 So good afternoon to everyone who has joined the webinar so far and welcome to the 15th webinar in the Economics of COVID-19 series hosted by the Open Economics Forum and the Department of Economics at SOAS. For those that aren't familiar with the OAS, it's part of the Rethinking Economics Network which encourages pluralism in economics. We've had fantastic talks so far, this is the 15th in the series so lots to check out and you can find those on the OAS Facebook page or on SOAS's YouTube channel and feel free to follow the OAS Economics on Twitter which are listed in the chat box on your right. I think that's the correct notion. If you're feeling inclined to get involved on social media during the discussion then please feel free to use the hashtag economics of COVID. My name's Sarah Cole and I'll be moderating the webinar today. I'm a current master's student at SOAS studying economics of environment. Before I introduce our speaker I'll first spell out the format of today's webinar. We'll have a presentation by our speaker for approximately 25 to 30 minutes during which time you're invited to ask any questions you have through posting in the chat box to the right of the screen. Myself and other members of the Open Economics Forum will then collate these throughout our speaker's presentation and we'll have a Q&A session throughout the remainder of about half an hour of which I'll speak or do as best to answer all of your questions. So without further ado for today's webinar I'll be in conversation with Alfredo Saadfield about the crises of global neoliberalism, economy, politics and health. Alfredo is a professor of political economy and international development at King College in London. He's previously taught SOAS and the universities and research institutions around the world. He's also a participating editor of Latin American perspectives and a member of the advisory board of historical materialism. At King's Alfredo is currently researching the political economy of Brazil especially the transitions from import substituting industrialization to neoliberalism and familiar predictorship to democracy. If you're interested in following Alfredo on Twitter you can find him at ASADfilo which I will link on the chat box once Alfredo gets going. So without further ado Alfredo whenever you're ready take it away. Thank you so much Sarah this is great for me to be here so thank you for chairing the session and thanks to Sara Stevano for the invitation to contribute to your series it's it's always a pleasure to interact with the SOAS Department of Economics I mean this is my department too I got my PhD there many years ago and was based at SOAS until only a few months ago. What I'm going to talk about today is something that draws on work that I am doing at the moment but also follows from work that I've done with Ben Fine from SOAS Economics and Marco Boffo who was also in the Economics Department at SOAS and it is about the overlapping crises in neoliberalism the crises of the economy the crises of politics and the crises of health now in my hypothesis my suggestion that I will advance to you is that these are localized crises within neoliberalism but they are morphing into a generalized crisis of neoliberalism a crisis of the system of accumulation that we are living under. So to be able to make this argument what I have to do is to start from neoliberalism itself and my interpretation is that neoliberalism is not just a matter of the dominant ideas in our society or the dominant policies that we have from government. Neoliberalism the way I conceptualize it is the current phase or the current stage or the current mode of existence of global capitalism it emerged gradually after the end of the post-war boom and it spread worldwide from its main bases in the United Kingdom and the United States spread throughout the global north through Atlanticism spread through global south through the Washington consensus global south and the east the former Soviet bloc but the most important feature of neoliberalism is financialization financialization meaning the very briefly the subordination of economic reproduction and social reproduction through the accumulation of what Marx called interest bearing capital so the dynamic core of this process of financialization is the transfer of state capacity to allocate resources from the state itself to a globally integrated financial system that is dominated by institutions based in the United States and this is what allowed finance to control the most important sources of capital and the most important levers of economic policy around the world and this is what permitted the restoration of U.S. imperialism after the defeats in Vietnam and in Iran and after the dollar crisis in the 1970s financialization is also what underpins the transnationalization of production and the transnationalization of finance which in common columns with all globalization now neoliberalism with financialization is at a core it drove an extraordinary recovery of profitability since the lows of profitability in the turn from the 1970s to the 1980s and in turn financialization inevitably because of what finance does it filled this an immense sphere of pure speculation and with it drove a tendency for finance itself to appropriate a growing share of the total value produced in neoliberal stroke financialized economies and this had serious implications for inequality that increased significantly in the neoliberal period and it had implications for investments and for GDP growth both of which have tended to decline they have tended to decline even though neoliberalism has been associated with the most extraordinarily favorable conditions for accumulation in recent history on which neoliberalism itself are created but even though all those conditions favorable to accumulation are given you give neoliberalism everything it ever wanted the rate of accumulation and rate of economic growth in the core countries has been slowing down decade on decade for about five decades now in between 2007 and 2020 the west suffered the longest economic calamity and the weakest and the most distributionally regressive recovery on record and this is what I call the economic paradox of neoliberalism you deliver