporate giveaways
decades, imposed phony limits on capitalism. She insisted that such
the size of which has never been seen
the exercise of official power. moments could dispense insights
before, a transfer of trillions into
Even more than the public health in political economy faster than the
the accounts of the capitalist class.
crisis, the state has to respond to an average Capital reading group —
Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin
unprecedented economic shock. even if, perhaps, reaching similar
predicts the federal government
In the weeks leading up to April 2, conclusions. Robinson’s solution
will soon be covering 50 percent of
6.6 million Americans filed for unem- was to “take the back of an enve-
private-sector wages.
ployment — five times the previous lope and work it out.” Today, like in
The European Central Bank —
record. The Federal Reserve projects her day, we need to sketch out the
whose singular obsession up till
the jobless rate will surpass one-third transformations unfolding in front
now has been to avoid financing
of the active population — and there of us — the first step to finding a
the individual Eurozone states’
is serious talk of US national out- route from this crisis to the world
borrowing — is now being forced
put halving. we wish to see.
to facilitate exactly that, despite
the limits imposed by founding

64 ILLUSTRATION BY MARÍA MEDEM

European treaties. This will see force trauma not only to demand, of money will bleed out to nothing.
Eurozone countries soon adopting but also to supply; and the rescue Stimulus helicopters could find
the tactics of the United States efforts of the past month only attend themselves with nowhere to land:
and Britain, throwing money at to the first half of the problem. rather than stabilizing capitalism,
the problem. The idea is to haul In truth, a significant period of packages like the federal govern-
companies out of insolvency and quarantine and contracted demand ment’s $2 trillion effort could add
disburse “helicopter money” — will cut supply chains to ribbons. to the chaos by raising demand far
sums paid directly to households The effects of national shutdowns in excess of supply.
to prop up demand. Previously are already rippling from one sector Faced with a huge dislocation of
unthinkable, these moves confirm to the next, foreclosing on industry production, government will have to
what Tribune’s Grace Blakeley has after industry. If the scale of the wade even further into the depths
observed: “Ideas do not drive his- contraction this brings does eclipse of political economy. Already, the
tory, history drives ideas.” the Great Depression, then up to maneuvers taking place in the offices
But the two-part nature of this 50 percent of gross product could of state suggest that a journey of this
crisis means these tactics will soon vanish from the market. With fewer kind is underway.
run out of road. Lockdown is a blunt goods and services to buy, the value

PANDEMIC POLITICS 65
Jack Chadwick

The public-sector worker I

quoted above had, until March 9,
been responsible for procuring goods
and services from the private sector
for the school system. In the face of
market collapse, workers in this type
of role are being repurposed — told
to apply their logistical knowledge
to the direct state administration of
both existing services and entirely
new sectors. The British civil ser-
vants I spoke to for this article each
reported frantic moves in their min-
istries to conceptualize the economy
anew: abandoning “affordability” as
a precondition of the possible.

A Lost Decade
The lesson being learned is the same
as one delivered by John Maynard
Keynes in a lecture at the height of
World War ii: “Anything we can
actually do, we can afford.”
Public-sector workers from
across the United Kingdom have
been thrown into efforts to secure
resources for the front line of the
fight against covid-19. They have
been told to think differently, to ask
“‘how can this be done?’ rather than Indeed, of all the things made dollars out of nothing. Powers like
‘how much will it cost?’” Instances redundant by this crisis, the first to these were, until recently, the trade
of this new attitude are not exclusive go was neoliberalism. In the econ- secrets of neoliberal states. Their
to Britain. The sudden collectiviza- omy’s newfound state of atrophy, deployment now makes the real
tion of New York’s hospitals under the real mechanics of the market are capacities of governments clearer —
a single state plan has led one chief laid bare. One striking example: a just as the incapacities of the market
medic to explain, “We’re in an almost journalist asked the Federal Reserve become painfully apparent.
apocalyptic crisis, which requires where the funding for its $1.5 trillion covid-19 has pushed neolib-
cutting through the bullshit.” As the adrenaline shot of investment was eralism over a final precipice. The
crisis deepens and spreads beyond to come from. The response, at a last ten years — a lost decade for
public health to wreak a more gen- press conference streamed by mil- wages and growth — saw the system
eral havoc, this logic could — in the lions, amounted to “we just press increasingly begin to buckle under
blink of an eye — become the basis a button.” the weight of its contradictions.
for a new governing ideology. The United States has the power A collapse was on the docket long
to create and spend trillions of before the culturing of the virus

66 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 WHEN THE “UNSKILLED” BECOME “ESSENTIAL”

maximize firm profit by minimizing

The United States
the cost of labor has led to a decline
in the share of income accruing to has the power to
the working class (in the oecd,
create and spend
by roughly -0.3 percent a year
since 1980). The sapping away of trillions of dollars
working-class purchasing power —
out of nothing.
despite expanding credit — has
halved the general rate of corpo-
rate profitability, in turn shrinking
business investment. The result was
a prolonged period of stagnation.
Growth in the world’s largest econ-
omies had, by 2019, Roberts points
out, trickled to “stall speeds.”

Lessons Learned
most useful such comparison,
As the Great Depression deep- economic historian J. W. Mason
ened, Joan Robinson looked back provides us with a simple rule: “the
over her previous research, mired more — and faster — an economy
in orthodoxy — and wrote much needs to change, the more plan-
of it off as “a shameless fudge.” ning it needs.” Allied governments
For her, the history of World War responded to the demands of total
ii brought the ideas of Karl Marx war with huge exercises in economic
“over the horizon,” as she watched planning — after realizing that cap-
the British state drastically recon- ital could not be coaxed, through
figure the economy. The public market mechanisms, into meeting
share of national expenditure the urgent needs of the fight.
soared from 17.4 percent in 1939 to Today, we’re headed for a
at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale 62.1 percent in 1943, and for the first similar reckoning. In the struggle
Market. time, the working class was granted against covid-19, the market is
Back in January, mit econo- a substantial degree of control over proving incapable of furnishing the
mists projected a 70 percent chance production. The successes of war- medical front line with what health
of major recession by October 2020. time mobilization meant Robinson care workers need to do their jobs,
Their paper tracked changes in came to view central direction in a let alone to do them safely. Factories
production, payrolls, stock market socialized economy as the bedrock that could be producing lifesaving
profits, and the cost of borrowing for a peacetime Jerusalem. devices are mothballed, even as
over a century to conclude that the We’ve grown used to compar- patients die from a lack of venti-
last few years resembled the periods isons with this period of history in lators, and medics from missing
preceding earlier collapses. recent weeks —Boris Johnson is one protective gear.
It takes a Marxist economist of several world leaders rushing to The problem of idle capacity in
like Michael Roberts to fully explain “declare war” on the pandemic, the face of huge unmet social need
the historical forces behind these imploring Britain to shoulder the will only worsen with the deepening
trends. Capital’s reflexive drive to crisis with a “Blitz spirit.” In the of this crisis, as the recession sinks

PANDEMIC POLITICS 67
Jack Chadwick

its teeth in. As supply dries up and industry standing idle and farms class’s quality of life will suffer.
new shortages appear, workers must turning fallow. “The English are longing for their
demand direct intervention on the Economist James Meadway cream buns,” Robinson remarked at
part of governments to forcibly draws distinctions from the war the end of the war. Any democratic
activate idle productive capacity to period — noting that ours is a time system of planning in peacetime
meet our needs. Demands like this of demobilization, not mobilization would have to guarantee workers
are already on the table in the United of the economy. He recognizes the the full lives they have earned —
States, as calls mount inside Con- need for a degree of planning, lim- production that meets the full
gress for the White House to trigger ited to health care and food. But we spectrum of social need.
the 1950 Defense Production Act, should also look beyond the lock-
enabling the federal government to down period itself. For after the
centrally direct the production of virus recedes, workers will want
medical equipment. more from the economy: bread, yes, To War?
One of the new duties assigned but roses, too.
to civil servants in the UK since the If whole sectors are left to Writing in 1919, in the wake of
outbreak began is the task of tracing wither on the vine, the working World War i, Austrian socialist
capacity in certain key areas of the
economy, like food supply. The
British government is beginning
to take stock of private produc-
tive assets in a way that indicates
it is considering what it may have
to do to keep industry moving.
Spurred by supermarket shortages
in the first month, there is now an
unprecedented level of coordina-
tion occurring in the food supply
sector, at the state’s behest. A
programmer in the head office of
Walmart-owned supermarket Asda
reports that it is now in active talks
over supply strategy with both the
British state and other national
chains. Antitrust rules barring this
kind of coordination among firms
have been suspended. The effect is
a centralization of supply under the
supervision of the civil service —
a sign of things to come.
The disintegration of supply
means this crisis cannot be paci-
fied with corporate welfare. Post-
lockdown, governments will not
be able to simply bribe capital back
into production. The severity of the
supply collapse calls for the kind of
restructuring measures adopted in
World War ii, this time to prevent

68 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 WHEN THE “UNSKILLED” BECOME “ESSENTIAL”

Otto Neurath found that huge wars in purely physical terms — asking
Post-lockdown,
transform the way states relate to what is actually, materially required
production. War economies are to achieve these goals. governments will not
“natural economies,” where the pos- Stripping back capitalism to
be able to simply
sibilities of what can be produced conceive of production as a matrix of
are decided — as under Keynes’s inputs and outputs has historically bribe capital back
dictum — on the basis of what can been good terrain for the working
into production.
be done with what is available. class. Neurath saw natural econo-
Resources are accounted for, first mies, or “economies in kind,” as a
and foremost, by their potential system that could achieve a more
uses: finance becomes an after- optimal distribution of means rel-
thought. Instead of asking how ative to popular goals. He also
many paper notes or digital numbers championed the clarity natural
on a screen it would take to make economies brought to economic
a tank or feed an army, a govern- life and the social exchanges at the
ment at war costs these objectives center of production. Thinking in
terms of inputs and outputs makes
The war meant workers in
it easier to see the relative values of
Britain were, for the first time, given
these things — capital and labor —
a hand in the direct administration
on both ends. The chicanery of
of their work.
capitalism does a lot to disguise
The dependence of wartime pro-
these values, always to the detriment
duction on workers was hammered
of labor.
home by a wave of industrial action
It is no coincidence that the
during the war — taken in spite of a
reconfiguration of the British
ban. Incidences of strikes and lock-
economy in the early years of
outs rose year over year, peaking in
World War ii was accompanied by
1944 at a loss of 3.7 million produc-
a steep rise in the power of workers.
tion days. Churchill had integrated
First, the demands of the war effort
the Labour Party and trade unions
did indeed force a transition to a
into government in 1940, partly in
Neurathian view of the economy.
order to stave off such conflict. Yet
Oliver Lyttelton, the first minister of
the Tories’ fear of the unions led
production, remarked in his opening
ministers to gradually cede greater
speech to the Commons that his
control of the production commit-
responsibility was “deciding what
tees to them — and the number of
went in one end of the raw-material
workers in committee leadership
department” and “what came out
positions continually rose. By 1942,
of the other end.” Under Lyttelton,
all plants controlled by the state
the most senior body ruling the
were managed by committees that
British economy was the Central
were half-elected by their workers.
Joint Advisory Committee to the
The unions’ wartime tenacity
Production Executive, made up
ensured this model “soon spread
of six representatives of business
to privately owned or operated fac-
and six elected workers, chosen by
tories.” In addition to the threat
their unions. In addition, there were
of strike, the power of workers on
eleven regional boards, also with sig-
these boards stemmed from their
nificant worker representation.
close knowledge of production,

PANDEMIC POLITICS 69
Jack Chadwick

earned through hard collective For billions under lockdown, understanding of production and
graft. The general advance in pro- the pandemic is an arm’s-length the role we as workers play. The
ductivity made during the war is to spectacle, experienced through a “unskilled” are now the “essential”:
their credit, and, along with it, the numbing drip feed of media updates old hierarchies tumble, just as they
Allied victory. on our national prognoses. The front did in the war.
line of the crisis is unnervingly invis- Like Robinson and her genera-
ible to most, with the exception of tion, we will never forget the lessons
those workers in the critical care learned in this chaos — lessons on
Reconfiguration trenches. The irony of the pandemic the weakness of market anarchy,
is that even as we’re confined to our and on the strength of the state,
The wartime reconfiguration of homes, the most familiar of places, of planning, and of its capacity to
British production, shaped by union the world no longer feels familiar. finally grant workers the power to
militancy, is the model socialists Huge shifts are occurring, not only achieve, as Marx put it, the “con-
today should look toward in the face in the way the government relates sciously arranged society.”
of capitalist collapse. to the economy, but in our own
Is This the BY NICOLE ASCHOFF

End of The coronavirus has scattered the

Neoliberal pieces on the geopolitical chessboard,

revealing the fragility of just-in-

Globalization? time global production. Getting back

to normal is the last thing we need.

the prepper is often the subject Prepper’s Network. Some countries unnecessary waste of money. But
of scorn, derided as a paranoid are preppers, too. Switzerland has as the coronavirus crisis has demon-
nut drunk on millenarianism and enough cooking oil, wheat, rice, and strated, and as many have long
conspiracy theories. With the coffee to last the entire country for warned, today’s global supply chains
coronavirus pandemic, however, months. Finland has been dubbed are incredibly vulnerable. This pan-
preppers are getting their due. the “prepper nation of the Nordics.” demic might just herald the end of
Bare store shelves, jacked-up Cognizant of its reliance on Baltic neoliberal globalization.
prices, and a startling lack of basic Sea shipping lanes for imports,
medical supplies have many people Finland has, since the 1950s, main-
scrambling. But not preppers. tained national stockpiles of food
They’ve been methodically stocking and medical equipment in secret Mean Production
up their basements and bunkers for warehouses.
These countries have gone Just-in-time, or “lean,” produc-
years, fine-tuning their collection of
against the grain, bucking the pre- tion is an industrial engineering
survival supplies in anticipation of
vailing “just-in-time” dogma that philosophy that was perfected in
just such an event as this.
deems stockpiles, even of essen- manufacturing to maximize produc-
It’s not only individuals and
tial food and medical supplies, an tivity and minimize waste. Under
groups like the New York City

ILLUSTRATION BY MARÍA MEDEM 71

Nicole Aschoff

Management by stress isn’t just applied

to the factory — it has become a global
philosophy.

lean production, suppliers deliver giving the other guy a few hours to Ricardo’s ideas of comparative
parts precisely when and where they sneak a nap or read a book. advantage to produce a new dogma
are needed, eliminating the need for Just-in-time production, or of how countries should orient
stockpiles. Beginning in the 1980s, “management by stress,” as Jane themselves to the global market.
the concept spurred a logistical Slaughter and Mike Parker aptly call Instead of economic sovereignty and
revolution, becoming standard prac- it, has made these kinds of work- self-sufficiency in food and essential
tice in manufacturing, retail, and arounds impossible. Today, workers goods, nations focus on “what they
services around the world. in manufacturing, retail, services, do best,” buying what they need on
Of course, much of the lean- and logistics are managed down to the global market instead of pro-
ness was bunk. In many sectors, the the second, with little time to think, ducing it home.
costs of lean production were simply let alone steal a few seconds or min- This doesn’t mean that the
pushed onto suppliers, who were utes for a break. United States and Europe no longer
expected to meet their customers’ Management by stress isn’t “make” anything. On the contrary,
insane logistical demands. This is just applied to the factory — it has manufacturing output in the United
still the case. In a recent diagnosis become a global philosophy, oper- States, for example, has increased
of the US toilet paper shortage, ationalized beginning in the 1980s steadily over the past few decades.
Harvard business professor Willy and ’90s as part of a dogged push Global trade is like a finely tuned
Shih noted that truck drivers by companies to increase produc- symphony, with higher value-added
making deliveries to Walmart distri- tivity and profits after the stagnant and lower value-added production
bution centers have only a half-hour ’70s. In addition to downsizing and linked across the globe in circuits
delivery window. dumping money into finance, com- designed for optimal profitability.
Moreover, lean is often paired panies tore apart and rebuilt their China, thanks to its low labor costs
with mean. In the automobile value chains to take advantage of and highly flexible assembly plants,
industry, lean production brought cheap labor offshore. Decades has become the supplier par excel-
layoffs and speedups. Toiling on later, arms-length international lence, the workshop of the world,
traditional assembly lines was mis- trade and production relationships leapfrogging the United States as
erable and mind-numbing, but as have evolved into deeply integrated the lead exporter to all but a handful
former autoworker Ben Hamper global value chains, defined by of countries.
described in his gonzo classic Rivet- sweatshops, tight delivery times,
head: Tales from the Assembly Line, and a reliance on horizontal supply
workers had managed to game the networks.
system a bit. Hamper and a fellow Nations have adopted a sim- Globalism Under Siege
riveter devised an arrangement in ilar philosophy. By the end of the
which each man would perform two twentieth century, lean production Many have noted that these global
jobs on the line for half their shift, techniques had merged with David arrangements are vulnerable.

