I have submitted an abstract to the special issue of an Australian journal and am hoping to write a paper examining the lessons we might learn as sociologists from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; and as I write this I am aware that an astonishing 20% of the global population is now in some kind of lockdown. But I thought I might jump the gun and offer a few preliminary thoughts about the likely ramifications of this extraordinary and disruptive intrusion into our lives. In the sketches and fragments that follow I draw ‘lightly’ and I hope accessibly on the sociological literature in general and on a book due to be published in a few weeks time called Communal Forms: A Sociological Exploration of the Concept of Community in particular. I co-authored this book with old friend Aksel Tjora, and I should emphasise that I was very much a passenger in this vehicle while Aksel navigated and drove, often with a single hand on the wheel and sometimes at considerable speed. In other words, this Norwegian Professor of Sociology has enviable originality and flair.
Perhaps the biggest question for sociologists hinges on the future of our present phase of post-1970s neoliberal or ‘financialised’ capitalism and the prospects for some kind of social transformation. There were several reputable, indeed distinguished, practitioners of so-called ‘big sociology’ who judged neoliberalism’s days numbered prior to the emergence of COVID-19: in a recent collection (Does Capitalism Have a Future?) there was something of a consensus that a turning point could occur by the mid-21st century. Nor were all these authors of a radical disposition.
Unambiguously, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a stronger challenge to the global status quo than did the financial crisis of 2008/9. The uncertainty of what lies ahead is ubiquitous. I have no crystal ball, but I am thinking along the following lines, starting with the ‘big’ questions and going on to those ‘small’ questions of ‘communal forms’ that arise out of our common, everyday or ‘mundane’ experiences of life under lockdown.
- I am sympathetic to the hypothesis that neoliberal capitalism (let’s stick to this terminology for convenience), which is already suffering from a cluster of long-term ills, is now terminally sick. And I say this in full knowledge of capitalism’s wondrous and proven powers of recovery, rehabilitation and reinvention. It does not follow that its death is imminent.
- We have ahead of us – over the next months and years (maybe 2020-25) – a profoundly unsettled period of quite extraordinary economic and social volatility. Many millions of people globally will suffer and die at rates well above those already being experienced in this era of the anthropocene/novacene. This ‘chaos’ will be a source of ‘opportunity’ for capitalists and anti-capitalists alike, the former aspiring to create novel and more exploitative and profitable devices, the latter pushing for a radical, even revolutionary, social transformation.
- I have previously maintained that COVID-19 is a kind of natural ‘breaching experiment’. I mean by this that by radically disrupting the status quo it will throw into sharp relief the products of post-2010 austerity. It is already revealing an exposed, under-staffed and equipped NHS, calculatingly run down by the government in the wake of the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. Social care has been allowed to shrink until it is all but non-existent. Many contemporary UK institutions are simply unfit for purpose, quite unable to respond effectively to the unexpected.
- Sociologically, it seems probable that over time lockdowns, partial or otherwise, coupled with financial hardship, institutional failure and a shortage of basic goods, especially food, will lead to protests, civil disobedience, even looting and riots. Meltdowns are just around the corner.
- Any significant demand for socio-economic change will be fuelled by populist appeals. Fraser has usefully distinguished between ‘reactionary’ and ’progressive’ populism. Trump and Johnson might be cast as progeny and carriers of the former, Sanders and Corbyn of the latter. At the time, of writing reactionary populism has the edge in the Occident, though not exclusively so.
- There is an abundance of ‘unknowns’. I have suggested that there will likely be a crisis of state legitimation in the UK (and quite possibly elsewhere), contingent upon a level of mortality ‘beyond what is acceptable’. The fall of a government need not mark significant social change. What would occur in its aftermath might well depend on the balance at the time between the forces for reactionary versus progressive ‘reform’.
- What this scenario calls for is movement activity NOW. There is populist enthusiasm for and against capitalism, encompassing outlying pressure: (i) rightwards for proto-fascism and (ii) leftwards for socialism. But whilst rhetoric might suffice for (i), (ii) requires a stronger narrative and praxis (informed and informing engagement) than has as yet been on offer. Many people are compellingly anti-capitalist, but few have a clear vision and programme for a viable socialist alternative.
