COVID- 19 and the emergency loop of implosive capitalism

Vighi, Fabio ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4245-0144 2024. COVID- 19 and the emergency loop of implosive capitalism. Lange, Elena Louisa and Shullenberger, Geoff, eds. COVID-19 and the Left: The Tyranny of Fear, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 95-114. (10.4324/9781003390183-9)

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Abstract

The pandemic emergency should be framed as a capitalist phenomenon through and through rather than a contingent microbiological event that took the world by surprise. In this essay, I argue that COVID-19 worked as a financial tool with a twofold purpose: first, to conceal the epochal implosion of the dominant debt-based, hyper-financialised model of capitalist accumulation, and second, to accelerate the authoritarian process of global governance through which the system (stakeholder capitalism) attempts to reproduce its logic at deeper levels of structural violence. The inability to see how the coronavirus crisis worked as a perfect storm to expedite the ascent of authoritarian emergency capitalism suggests that the left is either opportunistically compliant or hopelessly in denial (or both). The vanishing of any meaningful left-wing opposition, already a key factor in the success of the neoliberal revolution, now seems decisive for the rolling out of a new phase of capitalist domination based on the controlled demolition of the work-based society and its liberal-democratic superstructure.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781032486703
Last Modified:	15 Aug 2024 13:02
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/168272

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