Jonathan Chadwick

I curse the day I made a commitment to myself to write these pieces about the ‘situation’ we are in during this pandemic. I was happy writing plays that I knew no theatre on earth would opt to produce. Now I look around and see a world in which theatre may be considered the most contagious art and that if like in other sectors we are going to be left only the well upholstered ‘centres of excellence’ all that’s worst will persist in an anaesthetised form. Effectively there may be no theatre on earth so it will be doubly impossible to get my plays on. I will talk about that in the next piece in this damned series.

Before I entered this recent period of playwriting after I returned from a working trip to China, I emerged as a Masters of Science in Ecological Economics (Sustainability) from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds. I’d worked as a theatre director/writer/company artistic director/course director for decades. In 2009 a dreadful curiosity beset me. Most of my course was concerned with climate change models. Trying to engage with the complexity of the microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, politics and economics of the ‘situation’ reminds me strongly of the pain I encountered when attempting to come to terms with ‘uncertainty’ in earth systems modelling. It brought me to tears. The margins of error in measuring, for example, ocean temperatures (the mechanics of the instruments), the complexity of the feedback loops involved in the albedo effect as the ice sheets decreased, the interaction between the increased salinity of sea water due to acidification and oceanic carbon take-up, the countervailing process produced by fresh water entering the earth’s oceans from melting ice coupled with continuing alterations in human production systems, mitigations, adaptations all combined in a single model where the scientists were feeding in data from their own area of expertise in a situation where it was impossible to know about the field of a scientist who was entering data from theirs so somebody working in cryospheric changes knew next to nothing about the impact of changes in consumption of plastics and that uncertainties had to be measured, in terms of complex combinations of probabilities, that were due to the interaction between the data coming from different scientific areas.

What I did learn was that when it came to dealing with the impacts of climate change and building human resilience, the social systems that adopted ‘bottom up’ approaches where community needs and information was gathered, listened to, collated, organised in a participatory way were 100% more effective than ‘top down’ organisational structures. No doubt. Informed engaged communities create effective resilience. An open and shut case.

If you are unfortunate enough to have found yourself reading these disagreeable attempts at sense please bear the foregoing in mind. Also, I have put no references in this piece but if you want to find out more about any of the assertions do contact me.

There are differences within the scientific community about aspects of the spread, identification and treatment of CV-19. This is unsurprising. How these are being aired and how they relate to differences in national approaches may tell us a lot about ‘recovery’ strategies. Looking at these issues means understanding the political and commercial interests involved.

There are a number of differences in the scientific community. One is to do with the modelling of the spread of the virus. One school contests that the virus has followed patterns formerly seen in other similar pathogens and may well be now past the peak of its impact. There are disagreements about the lethality (the ratio between the number of cases and the number of deaths) of the virus. People who believe that the virus has moved beyond its peak impact tend to be associated with those who believe that the lethality has been over-estimated.  There are differences around the accuracy of the testing processes, particularly with the most common method which is based on Polymerase Chain Reaction identification. The difficulties in testing are to do with problems encountered in the isolation of the virus. As I understand it, the virus is a Ribo-Nucleic Acid but the testing processes are able only to sequence and ‘amplify’ DNA. This and associated problems of accurate definition and isolation make understanding the relationship of the virus to the etiology of disease indecisive. This also means there are questions about anti-bodies and whether immunity is created in people who have recovered from the impact of the virus.  There has been some circumstantial evidence that the malarial drug, Hydroxichloroquine or Chloroquine can help resistance to the disease. This issue has two aspects; one is the use of this antimalarial drug to reduce recovery time for sufferers and the other is its use as a prophylactic or preventive treatment. There is evidence that the drug can be harmful if applied to people who are suffering advanced respiratory collapse. On the other hand a drug called ‘remdesivir’ has just been adopted as a treatment here in the UK. This is produced by US pharmaceutical company Gilead Inc. In January 2020 this drug was sold on license to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and during trials in March it was discovered not to have effect in reducing recovery time from Covid -19 and had adverse effects. Nevertheless this drug has the backing of governments and the World Health Organisation. Gilead is a large and politically powerful company on whose board Donald Rumsfeld once sat. Gilead developed ‘remdesivir’ for use against Ebola, then against SARS, then against MERS. In January laboratory testing started for its effectiveness against CV-19. There’s nothing against the supposition that cures exist and are waiting for the appropriate diseases to emerge. I’m suspicious and I have to admit to being prejudiced against Donald Rumsfeld but what worries me most is the lack of clear lines between government and business. In a recent Horizon programme which claimed to be about the science addressing the virus these other dissenting perspectives were totally excluded. Science only appears to be speaking with one voice. The UK government’s mantra has been that they are following the science. But which science? Already their Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies team has been riven by dissension, mainly over the question of transparency. Surely there should be clearer public information. It is for this reason that I reiterate the need for there to be a popular movement of resistance based on publicly-sourced knowledge and information.

