Scourge of neoliberalism in times of Covid

All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the state and no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. — WH Auden

The present global lockdown due to the pervasiveness of a novel virus has given us all a pause. It’s a chance to introspect, reflect and honour our blessings with grace and humility. For some of us, privileged to be safely situated in our well-stocked homes, little things that we took for granted are suddenly in the forefront of our attention; the summer is bursting forth, rich with a profusion of apple and cherry blossoms, while bougainvillea and jacarandas have sprung from the sleepy winter hibernation. Stepping back from the maddening pace of life is calming and we wish we could carry that forward as life returns to normal. We are blessed to observe these joys while we deal with our ominous present.

For millions of others not as fortunate as us, these same sights and sounds are not so readily available. They struggle with acute poverty, homelessness and poor healthcare while they grapple with the phenomena of the lockdown. They were already left way behind, scraping at the leftovers of our neoliberal economy; the punishing loss of jobs has further pushed them under the unbearable load of hopelessness and criminally abysmal conditions of existence. The discrimination within social democracy is apparent.

It’s not at all clear where we are headed. The last time there was economic collapse on this scale, we got fascism and the Second World War. A similar bleak picture of the impact of neoliberal capitalism and its catastrophic economic ramifications on the Indian democracy and its teeming exploited millions stares us in the face. Corporate penetration into the heartland of the poor rural masses forces thousands of farmers to suicide, and to the large-scale dispossession of rural land that is either swallowed up by dams or corporates, moving in to profit from the natural resources. The scramble for development has left in its wake not only environmental catastrophes, but also hunger, poverty and disease.

India is already riven by divisions of religion, caste and gender, and to this toxic mix, we’ve added economic inequality. While capitalism thrived, its profits did not trickle down to the workers and today, over two-thirds of the entire wealth generated by India goes to the top one per cent. While the rich get richer with crony capitalism, the lower strata slaves away to eke out a minimum threshold of wages. It is time we acknowledge the failure of the free market economic system, and take honest, well-governed steps towards restoring our democracy.

Interestingly, the discourse of economic insecurity is the strategic recipe for social dominance. The Nazi movement in the 1930s grew out of manufacturing the fear of economic insecurity and world weariness. The economic turmoil in the UK recently led to the rise of fascist nationalism. The worst recession in Brazil ushered during the dictatorship of Bolsonaro. Apparently, the anxiety of hunger and unemployment becomes the breeding ground for fascist politics. The discourse of inequality, progressive tax structures, minimum wages, redistributive schemes and welfare programmes fails to stop the growing drift of instability. The perpetuation of inequality remains capitalism’s central feature, with the financial institutions in cahoots with the powerful nations and their geo-political ambitions.

The amalgamation of democracy and the free market economy has moved all motivation towards profit in an unprecedented economic global landscape with all its intricacies. The underbelly of poverty and social apartheid are the results of the callous financial interests of western institutions like the IMF and the World Bank that operate surreptitiously beneath the discourse of human rights and economic well-being of the underdeveloped economies, all the time posing arrogantly as the benefactors of the human race.

This retrogressive cornerstone of neoliberal ideology based on profit and control remains suspect, going by the growing tension between economic “progress” and its often negative social impact. Since the second decade of the 20th century, not only is the social order in jeopardy, but so is the environment on which we depend. We exist under the facade of democracy while rapidly moving in the direction of an authoritarian business-state combine, an improved version of fascist corporatism. A new world order seems a delusion in the light of a highly fragile market system that is far from a utopian self-correcting machine, as neoclassical economists would have us believe.

Economics as a science that once worked for the welfare of the people has now turned into a theory that scaffolds the neoliberal era of corporate dominance. The notions of raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the wages of the poor and a need to regulate the corporate organisations are diametrically opposed to the neoliberal economics that reckons such steps as exceptionally destructive. However, decades of hunger and misery for the masses corroborates the deceptiveness of such a claim. People are sick of sacrificing themselves for the big game plans of the big economic powers and their unyielding ideology of self-interest. We, therefore, need a more just and inclusive economics that works towards enhancement of social cooperation necessary for a society to flourish. Humans, indeed, are inherently altruistic with an overriding passion for reciprocity.

We urgently need a revision of neoliberal economics that strives towards a higher performing democracy, the only antidote to the ancient feudal system. To increase the wages, therefore, would imply increasing the demand which would in turn contribute to a new capitalism where the working class and the middle class thrive. Transparently self-aggrandising capitalism just cannot work. It has to be a new inclusive capitalism, dynamic enough for a better tomorrow.

The blame, therefore, falls on capitalism’s “nearsightedness” as its chief blemish, and paradoxically, its only tempting feature. We survive for the moment and create a future to which we turn a blind eye. To counter such an outmoded and detrimental economics, questions of social justice, human rights, rule of law and transnational camaraderie remain paramount.

The future debate about capitalism, therefore, will be between those who want to restructure the underlying system and those who want to help people take advantage of its negative intensity. It will be between people who think you need a strong government to rout oligarchy and those who think you need open competition. The precedence of profit and uninterrupted growth over global aspirations for a sustainable economy will remain the inherent aberration of capitalism.