2 May 2020 — theplanningmotivedotcom
The incompetent and disorganised response by the US and UK government to the pandemic poses a deeper question than simply the personnel involved. Is this response accidental or predictable in so far as it has occurred in the two countries where neo-liberalism is most advanced, financialization most extreme and the state most disrupted. This article addresses this question.
30 March 2020 — Mada Masra
The coronavirus pandemic is overwhelming to comprehend. There are now hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases. Tens of thousands have died. Nations are on lockdown as the disease continues to spread. The planet is in crisis.
How did this happen?
What are the underlying political, economic and environmental structures that paved the way for this global outbreak? Where do pandemics emerge from? Is our capitalist way of life biologically sustainable?
To shed light on some of these questions, we turned to American writer, historian and political activist Mike Davis, author of over 20 books, including City of Quartz, Planet of Slums, Ecology of Fear, and The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. Davis is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of California, Riverside and is a recipient of a McArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.
He responded in writing to a series of questions from Mada Masr about the coronavirus pandemic.
31 March 2020 — MROnline
by Ajit Singh
For nearly four decades the United States and its Western allies have proclaimed to the world that “there is no alternative” to neoliberalism, maligning the state and public sector as inefficient and unproductive. If the 2008 financial crisis loosened this myth’s stranglehold on notions of what is possible, the current coronavirus pandemic has shattered it.
26 March 2020 — Left Voice
Although Italy is on lockdown, many non-essential sectors are still going to work. Today a general strike is being called to protest the government’s insistence on maintaining “business as usual” in the face of a devastating pandemic.
21 March 2020 — True Publica
By TruePublica Editor: Remembering this impending event and recalling it from memory to your friends is as easy as A, B, C, D. Broadly speaking it is about four interlinked events that have already happened but their combined effects will engulf the country within a year. Austerity, Brexit, CoVid and Debt will lead to a ruinous recession or a country and society so debt-laden it will be at the mercy of the ‘moneymen’ for decades to come.
Continue reading
19 March 2020 — CADTM
by Eric Toussaint
Sommaire
The coronavirus pandemic is a serious public health problem and the human suffering caused by the spread of this virus will be enormous. If it massively affects countries of the Global South with very fragile public health systems that have been undermined by 40 years of neo-liberal policies, the death toll will be very high. We must not forget the critical situation of the Iranian population, victim of the blockade imposed by Washington, a blockade that includes medicines and medical equipment.
20 March 2020 — Jacobin
By David Harvey
As Marxist geographer David Harvey argues, forty years of neoliberalism has left the public totally exposed and ill prepared to face a public health crisis on the scale of coronavirus.
19 March 2020 — Michael Roberts Blog
Forecasts of a global slump in the rest of 2020 are coming in droves from mainstream economists – it’s now the consensus that there will be a contraction in global real GDP in at least two consecutive quarters (Q1 and Q2), in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic and the ‘lock down’ in response.
15 March 2020 — Morning Star Online
The neoliberal orthodoxy which decrees that public services should be located in the marketplace, their functions subordinated to the profit nexus and service provision reduced to bare-bones delivery means the NHS has a limited number of intensive care units that — before the coronavirus epidemic really takes off — are already 80 per cent occupied.
16 February, 2020 — MROnline
Introducing an important book series on Democratic Marxism in Africa, Vishwas Satgar explains that the project is premised on a rejection of the authoritarianism of vanguardist politics and the need to learn critical lessons from all the left projects of the 20th century. There is a rich inheritance of emancipatory Marxism in Africa, which includes Frantz Fanon, Ruth First, Samir Amin, Sam Moyo, Harold Wolpe and many others. Today, Satgar argues, the challenge is to defeat carbon capitalism accelerating the climate crisis and fomenting exclusionary nationalisms and for this there has to be a return to Marx.
23 January 2020 — Strategic Culture Foundation
Anyone looking with sober eyes upon today’s world and the feeble economic and geopolitical underpinnings holding the system together must accept the fact that a new system WILL be created.
13 January 2020 — Global Research
How much longer are we accepting the tyrannical dictate of the American rulers? It gets worse by the day – and it looks like the western world’s “leaders” (sic – so sic!) are caving in ever more to the American killing machine – the European Union – and all its members heads of state, and all the Zion-Anglosaxons and Japan – no one dares standing up and shouting “NO!” – no more of your hegemonic atrocities! – But they all bend over backwards to please a criminal empire, run like the Barbarians.
