"The shortage of fans reveals the cruelty of neoliberal capitalism"

 
"The shortage of fans reveals the cruelty of neoliberal capitalism"
The Covid-19 has taken the world by storm. Hundreds of thousands of people are infected (possibly far more than confirmed cases), the death toll is growing exponentially, and capitalist economies have stagnated, making a global recession almost inevitable.

The pandemic had been anticipated long before its appearance, but actions to prepare for this crisis were restricted due to the cruel imperatives of an economic order in which "the prevention of a future catastrophe does not produce benefits," says Noam Chomsky. in this exclusive interview for Truthout. Chomsky is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, author of more than 120 books and thousands of articles and essays. In this interview, he argues that neoliberal capitalism itself is responsible for the inadequate response of the United States to the pandemic.

C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, the new coronavirus disease epidemic has spread to most of the planet, and the United States already has more cases than any other country, including China, where the virus originated. Do you think it is a surprising evolution?

Noam Chomsky: The scale of the plague is surprising, shocking I would say, but not its appearance. Nor is the fact that the United States is having the worst response to the crisis.

Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years, insisting on it since the 2003 SARS epidemic, also caused by a coronavirus, for which vaccines were developed that did not go beyond the preclinical phase. Now was the time to start implementing rapid response systems to prepare us for another epidemic and save the spare capacity that might be needed. Initiatives could also have been launched to develop defenses and modes of treatment for a likely recurrence of a related virus.

But advances in science are not enough. There has to be someone who makes decisions. And that option is hampered by the pathology of the contemporary socioeconomic order. The signs of the market were evident: the prevention of a catastrophe does not produce benefits. The government could have intervened, but the prevailing doctrine prevents it: "the government is the problem," Reagan told us with his beaming smile, which meant that decision-making must be delegated even more to the business world, committed to making profit and free from the influence of those who should care for the common good. The following years injected a dose of neoliberal brutality into the unfettered capitalist order and the twisted form of market that it develops.

The severity of the pathology is evidenced through one of its most dramatic (and deadly) failures: the lack of respirators, which constitutes one of the main bottlenecks when facing the pandemic. The Department of Health and Human Services anticipated the problem and hired a small company to make cheap, easy-to-use respirators. But capitalist logic intervened. The company was acquired by a large corporation, Covidien, which sidelined the project, and "in 2014, without having provided any respirators to the government, Covidien's management told officials at the [federal] biomedical research institute its desire to terminate the contract, according to three former federal officials. The executives complained that the contract was not beneficial enough for the company.

It is a truth that does not admit doubt.

But then the neoliberal logic intervened, dictating that the government could not intervene to save the huge market failure that is now creating chaos. As the New York Times very diplomatically argued, “the freeze on the initiative that sought to create a new type of cheap and user-friendly respirator highlights the dangers of outsourcing projects with major public health implications to private companies; their focus on obtaining the maximum benefit is not always in line with the government's objective: to be prepared for a future crisis 

Leaving aside ritual reverence for the caring government and its laudable goals, the comment is not without reason. We might add that the focus on maximum profit is also not "always in line" with the hope of "humanity's survival", borrowing the phrase from a deleted report by JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, in which He warned that "the survival of humanity" was in danger of following the current course, to which the bank's own investments in fossil fuels contributed. So Chevron canceled a profitable sustainable energy project because it made more profit by destroying life on Earth. ExxonMobil did not even consider such an investment because it would have previously made more precise profitability calculations.

And it was totally logical, according to neoliberal doctrine. As Milton Friedman and other neoliberal luminaries explained to us in their day, the task of managers of large companies is to maximize profits. Any deviation from this moral obligation would destroy the foundations of "civilized life."

In any case, we will recover from the Covid-19 crisis, paying an important and possibly terrible price, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable population. But we will not recover from the melting ice caps and other devastating consequences of global warming. In this case, too, the catastrophe will be the result of a market failure, in this case of truly devastating proportions.

The current Administration had been widely informed of the probability of a pandemic. In fact, a high-level simulation exercise took place last October. Throughout his years as President, Trump has reacted the way he's used to us: withdrawing funding and dismantling any relevant part of government and regularly implementing instructions from his corporate masters to remove regulations that hinder benefits and save lives –And leading the race towards the abyss of the environmental catastrophe, by far its greatest crime; in fact the greatest crime in history if we consider the consequences.

