When everyone sees what is on the end of every fork: Oesterich's "Pandemic Capitalism"

The pandemic that we got going on around here has gotten me thinking of two separate but related things.

The first is from the novel / literary artefact “Naked Lunch”, where Burroughs described the titular meal as: "The title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

The second is from Warren Buffet describing the Minskyian Ponzi finance, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.”

Both are about moments where everything freezes for a moment and we are allowed reflection in that period between when you realize the fragile bowl has slipped from your hand but right before it really starts falling – you really don’t have time to think but you’re just reacting. It is the filmstrip quality of living life as through a downtempo strobe light is all you have for illumination. 

We live moment to moment but need those periods where the moments stop and we can take a moment to reflect. I think that now is the time. The initial fear of the COVID-19 virus has passed as has the initial response in too-spotty but expensive fiscal and monetary reactions from the state (here I’m American-centric because that’s where I’m at). 

What the pandemic has done is really exposed where all the cracks have already been. Chris Oesterich in his book “Pandemic Capitalism” looks at both the problem of the virus and the early reactions but really focuses on how we can use these moments to create a more fair and equitable system. This is something that Oesterich has examined before. His Wicked Problems Collaborative put out a nice collection looking at the issue of inequality from several different angles only a few years back. The solution that he focuses on is the need for a basic income so that people have the money in times of crisis right now. This is especially pertinent because had we some such policy in place, we would not be in so much of a scramble trying to create second and third best options that had the political convenience but won’t be extended. 

Of course, I worry about a couple of things. I doubt that we have the will. Yang ran explicitly on a Basic Income platform and that couldn’t find a real traction amongst the primary voters in America’s center-left party. Then there’s the piece where as a Marxist I can applaud the idea of improving the material conditions for the workers and other citizens, but such policies are just tinkering at the edges and does nothing to change the social relationships that are characteristic of capitalism.

Pandemic Capitalism is timely not just because it is of the moment but also in left wing books that it stands against. I also just finished Professor Kelton’s primer on MMT, “The Deficit Myth” and though I am incredibly sympathetic to the MMT framework for fiscal policy at the state level, what they mostly propose, as a safety net is a job guarantee – centering work at all times. I am not the biggest fan of work. I happened to be part of the crew at the Big Rock Candy Mountain who hung the jerk who invented it, but on a broader perspective it is times like this where we need to ratchet down the work. (Though to be fair, I have seen people say that the job that would be guaranteed right now would be a job of staying home but that seems like extra steps). This debate is not explicit in the text of the book but exists in the argument over what is to be done, and Pandemic Capitalism makes a concise, forceful argument.