72 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

Nicole Aschoff

Workers, for example, despite being demonstrated the growing cracks It’s important not to overstate
displaced and disempowered in the in the certainty of these polit- the deglobalization trend. Most
aggregate, retain great disruptive ical arrangements. Increasingly, global value chains will remain in
power. The fine-tuned nature of elected officials began publicly ques- place. Moreover, China has posi-
just-in-time value chains means tioning the value of free trade and tioned itself firmly against Trump’s
that work stoppages in key nodes globalization. anti-globalist stance. Xi Jinping’s
can bring whole sectors skidding to In countries around the world, Belt and Road Initiative signals a
a halt. Logistics workers — truckers right-wing populists have gained long-term desire to evolve neolib-
and warehouse workers — are power and prestige on promises eral globalization into something
particularly powerful. to break with “globalism,” seen as slightly different, but China isn’t
Aside from a few notable excep- the primary cause of precarity and ready to jettison the institutions and
tions, however, workers haven’t malaise. Instead of globalism, the arrangements of the present arrange-
exercised this power. For decades, new ideologues of the Right call for ment just yet. European countries,
global value chains remained rela- economic nationalism to preserve for their part, are attempting to
tively tranquil, nurtured by global traditional values and “bring back” placate both nations, eager to main-
institutions and trade agreements. middle-class jobs. tain access to the Chinese market
The fact that workers didn’t Trump set this revived nation- but wary of losing favor with the
often shut down these value chains alism into motion when he declared United States.
didn’t mean that lean production a trade war against China, slapping The coronavirus has scattered
was particularly robust, though. The tariffs worth hundreds of billions the pieces on the geopolitical chess-
September 11 attacks revealed their of dollars on Chinese exports. The board, however, throwing into stark
vulnerability, temporarily wreaking tariffs are part of a larger White relief the fragility of just-in-time
havoc on automobile supply chains. House project to reboot US dom- global production and likely bol-
Essential components that had pre- inance and derail China’s ascent by stering the forces of deglobalization.
viously sailed over US borders were attacking the country’s key sectors,
held up at security checkpoints. It such as technology. Last May, the
quickly became apparent that just Trump administration introduced
in time didn’t work if things didn’t sanctions on Huawei, a global tech Things Fall Apart
arrive on time. powerhouse, prohibiting US busi-
New vulnerabilities in lean pro- nesses from selling to the Chinese In just a few months, the pan-
duction have been building since the company. demic has caused global circuits of
2008 financial crisis. The decreasing That Huawei’s new P40 smart- people and goods to collapse. For-
willingness of Western banks to phone still ended up with some US eign nationals are banned in many
lend, along with currency fluctua- companies’ parts in it demonstrates countries, and global shipping is
tions, have contributed to a steady how difficult it is to disentangle in chaos as first supply and then
decline in gross exports relative to global supply chains. Nonethe- demand have collapsed. Spending
gdp since 2011. less, Trump’s trade policies have in retail, tourism, and entertain-
Compounding this trend are been extremely disruptive. World ment has nosedived, and a growing
shifting political sentiments. For trade contracted last year for the number of developing countries are
decades, global elites broadly agreed first time since 2009, largely as a on the brink of “disorderly default.”
on the superiority of free trade and result of the trade war. Observers, Chief economists at the Interna-
integrated supply chains, resolving noting both the rhetorical shifts tional Monetary Fund say that
disputes as they arose and main- against free trade and the logistical while up-to-date data isn’t available,
taining the functionality of global maneuvering of the world’s largest they’re confident a global recession
institutions that kept goods and corporations, worry increasingly has already begun.
services moving. But the Brexit about “deglobalization.” The failure of just-in-time global
vote and Donald Trump’s election trade for health care provision is

74 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 IS THIS THE END OF NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION?

even more grim. Countries and as personal protective equipment, demands that all markets and
businesses that relied on the global and they’re being forced to decide exchanges, large and small, global
market for essential medical sup- who lives and who dies because hos- and local, be optimized for profit.
plies, most of them provided by pitals don’t have enough ventilators. This has been the mantra of corpo-

China, have found themselves in The problem is bigger than rate executives and elites for the past
dire straits. In the United States, the collapse of lean supply chains, four decades. Empty hospital beds
doctors are using garbage bags, however. The ideology under- cost money. Local production is too
scuba gear, and takeout containers pinning neoliberal globalization expensive. Stockpiles of surgical

PANDEMIC POLITICS 75
Nicole Aschoff

The Left should fight like hell against

ceding any more ground to right-wing
populists who now control the
narrative on critiquing neoliberal
globalization.

masks and ventilators are a waste of magnitude. Around the world, the The blame game has already
of money. Community hospitals in post-covid reckoning will amplify started. Italian political leaders,
poor and rural counties won’t turn a the already simmering legitimacy of both the Left and the Right, are
profit, so they must be closed. crisis of neoliberal capitalism, par- furious at being abandoned by the
The result? Frontline workers ticularly in those countries that have European Union. US officials call
are dying because they don’t have been hit hardest. the virus the “Wuhan virus” and
the right equipment. Poor Ameri- Italy and Spain have been rav- make insinuations about covid-19
cans without health insurance are aged, yet help from the European being a biological weapon developed
dying at home because they can’t Union has been spare. Instead of by the Chinese government. The
afford to go to the hospital. Even a eurozone-wide policy to help all Chinese government has retaliated
when they do have insurance, twenty-seven member states, the by allowing rumors to circulate in
medics are in short supply, and some European Commission was side- state-approved media outlets that
counties in the United States don’t lined as each country implemented the coronavirus actually originated
have a single hospital. its own action plan and prevented in the US military.
Security experts have urged exports of protective medical Observers worry about inter-
the Trump administration to use equipment. Despite the looming national breakdown, the potential
the 1950 Defense Production Act economic and political fallout, the collapse of the European Union,
to compel private companies to Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte and possibly even war between
produce personal protective equip- vetoed a plan for eurozone debt the United States and China if the
ment and ventilators. But even if mutualization. pandemic spurs an “uncontrolled
the White House does eventually In the United States, which nationalism.” These are not idle
wake up and match production to is currently on track to suffer the fears. When the smoke clears, the
the country’s needs, it will be too highest rate of infection and death, central role of nation states in man-
little, too late. the pandemic will pull the conver- aging the pandemic, paired with
The inescapable conclusion sation back to our country’s broken the impotence of international and
emerging from this pandemic is health care system. The miles-long regional institutions, will no doubt
that our obsession with optimizing food pantry lines will highlight the bolster anti-globalist sentiments.
for profits rather than human needs unconscionable fact that, despite In the post-corona landscape,
has created a tragedy that, while working harder than ever, the nationalist ideology will hold even
perhaps not entirely avoidable, majority of Americans don’t have more sway.
was made worse by several orders enough savings to cover a single
month of expenses.

76 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 IS THIS THE END OF NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION?

The Left should fight like hell and poor countries alike, burnishing corporations and banks with the
against ceding any more ground a right-wing worldview rooted in assumption that the coronavirus was
to right-wing populists who now xenophobia. just a bump, albeit a painful one, in
control the narrative on critiquing But progressives should also the road. With a leg up, they assume
neoliberal globalization. In the push back against the centrists who that it’s just a matter of time before
United States, calls for Medicare are hoping and praying for things to neoliberal globalization is back
for All, stockpiling of essential “go back to normal.” Elected officials on track.
supplies, and vaccine development are already attempting to reproduce This pandemic has exposed
must be made within a frame- the bailout model used after the the brutality and irrationality of
work of international solidarity. 2008 financial crisis. The Federal just-in-time global capitalism in
Any moves toward delinking and Reserve System and the Depart- the starkest way possible. Getting
deglobalization without global ment of the Treasury have handed back to normal is the last thing
solidarity and international coop- themselves hundreds of billions of we need.
eration will be disastrous for rich dollars to prop up multinational

PANDEMIC POLITICS 77
Viral BY MIKE BEGGS & BECK PEARSE

Socialism Class struggle will shape how this

Now! crisis plays out, and the world that’s

created in its wake.

on march 22, Madonna posted a is highly collectivist, but it obscures economic crisis provoked by coro-
silly tweet with a video of her in a this socialization behind individual navirus? Let’s start by imagining, for
bathtub sprinkled with rose petals. property rights and income claims. a minute, an omnipotent technocrat
The video had humble, no-makeup The pandemic has interrupted whose aims were to minimize the
production qualities — and terrible some of our collective labor, severed economic fallout of the pandemic
class politics. the financial flows that depended on and prepare to get the ordinary
The Queen of Pop said, it, and spread its effects along vec- business of capitalism back up and
“[covid-19] doesn’t care about tors no microorganism needed to running as efficiently as possible.
how rich you are ... It’s the great travel. By breaking the relationships In this fantasy, the technocrat can
equalizer, and what’s terrible about we take for granted, it has revealed transfer funds without limit, edit
it is what’s great about it,” and then the conditions our class structure contracts, and coordinate the rede-
added, “Like I used to say at the end depends on. ployment of labor.
of ‘Human Nature’ every night, ‘If From this technocrat’s view-
the ship goes down, we’re all going point, the problem is fairly simple:
down together.’” public health demands that we
She was shouted down quickly, No One’s at the Wheel hibernate as much as possible,
and she sheepishly deleted the so whole sectors of the economy
Commentators have strained to must shut down or run at whatever
post. Madonna was wrong about
find the right historical reference reduced capacity can be managed
our equality in the face of pan-
point for the economics of the at a social distance. Other sectors
demic, but was she wrong about our
pandemic. It’s World War I, and need to ramp up production —
interdependence?
we’re all hoping it will be over by because they are either “essential”
The covid-19 crisis does reveal
Christmas. It’s World War II, but or at least well suited to catering
our commonalities and reliance on
with planned demobilization. It’s to homebound consumption and
one another, but it also reveals how
the Great Depression, but faster and telecommuting.
deeply unequal we are in terms of
in reverse, with job losses first and Even in this fantasy, with the
our risks, losses, responsibilities,
financial collapse later. deftest demand management and
and bargaining power. With its
How should we think about the most frictionless movement of
intricate division of labor and web of
resolving the unique kind of workers, much of the capital stock
financial commitments, capitalism

ILLUSTRATION BY MARÍA MEDEM 79

Mike Beggs & Beck Pearse

would be stuck gathering dust state is not a rational, benevolent,

amid unused equipment and empty omnipotent wizard of transfers
buildings, while the pandemic- and contracts. Its existing income- Tangled Interests
ready sectors would expand only at support programs are not designed
One way in which labor and cap-
increasing cost because of skill mis- to keep people secure and spending,
ital seem to be “in this pandemic
matches and other input shortages. but to keep them insecure — to keep
together” is in looking to the gov-
There would then be a tempo- the unemployed desperate for work
ernment for income support.
rary fall in potential output, and and the employed with something
Where value is not being pro-
some of what is left would be to lose. Its ability to coordinate the
duced — whether directly because of
diverted to mitigating the pan- renegotiation of private financial
hibernation, or indirectly because of
demic rather than consumption. and rental commitments is hemmed
the cascading demand failure — nei-
Even in the technocrat’s ideal in by the political power of property.
ther party is getting paid. Both have
world, there are costs to be distrib- These constraints are pressing
seen the market bases of their claims
uted. There is no reason they should up against the state’s unavoidable
on income collapse — workers in
be concentrated among those tied responsibilities to engage in public
the labor market, and firms in the
to the locked-down sectors, and provisioning and market “inter-
product market. And so both are
the omnipotent technocrat could ference” to avoid unconscionable
looking to the state to keep them
spread them around with transfers, human loss and economic crisis.
above water.
taxes, and a temporary revising of The virus and its wider crisis have
Workers have an especially
contractual obligations of all kinds, overturned the market conditions
strong interest in maintaining
from bonds to leases and mortgages. on which both labor and capital
their employer. We stand to a lose
When the vaccine arrives, every- depend, and so the class struggle
a lot from losing a job, particularly
thing comes out of hibernation and has well and truly reconvened at the
because labor markets are usually
goes back to how things were. political level, with demands on the
buyers’ markets, and all the more so
But that is not what is hap- state to use its fiscal and regulatory
now. Employers depend on us, too,
pening. Against this perspective, powers to redirect flows of capital
but with slack in the labor market, it
the default market pandemic and edit the structure of contractual
is an asymmetric relationship.
response is highly irrational. The commitments.
Our replaceability makes us
oecd estimated in late March that, But whose incomes, and whose
individually expendable. Other
in most countries, shutdowns would needs, will be protected? Will we
things being equal, employers do
directly reduce output by between a come out the other side of this
have something to lose in dismissing
fifth and a third for their duration, crisis having forced the wealthy
us, even if it is only the cost of
concentrated in services and con- to absorb the hit, with institutions
training someone new. But changes
struction. Without a massive public reoriented toward meeting social
in labor law in recent decades have
response, the sudden precipitous needs in an egalitarian way, or will
tended to shift the risks of market
drops of income in those sectors will we be hungry, weighed down with
downturns onto particular groups
then cascade into demand shortfalls debt, and facing years of austerity?
of workers.
across the private sector. Businesses As socialists, our ideal is not of
Firms have structured their
shut down, there is a plunge into the technocrat hoping to restore
labor force to meet their own needs
mass unemployment, people can’t the former status quo. There is no
for security. They give a core work-
pay rent or mortgages, millions rational driver at the wheel anyway.
force relatively safe jobs, and they
are homeless, and banks collapse. Instead, we know that class strug-
buy those employees’ loyalty and
When the vaccine arrives, the gles will shape how this crisis plays
effort with high pay, perks, and pro-
economy remains in a deep depres- out and the extent to which the costs
motion ladders. Surrounding this
sion for years. are fairly shared.
core, they have a buffer of precarious
The irrationality is obvious
casual and fixed-term workers, who
to everyone, but the capitalist
can be taken on and let go as needed.

80 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 VIRAL SOCIALISM NOW!

The pandemic has made plain supply and goods distribution chain.
that insecure workers are bearing The list of workers threatening or
the risks, and the unfairness is Dangerous, undertaking strike action to push
extreme and obvious. As ships go Necessary Jobs employers into better virus pro-
down, some are getting on lifeboats, tection is growing day after day:
and others are being pushed out to A pandemic is the mother of all nurses in Papua New Guinea, doc-
swim. In many small businesses, the workplace health and safety issues. tors in Zimbabwe, Amazon and
captains are going down with their While most of us are asked to hiber- McDonald’s workers in the United
vessels. Most larger organizations nate, “essential workers” from States, Coles supermarket staff and
will survive, and their manage- nurses to cashiers are kept in harm’s wharf workers in Australia.
ments are already using the crisis way. They have found themselves Pandemic class struggles have
to strengthen their power over their facing two opponents, the virus and seen mobilization on the other
“human resources” in the long run. their bosses. side, too. Bosses are already orga-
Employers are quick to argue Cashiers and transport and nizing for suppressed wages, even
that the privileges of secure con- delivery workers are necessary to for essential workers. The Austra-
tracts and good conditions are no meeting our basic social needs. The lian Retailers Association’s first
longer affordable. Labor must push work of distributing food and other instinct was to argue for a min-
back on this. This is a fight on two goods is so obviously vital, but it imum wage freeze, while employers
fronts: within workplaces and in isn’t valued as such. across the board have jumped at the
politics. It is the duty of those who The pandemic has exposed a chance to argue that the crisis calls
remain employed to not cut man- horrible irony: many of the workers for still more “flexibility” in work-
agement slack. Organizational we need most are those on the most place rules.
budgets may be squeezed, with no precarious contracts with the lowest But the spread of worker
easy options, but workers need to wages. Salaried professionals are resistance has shaken the social
resist pressure to pick up the tab largely able to ride out the virus by legitimacy of managers, and
created by losing colleagues and sol- working from home, with full pay, there is widespread sympathy for
dier on. Large organizations have while the service workers who make these workers now understood as
ways to ride out temporary prob- their food, serve their drinks, and essential to social needs. The public
lems — reserves, borrowing power, deliver their packages are either can neither tolerate nor survive
and public support. Caving prema- “flexibly” tossed out of work or shortages and delays on care and
turely removes employers’ incentive pressured into accepting risks to food supplies.
to push for government support. keep the show on the road. It is our job to exploit the
This is especially true of public Meanwhile, health workers changing mood and press for per-
institutions like schools, univer- are on the front lines of disease manent protections — from threats
sities, utilities, local government, control, and they are bearing the to not only health and safety, but
and social services. Labor here lion’s share of risk. The failure to also living standards and security.
has a special responsibility to hold provide basic equipment needed These essential workers have gone
the line, because they are poten- for medical workers’ protection is uncompensated for bearing health
tial channels for public funds into shocking. The low-paid, precar- risks inherent to their jobs as well
the rest of the economy. There is ious position of many workers at as far more than their share of eco-
no rationale whatsoever for public elderly-care facilities has put both nomic risks.
austerity at this time. But there are them and their charges in truly awful
also battles worth fighting in large positions — throwing together those
corporations, many of which have most vulnerable to the virus with
substantial reserves and borrowing those most vulnerable to lost income Care Deficit
capacity, and are even now still dis- should they take a sick day.
tributing dividends to shareholders. These past few weeks have The pandemic is rearranging
seen strikes on the front lines of what Miriam Glucksmann calls
health care and all along the food the “total social division of labor.”

