htaed kcalb (the black death in reverse)

so horsemouth watched the latest transmission from rasta boris ‘get back to fucking work’. he’s sad to say it did make him laugh (so it’s off to the re-education camp for him). but at least the government appears to have rediscovered the trick of clear messaging.

 ‘get back to fucking work’. (sorry) but that doesn’t make the practicalities of it any better.

take this 2m rule for example (one caribou = two huskies = four ravens = 8 sourdough loaves as the people of the yukon have it) - basically it’s bollocks, it’s based on an idea about how far the virus might travel if you breathed it out with your normal level of respiration. of course if you sneeze or cough it’s going to travel much further (and coat any available surface), if you are sitting there in an air conditioned space (like an office, a modern bus, on an aircraft) then all the all the air is recirculated anyway. (and so you’re fucked so you are). and if you’re on an old tube train? well again - you’re fucked so you are.

horsemouth looks at the footage of people getting on the tube because they need to get to work and sighs. this is why he has proposed renaming the new elizabeth line (crossrail) the death line. take the death line to the death factory all aboard the death ship.

of course you should avoid public transport if you can (says rasta boris) when you ‘get back to fucking work’. of course something like 50% of the workforce was always already ‘back at work’ - the NHS, a vast employer, care workers, supermarket staff, transport workers, logistics and distribution people, farmers, key workers - like people who work in off-licences, posh wine shops etc, teachers teaching the children of key workers. the people who are bundled out of the door and into danger.

let us be frank about this ‘the low skilled’ - and how do we know they are ‘low skilled’? because they are low paid.

horsemouth is lucky he is in the joke bit of the economy (so this is what all that education was for) - the bit that can ‘work from home’. he feels a little guilty (but then on the other hand he has crap lungs and would like to make it to the other side of this alive).

now is probably the time to dust off those arguments about ‘the expanded circle of reproduction’.

there used to be attempts to distinguish between the work that needs to be done and the work that frankly doesn’t need to be done (but in this society we claim it does). to distinguish between the productive bit of the economy and the reproductive bit of the economy (the bit that enables the people in the productive bit to go to work), the inessential bits (the person selling you a latte by the tube station) and the frankly vampiric bits (finance etc.) that suck off the blood of value and feed it to the rich. this is pretty much how horsemouth sees it.

of course much of the work carried out under capitalism (building crossrail for example) makes sense (just about) within capitalism but is probably really inessential, if not actually ecologically harmful - but that’s a side point, here horsemouth is just interested in the production, reproduction and distribution of value within the system.

now in general we argue that value is generated in all of it as a whole. but you could argue that value is generated only in some of it and the rest of it merely makes ‘claims on value’ - e.g. in 2008 the financial sector crashes and we the people with our work (essential and inessential) bail it out. that the value circulated in capitalism is in fact generated by the work of the workers is one of the key marxist points. but capitalism, through ideology, can reset this point between what is held to be productive and what is held to be vampiric - the state or the unemployed for example, care work.

the virus offers capitalism a chance to reset (just as the financial crisis offered us a chance to reset in 2008 but we failed to take it) and crucially to reset at a lower level of activity but with tighter control over where the profits and thus the value goes (it helps to think of this whenever any political policy is proposed - cui bono).

as a friend joked this scenario will be like the black death in reverse - instead of there being a shortage of workers and thus the workers gained greater freedom (as at the end of the black death), work will contract and so less workers will be needed to do it. there will be a surplus population, vast unemployment, a state burdened with debt servicing its debt to international finance (aka the rich).

there is another scenario - the debt taken on by the state expands but people are relaxed about it, the wisdom of socialised health care becomes apparent, the former neo-liberals (tory and labour) have a road to damascus conversion and begin to tax the fuck out of the rich to support the economy and employment keynes style. workers share of gdp rises as the ‘gains’ of neo-liberalism are re-appropriated to the state as redistributive mechanism. frankly horsemouth would probably settle for this, this is kind of the thomas piketty ‘it always takes major social and political mobilisation to move societies in the direction of equality’ position.

both of these are ideological tendencies within capital so the actual result will be something down the middle. 

the virus will just become chronic (like season flu is). it will become endemic in the third world. biopolitical control measures - contact tracing via apps in the first world will reinforce the general level of xenophobia and paranoia. capitalism can live with the virus, its not an existential threat to it, just another opportunity, it permits the shock therapy but is not severe enough to kill the patient. of course it’s all early doors yet.

there is another scenario - the key workers become aware of their power, the danger they are being placed in as a class, blah blah blah revolution (but horsemouth doesn’t think this will happen because we did such a poor job of defending ourselves after 2008).

ok - that was cheerful wasn’t it. (further down the line - global warming - now that probably is an existential threat to capitalism)