The future postcoronavirus is already in dispute

We who are alive today have never faced a threat like that of the new coronavirus. If so many repeat that the world will never be the same, what is the world we want?

Let no one be fooled: as we face the pandemic, that answer is already in dispute. It is the one that will determine the near future. Fighting for the life that the virus threatens is the urgent need of the emergency. But there is also something even more difficult to do: fight for the future post-virus. If we do not, recovering "normality" will be returning to the daily brutality that is only "normal" for a few, a normality torn from the lives of many who are left exhausted daily. Disruption of the “normal” caused by the virus can be an opportunity to design a society based on other principles, capable of stopping the climate catastrophe and promoting social justice. The worst thing that can happen to us after the pandemic is precisely going back to “normal”.

Large corporations are already beginning to move to ensure control of what is to come. Last week, Donald Trump received the oil companies at the White House. They were not to discuss how to save the poorest from the effects of the pandemic. In the UK, airlines are pushing for government subsidies and, of course, deregulation. Nor did they meet to have tea and discuss investments in the social area.

Faced with the new coronavirus, even strongholds of the liberal press, such as The Economist magazine and the Financial Times newspaper, both born in the cradle of capitalism, have announced that it is necessary to take a step back. Greater state intervention and policies such as offering a basic income and taxing large fortunes, previously considered "exotic", have been included in the new social contract in the post-pandemic world. Granting a little to ensure that nothing changes in essence is an old trick.

With the virus, we found that those who claimed it was impossible to stop producing, reduce the number of flights, increase government investment, and radically change habits simply lied. The world has changed in less than three months in the name of life. Also in the name of life we ​​need to maintain the good practices that have emerged in this period and press like never before for another type of society, woven with other threads.

It is unavoidable. If we don't do that, the postcoronavirus world will be even more brutal, and the climate collapse will escalate. For the extermination of nature there is not and never will be a vaccine. Our future depends on burying the capitalist system that has exhausted the planet and brought us back to the time of pandemics. Communism, which exploded, destroyed lives, eroded nature and oppressed bodies, is also useless. We have to find other ways. And fast. Many say it is naive. Others say it is impossible. The naive thing is to sit in the chair of nails that has become the present and wait for the effects of the brutal overexploitation of nature to finish deforming the face of the planet. The impossible is to continue living as we were living.

Physical isolation has to be used to produce social thought and act collectively, in a network. This article, divided into two parts, aims to contribute to the debate of the future that must be started in the present. Now.

1) In Brazil, all roads lead to neoliberalism

The present, in Brazil, is a trap. We have an anti-president - and anti-president is a concept created by Bolsonarism - who opposes his own government. The technique has been clear since the beginning of his term, but has acquired dramatic contours in the pandemic, when Jair Bolsonaro has started a war against his own Minister of Health. Denial of reality as a method of maintaining power has various effects on the population. One of them is to grab the news and hijack the debate.

Instead of debating the most urgent threat, we are engaging in the false debate that Bolsonaro has launched against Brazilians: isolation or non-isolation, that is, health or the economy. This is what happens when you choose a man who, in the past, planned to blow up bombs at barracks to press for a pay rise. Today Bolsonaro's bombs are disinformation, point to chaos and can also kill.

The problem is even bigger, because denying reality also produces reality. In this case, not only that of putting the population at risk, but also that of making people believe that there is real opposition. This illusion that grows in Brazil, even out of desperation, can irreversibly compromise the future.

If Jair Bolsonaro resigned, which seems highly unlikely at the moment, or if he was removed, which also seems distant, the vice president would take office. Hamilton Mourão is a four-star general of the reserve who, until the 2018 presidential elections, was considered a coup-maker because of several public statements he had made. During the campaign, he went on to say in an interview on the GloboNews channel that, in "case of anarchy", a president can give a "self-coup" with "the help of the armed forces." Compared to Bolsonaro, even a pit bull seems "moderate." This is what happens with Mourão, as I wrote more than a year ago.