PANDEMIC POLITICS 81
Mike Beggs & Beck Pearse

As socialists, our ideal is not jobs; landlords expected their rents;

banks expected mortgage pay-
of the technocrat hoping to ments. Now those expectations have
restore the former status quo. been dashed.
There is no legal requirement
There is no rational driver at that consumption standards remain
the wheel anyway. where people expect them to be.
Consumption is neither mandated
nor protected by the legal system
in the way financial obligations are.
But people have a strong sense of
entitlement to the standard of living
Reproductive labor — the everyday, mostly women. The pandemic to which they are accustomed, and
messy, incessant work of cleaning, will take women out of paid work this can be a powerful political
provisioning, educating, and caring in greater numbers than men, and force. The grocery bill is as neces-
for family, friends, and other kin — the increased burdens on them will sary an outlay as a rent or mortgage
is intensifying. There are new widen the gender pay gap as working payment.
needs and problems, and workplace women drop hours or lose promo- Thus it has become morally
closures have reduced paid repro- tion opportunities later. School difficult for capital and reluctant
ductive work and confined it to closures are privatizing education states to protect the entitlements
the home. in a quite literal way — by leaving of landlords and rentiers in the face
The pandemic has abruptly families responsible for facilitating of general income collapse: it would
transformed care, which many and resourcing their kids’ distance involve mass evictions — a public
associate with the labor of parenting education, they will reinforce class health disaster, if nothing else — and
through childhood. But care cuts disparities. commercial bankruptcies.
across the lifespan, especially right Professional middle-class Tenant rent strikes and housing
now. The virus’s threat to life is most women have risen up the ranks of occupations are on the rise — and
keenly felt by older people, whose corporate hierarchies by relying on not only among households. Big
needs have intensified and become paid care of many kinds: day care, commercial lessees have been some
much more complicated under schools, and domestic work. The of the first successful rent strikers,
social distancing. The same goes pandemic threatens to undo the because their landlords depend on
for people with disabilities. advances of liberal feminism and their survival. Housing tenants are
In a well-resourced institutional expose the fiction of a “work-life in a much more difficult position
response to the pandemic, health balance.” individually — so they must orga-
systems should be a functional part nize to bargain collectively and push
of the care work needed for survival. for a genuine political solution to
Ideally, intensive care units offer the their predicament.
vital resources — a bed, a respirator, Home Improvement The political path of least resis-
a well-equipped doctor with a team tance has been to pause evictions
of healthy, properly protected, and We are entangled in a web of and temporarily defer rents, mort-
sufficiently paid nurses and support financial commitments suited to gages, and other debt payments
workers. But employed medical care a different world: debts, leases, for those unable to pay — either
is under extreme stress. If health employment contracts, utility bills. through regulation or by persua-
systems fail, unpaid carers will do We went into the crisis with agree- ding banks and landlords it is in
their traumatizing work for kin in ments that had been entered on the their longer-term self-interest. This
the absence of professional care. presumption that normal life would deals with the immediate public
Care work is already a con- go on: businesses expected revenue health problem and subdues the
suming task for many people, to grow; workers expected to keep most desperate social tension, but

82 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 VIRAL SOCIALISM NOW!

it still protects wealth by keeping We need to put forward proactive through moves to weaken labor
people on the hook for the future. collective claims — in workplaces, rights and manage expectations of
Accumulated liabilities from missed households, and civil society — about financial support. We need to head
rent mount into a crushing debt in a what fair distribution of costs and this off, or it will be used as a cover
matter of weeks. On the other side social provisioning in the pandemic, for austerity in the aftermath.
of the pandemic, we will be weighed and beyond, must involve. The basic In doing so, we should resist
down with an even more irrational principles should be: scaremongering about the public
network of obligations. debt burden. After all, the real
As long as incomes are ade- • Where incomes must take a hit, income of society is what we col-
quately supported by public higher incomes should do so lectively produce. In terms of real
transfers, the problem does not first. Specifically, income from output, the aggregate cost of the
arise — people will be able to meet propertied wealth and executive pandemic is our lost production
their obligations as anticipated. But pay should be cut well before during it — mostly services that
if these are not enough, consump- incomes from wage earners. would have left little physical leg-
tion needs must trump contractual acy anyway.
payments. The principle should be • No workers (paid or unpaid) We will come out of hiberna-
that pandemic losses are best borne should have to bear unaccept- tion again with the same capacity
out of wealth and not permitted to able risk or degraded conditions. to create. The real losses will be in
squeeze present or future incomes the past. Whatever hangover of
from labor. • People without formal employ- financial claims the pandemic leaves
To the extent that income and ment need a basic income should be thought of as a redistribu-
revenue losses mean people and defined according to need. tion of wealth, a redistribution of
firms cannot meet their obligations, future claims on future production.
those obligations should be nullified • New public investment in health It is well within our power to annul
for their duration. Where landlords and social service institutions that hangover entirely, or to push its
and lenders depended on those is urgent and must guarantee obligations entirely on the wealthy.
payments to pay their own bills, the safety, security, enhanced Orthodoxies have quickly been
they, too, can be suspended. Ulti- conditions, and pay of currently junked to stabilize the existing
mately, the chain of obligations can precarious and undervalued system. Revealed as superstitions,
terminate in the banking system, workers. they will be harder to impose again
where they can be managed by a when this is over. A crisis of this
central bank. • In many societies, national- magnitude, with such a profound
izing key parts of the food impact on everyday life, reveals
supply chain and other essen- the weaknesses and deep unfair-
tial services will be necessary ness of the social structure in which
Remaking the World to ensure that no one goes it began.
hungry or without energy and Everyone has been jolted awake
The pandemic has underlined our shelter, nor dies providing these to take a look around them. The
interdependence — in addition to basic goods. fact that even conservative govern-
deep inequalities and the neglect ments have found no alternative to
of public provisioning for our col- • The public costs created by this jerry-rigging a welfare state is tes-
lective needs. We will hear a lot pandemic should not be a debt tament to the continued popular
more in the coming months about borne by this or future genera- strength of egalitarianism. With
sharing the economic burden of the tions of workers. confidence and organization, we can
pandemic. But what does “sharing” feed the public mood to reorder the
mean in societies where the status The notion of “sharing the world permanently.
quo was starkly unequal? burden” is already being introduced

PANDEMIC POLITICS 83
 Cultural
Reading
Capital
THE
STREAMING
POPULISTAWAY
FRONT
THE MISERY
 CULTURAL CAPITAL
RED CHANNELS BY EILEEN JONES

Beautifying the
Apocalypse

In films like Annihilation and Ex zombie-esque “rage” virus. But

in his films Ex Machina (2014) and
Machina, director Alex Garland Annihilation (2018) — and in his
knows how to make the end of the new fx miniseries Devs — he’s consis-
world look majestic. But his new tently focused on the moment in
our near future when we confront
show, Devs, gives a grace and just what exactly may lie beyond
dignity to the apocalypse that you our time on Earth.
won’t find in our own world. What specific form will the
posthuman era take? Will it be
radical advances in ai, like in
Ex Machina? An alien takeover
via horrific gene splicing, as in
Annihilation? Or perhaps techno-
logical advances that reveal a
multiverse of infinite possible
worlds that undercut our ability to
Alex Garland is an auteur fulfilling of coronavirus, lists were drawn up understand reality, as in Devs?
a growing need. As Time magazine and eagerly shared evaluating how
recently put it, Garland’s “ascen- closely our new reality approxi- Whichever version of posthuman-
dance from buzzy young author to mates the pandemics in films like ism Garland chooses, his aesthetic
A-list filmmaker has coincided Contagion, Outbreak, World of doom is remarkably consistent.
with an intensifying ambient sense War Z, and Children of Men. An atmosphere of quiet, gleaming
that we’re living in the End Times.” grandeur accompanies any dread
Garland has done only one pan- felt by characters or viewers. In his
As we navigate our way through demic film: the excellent script for directorial work, the production
the apocalypse, there’s no doubt Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later design is sublime, and the pace is
we crave media that reflects that (2002), about peta-like activists slow and stately. It’s perfectly
experience. During the early days who unwittingly unleash a expressive of the Garland aesthetic

86 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Beautifying the Apocalypse

that the alien takeover in Annihi- redwoods, then moved through uniqueness, “right down to the
lation is called “the Shimmer,” in the golden-glowing architectural last strand of hair,” as Forest (Nick
honor of its lovely, shiny appear- space inside a transport pod. Offerman), the genius who runs
ance floating on the horizon. Most the futuristic lab in Devs, says of
Human beings are rare and special
of the effects of the Shimmer are his beloved dead daughter that
in Garland films. We’re often
pretty, too, from the thin, towering he’s seeking to recover.
treated to scenes featuring two
ice sculptures on the sandy sea-
glamorous human specimens These conversations are filled with
shore, to the animal-plant hybrids
facing each other in sterile, high- lengthy pauses suggesting worlds
with flowering antlers, to the
ceilinged rooms, usually laborato- of meaning implied but held back —
center of alien power inside a
ries — Alicia Vikander and or maybe it’s all just impossible
glossy black cave that resembles
Domhnall Gleeson in Ex Machina, to convey in ordinary speech. The
a posh nightclub.
Natalie Portman and Oscar effect is to bring the pace from
The site of scientific endeavor in Isaac in Annihilation, and Alison slow to glacial, almost perfect
Garland films is usually inside Pill and Sonoya Mizuno in Devs. stillness. The demise — or rather
an ultramodernist building in a the transformation — of the
They converse in measured
remote natural setting. In Ex character Josie (Tessa Thompson)
ways about groundbreaking tech-
Machina, the main character is in Annihilation is a perfect
nology that changes everything
helicoptered into an isolated Garland death in its movement
or scientific breakthroughs we can
forest temple; in Devs, the toward inanimate beauty. Seeking
scarcely dream of in our philos-
geniuses are driven into the midst a release from her emotional
ophy. They’re photographed
of sublime Northern California numbness, Josie embraces her dna-
reverently to impress upon us their

PANDEMIC POLITICS 87
 RED CHANNELS

shifting fate just to feel something. would have resulted in gruesomely the appearance of meaning on our
After a slow, pause-filled conver- ripped flesh and guts strewn all end times. We in self-quarantine
sation with Lena (Natalie over the landscape. But it’s a have only to look outside our
Portman), Josie calmly walks away typical Garland corpse — open- windows — or do a few masked
as tiny green shoots emerge eyed, dignified, and aesthetically errands in town, or watch the
delicately from her veins. In the pleasing. news, or go online — to see that
blink of an eye, she’s just another the reality of collapse bears
The violence in Garland films,
one of the immobile, flowering, no resemblance to the gorgeously
always startling because it erupts
human-shaped trees already lining elevated fantasies generated
out of such stillness, is like a
the garden. by Garland’s aesthetic.
grisly ballet. In Devs, the vicious
Even after the death of the char- murders committed by ex-cia In his world, there are no clownish
acter Cass (Tuva Novotny) in goon Kenton (Zach Grenier) seem political shenanigans, no yawping
Annihilation — killed in flailing, timed to a metronome. See how media coverage, no comedy of
screaming terror by a gigantic he walks Jamie (Jin Ha) out of the errors from incompetent authori-
bear — her corpse must be sought frame at the cliff-hanging end ties, no desperation from ordinary
out the next day. When they find of Episode 4, presumably to his people as they quietly die off in
her remains, one side of her throat death — Jamie moves backward lonely homes and hospitals.
has been neatly and bloodlessly as Kenton advances, a neatly Garland achieves his glacially eleva-
removed, as if it were part of a synchronized dance. ting effects by severely limiting
Body Worlds exhibit. Realistically, the environments and characters
The appeal of Alex Garland’s work
that could never represent the he portrays — always special,
is that he confers calm, dignity, and
detritus of such an attack, which never ordinary, favoring a few

88 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Beautifying the Apocalypse

brilliant outliers interacting humanity drove toward its own

The appeal of Alex
in architecturally superb settings. violent end.
Garland’s work
In Devs, even the streets of Romero’s vision is a deliberately
San Francisco are eerily unpopu- messy one — gory, funny, angry, is that he confers
lated, as if Garland had somehow poignant, and teeming with
calm, dignity, and
anticipated shelter-in-place prac- energy. His films are not inclined
tices. Instead of the legion of toward stately pacing, ponderous the appearance
desperate homeless people who philosophical conversations,
of meaning on our
live in the real San Francisco, symmetrical imagery, tricky shots
in Devs, there’s one homeless man, in beautifully reflective surfaces, end times.
Pete (Jefferson Hall), who’s treated elevating choral music, or
as so singular, one expects him self-conscious formalism of any
to be revealed as an undercover kind. They’re rough and grimy.
agent spying on the two geniuses Unlike in Garland’s work, there
he’s befriended after bedding are no beautiful ultramodern
down on their doorstep. buildings in lush green forests.
Romero’s first three zombie
Garland surely isn’t the first to
movies were shot outside of
find the seductive utopian fantasy
Pittsburgh — one in a drab
within dystopian sci-fi. No world
shopping mall, another in an
could be as beautiful in its neon-
abandoned mine shaft. Romero’s
lit blackness and rusting decay as
self-destructive characters,
the future-noir Los Angeles por-
on the brink of eradication, hole
trayed in Blade Runner (1982),
up in a mall and go shopping,
which set the terms for so many
whereas Garland’s achieve
gorgeous-doom films to follow.
moments of somber grace and
We’re so used to imagining a lovely
insight in Annihilation, going forth
apocalypse, it’s hard to recall
to confront the shimmering alien
the exceptions. But it’s useful to
invasion in cathartic reworkings of
contrast the Garland approach
their own personal traumas.
to end times with, say, an unlovely
approach such as George A. The greatest years of Romero’s
Romero’s. filmmaking career, the 1960s and
’70s, occurred when few members
In his legendary series of zombie
of the general public would have
films, from Night of the Living
agreed with his truly apocalyptic
Dead (1968) through Survival of
sense of how close we were to the
the Dead (2009), Romero felt he
end of human-dominated history.
was portraying a transformational
But now that we’re facing what
moment when control of the
certainly feels more and more like
planet passed from human to some
end times, Garland’s flattering
other life form — in his case, the
vision is no doubt preferable — it
zombie. Romero also sided with
indicates that we die seriously
the zombies, often in class terms,
and beautifully, and that we leave
calling them “blue-collar mon-
good-looking corpses.
sters,” the new being struggling
to survive while fundamentally If only we were so lucky.
destructive and shortsighted

PANDEMIC POLITICS 89
 CULTURAL CAPITAL
RED CHANNELS BY CONNOR KILPATRICK

Jacobin’s greatest American filmmaker of

the 1930s and ’40s. Hawks was

Quarantine an affluent wasp adventurer, and

his ideal was competent profes-
sionals working as a group. He was

Movie List a conservative — and yet there’s

something quite egalitarian about
his movies. His screwball come-
dies with Cary Grant are just as
powerful as his action films.

