In the video below entitled “Coronavirus Capitalism–And How To Beat It,” author and activist Naomi Klein explores the impact of the Coronavirus in terms of the economic and political policy decisions that are being made in the face of the pandemic.
In her accompanying article on The Intercept, we come to understand Klein’s political affiliations as she expresses the premise of a book she wrote entitled The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism:
Thirteen years ago, I wrote a book [which] described a brutal and recurring tactic by right-wing governments. After a shocking event — a war, coup, terrorist attack, market crash or natural disaster — they exploit the public’s disorientation, suspend democracy, push through radical free market policies that enrich the 1% at the expense of the poor and middle class.
She goes on to apply this to the current response she is seeing to the Coronavirus pandemic, while maintaining a glimmer of hope that some left-leaning policies may yet get the opportunity to germinate under these circumstances:
The Trump administration and other governments around the world are busily exploiting the crisis to push for no-strings-attached corporate bailouts and regulatory rollbacks.
This crisis — like earlier ones — could well be the catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interests in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities, while offering next to nothing to the most workers, wiping out small family savings and shuttering small businesses. But as this video shows, many are already pushing back — and that story hasn’t been written yet.
Only A Crisis Produces Real Change
What is perhaps most intriguing about the video is the suggestion that this could be a time of massive transformation in the way our societies function. She provides a quote from Milton Friedman, whom she derides as ‘an extreme free-market economist,’ in order to substantiate this idea:
“Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”–Milton Friedman
Klein hearkens back almost a century ago to exemplify how a crisis was able to suddenly start to bring about the type of social and economic change she is in favor of:
In fact, it’s possible for crisis to catalyze a kind of evolutionary leap. Think of the 1930s, when the Great Depression led to the New Deal.
In the United States and elsewhere, governments began to weave a social safety net, so that the next time there was a crash, there would be programs like Social Security to catch people.
Looking Beyond The Polarity
Now granted, Klein limits her vision of transformation to the implementation of the current liberal talking points like universal health care and the Green New Deal. She considers Friedman’s idea of ‘keeping alive and available alternatives to the existing policies’ is the ongoing work of the opposition (minority) political party and its associated sponsors, lobbyists, and activists.
However, I am looking at something more radical. I’m looking at the transformation of the system as a whole, authored by a human collective that has begun to transcend the current either/or political affiliations. I am looking at something that comes out of the core of what it is for each of us to be human, not what powerful interests tell us we want. And I believe this crisis, which has cut down many of the distractions we’ve always paid attention to without really forcing most of us into survival mode, is allowing us to contemplate our lives more deeply.
I consider this video to be an interesting jump-off point into a more profound discussion, into how we as individuals might get awakened by this crisis to become clearer on what we don’t really need and what we actually want in our lives. And hopefully, this will lead to new discussions about how we change course and find a different way forward.
The Takeaway
Naomi Klein, and for that matter most of the players on both sides of the established order, would be aghast at the notion that the type of transformation that the Coronavirus crisis has the potential to spark is one that goes beyond left/right politics, liberal or conservative ideologies, or socialist/capitalist economics. However, what Klein has pointed to may ultimately be something bigger than she is aspiring for: not just an improvement in our health care system or environmental policies, implemented by the same form of authority that has long outlived its natural expiry date, but rather the dismantling of those very forms of authority that are antithetical to individual health, liberty and autonomy.
As this pandemic runs its natural course, CE will be keeping a close eye and will continue to discuss any signs that real transformation is coming, both in our collective awareness and in the implementation of changes that truly aim to honor the lives of all of the Earth’s inhabitants.
This article was originally published on Collective Evolution.