The third in the hierarchy is Rodrigo Maia, from the Democrats party (DEM). In addition to being accused of corruption, the president of the Chamber of Deputies fully identifies with the neoliberalism that has led us to the current situation and with the most conservative forces in the country, with the exception (for the moment) of the evangelical saccharines. What made Maia an example of moderation and competition for what they call the “market” was to carry out a pension reform, which, although necessary, clearly the approved model was neither the best nor the fairest for workers, since it made their lives even more precarious. Maia, who, until the advent of Bolsonarism, most Brazilians preferred to see far away (or in prison), became a kind of common sense oracle, which shows the depth of the abyss in which he finds himself Brazil.

And then we have the new candidates for statesmen: the governors of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. João Doria, from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), and Wilson Witzel, from the Christian Social Party (PSC). Doria, the privatization manager, and Witzel, the defender of police violence in the favelas. Until yesterday, both were fingernails with Bolsonaro. Or vowel and consonant, in the case of Doria, which was chosen as "Bolsodoria". To contain the pandemic, they only follow international health guidelines in their states, but since doing the obvious is doing the opposite of what Bolsonaro preaches, they become defenders of the people against the purse virus. His eyes are on the 2022 presidential election.

Bolsonaro renders great service to his former best friends. In São Paulo, in particular, he frees Doria from explaining the low investment in public health that his party has made over the more than 25 years that he has been in command of the State. Ultimately, this lack of investment in the public health system is what will result in deaths from coronavirus.

Across the country, false debate overshadows true debate. The pandemic has shown the importance of public health. And it has revealed all the monstrosity of the Proposal for Constitutional Amendment 95, created by the government of former President Michel Temer to put a ceiling on public spending, a typical neoliberal minimum state policy that eliminated billions from the Health budget. Much of this bill is being paid now. With lives.

In the death certificate of the victims it will put “death by coronavirus”. But, in a part of the cases, what will have killed them is the precariousness of public health, the increase in inequality and misery in recent years, the lack of investment in sanitation and decent housing. And finally, the fact that a part of the population is still exposed to the virus because they are not allowed to stop working.

The image of the trap that Brazil is in is the Minister of Health, Luiz Henrique Mandetta. By taking on the boss and taking obvious steps in the pandemic, Mandetta has become the new national hero. All errors, such as delays in providing tests, masks, and other protective equipment, are forgiven. Bolsonaro, his minister's main opponent, also does him a great service. And to their own government, since, whatever the result, it can be attributed or not. It is the cunning to be Government and opposition at the same time.

Let's see who is the new national hero, today flattered and supported by all ideological fields. Mandetta, a well-known advocate of ruralists, spoke out openly against the More Doctors program on health and militated against the expansion of cases where abortion is allowed. He also regretted the fragmentation of families caused by the Divorce Law. Dilma Rousseff demarcated far fewer indigenous lands than her predecessors, one reason why she receives severe criticism from indigenous and environmentalists. Still, Mandetta thought the President was exaggerating. "The president is directing her anger against rural producers, she is putting all her desire for Brazil to go wrong in agribusiness," he said at the plenary session of Congress in 2016. The following year, he was a fierce critic of Operation Weak Meat, in which the Federal Police investigated irregularities in the cold stores.

The new Brazilian hero points out where Brazil is. Each one comes to his own conclusion. The real opposition, as already seen, is weak. It does not show what its great difference is, much less convinces the population that it is different. Embraced by Lula and the Workers' Party (PT), or fighting with Lula and the PT, the left has stopped arguing for the country. He thinks he quarrels, of course, but nobody cares. The strongest performance is that of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL), but it only takes its toll on a small number of Brazilians.

This does not mean that the left is a solution, since a significant part of the Brazilian left - and of the world - remains anchored in the 20th century, totally oblivious to the main current problems, such as the climate crisis and the destruction of natural life in the planet. The ones who really opposed in the pre-pandemic Brazil of recent years were identity groups: women, youth, blacks, and indigenous people. The opposition is political, but it does not have political parties as protagonists. And political parties are still needed to contest the future.

