Video COVID-19 and capitalisms deepest-ever crisis
Core Argument¶
The central thesis is that the COVID-19 pandemic did not cause capitalism's deepest crisis, but rather acted as the trigger for a crisis that was already fully prepared by the system's internal dynamics. The anaemic recovery from the 2008 financial crash had already exhausted itself; the virus simply pulled the trigger on a loaded weapon. The argument further claims that the ruling class is attempting to blame the virus alone for the ensuing social and economic turmoil, a deliberate ideological manoeuvre to obscure the systemic roots of the catastrophe. The period after the pandemic will be one of extreme crisis and struggle, in which the ruling class will find it impossible to govern in the old way and the working class will move like never before.
Theoretical Grounding¶
The analysis is grounded in the Marxist understanding of capitalist crisis as an immanent feature of the mode of production, not an external shock. It draws on the classical Marxist tradition — particularly the work of Marx, Engels, Trotsky, and Lenin — which insists that crises are the violent resolution of contradictions inherent in accumulation itself. The argument implicitly deploys the concept of overaccumulation: the period after 2008 was characterised not by genuine recovery but by a prolonged and fragile deferral of crisis through state intervention, quantitative easing, and the expansion of fictitious capital. The article also draws on the Leninist theory of the conjuncture, specifically the notion that periods of acute crisis create revolutionary possibilities when the ruling class can no longer rule in the old way and the masses no longer accept being ruled in the old way. The rejection of reformism is implicit throughout: the bourgeois response to the pandemic — printing money to save the system today — will mean more austerity tomorrow, and the working class cannot rely on capitalist governments to resolve the crisis in its interests.
Conjunctural Relevance¶
The article was published in April 2020, at the height of the first wave of the pandemic, and its conjunctural analysis is sharply specific. It identifies China as having once held the global system together through its role as a manufacturing hub and source of demand, but notes that it had become a centre of the crisis even before the virus — a reference to the slowdown in Chinese growth and the trade war with the United States. The European Union is described as mired in infighting, a reference to the fractious debates over fiscal solidarity and the refusal of northern European states to mutualise debt. The article points to countries like Pakistan, where healthcare infrastructure and public sanitation are dire, as preparing a nightmare scenario — a concrete illustration of how capitalist uneven development magnifies the impact of the pandemic on the global periphery. The radical mood cultivated by years of austerity is identified as having found expression through the Corbyn and Sanders movements in Britain and the USA, and through mass protest movements worldwide. Strikes breaking out in Italy, Spain, Canada, and the USA are cited as evidence that the working class is already moving.
Where the Argument Continues¶
This article is a video presentation by Fred Weston, recorded during an internal meeting of the International Marxist Tendency (now the Revolutionary Communist International). It is a snapshot of the conjuncture at a specific moment — April 2020 — and the argument necessarily continues in subsequent IDOM articles and Against the Stream episodes that track the evolution of the crisis. The article leaves open the question of how the post-pandemic period will unfold in detail: the precise forms of struggle, the balance of forces between reformist and revolutionary currents, and the trajectory of the global economy. These questions are taken up in later analyses of the cost-of-living crisis, the inflation surge, the strikes in Britain, the rise of the RMT and CWU, and the broader radicalisation of a new layer of workers and youth. The article also does not develop a detailed analysis of the role of the state in managing the crisis — a theme that is explored in depth in subsequent IDOM pieces on state intervention, nationalisation, and the limits of Keynesianism in the 21st century.
Connections¶
This article should be read alongside the broader Marxist literature on capitalist crisis, particularly Marx's discussion of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in Volume III of Capital and the analysis of crises in Trotsky's The Transitional Program. Within the IDOM corpus, it connects to later articles on the economic consequences of the pandemic, the inflation crisis, and the strike wave in Britain. It also connects to the broader Marxist tradition's analysis of war, revolution, and the role of the state in crisis management. The article's emphasis on the radical mood cultivated by austerity connects to the work of David Harvey on neoliberal accumulation by dispossession and to the analysis of the 2008 crash and its aftermath in the pages of In Defence of Marxism.
Key Quotes¶
-
"The anaemic recovery of world capitalism after 2008 was coming to an end even before the virus hit."
-
"While the bourgeois are trying to blame the current social and economic turmoil on the virus alone, it was in fact just the trigger for a crisis prepared in the last period."
-
"China once held the system together, but it has become a centre of the current crisis."
-
"The bourgeois are desperately printing money to save the system today but this will mean more austerity in future, which will provoke the workers even further."
-
"The period we will enter into after the pandemic is one of extreme crisis and struggle, where the ruling class will find it impossible to govern in the old way, and the workers will move like never before."
-
"Years of austerity have cultivated a radical mood that found expression through the Corbyn and Sanders movements in Britain and the USA, and mass protest movements worldwide."