Jonathan Chadwick

This is the third piece in this series.  The next will be about international impacts Monday 25th May

 I recall working at a conference in Italy in 2005 with theatre practitioners from Sri Lanka who were running projects with victims of the 2004 Tsunami.  At a certain point one of them turned to me and said:  ‘You don’t seem to understand. It wasn’t the Tsunami that caused the suffering it was the ‘recovery’ operation’  The coastal communities had been moved into camps and the shoreline was sold up to hotel chains.  This of course makes perfect economic sense! Look at what happened in New Orleans with Katrina.  Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine describes the phenomenon of ‘disaster capitalism’ where predatory grabs are made on public goods in the wake of catastrophe. While we are clapping on our doorsteps the Tories are privatising the health service .

Where is popular resistance? People throughout the land took effective action against the spread of the virus. We are in an uncertain period now waiting to see what the relaxation to the lockdown may bring. At the same time the number of cases internationally is rising. Will people be able to build the resilience of our communities against the activities of the ruling elites never mind about the next virus epidemic? Already our teaching community is under attack. What kind of unity can there be? People have had very diverse experiences of this period of ‘lockdown’. There are potential divisions between administrative ‘white collar’ workers and manual ‘blue collar’ workers, between those in good housing with outdoor space and those without, between those on ‘furlough’ and those who have accumulated debt. Is unity necessary? The Labour Party’s attempt to construct a consensus through its seven points shed no light. Will the attempt by the TUC to influence a recovery plan work or will they, like so many times in the past, be incorporated into the deceptive strategies of the elites? Searching around for initiatives I came across only one that described building an active alternative network: ‘A People’s HQ for Covid 19’ In my opinion this limits itself too strictly to an appeal to the Labour Movement. I was also impressed by 350’s Principles for Just Recovery from Covid 19 and the campaign that resembles it, Build Back Better. This phrase is common in global disaster recovery philosophy and may have originated in publications by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

I became preoccupied by the question of information management. I believe that popular resistance can be more effective if an alternative source of knowledge can be created. At the moment we have no shared idea of what the impacts of the CV-19 might be. Is there a way of engaging hundreds of people in building a big picture of what has been happening in our society? This would give people an active relationship to this big story and therefore create active knowledge. A network of researcher/correspondents in every locality (or constituency), in every industry and sector and in every special community (the disabled, the visually impaired, the mental health service users, communities coping with death and grief, ethnic groups, LGTBQ refugee and migrant organisations). The work could be co-ordinated in a brilliant website where the quantitative and qualitative information could be cross-referenced. It would be like Mass Observation and the Doomsday Book all rolled into one and online! It would give an alternative source of knowledge built up through popular participation.

The most powerfully moving aspect of the work of the International Panel on Climate Change is the high level of collaboration and management of information between scientists all over the world. Its work is divided into working groups. The first and original working group was the one concerned with physical science. It was later that a the second working group began its work. This is the one that takes accounts of impacts. I believe that this offers a model of practice and provides definitions of what impact means that could be carried across to the much more hasty and urgent work of researching the impacts of CV-19. This brilliance and organisational ingenuity of the scientific community could be brought to bear and linked up with popular researcher/correspondents.

The initiators of the ‘People’s HQ for Covid 19’ may have found a warm reception from The People’s Assembly Against Austerity which is already carrying out key work in its Making Sense of the Crisis campaign. The project that I’m describing that has the working title of ‘together’ would need the support of broad-based organisations but I believe it should include all aspects of the resistance. It will cost thousands to administer and manage. It must start by bringing together into a ‘temporary think-tank’ experienced activists from the environmentalist/green new deal movement like Andrew Simms who alongside colleagues from the New Weather Institute is producing innovative and quickened creative thinking in the narratives assembled in the Rapid Transition Alliance, also social scientists such as Mariana Mazzucato, who has developed penetrating analyses of the relationship between state research and private industrial exploitation. These people should be working alongside experts in media management like Greg Philo from the Glasgow University Media Unit who have produced the ‘Bad News’ series. I, of course, am hopelessly disconnected from direct links to the kind of talents that should be brought together to devise the informational template and the sectoral and local definitions that can make information data collection coherent. But working alongside online space designers this is what the temporary think-tank should be able to do.