the most extraordinarily favorable conditions for accumulation and what you get is worsening economic performance greater vulnerability deeper and more long lasting economic crisis that's a paradox now if you look at neoliberalism in historical terms neoliberalism has been through three phases that are broadly divided by the mid 1990s and by the great financial crisis that started in 2007 the first phase of neoliberalism is a transition phase and in each country and region it has particular features but it always emerges in opposition to the system of accumulation that existed before it could have been Keynesian social democracy or it could have been developmentalist in different ways it could have been soviet style socialist it could have been anything and what the transition phase involves is forceful intervention by the state to contain labor to destroy the left to disable the opposition to promote the transnational integration of capital and finance it's a phase when the state introduces the new institutional framework without any consideration for the adverse consequences for society for employment for balance of payment sustainability and whatever else and this is a phase that opens historically with the transitions in the southern cone in latin america in the 1970s with the military dictatorships there and that is followed by tatterism and raganism and then followed by structural adjustment programs in the global south and then the transitions in the soviet block of china and it closes historically with the east asian crisis in the mid 1990s now if you look at these these phase of transition from a political angle then transitions to now liberalism has have been associated with very different parts and they can be more authoritarian pinochet and vidella all the way to tatter and ragan so more or less constitutional methods but always authoritarian or transitions to neoliberalism can be associated with transitions to political democracy think brazil south africa south korea east europe what about the path followed by the 1990s they're kind of a typical political form of neoliberalism had been consolidated and these were neoliberal democracies historically specific neoliberal democracies they were heavily circumscribed and they in particular distinguishing features they included an institutional apparatus that was designed to separate the economic and the political domains that was designed to lock in neoliberalism that was designed to insulate economic policy away from interference by the majority in order to secure the hegemony of the hegemony of finance you then move into a second phase a mature phase of neoliberalism or a third-wayist phase of neoliberalism that's a phase of intensified financialization of economic and social reproduction this is a phase that completes the institutionalization of the structures and processes of management of the new modalities of international integration of the economy it's a phase of consolidation of neoliberal democracy it's a phase when the when neoliberalism itself is legitimized through the creation of a neoliberal subjectivity so first phase about creating neoliberalism on the ground in reality second phase about creating neoliberalism in the mind and then neoliberalism becomes generally accepted as the only possibility of economic organization it's also a phase when typically neoliberal social policies are introduced to contain the deprivations and the adverse social consequences of the transition itself at that point the space for the traditional left had declined significantly both because the economy and society had already changed but also because most people didn't believe in it anymore and one of the consequences of the institutionalization of neoliberalism at this moment in time think Bill Clinton think Tony Blair typical figures of this mature phase of neoliberalism a consequence of this is that in neoliberal democracy's policy space the policy space nominally available to democratic states that policy space declines significantly and policymaking capacity is disabled to a very significant extent so with this the space for legitimate opposition declines significantly that is in reality at this point no alternative to neoliberalism so there is no policy choice to be made and so there's no need to debate the economy what happens then is that the political space that can no longer be open to contestation about the economy that political space is taken up it's taken up in sequence by matters of culture it is taken up by matters of religion it's taken up by matters of nationalism and it is eventually taken up by matters of racism so it is very important to point out that the transition to neoliberalism it restructured economies restructured societies you read newspapers and magazines from the previous period from the 1970s you will see a different world it is a very different world that existed then and these transitions by restructuring economies and societies one of the things that they did was to create a very significant array of economic what i call economic losers from neoliberalism and if you think of the advanced economies in the west this is very very clear millions of jobs were eliminated particularly in the manufacturing sector but also certain areas of services whole professions vanished or they were exported employment opportunities in the public sector declined because the state sector itself was retrenched and there were extensive privatizations jobs stability declined across the board pay conditions and welfare protections and the to deteriorate as well and in the meantime in the meantime as these restructurings of the economy are taking place the institutionalization of neoliberal democracy compounds the alienation of the economic losers so they've lost something but their concerns are also ignored their disappointments their resentments their hopes their fears their feelings of alienation and anger they cannot be represented through the political system what happens is they are captured by the mainstream media and they are dislocated through or to a never-ending sequence of ethical conflicts ethical conflicts between insiders and outsiders ethical conflicts between good individuals and bad individuals that are framed