Wednesday, April 15, 2020

COVID-19, VIRUS OR SYSTEM "BUG"?

Since its appearance in November 2019 in China, the Covid-19 has successfully undermined all authoritarian narratives of governance, from the extreme Chinese fascist dictatorship to our ultra-liberal semi-democracies. It took a microscopic grain of sand, a particle of natural chaos to literally seize all of our systems.
With the Covid-19, all the illusions, the false decorations, the hollow slogans fell by themselves, revealing the sad reality of the stupidity and the inhumanity of the politico-financial models which pretend to direct us. The Covid-19 is, on the one hand, the revelation in broad daylight of the face, as brutal as it is ineffective, of proven dictatorships (China, Iran, soon Russia and others) and their system of social control, and on the other, the outright annihilation of the false smiles and Self-Help slogans from the political sales reps in the EU, England and the USA.

It is certainly not the first time that an epidemic has hit the world, but what is different is that today, it is us that it strikes and that the bankruptcy of an effective response by many country comes from a perfectly identifiable cause: the disinvestment of governments in essential structures such as health, education or basic administration in favor of private capitalization without control and without moral responsibility (nor financial, since when that goes bad, it's up to the State, therefore us, to pay up for their mistakes ...). However, like Hitler in his bunker in 1945, our states continue their maddening denial of responsibility in the middle of a field of ruins. But today even the media behind them can no longer divert attention and find other causes for our problems. The proof: they never actually talk about the causes. They cannot. If they talked once about the reduction of beds in the hospitals, the slashing of useful jobs in administration, the policy of criminal savings in all the infrastructure of the nation, they would open the Pandora's box, whose monsters would risk taking them too.

But this total failure of our leaders is also the failure of a whole part of the education of our elites: that of business schools. The whole construction around Maastricht and Lisbon was built around a weak, harmful and totalizing ideology. What this crisis proves is that a country is anything but a business. That what constitutes the rationality of a decision is not the analysis of the results of an algorithm, but a human reflection from the real. The Covid-19 is more than a virus, it is a huge computer “bug”, which reveals all the flaws of a system which was seen until now (and which is still seen, no doubt) as the worthy and unique representative of “the end of History”, to use Francis Fukuyama’s moronic formula.

Propaganda will certainly take on the task of repainting the world in a few months' time, and will certainly claim an usurped victory from those who actually fought to save lives, despite the system. But I think, without being a prophet, that the bug will remain and that it has infected the machine much deeper than she imagines.

Because, with its tens of thousands of deaths and its ineffective and even criminal policies (To think that a natural “mass immunization” could work, when we see in history how many deaths were caused by smallpox only before the discovery of his vaccine is unfathomably stupid and sinister), our system is more than bare: it has become transparent. All the fears that one might have about his ideology are now not only confirmed, but undeniable. Even China has not been able to hide the real volume of the funeral urns, which means we have to multiply all their figures at least by 10. The society of surveillance of citizens is being transformed into a society of surveillance of the State, and ironically, thanks to purely commercial tools (social networks, among others). Oh the sweet irony it is when you think that “money has no political color”...

The Covid-19, a bug that has succeeded in a global “system error”, is therefore an essential element for a regenerated thinking of our political, social and environmental system. If it is nothing in itself but than a dirty disease that has killed far too many of us, it is nonetheless the paradoxical ally of all current social thought, whether deeply reformist or revolutionary. The machine also coughs, has a fever and is on a ventilator. But there is no hesitation here about whether to disconnect it or not. Its disappearance will no doubt save millions of lives.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

COVID-19 AND THE GLOBAL POTEMKIN VILLAGE

In 1787, to impress his ex-mistress, Catherine II, then on a trip to the Crimea, Minister Potemkin ordered the construction of false villages in order to make her believe that her people were happy and hide the real misery of the country.
Since the 1980s, neoliberalism with the help of the media has built a global Potemkin village, where we are taken for walks whenever we have doubts. So far, it has worked perfectly, and the happiness provided by finance and (false) competition seemed to be more or less established, and those who challenged it were considered, at best, to be in bad faith, at worst, as supporting terrorism.
It was, alas, without counting on nature, that damn nature which neoliberalism still cannot get rid of, despite its repeated "greenwashing" operations. Now nature, which knows nothing in politics, cares little for newspeak and economic-political nuances.
China, the fascist regime and worthy heir to Mussolini, was the first victim, despite its ultra-totalitarian policy of super-control. Unable to face the truth, it now pays for it with a death toll probably ten times higher than the figures announced.
But then, the covid-19, who decidedly does not respect anything, came to us, after having visited the totalitarian Iranian theocracy. And there, the masks (for those who had them) began to fall: all our hospital infrastructure, dismantled since the 80s to make room for the private sector and its financial interests, are failing us. Our hyper-technological algorithmic society is useless. Factories close, shops close, restaurants close, museums close, everything closes except hospitals and supermarkets.
Our governments turn out to be helpless at best,criminal at worst (heavy glance directed at all those who preached "group immunity", that great Nazi idea). The finance experts, who we saw every day parading sternly in TV shows are now MIA - trembling with fear in their villa in their week-end villas.
Those who save the country are the underpaid employees in supermarkets, the nurses and health personnel in the hospitals, the teachers who are doing their best to teach from home, and all the usually invisible world of logistics or social infrastructures. All those to whom the system sometimes said "they should work more to earn more", or that they are "nothing". If there weren't so many dead, we could joke that we find ourselves in a classic XVIIth century fable. But one can, without joking, wonder what will be the moral of this story. What did the neoliberal system do after the 2009 financial crisis? Nothing. What will it do after the covid-19 crisis? Probably nothing.
The problem is that if Potemkin had built the villages for the Tsarina, the neoliberal system built them for itself and it does not even realize that they are false. Or rather, if they are "real" for them, then they must be "real" for everyone else.
Covid-19, a dirty little revolutionary virus in spite of itself, has just shown everyone that solidarity is better than competition, that strong social structures allow crises to be better managed than with a confetti of privatized companies, than strategic institutions and productions must remain national, because if not, well, everything falls to the ground like a bad cinema set.
When the crisis is over, we will then have to fight with all our might so that this Potemkin village can never ever be re-built again, and claim that reality is on our side and not theirs.