Therefore, in the post-pandemic period, or even during the pandemic, since it is not known whether it will end, all roads lead to the neoliberal right. This is the hole in front of Brazil. And also many countries, mired in the crisis of western democracies, some having to deal with elected despots.

Brazil therefore has two gigantic challenges. The first is to prevent the virus from killing thousands of Brazilians. There is no doubt that the poorest will die the most. Those who do not have houses compatible with insulation; those who have been forced by employers to work; those who have been fired; those who live on jobs, in informality, and can no longer work. Those who will not be able to feed on the 600 reais ($ 117) offered by the Government. Those without sewers have no water and will soon have no food. Those who fall ill and do not find beds in public health, sabotaged in recent years in the name of privatization and the lobby of private health insurance.

The 600 reais emergency subsidy for the informal is another proof of the paradoxically large and at the same time claustrophobic hole in which the country is located. Before the 200 reais ($ 39) initially proposed by the economy minister, Paulo Guedes, suddenly 600 reais began to sound with decency notes. The value, however, is totally indecent. No one lives in Brazil with a minimum dignity of 600 reales. For the other half of the workers, those with a formal contract, the Government has allowed their working hours and wages to be reduced.

For those who get involved with the meaning of neoliberal, this is it. It is worth looking for more sophisticated and comprehensive definitions. In one paragraph, what can be said is that the neoliberals believe that the State should interfere as little as possible and that the market is self-regulating. To do this, it is essential to weaken the representations of the workers and the word for everything is “flexibility”. Privatize, deregulate, flexibilize: these are neoliberalism's favorite verbs. Every time something is “relaxed” in Brazil, urban and rural workers, indigenous peoples, nature and other species suffer. The precarious worker with fewer and fewer rights is given the beautiful and modern name of "entrepreneur." Free and autonomous to die working. And, if you cannot "undertake," the reasons for failure also belong to you. Look, "entrepreneur", what situation you are in. And if that's what you want to continue being.

In the neoliberal stage of capitalism, all relationships are reduced and subject to consumption at the same time. What defines each "individual" is their ability to consume. Your options are reduced to choosing between products, brands, prices, colors, formats; your freedom is to consume what your income allows and to want to exhaust yourself more to have more money to consume. All life is mediated by merchandise and, above any identity, you are a consumer.

It is just with this system that the planet has been consumed, supposedly at the disposal of consumers; Entire species have been destroyed and others have been subjugated so that their bodies are consumed at an industrial production rate. Thus, you are born to —consuming your body and your time— consuming you. And so, since the industrial revolution, when an ever faster process of CO2 emission began by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, etc.), humans have become a force of destruction on the planet.

Pressured by the collapse of nature that they have caused and the evidence that there will be more pandemics, the large corporations that control the world and those who benefit from them are now trying to reinvent the destruction system, as they have done in the past, to maintain the control. They have a good chance of getting it.

In Brazil, Bolsonaro has pushed the limits so much that he has made all the conservative forces around him acceptable. I don't know if you have realized that this is your main role. The fact is, it does it brilliantly. Every time he behaves like a maniac, he makes those who until yesterday caused chills now stand out as statesmen. Before him, a Mourão in the presidency was unimaginable after more than 20 years of military dictatorship. Before him, Rodrigo Maia was just another very traditional representative of a Congress marked by corruption and physiology. Before him, Doria and Witzel, each with their own style, would never receive applause from the left or praise from Lula. Before him, Mandetta was a politician concerned with supporting corporate projects in the health sector and lobbying ruralists. Thanks to Bolsonaro and the incompetence of the true opposition, everyone leads us.

Is it so, then?

Brazil - and the world - have to face two urgent questions: the dispute for the present, which is the new coronavirus, and the dispute for the future, which also occurs now, in the present.

