13. Covid

Abstract

Chapter Thirteen ("Covid"): The global Covid-19 pandemic is not a causeless "event," nor a return of repressed "nature," but the intensification of the underlying conflict between the global organization of labor and private ownership for profit. Millions are losing their jobs and health care as companies downsize or go bust from what was not only a foreseeable but foreseen global health problem because of an economy that puts profits before needs. Such a crisis would not have been allowed to occur in a centrally planned socialist society run by the workers, who are becoming all too aware of the dangers posed by the commodification of human needs for profit. And yet, the revelation of this basic economic truth in the wake of the pandemic is occulted by the post-al Left, who use an "event-al" (Badiou) logic that disconnects effects from their underlying causes lying in the exploitation of labor by capital, to make the pandemic seem a break from the "normal" order rather than its inevitable result. It might be laughable that the philosopher of the event, in encountering what is by his own parameters an "event," declares the global pandemic and subsequent economic crash "uneventful," due merely to the "apocalyptic" rhetoric of "revolutionaries" ("On the Epidemic Situation"). But it is a manifestation of the wider Left abandonment of revolutionary theory and praxis, the consequences of which have been devastating for the struggle to abolish the class relations that prioritize profit over social need. Keywords: Covid-19; Badiou; pandemic; capitalism.