There is no hope for a final exit without having a design for the placing of consumption and lifestyles on totally new foundations, setting out to rein in the profit and imagining a solidarity-driven society! That’s why socialism, indeed!
Bülent Falakaoğlu
In my last article, I started saying in the consciousness that everything going on just now is both historical and class-rooted, “Let’s peep at what the mirror held by the coronavirus is showing,” I summed up what appeared under the following headings:
Image 1 in the mirror: Private health is a disaster
The clearest image in the mirror: Class-rootedness
Image 3 in the mirror: Lack of information in the information age
Image 4 in the mirror: The economy’s bald patch was visible.
These images invite questions awaiting answers (premised on the fact that the speediest changes in societies occur in “shock” periods). What kind of change will the coronavirus trigger in economic, political and cultural terms? Following the coronavirus, will nothing and no set-up remain as it was before? Will the rout at the hands of a virus of consumption, money, profit, exploitation and the martial order create the consciousness to pave a new way? Or will authoritarian regimes strengthen as people voluntarily hunker at home fearful for their lives? Will authoritarian politics gain free rein as the virus seriously clamps down on public and social life within a “climate of fear” and induces millions to enclose themselves in private space?
There are those, too, filled with expectation that the pandemic will put an end to a neoliberal order excoriated by trade wars. And those whose expectation is for insecurity to intensify, the trend to scapegoat the “other” to gain even wider currency and the door to fascism to chink open in an environment of ballooning unemployment and bankruptcies and a decelerating tempo of daily life.
The crisis will undoubtedly create fresh opportunities and fresh tools of exploitation for capitalism. Like in all other crises. But those hunkering at home will not just acquiesce to authoritarian systems.
They will also see that the speed which is devouring people and nature (speedy manufacture, speedy distribution, speedy consumption) can be slowed.
That speed also accelerates transmission of the virus. Imparting the information that a pathogen originating from a village in one corner of the world will spread to all continents of the world within thirty-six hours, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention perceives this to be a national security issue. In light of this, energy and climate expert Önder Algedik comments, “From this perspective, we see there is a relationship between the speed of transmission and transport. That is, the transport policies that have burst out and become extreme with capitalism’s fossil fuel consumption will nowadays be seen to be parameters that determine both the climate, and the speed with which diseases spread” (The Issue of the Climate in the Corona Days, 20 March 2020, Gazete Duvar).
In an announcement it made when the Ebola virus was prevalent, the World Health Organisation stated that diseases were inevitable with changes in people’s life styles and situations had now arisen in which microscopic agents were able to copy themselves a million times a day. Recalling this, Algedik opines, “This shows us the extent to which a disease of the modality engendered by the overconsumption and tempo based on overproduction can be spread and created.”
Is this speed necessary? Should onions come from America to Turkey, thousands of kilometres away? How necessary is it for garlic to come from China? Should needs-related production take the place of intensive production?
We are in a period in which such questioning will intensify further thanks to the contagion. Yes, those seeking their own way on the streets in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Chile and France will be shut in their homes for the time being. But it should not be forgotten that those whose demands become more pressing as things unfold will not abandon this quest.
Authoritarianism and war may become more needed for imperialists. However, the age may also hold wars in question. “Budgets for the contagion, not war” may become a pressing demand. With not a single pharmaceutical company on the list of the companies with the highest R&D expenditure, there are seven companies in the arms-defence sector in Turkey!
With neoliberalism’s veneer peeling off bit by bit, for sure nothing good will come about of its own accord. The problem will not be solved if hospitals are brought into public ownership, either. The “public-orientational” aspect underlying China’s success in stamping out the contagion is not praiseworthy or exemplary. Nor is a new authoritarian-capitalist globalization forged under China’s leadership the solution.
Even with a global problem of this nature, we have witnessed competition among nations, not solidarity, leaving imperialism’s stark contradictions thrust in our face. Rather than pooling to develop medicines or vaccinations, states have embarked on a race to secure patents for themselves. A supranational international endeavour has proved impossible to broker. With capital chasing fresh opportunities, states have become engulfed in concerns to escape with the least damage all the time jostling to appear the “strongest.” All this has brought home the need for a new globalization (internationalization). A globalization that will consolidate the distribution of resources and equality, freedom and solidarity at a national and international level and will sustain ecological balances.
