Pandemic, mass media, state and democracy
Rodolfo Gomez[1]
A major concern during the recognition of COVID-19 as a pandemic and the government's implementation of mandatory social isolation (ASO) was the role and functions of mass media (particularly television) during this period and their specific connection to the functioning of Argentine capitalism (beyond the impact on the global functioning of capitalist societies). From this starting point, we explored several avenues, taking advantage of the fact that the outbreak of the pandemic and the extension of the ASO led to increased consumption of various media, including broadcasting platforms such as radio and, especially, television.
Watching television, but also listening to the radio, we wondered why there was a constant criticism in most broadcasting media (especially, but not excluding "new media," i.e., social media) of everything that we might consider "rational" (such as the suggestion to try not to go out in order not to get infected), and in relation to this, a criticism of certain medical or scientific knowledge in general (although the mass media in particular did not question this "scientific" knowledge in the economists of the dominant economic establishment, whose forecasts are rarely fulfilled, and whose "tense" presence is already "traditional" in the main capitalist mass media).
An initial search was historical and opened up new questions. At what point did the functions of mass media take shape in contemporary Argentine capitalist society (although the question could, of course, be extended to all Latin American capitalist countries)? What characteristics does Argentine capitalist society possess that allow these media outlets to have the political influence necessary for capitalist reproduction itself and—moreover—for the reproduction of a “certain type” of capitalist society (neoliberal capitalist society)?
Our guiding principles for this reflection were varied, but we will mention some of the main ones. First, we cannot fail to mention Marx, since from our perspective, contemporary societies, including Argentina, are capitalist societies. However, acknowledging Marx's contribution and accepting that contemporary societies are capitalist also implies recognizing that these societies exhibit different forms of the capital-labor conflict inherent in any capitalist society, and that this conflict unfolds in all spheres of social functioning. That is to say, it is present in the political, economic, social, and, of course, communicational and cultural spheres.
From this point, we attempted to formulate some answers, which led us to consider the capitalist democracy established by the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina. This involved taking into account certain assumptions that lead us back to the aforementioned interpretation of Marx's thought.
Thus, we begin with the premise that the last civic-military dictatorship transformed the functioning of the conflictive national capitalist society, modifying the existing social power relations in such a way as to "permit" a return to a democratic rule of law. And that, on the other hand, this return had to be sufficiently limited so as not to call into question not only capitalism itself but also the new mode of accumulation—neoliberalism—established by the dictatorship, which was in line with the transformations that had taken place globally in the functioning of "developed" (or "First World") capitalist societies.
In this process of capitalist transformation, the symbolic-cultural-communicative component was not insignificant in the policies of societal transformation implemented by the dictatorship. This component developed in conjunction with the process of destructuring the working classes and the formation of a significant number of social sectors (middle class and lumpenproletariat) with potential for ideological "availability." This allowed media discourses to exert influence, whether by reinforcing prevailing "average" common-sense norms and values (work, honesty, love, non-protest, apoliticism), by generating an "agenda-setting effect" (establishing topics that mass media—print, radio, and television—deem most important), or by creating "interpretive frameworks" that set hegemonic limits on the evaluation of the topics established by the agenda.
Thus, if the bureaucratic, authoritarian, capitalist state of the last Argentine civic-military dictatorship incorporated—almost in an Althusserian manner—as part of the aforementioned process of transforming the “totality” of Argentine capitalist society, this apparatus demonstrated its continuity in the form of the neoliberal and neoconservative capitalist state that developed during the various subsequent constitutional governments. From the last dictatorship onward, this implied a complete novelty in the functionality and role played by the mass media subsystem in relation to the overall functioning of capitalist society, a role that, as we mentioned, was foreseen for developed countries by authors with such diverse approaches as Althusser, the Germans Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Habermas, Deutsch, Luhmann, and more recently, Bob Jessop.
Certainly, this brought about changes during the governments elected by popular vote, manifested above all from the lifting of censorship, although it also brought about notable points of continuity, manifested in the same way as in other institutions more recognized as "typical" of capitalist democracies, such as the Judiciary or even those that had ended up in some cases strongly questioned, such as the Armed Forces or the police forces.
This line of “continuity” and proximity observed in those institutions specifically concerned with “social control” and the management and processing of information is not a coincidence. Following the work of Deutsch and Luhmann, the Catalan scholar Miquel Rodrigo Alsina describes this position in the case of the functioning of mass media, providing examples of the necessary interaction between the mass media subsystem and the political subsystem (which includes the State) and the economic subsystem. Regarding the functioning of the capitalist State, Jessop takes into account information flows (both public and inter-institutional) as crucial elements in the process of rebalancing capital accumulation with the legitimacy and consolidation of the capitalist social order.
Nor was it a coincidence that in Latin America during the 1990s, the consolidation of the neoconservative-neoliberal capitalist “state form” occurred, in conjunction with the consolidation of a mode of accumulation based on the integration of national production into the global market through the presence of large transnational monopolistic corporations (both national and foreign), along with the establishment of monopolistic and even oligopolistic mass media subsystems. Rather, it was the “natural” development of the “form” of operation of Latin American capitalist societies as a whole, such that, for the first time in Latin American history, a truly hegemonic project developed by the dominant capitalist classes was expressed in its entirety, as Alberto Bonnet demonstrates in his analysis of the governments of the Peronist Carlos Menem in Argentina.