One way of seeing how these differences of scientific opinion are enacted is to ask what it was that led to the UK government to change tack from the strategy of allowing the development of the population’s natural immunity to conforming to what was becoming the more internationally accepted strategy.  This appeared to be in response to the key paper produced by Imperial College. In this paper two basic strategies were outlined one of which was ‘mitigation’.  This involved ‘lockdown’ and flattening the graphic curve which measured the rate of transmission of the virus.  The other was suppression which involved lock-down/social distancing plus testing, tracking and tracing the incidents of the virus.  We could say that the national strategies fell broadly into these two options with Sweden and Brazil offering eccentric approaches and the UK and the US pursuing mitigation but ineffectively and without resolution because of the severely deteriorated public health systems in both countries.  The commonplace argument as to why this turn in policy took place is that the government had its attention called to the disastrous and politically unacceptable consequences of the impact on the public health services and the care sector of following the ‘natural’ ‘herd’ immunity route.  The government had to conform to what other countries were doing or face destabilising comparisons which may damage their political credibility. 

How did this scientific consensus emerge in relation to political considerations?  How were these political considerations influenced by commercial pressures? What commercial pressures are active in the scientific community? Were other arguments put about how the lockdown strategy could be used to political advantage and how it might advance the interests of production sectors that the Tories wanted to keep onside?  In looking at the views, on the one hand, of the ‘dissenting’ scientists and the ‘orthodox’ science community, on the other, one issue stands out: the search for a vaccine.  The question of the effectiveness of a vaccine has been radically called into question by the ‘dissenting’ community on a similar basis to their criticism of the accuracy of the prevailing testing processes.  From the point of view of microbiology this turns around the ability to isolate the virus and be able to clearly understand its impact on other organisms.  There have been calls from extremely powerful individuals like Bill Gates, for universal vaccination. What is the relationship between the interests of the big pharmaceutical corporation and the information technology ‘giants’. The relationship between testing and tracking and tracing is operationally close. Are the main players in this system commercially close? The pharmaceutical operation that can produce an approved vaccine will make a lot of money, especially if we accept that the only way of managing the impacts of the virus is through a mass vaccination programme.  Of course there may be competing ‘vaccines’.  All those seeking to receive public money for research, the development and the production of vaccine on a mass scale will have an interest in emphasising the virulence of the disease, its exceptional part in the ethology of disease, its complex symptoms, its multiple physiological impacts and its widespread intergenerational impacts.  The relationship between public and private institutions in these activities is obscure.  Public health services present enormously rich pickings for a capitalist system constrained, because of the falling rate of profit, to predate on public goods.  Health is big business as is the development of the technologies that are at the interface between microbiology, nanotechnology and bioengineering. A recent indication is the expansion of the genomics sector which relates therapeutic procedures to genetic profiling.  The data processing involved in tracking and tracing adjoins with the collection and management of genetic information.

The strategy of lockdown and the population controls involved, the centralisation of data collection that it enables, is a business opportunity for already powerful corporations and the association of these powerful communications controllers with pharmaceutical corporations is already taking place. 