through a logic of common sense and seen through the lens of undue privilege given by the state to the undeserving poor to the minorities to foreigners and to foreign countries and the consequence of this type of political logic is the delegitimation of the political process the buildup of alienation and because of the destruction of the left the creation of spaces that were seized by the far right so what i call i've mentioned the economic paradox of neoliberalism this is now the political paradox of neoliberalism the political paradox of neoliberalism is that the institutionalization of neoliberal democracy undermined the foundations of democracy itself the structures of representation became unresponsive public policy became rigid and indifferent to the majority and the state signaled very very clearly that class-based collectivities would not be recognized anymore and that cash poor individuals were either failures or they were crooks that's what happened if you are poor and at the same time the legitimate quite legitimate material aspirations of individuals in a neoliberal society particularly the aspirations of the losers were validated routinely by a heavily consumption-oriented culture within neoliberalism but those aspirations would not be satisfied and the next generation will not do as well as their parents did in material terms now this is a decisive rupture with a generational contract that says that our we sacrifice ourselves but our children will do better than we did and this generational contract had helped to validate capitalism since the 18th century and this contract has been broken under neoliberalism even if we set aside the environmental catastrophe we can come back to this later on but even setting that aside purely in terms of the functionings of neoliberalism broke this contract so in the end what we have is each person for themselves except for the perception that minority groups were being given by the state or they were taken by dishonest means things that did not belong to them and this was an absolutely combustible social and political situation now the mature phase of neoliberalism comes to a close with the great financial crisis in 2007 and in addition to not dealing with these political and social difficulties the financial crisis erodes heavily the legitimacy of financialization and the legitimacy of neoliberalism itself and as we go through the great financial crisis we move on to the third phase of neoliberalism that is a phase that is marked by the attempt to manage the consequences of the financial crisis itself in a context of loss of legitimacy of neoliberalism because of the general realization of the immensity of the shock that was suffered by the economies realization of the absolutely astronomical costs of saving finance and the perception that neoliberalism had concentrated income and wealth and that it had imposed patterns of employment that were very unpopular and considered to be illegitimate and at the same time neoliberalism failed to deliver rapid and stable accumulation so the core of the economic policies that come into existence after the crisis is a combination of ultra-lose monetary policies symbolized by successive waves of quantitative easing in the largest economies in order to bail out finance and fiscal austerity in order to socialize the losses and to do this by compressing even further the incomes and the living conditions of the poor now this erodes significantly the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism and the only way to shore up and impose this type of combination of policies would be through the intensification of different forms of repression and the introduction of new forms of exclusion to confound the opposition and to divide the opposition and this effort was made but it turned out to be too much and what happened was that political control started to escape through the fingers of the traditional neoliberal elites and it opened up the circumstances opened spaces for the emergence of anti-systemic forces polarized by spectacular what I call spectacular authoritarian leaders almost invariably male and the open space for a new generation of far-right political movements so what you have in this period post-crisis is the defeat of traditional forces associated with blairism associated with the triangulation in the middle ground in the rise of supposedly strong men that cultivate a politics of resentment that appeal to common sense that appear to talk honestly and clearly and that claim to be able to get things done by force of will and that they often particularly think of Donald Trump claim political credentials because of their supposed business acumen now Trump is not a successful businessman in fact he lost billions of dollars from the fortune that his father left to him but it doesn't matter because he projects the image of being a very strong businessman and they promise to use their strength of character and their status as outsiders to the political system to then come in and confront confront the neoliberal state confront finance confront globalization confront the elites confront the experts confront entrenched interests confront corrupt politicians confront self-interested civil servants confront captured institutions confront foreigners etc all of whom are attacking our nation and are hurting our people and they do this to attract the support from the people who are unhappy with neoliberalism so very symbolically 23rd of June 2016 brexit wins the referendum in the uk life of november donald trump is elected president of the united states but these were just elements of a much broader process by which authoritarian governments were installed in a number of countries and they were stalled by elections austria chili italy philippines uh poland uk united states they were installed through abusers of the constitution brazil hungary india russia turkey they were installed through judicial parliamentary coups in bolivia brazil honduras paraguay they were installed through military coups think egypt and thailand and the rise of these authoritarian administrations happens together with the continuing hollowing out of the neoliberal technocratic exclusionary democracies that existed in those countries