When, during the first decade of the 21st century, a different articulation between different sectors of the subaltern classes (where workers' movements, trade union movements, but also other social movements converged, with demands for gender, indigenous rights, and human rights) called into question this “neoliberal neoconservative consensus”, the result was the emergence of a capitalist “state form” differentiated from the previous one, which shifted –in broad strokes and with exceptions– between neo-Keynesian, neo-developmentalist, neo-populist positions, and which developed in Latin America between 2005 and 2015 (Gómez, 2019).
However, these capitalist “state forms” have since shown their limitations, their inability to build consensus, especially among the dominant classes and the “middle” sectors, but also to the extent that these processes simultaneously “institutionalized” within the capitalist rule-of-law state the social movements that challenged the neoconservative and neoliberal order. This led to the development, consolidation, and repositioning of a “new type” of capitalist “state form,” which seeks, in some way, a return to the old limits established by a mode of capitalist accumulation that has not been substantially modified even during “neo-developmentalist” or “neo-populist” processes and which—as we have seen—expressed itself hegemonically in the last decade of the 20th century.
In this capitalist “state form” of “new type”, which we could characterize at the moment and in preliminary terms as an “authoritarian neo-Keynesianism”, we can observe the important presence of the function of “social control” and systemic rebalancing played by the highly concentrated capitalist mass media (throughout and across all of Latin America), which act by coordinating the flows of information with the Judicial powers of the capitalist State (as Pashukanis was able to show early on) and with the intelligence services belonging to the Armed Forces and Security of the capitalist State.
This situation we have just described, exemplified by the Argentine case but which, in our view—and despite the differences—is applicable to all of Latin America, is what we found at the time of the global outbreak of the pandemic. Here, two distinct political positions can be observed, linked to the right-wing and progressive governments of the region (a difference that is consistent with the approaches of these same political positions in both the United States and Europe). The first position tends to prioritize the functioning of the economy, paying less attention to health, while the second seeks to prioritize health while attempting to maintain economic activity as much as possible.
In this context, where there is currently no vaccine to combat the disease and the only way to prevent contagion is through social isolation, prioritizing the economy increases the likelihood of infections through contact or proximity. Conversely, prioritizing health and practicing isolation disrupts the normal functioning of the capitalist economy.
By adopting the first option, right-wing governments have, in most cases, produced a significant health crisis with a high number of deaths, without preventing the economic downturn, which shows declining indicators in all countries, regardless of the position taken (pro-economy or pro-health). In the case of progressive governments, the second option has led to more balanced health outcomes, although it has not completely prevented the increase in infections or deaths; but unlike the first case—although this statement should be considered primarily in ideological and discursive terms—this case raises the possibility of implementing public policies as a way to counteract the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
Here, in this same example regarding the position adopted during the pandemic, one can see a political difference and a tension between those on the right who would advocate a return to a neoliberal-neoconservative capitalist “state form” where the type of interventionism of the capitalist state seeks to favor capitalist development through an increase in investment from the market, and those on the progressive side who would instead advocate a return to a neo-developmentalist or neo-populist capitalist “state form,” where the type of interventionism of the capitalist state—in the absence of an increase in investment from the market—is an engine of capitalist development itself.
But the capitalist “state form” is directly linked to the “form” in which the class struggle develops in capitalist societies, and in that case, while the neoconservative and neoliberal “state form” was in line with the disorganization of the subaltern classes, the emergence of a neo-developmentalist or neo-populist capitalist “state form” had been the product of an increase in public protest carried out by these same working and popular classes that towards the end of the nineties began to show an important articulation.
Now, if we cross-reference these two variables (the stance on the pandemic and the emergence or configuration of a capitalist “state form” resulting from the public presence of class struggle), we see that adopting the second position, which advocates social isolation and state intervention, is problematic. This is because the possibility of implementing a progressive policy necessarily presupposes the public presence of mobilized subaltern classes in the streets. In contrast, the first position—that of the right—offers two possibilities for public presence: one through the intervention of the capitalist mass media subsystem (which, of course, includes social media, although television remains the predominant medium, at least in Latin America), responsible for maintaining both “social control” and the “equilibrium” that allows for capitalist reproduction; and another through the presence in the streets of those middle sectors who consume the same capitalist mass media and who practically discredit the existence of the pandemic and dismiss both health policies and the recommendation for social isolation.
This preaching, radicalized in much of Latin America by the region's right wing (although we can find similar rhetoric in Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, or the proto-fascist right wing in Spain or Greece), which daily occupies a political public sphere practically reduced to what is constructed from the capitalist mass media subsystem; seeks to block any attempt or possibility of returning to capitalist "state forms" of a neo-developmentalist or neo-populist type and redirect said "state form" towards the previous neoliberal "form" (hence the difficulty, for example, for the Argentine government, even in enacting a one-time extraordinary tax on large fortunes, which covers less than 1% of the country's population).
In the midst of this tension we find a capitalist “state form” that is neither one nor the other, and which for that reason we define as “neo-Keynesian”, but which, due to the “new type” conditions where the mass media and the middle sectors play this important role, we also define as “authoritarian” (taking at times and in some cases the trappings of a kind of “fascism” institutionalized in the capitalist State).
However, far from assuming that this implies the definitive and imminent triumph of capitalism, we consider it rather another example—a desperate one, hence the radical irrationality of these discursive, economic, political, and cultural practices—of the profound crisis of these types of societies based on the exploitation and plunder of human beings and the planet as a whole. The possibility of a vaccine offers us hope: the possibility of returning to the streets and restarting the struggle for public space, restarting the struggle for a democracy that transcends capitalist democracy.
[1] Lecturer and researcher, Departments of Communication Sciences and Political Science, FSOC, UBA. Member of the CLACSO Working Groups on Communication, Politics and Citizenship and States in Dispute.
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