Daily Times

“The courage to resist suffering”, Sartre said, “was the secret of a man. But the perils of the Resistance were to be shared: and that is why the Resistance was a true democracy; for the soldier, as for his superior, the same danger, the same loneliness, the same responsibility, the same absolute freedom within the discipline”.

Had Sartre been around in the Corona times, he might have stated with slight variation what he said under the German occupation ‘never were we freer than under’ Corona’s assault. The freedom we are condemned to, of living alone and lonely within our families in our private prisons called homes without being at home.

After the prolonged state of denial, the leaders of the world finally succumbed not to the proletariat of the globe but to an invisible and, so far, invincible might of a tiny RNA virus responsible for the COVID-19 disease. According to the World Health Organization, on 31st December 2019, when China informed the agency about the outbreak, lethality and the pandemic nature of the viral disease, the western leadership took it as a triviality and dismissed it with impunity.

While COVID-19, akin to any other virus, is likely to hurt the older segment of society, capitalism with limited health facilities has made the Darwinian law of adaptability the main condition/stay of survival

The states which in the wake of a ‘communist virus’ can make the economy of distant, remote countries shriek cannot pretend to be naïve or unfamiliar to the perniciousness of the virus about to break havoc on humankind. If they were unaware of the mayhem in China, they need to ask their respective intelligence agencies – remarkably active in finding the non-existing weapons of mass destruction and overthrowing the non-conformist leaderships of the developing world – to leave spying and scavenge some other planet to lay the foundation for the imperialist designs. Trump has already taken a step towards the moon, his next destination!

The western world was not wearing the Perseus cap to become invisible and hunt down the monster; Contrarily, it had consciously pulled down the cap on its face not to see it temporally. The ruling classes knew that death was knocking at the door but keeping a brazen face in public, they were busy investing in different pharmaceutical companies, likely to find a fortune for them in the shape of a vaccine soon.

Once the Cold War became history, the massive privatization in every field left the public health institutions with scant resources to provide a decent treatment to the majority. The American dream – where the prospect of a shoeshine boy becoming a millionaire is applauded but the alleviation of mass poverty is looked down as utopia – health is always a lucrative business, a luxury the majority can ill-afford. Instead of providing the universal health care to its citizens, Europe followed the primrose path of neo-liberalism.

The initial denial was a tactic to delay the inevitable, to prolong the business activity until the biblical siren was blown. The democratic destructive dimension of COVID-19 has little destructiveness for the youngsters, but it can be lethal for the aged and the ones with a compromised immune system. No one knew it better than the capitalists. They found it a god-sent opportunity, appearing as a bolt from the blue to wipe out the unproductive stratum of society, an unnecessary burden on the health and the welfare system.

Those who create surplus value create surplus population and the market regulates both. The younger generation waits in the wings to replace the aging. While COVID-19, akin to any other virus, is likely to hurt the older segment of society, capitalism with limited health facilities has made the Darwinian law of adaptability the main condition/stay of survival. The property-less are powerless, the aged caged in the autumn years of lives are left to fend for themselves. The modern holocaust requires no concentration camps, “why send the murderers”, Brecht inquires, “when one can have bailiffs”, “all the professors say nothing can alter the distribution of property. The owners can never be got rid of, but why not at least the non-owners”.

The busting of the economy, the inherent flaw of capitalism, was another significant factor holding the ruling classes back from declaring the pandemic to the people. Once the catastrophe struck, and anarchy reigned, the dominant classes found the much-awaited opportunity to bail out the capitalists running down with a declining rate of profit. Instead of a hallmark of capitalism, the economic recession will be spun as the outcome of a pandemic, a natural calamity inflicted by a virus that in reality owes its existence to the greed of the same system.

If an astute psychoanalysis of the current situation is possible, and the genesis of the psychic maladies is sought in the social circumstances, the investigation would reveal that “contemporary sickness exists precisely in what is normal”. What can be the normality of an insane system? Adorno states in a verse, “Misery remains. As it ever was. You can’t completely uproot its laws, but you make it an invisible cause”. To this day, no science has plumbed “the depths of the hell in which those deformations are produced, which surface later as cheerfulness, decisiveness, sociability, as successful adaptation” to the unavoidable system. The sickness of the system and the health of the sick are identical, both represent the same catastrophe, only the forms are different.

As billions of dollars are flying in the cuckoo’s nest of the corporate sector to shield it from the blowback of the virus, the pandemic has forced the ruling elite of the world to provide crumbs to the masses as well. Based on the realization of capital the intentions of the state to keep the consumer alive and ready to present him healthy once the life returns to the routine may not be noble, but its execution is of paramount interest to the capital. With the overproduction of commodities, the absence or dearth of consumers hurts the capitalist directly. The state, under the capitalistic logic or lack of it, is compelled to provide some financial help to the workers hoping to fleece the money back by cutting their wages and mounting the taxes in good times.

The Corona moment is a revealing time. The flow of money largely to the kitty of the corporate sector and partly to the masses calls for a thoughtful reflection by the people about the distribution of money – never in short supply but always denied to them. Health and the welfare system, now called entitlements, are rights and necessities and no crime is more hideous than auctioning the rights of peaceful existence to private bidders. If in times of pandemic, a state can provide workers with 80% of the wage, it can surely provide a living wage to every worker in ordinary times too. To save the dying humanity the nationalization of the private hospitals in Spain is a vivid confession that negation of humanity for profits is a cardinal blunder and dignified existence unsoiled by the filthy hands of capital is an inviolable human right.

COVID-19 has not only exposed the myth of a human-enemy lurking in every corner of the world but has revealed the limits of the means of destruction too. One cannot nuke the virus, and the world is not a battleground for the imperialist designs but a community that needs more unity rather than animosity. How ironic that humanity required enormous deaths to understand the importance of human life.

The writer is an Australian-Pakistani based in Sydney. He has authored several books on Marxism (Gramscian and Frankfurt Schools) and History