Facing a pandemic in a country where inequality and extreme poverty have increased in recent years due to neoliberal policies is an immense challenge. But perhaps even greater is the challenge of imagining a future other than returning to a normality that was only normal for the privileged. In the trap that the country has become, all roads lead to the same place. The characters that dispute the present and the future within the structure of the State are, basically, all the same, or at least very similar.

How can we learn from the coronavirus to create a future other than annihilation?

It seems almost impossible when all the exits are blocked by the neoliberal troops, who are already organizing to scourge the population after the pandemic, with the urgent need to produce to overcome the recession and resume the dogma of growth. We have already had indications that the coronavirus will be used to impose losses of rights and freedoms. China, with its capitalist communism (yes, that is possible), has further expanded its despotic surveillance of the population. It is just a sign of what is to come.

Soon, you will see, governments will ask that we all sacrifice ourselves. That we are never all, but always. Pay attention to the meaning that will be given to the word "retake" and think about what will be retaken. The pandemic is new. The methods of those who have brought the planet to this state of affairs, no.

It seems impossible to dispute the future under these conditions. But all we can do is find a way to undermine that creature called capitalism, which in our time is expressed through neoliberalism, and prevent it from regenerating. Today, more than ever, we fight for life.

2) We have to stop the lords of the world before they can hit us (again)

Western thinkers had long since been so reluctant to interpret a moment. It makes a lot of sense. Nothing is - or has been - greater than this pandemic as a global threat capable of changing everything in a second. Even how humans look, upon discovering that the species, which has always been considered the owner of the planet, is threatened by a microscopic being. There is already at least one book with a compilation of articles by philosophers on the coronavirus and its effects. However, there is something that differentiates them. There are the thinkers who have understood the climate crisis and there are those who are still hanging around with the dilemmas of the 20th century, like much of the world left, and who have not been affected by the anxieties of today.

Among the thinkers connected with the climate emergency is the French Bruno Latour, author of one of the best contributions to reflect on the moment as an action. The text, available on the author's page, has been translated into Spanish by Jocelyn Leyva Santoyo. In his analysis, Latour defines the lesson of the new coronavirus as follows: “The first lesson of the coronavirus is also the most powerful: the test is done, it is entirely possible, in a matter of weeks, to suspend, worldwide and at the same time time, an economic system that until now we have been told was impossible to stop or redirect. Faced with all the arguments of environmentalists about the need to change our ways of life, the argument of the irreversible force of the 'train of progress' was always opposed, which could not get off its tracks for nothing; 'because of', it was said, 'globalization'. ”

And he points out the risk: “Every motorist knows that, to increase the opportunity to save himself and continue on the road after a sharp turn at the wheel, it is better to slow down first. Unfortunately, in this sudden pause in the globalized production system, it is not just environmentalists who find the ideal occasion to push their landing program forward. Globalizers, those who after the second half of the 20th century invented the idea of ​​escaping planetary limitations, also see a magnificent opportunity to destroy, even more radically, the few obstacles that still prevent them from escaping from this world. For them, the occasion is also perfect: freeing themselves from the remains of the welfare state, from the safety net of the poorest, from what remains of the regulations against pollution and, even more cynically, from getting rid of all those people in excess that crowds the planet. (...) We must not forget that what makes globalizers so dangerous is that they necessarily know that they have lost; that the denial of climate change cannot last indefinitely, that there is no longer any opportunity to reconcile its 'development' with the various layers of the planet, where it will be necessary to end up inserting the economy. This is what disposes them to try everything to obtain, one last time, the conditions that will allow them to exist a little more time and be safe together with their children ”.

Before anyone mentions the hoax of “sustainable” development as the panacea capable of re-channeling capitalism, it is worth listening to another thinker, this indigenous man. Author of the book Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo (Ideas to postpone the end of the world), Ailton Krenak provoked hatred and gritted the teeth of many by stating, long ago, that "sustainability was personal vanity". All corporations, even the most destructive, today have a sustainability manager. It is part of the capacity of capitalism to co-opt and adapt. One more shame.

