When the Covid-19 lockdown was announced, was I the only person to think how crazy is capitalism?
So everything shuts down – or nearly everything. Essential work continues – food production, transportation, etc. In a planned economy there would not even be a hiccough. There are 30 million people who work in the UK. If 25 million have to stay at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19, that is not a problem. Sure, the economy will be producing less goods and services than previously, but there will still be food to eat.
Only an economic system that not subject to conscious control would it be a problem to make the rational decision to stop 25 million people working for a few months.
But in an economy that depends on profit, credit and unrelenting growth to even stand still, it creates huge problems.
You get a glimpse of how the capitalist class are weighing up their Covid-19 options by reading their publications. The Economist is one publication which has been weighing up the grim options open to them.
This week’s edition has a long article discussing the approach needed for capitalism to survive the Covid-19 crisis. It opens with several paragraphs about politically uncontroversial issues – triage and the difficult medical decisions required of doctors with limited resources. Choosing the best containment/suppression strategy in different countries and different cultures. But after the preamble the article drops the deadly question: ‘as the disruptive effects of social-distancing measures and lockdowns mount there will be hard choices to make, and they will need to be justified economically as well as in terms of public health’.
In the words of the Economist: ‘Attempts to argue that the costs of such action could be far greater than the cost of letting the disease run its course have, on the other hand, failed to gain much traction.’ At the beginning of a pandemic this is is not a bad thing, The Economist tells us. The economic disruption caused by lockdowns, social distancing and business closures would likely had happened anyway if no action had been taken and the disease had been left to run its course.
But as the loss of profits continues beyond a month or so the ruling class has to make a ‘grim calculus’ they tell us. Loss of business versus loss of life.
Grim indeed. And there is little doubt which fork of the road they will take when they feel they can manage the political fallout.