{"id":285,"date":"2025-05-14T22:31:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T20:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nonkongress.noblogs.org\/?p=285"},"modified":"2025-05-14T22:31:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T20:31:54","slug":"corona-the-bizarre-alliance-between-capital-and-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nonkongress.noblogs.org\/?p=285","title":{"rendered":"Corona: The bizarre alliance between capital and the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preliminary remark<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/span>Feminist L<\/i><\/span>oo<\/u><\/i><\/span>kdown<\/i><\/span>, 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, <\/span>Linksb\u00fcndig<\/i><\/span>, 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Without this collective brainwork, I would not have been able to formulate the following. I would therefore like to also thank these two collectives.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201ewith enormous numbers of death and illness\u201c (Green\/Fazi: 79). As we all know, Covid-19 has the mortality rate of a medium-severe flu \u2013 a fact that was already scientifically clear in the summer of 2020 \u2013 and would therefore not fall under this definition of \u201eenormous numbers of death\u201c. In the following, I will also not speak of \u201emeasures\u201c or \u201eprotective measures\u201c, but, following Toby Green and Thomas Fazi’s book: <\/span>The Covid Consensus. The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor – A Critique f<\/i><\/span>ro<\/i><\/span>m the Left<\/i><\/span>, I will simply talk about \u201egovernment responses to the occurrence of a new coronavirus\u201c. What we have been dealing with since March 2020 is not so much the virus, but <\/span>the responses<\/i><\/span> to this virus.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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.
\nSo I wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I would therefore like to start by summarizing some basic facts. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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:
\n– 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 \u2013 I refer to the statistical material compiled by Tobby Green in his book <\/span>The Covid Consensus. The new Politics of Global Inequality <\/i><\/span>(p. 208-218) \u2013, 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.
\n– 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 <\/span>Linksb\u00fcndig<\/i><\/span> 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\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So it is also not about science. Rather, we need to talk about a \u201econfused status of knowledge\u201c: The state constantly waves with \u201ethe science\u201c 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. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And that brings me to my first point.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

1. The Global Biosecurity State <\/span><\/u><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

To say that the so-called corona protectiv<\/span>e<\/span> 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 <\/span>Eco Health Alliance<\/i><\/span>, mega-foundations such as the <\/span>Rockefeller Foundation<\/i><\/span> or the <\/span>Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation<\/i><\/span> 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 \u201e<\/span>Global Biosecurity State<\/i><\/span>\u201c. It is important to understand: The nation states are the executors of the concepts of the <\/span>Global Biosecurity State<\/i><\/span>, they are not the actors themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/span>All Hazard Approach<\/i><\/span> or <\/span>One Health<\/i><\/span>: 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 \u2013 the keyword here is <\/span>All Hazard Preparedness<\/i><\/span> \u2013 and by definition risks always exist, this paradigm is permanent; there is no \u201eafter\u201c, as this is already the next \u201ebefore\u201c. And that is how it should be. <\/span>One Heath<\/i><\/span> \u2013 the idea that <\/span>Biosecurity<\/i><\/span> should be about the interaction between humans, animals and the environment all in One \u2013 is therefore a biotechnological rewriting of what an outdated social theory once called \u201esociety\u201c, namely under the aspect of \u201ehealth security\u201c. <\/span>Biosecurity<\/i><\/span> is military in the guise of health.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

2. Biosecurity as management of the crisis of capital accumulation<\/span><\/u><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201ecredit-driven <\/span>simulation<\/u><\/span> of growth\u201c. 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201eaccumulation through dispossession\u201c, as David Harvey calls it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What can the biosecurity dispositive provide in terms of lowering living standards in the global North? I summarize the following four points:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n