It is true, as we shall discuss in the next installment, that the neoliberal ruling classes face a scissor: a widening gap between their governmental and political abilities and the public health challenge. It has turned what should have been only a public health crisis, albeit a serious one, into an unprecedented economic collapse, both in degree and character, and a fundamental, constitutional crisis of neoliberal capitalism.
However, the left faces an historic disparity between its own long-depleted abilities and the hopes it has begun nursing that is even wider. Its abilities—levels of union organization and votes for left-of-centre parties, to take only two of the more obvious indicators—have taken a beating amid the neoliberal assault of the past four decades. Moreover, if one takes a longer historical view, its debility appears even more serious.
This is the third in a seven-part, multi-week series of commentary on the COVID-19 crisis entitled “What is to be done? A Manifesto for Politics Amid the Pandemic and Beyond” by Radhika Desai.
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Photo by Brian Wangenheim on Unsplash