Organic Crisis, Integral State, Passive Revolution: Twilight of the Neoliberal Order?

A reconnaissance of the 2020 pandemic begins by registering the moments of refusal and supersedure, demonstrating the extent to which it seemed to many to be an organic (transformational) crisis re-ordering neoliberal capitalism’s fundamental elements. Vaccine development and debates over lockdowns illustrate the emergence of a neoliberal integral state, one in which the lines between government, industry and finance are blurred to the point of invisibility. Yet the pandemic also suggests that such states are hobbled as effective organisers of hegemony by their incapacity to safeguard the lives and interests of the people they purportedly represent and to break with imperial patterns of global dominance. Passive revolutionary attempts to contain revolutionary critiques and activism are to be expected; yet they may not succeed, given that the covid-19 pandemic arose from the environmental consequences of the global processes of capitalist accumulation neoliberals defend. The ‘next left’ has an opening, provided it soberly addresses the crisis of the neoliberal order and develops a convincing strategy for overcoming it.

Bolsonaro: A Ridiculous Caesar?

In this article, we aim to set out an appropriate interpretation for the historical form that the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro embodies and the context that made his presidency possible. We propose a discussion on the level of ideology, although conceived from a material and historical background and integrated into a context of hegemonic dispute that presupposes ideology but which is not identical to it. We analyse the constituent elements of this ideology and its particularities, based on the Gramscian concept of ‘Caesarism’ and the notion of ‘corrosive ridicule’. Finally, we outline probable future developments for social conflict and crisis in Brazil during the coronavirus pandemic.

Strategies Against the covid-19 Pandemic and the Crisis of Hegemony

This article tries to explain why, if those countries that applied an elimination strategy in respect of the covid-19 pandemic experienced fewer deaths and relatively fewer negative impacts on their economies, the ruling bourgeoisie of other countries did not promote similar measures. Additionally, it attempts to explain why people have not widely demanded that policies be implemented to eliminate the circulation of the virus. The article suggests that, in order to better understand these behaviours, it is necessary to frame them in the context of the profound crisis of hegemony in which most of Europe and America was already plunged before the arrival of the covid-19 virus.

covid-19 and the Role of the State: Evidence from Keren, Eritrea

The covid-19 pandemic has caused the worst socio-economic disruption since World War ii. From the integral state perspective, this article explores the Eritrean government’s pandemic response and the ramifications for its people. The study seeks to understand the measures taken by the government to contain the virus and their immediate impact on the residents of the city of Keren, using individual stories, in-depth interviews, participant observations, media sources, and archival resources gathered from local and national resource centres in Eritrea between March and July 2020. According to the findings, the state’s main measures were restricting large gathering, maintaining complete or partial lockdowns, quarantining persons who might be infected, closing non-essential shops and stores, setting up hotline services, and running massive media campaigns. However, these measures hurt the livelihoods of the majority of residents, leaving many households without any way to earn a living.

Political Potency and the Impotency of European Sovereignism: Pandemic and Technocracy

The covid-19 pandemic and the parallel economic and social crisis mark both a decline of neoliberal globalisation and a return of public intervention. As many have stated, the economic policy triptych of the past decades – the opening of markets, withdrawal of the state and privatisation – has substantially disappeared from the agendas of governments around the world. The ‘political’, in a sense, is back. But in what sense? Can we talk about a real paradigm shift? The return of the political that we are witnessing manifests itself in the permanence and persistence of the neoliberal anthropology of the masses, which is the legacy of globalism, of the Maastricht order and of its idea of civilisation (even more than its political economy dogmas).