FOR 40 years they hurled their neoliberal dogmas at us. The 2008 financial crisis seriously shook the belief in those beliefs, but eventually the system survived. This time things are different. The corona crisis and the socio-economic measures for saving the system have killed the neoliberal dogmas one by one.

It’s time for something new — and the challenges we face today are huge. The new paradigm must be suitable for respond to at least four crises.

Economic deadlock

The world economy has experienced a major crisis three times over the past decades: the dotcom crisis in 2000, the financial crisis in 2008 and in recent months a depression following a pandemic.

This clearly shows that Covid-19 is not the cause but the trigger of the economic storm. A healthy economy should (in principle) be able to cope with a corona shock, a country such as China proves it.

But that does not seem to be the case at all for the capitalist economy. Productivity growth has almost stalled, profit rates (percentage of profit on invested capital) are steadily declining and debt worldwide has risen to an unsustainable 322 per cent of GDP. Moreover, each crisis means nothing but misery for millions of people. This crisis will again push several hundreds of millions into poverty. It really can’t go on like this.

Outrageous gap between the rich and the poor

In capitalism, production focuses solely on the pursuit of profit of a small group of private owners and not on the social needs or opportunities for development of the great majority. That creates an outrageous gap between the rich and the poor.

With the wealth that is produced worldwide today, every family with two adults and three children worldwide has a potential monthly disposable income of £ 3,650 (you read that right).

Yet one person in three of the world’s population does not have any basic sanitary facilities and only one person in eight has access to electricity. One in five lives in a slum and one in three does not have safe drinkable water.

Every year thousands of people in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world, are dying from poverty. These are not excesses of the system. They directly result from its logic.

Upcoming pandemics

Since the beginning of last century, we have known that almost all modern epidemics are the result of human intervention in humanity’s immediate ecological environment.

Mammals and birds are carriers of hundreds of thousands of viruses that are transmissible to humans. The exploitation of previously inaccessible nature reserves means that there is an increasing chance of transmission of those viruses to humans.

In response to HIV, Sars, Ebola, Mers and other viruses, top experts have been warning us for more than a decade. We may consider ourselves fortunate that no more deadly viruses have come our way.

In 2018, scientists in the US drew up a detailed plan to prevent such pandemics. Losses caused by Covid-19-19 may reach an estimated $12,500 billion. The cost of the 2018 prevention plan is barely $7bn.

No financier has yet been found for the project. This should come as no surprise, because this kind of research is largely private and is not about the public interest, but about profit.

Noam Chomsky puts it very sharply: “Labs around the world could be working right then on developing protection for potential coronavirus pandemics. Why didn’t they do it? The market signals were wrong. The drug companies. We have handed over our fate to private tyrannies called corporations, which are unaccountable to the public, in this case, Big Pharma. And for them, making new body creams is more profitable than finding a vaccine that will protect people from total destruction.”

Climate degeneration

The hunt for maximum profits undermines the ecological system of the Earth and threatens the survival of the human species. According to famous writer and activist Naomi Klein, the world is faced with a decisive choice: either we save capitalism or the climate.

This choice is razor-sharp in the fossil energy sector, the main culprit of CO2 emissions. The 200 largest oil, gas and coal companies have a combined market value of $4,000bn and gain tens of billions of profits annually.

If we want to keep the temperature rise below 2°C, these energy giants must leave 60 to 80 per cent of their supplies untouched. But that is detrimental to earnings expectations and it would immediately make their market value plummet. Therefore, they still invest hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the quest for new supplies.

In response to the corona crisis, governments have taken unprecedented measures. In order to tackle climate degeneration action will have to be taken which is at least as radical. “If there’s one thing the pandemic has shown,” the Financial Times wrote, “it’s the danger of experts’ warnings being ignored.”

So what of the fight for a different social system? What can we learn from these four crises?

In order to break the current economic deadlock, it will first of all be necessary to curb the financial markets and break the disproportionate power of the multinationals. In order to tackle social issues, the economy should no longer focus on the private profits of the few, but on the social needs of the many. There must also be a redistribution of wealth.

In order to arm ourselves against future pandemics, the pharmaceutical industry will have to implement a radical change of course.

Finally, climate policy is too important to be left to the energy giants and their profit logic. Their omnipotence must be broken so that there is room for a responsible climate policy.

To achieve all this, we will have to subordinate the economic sphere to the political sphere. Where is invested and what is invested in, the distribution of the economic surplus, trade, money — we must all focus on the priorities and needs of today’s society and that of future generations.

This “planning” by no means implies total state control, but it does mean that the economy is controlled by an (elected) political body and not by private owners. It means that economic logic is subordinated to the state and not the other way round.

A different social system is a necessary and urgent goal, but it will not be realised by itself. Correct ideas are important but not enough to bring about changes. The present system is backed and driven by giant interests.

Those who benefit from this system will never voluntarily give it up or be willing to make concessions, even if enlightened capitalists are convinced that such concessions are essential for the preservation of the system. Associations of Entrepreneurs will even try to use the crisis situation for imposing a shock strategy.

History teaches us that the type of society and our future depend on the struggle we will wage. As sociologist Jean Ziegler puts it: “We should not be optimistic, we should mobilise.” To build a powerful mobilisation, we will have to build strong organisations, because our opponents are very strongly organised themselves.

As Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis says: “If we fail now to stand together … my fear is that this system will only deepen its cruel logic.” In any case, these will be exciting and decisive times. Get ready.

Translation: Dirk Nimmegeers.