A new canon for those Me and My Gal (1932), The

stuck indoors. Strawberry Blonde (1941), and
The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Raoul Walsh was an early

Hollywood master of action
pictures. My Gal is a pre-Code
rom-com about working-class
romance in New York City
If I’m being totally honest, the This is strictly a list of fantastic with Spencer Tracy and Joan
three movies I watch most are movies you may not have heard of Bennett. Strawberry Blonde
Jaws, Goodfellas, and Aliens — (but that are readily available) or is a nostalgia picture about some-
but you’ve seen all those. Yes, The ones you misjudged or over- thing I didn’t know people were
Rules of the Game, Citizen Kane, looked — with a few (non-prestige) nostalgic for — 1890s NYC —
and The Searchers are all master- tv show recommendations to get with James Cagney, Rita Hayworth,
pieces, but that fact can be you through the ’Rona. I’ve tried and Olivia de Havilland as a
confirmed by any Sight & Sound to go for surprising options, but suffragette. The Roaring Twenties
top ten list. not contrarianism. Enjoy. is a great gangster epic with
I don’t need to tell you about the Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. All
very entertaining.
genius found in The Big Lebowski Golden-Age Hollywood
and the Alfred Hitchcock and
Stanley Kubrick oeuvres, nor the Scarface (1932), The Big Sleep
charms of Die Hard and The Hunt (1946), Red River (1948), Only Sullivan’s Travels (1941) and
for Red October. A Jacobin reader Angels Have Wings (1939), The Lady Eve (1941)
doesn’t need to be told of the Bringing Up Baby (1938), and His Writer-director Preston Sturges
dialectical brilliance of The Battle Girl Friday (1940) was Hollywood’s greatest comedic
of Algiers or Sergei Eisenstein’s filmmaker. Sullivan’s Travels,
You know that afi list is bullshit
classics. his masterpiece, was the basis for
when there’s not a single Howard
Hawks film on it — maybe the O Brother, Where Art Thou?

90 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Jacobin’s Quarantine Movie List

But The Lady Eve has the undeni- infantryman but a journalist, the A glimpse into the pivotal couple
able pairing of Henry Fonda as great war correspondent Ernie years after Victory over Japan Day.
a geeky herpetologist and Barbara Pyle. And it’s not really about
Stanwyck as the con artist combat so much as the everyday
trying to seduce him. Read Eileen miseries of being a grunt — bored, Border Incident (1949), Reign
Jones’s piece on Sturges in Jacobin cold, wet, and lonely. of Terror (1949), The Tall Target
issue 35, “The Little Man on (1951), The Naked Spur (1953), and
the Big Screen.” Men in War (1957)
The Body Snatcher (1945),
Anthony Mann made these small,
The Set-Up (1949), and The
violent, and perfect B pictures
The Sea Wolf (1941) Haunting (1963)
(often shot by legendary cinema-
The best essay ever to appear Robert Wise directed two of the tographer John Alton) until he
on Grantland was “The Sea Is biggest movies of the 1960s: went big and bloated. Tall Target
Dope,” arguing that all movies that The Sound of Music and West Side takes place on a train and is
take place on the ocean are, at Story. Today, he gets unfairly about the possible attempt to kill
the very least, “good.” I agree. blamed by cinephiles for suppos- Abraham Lincoln on his way
Here, Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) edly “butchering” The Magnificent through Baltimore. Border
directs John Garfield and Ambersons. Yet Wise’s real talent Incident is basically a grisly Coen
Edward G. Robinson in a tense was for black-and-white noirs brothers noir starring a young
and spooky nautical flick based and horror pictures. Body Snatcher Ricardo Montalbán — plus a
on Jack London’s anti–Social is about Boris Karloff as an 1830s horrific nighttime thresher death
Darwinism novel. cab driver who robs graves for scene. Men in War is the answer
a doctor. The Set-Up is a great to “what if Jean-Paul Sartre
boxing noir about a fighter (Robert made a war movie.” Naked Spur is
I Walked with a Zombie (1943) Ryan) who’s supposed to throw one of the great Hollywood
and Out of the Past (1947) a match for the mob, but nobody Westerns. And Reign of Terror is
tells him (uh-oh). The Haunting, French Revolution noir with
Jacques Tourneur was one of the based on Shirley Jackson’s novel a touch of perversion.
great noir artists of Hollywood. The Haunting of Hill House, is
Zombie is a Val Lewton–produced unbelievably terrifying for a movie
horror film, which means it’s a devoid of any blood and gore — On Dangerous Ground (1951)
gorgeous, black-and-white psycho- I can’t watch it alone.
drama (this time, Jane Eyre in Nicholas Ray is one of the great
the Caribbean) with an almost American filmmakers, yet this
unrelated lurid title. The latter is little beauty starring Robert Ryan
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
perhaps the ultimate film noir, as a brutal big-city cop finding
starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Long seen as a great liberal mes- redemption with Ida Lupino in
Greer, and Kirk Douglas. sage movie, this is actually closer the middle of an upstate murder
to Taft-Hartley cinema, which investigation somehow gets
I guess is a good way to describe overlooked. Excellent score by
The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) film noir itself. Three soldiers Bernard Herrmann, too.
come back from the war but are
It’s a war movie by Hollywood’s crippled with anxiety about
action master, William A. the Great Depression, class, and The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Wellman, but not really. It's much the growing number of people
closer to a Studs Terkel–esque who think we shoulda joined with Actor Charles Laughton directed
look at soldiers as workers — the Germany to smash the USSR. only one film, this masterpiece. It’s
main character isn’t an basically a nightmarish fairy tale

PANDEMIC POLITICS 91
 RED CHANNELS

set in the Great Depression about American girl in a British nursery fucking Reagan as the stone-cold
kids on the run from a murderous school who goes missing on her villain. Guess what? He’s convin-
preacher (Robert Mitchum). With first day — and yet no one seems cing! Charley Varrick is basically
Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. to have even seen this girl. Is the No Country for Old Men starring
Wonderful songs. mom lying? Or crazy? The quaint Walter Matthau.
Britishisms are wonderful, and
it was all filmed on location.
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and
The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) Fancy Euro Cinema
Wild River (1960)
Robert Aldrich’s two greatest Spione (1928)
films: Kiss Me Deadly is a low- Easily Elia Kazan’s greatest film,
budget nuclear noir with an beautifully shot in CinemaScope Yes, it’s a silent film, but give it a
apocalyptic finale later pilfered by on location in rural Tennessee. It’s try. Fans of Babylon Berlin should
Raiders of the Lost Ark. Flight is about a young Tennessee Valley love it. It’s basically a madcap
a tightly constructed thriller about Authority bureaucrat (Montgom- thriller by the great Fritz Lang
survivors of a catastrophic desert ery Clift) who has to get an old about espionage in the interwar
airplane crash attempting to, lady off a piece of land that needs period. And it ends with one
somehow, get the totaled plane to be flooded. Clift was on the of cinema’s greatest disturbing
back in the air. decline, but it’s an excellent look clown scenes.
at the dynamics of a liberal New
Dealer thrust into the heart of Jim
The Wrong Man (1956) Crow reaction. I Know Where I’m Going! (1945),
A Matter of Life and Death (1946),
One of Hitchcock’s best, based and The Red Shoes (1948)
on a true story about a working-
Charade (1963) The latter two of these Michael
class Italian jazz musician who’s
mistaken for a guy who held up What if the codirector of Singin’ in Powell and Emeric Pressburger
a liquor store. Nothing sensational the Rain did a Hitchcock-style films are shot in such deliriously
happens to him, it’s just about Cary Grant movie? That’s what we rich color that I’d recommend
being thrown helplessly into the have here, plus the great Walter watching them even if the movies
criminal justice system and having Matthau and loads of macabre weren’t any good. But they’re
it tear your life apart. humor. It’s a thriller and a screw- great, even if Matter is technically
ball comedy with impeccable a work of British wartime propa-
shot composition — the Knives ganda. I Know Where I’m Going!,
Out of its day. A lot of fun. though, is my favorite, a delightful
Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and
rom-com shot on location on a
Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Scottish island.
Otto Preminger was once a
The Killers (1964) and Charley
Hollywood household name.
Varrick (1973)
I think it’s time to bring him back. A Man Escaped (1956)
Anatomy is about a real murder Everyone knows Dirty Harry and and L’Argent (1983)
trial in the Upper Peninsula of Escape from Alcatraz, but these
Michigan that should please any two seedy Don Siegel classics are The best way to describe Robert
true-crime fan today. Bunny is even better. Shot as a tv movie Bresson is “Catholic materialism.”
a much stranger film, but it’s but released in theaters because A Man Escaped is about a French
absolutely enthralling. Laurence it was so violent, The Killers stars Resistance soldier getting cap-
Olivier is a detective investigat- Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, tured and doggedly finding his way
ing the disappearance of an John Cassavetes, and Ronald out. It’s thrilling. In L’Argent, rich

92 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Jacobin’s Quarantine Movie List

kids create a counterfeit bill, It starts off zany but is actually

which ends up in a working-class about the political turmoil of the
man’s hands and destroys his time, with the rise of the far right
life. It’s bleak. bubbling up into the narrative. The
ending is chilling.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

For a Few Dollars More (1965)
Colorful, elegant, lurid, and so
much fun, I’ve never seen a Yeah, Sergio Leone’s The Good,
Hammer Film Productions horror the Bad, and the Ugly is great,
movie I didn’t like. This is the but the overlooked second entry
best one — and the best Sherlock in the Man with No Name trilogy
Holmes — starring Hammer is even better, giving the excellent
(and Star Wars) regulars Peter Lee Van Cleef the role of hero,
Cushing and Christopher Lee. plus casting the legendary Gian
Maria Volonté as villain. Turns out
demoting Clint Eastwood to
Purple Noon (1960) second fiddle yields even better
results.
The very first and best adaptation
of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented
Mr. Ripley, with Alain Delon as
Army of Shadows (1969)
Ripley. Everyone is tan, slim, and
beautiful. It’s not fair, is it? A top ten movie for me. Jean-
Pierre Melville directs the ultimate
French resistance flick, but
The Leopard (1963) stripped of any glamor and heroism.
What’s left is a stunning and
Armed with Burt Lancaster, Alain thrilling story about failure and
Delon, and Claudia Cardinale, futility. It has a haunting score
the great Italian Communist film- and an incredible opening shot of
maker Luchino Visconti directed the Arc de Triomphe, plus one
this gorgeous, sweeping epic about of my favorite exchanges: “Are you
a Sicilian nobleman in 1860 watch- a communist?” “No. But I have
ing the tide of modernity finally many comrades.”
catch up with his country. Great
quote: “For things to remain
the same, everything must change.”
The Confession (1970) and State
of Siege (1972)

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) Jacobin readers probably already

know the work of the great
An unjustly overshadowed Luis Marxist filmmaker Costa-Gavras,
Buñuel film, perhaps because it’s but in case you don’t, definitely
fairly straightforward. The don’t skip these. Both are in the
beautiful and wonderful Jeanne Criterion Collection.
Moreau plays the title role, a maid
at a French estate in the mid-1930s.

PANDEMIC POLITICS 93
 RED CHANNELS

Two English
Two English Girls
Girls (aka
(aka Anne
Anne and
and My American
My American Uncle
Uncle (1980)
(1980) World War
World War I,
I, shot
shot with
with an
an irresist-
irresist-
Muriel) (1971)
Muriel) (1971) ible pastoral
ible pastoral beauty.
beauty.
Like Wes
Like Wes Anderson,
Anderson, II havehave
Another François
Another François Truff
Truffautaut fi
film
lm a near-fetishistic love of late-’70s
a near-fetishistic love of late-’70s
based on a novel by Henri-Pierre
based on a novel by Henri-Pierre European fashion, consumer
European fashion, consumer
Roché (Jules
Roché (Jules and
and Jim), this fi
Jim), this film
lm products, and
products, and interiors.
interiors. Alain
Alain
is remarkable at conveying
is remarkable at conveying the the Resnais deploys all of
Resnais deploys all of thosethose East Asian Cinema Isn’t
changing sexual
changing sexual mores
mores of of turn-of-
turn-of- elements here
elements here and
and weaves
weaves anan Just Kurosawa
the-century Europe. We
the-century Europe. We see thesee the entire film around the evolutionary
entire film around the evolutionary
price paid by young women
price paid by young women for the for the psychology of
psychology of Henri
Henri Laborit.
Laborit. Sansho the
Sansho the Bailiff
Bailiff (1954)
(1954)
boho lifestyles of affluent
boho lifestyles of affluent menmen Even if you don’t buy Laborit’s
Even if you don’t buy Laborit’s and Ugetsu
and Ugetsu (1953)
(1953)
(Jean-Pierre Léaud).
(Jean-Pierre Léaud). TheThe exteriors
exteriors theories, it’s an incisive melodrama
theories, it’s an incisive melodrama Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi made made beautiful
beautiful
and locations are serene
and locations are serene and and following the lives of three French
following the lives of three French and heartbreaking
and heartbreaking movies,
movies, largely
largely
gorgeous, and
gorgeous, and the
the strength
strength of of the
the characters as they struggle through
characters as they struggle through about suff
about suffering
ering and
and injustice
injustice — —
two female leads, Kika Markham
two female leads, Kika Markham global capitalism.
global capitalism. which makes
which makes sense
sense for
for aa Japanese
Japanese
and Stacey
and Stacey Tendeter,
Tendeter, takes
takes it
it pacifist
pacifi st and
and socialist
socialist born
born inin 1898.
1898.
beyond nostalgia.
beyond nostalgia. These are
These are two
two ofof his
his best.
best. Sansho
Sansho
The Long
The Long Good
Good Friday
Friday (1980)
(1980) is about
is about anan upper-class
upper-class family
family that
that
is exiled
is exiled by
by aa feudal
feudal lord
lord —— the
the
Don’t read
Don’t read too
too much
much about
about it —
it —
The Emigrants
The Emigrants (1971)
(1971) and
and The
The New
New mother is
mother is sold
sold into
into prostitution,
prostitution,
just watch it. Bob Hoskins
just watch it. Bob Hoskins is is
Land (1972)
Land (1972) and the
and the children
children areare sold
sold into
into
aa British
British gangster
gangster trying
trying to
to make
make
slavery. Heartbreaking,
slavery. Heartbreaking, yes, yes, but
but
More of
More of aa single
single fi
film
lm in
in two
two parts,
parts, his fortune in the early Thatcher
his fortune in the early Thatcher
II promise
promise it’s
it’s enthralling.
enthralling. Ugetsu
Ugetsu
Jan Troell’s epic about a Swedish
Jan Troell’s epic about a Swedish years with
years with aa plan
plan to
to develop
develop the
the
is about
is about many
many of of the
the same
same things
things ——
farmer (Max
farmer (Max vonvon Sydow)
Sydow) immi-
immi- London Docklands. But
London Docklands. But someone someone
but with
but with ghosts!
ghosts!
grating to the Midwest
grating to the Midwest in the in the keeps setting
keeps setting offoff bombs.
bombs. Look
Look
1840s is, hands down,
1840s is, hands down, one of one of the
the for a baby-faced Pierce Brosnan
for a baby-faced Pierce Brosnan as as
greatest films ever made.
greatest films ever made. The The a young killer.
a young killer.
scene where,
scene where, having
having newly
newly arrived
arrived High and
High and Low
Low (1963)
(1963)
in the United States, they
in the United States, they lose lose and Ran
and Ran (1985)
(1985)
one of
one of their
their small
small children
children in in the
the Hope and
Hope and Glory
Glory (1987)
(1987) Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa is is truly
truly the
the master.
master.
most mundane way is absolutely
most mundane way is absolutely And yet
And yet itit seems
seems most
most people
people
harrowing. John Boorman’s
John Boorman’s most
most personal
personal
harrowing. today just
today just watch
watch Seven
Seven Samurai
Samurai
film, about a small child living
film, about a small child living
(a great
(a great fifilm)
lm) or
or Rashomon
Rashomon (over- (over-
through the 1940 Blitz —
through the 1940 Blitz — it it seems
seems
rated). High
rated). High andand Low
Low isis one
one ofof
appropriate for a quarantine list.
appropriate for a quarantine list.
The American
The American Friend
Friend (1977)
(1977) the great
the great postwar
postwar noirs:
noirs: aa rich
rich
A great movie for kids and adults.
A great movie for kids and adults.
Japanese businessman
Japanese businessman is is chilling
chilling
Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders makes
makes aa Tom
Tom Ripley
Ripley
in his
in his awesome
awesome house,house, and
and he he
movie, but this time in Germany
movie, but this time in Germany
gets aa ransom
gets ransom notenote informing
informing him him
with Dennis
with Dennis Hopper
Hopper asas Ripley
Ripley and
and Distant Voices,
Distant Voices, Still
Still Lives
Lives (1988)
(1988) that kidnappers
that kidnappers have have taken
taken hishis
the late, great Bruno Ganz as
the late, great Bruno Ganz as his his and Sunset
and Sunset Song
Song (2015)
(2015) child. They’re
child. They’re asking
asking forfor millions,
millions,
mark. It’s
mark. It’s surprising
surprising that
that the
the
Terence Davies’s
Terence Davies’s two
two best
best fi
films.
lms. but he
but he quickly
quickly realizes
realizes his
his son
son is
is
ponderous Wenders can make
ponderous Wenders can make such such
The former is a masterfully
The former is a masterfully shot shot fine
fi — they
ne — they got
got his
his chauff
chauffeur’s
eur’s kid
kid
an eff ective noir, but he really
an effective noir, but he really
film
fi lm about
about aa working-class
working-class family
family instead. Is
instead. Is he
he still
still gonna
gonna pay?pay?
pulls it
pulls it off
off..
in 1950s Liverpool starring
in 1950s Liverpool starring the the Ran is
Ran is aa movie
movie everyone
everyone seemsseems to to
late, great Pete Postlethwaite.
late, great Pete Postlethwaite. The The know they’re
know they’re supposed
supposed to to see
see
latter is about the struggles
latter is about the struggles of of but haven’t:
but haven’t: absolutely
absolutely apocalyptic
apocalyptic
an Aberdeenshire
an Aberdeenshire farmfarm girl
girl during
during beauty; stunning
beauty; stunning color,
color, stunning
stunning
set pieces.
set pieces.