and in a whole range of other countries so those leaders they will campaign against particular facets or aspects of consequences of neoliberalism but once they achieve power invariably they will implement programs that intensify realism but this time under the veil of nationalism and a more or less disguised racism so invariably what's going to happen is that these radically neoliberal programs will hurt their own electoral base particularly among the losers and this is a fundamentally unstable political situation that leads to a politics of permanent crises and opens space for the rise of new forms of fascism so what we have what i'm suggesting to you is that the political problem that we have at this moment in time is that this is not a transitory belief what we have is something that will not cancel itself out we're not going going back to barbarism and centrism we're not going back to the traditional political elite what we have is a systemic political crisis in neoliberalism and we have a situation where the rise of those authoritarian leaders is a symptom of the decomposition of neoliberal democracy it is the outcome of the crisis of re-structured, neoliberally re-structured economies and political systems and institutions of representation and what we have is evidence of the hijacking of mass discontent by the far right and what nationalism in this context what nationalism and racism do is that they offer this mythical entity called the people they offer a way to respond to actual injuries and problems nationalism and racism they restore a sense of collectivity that was lost everywhere else was lost in the production line it was lost in the community it was lost in political effect was lost everywhere and what they do is that they restore this sense of collectivity through the reaffirmation of the worth of those individuals the worth that neoliberalism denies in every other way so what authoritarian neoliberalism does is to respond to this desperate search by the losers for a way to short-circuit a political system that is unquestionably blocked it is a response to people who have got tired tired of losing out and losing out to what is presented to them losing out to undeserving others and the state then promotes the interests of the undeserving others and so the state is the object of hatred but at this point to the right of the losers to the right of these authoritarian leaders what we have is even more dangerous movements claiming even greater political coherence because these leaders are not great political coherence but movements that claim to represent the losers in much more aggressive ways and then we reach the paradox of authoritarian neoliberalism and this paradox is that the economic crisis of neoliberalism and the political crisis of neoliberalism they promote the personalization of politics and the rise of spectacular leaders uncontained unlimited unpebbled by stabilizing intermediary institutions political parties trade unions social movements the law they are not contained by any of this and these are leaders that are committed to neoliberalism and at the same time committed to their own political power when they are in office they promote a radicalized version of neoliberalism at the same time as they attack every form of opposition they promote globalization and financialization they give even more power economic and political power to the neoliberal elites in doing this they will harm their own political base and the consequence is that a disoriented society will become increasingly polarized wages will tend to decline taxes will tend to become more regressive social protections will be corroded economies will become more unbalanced poverty will tend to grow mass frustration will intensify in a non-focused way and those leaders must navigate these dissatisfaction and the way to do this is by creating even more resentments and even more conflicts they cannot stop because if they stop they have to resolve problems and their popularity will decline in the meantime but they cannot resolve problems they can only perform think Donald Trump think Boris Johnson think Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil so the consequence is that authoritarian neoliberalism is intrinsically unstable this is a bicycle it's intrinsically unstable and its dynamics will give increasing prominence and space for the far right and maybe unintentionally even will give more space to new forms of fascism now this is a degenerating political dynamics no question about that but this political dynamics was completely overrun by the COVID-19 pandemic and the pandemic immediately what it did was to radicalize everything that happened before it the economy wasn't performing well the pandemic created the deepest and the most the sharpest economic contraction in the history of capitalism and in doing this intensified every single problem the pandemic hit and then immediately of course as in every crisis the neoliberal discourse about the the necessity of fiscal austerity of the the discourse about the limitations of public policy those discourses they disappeared and every single government runs back into some form of fake Keynesianism in a crisis everyone is a Keynesian or even the radically neoliberal but at the same time what we could observe very clearly is that as the global economy disintegrated we had the most uncompromisingly radical wealthy neoliberal economies United States and UK in particular they were left completely exposed being unable to produce enough face masks and personal protective equipment for their health personnel and unable to produce enough ventilators to keep to keep that hospitalized population alive this was not a misfortune this wasn't a misfortune these were outcomes designed by policy for decades of neoliberalism they depleted state capacity deliberately by design in the name of the superior efficiency of the market but in fact to plunder social resources through private enterprise these governments promoted the industrialization through the globalization of production and the chase for short-term profitability they built fragile financial structures deliberately fragile financial structures that were held together by magical thinking and by state