In early January there was little doubt as to what was happening. On December 31, China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of the spread of symptoms similar to pneumonia of unknown causes. On January 7, China informed the WHO that scientists had identified the origin of the disease as a coronavirus and had successfully sequenced the genome, which they made available to the scientific world. Throughout January and February, American intelligence tried to capture Trump's attention in every possible way without succeeding. Officials informed the press that "they could not convince him to do anything about it even though the alarm lights were on."

But Trump did not remain silent. He issued a series of confident statements informing the public that the coronavirus was no more serious than a cough; that he had everything under control; that he was managing the crisis perfectly; that it was very serious but that he already knew it was a pandemic before anyone else; and so on, with the entire repertoire of regrettable claims. The technique is well designed, like the practice of releasing lies so quickly that the concept of truth itself disappears. Whatever happens, Trump is confident that his loyal supporters will defend him. When you shoot arrows at random, one has to hit the target.

To top off this impressive record, on February 10, with the virus sweeping the country from end to end, the White House released its annual budget proposal, which further expands the sharp cuts in all major health items the government's responsibility (from done, in virtually anything that can help people) while increasing funding for what really matters: the army and the wall [with Mexico].

One consequence of this is the scandalous and limited testing delay, far below other countries, making it impossible to use strategies for monitoring infections that have prevented the epidemic from spiraling out of control in functional societies. Even the best hospitals lack sufficient basic equipment. The United States is currently the epicenter of the crisis.

This example is just a small sample of Trump's malevolence, but unfortunately we do not have more space to delve now.

Although it is tempting to blame Trump for the disastrous response to the crisis, if we want to prevent future catastrophes, we need to look beyond his figure. Trump assumed power in a sick society, afflicted by 40 years of deeply rooted neoliberalism.

The neoliberal version of capitalism has been in force since the times of Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. There should be no need to detail its dire consequences. Reagan's generosity to the super-rich is of utmost relevance in the current crisis, when a new bailout is being prepared. Reagan hastened to lift the ban on tax havens and other mechanisms intended to shift the tax burden to the public, in addition to authorizing the repurchase of shares - a mechanism to inflate the value of the shares and enrich corporate management and very wealthy (who own most of the shares) while weakening the company's productive capacity.

These regulatory changes have huge consequences, on the order of tens of billions of dollars. Generally, the rules are designed to benefit a small minority while the rest have to fight to stay afloat. In this way we have come to have a society in which 0.1 percent of the population owns 20 percent of the wealth and the bottom half has a negative net worth and lives on a debt basis month after month. As profits grew and top managers' salaries skyrocketed, real wages have stagnated. As economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman show in their book The Triumph of Injustice, taxes are basically flat on all income groups except the highest, where they fall.

The US private (and for-profit) healthcare system has long been a case of scandal on an international scale, as it has a cost that doubles that of other developed societies and one of the worst results. Neoliberal doctrine dealt another blow to him by introducing business efficiency measures: service on demand and lack of contingency reserves. At the slightest alteration, the system breaks down. The same is true of the fragile economic order forged on neoliberal principles.

This is the world inherited by Trump, the goal of his battering ram. Those interested in rebuilding a viable society from the ruins that remain after the current crisis would do well to heed Vijay Prashad's warning: "We will not go back to normal, because normality was the problem."

Yet even now, with the country in the midst of a public health emergency unlike anything we've seen in a long time, the American public is still being told that universal healthcare is not a realistic proposition. Is neoliberalism solely responsible for this typically American view of health?

It is a complex story. For a start, surveys for a long time showed favorable attitudes towards universal healthcare, sometimes even strong support. In the last years of the Reagan era, around 70 percent of the population believed that the Constitution should guarantee healthcare, and 40 percent believed that this was in fact the case - assuming that the Constitution was the repository of everything which is obviously correct. Surveys showed great support for the right to universal healthcare, until the companies' propaganda offensive began, warning of the enormous tax burden that would entail, something similar to what we have seen recently. Then popular support disappeared.

As is often the case, propaganda has an element of truth. Taxes will go up, but total spending will drop sharply, as data from comparable countries show. How much? There are some interesting estimates. One of the world's leading medical journals, The Lancet of the United Kingdom, recently published a study estimating that the implementation of universal healthcare in the United States “would probably save 13 percent in national healthcare spending, equivalent to more than 450,000 million dollars annually (according to the value of the dollar in 2017). The study continued to state:

“The entire system could be financed with less disbursement than that contracted by companies and families that pay for health policies along with the items assigned by the government. This change to a single-payer healthcare would especially benefit lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that access to healthcare for the entire American population would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million years of life each year, relative to the current situation. ”

But taxes would have to go up. And it seems that many Americans prefer to spend more money as long as it is not in taxes (although on the other hand that means the loss of tens of thousands of lives every year). This is a symptomatic indicator of the state of American democracy, as perceived by people; and, from another perspective, of the strength of the doctrinal system designed by the business power and its intellectual lackeys. The neoliberal attack has intensified this pathological element of the national culture, but the roots go much deeper and can be seen in many examples. This is a topic worth investigating further.