94 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Jacobin’s Quarantine Movie List

A City
City of
of Sadness
Sadness (1989)
(1989) Robert Mitchum,
Mitchum, the
the underrated
underrated
A Easy Riders, Robert
Richard Jordan,
Richard Jordan, Peter
Peter Boyle,
Boyle,
Like most
Like most of of Hou
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s
Hsiao-Hsien’s Raging Bulls and The
and The Godfather’s Moe Greene
Godfather’s Moe Greene
fi lms, it’s a little diffi cult to
films, it’s a little difficult to fi
find
nd
Duel (1971)
(1971) and
and A.I.
A.I. Artifi
Artificial
cial himself, Mr
himself, Mr Alex
Alex Rocco.
Rocco.
(try BitTorrent), but this
(try BitTorrent), but this is is Duel
an extraordinary
an extraordinary fi film
lm about
about the
the Intelligence (2001)
Intelligence (2001)
Kuomintang’s White
Kuomintang’s White Terror Terror II once
once read
read someone
someone callcall Steven
Steven
destroying aa family
destroying family in in late-1940s
late-1940s Night Moves
Night Moves (1975)
(1975)
Spielberg the
Spielberg the synthesis
synthesis of of Alfred
Alfred
Taiwan. It stars the great
Taiwan. It stars the great Tony Tony Hitchcock and
Hitchcock and Walt
Walt Disney.
Disney. Well,
Well, Arthur Penn
Arthur Penn directs
directs GeneGene
Leung Chiu-wai as the deaf
Leung Chiu-wai as the deaf middle middle here we
here we have
have Duel, his extraordi-
Duel, his extraordi- Hackman in
Hackman in perhaps
perhaps the the greatest
greatest
son with socialist sympathies.
son with socialist sympathies. narily eff
narily effective
ective tv
tv movie
movie repping
repping of the
of the 1970s
1970s neo-noirs.
neo-noirs. From From
the Hitchcock
the Hitchcock gene,
gene, and
and A.I. as
A.I. as Southern California
Southern California to to the
the Florida
Florida
his Kubrick-accented
his Kubrick-accented remakeremake of of Keys and
Keys and back,
back, itit all
all culminates
culminates
Audition (1999)
Audition (1999) Ironically, all
Pinocchio. Ironically,
Pinocchio. all the
the in aa shocking
in shocking ocean
ocean set set piece
piece that’s
that’s
bleakest bits
bleakest bits were
were Spielberg
Spielberg — — not
not right up
right up there
there with
with the
the best
best of
of
II didn’t
didn’t watch
watch this
this Takashi
Takashi Miike
Miike
Kubrick. Trust
Kubrick. Trust me,
me, II think
think it’s
it’s Hitchcock. Look
Hitchcock. Look for for aa young
young and
and
fi lm for years because I
film for years because I heard heard
just as
just as bizarre
bizarre as
as you
you dodo that
that aa sleazy James
sleazy James Woods
Woods and and aa teenage
teenage
it was
it was so
so disturbing.
disturbing. When
When II fi finally
nally
billionaire mogul
billionaire mogul also
also happens
happens to to Melanie Griffi
Melanie Griffith.
th.
did check it out, I was bummed
did check it out, I was bummed
be aa master
be master craftsman.
craftsman.
that II hadn’t
that hadn’t just
just sucked
sucked itit up
up
earlier. Yeah, it’s gross — but
earlier. Yeah, it’s gross — but great. great.
The less you know about
The less you know about it, it, The Fury
The Fury (1978)
(1978) and
and Blow
Blow Out
Out (1981)
(1981)
the better.
the better. McCabe &
McCabe & Mrs
Mrs Miller
Miller (1971)
(1971) and
and
Brian De
Brian De Palma
Palma isis fi
finally
nally getting
getting
The Long
The Long Goodbye
Goodbye (1973)
(1973)
his due
his due (thank
(thank you,
you, Noah
Noah
Robert Altman
Robert Altman isis almost
almost always
always Baumbach), but
Baumbach), but he
he might
might rubrub you
you
Memories of
Memories of Murder
Murder (2003)
(2003) worth watching,
worth watching, but
but here
here he
he made
made the wrong
the wrong way.
way. He’s
He’s totally
totally
two of
two of the
the greatest
greatest fi films
lms ever
ever —— unconcerned with
unconcerned with realism
realism — — just
just
Everyone loves
Everyone loves Bong
Bong Joon-ho’s
Joon-ho’s
nearly back
nearly back to
to back.
back. McCabe
McCabe is is cool set
cool set pieces,
pieces, melodrama,
melodrama,
Parasite, but this is just
Parasite, but this is just as as stellar.
stellar.
just perfect,
just perfect, from
from thethe leads
leads to
to the
the and Hitchcockism.
and Hitchcockism. Blow Blow Out
Out isis
Based on a true story, a provincial
Based on a true story, a provincial
production design
production design and and the
the probably his
probably his best
best fi
film,
lm, but
but The
The
South Korean
South Korean police
police department
department
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen score.
score. In In Long
Long Fury (Kirk Douglas
Fury (Kirk Douglas and and John
John
fi nds itself overwhelmed,
finds itself overwhelmed, with with
look for
Goodbye, look
Goodbye, for aa young
young (and
(and Cassavetes) is
Cassavetes) is totally
totally bonkers
bonkers and
and
a serial killer on the loose
a serial killer on the loose and and few
few
surprisingly not
surprisingly not that
that tall)
tall) Arnold
Arnold contains aa better
contains better head
head explosion
explosion
resources to do much about
resources to do much about it. it.
Schwarzenegger, plus
Schwarzenegger, plus one
one of
of than Scanners
than Scanners — — plus
plus aa wild
wild John
John
Apparently, in
Apparently, in real
real life,
life, they
they fifinally
nally
my favorite
my favorite cinematic
cinematic exchanges
exchanges Williams score.
Williams score.
caught the guy just a couple
caught the guy just a couple of of
between aa femme
between femme fatale
fatale and
and
months ago.
months ago.
Elliott Gould:
Elliott Gould: “Dried
“Dried apricot?”
apricot?”
“I didn’t
“I didn’t eat
eat the
the one
one you you gave
gave me
me Real Life
Real Life (1979)
(1979)
this afternoon.
this afternoon. They
They givegive me
me
Red Cliff
Red Cliff (2008)
(2008) Albert Brooks’s
Albert Brooks’s comedies
comedies areare
diarrhea.”
diarrhea.”
today wildly
today wildly overlooked.
overlooked. This
This
Very fun
Very fun and
and very
very big
big Chinese
Chinese
is my
is my favorite
favorite of
of his,
his, aa mockumen-
mockumen-
action epic directed by John
action epic directed by John
tary takeoff
tary takeoff ofof what
what was
was then
then
Woo about the end of the Han
Woo about the end of the Han The Friends
The Friends of
of Eddie
Eddie Coyle
Coyle (1973)
(1973)
the emerging
the emerging genre
genre ofof “reality
“reality tv.”
tv.”
dynasty. Maybe my favorite
dynasty. Maybe my favorite of of
Another rare
Another rare example
example of of an
an Starring the
Starring the equally
equally underrated
underrated
Woo’s movies. Thank
Woo’s movies. Thank you,you,
excellent
excell ent book
book becoming
becoming an an national treasure
national treasure Charles
Charles Grodin.
Grodin.
Chinese Communist
Chinese Communist Party
Party cinema
cinema
excellent fi
excellent film,
lm, this
this is
is the
the ultimate
ultimate
department!
department!
Boston crime
Boston crime picture
picture — — dreary,
dreary,
grimy, and
grimy, and washed
washed out.
out. Starring
Starring

PANDEMIC POLITICS 95
 RED CHANNELS

The In-Laws (1979) and dumping a body. His wounded and Mickey Mouse (2013–present)
The Freshman (1990) alcoholic Vietnam vet friend (John
For some reason, Disney let a
Heard, the dad from Home Alone)
Both films were written by Cartoon Network veteran turn
pushes him to pursue it as payback
Andrew Bergman, who is perhaps their iconic 1930s characters into a
against the rich. It’s got an amazing
American cinema’s most under- hilarious and insane update of The
score by the great Jack Nitzsche
rated comedic writer. The In-Laws Ren & Stimpy Show via a series of
and beautiful impressionistic
stars the great Peter Falk as a five-minute shorts. Delirious fun.
cinematography.
shady cia agent whose son
is set to marry the daughter of
Alan Arkin, a nice, upper-middle- Review (2014–2017)
class Long Island dentist. File Southern Comfort (1981)
this under “Church Committee YouTube clips make this look like
Walter Hill’s bayou-set thriller
cinema.” The Freshman is about a series of goofy stunts starring
is better than Deliverance.
an nyu film student (Matthew Andy Daly, but it’s much, much
Starring Keith Carradine and the
Broderick) falling in with a mob more than that. The premise of the
late Powers Boothe, with a great
boss (Marlon Brando) who turns show is that its host has to review
score by Ry Cooder.
out to have been the model for The user-submitted life experiences by
Godfather. Very 1930s. going through them — everything
from divorce and homicide to
First Blood (1982) making every decision in your day
The very first Rambo film is via Magic 8-Ball.
The Fog (1980) and
nothing like the others — yet a lot
Christine (1983)
of you young’uns haven’t seen it.
Everyone knows that John A classic thriller shot in a dreary Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
Carpenter’s Halloween, The Thing, Pacific Northwestern winter. Plus,
and Escape from New York are The original Twin Peaks took
Brian Dennehy (rip) in all his glory.
masterpieces. But for some reason, place in 1989 but made not a single
these two gems get sidelined. reference to any historical event
Christine takes an absolutely or pop-culture artifact of the time —
absurd premise and executes it to with its Douglas Sirk–esque
TV, No Prestige melodrama and upright fbi
perfection. The special effects
still blow me away, as does the shot protagonist, it might as well have
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)
of the car cruising along at night, been set in 1959. Season three,
and Smiley’s People (1982)
engulfed in flames. The Fog however, is very much set in the
Okay, some prestige. Alec early 2010s. The American West
is a Tales from the Crypt–style
Guinness plays British spymaster here is a sparsely populated
throwback, but it has that great
George Smiley in these two wasteland full of hit men, mon-
pulsing Carpenter score and
fantastic bbc miniseries based on sters, and empty tract housing.
gorgeous Marin County exteriors.
John le Carré’s novels. Look for Everything about this season is
a young (but still old-looking) totally bizarre, particularly the
Patrick Stewart as a top kbg Mario Paint–level effects.
Cutter’s Way (1981)
master. But make sure you watch Everyone loves episode eight, but
I’m pretty sure The Big Lebowski the British (not the pbs) version for me, the finale could stand
is a comedic remake of this movie, of the former, otherwise an entire alone among David Lynch’s very
with Jeff Bridges in the same episode is omitted. best films. You probably need
basic role. A bummy rich kid in to watch seasons one and two first,
a Santa-Barbaraesque town thinks plus the film Fire Walk with Me,
he sees the local oil billionaire but it’s worth it.

96 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Jacobin’s Quarantine Movie List

Modern Classics Spanglish (2004)

Yes, the James L. Brooks, Adam

Conspiracy (2001)
Sandler rom-com. An undocu-
An hbo movie about the Wannsee mented Mexican single mother
Conference with Kenneth Branagh takes a job working as a house-
as Reinhard Heydrich and Stanley keeper for a wealthy chef and
Tucci as Adolf Eichmann. The brings along her daughter. A
subtlety of this film, the script, and shockingly sophisticated look at
its performances give it an extra- the modern class divide, with its
ordinary power and a demonstration roots in 1930s and ’40s Hollywood
of how ideology steers (and comedies. Also: a scene in which
overrides) bureaucracy. Chilling. Sandler crafts a truly delicious-
looking sandwich — I still dream
of it.
24 Hour Party People (2002)

This is Michael Winterbottom’s

Black Book (2006)
comedy about Tony Wilson and
the Manchester music scene, from Imagine if kooky, sleazy Paul
punk (Joy Division) to rave culture Verhoeven (Showgirls, Basic
(New Order, Happy Mondays), Instinct, RoboCop) did a film about
filmed with a grainy, early-2000s the Dutch resistance that com-
digital camera. Always hilarious, bined pulpy slam-bang action with
always surprising. Steve Coogan’s political nuance — that’s what
best film. this is. You won’t regret it. And
that last shot ...

Master and Commander: The Far

Side of the World (2003) Peter & the Wolf (2006)
This may be the ultimate Tory A mesmerizing, stop-motion
classic, which is fitting, because adaptation set in the wintry
Peter Weir is perhaps the most countryside of contemporary
reactionary director alive (just Russia. No narration and no
watch his anticommunist 2010 dialogue. Perfect filmmaking.
epic, The Way Back), but it’s
an extraordinary and lovingly
made film. The best part is Russell Hot Fuzz (2007)
Crowe getting his men pumped
up for battle: “Do you want to see Edgar Wright’s greatest work,
a guillotine in Piccadilly? Want and maybe my favorite comedy
to call that raggedy-ass Napoleon film of the past few decades. Sheer
your king? You want your children kineticism. We need more
to sing ‘La Marseillaise’?” Yes, Timothy Dalton comedies, I think.
no, and yes.

PANDEMIC POLITICS 97
 RED CHANNELS

Zodiac: The Director’s Cut (2007) these days to call our attention and every bit as demented and
to such gems — so thank me for wonderful as the original Tim
David Fincher, the man who
my service. Burton classic. This film was made
helped invent the absurd premise
with an astounding level of
of “serial killers as gods” with
craft and joy by Wonder Showzen
Seven, undoes it all here. Zodiac is
Rango (2011) and The Lone cocreator John Lee.
about the collective enterprise
that is investigation — how the Ranger (2013)
most promising information just Gore Verbinski is a lot like John
seems to fog it all up even more. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-
McTiernan: a master craftsman
It’s definitely not a horror movie, Verse (2018)
whose movies everyone has seen
but, that said, the recreation of but whose name few actually I couldn’t believe how good this
a Napa County daytime stabbing is know. His follow-up to the Johnny was — and I say this as someone
among the most horrifying mom- Depp Pirates of the Caribbean who pretty much never wants
ents in cinema. movies, The Lone Ranger, was to watch another superhero movie
almost entirely a victim of the ever again. The animation style
press wanting to take down a alone is breathtaking. Luckily, the
Coraline (2009) bloated ip vehicle. But it’s fan- movie itself is fun, with a lot of
tastic — and it’s Armie Hammer, heart, in a Karate Kid kind of way.
A gorgeous, stop-motion children’s
not Depp, who steals the show.
film by Henry Selick based on a
Rango, another Western, is
Neil Gaiman novel — I never get
technically a kids’ movie but seems First Man (2018)
tired of watching it. Bizarre
to scare the hell out of my kid —
and wholly original. A great rainy- The New Yorker accused it of toxic
a rattlesnake as a Lee Van Cleef
day film. masculinity, but it’s excellent —
gunslinger? Sure. Awesome.
The Right Stuff as directed by
Robert Bresson. When matched
True Grit (2010) with the terrifying sound design
Pain & Gain (2013)
and the ingenious Justin Hurwitz
While the Coen brothers have
Despite being based on a true score, the grainy 16mm cinema-
many triumphs to their names,
story, Pain & Gain is close to full tography of mostly interiors
this is somehow their most under-
Michael Bay cartoon and asks us (cramped cockpits and late-1960s,
sung. While you’ve probably
to believe Tony Shalhoub’s asshole ranch-style homes) just makes it
seen it and you probably like it,
$14 million Medicare fraudster feel all the more enormous when
you probably don’t worship it —
(a fact left out of the movie) is a the landscape suddenly expands to
but you should.
worthy meritocrat. Ironically, Bay the stratosphere or the lunar
makes the exact opposite point: surface.
it’s a “crime doesn’t pay” movie
The Grey (2011) that unintentionally suggests,
Immortalized already on Key & “Hey, maybe crime as class war?”
Peele as the “Liam Neesons” wolf
movie, this is the kind of tightly
constructed pulp that Hollywood’s Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (2016)
golden-age masters like Anthony
The greatest of all 2010s reboots,
Mann worked wonders with in the
Netflix’s Pee-wee Herman movie
1940s and ’50s. Unfortunately, we
is a delight worthy of Jacques Tati
don’t have any good movie critics

98 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 CULTURAL CAPITAL
WAYS OF SEEING BY OWEN HATHERLEY

It Came From
Canada!