guarantees and so with the pandemic what happens almost everywhere is that capital is protected almost everywhere capital is protected but the workers in general and the losers in particular they lost jobs they lost income they lost businesses they lost credit lines and the ongoing process of disintegration of democracy that was already quite evident in the rise of authoritarianism that was evident they were followed by the emergence of elements of totalitarianism governments incompetently addressing the pandemic but claiming the right to control movements claiming the legitimacy to intercept communications claiming the right to cross-check contacts and health status claiming the mandate to deploy the military to control civilians they don't do it very well particularly in the US and the UK but we can't do we can't continue to count forever on the incompetence of those governments at some point they will learn how to do this now liberalism had already created flexible labor markets but labor markets are tending now right now to become even more flexible than before as economies reemerged from the crisis with many reports of workers being rehired substantively to their previous jobs but in worse contracts worse conditions than they had before and given the output losses and the expenses to control the pandemic and that were consequent on the pandemic many of have already indicated that they will be shifting to some form of new austerity as soon as possible but they will have to rely also on even stronger political repression to maintain stability in those countries but I believe that this is untenable it's untenable because in economic terms austerity is completely unjustifiable this is totally not the way to go and if it is imposed by force austerity will undermine what remains of democracy and in doing this to undermine the legitimacy of whichever government imposes those absurd policies and austerity will also harm disproportionately those people who had already lost in previous phases of neoliberalism which is of course the mass base of the authoritarian administrations that we have and I believe that those limitations point to a long period of crisis politics with absolutely unpredictable implications in suggestions of those tensions and of what happens under those tensions they have emerged along three lines one is if you think of the Sander's campaign in the United States the Corbyn movement in the UK and before then the Syriza process in Greece and the workers party in Brazil all those were defeated all those left alternatives were defeated but what they do is to demonstrate the depth of mass dissatisfaction with neoliberalism and they demonstrate the spaces for mass mobilization for a progressive alternative and at the same time what we have witnessed more recently is the extremely sharp contrast between more successful states addressing the pandemic and less successful states experiences in essentially failed states Brazil Ecuador India except for Kerala state Italy Sweden the UK the USA and the successful experiences managing the pandemic in Argentina in China and Cuba in Ethiopia in Germany in Ghana and Greece in Kerala in New Zealand in Senegal in South Africa and South Korea and Taiwan in in in Vietnam and what you see by looking at those experiences is a very clear lesson the importance of integrated public policy the importance of state capacity the importance of a strong manufacturing base you know this comes in contrast with the destruction of the economy that is engineered by neoliberalism the destruction of state capacities that comes from an uncompromising neoliberal administration in the state so in this particular sense I think we can call this one a pandemic with neoliberal characteristics to mimic the Chinese slogan to make fun of that the pandemic with neoliberal characteristics because it does not have to do primarily with health issues health is very important but as New Zealand demonstrates today you can deal with it and what Vietnam demonstrates a country with one tenth of the per capita GDP of the UK with zero deaths big border with China one tenth of the per capita income of the UK zero death from COVID what that shows is that it's not an issue of genetics it's not an issue of biology of the virus it's an issue of public policy what we have then by contrast is tens of thousands of deaths in the more neoliberal economy in particular because of policy choice that's the consequence of policy choice is that tens of thousands of people are dying right now in some response has to be given to that the third consequence from the crisis is that we also saw this on the more neoliberal administrations not my coincidence the more neoliberal administration pushed initially and for a long time for highly unpopular strategies of herd immunity to deal with the pandemic at the initial stages and they only abandoned think United States United Kingdom Brazil they only abandoned this herd immunity approach under heavy pressure from below and they abandoned unwillingly and because they were unwilling they didn't implement the other policies correctly and again tens of thousands of deaths as a consequence of the unforgivable this is absolutely unforgivable if you take all these lessons together what may happen and I hope happens is the energizing of a new generation of left movements for democracy and for the accountability of the state and against neoliberal if we look at the explosion going on in the united states right now as we speak and to some extent in this country too that is part of this hopefully that's part of this I'll wrap it wrap up my presentation now there is a dominant tendency no doubt for a prolonged period of economic stagnation and the emergence of new forms of fascism that's the tendency there's a counter tendency to which points to the possibility of resurgence of the left and if we want to reinforce this counter tendency if we want to strengthen it then we need mobilizations mobilizations around the defining the distinguishing concerns of the left equality collectivity economic and political democracy this is what distinguishes the left from the right and we can push in that direction and in the short term what can be done is the left can highlight in contrast