LE COVID-19 ET LE VILLAGE POTEMKINE GLOBAL

En 1787, pour impressionner son ex-maîtresse , Catherine II, alors en voyage en Crimée, le ministre Potemkine ordonne la construction de faux villages démontables afin de lui faire croire que son peuple est heureux et cacher la misère réelle du pays.
Depuis les années 80, le néolibéralisme avec l'aide des médias a construit un village Potemkine global, où l'on nous promène à chaque fois que nous aurions des doutes. Jusqu'ici, cela a parfaitement bien marché, et le bonheur assuré par la finance et la (fausse) concurrence semblait à peu près établi, et ceux ou celles qui le contestaient étaient considérés, au mieux comme de mauvaise foi, au pire, comme des suppôts du terrorisme. 
C'était, hélas, sans compter sans la nature, cette satanée nature dont le néolibéralisme n'arrive toujours pas à se débarrasser, malgré ses opérations de "greenwashing" répétées. Or la nature, qui ne connaît rien en politique, ne se soucie guère de la novlangue et des nuances économico-politiques.
La Chine, au régime fasciste et digne héritière de Mussolini, en a été la première victime, malgré sa politique ultra-totalitaire de super-contrôle. Incapable de faire face à la vérité, elle le paye aujourd'hui d'un nombre de morts probablement dix fois supérieur aux chiffes annoncés.
Mais ensuite, le covid-19, qui ne respecte décidément rien, est venu faire un tour chez nous, après avoir visité la théocratie totalitaire iranienne. Et là, les masques (pour ceux qui en avaient) ont commencé à tomber: toutes nos infrastructures hospitalières, démantelées depuis les années 80 pour faire place au privé et à ses intérêts financiers, sont prises en défaut. Notre société hyper-technologique algorithmée à mort ne sert à rien. Les usines ferment, les boutiques ferment, les restaurants ferment, les musées ferment, tout ferme sauf les hôpitaux et les supermarchés. Nos gouvernements se révèlent au mieux impuissants, au pire criminels (regard dirigé vers tous ceux qui ont prêché "l'immunité de groupe", belle trouvaille nazie). Les financiers, que l'on voyait chaque jour faire leur important dans les émissions télé sont désormais aux abonné absents - en train de trembler dans leur villa à Belle-Île ou à Trouville. 
Ceux et celles qui sauvent le pays sont les employé.e.s à 1200 euros dans les supermarchés, les infirmières et soignants des CHU, les profs qui font cours de chez eux, et tout le petit monde invisible des infrastructures logistiques ou sociales. Tout ceux à qui le système disait tantôt de "travailler plus pour gagner plus", tantôt qu'ils n'étaient "rien". S'il n'y avait pas tant de morts, on pourrait dire en plaisantant qu'on se retrouve dans une fable de La Fontaine. Mais on peut, sans plaisanter, se demander quelle sera la morale de cette histoire. Qu'a fait le système néolibéral, après la crise financière de 2009? Rien. Que fera-t-il après la crise du covid-19? Probablement rien. 
Le problème est que si Potemkine avait construit les villages pour la Tsarine, le système néolibéral les a construits pour lui-même et ne se rend même pas compte qu'ils sont faux. Ou plutôt, s'ils sont "vrais" pour eux, alors ils sont "vrais" pour tout le monde.
Le covid-19, sale petit virus révolutionnaire malgré lui, vient de montrer à tous que la solidarité vaut mieux que la compétition, que de fortes structures sociales permettent de mieux gérer les crises qu'un confetti de sociétés privatisées, que des institutions et productions stratégiques doivent demeurer nationales, parce que sinon, hé bien, tout tombe par terre comme un mauvais décor de cinéma.
Il faudra alors, la crise passée, lutter de toutes nos forces pour qu'on ne puisse plus jamais bâtir ce village Potemkine, et protester que la réalité est bien de notre côté et pas de la leur.