David Cronenberg’s first three the workings of an extremely

films track the progress of contagious disease.

epidemics “from the perspective of Cronenberg’s fusion of body horror

and psychoanalytic drama created
the disease.” What they reveal is some of the most remarkable
a North American society already films of the last forty years, from
on the brink of disaster. Videodrome in 1983 to A History
of Violence twenty-two years later.
But his first four films remain
his most extreme statements,
drawing on a dialectic of carefully
constructed order punctuated by
sudden biological chaos.

Cronenberg was raised in the

1950s, in an affluent, intellectual
Jewish family in Toronto. In
Doctors on a university campus These are the premises of the first Chris Rodley’s 1992 book of inter-
experiment on mentally disturbed four films made in Canada by views, Cronenberg on Cronenberg,
youths. A virus carried by cosmetic David Cronenberg, the avant- the director recalls his father’s
products wipes out the entire garde Stereo (1969) and Crimes of death from colitis as a formative
adult female population. A luxury the Future (1970), followed by biographical trauma. “He
apartment building transforms the deliberately commercial horror started to die physically, but not
into the experimental playground of Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977). mentally. The body went, but the
for a sexually transmitted parasite. They all have a similar intent: mind didn’t.” The refusal of
A novel strain of rabies spreads putting North American middle- the body and the mind to work in
from a plastic surgery clinic to a class society under a microscope, tandem runs across his films —
large city. then subjecting it to sudden as does the gruesome transforma-
and violent strain, usually through tion of the human body.

100 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 It Came From Canada!

In the 1960s, the young

Cronenberg shifted from science
to filmmaking at the University
of Toronto. He told Rodley:

I think the best scientists are

as mad, creative and eccentric
as artists of any kind. Although
they may be tragic and
demented, I don’t subscribe to
the view that they are playing
with things that shouldn’t
be played with. You have to
believe in God before you can
say there were things that
man was not meant to know.

Cronenberg came of age at

university during the widespread
popularity of “sex-pol” radicals
such as Norman O. Brown and the
onetime Marxist Wilhelm Reich,
who envisaged that the removal
of constraints on sexual behavior
could liberate people from bour-
geois society. Cronenberg put that
theory to the test in his first four
films, the latter two marketed
under the banner of sexploitation
and horror.

Stereo tracks a group of teenagers

who are being experimented
upon in order to bestow them with
telekinetic abilities, a theme
extended in his 1981 science-fiction
film Scanners. Here, slow-paced
encounters unroll amid the are inflicted with many things “the idea that a movie is a real
lovingly shot, textured concrete that don’t have much to do with document of real people.”
of the University of Toronto those concepts.” The film was
Yet the four “virus films” all relied,
Scarborough campus, where the largely a reaction against the
to one degree or another, on
stifling order of post-war Canada socialist-inclined mainstream of
state support in a way that would
is painstakingly taken apart. In experimental Canadian film-
have been impossible in the
Stereo, as Cronenberg later recalled, making, particularly the National
United States: Crimes of the Future
“the massive architecture suggests Film Board of Canada, founded
was backed by the public Canadian
order and calm and eternity, by the Scottish documentary
Film Development Corporation
when in fact the poor human beings filmmaker John Grierson. Cronen-
(cfdc), and — much more contro-
who have to live inside that society berg was intent on resisting
versial — the cfdc would also

PANDEMIC POLITICS 101

 WAYS OF SEEING

fund the violent, lurid horror of Clinic for Plastic Surgery in Rabid. ramifications that he murdered her
Shivers and Rabid. Unlike, say, the But with these two films, Cronen- and killed himself. We soon
vehemently political horror of berg made a conscious shift discover she has already spread
the Pittsburgh-based George A. from being a filmmaker to being a the phallic, slug-like parasites
Romero, which takes great moviemaker, adding fast-paced through her affairs with the
pleasure in tearing apart the racial action and shocking violence to his tower’s residents via its ducts, its
and urban/suburban inequalities repertoire. He even went so far water supply, and, of course,
of the United States, Cronenberg’s as to cast a legendary porn star in the bodily fluids of the people who
disasters are predicated on a her first mainstream role. live there.
society that functions apparently
Shivers is set in Starliner Towers, “French critics really saw Shivers
without conflict.
which is in reality one of the as being an attack on the bourgeois
Crimes of the Future, less buildings designed by Mies van life, and bourgeois ideas of
visually memorable than Stereo, der Rohe for the spacious park- morality and sexuality. They
similarly unfolds slowly and land housing development of sensed the glee with which we
elliptically across a Brutalist Nuns’ Island, on the outskirts were tearing them apart,”
university campus, where a group of Montréal, a high modernist Cronenberg said. “Living on Nuns’
of young male scientists try to merging of nature and technology. Island, we all wanted to rip
deal with the unintended murder The film opens with an advertise- that place apart and run naked,
of the entire sexually mature ment for the building: “living screaming down the halls.”
female population by a disease becomes a luxury cruise when
This jubilant stress test of bureau-
developed in the college’s derma- you’ve made your home a Starliner
cratic, planned capitalist
tological institute, “the House Tower apartment,” which is
modernity becomes a horrifying
of Skin,” by Dr Antoine Rouge. It’s your “island paradise” — one that
kind of liberation. The hero who
a pathogen dubbed “Rouge’s “belongs to you and your fellow
is, by the end, the only person
Malady.” Both films share, in the passengers alone.” This is no
not to be infected is dragged into
director’s words, the “idea of a public housing estate, but rather
the tower’s elegant swimming
man-made, man-controlled an achingly luxurious work of
pool by a groaning, screeching,
environment short-circuiting the architecture.
orgiastic mob, shot in lingering stop
concept of evolution” — efforts
Yet this showcase is interrupted by motion. It’s hard not to see this as
that prove to be hugely destructive.
the horrific murder of a young a reference to the likes of Reich or
But, as Cronenberg insisted, “the woman by a doctor, Emil Hobbes, Brown — this is what really happ-
institutions aren’t evil. They who then kills himself. Hobbes, ens when the fetters are relaxed.
are almost noble in that they are we learn, was an experimental
Unsurprisingly, the film was
an attempt by human beings, surgeon whose ideas are summa-
accused of being amoral, and its
however crazy, to try and structure rized by a colleague with the
state funding was a scandal
and control their own fate.” In question, “Why not breed a
in Canada. Cronenberg’s own
Stereo, the institution is the parasite that can do something
statements on the film don’t
Canadian Academy of Erotic useful?” Dr Hobbes’s belief
exactly dispel the charge:
Enquiry; in Crimes of the Future, that “we had too much brain and
it’s the House of Skin and a not enough guts” inspired his To understand physical
corporation called Metaphysical creation of a parasite intended to processes on earth requires a
Import/Export. be “one part aphrodisiac and revision of the theory that
one part venereal disease.” After we’re all God’s creatures — all
These experiments are continued
he tested it on a sexually active that Victorian sentiment.
in the surgical work of Dr Emil
young woman living in the tower, It should certainly be extended
Hobbes in Shivers and the Keloid
he was so horrified by its to encompass disease, viruses

102 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 It Came From Canada!

and bacteria. Why not? A virus “We all wanted to rip that place apart and
is only doing its job . . . The
fact that it’s destroying you by run naked, screaming down the halls.”
doing so is not its fault.

Shivers was an attempt “to take

a venereal disease’s point of view,”
and Cronenberg argues that
what it does to people is, in a sense,
has spent several months of 2020 of what he would call a “new flesh”
positive; the protagonists “look
in coronavirus lockdown, what in Videodrome, an extension
beautiful at the end. They don’t look
follows is genuinely horrifying. Just of human evolution to match the
diseased or awful.” They have been
as the parasite of Shivers used machine-made environments
given what they always wanted.
the ducts and networks of a single humans had created.
Rabid, released two years later, building to infect all of its inhabi-
Recalling his skepticism of the
was an only partially successful tants, here the public transport,
orgiastic liberation imagined by
attempt to scale up Shivers, from malls, and cinemas of an affluent
Norman O. Brown, Cronenberg
the Mies towers of Nuns’ Island North American city become
argued that
to the entire city of Montréal. Its almost perfect conduits for the
dialogue is cheesier (“I just saw virus to do its work. to be so intent only on the
a motorcycle explode over there!” event itself, and not to have
The last twenty minutes of the film
someone cries out early on), any thought on what happens
are hard to watch today. As
and it is less relentlessly focused — after, means you’re not being
Montréal is placed under martial
and less funny — but also much a serious and pragmatic
law, anyone seen with symptoms
more ambitious. It begins as a revolutionary, you’re being
of the virus is shot on sight,
motorcycle crash victim (porn star that most hideous of things,
and everyone else lines up outside
Marilyn Chambers) is treated a poseur, driven primarily by
supermarkets to obtain essentials.
at the experimental Keloid Clinic, private anguish rather than
The Freudianism of the film is
a plastic surgery center somewhat social vision.
unsubtle — a nurse in the Keloid
resembling the House of Skin
Clinic is seen reading a Pelican In these films, the 1960s vision of
in Crimes of the Future. They save
edition of Ernest Jones’s biography liberation — given this viral stress
her life by grafting a newly created
of the founder of psychoanalysis. test — turns into a nightmare.
organ into her body, which quickly
It’s Civilisation and Its Discontents, Yet for Cronenberg, “that doesn’t
takes on a life of its own. Like
the horror movie. mean you have to stop” these
the sex parasite in Shivers, it drives
attempts to change and transform
Chambers’s character to find and Aside from making unnerving
human society. “It’s a given of
infect men and women (and, in quarantine viewing, these films are
human existence that you just
one scene, a cow) with the rabies enduringly ambiguous. Cronen-
don’t stop.”
of the title, a novel and extremely berg was accused by some radical
virulent strain of an old virus. critics of being intent on showing But if the sturdiest of post-war
what would happen if you modernity was no match for the
The disease is spread through
destroyed bourgeois North wildfire of Cronenberg’s patho-
the clinic, and by Chambers’s
America. He broadly agreed with gens, then I can’t imagine how
completely unaware and immune
the accusation (“being middle our world will hold up after four
crash victim after she hitches
class, that’s what I’m doing — pro- decades of dashed dreams and
a ride to a futurist Montréal of
tecting myself”), although he neoliberal rot.
high-rises, freeways, and under-
insisted that the films were not a
ground malls. To anyone who Cronenberg’s “body horror” has
critique but rather a proposition
now truly scaled up.

PANDEMIC POLITICS 103

 CULTURAL CAPITAL
BASS & SUPERSTRUCTURE BY ALEXANDER BILLET

Pretty Faces
Who Care

Why we all hate The video of Gadot and company

celebrities right now. (Will Ferrell, Zoë Kravitz, and
James Marsden among them)
singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”
as they quarantine themselves in
their luxury homes was savaged
within hours of its appearance on
her Instagram. Buzzfeed’s Tomi
Obaro called it “celebrity non-
sense.” The New York Times’ Jon
Caramanica declared it guilty
of “smug self-satisfaction, the
hubris of the alleged good deed.”
Twitter descended on it with
a childlike glee.

Then came the parodies — musi-

cians and comedians giving the
If he were just one iota more dedicated to Italy, is an exercise
same treatment to Smash Mouth’s
self-aware, Bono would be quite in cloying, saccharine, self-
“All Star” or Three 6 Mafia’s “Slob
thankful to Gal Gadot right now. aggrandizing cluelessness. From
on My Knob.” If the vitriol and
him, it’s predictable.
Quarantined Italians singing to mockery seem like overkill, that’s
one another from balconies during If actress Gal Gadot hadn’t because the original video was so
the worst pandemic in a century intervened with her “Imagine” flagrantly out of touch, so woefully
is sublimely haunting, perfectly cover, there’s reason to believe condescending, that it’s hard to
capturing how it feels to cling to that more commentators would picture a more visceral reaction
your hope in crushing isolation. have eventually called out Bono’s if the celebs had simply released a
By contrast, Bono’s “Let Your song for what it is. But thanks to video entitled “I Can Afford to
Love Be Known,” which is Wonder Woman herself, Bono has Buy My Safety.”
been largely spared.

104 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Pretty Faces Who Care

Let’s put aside the origins of bingeing on Netflix and playing for quite some time. The 1980s
“Imagine” — a song that was our favorite albums on repeat — were an especially bad decade for
written by Lennon when he and anything to distract for a few this: “We Are the World,” “Do
Yoko Ono were close to the minutes from the fear of jobless- They Know It’s Christmas?” and
Marxist left in Britain but that has ness and eviction, of the countless other Kiplingesque benefits
long since been diluted into liberal sick and dead overwhelming for African famines. Geographic
pablum. Let’s even ignore the hospitals. distance and the imbalance of
irony of this video coming from imperial power made it easy to
But that is fundamentally different
Gal Gadot, a longtime shill for talk about these disasters as some-
from shoddily composed videos
the Israeli Defense Forces and an thing happening “over there,”
telling us that “everything is going
apologist for their decades of as well as to obscure the imperial
to be okay,” when we know full
atrocities. Both are enough to subjugation that first led to these
well it’s not. Things haven’t been
condemn this video for the nations’ dire conditions. But
“okay” for a long while, and the
rank hypocrisy it is, but to most then, this was also a moment of
pandemic is merely tearing off the
people, these are secondary breakneck consolidation in media
mask. The manipulative ploy to
factors if they are factors at all. and communications, fostered
get us to smile is far from a
by the rise of Reaganism and
We are in a moment that divides soothing balm — it’s part of the
Thatcherism. There was, as Marga-
history into before and after. “Art damn problem.
ret Thatcher herself said, no
as uplift” is simply no match for
The fact is that moments of global alternative.
the dread kicking around most
crisis have gone hand in hand with
people’s heads. Yes, we will, in the It’s here that we might better
this kind of celebrity sanctimony
coming weeks and months, be understand the nature and role of

PANDEMIC POLITICS 105

 BASS & SUPERSTRUCTURE

Things haven’t been “okay” for as the culture industry adapts.

Lionel Richie is already publicly
a long while, and the pandemic is considering (threatening us
merely tearing off the mask. with?) producing a new “We Are
the World” to raise money for
Dispossession and its consequences coronavirus victims. Given the
have come full circle to the expected duration of this crisis,
it very well may happen. Funds
Global North. will be raised and disbursed. What
will certainly go unmentioned is
the criminal systemic deprivation
and exploitation that forces
people to rely on this donated
money in the first place.

celebrity in twenty-first-century The problem is that coronavirus Certainly, there have always been
capitalism. The idea of celebrity represents such a deep crisis, such dissident critiques of the charity
as we understand it is fully a massive shock to the world model of celebrity activism, biting
intermeshed with the rise of mass system, that these same attempts observations that “pictures of
media and the technological to filter and dodge may not work starving children sell records,” and
reproduction of art — in other like they used to. No longer can we calls to replace the mindlessness of
words, with media as commodity. speak of disease and disaster as the culture industry with what
Historically, fame has been something happening “over David Widgery and Rock Against
presented as distinct from (though there,” much as Donald Trump Racism called “crisis music.” Now
sometimes overlapping with) the may try. Dispossession and its is the time to bring these critiques
notion of inherited privilege. In consequences have come full circle to center stage, to posit a funda-
most narratives today, celebrities to the Global North. mentally different approach to art,
have gotten where they are not media, and the role of the indi-
As James Meadway observed
through divine right but through vidual in society.
recently, this pandemic has the
talent and knowledge that,
potential to rearrange the balance It’s not that we don’t need art (or,
theoretically, we all should be
of social power. Whether this yes, talented artists) to remind us
capable of.
signals a death knell for neoliber- of the beauty in the world, of
Charity, as a method of shifting alism is impossible to tell, but if gentler and fairer outlooks. It is
blame for social ills away from the that is the case, and if history is that, right now, we have only
rich, suits this template well. bent back in the direction of labor, wreckage to build that beauty
Before any reproach can fall upon then the cultural playbook is going with. We cannot, in a moment like
them, the elite simply strike a to have to change. As Gadot and this, deny that reality. Much as we
pose of noble-minded concern. In friends have no doubt learned need to imagine, we need to make
the 1980s, this posturing fused from the uproar, charity and its sure it is really our imagination
with the twisting of conversations attendant condescension may not steering things — one that allows
about inequality into those of work the way they once did. for a future beyond capitalism or,
“personal responsibility.” Ques- for that matter, celebrity.
The celeb-as-charitable-activist
tions of “what the West owes
model won’t be going anywhere
Ethiopia” were replaced with
anytime soon, of course. In fact, it
“how the gifted and glamorous are
may be returning with a vengeance
showing us how to take pity.”

