‘Let the virus spread’. A doctrine of pandemic management for the libertarian-authoritarian capital accumulation regime

Abstract

Debates have grown around the initial COVID-19 response of radical right-wing governments such as those of the UK, the US and Brazil. These governments initially let the virus spread among the population and delayed the enforcement of strong social distancing measures such as a lockdown. Focusing on the UK’s early response to COVID-19, this article builds on Nicos Poulantzas’ Marxist theory of the state to highlight how this pandemic management doctrine stemmed from changes in the UK’s capitalist class. It traces the ideological grounding of this doctrine, relating it to the rise of libertarian think tanks in British conservative circles and shifts in the policy committees in charge of pandemic preparedness. It suggests that this pandemic response is an episode of the ongoing replacement of the dominant neoliberal accumulation regime with a new libertarian-authoritarian one and examines how this latter materialises the interests of an emerging group of ‘disaster capitalists’. Therefore, it takes the COVID-19 crisis as an example of how the reconfiguration of capitalist accumulation regimes articulates a new doctrine of catastrophe management, radical right-wing ideologies, libertarian-authoritarian institutions and the growing power of capitalist actors able to profit from extreme events.

Live or be left to die? Deregulated bodies and the global production network: Expendable workers of the Bangladeshi apparel industry in the time of Covid

“…While these are actions of business, the involvement of the state shows that the collective management of resources through deregulated bodies is to protect the interests of transnational capital. Consequently, the state’s absolute reliance on the profit economy is clear even under the pandemic catastrophe (Bourgeron, 2020).…”

The sway of migrant crisis and COVID-19 pandemic on voter preference.

“…Moreover, past research showed that conservatives are vaccine hesitant (Baumgaertner et al, 2018; Fridman et al, 2021; Gugushvili et al, 2020; Speed & Mannion, 2020). Recent research further found conservatives holding a cavalier attitude toward the exposure to COVID-19 (Agius et al, 2020; Bourgeron, 2022; Grenier, 2020). Therefore, Canada in early 2021 presented a valuable opportunity to test the sway of two threats, with their possible unique ties to party politics.…”

Covid on the Coast: Pandemic Governance and Protests in Fishing Villages in South Kerala, India

“…Here we are not implying that the Kerala government failed its citizens. With somewhat scarce resources but substantial popular mobilization, the measures it implemented to control and contain the pandemic have been far more effective and successful than those introduced elsewhere in India, as well as in many a ‘western’ nation (Bourgeron, 2022; Bratich, 2021; Crane & Pearson, 2020). Rather, we argue that the bio-moral marginality of coastal fishing communities not only informed the social panic drummed up by the media, but overdetermined, at least for a time, government responses and actions.…”

“…A number of recent studies have underscored how the COVID-19 pandemic had its most devastating consequences on vulnerable or marginal communities (Bourgeron, 2022; Bratich, 2021; Buheji et al, 2020; Crane & Pearson, 2020; Haneefa, 2021; Manderson & Lavine, 2020 Singer & Rylko-Bauer 2021). We build on these studies to argue that, in order to understand the impact and responses to the pandemic on coastal fishing communities in south Kerala, attention should be paid not only to conditions of socio-economic precarity and vulnerability but also to the ways these conditions have been expressed through and compounded by what we name as bio-moral marginality .…”