The Crisis This Time: Neoliberalism and the Pandemic

This article examines the triple crisis of global neoliberalism: the Great Financial Crisis (gfc) starting in 2007 and yet unresolved, the political crisis of democracy that followed the gfc, and the global health crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The article makes two principal claims. First, these crises and the ensuing economic political dilemmas are intensifying the exclusionary tendencies of neoliberalism. Consequently, the Covid-19 crisis is unlikely to trigger a «transformation» of neoliberalism; instead, it will tend to intensify its key features and contradictions. Second, most neoliberal governments will tend to address the economic consequences of the pandemic through a renewed «fiscal austerity», or an enhanced version of the policies imposed after the gfc. This will be unfeasible in practice, and even the attempt to do so will destabilise societies and (what remains of) democracy. At the same time, there are powerful counter tendencies at work, driven by mobilisations to restore collectivity and democratise the economy and society.