After. Economics and politics of the post-pandemic world

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic that has shaken the world will lay a long shadow for many years. It puts humanity in the face of incredible challenges that coincide with other negative mega-trends and unresolved economic, social and political problems. The enormous consequences and costs of the pandemic — human and social, economic and financial — will be known only ex post. While some lose nothing, others lose everything, sometimes even their lives. The heterogeneous, post-pandemic future — in which under the conditions of irreversible globalization various political and economic systems will interact with each other — will follow many paths, with the position of highly developed countries becoming relatively weaker. Tensions on the US—China line will increase, geopolitics and geoeconomics will change. The confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism will intensify, the synergy of the market and the state will be transformed. It will be particularly dangerous to turn two sides of the same counterfeit coin as an alternative: neoliberal capitalism versus populist capitalism. Chances for the better future may be created by a gradual transition to new pragmatism. It is a strategy of moderation in economic activities and a triple — economically, socially and ecologically — sustainable development based on the outline of an innovative, unorthodox and holistic economic theory. Pandemic is also an immense challenge for social sciences, not only for economics, because old manner of thinking will often occur to be useless for analyzing and explaining new situations.