Some European countries are managing the spread of the coronavirus better than others, but it appears that those that have been most successful in this task are outside the Western (neo) liberal universe. We are talking about Singapore, South Korea, Russia and China itself. Do you think this information provides us with information about Western capitalist regimes?

There have been different reactions to the spread of the virus. China seems to have controlled it, at least for now. Like the countries on its periphery, including democracies no less dynamic than the western ones, which took the first warnings very seriously. Most of Europe delayed decision-making, but some countries acted quickly. Germany seems to hold the global record for low mortality, thanks to the reserve of sanitary facilities and diagnostic capacity and the immediate response. The same seems to happen with Norway. Boris Johnson's reaction in the UK was disgraceful. But Trump's United States is in the queue.

However, the diligence with which Germany acted with its population did not extend beyond its borders. The European Union has shown itself to be anything but united. However, sick European societies may ask for help on the other side of the Atlantic. The Cuban superpower is ready to help once again with doctors and equipment. Meanwhile, his Yankee neighbor has dedicated himself to withdrawing healthcare to Yemen, where he has contributed to creating the world's largest humanitarian crisis, and uses the opportunity presented by the devastating health emergency to toughen his cruel sanctions and ensure maximum suffering. from his supposed enemies. Cuba is its longest victim, since the times of the terrorist wars and Kennedy's economic strangulation, although it has miraculously managed to survive.

Incidentally, it should be extremely disturbing for Americans to compare the Washington-ridden circus to Angela Merkel's calm, measured, and objective reports on how to handle the epidemic.

The different ways of responding to the crisis do not seem to depend on whether the country is a democracy or an autocracy, but on whether its society is functional or dysfunctional - which in Trump's rhetoric is summarized as "shitty countries", like the that he himself strives to create under his mandate.

What do you think of the economic rescue plan for the coronavirus, valued at 2 billion dollars? Is it enough to prevent another possible major recession and help the most vulnerable groups in American society?

The rescue plan is better than nothing. It offers limited relief to some of those who desperately need it and contains enough funds to help the truly vulnerable: the pitiful corporations who flock to Daddy State, hat in hand, hiding their copies of Ayn Rand * and pleading Once again the public sector bail them out after spending their glorious years amassing immense profits and expanding these with an orgy of share buybacks. But there is not nothing to worry. The black box will be overseen by Trump and his Treasury Secretary, who can be trusted to be fair and impartial. And if they decide to ignore the demands of the new inspector general and of Congress, who is going to avoid it? Barr's Justice Department? An impeachment?

Mechanisms should be designed so that aid reaches those who need it, the homes, beyond the misery that seems to have been assigned to them. That includes the working people who had real jobs and the huge precarious who suffered from temporary and irregular jobs, but also others: those who had already thrown in the towel, the hundreds of thousands of victims of "death by despair" ** - a real American tragedy - the homeless, the prisoners, all those who live in such inadequate houses that food isolation and storage is not possible, and many others that are not difficult to identify.

 Political economists Thomas Ferguson and Rob Johnson have put it bluntly: As long as universal healthcare that is common elsewhere is considered unattainable in the United States, "there is no reason why you should accept a single company-funded insurance." These authors summarize simple ways to overcome this form of corporate theft.

At a minimum, the usual practice of bailing out the business sector with public money should require, in return, the strict prohibition on the repurchase of shares, a significant participation of workers in the management of the company and the end of the scandalous protectionist measures against misnamed “Free trade agreements”, which guarantee enormous benefits for the big pharmaceutical companies while increasing the price of medicines much more than would be reasonable. As minimum.

This interview has been edited to facilitate reading.

N. de T .: * Russian philosopher and writer who obtained American nationality and who defended rational selfishness, individualism and laissez faire and rejected altruism and socialism.

** Chomsky refers here to the "epidemic" of worker suicides in the US (of the order of 150,000 each year), and a book by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015 and authors of the book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, to which the philosopher indirectly quotes.

Source: https://truthout.org/articles/chomsky-ventilator-shortage-exposes-the-cruelty-of-neoliberal-capitalism/  ”