The UK government are engaging with logistics and public service organisations complementary to these organisations. This may have been why the lockdown strategy, as well as helping to save lives through relaxing pressure on health services, appeared attractive enough to turn government policy.  It would be reassuring if our public institutions were under democratic control or even subject to the requirement for transparency so that conflicts of interest, if not prevented, were at least visible.  However, the people who stand to gain most from the development of an approved vaccine and all the other special services and activities demanded by the situation created by the pandemic are at the heart of the governing circles.  It is as if there are two divergent scenarios. One is a virus that will be suppressed through widespread immunity created through contact and the other is virus that will continue to plague the human population until a vaccine is found. Neither is likely to be completely true. But the pertinent issue is that no scientific work is free from political pressure and no political strategy is free of financial pressure. Along with centralisation secrecy is enabled and without transparency and popular participation the situation is open to corrupt manipulation and this is inevitably accompanied by incompetence. This is the political and social culture we need to resist.

I cannot make a judgement about whether a universal vaccine and the inoculation of the entire human population – or at least all those who want immunity passports – is a good idea. Look at the actions of institutions with which Dr Anthony Fauci has links. He is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is a chief adviser to the US government. He rose to prominence during the HIV epidemic of the 1980s. His organisation has been a conduit for funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They were carrying out a joint study with Fort Detrick, a US military biological weapons research establishment which was hastily closed down in August 2019. International co-operation in science is important. People working working in epidemiology and immunology know each other and collaborate across frontiers. However as soon as aspersions were made about the Wuhan Institute being a possible source of CV-19, the US funding scheme made by Dr. Fauci’s NIAID through an intermediary organisation was withdrawn? Why? What was being hidden? Was it because knowledge of this link might give credence to a suspicion that the source of the infection may also be the source of the cure? Why was there no public debate. It would be upsetting if Dr Anthony Fauci stood to gain financially from the development, patenting and sale of a global vaccine.

In Naomi Klein’s recent article she warns about the domination of the post-Covid world by tech giants and she calls the recovery settlement dominated by these corporations a ‘screen new deal’. She describes the appearance of ex-Google boss Eric Schmidt next to New York Governor Cuomo in one of his public addresses. Schmidt was promoting the prospect that many public functions like education and health could be brought online and an implicit vision of a world where the privileged may no longer have to leave their houses while the poor – who presumably will be deprived of immunity passports – will be productively organised in massive distribution warehouses and food supply centres.  Surely we should be ensuring access to public information about what this world dominated by tech giants and Big Pharma may look like so we can decide whether we want it.

While the opposition to the government in the UK is being distracted by the idiotic behaviour of the government’s chief adviser and cooing with admiration at the forensics abilities of the leader of her majesty’s loyal opposition, investment accounts and contracts are being prepared and even operationalised – with the accompanying socially-distanced flesh being pressed- to give enhanced powers of control to a new and unsavoury gang consisting of charismatic overgrown puerile schemers and the arch knowing fixers of nano circuitry.  

The science is highly politicised and commercialised. The supposedly most powerful man/person in the world (not for long maybe!) advertises that he is taking a particular cure. Sales escalate. Institutions tremble. Authoritative scientific reports are produced. Institutions lose their funding. Even as the action in response to the impacts of CV-19 are articulated through ‘science’ so too will be the ‘recovery’ strategies. I emphasise again that it is these that may be far more deadly to human life than the virus.

What will be the consequences of all this for international relations? Will the responses to the virus reorganise the relationship between nation states. And how far will the recovery from the CV-19 pandemic be determined internationally?