with the neoliberal discourse that there is a tradeoff between health and the economy and countries have to choose a position between herd immunity and total lockdown you have to choose a position for yourself along this this life we can say no there is no trade off there is no dichotomy because the economy cannot function if people are unhealthy and insecure and what is happening when you conceptualize of a tradeoff like this one is you're fetishizing the economy and you're instrumentalizing people to exploit them so we refuse to make this particular choice we look after people and that's what the economy is for you can also stress that there is no dichotomy there is no dichotomy between democracy and efficiency you might remember in the first days of the pandemic of the mainstream media and governments in the west said that they could not possibly control the virus as china had done because china's dictatorship and countries in the west are democracies that's not true this is not true what experiences around the world show is that there is no trade off between efficiency controlling the virus and degrees of democracy countries have performed more or less well against the pandemic depending on their public policies nothing to do with their political regime what the neoliberals wanted to do was to obfuscate the conversation and then they wanted to be able to create confusion to avoid taking measures to protect life because their preference has always been for profit at the expense of people so what the left can do is to articulate and to promote a discourse of securing life and promoting social equality during the pandemic and promoting redistribution after the pandemic promoting social well-being promoting the rediscovery of collectivity that has come out very tentatively and erratically through the strains of the pandemic that we are experiencing and if we do this then we can also say let's settle the costs of the pandemic and let's finance the transition to democratic economies and to sustainable economies through progressive taxation and through the de-financialization of the economy let's transcend neoliberalism and let's move in a progressive direction this is difficult to do and as I mentioned before this is the counter tendencies this is the most unlikely outcome but it is possible and I think it is urgently necessary and I'll finish on this it's urgently necessary and if we do this then we can turn the crisis in neoliberalism into challenges against neoliberalism we can turn this into a generalized malfunctioning of neoliberalism that can be resolved in a progressive direction this is what I think we can and we should push for and we ought to do this now if we don't there will be severe consequences for populations right now and for the even greater challenge that will be to address the environmental crisis that is inevitably coming just after this one thanks very much thank you very much Alfredo that was really really interesting a little bit unsettling as well I must say some of the things you highlighted we have had questions coming in and I will begin just by asking a few clarification points so the first one was you the last one of the last things you mentioned was how the left can gain traction and momentum after covid by highlighting that there is no dichotomy between the health of the economy and the health of the economy and I was wondering how you would imagine left-leaning political parties to gain support from previous neoliberal supporters or those who support the popularist movements how to gain their support and how to push that narrative um I think this is these are conversations to be had individually and these are discourses for movements that speak to millions of people at the same time and the example is very clear Argentina versus Brazil president of Brazil is absolutely dead set against any form of lockdown in the country has undermined his own ministers of health as he fights with state governors and with city mayors in order to try and push the opening of the economy believing that this will be a strategy of minimum damage and that would be good electorate for him brazil is an absolute pandemonium it's currently apparently the third the country with the third largest number of deaths because of covid but the undercounting is absolutely massive so we just don't know how many tens of thousands have been victimized officially close 40 000 who just don't know cross the border and go to Argentina president of Argentina said right at the beginning of the crisis I don't care about the economic cost the economy is here to protect people and we will go into lockdown and we'll fix the economy what we can't fix is when people die that is what you cannot fix and the disaster in Argentina has been immeasurably smaller than in brazil the contrast is very clear or if you look at new zealand implemented very sensible policies early on and the prime minister of new zealand has stressed this very very strongly it was never consideration all the strategy of herd immunity in new zealand so and they would definitely go for the strategy that they were massively successful so the discourse that I think we can in a very defensible way in a very reasonable way and with plenty of evidence we can put on the table is that it works addressing health works and this respond to the imperative the intuitive instinctive imperative that every human being unless you're Richard Branson or whatever every human being feels I mentioned Richard Branson because the first thing he did was to come to the British government to ask for subsidies even though he doesn't pay tax in this country every human being feels the need for protection that is the basic function of the state if you cannot protect life in my view you forfeit the right to be a government and in the UK the US Brazil and other countries they forfeited that right through perversity and incompetence at the same time so if we put this and if we show the examples of success I think we are in a very solid position to convince people that there are there are alternatives despite all the obfuscation there are alternatives okay thank you I've got a question here from agent of Brunner how can civil society lead the change you allude to without