- Such a narrative, if it is to capture the popular imagination and prove an effective mission towards a socialist alternative must be a means to recruit the working class. I continue to hold the view that objective class relations have grown stronger during neoliberal capitalism for all that subjective class relations have weakened. I accept that class is less salient for people’s sense of self and identity than it was in the era of welfare state capitalism after WW2, making a lighting of the fuse of ‘working-class awareness and consciousness’ significantly more difficult.
- For those who protest that there is no longer a recognisable working class in the UK, I call on Wright’s notion of ‘an abstract simplified class concept’: ‘I define capitalists as those people who own and control the capital used in production and workers as all employees excluded from such ownership and control. In this abstract analysis of class structure I assume that these are mutually exclusive categories. There is thus no middle class as such. No workers own any stock. Executives, managers, and professionals in firms are either amalgamated into the capitalist class by virtue of their ownership of stock and command of production, or they are simply part of the working class as employees.’ Wright is aware that this is a simplification and of limited usage for sociologists, but contends that ‘this sort of abstract, polarised description of class relations in capitalism can still be useful to clarify real mechanisms that actual actors face …’. I agree. My point is that any leftward narrative winning popular support must galvanise the working class, understood in Wright’s sense, if it is to win power.
- Balfour once described the welfare state as the best antidote to socialism. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns are already extracting concessions from neoliberal governance, however slowly and reluctantly. These are designed to thwart a crisis of state legitimation: the optimum concessions are the minimal concessions. UK’s governing oligarchy/plutocracy is strategic and opportunistic (C Wright Mills once referred to the American power elite’s ‘higher immorality’). The working class will not be handed power on a plate of any colour or design.
- COVID-19 is fragmenting communities as well as people’s finances, security and day-to-lives. The more traction the government’s rhetoric and ‘rescue packages’ the greater its chances of clinging onto its power.
- But the concept of community, to move away from big sociology, is multifaceted and durable. Amidst the gathering gloom and threat of disorder there are emerging new forms of community and solidarity. NHS and social care workers are bonding in adversity, not least because of the scandalous delays in equipping them to do their work safely; and they have the sympathy of swathes of an increasingly angry public.
- On a more local level, the formation of a Mickleham Emergency Group to coordinate support and help for those most vulnerable in the village is using WhatsApp to liaise, and its working well. Importantly, it cuts across a plethora of political and other divisions. On the edge of this newfound unity of purpose is an articulated dissatisfaction with government.
- Novel communal forms are often dynamic and fluid: they are natural offspring of Bauman’s ‘liquid society’. Actual and virtual forms of solidarity and being formed and consolidated in this pressure-cooker of an environment. Their residue will be apparent when the crisis itself has abated. There are seeds here, being scattered far and wide, for a nascent movement oriented to progressive forms of populism (and as it happens it’s the growth season).
Any left-leaning sociologist worth his or her salt must confess that Gramsci’s pessimism of the intellect presently has it over his optimism of the will. The resources available to the class-driven governing oligarchy – and remember the formula: capital buys power to make policy – are immense, most conspicuously in the guise of the mass media. The UK polls currently suggest that much benefit of the doubt is still being given to Johnson and co. Those savvy with social media will know that this is extraordinary given the level of corruption and incompetence on display. The rich are being sheltered, and the poor subjected to a bout of Social Darwinism yet to be effectively’ abandoned. Marmot has rightly anticipated that it is the poor and disadvantaged who will inexorably bear the brunt of COVID-19 mortality (which at the time of writing is expected to rise exponentially over weeks, or maybe months, min the UK).
These are dangerous times indeed, but times also when opportunities present themselves and should be taken. Key phrases: global, national and local chaos; the roles of capital and power exposed; state legitimation crises likely; stirrings of movement activity; new communal forms evolving; reactionary versus progressive populism; huge space opening up for positive narratives for a better society.
A final point to end on. I have long commended roles for foresight and action sociology, the former advancing evidence-based ways of better organising our institutions and exploring ‘alternative futures’, and the latter engaging actively in their pursuit. If not now, when?