The virus is international but the political strategies it has evoked have appeared to be uniquely national. So some kind of shake up is involved and the scale is massive and the depth is fundamental. Comparable upheavals to this pandemic, measured in terms of stress on public resources and the scale of exceptional financial arrangements, are the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century, the First World War, the Second World War, the Great Depression of 1929 and the 2008 financial crisis. These all led to major changes in the political shape of the world. This is the first pandemic/economic crisis that has been global in its impacts. Each nation-state has conducted a different campaign to suppress or manage the impact of the virus. This is to do with the relationship between the social state (national) and the economic state (international). Health and the reproduction of labour power (reducing the cost of doing so) is the business of the capitalist state. Even in a hybrid state organisation such as the European Union it has been noticeable that each nation-state has separately been required to manage according to the level of its preparedness and of its public health infrastructure. The southern states have been exposed because after the 2008 crisis it was only they that had to apply cuts to social spending. These states (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and France) have been faced by the refusal of their northern partners to develop a eurobond that would enable them to spread the load of the borrowing they are constrained to make. Germany, Netherlands, Finland have in some instances deprived their partners of vital material as well as financial assistance. This structural inequality has led to fissures in an already volatile union and exposed the myth of ‘social’ Europe exposing the EU as a bare economic structure.

If nation-states’ struggle against CV-19 is a war, it is a war of a peculiarly internal sort and on the face of it the peace settlement that will follow seems like a domestic issue. So even as the national strategies for management of the impact of the virus have been variations on certain key science-affirmed ‘narratives’ conforming broadly to international imperatives, the recovery strategies will be shaped by a similar combination of internal and external factors.

We know that the spinal cord of politics unites ‘home’ policy and ‘foreign’ policy and the extended trick played by the ruling group is to conceal this vital connection by enacting policy through apparently separate government departments. What is the relationship between recovery at a local level and the global reorganisation of international order?

For example, what is the relationship between the demand for local authorities to maintain the higher quality of air gained during the lockdown through horticulturally attractive ‘parklets’ placed in roads to decrease pollution from motor vehicles and the five Iranian oil tankers, guarded by the Venezuelan armed forces, docking in the port of La Guaira near the Venezuelan capital of Caracas?

Venezuela has, rather like the southern states of Europe, been refused credit needed to mitigate the economic impacts of the virus. The IMF members were said to have disagreed as to whether Maduro or Guaidó might be the recognised President of the country. Iran has similarly been refused borrowing rights. At a recent online meeting of G7 foreign affairs minsters an argument broke out as to whether the virus should be called ‘corona’ or ‘Wuhan’, exposing the lineaments of the international contest that underlies the world of the pandemic. IMaybe the CV-19 pandemic is not changing our world but simply driving forward changes that were already taking place. The key determining movement has, for some time, seemed to be the escalating confrontation between the US, in decline, and China, in the ascendent. As the US Congressional Research Service’s Global Economic Effects of Covid-19 tell us, ‘policy approaches are displaying differences between countries that promote nationalism versus those that argue for a co-ordinated international response. They are also intensifying policy differences between developed and developing economies and in Europe between northern and southern members of the Eurozone’

As for the struggles on the ground like the action to secure environmental improvements at a local level, it is already clear that the UK government is moving in the opposite direction from a recovery that will be localised, democratic, participatory. There is a vital link between localised movements of resistance and for sustainability and resilience and international political alliances and movements.

In the supply chains to the Health Service the UK government has centralised the purchasing functions easing the way towards privatisation. They have centralised the track and trace systems, engaging the US privately owned contact centre company Sitel in the operation of these systems. They engaged Deloitte’s to organise the logistics for the testing programme. This transatlantic company is involved in what appears to be collusive relationships with other so called ‘public service providers’. It was found guilty of improper auditing of Serco subsidiary, Serco Geographix in 2009. It was the internal auditor for Carillion before it went into liquidation.

Rather than engaging in regenerative democratically controlled and participatory strategies that galvanise peoples’ ingenuity by using the enormous public resources that can and are being released, the UK government are planning to ‘bail out’ large corporations and secure the corporate and financial sector that has close and strong ties with US business. All this indicates that it is these alliances that will be strengthened during the recovery process. This will forestall and extinguish localised public benefits? Even if this was not the case is this policy direction wise from the point of view of realpolitik? This might be the moment for a relatively independent and developed country to seek a unique unilateral path of development towards increased self-sufficiency, ecological sustainability and local empowerment.

