Preliminary remark
I would first like to express two words of thanks: First of all, I would like to thank all those who organized this great event.
But I would also like to thank my fellow campaigners from Switzerland. What I will present in the following is, among others, the result of a collective process of thinking that took place within two collectives, both of which emerged in the course of the Corona crisis. The first collective, called Feminist Lookdown, attempted to shed light on this crisis from a feminist perspective; so right at the beginning of the Corona crisis for example we called for the doubling of spending on nursing staff while dropping all other measures, which of course went completely unheard; the other collective, Linksbündig, reflects on this crisis from a decisively left-wing, i.e. capitalism-critical perspective. In both collectives, we wanted to understand what the point of these obviously nonsensical measures could be. In short, our question was what we were actually dealing with in the Corona crisis.
Without this collective brainwork, I would not have been able to formulate the following. I would therefore like to also thank these two collectives.
So what is corona? In what follows, I will not talk about a pandemic. Corona would not have been a pandemic according to the WHO criteria that applied until 2009. At that time, the WHO removed the decisive criterion for declaring a pandemic, namely the worldwide spread of a new virus „with enormous numbers of death and illness“ (Green/Fazi: 79). As we all know, Covid-19 has the mortality rate of a medium-severe flu – a fact that was already scientifically clear in the summer of 2020 – and would therefore not fall under this definition of „enormous numbers of death“. In the following, I will also not speak of „measures“ or „protective measures“, but, following Toby Green and Thomas Fazi’s book: The Covid Consensus. The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor – A Critique from the Left, I will simply talk about „government responses to the occurrence of a new coronavirus“. What we have been dealing with since March 2020 is not so much the virus, but the responses to this virus.
My statement is now simply: these answers follow a logic. They respond to the requirements and crises of capital accumulation. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to speak of logic. Capital is enough. In other words, I see corona as an expression of a totalitarian drift that is in its tendency inherent to liberal capitalism, a tendency that was already evident in the authoritarian traits of neoliberalism. Corona has merely perpetuated and intensified this drift. However, there is a crucial difference. Today, it is the Left that mainly defends this authoritarianism. This new authoritarianism no longer appears as such to all those who, before 2020, were resolutely opposing to the neoliberal grip on our lives. What is new, therefore, is that not only the parliamentary and therefore statist Left has succumbed to the charm of the neoliberal offensive; also the non-parliamentary Left has now given up its distance towards state and capital and joins in this consensus: As a result, today this totalitarian drift finds its greatest support in the non-parliamentary Left.
So I wouldn’t so much say that neoliberal ideology and economics have gone; neoliberalism had always and above all been a highly equipped state driven form of authoritarian imposition of so-called market forces, which must always be artificial, in other words induced, as they do not exist as such. Neoliberal is still in charge. But its spearhead has changed: bizarrely, it is now the Antifa, the feminists, the autonomists and the anarchists who defend this form of capitalism. Hence the systematic blurring. We are dealing with a constitutive confusion that exists everywhere, also between us.
I would therefore like to start by summarizing some basic facts.
The responses to the new coronavirus have not saved lives; on the contrary, they have led to massive excess mortality worldwide. And they have had an absolutely devastating impact particularly in the global South, massively widening the gap between the global South and the global North. I emphasize once again: This was not due to the virus but to the response to it. To elaborate a little on this:
– There is no evidence worldwide that fewer people have died in countries with harder lockdowns than in countries with light or no lockdowns. Conversely, there is strong evidence – I refer to the statistical material compiled by Tobby Green in his book The Covid Consensus. The new Politics of Global Inequality (p. 208-218) –, that the death rate from Covid-19 correlates with the quality of the healthcare system in the respective countries and not with the severity of the lockdowns. In fact, the countries with the toughest lockdowns also have the highest death rates. Peru is the first country to be mentioned here.
– There is also no evidence that the vaccination has saved lives. There is simply no data collected on this question. The only country where this data on vaccination status is available: England, shows a very different, even frightening picture. Christian Baur from Linksbündig has studied this data. Based on this data, it must be concluded that people with a Covid vaccination have a much higher risk of dying from Covid-19 and that they also have a higher risk of dying in generally than those who have not been vaccinated. You don’t read anything about this data in the official media, even though it is freely available. Other countries such as Germany or Switzerland do not even collect data on vaccination status of people who have died from Covid-19. Nevertheless, they claim that the vaccination protects against severe cases. There is no data to support this statement.
So it is also not about science. Rather, we need to talk about a „confused status of knowledge“: The state constantly waves with „the science“ in front of our head, but at the same time decidedly does not want to know anything: None of the measures applied have ever been evidence-based examined for their effectiveness or accompanied by corresponding studies.
In my opinion, it would therefore be completely misguided to say that all of this was to protect life, but it was politically authoritarian and that is why we are against it. This stance underestimates what we are dealing with in a way that is incomprehensible to me.