The political elites, and their frontmen in the Tory government, rely more than anything else on information manipulation and spin. This is why the Covid Act, which is in force for two years, suppresses freedom of information, puts Coroners’ reports under tight government control and gives it draconian powers over personal data. Any effective resistance will have to create an alternative authoritative source of knowledge. This is already experientially alive within the population. It has to be centralised in order to be coherent but it can be activated from the bottom up.

The devising and launching of this information network, ‘together’, supported by broad-based organisations and fed by the inventive culture of the social science community, could be receiving data and reports within weeks. We must provide ourselves with a big picture of the impacts of the CV-19.

This number two of a series of pieces about the impact of CV-19.  Next post on Thursday 21st May The CV-19 Impact: Popular resistance

Correct me if I am wrong. The CV-19 like all viruses is not a life-form. It does not have a cell structure. There is no mitochondria in its genetic material. It cannot reproduce itself. This is why viruses are categorised by the species with which they coexist. Something like 10% of the human genome is composed of DNA viruses. The CV-19 is a particle of genetic material, a strand of nucleic acid, or in this case ribonucleic, seeking to reproduce through contact with a host body that has the capacity to reproduce it lacks. The virus is pure reproduction. It might be that this action of particles of protein DNA and RNA mixing and self assembling eventually created cells and thus life on earth began to evolve. We really are dealing with very powerful and original processes. What has happened in this instance is that the virus has migrated from one species to another which does not have the preventive power to cope with the reproductive demand. This is happening more and more because of the human disordering of ecosystems through invasive and extractive production systems. We know the other diseases that belong to this group (HIV, SARS, Ebola etc.). The processes of viral migration is collateral with the mass species extinctions and the biospheric transformation associated with capitalist production.

Our rulers and their media diffuse utter stupidity. They talk about a dreadful enemy; they ask for heroism; they clad their so-called policies with science. Chief amongst the idiots described his encounter with the virus as being like one with a mugger that wrestled him to the ground but he, strong of body and mind…….I can’t continue. ‘Unhappy is the land that needs heroes’. Indeed we may be among the most unfortunate of all lands to have such witlessness current within our ruling circles. They presumably imagine that once this great battle is won and we are proven to have got the better of CV-19 we will be able to get on with the real purpose of our lives which is to enrich the wealthy. As they try to save their own arses and cling on to power they cannot see the reality of the situation we are in. If they admitted what was happening with CV-19 they would have to admit what is happening with climate change and the catastrophic relationship human capitalist society has to other species, other forms of life. What kind of resilience does our society have? This will not be the last species-migrating virus though this one may be relatively more gentle than the ones to come.

The UK government are engaging in catch up, reacting to events and putting ‘a spin’ on them in an attempt to control the population. The initial turn in their policy away from that of ‘laisser faire’ or ‘herd immunity’ was because considerable sections of the population were withdrawing their children from school. It was only then that they decided to imposed a ‘lockdown’, creating a completely misleading and provocative image of social processes. Their natural inclination is to ‘bang up’ people. Now they are facing a rebellion from a similar section of the population as they try to coerce the teachers into reopening the schools. Their view of schools has nothing to do with education. They need to get the schools open in order to get people back to work.

It is in the reproductive processes of our society that resistance to this obsession with ‘the economy’ will grow. It will be amongst women and carers, curers and teachers that the current governing elite will find itself coming unstuck. It will be against the insane centralisation of governing and distributional processes that opposition will manifest itself. They are currently engaged in a struggle with Google and Apple because they want to over-centralise the data gathering processes. Hierarchically control-obsessed they cannot engage with horizontal structures. The UK government have even ignored the enormous local productive potential of providing for the new needs that have arisen during the pandemic. They have outsourced and militarised. Home-based producers have been sidelined. Blinded by quantification and finance they haven’t been able to see the foundational economy. They really do think that creating wealth is to do with making money!