All nation-states will become more reliant on the international alliances they make or they strengthen during this period. This is the importance of the Iran-Venezuela entente. The reason for this interdependence is to do with the role of currencies in the financial markets. All states have engaged in monetary and fiscal policies that put their currencies in unstable relationship to each other. The basic recourse has been to increase financial liquidity by ‘central banks’ buying government bonds thus ‘lending’ money to the state. Also there has been a relaxation of the terms by which banks are able to make loans. The attendant danger of increasing liquidity is of inflation, of money losing its value. This will leave more vulnerable economies liable to have their assets and property bought up by holders of more robust currencies and will lead to a disastrous increase in the centralisation of wealth, i.e. inequality. In the past couple of days two governments, Lebanon and Argentina have defaulted on their interest payments.

At the beginning of this period of instability two tendencies were in evidence. One was to head for safety by buying dollars or assets held in dollars, the other was to buy Chinese government bonds. According to one trader this was the “single largest change in capital markets in anybody’s lifetime”. The Chinese People’s Bank is the largest holder of US government bonds. Many Chinese corporations hold debts in dollars yet this bank has no immediate access to dollars. China must be looking forward to the time when transactions are no longer related to the dollar. If they started to sell their US government bonds this would erode the value of the dollar and create a major shift in financial power undermining the US and exposing its enormous indebtedness. It is only secured by the strength of its military or its military spending.

The UK is effectively a US client state and the interpenetration of their banking, economic and political structures shores up the value of sterling. So it is vulnerable. The UK under the Tories has gained no independence nor sovereignty by becoming independent of the EU. In asking whether it is wise for us to integrate more strongly with the US I am not necessarily suggesting China as an alternative special partner.

China produces 90% of the antibiotics used in the US, it produces 70% of the ingredients for drugs production. An added dimension to the weakening of US power is decarbonisation. As the world moves away from oil the dollar’s position as its key benchmark value indicator becomes more precarious. A few weeks ago crude oil attained negative value. This is to do with the downturn in consumption and the limits on world storage capacity.

While the US were stealing shipments of medical equipment and while the ‘northern’ EU states were refusing to allow Italy to borrow money, the Chinese medical delegation arrived in Northern Italy with medical equipment supplies and a banner proclaiming ‘We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden’. I’m not saying the Chinese are nicer or better than the Americans I’m simply pointing out their relative strength and confidence. It isn’t a matter of morality, it is a matter of integrity and survival for the UK to move away from this dependence on US power.

In these circumstances the policies of the Labour Party in the last election for a nationalised and publicly controlled pharmaceutical industry and for a nationalised information technology network may look enlightened and attractive.

Contrary to the policy of her majesty’s loyal opposition in its basic support for the government in what is falsely called its ‘war’ against the virus, the opposition should be animated by deep and imaginative demands. This is a turning point moment. The scale of the resources being released through public borrowing and the potential for participatory investments led by local needs and the development of the foundational economy can increase community resilience locally and human resilience globally. Since these resources are public resources the people should be actively engaged in their disposition. This will produce the skills and tools that will put us in the situation of being able to show material solidarity to communities all over the world. The UK government strategies are leading us towards dangerous partnerships.

But as I said in my blog before last resistance to the government’s ‘disaster capitalism’ has to be based on superior intelligence, derived from participatory information and knowledge management.

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This is the third piece in this series.  The next will be about international impacts Monday 25th May

 I recall working at a conference in Italy in 2005 with theatre practitioners from Sri Lanka who were running projects with victims of the 2004 Tsunami.  At a certain point one of them turned to me and said:  ‘You don’t seem to understand. It wasn’t the Tsunami that caused the suffering it was the ‘recovery’ operation’  The coastal communities had been moved into camps and the shoreline was sold up to hotel chains.  This of course makes perfect economic sense! Look at what happened in New Orleans with Katrina.  Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine describes the phenomenon of ‘disaster capitalism’ where predatory grabs are made on public goods in the wake of catastrophe. While we are clapping on our doorsteps the Tories are privatising the health service .