In March, when the pandemic was already crossing the globe, Krenak, speaking about anticolonial perspectives at the opening of the São Paulo International Theater Show, explained: “We live precariously in a relationship of consuming what Mother Nature offers us. And we have always used what our mother gives us without worrying. Until, one day, we became such a large constellation of people who consume everything, that our mother nature said: wait, do you want to end everything that can exist, here, as balance and as a possibility of what is the flow of life? Are you going to examine the production of life and decide how many pieces of life each can have? And, in this scandalous inequality, are you going to manage water, oxygen, food and land? Then [nature] began to put limits on our ambition.

”One way that humans found to manage it was by creating the idea, for example, that there is an environment and that this universe is something that can be managed. And, within this environment, some vital flows can be measured, evaluated and enabled, some even with sustainability seals.

”If you take water from the Guaraní aquifer, for example, which is very good quality water, and bottle it properly, you are a sustainable company. But who says that extracting water from the Guaraní aquifer is sustainable? You practice violence at the source and receive a sustainable stamp along the way. It is the same with wood. That's a scam, there is no such thing as sustainable water or sustainable wood. ”

Then he says the terrible truth, which is also the starting point of any future proposal that we can outline: “We are an unsustainable civilization, we are unsustainable. How can we produce something in balance?

This is the challenge.

As soon as the new coronavirus gives us a truce, the prophets of neoliberalism will begin to preach: "We must produce and grow!" There is no greater dogma in the economy than growth. Thousands of economists will lose their jobs in the field of economic astrology if the dogma of growth is unmasked. Growth is the imperative need of all countries. Who does not remember that “growing the pie of the economy and then sharing the pie” that the minister of the dictatorship and the greatest economic astrologer in Brazil, Delfim Netto, repeated during the regime of exception? Later, with the expansion of neoliberalism, not even that. It was enough for the poorest to know that, in the event that the country grew, perhaps there might be something left for them.

The dogma of growth is built on a lie: the possibility of infinitely exploiting the resources of a planet with finite resources. Two neurons are enough to understand that it is not possible. And here comes the other dogma, that of sustainability, as if it were possible to make sustainable what, in its structure, is unsustainable.

What the growth dogma does is protect the privileges of the very wealthy: the problem is no longer the equitable distribution of existing wealth, but insufficient growth, which does not guarantee enough for everyone. The urgent need to grow is repeated endlessly to cover up structural injustice: inequality in the distribution of wealth. Charging with his exhausted body, even the poor come to believe that his misery is caused by lack of growth. Not realizing that, as the cake grew, the chunks grew larger for those who already owned the cake, and for them some crumbs were left at most.

In Brazil, the richest 1% concentrates almost a third of income (28.3%), which gives the country the title of world vice champion of inequality, according to the latest United Nations Human Development Report. Brazil only loses to Qatar, and only by 0.7%. Five Brazilian billionaires concentrate the same wealth as the poorest half of the country, according to a study by the British non-governmental organization Oxfam, published in 2018. Five people concentrate the same income as 100 million Brazilians. This is the problem. If the country is tremendously unequal, it is not due to a lack of exploitation of nature. Unlike. The depletion of the planet's life support is one of the main drivers of poverty and inequality.

The dogma of growth, which turns the gears of capitalism, was decisive in producing the climate emergency. What the climate emergency makes explicit is that it will no longer be possible to “grow”. We have to radically change our way of life because, as the young Greta Thunberg says, "our house is on fire". In the face of global overheating and the loss of vital ecosystems, it is really imperative to distribute the existing wealth.

This explosive content encourages large corporations dominating the planet to support climate deniers such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. With these elected despots who spread lies and distract the world with false problems, they save time. They already know that they cannot continue, but they will do their utmost to earn as much money as possible. Bridging the gap, it's like the tobacco industry: it denied the damage for decades, against all scientific research, and made money producing cancer while it could. Even today, he gets multi-million dollar figures.