106 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

The Tumbrel
IDENTIFYING
THE PATHOGEN
 TUMBREL
VERSAILLES BY BRANKO MARCETIC

Corona
C.R.E.A.M.

With the appalling Senate

scandal over coronavirus
insider trading, it is no longer
possible to deny it: we are
governed by a caste of the
unimaginably rich, far
removed from our realities.

A terrible crisis can reveal many

things — and such is the case with
the coronavirus pandemic. It’s
already laid bare how many of the
rules that govern American life
are pointless and arbitrary, that
it’s not pragmatism but the
bulging eyes of a true believer that
fuels the Democrats’ economic
conservatism, and the true, pitiful
state of the US health care
system. Now it’s shown just how
venal those who run the country chairman of the
really are. New York Stock
Exchange and, with
Washington, DC, was rocked in
an estimated net
March by revelations of possible
worth of half a billion
coronavirus-related insider
dollars, the richest member
trading by members of Congress.
of Congress. That particular
Though several senators have
fact had already made Loeffler a
been accused, it’s two in particular
walking, talking conflict of interest,
that the charges have focused on.
plonked onto a committee where she
First, there’s Georgia Republican would be in charge of regulating her own
Kelly Loeffler, spouse to the husband’s business enterprises.

108 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Corona C.R.E.A.M.

On January 24, Loeffler sat in on a private, senators-

only briefing about the virus, which included the
director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (cdc) and National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases director Dr Anthony Fauci.
Over the next three weeks, until February 14, Loeffler
and her husband sold off between $1.275 and $3.1
million worth of stocks, while buying stocks in Citrix,
a company that makes software for remote work.
Bear in mind that by February 12, a booming Dow
Jones Industrial Average had hit a record high,
with no signs of slowing down.

Loeffler is defending herself by saying

investment decisions are made by third-party
advisers without her or her husband’s
involvement, and that disclosure forms
show she wasn’t told about any of this until
February 16 this year. Let us say that’s true.

What’s less explicable is the fact that, for

weeks after, Loeffler was publicly assuring
Americans about the government’s
readiness to tackle the virus, and claiming
that the economy was strong enough to
handle the crisis. She even put out a
February 28 statement with her counterpart,
David Perdue, saying: “My number one
priority is to protect the people of Georgia
and keep them informed.” If the January 24
briefing didn’t tip her off, are we really
supposed to believe Loeffler, a successful
businesswoman, found out her advisers had sold
millions in stocks and blindly assumed everything
was hunky-dory?

But even this is nothing compared to North Carolina

senator Richard Burr, another Republican who has
justifiably been thrust into the eye of the hurricane
over congressional stock sell-offs. As ProPublica
reported, Burr not only attended the same January 24
briefing as Loeffler, but, as chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, he was getting daily briefings
about the virus’s spread. A day after the Dow Jones
hit its all-time high, Burr made his largest stock
sell-off in fourteen months, selling up to $1.72 million
in shares, including as much as $150,000 invested in
several hotel chains whose value tanked not long

PANDEMIC POLITICS 109

 VERSAILLES

after. Burr didn’t buy any shares, false assurances to the public while
either. As icing on the cake, Burr telling his state’s business leaders
was one of only three senators to the harsh truth about the
vote against the 2012 stock (Stop virus? The simple answer is that
Trading on Congressional the United States is a society
Knowledge) Act, which banned in which political leaders listen to
insider trading by members of and enact the wishes of the rich
Congress. and generous, while systematically
ignoring those of the poor and
What makes Burr’s case particu-
middle class. Burr was straight
larly outrageous is that, unlike
with those few donors at a
with Loeffler, we have evidence
luncheon because it is their
he was lying to the public about
opinions, not those of the voting
the threat of the virus. Despite
public, that truly matter to
authoring a February 7 op-ed
members of Congress. One can’t
assuring people that the govern-
help but wonder what other
ment was well prepared to prevent
nuggets of honesty are being
a pandemic, twenty days later,
offered by the nation’s politicians
in a meeting with his real constitu-
behind similarly closed doors.
ents — a group of wealthy local
industrialists who had donated Second, why is it that sitting
more than $100,000 to his members of Congress are allowed
last campaign — Burr gave a very to buy and sell millions in stocks at
different message: that the virus all, or even to sit on powerful
was “much more aggressive committees that may or may not
in its transmission than anything impact their partners’ business
that we have seen in recent dealings? On the one hand, it
history”; that “you may have to points to the need for stricter rules
alter your travel”; that there around conflicts of interest,
would be school closures; that including simply barring represen-
the military would be tasked with tatives and their spouses from
grappling with the health crisis. gallivanting through the stock
market as they help run the
Though other senators have been
country.
accused of similar wrongdoing, as
the Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay On the other hand, it points to
reported, these are not in the same something much deeper: just as
league. They were either selling the Democratic Party requires
before the coronavirus briefing or its candidates to be able to raise
sold after the public was well at least $250,000 from just the
aware of the scale of the crisis. contacts in their phone, the
But these cases, too, expose some political process is closed off to
uncomfortable realities. anyone who isn’t already outra-
geously wealthy, or at least runs
One is the way that today’s
in circles that are. And a system
historic wealth inequality has
like that will inherently create its
manifested itself in this crisis.
own conflicts of interest, stocks
Why is it that Burr was giving
or no stocks.

110 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 TUMBREL
THERMIDOR BY DAVID BRODER

“It’s not enough to give doctors

and nurses a pat on the back and The New
call them ‘heroes,’” Matteo Salvini
told Italy’s leading politics talk
show on April 9. “A pay raise
Thatcherites
would have been more concrete.”

Two days earlier, the Italian

Senate had rebuffed his proposal
of a tax cut for medical staff. The
blame, the right-wing Lega leader
insisted, lay with an “old bureau-
Across Europe, the far right is
cratic vision concentrated on insisting on the need for a more
pre-virus schemas” — a problem powerful state — but on terms that
also weighing down laid-off
Italians, whose financial help was
will crush millions of workers.
slow in coming because “the trade
unions say no.” Salvini clicked
his fingers: “What Italians want is
speed.” A swipe with the back of
his hand. “In these exceptional
times, we need to wipe out the
bureaucracy.”
out mass testing, and the absence crisis-response measures. But
Across the Alps, in France, where of reassurances for small busi- absent the institutions that would
the far right is likewise the main nesses all fed Le Pen’s message. push through a renewed social
opposition party, Marine Le Pen democracy, such a “refurbish-
Yet this also pointed to something
similarly insists that the political ment” will take place on a terrain
of a paradox. Even the most
center hasn’t understood how highly unfavorable to the Left.
hawkish neoliberal commentary
times have changed. Her Rassem-
on the pandemic has conceded the The gains the far right has made
blement National condemned
need for the return of the state. In in recent years are bound to shape
Emmanuel Macron’s government
a televised address on March 12, the terms on which the state
for its wishy-washy response to
Emmanuel Macron himself hailed makes its “return.” This is not a
the coronavirus — accusing it of
the role of the welfare state, logic of welfarism or social
“sticking its finger in the wind” to
while the Financial Times insisted solidarity, but a protector state
decide what to do, when what was
on the need to “refurbish the that stands up for small businesses
instead needed was the “revival
social contract” — rebuilding and prevents a generalized
of the strategic state.” Widespread
social-democratic compromises debt crisis — while making sure
reports of medical staff lacking
rather than just adopting someone else foots the bill.
resources, the state’s failure to roll

PANDEMIC POLITICS 111

 THERMIDOR

Exclusion
The fact that the pandemic doesn’t
just show us all the need for
solidarity is first apparent in the
attempt to find scapegoats for its
transmission. Apart from claims
that “China gave us the virus” (as
per Giorgia Meloni, leader of
Italy’s post-fascist Fratelli
d’Italia), this is most visible in the
bid to target minorities for
flouting social distancing rules.
The rising star of France’s far
right, Jordan Bardella, condemned
the state for “turning a blind
eye to the disrespect for confine-
ment ... in neighborhoods like
Seine-Saint-Denis ... for fear of
riots.” Bardella’s reference to this
département in the northeastern
Paris suburbs has a clear
meaning — “neighborhoods like
Seine-Saint-Denis” are “where
black people and Muslims live.”

Bardella grew up in Seine-Saint-

Denis — and since his election to
the European parliament last year, The advantage of such rhetoric is April 7, Béziers tore more than a
at just twenty-three years old, he that it exploits something the hundred public benches out of the
has given a slicker, younger face to government is already doing. ground, declaring that there was
the far right. But if the Rassemble- Macron’s government has itself “no reason for lazing around amid
ment National calls for a “war individualized responsibility for this crisis.”
economy,” this is also aligned with stopping the spread of the
Rather weaker have been Le Pen’s
an age-old far-right theme — the virus — imposing confinement in
efforts to find a coherent criticism
disloyal minorities who under- people’s free time while still
of the pandemic response. Most
mine the collective effort. Typical forcing millions to go to work. Le
governments internationally (and
in this regard was Le Pen’s call for Pen radicalizes this divide,
public health systems) have seen
a curfew to stop people going sympathizing with “necessary”
their popularity rise thanks to
outside in the quartiers sensibles workers (nurses) and innocent
their response to the outbreak,
(a state euphemism for poor, victims of the crisis (small business
and the narrative of national unity
majority-minority districts). As owners) but damning the idle,
is risky for any opposition party
she put it, “The curfew won’t hurt undisciplined poor for flouting the
in a moment of crisis. Le Pen has,
anyone — we’re all confined. But it rules. Illustrative in this regard
however, struck a critical pose
will hurt thieves, gangsters, and were the measures taken in
by insisting on the need to use the
other scum who think they can go Béziers, whose independent
anti-malaria drug chloroquine —
on with their little games with mayor, Robert Ménard, is closely
a panacea also touted by Donald
total impunity.” aligned to Le Pen’s party. On

112 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 The New Thatcherites

Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. This control and restricted migration. point, he accused the government
seems to flatter her militants’ own From this perspective, Le Pen was of overreaction — insisting
preconceptions; one of her party’s ahead of the curve — calling in that Italians, who already faced
European parliamentarians late February for the government barriers to entry in other countries,
even pushed a conspiracy theory to deny entry to Italian soccer should take the chance to go on a
implying Jewish lobbyists had a fans. Across the now-closed staycation.
hand in the government’s refusal border, Salvini and Meloni have
to take this approach. But this, likewise used the virus as a basis to
Full Powers
like her dissemination of the damn mass immigration.
conspiracy theory that the virus In the span of just a few days,
On February 28, Salvini posted a
was produced in a “Chinese lab,” Salvini damned the Italian
video of himself at a ski resort
hardly sets a “stately” tone. government for not sealing off the
calling for a government “with
border, claimed that an excessive
The crisis has, nonetheless, clearly balls” that would stop “the world
shutdown would hit jobs in the
played into the politics of border arriving in Italy.” Still, at this
tourism sector, and then pivoted to
insist that the government wasn’t
enforcing enough of a lockdown.
Even if critics will see these
contradictions as gaffes, his Lega
party easily maintains first place in
the polls, with around 30 percent
support, while Meloni’s rising
Fratelli d’Italia, a party of direct
fascist lineage, remains its junior
ally at 12–14 percent. The rising
stature of independent premier
Giuseppe Conte seems unlikely to
stop such forces from eventually
reaching power, perhaps propelled
by this crisis.

The far right is insisting on the

return of the state — with quicker,
firmer action, from more police to
tax cuts for nurses. Yet this does
not extend to all fields. Notable
in this regard is the behavior of
the largest Lega-controlled region,
Lombardy, which is the center of
the outbreak in Italy. Its president,
Attilio Fontana, at first dismissed
the virus as “just the flu,” before his
own aide caught it. As late as
March 11, he persisted in denying
the need to shut down workplaces —
backing bosses’ federation Confin-
dustria in allowing employers to

113
 THERMIDOR

“self-regulate” before he was demagogic far-right responses to a tax cut — not investment or a
forced to back down. In early the crisis. In his TV appearance on leveling up of conditions, but
April, Fontana attempted to usurp April 9, Salvini said that “while transferring spending cuts from
the national government by the politicians may think this is one part of public services to
“filling in for the state,” promising mad ... for many, it’ll be hard to another.
to pay out regional funds to pay the bills this month.” But if
laid-off workers before the central “nothing has been done for bills,
European Failures
state does. for rents,” the answer was “not
that the bills are canceled, but the The call for a return of the state
Had the crisis hit at this time last
payment can at least be suspended also concerns individual nations’
year, when Salvini, then interior
till September, and then done in relationship with the European
minister, was the government’s
steps.” This also explains why Union. In their respective election
hegemonic figure, this talk of
Salvini’s proposal for a “pay raise” campaigns in 2017 and 2018, both
“quick solutions” and cutting out
for medical staff took the form of Le Pen and Salvini dropped their
bureaucracy might have taken on
different proportions. The Lega
leader was one of few prominent
European politicians to praise
the approach taken by Viktor
Orbán, Hungary’s far-right prime
minister, after the country’s
parliament passed a bill allowing
him to rule by decree. In Buda-
pest, Orbán’s response has been a
particular kind of “social protec-
tion” — helping businesses
through tax credits and delayed
mortgage payments, but not
through canceling rents or
evictions or aiding workers. In a
certain sense, this approach does
support the idea that the crisis
has shown how interdependent we
all are. The response, though, is
not to extend rights (with the state
guaranteeing incomes or jobs)
but simply to insist that workers’
interests lie in their employers
staying afloat. Any direct repre-
sentation of workers (the Left,
trade unions) is merely a bureau-
cratic impediment to the action
the strong state must make to save
“the economy,” in this same spirit.

This subjection of social solidarity

to a logic of markets and privatiza-
tion is visible even in the most

114 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 The New Thatcherites

crisis — far-right parties that have

been on the rise since the 1980s.
Yet part of the strength of these
forces is that the changes they
propose don’t actually break with
Thatcherite common sense.

The far right demands rapid action

to keep us afloat — but also that
we pay the bills, eventually. They
The forces best placed to condemn Europe for its lack
of crisis response — yet insist on
exploit the crisis are the sanctity of debts as well as
well established — and savings. They admit that the state
they aren’t on our side. should step in to bail out the self-
employed and small businesses —
yet reject generalized welfare
measures and demonize the idle
poor. Salvini’s party even calls for
a 15 percent flat tax.