participating directly in politics well they should participate in politics of course they have to participate in politics they have to push their way in so when you go to Bristol and you take a statue and you throw it into into the river you participate in politics that is not the politics of parliament it's a politics that overruns parliamentary politics it creates facts on the ground if you do what is happening right now in the United States and you claim your rights and you say I'm not going to be treated that way anymore that is a political statement that you're making and that is truly transformative and it's very very important to act through parliament and through the institutional means of the state very very important and that consolidates gains and that changes policies and it moves the public administration and that is the kind of politics that builds more hospitals and build more houses but at the same time if you shake the system from outside you change the quality of the day it doesn't happen very often but we may be at a moment in time when this is happening now and I think the younger generation has realized that they have to say something because it's a generation that has been uh the um that has suffered immensely through the consequences of the great financial crisis it's a generation that will be stunted by the consequences of this pandemic in terms of their careers prospects earning potential etc it's a generation that in the UK and in the US in particular has an extremely heavy load of student debt on their backs for no particularly good possibilities of employment a generation that has to say what what's going on here we will not accept this kind of deal this kind of generational deal where we are laden with the burden of austerity and have very limited prospects for material satisfaction that neoliberalism itself says that is the measure that is the be all and end all of human life no first it's not but second we want the space to be happy to construct happy lives and happy lives they need first of all they need respect that is part of what's going on I think in the United States but also in this country and we want the state to be constructive in that sense and not to be a burden and an obstacle so I'm optimistic I'm pessimistic about the rise of fascism in terms of I'm optimistic that a new set of demands for rights a new set of demands for states that function in different ways will be embodied by the younger generation and that they will be very loud and clear about their demands that's what I'm hoping for thank you again we have got a lot of questions now so I'll try and get through these quickly question from Edward he thanks you first of all for your analysis of the mechanism through which neoliberalism hinders the full realization of democracy and he asks do you think that following the pandemic the world will tend to increasingly look at China as an alternative economic and political model my hunch on the basis of nothing in particular and I'm not a specialist on this is that the pandemic will be a marker on the long-term shift of hegemony from west to east China dealt with the pandemic and not just China but also South Korea and Taiwan and Hong Kong and Singapore and Vietnam all in different ways but very efficiently their economies will also not just the pandemic their economies will also recover very likely will recover relatively rapidly and the west has fumbled the west was already mired in economics stagnation and they will not be able to shake this off in my view in the coming months and years so a discrepancy of political capacity and policy capacity and a discrepancy in terms of economic performance will be very visible in the months and years to come this at the moment is pointing toward the response from the west is pointing towards increasing aggression the posturing of the United States against China the shift in the position of the British government against China as well treating China as a strategic enemy instead of treating China constructively as a country to engage with is the tradition of the west to look at everywhere else as rivals and to try and destroy them it is what it is it is a shame in my understanding China will be increasingly tends to be increasingly successful it has huge resources and a functioning state the west has more limited resources and dysfunctional states but I think that points to this shift in hegemony we'll wait and see in the next 10 20 30 years we'll be able to answer this question but at the moment it's just speculation thank you we're another question from Natasha Kunesh she asks she thinks first your insights and asks what are your thoughts on the just transition building economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy I think this is absolutely fundamental we are at the cost no let me let me be more realistic we are in process of runaway climate change it has already started and it is runaway it's out of control if we do not use the lessons from this pandemic in terms of state capacity in terms of organization purposefully intervention etc lessons that come from the east they do not come from the west if we fail to draw those lessons and use them immediately and aggressively to address the climate problem we will go extinct but in the process of going extinct there will be untold suffering on billions of people as the human species degrades itself and debases the earth moving rapidly I thought we had more time actually we don't moving rapidly to a situation of mass extinction including ourselves so the stakes could not possibly be higher and we must absolutely shift the energy base of the earth we must absolutely invest in renewable resources we absolutely have to shift away from the model of accumulation and growth that we have so far if we don't we are truly truly truly down for so hope is there but we do need to act and we need to act to right now thank you we've got a two-part question it's quite long coming in from Antonella linguist forza so thanks first of all and asks one do you think that nationalization will increase the degree of global financialization I think we'll we'll go from next the next is quite long okay it may or may not it depends on how nationalization is imposed how