Basically, it may be “normal” for humanity to be plagued with constant threat and encounter viruses that cause mass death regardless of the level of social development it attains. However, unpreparedness for this and the failure to take measures and respond with the technological and scientific developments of the day is not a “normal” situation!
This crisis will be surpassed and “social distances” will narrow again but, until “social distancing” from the system is imposed, there will be no shortage of headaches and hopelessness. Everything points to transgressing capitalism and establishing a socialist society!
So, why socialism?
Let’s address this based on the images in the virus mirror we listed.
Let’s start with the health system!
The three countries with attention-grabbing anti-corona success stories are: China, South Korea and Cuba! This list shows one thing: those with a “public orientation,” not a market one, are at an advantage. I don’t mean there is no exploitation of labour and nature in these countries. In terms of shutting out popular oversight and intervention, there is plenty to criticise about these examples demonstrating as they do the wealth of counteractive possibilities. The way China concealed information from its people and the world is no secret. But we are living in a world where even statist-inspired restrictions on unfettered market relations make a difference.
Underlying China’s “success” story is the influence of the planning experience acquired from socialism.
In China, citizens are included within the health system in a planned manner area by area. Each area has extensive and adequate equipment. Everyone can access general and instant health information and venues. When lockdown came to the eleven-million city of Wuhan, the origin of the contagion, it also boasted a significant degree of self-sufficiency.
Living under embargo for decades, Cuba’s leading position in the fight against the coronavirus, as opposed to the advanced capitalist countries having companies with million-dollar budgets and global pharmaceutical monopolies, derives from being steeped in the legacy of populism, even if it is not a socialist country.
The fact that socialist inspiration confers an advantage points to socialism being the end solution. For as capitalist health advances and the availability and efficacy of treatment increases, new illnesses also come into being. As health becomes more capitalist, protective medicine and health is pushed to one side.
The virus has mercilessly laid bare rampant capitalism and exploitation in the health system. The search for a remedy to the problem only after the appearance of the symptoms of the contagion has been perceived to be a very passive method of intervention.
Fostering healthiness requires the ability to create adequate means for nutrition and rest. To enable healthy departure from workplaces entered with a healthy body, health must be safeguarded. It requires the ability to confer conditions under which people can build up their disease resistance and constitutions. If a health problem is nevertheless experienced following the fight waged to prevent people from falling ill, a universally accessible free-of-charge structure capable of providing quality public health service is needed. The virus mirror points to the urgency of promoting an economic and social programme that encompasses all of this!
With modern medical “miracles” being created, what is the reason for people dying of commonplace diseases? What is the reason for the reappearance of diseases said to have become history (cholera, plague, tuberculosis, diphtheria, dysentery)?
Can it be otherwise with a process unfolding that impoverishes people and deprives them of income and hampers their access to health, clean water and food?
For consummate health, health must be addressed holistically. The trio of bodily, environmental and mental health must be planned together. To this end, manufacturing must be organized in an environment and people-focussed manner. The name of the system, an alternative to capitalism, with this organization in its mindset is socialism!
Along with the coronavirus shock, a crack has opened in the process I call the “new Middle Age” that since the 2000’s has sidelined science and increasingly accommodated “orders coming from the sky”: a crack thanks to which human reason will draw near to the enlightenment of science once more! And this crack is now a window of opportunity to pass beyond inspiring longing for the unscientific and make the scientific method and social benefit the starting point for the freedom of the individual!
We have seen that the socialization of information liberates and the reverse sows despair.
With no common pooling of humanity’s attainments, gathering information has become an individual task. In struggling to fill the void, humans have become people in quest of omniscience, required to have an opinion about everything.
As information has become marketable, the rulers have shifted solely towards profit-yielding information. The avoidance by pharmaceutical monopolies of non-profit yielding research into communicable diseases has been going on for decades.
The ability of information to spread rapidly on the internet does not prevent extremely useful scientific research from being locked in monopolies’ safes thanks to copyright! How is the necessary information to be produced in a world in which universities and technological institutions are only supported as companies’ needs dictate?
Information must be decoupled from profit and socialized under policies that attach regard to science, nature and society.
Nothing can do this apart from socialism, with its focus on creating a different kind of globalization (internationalization) and in which people are not governed but govern the system!
I mean, there is no hope for a final exit without having a design for the placing of consumption and lifestyles on totally new foundations, setting out to rein in the profit and wealth regime and imagining a solidarity-driven society!
That’s why socialism, indeed!
(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)
Hakkı Özdal
