Coronavirus and neoliberal biopolitics
Luis Gustavo Guerreiro Moreira1
"It's going to cost a lot. Are you worried about how the poor are? Are you going to see humanity's life devastated at the time of economic collapse, the world recession, the poor have nothing to eat, the companies are damaged, their performance is massive, there is nothing to compare with a 'virusinho', which is a mild flu for 90% give people.” This is businessman Roberto Justus, a millionaire who is also a TV presenter in Brazil. As in a magic pass, for them and for the other endinheirados, the social well-being of the “poor” became a recurring concern. But what would be the speech, or “não-dito” behind this statement?
The crisis of the global COVID-19 pandemic brings with it the emergence of a new somatic ethic, which requires obrigações imbued with gold and hope, but also with hope, demanding a drastic present. This new sociability created by the pandemic imposes on us not just individual and collective tasks, but deeper reflections, to the extent that biopolitics becomes entangled in the entrails of the economy. “It doesn't matter that 5 or 7 thousand deaths” says the donor of a network of Brazilian restaurants that is said to be “concerned with the deaths that will be caused by the paralization of the economy.” Not capitalism, life matters less than money.
President Jair Bolsonaro's speech on the night of March 24 was the death song of a genocidal melody, but it had nothing strange. He barely fez or that the capital claims: or he bleeds the lives of his explored ones. The Camarón philosopher Achille Mbembe in his great work entitled “Criticism of the Black Race”, argued that the use of the black body, explored as a form of slave work during colonialism on the American continent, generated astronomical profits, constituting the basis of modern capitalism. There would be no capitalism without exploration and control of the life and death of those explored. It was what he understood from the concept of necropolitics (apolitica da morte).
The concern of the president and the business class that he supports is nothing more than the public demonstration of the logic of exploration of death. The arguments refer to the colonialist escravismo, where the senhores de escravos, após o Decreto da Lei Áurea, argued that it would be better for their slaves to remain in the security of their lives, because they were guaranteed land, food and water, to conquer their liberties, even as you fajutas, and die of fome e pest. Bolsonaro, in affirming that the coronavirus is “oversized”, that it does not go beyond a “flu” or “cold” and that the economic effects of a paralization are very short of the point of view of health and life of people, clearly supports the interests that he sustains. What he says for the masses of precarious workers is: permaneçam na senzala ou morrerão.
In fact, it is not completely wrong, it embora seu intuito seja a perpetuação da logic da senzala. For those who cannot stop working, it represents a very serious drama about the virus. The owner of the barracks cannot spend 90 days selling his fruits and vegetables. When capitalism charges its price, there will be masses of workers returning to the streets paying to see. Let us ask you: when will the isolation be supported without a public policy to mitigate its effects?
It is easier to visualize this tragedy, once the force of work is compounded by the high taxa of informality, with more than 40% of the total employees without any work direction that allows them to face such a situation. No Brazil, there are more than 38 thousand people working precariously. We cannot “give ourselves the luxury of confinement due to a flu”, because the State opted for the banks, the barons of financial capital and the elites to the detriment of the poorest workers. The labor and social security reform is an option for the business and financial elite, so much so that Bolsonaro decided to edit a Provisional Measure, withdrawing four months of wages from two workers. Only after a lot of pressing, turn back. I repeat, due to the large number of deaths due to the alliance of viruses with neoliberal policies.
The pandemic traces, however, a powerful dialectical movement. COVID-19 exposes the fundamental contradiction of a system that for a long time dominates all aspects of our societies, transforms education and health into the marketplace, accumulating profits at the expense of undervalued and poorly paid workers. Not all countries and regions will be affected in the same way. The ability to isolate, work and educate children at home, store products, access medications and reorganize financially and psychologically depends on class, gender, race, identity and geography.
Ironically, we ourselves defend the fiscal spending in the name of speculative rentism, two cuts in social programs, education, health, science and technology and moradia, against which we demand greater presence of the State. The rich will discover that they are not the only human beings. O COVID-19 unifies the tragedy, in the eyes of the elites, transforms human beings into a precarious part of society, which already suffers from hanseníase and tuberculosis, causes of extreme poverty. Now, if the elite is not infected by the mazes of poverty, why the State?
It is not just that international solidarity is being led not by the great imperialist and neocolonialist powers, but by Cuba and China. The small Caribbean country plays a fundamental role in combating the pandemic, sending brigades of doctors to all corners of the world. The same country also received a British cruise with several infected travelers, after spending several days at sea and being detained by other Caribbean countries. To devastated Italy, we pay tribute to the death of two Cuban doctors, themselves defenestrated in Brazil, already contaminated by the virus of ignorance and their ideological comorbidity.
Solidarity internationalism attests to the vast possibilities and alternatives beyond neoliberalism and exploration. But, for this incredible demonstration of solidarity to continue, we need to create systems that can foster this solidarity beyond this crisis and place it at the center of our economy, our political system and our interaction with each other.
Neoliberal biopolitics places or homo economicus as a real individual, one of his own. O COVID-19 shows that it is a mere abstraction. The tragedy of the pandemic requires a profound epistemological, ontological and technical remodeling of society. The terrible virus shows in a dramatic way that only solidarity derived from the feeling of belonging to a community (a união de comuns) can we free ourselves from ignorance, from obscurantism and from individualism exacerbated by the ultraliberal ethos. Então Estado, pray for us!
1-Member of the national directorate of Cebrapaz and editor of the magazine Tensões Mundiais
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