According to their ingrained basic assumption reproduction should cost nothing. The production of labour power must be cost effective and internationally competitive. The great nineteenth century social philosopher who analysed capitalist society by scrutinising its cellular composition came to the conclusion that the commodity form contained two contradictory elements, use value and exchange value. He pointed out that in our social system the latter obscured the former. So he pointed out that the relationship between people will appear to us as the relationship between things. He described how it was the commodity that demanded that it be taken to the market and that finds the willing hands to so do. Our lives are being determined by forces that since they are inexplicable are irresistible. The UK government would rather persuade us that the virus is a mystical force, an enemy being, against whom we must pitch all our goodness. Lynne Margulis clarified the definitions of life forms bringing to our attention the collaborative processes involved in cell reproduction which helped species definition and thus advances in virology. Primatologist Sarah Hrdy brought to our attention to the key role played by female-centred organisation of allo-parenting (or babysitting) in the development of intersubjectivity. Also see Dr Jane Goodall’s view. Of course the scientists I’m pointing to are women. Will our society make a profound turn towards basing our society in reproduction and be able to place these processes in a more fruitful relationship to production? Or will we continue to permit these gangs of predators to prey on our love?

This is the first of a series of pieces about the current situation. Coming up: May 18 2020 ‘CV-19 impact: production and reproduction’, May 21 2020 ‘CV-19 impact: popular resistance’

What strikes me is the way in which the CV-19 virus has laid bare things that previously were invisible.  It is as if the virus – or its impact on us in all our manifestations, as individuals, as social groups, as organisms – has led to lucidity.  The CV-19 impact is elucidation, all elements and processes are seen more clearly; they reveal their inner structure as if in an X-ray.  But this X-ray is of a unique sort because the CV-19 impact permits the visibility of the inner and outer aspects of reality simultaneously.  It has had the effect of affording us a view that is at once macrocosmically distanced and at the same time meticulously close and interior.  The ‘stopping’ of normal activity has enabled a perspective that is at once cross sectional and topographical.  It reminds me of the quality of perception gained in theatre art by the use of ‘Verfremdungseffeckt’ as it is described by Brecht or the gnoseological outcomes in Boal’s work of the use of analogical induction in the confrontation of reality by its image.  The CV-19 is like a searingly enlightening freeze-frame.  All elements tend to show their essence under the impact of its gaze.  Our society becomes more like itself.  We become more like ourselves.

I have become more isolated not epidemiologically (that as well) but more separated from those I live amongst.  The already existing view that I have of the political elites, the prevailing values, beliefs, interests and the common sense of my society have become more unacceptable and somehow unbearable.  More unbearable because their ignorance and insentience appears to me to be more socially dangerous.  They are consonant with a dreadful lack of sense, a kind of lumbering folly, delusional grossness.  I think I have a sharper sense than most of the need for this regime’s displacement because I even identify their forms of kindness as menacing.  The CV-19 impact has made me even more extremely opposed to what I consider their stupidity and made me even more convinced that it is necessary for life that they should be removed from power.  I’m not just talking about the odious creeps who are their political servants, the Tories, but the awful monarchy, the millitarists, the corporate flunkeys, the visionary leaders, the charismatic managers, the ludicrous factotums, the whole apparatus.  And this is because the CV-19 impact has revealed even more certainly what bungling, murderous oafs they are.

Of course this at the same time reveals me to be a grumpy irate outraged ageing know-all who will not accept anybody’s opinion if they don’t share my prejudices.

The CV-19 impact has revealed our existence as a species like never before, it has shown us our extinction, it has warned us that our relationship to ecosystems will continue to produce these impacts, it has shown us that our little corner of the globe is molten with kindness and human generosity all of which, as with all public goods, is predated on by an omnivorous greedy oligarchic elite, that the syrup of collusion in which we are stuck is made up of structures that seem to be prehistoric and can never be changed; our isolation itself is somehow embodied in this cursed island kingdom, this throne of idiocy, clearly not a fortress against infection, ‘bound in with shame with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds’.  Shame yes, shame. 

Of course I cannot expect people to agree with me.  What I am saying is disagreeable.  It may even be destructive of the vestiges of solidarity that hoodwink people into humble submission and like a disappearing twinkle lighten their penumbral stupor.  We are symbolically back in the ‘Great War’ trenches where my grandfather served, where we shiver at the danger posed by the enemy but quake with fear at the awful officers who are in command.  There is no comfort in this for me.  Letting off steam is good for locomotives. 

I am aware of the need for optimism and looking on the bright side, of appreciating all the wonderful people showing solidarity and kindness through the mutual aid movements and in the voluntary, dedicated, and professionally engaged cohorts of the health, care and educational sectors.  Of course there may be an enhancement of the general opinion people have of them and the status they gain may be regenerative.  

Unless we advance our knowing and wake up and look at what our rulers are doing, they will be ground back down into the position of skivvies for the brutal marketeers of trickle down.