Where is popular resistance? People throughout the land took effective action against the spread of the virus. We are in an uncertain period now waiting to see what the relaxation to the lockdown may bring. At the same time the number of cases internationally is rising. Will people be able to build the resilience of our communities against the activities of the ruling elites never mind about the next virus epidemic? Already our teaching community is under attack. What kind of unity can there be? People have had very diverse experiences of this period of ‘lockdown’. There are potential divisions between administrative ‘white collar’ workers and manual ‘blue collar’ workers, between those in good housing with outdoor space and those without, between those on ‘furlough’ and those who have accumulated debt. Is unity necessary? The Labour Party’s attempt to construct a consensus through its seven points shed no light. Will the attempt by the TUC to influence a recovery plan work or will they, like so many times in the past, be incorporated into the deceptive strategies of the elites? Searching around for initiatives I came across only one that described building an active alternative network: ‘A People’s HQ for Covid 19’ In my opinion this limits itself too strictly to an appeal to the Labour Movement. I was also impressed by 350’s Principles for Just Recovery from Covid 19 and the campaign that resembles it, Build Back Better. This phrase is common in global disaster recovery philosophy and may have originated in publications by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

I became preoccupied by the question of information management. I believe that popular resistance can be more effective if an alternative source of knowledge can be created. At the moment we have no shared idea of what the impacts of the CV-19 might be. Is there a way of engaging hundreds of people in building a big picture of what has been happening in our society? This would give people an active relationship to this big story and therefore create active knowledge. A network of researcher/correspondents in every locality (or constituency), in every industry and sector and in every special community (the disabled, the visually impaired, the mental health service users, communities coping with death and grief, ethnic groups, LGTBQ refugee and migrant organisations). The work could be co-ordinated in a brilliant website where the quantitative and qualitative information could be cross-referenced. It would be like Mass Observation and the Doomsday Book all rolled into one and online! It would give an alternative source of knowledge built up through popular participation.

The most powerfully moving aspect of the work of the International Panel on Climate Change is the high level of collaboration and management of information between scientists all over the world. Its work is divided into working groups. The first and original working group was the one concerned with physical science. It was later that a the second working group began its work. This is the one that takes accounts of impacts. I believe that this offers a model of practice and provides definitions of what impact means that could be carried across to the much more hasty and urgent work of researching the impacts of CV-19. This brilliance and organisational ingenuity of the scientific community could be brought to bear and linked up with popular researcher/correspondents.

The initiators of the ‘People’s HQ for Covid 19’ may have found a warm reception from The People’s Assembly Against Austerity which is already carrying out key work in its Making Sense of the Crisis campaign. The project that I’m describing that has the working title of ‘together’ would need the support of broad-based organisations but I believe it should include all aspects of the resistance. It will cost thousands to administer and manage. It must start by bringing together into a ‘temporary think-tank’ experienced activists from the environmentalist/green new deal movement like Andrew Simms who alongside colleagues from the New Weather Institute is producing innovative and quickened creative thinking in the narratives assembled in the Rapid Transition Alliance, also social scientists such as Mariana Mazzucato, who has developed penetrating analyses of the relationship between state research and private industrial exploitation. These people should be working alongside experts in media management like Greg Philo from the Glasgow University Media Unit who have produced the ‘Bad News’ series. I, of course, am hopelessly disconnected from direct links to the kind of talents that should be brought together to devise the informational template and the sectoral and local definitions that can make information data collection coherent. But working alongside online space designers this is what the temporary think-tank should be able to do.

The political elites, and their frontmen in the Tory government, rely more than anything else on information manipulation and spin. This is why the Covid Act, which is in force for two years, suppresses freedom of information, puts Coroners’ reports under tight government control and gives it draconian powers over personal data. Any effective resistance will have to create an alternative authoritative source of knowledge. This is already experientially alive within the population. It has to be centralised in order to be coherent but it can be activated from the bottom up.

The devising and launching of this information network, ‘together’, supported by broad-based organisations and fed by the inventive culture of the social science community, could be receiving data and reports within weeks. We must provide ourselves with a big picture of the impacts of the CV-19.

