One of the ironies of the pandemic is how "social distancing" demonstrates the potential of collective power.
The economy has tanked as people across the country have been urged to stay home as much as possible, and many of the avenues for spending our money are closed to us.
I read of virtual book clubs, happy hours, friends drinking "quarantinis" in front of webcams — and numerous efforts at emulating consumerism as best we can under weird circumstances.
The week ending March 21 saw nearly 3.3 million unemployment claims in the U.S. as non-essential businesses closed some or all of their operations.The federal reserve chair admitted we may already be in a new recession.
And so, President Donald Trump signed a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill and announced he would use his powers under the Defense Production Act to direct General Motors to speed production of medical ventilators, which have been in short supply for some time.
The enormous spending bill authorizied cash payments and expanded unemployment insurance to Americans, cash for hospitals seeking to build their surge capacity before severe cases spike and $500 billion in aid for large capitalist organizations.
What pressed fiscal conservatives to support so much deficit spending?
Something we call "the economy" requires assistance, but "the economy" is not a god, not an appliance, and not a moral fable.
The economy, rather, is a system of class power that organizes ownership of production and surplus, backed by the coercive powers of government and stewarded by a community that has enriched its own members while leaving society without (for starters) the medical materiel needed to care for humanity in a pandemic.
American capitalism just never seemed to get around to building a robust healthcare system for its labor force, which now faces a global health crisis even as the financial ground shakes beneath its feet.
Some of us may now be noticing the magnitude of potential disruption when people withhold their labor and consumption on a major scale. Imagine the implications of a general strike.
Many who only recently learned of the Defense Production Act may be exhilarated to imagine America’s productive capacity appropriated to produce on behalf of human need rather than for exchange value alone. Can such things be? Why, yes; and saying so is not blasphemy.
What becomes possible if working people organize power around their capacity to shut down sectors of the economy and insist on humanitarian production first, with luxury and personal enrichment for later?
It is an idea that could very well become, well, contagious.