And that brings me to my first point.
1. The Global Biosecurity State
To say that the so-called corona protective measures served to protect life is about as meaningful as saying that the Pentagon serves to protect life. Indeed, the statement is not entirely false. In the logic of its inventors it is even correct. This logic stems from a military dispositive that was developed in a complex of supranational networks that we hardly know and pay far too little attention to, consisting of international organizations such as the WHO, GAVI, CEPI or the Eco Health Alliance, mega-foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and research institutions – often affiliated with the military – a complex that is usually and somewhat euphemistically referred to as a public-private partnership and which I, following Simon Elmer, call the „Global Biosecurity State“. It is important to understand: The nation states are the executors of the concepts of the Global Biosecurity State, they are not the actors themselves.
The understanding of society of this military dispositive roughly states that problems in society are not primarily of a political nature, but should be seen as a security issue that requires an exclusively technological solution. The threats to be dealt with include social unrest as well as natural viruses or bioterrorism. There is no difference between social conflicts and natural catastrophes, as both require the same responses. In bio-security parlance, this is known as the All Hazard Approach or One Health: regardless of whether we are dealing with the containment of viruses or riots, both are security risks. However, as the aim is to prevent risks – the keyword here is All Hazard Preparedness – and by definition risks always exist, this paradigm is permanent; there is no „after“, as this is already the next „before“. And that is how it should be. One Heath – the idea that Biosecurity should be about the interaction between humans, animals and the environment all in One – is therefore a biotechnological rewriting of what an outdated social theory once called „society“, namely under the aspect of „health security“. Biosecurity is military in the guise of health.
2. Biosecurity as management of the crisis of capital accumulation
My argument now is that this biosecurity dispositive provides on several levels exactly what the crisis-ridden capitalism of today needs. I cannot go into this crisis in detail here. But the following point is central to what follows. Capitalism is in a state of secular stagnation because the possibility of making profits by investing in manufacturing industry is shrinking dramatically. Since the 1960s, we have been dealing with a steady, intermittent decline in productivity growth, and capitalism can only generate profits with these productivity gains. The so-called Industrialization 4.0 does nothing to change this weakness in growth. On the contrary, it is accelerating this trend. The effect of this is that today profits can only be made in the highly speculative financial sector. Fabio Vighi therefore speaks of a „credit-driven simulation of growth“. This comes at the price of ever-looming and ever-increasing financial crises in the background, which in turn require authoritarian crisis management to overcome. According to Vighi, capitalism is therefore not simply in a crisis, but the crisis has now become its genuine/very form of government.
However, crises are also useful from the perspective of capital owners: as controlled devaluations – of public property, but also of smaller private property – they enable new lucrative investment opportunities. This is a kind of „accumulation through dispossession“, as David Harvey calls it.
For the population, however, all of this primarily means a reduction in living standards. And this is where the biosecurity dispositive comes into play. It manages the uprisings to be expected in the course of such reductions. But more importantly, and this is what seems so central to me about the lockdowns, it should get us used to digital poverty. By that I don’t mean that the poor in the Sahel still lack access to the internet. I mean, conversely, that the digital way of life is a form of impoverishment that does not appear as such and over all enjoys great popularity, especially on the Left: digital walks to protect nature, 10-minute cities to protect the climate, swimming at the screen to protect the beaches. Digitalization is first and foremost a form of impoverishment that has been underway in the global South for decades and is now set to be extended to the global North.
What can the biosecurity dispositive provide in terms of lowering living standards in the global North? I summarize the following four points:
- As a healthcare dispositive, biosecurity is primarily about replacing the low-value-added care sector with high-value-added products from industrial production: Human care is replaced by technological devices, i.e. (that is) technical equipment that replaces the labor intensity of care work with an industrially manufactured product or a digital service – e.g. (for example) a therapy app – in order to counteract the productivity crisis: Profits can be made with devices, but hardly with care work. On the contrary, it is the ever-growing care sector that is responsible for the stagnation in overall social productivity. And that is why, according to the logic, the labour-intensive and therefore low-value-added care work of real people in this sector should be replaced by high-tech processes. This is the reason why we from Feminist Lookdown have said from the very start of the crisis that we are dealing with an actively induced „shrinkage of staff“ in the healthcare sector, and not simply a lack of staff! Seen in this light, the corona regime is a gigantic attack on the care sector, and I still don’t understand why feminists are so little interested in this.
- In more general terms and immediately following on from this, the biosecurity dispositive can also be interpreted, as Andrea Komlosy suggests, as an attempt to establish the so-called MANBRIC technologies as the new leading technologys and healthcare as the new leading sector of a new accumulation cycle. MANBRIC stands for Medical, Additive, Nano-, Bio-, Robotic, Information and Cognitive Technologies, i.e. exactly those technologies that this dispositive privileges.