This number two of a series of pieces about the impact of CV-19.  Next post on Thursday 21st May The CV-19 Impact: Popular resistance

Correct me if I am wrong. The CV-19 like all viruses is not a life-form. It does not have a cell structure. There is no mitochondria in its genetic material. It cannot reproduce itself. This is why viruses are categorised by the species with which they coexist. Something like 10% of the human genome is composed of DNA viruses. The CV-19 is a particle of genetic material, a strand of nucleic acid, or in this case ribonucleic, seeking to reproduce through contact with a host body that has the capacity to reproduce it lacks. The virus is pure reproduction. It might be that this action of particles of protein DNA and RNA mixing and self assembling eventually created cells and thus life on earth began to evolve. We really are dealing with very powerful and original processes. What has happened in this instance is that the virus has migrated from one species to another which does not have the preventive power to cope with the reproductive demand. This is happening more and more because of the human disordering of ecosystems through invasive and extractive production systems. We know the other diseases that belong to this group (HIV, SARS, Ebola etc.). The processes of viral migration is collateral with the mass species extinctions and the biospheric transformation associated with capitalist production.

Our rulers and their media diffuse utter stupidity. They talk about a dreadful enemy; they ask for heroism; they clad their so-called policies with science. Chief amongst the idiots described his encounter with the virus as being like one with a mugger that wrestled him to the ground but he, strong of body and mind…….I can’t continue. ‘Unhappy is the land that needs heroes’. Indeed we may be among the most unfortunate of all lands to have such witlessness current within our ruling circles. They presumably imagine that once this great battle is won and we are proven to have got the better of CV-19 we will be able to get on with the real purpose of our lives which is to enrich the wealthy. As they try to save their own arses and cling on to power they cannot see the reality of the situation we are in. If they admitted what was happening with CV-19 they would have to admit what is happening with climate change and the catastrophic relationship human capitalist society has to other species, other forms of life. What kind of resilience does our society have? This will not be the last species-migrating virus though this one may be relatively more gentle than the ones to come.

The UK government are engaging in catch up, reacting to events and putting ‘a spin’ on them in an attempt to control the population. The initial turn in their policy away from that of ‘laisser faire’ or ‘herd immunity’ was because considerable sections of the population were withdrawing their children from school. It was only then that they decided to imposed a ‘lockdown’, creating a completely misleading and provocative image of social processes. Their natural inclination is to ‘bang up’ people. Now they are facing a rebellion from a similar section of the population as they try to coerce the teachers into reopening the schools. Their view of schools has nothing to do with education. They need to get the schools open in order to get people back to work.

It is in the reproductive processes of our society that resistance to this obsession with ‘the economy’ will grow. It will be amongst women and carers, curers and teachers that the current governing elite will find itself coming unstuck. It will be against the insane centralisation of governing and distributional processes that opposition will manifest itself. They are currently engaged in a struggle with Google and Apple because they want to over-centralise the data gathering processes. Hierarchically control-obsessed they cannot engage with horizontal structures. The UK government have even ignored the enormous local productive potential of providing for the new needs that have arisen during the pandemic. They have outsourced and militarised. Home-based producers have been sidelined. Blinded by quantification and finance they haven’t been able to see the foundational economy. They really do think that creating wealth is to do with making money!

According to their ingrained basic assumption reproduction should cost nothing. The production of labour power must be cost effective and internationally competitive. The great nineteenth century social philosopher who analysed capitalist society by scrutinising its cellular composition came to the conclusion that the commodity form contained two contradictory elements, use value and exchange value. He pointed out that in our social system the latter obscured the former. So he pointed out that the relationship between people will appear to us as the relationship between things. He described how it was the commodity that demanded that it be taken to the market and that finds the willing hands to so do. Our lives are being determined by forces that since they are inexplicable are irresistible. The UK government would rather persuade us that the virus is a mystical force, an enemy being, against whom we must pitch all our goodness. Lynne Margulis clarified the definitions of life forms bringing to our attention the collaborative processes involved in cell reproduction which helped species definition and thus advances in virology. Primatologist Sarah Hrdy brought to our attention to the key role played by female-centred organisation of allo-parenting (or babysitting) in the development of intersubjectivity. Also see Dr Jane Goodall’s view. Of course the scientists I’m pointing to are women. Will our society make a profound turn towards basing our society in reproduction and be able to place these processes in a more fruitful relationship to production? Or will we continue to permit these gangs of predators to prey on our love?