For all these reasons, we should

be doubtful of claims that the
pandemic response is bound to
strengthen social solidarity, as if
borne of the recognition that we’re
all in it together. The 2008 crisis
exposed the failings of financialized
calls for an exit from the eurozone. opportunity for the far right to capitalism, but this did not
While the single currency has widen its base. Both the March 26 cause neoliberalism to disappear.
enfeebled their countries’ ability European Council meeting and Rather, the winners were
to deal with their public debt, the April Eurogroup meeting of those who were already winning.
both parties’ electorates include a finance ministers refused to
For thirty years and more, far-
large swath of middle-class savers mutualize the debts resulting from
right forces across Europe
as well as small business owners the mounting economic crisis —
have exploited the fragmentation
who fear that an outright split would a denial of European solidarity
of the workers’ movement to
mean default and even trade emphasized by the arrogance of
propose a war among the poor as
reprisals. Each party’s support is Dutch and German representa-
the solution to diminished
primarily drawn from the center tives, who suggested that Italy was
resources. Today, this is replicated
right, and only secondarily to blame for its debts. When major
in the call for short-term tax cuts
(especially in Lega’s case) from Berlin daily Die Welt published
to be followed by a bigger burden
blue-collar voters disillusioned an opinion piece calling on Angela
of debt and the denunciation
with the Left. They have no stable Merkel to “stand strong” against
of “too many mouths to feed.”
majority for a Frexit or an Italexit. those who would “rain money on
the mafia,” Salvini cried foul. The crisis is, indeed, unprece-
Especially in the most debt-
dented. But the forces best placed
afflicted southern countries, the For now, it looks like the eu’s
to exploit it are well established —
evident lack of European soli- failures will be exploited by the
and they aren’t on our side.
darity does at least offer an forces who did best in the last

PANDEMIC POLITICS 115

Leftovers
STAY SAFE,
WE’LL SEE YOU
NEXT ISSUE
 LEFTOVERS
POPULAR FRONT ELLEN ENGELSTAD

ILLUSTRATION BY
DOMINIC KESTERTON

Writing about Scandinavia for an

international audience poses a
dilemma. Pointing out good
aspects of the “Nordic model”
tends to hide what’s wrong in

Krona Virus
these countries, and how incom-
plete the victories of social
democracy have been. Here, too,
there has been rising inequality,
massive privatization, and
austerity measures. The gains of
decades of class struggle and
organization have been undercut.
A magic money tree does exist —
Yet even as the welfare state
withers, these past victories and not just in Scandinavia.
remain a solid platform from The question is who gets to shake
which to offer millions protection it first.
from the worst of poverty and
exploitation. Faced with the
coronavirus crisis, we are seeing
the importance of both defending
and deepening social democracy.
The government proposals tabled This turnaround was partly due to
on March 13 would have slashed the government’s weakness. It
The Left Is the full-pay period from fifteen has been a minority coalition since
Resurgent in Norway days to two, after which a person fall, when the far-right Progress
making €2,500 a month would be Party (frp) and its ministers
This imperative is most obvious
left with just over €1,500. noisily left the administration in a
in Norway. Its government is
dispute over isis-linked Norwe-
ruled by a coalition of right-wing “This is just a gift to the wealthy,”
gian citizens returning from a
parties, and in March, its first complained a Socialist Left Party
refugee camp in Syria. frp likely
measures were mainly focused spokesperson, Kari Elisabeth
wanted to return to opposition
on helping private businesses Kaski. The leader of the radical
before the 2021 election, having
weather the lockdown. The state Rødt party, Bjørnar Moxnes,
lost support while presiding over
promised to make it easier, quicker, accused the government of shifting
unpopular spending cuts.
and cheaper for employers to the costs of the crisis to workers,
put workers “on leave” — and thus while the leader of the trade union This split among the Right, the
avoid having to continue paying confederation lo, Hans-Christian left-wing parties’ strengthened
out wages. Gabrielsen, called the proposal polling position, and the resulting
unfair and unacceptable. The Left pressure on the Labor Party to
Normally, a business can force
in Norway has grown used to strike a more aggressively
employees to go on leave because
making this kind of complaint anti-austerity stance ultimately
of seasonal work patterns, but it
from opposition — without being allowed the opposition to call the
would then need to pay them
listened to. But this time, the government’s bluff in parliament.
fifteen days’ full pay, after which
bailout plans were halted. But the power of Norway’s trade
social security would pay out 62.4
union movement was particularly
percent of their previous income.
decisive.

PANDEMIC POLITICS 117

 POPULAR FRONT

Lorem Ipsum
Dolor Sit Amet

DEK: Nam aliquet, ipsum et

semper convallis, quam lacus luctus
nisi, ac cursus enim diam ut leo.

The government’s retreat led to means. After the bailout package, workers are fine, so long as they
hasty discussions among all nine controversy has, in particular, don’t harm profits for capitalists.
parties in parliament, and on revolved around the police
Rødt additionally proposed that
March 16, a new package was powers the government sought
the government should force the
presented, in which the state through its state-of-emergency
landlords of businesses receiving
would take a much more proactive bill. The left-wing parties
state aid (stores, restaurants,
role. Workers put on leave would managed to reduce this bill to
cinemas) to offer rent relief. But
now get full pay for twenty days its bare minimum, while also
that was also voted down,
(an improvement even on the pre- limiting its scope to just one
meaning that public payouts for
coronavirus situation), but month. These parties have also
struggling businesses will go
employers would only cover the sought to shape the terms of
straight to property owners —
first two days, with the rest paid state aid, pushing for a ban on
some of Norway’s richest people.
by the state. After that period, dividend payments to the
a worker on leave will receive 80 shareholders of businesses and
percent of their previous salary, banks that receive public funds. Elsewhere in
up to €26,000 a year, and 62.4
Just a few years ago, the Labor Scandinavia, the
percent of what they received on
Party would probably have joined Situation Is Mixed
top of that. This policy was
the Right in insisting businesses
combined with increased days off Norway’s response was contradic-
could “self-regulate,” but this
for care duties and payments for tory, and it differed from the
time, it sided with the Left. The
freelancers. approach of its neighboring
far-right frp and the government
countries. This is perhaps most
Conflicts remain — including over blocked the proposal anyway —
obvious on the epidemiological
what the new legislation really for right populists, handouts for

118 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 Krona Virus

front — at the time of writing government is at the mercy of the gets to shake it first and take
in early April, Sweden faced Right. This is the result of an home the most. The differences
sharp criticism for its failure to inconclusive 2018 election, after among the three Scandinavian
institute a general shutdown, which the neoliberal Center countries partly reflect the fact
whereas Denmark was the first and Liberal parties have tolerated that they are ruled by very
of the Scandinavian nations to a center-left coalition in order different coalitions: Norway by
close borders and schools and to keep out the far-right Sweden the Right, Denmark by the Left,
provide state aid to address the Democrats. The sustainability and Sweden by the Center.
economic impact. of this centrist cordon sanitaire is Sweden and Denmark’s Social
doubtful, not least as the Social Democrats, unlike the Norwegian
Denmark’s actions reflect the
Democrats’ own neoliberal government, banned dividend
country’s quite different
measures (including the privatiza- payments to the shareholders of
parliamentary arithmetic. There,
tion of the unemployment agency) businesses and banks receiving
the government is led by the Social
are fueling far-right support. state aid; Denmark went even
Democrats, whose majority also
further, as they also banned state
depends on the Socialist People’s Rather than suggesting that
aid to firms registered in tax-
Party and the Red-Green Alliance. companies can put people “on
havens and made sure workers in
Yet like Norway, the economy leave” with most of their wages
companies receiving state aid were
rests heavily on tripartite covered, as in Norway, or paying
completely protected from layoffs.
employment relations — and the businesses to keep their
government’s response was the employees, as in Denmark, the Nonetheless, it’s interesting to
result of a deal with trade unions Swedish government’s approach observe certain similarities — the
and employers’ associations. has been to ask the employees result of an enduring “common
of struggling businesses to work sense” built up by past working-
The effect was a coordinated
reduced hours while keeping class victories. It remains difficult
plan — companies that had to lay
most of their salaries (the shortfall to take popular welfare and
off at least 30 percent of their staff
is picked up by the state). The security away from people. In
(or at least fifty employees) would
government will also make it Norway, it looks like the Right has
receive help, with the state
easier to receive unemployment more or less given up on this
covering 75 percent of wages for
benefits, while cutting business idea, opting to splash the cash on
workers put on temporary leave.
taxes and freeing up credit. everyone so long as the rich
So, as in Norway, Denmark helps
continue to get the most.
those who are temporarily laid off Unlike Norway, Sweden is
with money, but unlike Norway, encouraging landlords to cut rent A crisis is always an opportunity
they ban permanent layoffs for all but not enforcing it. Instead, the for the Right to weaken labor,
businesses receiving aid. Denmark government promises to pay half especially considering that these
also introduced generous assis- the cost back to landlords who are hardly good circumstances for
tance to freelancers and precarious voluntarily agree to take less from trade unions to organize. Yet it
workers. their tenants. is also an opportunity for the Left
to highlight the popularity of
In the more famous bastion of
welfarist policies — and even push
the Nordic model, Sweden, Using the Crisis
to expand them.
however, the picture is less for Good
positive. Its government consists
of Social Democrats and Greens, If the coronavirus crisis shows
but, unlike in Denmark, where one thing, it’s that a magic money
the center left is pressured in tree does exist — and not just in
parliament by the Left, Sweden’s Scandinavia. The question is who

PANDEMIC POLITICS 119

 LEFTOVERS
POPULAR FRONT BY MARTA FANA &
FRANCESCO MASSIMO

ILLUSTRATION BY
DOMINIC KESTERTON

We Set Amazon Throughout March, the

employers’ federation Confindu-
stria lobbied hard to keep

on Fire workplaces open, insisting that a

country long hit by stagnation
couldn’t withstand a fresh
recession. On March 22, faced
with a wave of strikes from docks
to engineering factories, the
government passed a new decree
Millions of people stuck at home promising a wider shutdown.
means more orders for Amazon. Yet thanks to continued employer
resistance, even in early
But squeezed Amazon employees April, some 11 million nonessential
in France and Italy didn’t want workers remained at work.
to be “essential workers” — and Throughout the lockdown,
they launched a wave of strikes Amazon has been a particular
locus of attention. As Italy’s
to demand a shutdown. government began passing
measures to keep the population
at home, the online delivery
firm’s orders skyrocketed — and
By April, Italy was responsible for economic activity left around a
so, too, did the pressure on its
around a quarter of coronavirus third of workplaces open.
personnel. Based on information
deaths worldwide. Starting from From the smallest shops to vast
provided by Amazon workers,
a few towns in the hardest-hit zone distribution centers, workers
we know that in one of its largest
rosse, a lockdown spread nation- faced pressure to keep up produc-
Italian hubs, the number of
wide in early March and promised tion even in the absence of basic
items processed during the first
to keep Italians at home. Yet health and safety protections.
week of confinement stood at
while “smart working” measures But at Amazon, as elsewhere, they
around 180,000 — similar to what
allowed a minority of mostly refused to be mere cannon
the site would usually process on
professional employees to work fodder — and ignited a resurgence
Black Friday.
remotely, the situation for most of labor conflict.
workers was quite different. Another sign of this ramped-up
activity is the number of tempo-
Millions of workers had to Soaring Sales
rary workers being hired. In a
continue showing up for their
Such disputes partly owed to the March 21 letter, Jeff Bezos
shifts — and even a government
lack of definition in what counted confirmed press reports that the
decree curtailing “unnecessary”
as “necessary” production. company planned to recruit an

120 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 We Set Amazon on Fire

additional one hundred thousand Social Distance covid-19. Workers at multiple

employees in the United States. sites reported a lack of masks or
Similar spikes in the hiring of From early on in the pandemic, gloves — and being directly told
temporary employees have been there had been calls for employers by managers that they could not
recorded in Amazon facilities to offer staff extra protections if slow production rates simply to
in European countries including workplaces did stay open. On allow effective social distancing.
France, Poland, and Spain. March 14, the Italian government
reached an agreement on work- The same problems were rampant
In Italy, this process has been fed place safety with trade unions and in France, where Amazon chiefs
by the long-term liberalization Confindustria that was designed to admitted to not following
of the labor market. Where keep production going. But this government safety instructions
workers did go on leave for fear of protocollo’s prescriptions were so “to the letter.” Yet this reluctance
contagion — thus keeping just vague that they offered no real to provide for workers’ safety,
50 percent of their pay — Amazon protection. Power of decision was combined with increased produc-
quickly moved to replace them left up to management, and tion, soon provoked a response.
with temps, on shorter-term and employee representatives had no On March 16, workers walked out
less secure contracts. These authority to inspect and intervene at the Amazon France distribution
temporary workers were even to change shop-floor processes. hubs in Lille, Chalon, and
more vulnerable to management
At Amazon, the health conditions Montélimar. The following day,
pressure, and even less able
in the distribution warehouses they were joined by workers
to stand up for basic standards of
were disastrous — a drama in Orléans, and soon the strike
health and safety in their
heightened as reports emerged of spread to Italy, where similar
workplaces.
employees testing positive for walkouts took place at both the

PANDEMIC POLITICS 121

 POPULAR FRONT

Piacenza and Passo Corese (near This mobilization put Amazon the tasks workers are expected to
Rome) warehouses. Alongside under pressure — creating fulfill, and the changes that were
these strikes, absenteeism conflicts among management made came too late to prevent
soared — with between 30 and 50 as well. French press reported that transmission in the early phases of
percent of staff calling in sick or the director of the Orléans the crisis. Unions report that at
refusing to come to work. plant and the vice president of EU least ten workers have tested
Operations resigned, probably positive in France — in Italy, two
Such actions involved workers
because of disagreements Amazon employees have con-
who don’t usually join in strikes —
over how to handle the crisis. Yet firmed cases of coronavirus,
and the scale of the protests was
despite such turmoil, management though we may well think the real
a surprise for the unions them-
began to regain the initiative. number is much higher.
selves. This was especially the
case in Italy, where, compared to In both France and Italy, the Such doubts are fed by the
France, union leaderships company threatened strikers with company’s efforts to block the
tend to be more controlled by disciplinary measures — while work of union representatives
full-time officials, even at the insisting that they were providing looking into hygiene matters. At
individual workplace level. In the public with an essential the Piacenza site, workers did
France, where unions remain service. At the same time, get a factory committee charged
more based on grassroots struc- they bumped up wages to incen- with monitoring the application
tures, they were better able to lead tivize employees to take the of safety measures (such
the way rather than just tagging risk of continuing work, offering bodies are stipulated by the
along behind wildcat actions. temporary staff a full wage tripartite protocollo, but they are
while increasing pay by €2 an hour not materializing elsewhere).
Workers raised similar demands
so long as the crisis last. They’ve used this as an opportu-
across the largest European
nity to extend workers’ control
countries: shut down Amazon’s Faced with both the strikes
over their labor — members
warehouses, or at least signifi- and media pressure, the French
of the committee are nominated
cantly reduce the workload, so and Italian branches of Amazon
by the union and have the
that there would be fewer each announced they would focus
authority to report managers who
employees present and thus on delivering “primary necessity
do not respect safety measures.
a reduced risk of contamination. goods.” This sweeping category,
However, management obstruc-
Workers insisted that only however, included not just food or
tionism — denying committee
those who volunteered to do so even health and hygiene products,
members full freedom to inspect
should go in to work, whereas the but also office equipment.
facilities and ignoring the
rest should be able to stay at home
Moreover, the company began to problems they report — has
and receive at least partial wages.
reorganize production in order to undermined their effectiveness.
Their demands also concerned the allow social distancing, providing
Still, the crisis has affirmed
purpose of their work. Italian workers with disinfecting gel
the enduring power of shop-floor
and French workers asserted that and rescheduling shifts in order to
organizing and the ability of
Amazon’s site should only be avoid the ordinary concentration
workers to extend their demands
selling basic necessities, and not of people on the shop floor.
to questions of what they produce
sending people door-to-door just
and how they go about producing
to deliver gardening equipment.
Democratic Control it. Any socialist left, in Europe
Such demands were also raised by
or elsewhere, would be wise to
workers in Germany, Poland, and However, all these measures were
remember this latent class power.
Spain, even if no strike has taken only a palliative. Social distancing
place so far in those countries. remains nearly impossible given

122 № 37  /  SPRING 2020

 LEFTOVERS
MEANS AND ENDS

An Urgent
A pandemic. An economic crash. Appeal for Your
And a second socialist run for the
White House smashing up against
the rocks of the Democratic Party.
Support
We just finished two decades of
the twenty-first century, and the
end of the End of History has
come crashing to a halt — at least
twice already.

As Antonio Gramsci put it, the old

We’ve avoided making an appeal
is dying and yet the new cannot be up to this point, but if you’re able,
born; in this interregnum, morbid we’d appreciate your support.
symptoms appear. Most of our
readers haven’t even hit forty, and
already they’ve seen two economic
disasters, followed by two major
socialist runs for the American
presidency that won big with those
under forty-five but lost older
voters. And with the spread of right-
election cycle by election cycle, able to renew and will have
wing populism, we have plenty of
but also look beyond those to temporarily suspend their
morbid symptoms to contend with.
contests and start planning for subscription.
But the light breaking through a future that is slowly coming
That’s where you come in. We’ve
the dark is bright. Even after four into view.
avoided making an appeal up to
years of media smears and
Jacobin is one such institution. this point, but if you’re able, we’d
Democratic establishment attacks,
But, as you can imagine, these appreciate your support.
Bernie Sanders gained millions
are difficult times for us. Without
of votes and broke new ground in Donate online to Jacobin at
income from bookstores and
the western half of the United jacobinmag.com/donate, renew
newsstands, and with diminished
States. And now, with the your subscriptions, and spread
advertisements, we’re looking at
COVID-19 pandemic, the public’s the word about the publication to
a serious revenue shortfall. Thank-
ideas about what is possible your friends.
fully, our subscription numbers
and what is owed to workers are
keep growing, but with the ongo- History isn’t over — and socialists
changing by the day. Now,
ing economic recession — and the have a vital role to play in what’s to
more than ever, it’s the time for
worst yet to come — we worry come. Please make sure that we’re
socialists to start building
that many of our readers won’t be around for the long haul.
institutions that can not just fight

PANDEMIC POLITICS 123

 “We will feed each other,
redistribute wealth, strike.”

— Britney Spears

124 № 37  /  SPRING 2020