- In this context also have to be seen the new products, and here I am referring to the work of Amrei Müller, created by the biosecurity complex, which are needed for pandemic prevention and control and which, curiously enough, in the WHO-chargon are called PHEIC products: PHEIC stands for Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The range of products for such a PHEIC extends from tests and protective material to medicines, but, of course primarily vaccinations. The important thing is that all of this must always be kept in stock, continuously adapted and produced for the entire world population. An enormous economic stimulus program.
- The most important point, however, seems to me that this dispositive involves a very specific form of counterinsurgency through isolation and manipulation of perception. In particular, it is also about preventing insurgency: Isolated in front of a screen and completely confused, as we all are by the constant barrage of information that simultaneously makes us increasingly ignorant, it is no longer possible for us to formulate what our problems actually are. But we don’t need to as the task force has long since taken over the articulation of our needs on our behalf. If there is no longer a political sphere, there is no longer a need for political articulation …
3. The role of the Left: An ideological cover-up for capital interests
I conclude: The responses to the emergence of the new coronavirus, and in particular the economic contraction induced by the lockdowns, amounted to a targeted reduction in the living standards of broad sections of the population in the North and a massive widening of the North-South divide. Why do I say targeted? As Toby Green and Thomas Fazi convincingly demonstrate in their book, those responsible for the WHO’s coronavirus strategy recommendation were aware of the following facts:
- Until 2019, it was standard knowledge at the WHO that a respiratory virus could not be contained with lockdowns.
- The measures were not necessary, as Covid-19 is not so dangerous that it could justify such drastic measures.
- The lockdown measures have caused many more deaths worldwide, especially in the Global South, but probably also in our country, than people have died from Covid-19.
Those responsible for this strategy have knowingly taken this into account.
Of course, it is not the same whether something is deliberately accepted or planned for. I cannot – at this point in time – judge which of the two scenarios came into play here. What is true, however, is that this strategy fits in with the requirements of capital accumulation or the crisis management of today’s capitalism.
What is special about this situation is that it was the „left“ that succeeded in making these requirements appear not as what they are, a response to the crisis of capital accumulation, but in transforming them into something that supposedly unquestionably demands the active and solidary commitment of all of us.
So what is corona? It is a form of increasingly totalitarian crisis management of capitalism that, with the help of the left, is able to generate acceptance, even approval and sometimes even enthusiasm. In other words, a bizarre alliance between capital and the „Left“.
I have coined the term post-ideological totalitarianism for this alliance. Post-ideological because this dispositive does not seem to recognize any „higher“ ideal beyond its „solution orientation“. The perfidious thing about this constellation is that, under this loud cry for solution, the question of who actually has the power to define the problem that we are being called together to solve fades completely into the background.
Literature
Christian Bauer (2024): Waren die Corona-Impfstoffe wirklich so erfolgreich und haben Millionen Menschen gerettet? Blogbeitrag auf https://www.linksbuendig.ch/
Simon Elmer (2022): The Road to Fascism. For a Critique of the Global Biosexurity State. London: ASV (Architects for social housing)
Toby Green (2021): The Covid Consensus. The new Politics of Global Inequality. London: Hurst
Toby Green/ Thomas Fazi (2023) The Covid Consensus. The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor – A Critique form the Left. London: Hurst
David Harve (2003): The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Jacques Lacan (1991): Le Séminaire, libre XVII. Paris: Seuil
Andrea Komlosy (2022): Zeitenwende. Corona, Big Data und die kybernetische Zukunft. Wien: Promedia.
Amrei Müller/ Silvia Behrend (04.05.2024): WHO-Pandemievertrag: Schleichende Militarisierung der Pandemiepolitik, Berliner Zeitung
Massimo Recalcati (2022/ital. Orig. 2007): Das Verschwinden des Begehrens und der postideologische Totalitarismus. In: Soiland, Tove / Frühauf, Marie / Hartmann, Anna (Hrsg.): Postödipale Gesellschaft (Bd. 1). Berlin/Wien: Turia + Kant 2022, S. 331-363.
Colette Soler (2022): Psychoanalyse und Politik. Sigmund Freud Vorlesung 2021. Aus dem französischen von Brita Pohl. Wien/Berlin: Turia + Kant.
Fabio Vighi (2023): Die Untergangsschleife: Covid-19 und das Zeitalter der kapitalistischen Dauerkrise. In: Andreas Urban (Hg.): Schwerer Verlauf. Corona als Krisensymptom. Wien: Promedia, S. 21-46
Fabio Vighi (29. Mai, 2023): Gradually, then Suddenly? Crisis Capialism and its Disavowals. In: The Philosophical Salon.
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/gradually-then-suddenly-crisis-capitalism-and-its-disavowals/