This is the first of a series of pieces about the current situation. Coming up: May 18 2020 ‘CV-19 impact: production and reproduction’, May 21 2020 ‘CV-19 impact: popular resistance’

What strikes me is the way in which the CV-19 virus has laid bare things that previously were invisible.  It is as if the virus – or its impact on us in all our manifestations, as individuals, as social groups, as organisms – has led to lucidity.  The CV-19 impact is elucidation, all elements and processes are seen more clearly; they reveal their inner structure as if in an X-ray.  But this X-ray is of a unique sort because the CV-19 impact permits the visibility of the inner and outer aspects of reality simultaneously.  It has had the effect of affording us a view that is at once macrocosmically distanced and at the same time meticulously close and interior.  The ‘stopping’ of normal activity has enabled a perspective that is at once cross sectional and topographical.  It reminds me of the quality of perception gained in theatre art by the use of ‘Verfremdungseffeckt’ as it is described by Brecht or the gnoseological outcomes in Boal’s work of the use of analogical induction in the confrontation of reality by its image.  The CV-19 is like a searingly enlightening freeze-frame.  All elements tend to show their essence under the impact of its gaze.  Our society becomes more like itself.  We become more like ourselves.

I have become more isolated not epidemiologically (that as well) but more separated from those I live amongst.  The already existing view that I have of the political elites, the prevailing values, beliefs, interests and the common sense of my society have become more unacceptable and somehow unbearable.  More unbearable because their ignorance and insentience appears to me to be more socially dangerous.  They are consonant with a dreadful lack of sense, a kind of lumbering folly, delusional grossness.  I think I have a sharper sense than most of the need for this regime’s displacement because I even identify their forms of kindness as menacing.  The CV-19 impact has made me even more extremely opposed to what I consider their stupidity and made me even more convinced that it is necessary for life that they should be removed from power.  I’m not just talking about the odious creeps who are their political servants, the Tories, but the awful monarchy, the millitarists, the corporate flunkeys, the visionary leaders, the charismatic managers, the ludicrous factotums, the whole apparatus.  And this is because the CV-19 impact has revealed even more certainly what bungling, murderous oafs they are.

Of course this at the same time reveals me to be a grumpy irate outraged ageing know-all who will not accept anybody’s opinion if they don’t share my prejudices.

The CV-19 impact has revealed our existence as a species like never before, it has shown us our extinction, it has warned us that our relationship to ecosystems will continue to produce these impacts, it has shown us that our little corner of the globe is molten with kindness and human generosity all of which, as with all public goods, is predated on by an omnivorous greedy oligarchic elite, that the syrup of collusion in which we are stuck is made up of structures that seem to be prehistoric and can never be changed; our isolation itself is somehow embodied in this cursed island kingdom, this throne of idiocy, clearly not a fortress against infection, ‘bound in with shame with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds’.  Shame yes, shame. 

Of course I cannot expect people to agree with me.  What I am saying is disagreeable.  It may even be destructive of the vestiges of solidarity that hoodwink people into humble submission and like a disappearing twinkle lighten their penumbral stupor.  We are symbolically back in the ‘Great War’ trenches where my grandfather served, where we shiver at the danger posed by the enemy but quake with fear at the awful officers who are in command.  There is no comfort in this for me.  Letting off steam is good for locomotives. 

I am aware of the need for optimism and looking on the bright side, of appreciating all the wonderful people showing solidarity and kindness through the mutual aid movements and in the voluntary, dedicated, and professionally engaged cohorts of the health, care and educational sectors.  Of course there may be an enhancement of the general opinion people have of them and the status they gain may be regenerative.  

Unless we advance our knowing and wake up and look at what our rulers are doing, they will be ground back down into the position of skivvies for the brutal marketeers of trickle down.