The challenge facing our generation is immense. And it will be hard. Very hard. As the climate crisis unfolds at a different pace, most always postpone the encounter with reality, despite the cries of scientists and young people. The deniers have been chosen because a large part of the world population wants to continue denying the undeniable along with them. Then the virus arrives and exposes reality wide open. It is not possible to escape from it, since to escape is to die.

What we have today is a window of reality, the moment when everyone, absolutely everyone, is forced to meet the truth. So Bolsonaro has become even more pyrotechnic. To maintain power, you must falsify reality. He was doing it, but the virus has swept away that possibility. Then he says that "the virus is not all they say." Because, terrified, he knows that the virus is much more. Faced with the truth of death, lies do not survive.

Bruno Latour thus announces the impasse of the window that has opened the coronavirus: “If the occasion opens to them, it also opens to us. If everything stopped, everything can be questioned; questioned, selected, ordered, interrupted once and for all or, on the contrary, accelerated. The inventory of the year should be done now. If common sense tells us, 'Let's restart production as quickly as possible,' we should yell back: 'Of course not!' The last thing we should do is return to what we did before in the same way. ”

So that we can continue this debate, I reproduce here the questions that it raises for each one and for the group:

“Let's take the opportunity to make a list of the activities that we feel deprived of due to the current crisis and that we even perceive as an attack on our essential subsistence conditions. For each activity, let's indicate if we would like them to return as they were before, with improvements, or not to return at all. Answer the next questions:

"one. What activities that are currently suspended would you like not to resume?

"two. Describe a) why this activity seems harmful / superfluous / dangerous / inconsistent to you; b) to what extent your disappearance / put on hold / replacement would make other activities you prefer easier / more consistent. (Write a different paragraph for each of the answers).

"3. What measures do you recommend so that workers / employees / agents / entrepreneurs who will not be able to continue in the activities that you have eliminated, will facilitate their transition to other activities?

"4. What currently suspended activities would you like to be developed / resumed or created from scratch?

"5. Describe a) why this activity seems positive to you;b) How do you make it easier / harmonious / consistent? Do these activities allow you to fight against those that you consider unfavorable? (Write a different paragraph for each of the answers).

”6. What measures do you recommend to help workers / employees / agents / entrepreneurs in acquiring the skills / means / income / instruments that allow the resumption / development / creation of this activity? ”

I add a question of mine to the list. There is nothing that the large corporations that control the planet, like the neoliberal politicians who represent them in the various instances of the State, fear more than civil disobedience. In Brazil, the alms they give so that the poorest survive the pandemic have the objective of stagnating the possibility of generating “social chaos” or a “social convulsion”. In other words: people on the street and with nothing to lose.

Since the end of 2018, the movement that has shaken the “normality” the most that the world's lords appreciate so much has been the civil disobedience of adolescents, who refused to go to school on Fridays. In the school strike, they denounced that the adults robbed them of the future by not doing what was necessary to contain the climate collapse. With no future, why study? Since they are children and adolescents, this was the civil disobedience that was available. And how it worked.

So my question is: what could be the best civil disobedience action right now?

In Bolsonaro's Brazil, we know that our main civil disobedience is to survive. But in addition to staying alive, how can we disobey the producers of death to create a future where we can exist with everyone else?

I conclude with Ailton Krenak, because I believe that the best ideas will come from indigenous thinkers, from those who know how to live without exhausting the planet and without producing iniquities. He says: “The very statement of something that will come later animates our sense of life. It is the idea of ​​postponing the end of the world. We postpone the end of each world, each day, creating exactly a true desire to meet tomorrow, at the end of the day, next year. These worlds encapsulated one inside the other challenge us to think about a possible meeting of our existences. It is a wonderful challenge. ”

Let's go?

Eliane Brum is a writer, reporter, and documentary filmmaker. Author from Brazil, ruin builder: um olhar on the country, from Lula to Bolsonaro. Web: elianebrum.com. E-mail: elianebrum.coluna@gmail.com. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook: @brumelianebrum.

Translation by Meritxell Almarza

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