The COVID-19 Economy

A disaster like COVID-19 was always going to happen, eventually, under capitalism. Like me, you’ve probably seen the widely circulated memes about how food service workers cannot afford to miss work when sick, a reality that has knock-on effects when other workers lack time enough to cook at home. But I suggest the problem extends far beyond food. This crisis has the potential to unmake capitalism like John Ball’s Peasants’ Rebellion eventually unmade feudalism.

Our entire economic system is based upon presumption of scarcity, that there isn’t enough wealth to cover everyone’s needs. This has been our justification for denying healthcare to the indigent, sick leave to hourly workers, and better wages to anyone, even amid record high productivity. The assumption is that we will run out of whatever we particularly treasure. And we will run out because ordinary people will use it up.

Admittedly, the scarcity argument is sometimes true. There isn’t enough land for everyone who wants a house in San Francisco. But applying this reasoning to larger issues becomes absurd quickly. The idea that our economy can’t afford to offer sick days to hourly wage workers resembles the argument that women will hoard hygiene products if they’re subsidized. Sick days and tampons are not essentially similar to land in Frisco.

Would a waitress throwing a sickie really implode the economy? Individually, certainly not. The fear is, every waitress could develop brown-bottle flu simultaneously, which would have disastrous economic effects. But I can only see two reasons that could happen. Either work conditions are so systemically horrible that they’ve called a general strike; or we consider working-class people inherently untrustworthy and prone to stealing common resources.

Which seems more likely?

If we fear working-class people will hoard resources, what does that say about the hoarding tendencies which already exist? In feudal times, nobility officially owned land, but practiced nominal control. Ordinary workers operated that land communally, in trust. The transition to capitalism following the Peasants’ Rebellion involved privatizing formerly public goods, particularly land (by enclosing previously common pastures) and labor (by introducing slavery).

The hoarding accusation blames selfish individuals for removing common-good resources from general use. Importantly, you can’t accuse people of hoarding common-good resources without admitting the common good exists. Saying people will privatize anything made public, admits privatization harms the general welfare. And it means admitting the economy is essentially collective, except where laws make it otherwise.

This past week has seen numerous national chains reverse their previous sick-leave policy. Apparently McDonald’s and Chipotle actually can afford to let sick workers recuperate without losing pay. In other words, nothing has stopped them introducing a paid leave policy, except the necessity of keeping work abundant and money scarce. They have admitted, effectively, that the scarcity principle underlying capitalism is moral, not factual.

Except in certain circumstances, like land in San Francisco, scarcity is an illusion. Our system has enough food that nobody should go hungry, enough houses that nobody should remain homeless, and enough money that nobody should live in penury. Admittedly, we can’t make everyone rich. Nor should we; wealth only matters if you can hire others to work, which requires somebody to be poor. We can’t make everyone rich, but we can make nobody poor.

Before anybody says anything, I know COVID-19 hasn’t struck only capitalist countries. It originated in Wuhan province, China. And the Chinese response, which started with denial and evasion, before moving onto authoritarian crackdowns which proved about as airtight as a kitchen colander, demonstrates that command economy and a one-party state isn’t the solution. Reorganizing the bureaucracy doesn’t fix the structural problems.

Capitalism isn’t the market. Quoting Ibram Kendi, “Markets and market rules… existed long before the rise of capitalism in the modern world.” Rather, capitalism is the accumulation of laws, rules, and traditions that govern ownership. If people don’t own access to land, they don’t own unmediated access to food and water, the foundations of life. By keeping access to survival scarce, the system keeps labor abundant, and therefore cheap.

Communism largely does likewise.

We create scarcity by creating the illusion of constant crisis. But the only scarcity most citizens face, is scarce of access, caused by a bottleneck of money. This fake crisis has been exposed by collision with real crisis, when the actual abundance of goods like food and water comes crosswise against the scarcity of money. The next few weeks will expose how fake our economy is. The next few years will reveal how we handle that.