‘Liberal capitalism is bust'. But what next?

“The modern world-system, as a historical system, has entered into a terminal crisis and is unlikely to exist in 50 years. However, since its outcome is uncertain, we do not know whether the resulting system (or systems) will be better or worse than the one in which we are living, but we do know that the period of transition will be a terrible time of trouble.”

- Purushottam Agrawal and Ritwik Agrawal

SO predicted the social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein in his 1999 book, The End of the World As We Know It. Two decades on, we contemplate such a possibility with the post-COVID world: it will surely not just be life as usual. Pandemics have more than once changed the course of history. No less than The Wall Street Journal proclaimed on April 26, “Coronavirus means the era of big government is… back.” The question is: in which direction will the present pandemic, and our response to it, take us? Better or worse?

We are used to thinking of epidemics as mainly affecting the poor and the marginalised. In the last hundred years, their geographical footprint has been outside the ‘first world’ and consequently, these crises did not ring the alarm bells quite as loudly. Ebola, an epidemic with frighteningly higher mortality rates, is a case in point. Who could imagine, in that ancient period we can now call BC, i.e. before corona, the crown prince of the UK undergoing treatment for a viral infection—and his prime minister, an ardent believer in ‘herd’ immunity, finding himself in the ICU? The most powerful man on earth, the President of the US, too has been tested twice for a viral infection, and the spouse of the Canadian PM has undergone treatment.

Ordinary people had also seen, in recent times, healthcare mutate from state responsibility to big business. This nexus of healthcare and insurance in the US is what Elisabeth Rosenthal’s 2017 book described in its title, aptly, as