it is financed and how it operates these two things nationalization financialization are in principle unrelated so you can have nationalizations that we had in 2007 nationalization of the banks that does build financialization and then you give the bank back to the private sector and what the state gets is the losses and then subsidizes socialism for the rich capitalism for everyone else that is unethical that would be that would be wrong that would be detestable but you could have nationalizations in a progressive direction where the state takes over particular areas of the economy and together with mechanisms of accountability and efficiency you have to have managerial efficiency and you have to have accountability to the wider population so if that can be done that would be amazing I think I would be in favor of that in takeover finance for example but take over other strategic areas of the economy definitely the energy sector and then build something more sustainable and more responsive to people's desires wishes preferences and imperatives first of all imperative to live imperative to live that's the one we'd have to deal with first of all so okay and the second part of the question was regarding relocation in countries such as brazil eastern europe and even the usa in different areas such as grain production in the south and industrialization in the west and north is it going to be a reality in what grade do you think for example cargill and other groups working in agribusiness will migrate to other businesses and leave branches they have around the world if yes could you please speak to us about the implications and relationships with the financial world that's a difficult one I don't care what cargill does I wish the company was destroyed that would be the most constructive outcome for a company that specializes in perverse models of growth as that one it is very difficult to think of an integrating industrial policy for the world at the moment we're stuck with states and state policy or state level policy and what countries must realize again given the lessons of the pandemic is that they have to have industrial policy they have to into a minimum level of integrated manufacturing capacity because when the crisis comes you will lose your friends it will be each country for themselves so there has to be a degree of concern with manufacturing capacity and the ability of countries to provide for their own populations again in order to secure life if we can do better than this I hope we can do better than this by definionalizing and then by integrating in constructive ways economic the economic base of different countries the EU did not do well in the pandemic absolutely did not do well but it could in principle have done better I don't see any reason in principle why it could not have done acted differently so transnational integration can be a good thing it can increase capacity and it can increase solidarity if countries should continue with um concentration on agricultural production commodities for example no in my view they should not they should aim to have diversified economies they should aim to have the capacity again to secure life and employment and incomes for their population in the world in which we live you have to think of your population with particular concern and seek integration with other countries to the extent that this is that this is possible and the interest of cargo I really don't care uh do really don't care about that thank you very much we've got just about five minutes left so I'll ask you the last two questions I've got a question from Malik Imtaz Ahmad and he asks COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the financial conditions of private as well as public institutions so when is the right timing is now the wrong time de-financialization of state-owned enterprises to avoid massive losses in state debt the time is now the one thing that we've noticed is that uh increasingly central banks are getting more and more involved uh with financial institutions and with corporations and if in the previous crisis in the great financial crisis central banks started buying uh bundles of paper from the banks bundles of private paper from the banks in order to support the the banks by issuing cash this time around the back the central banks are buying paper directly from private corporations they are intervening directly into individual circuits of accumulation and realizing surplus value that has been produced elsewhere in the economy channeling to particular to particular capitals it's a non-precedented degree of intervention in the realization of capital and in the accumulation of capital the signal is there there is this is a signal for the socialization of finance finance is already performing a social role to just go there and take it over and then eliminate that massive sphere of speculation all that paper being traded between financial institutions has no meaning it is just a game to generate income and revenue for particular traders on the market this is completely parasitical on the real economic activity so eliminate all that and you can eliminate all that in one fell swoop by just nationalizing the key banking or financial institutions and closing down the rest and this will be a massive shock for heavily financialized economies like this one in the UK city employees or finance employees about a million people perhaps even more it's a it's a massive shock but it's the cost that you have to pay for having specialized wrongly in the past but this will lead to greater economic stability so a set of targeted interventions can contribute to greater economic stability in the future and can ameliorate problems of volatility and costs when you have to rescue finance on a regular basis if every decade you have to rescue the financial system well why would you want to do that finance does not contribute to anything and it costs a lot of money to maintain let's just cut the losses thank you very much I think we are just about out of time so thank you everyone for all of your questions and thank you so much to Alfredo for your wonderful presentation and for so succinctly and in depth answering the questions if I've not been able to read out any of your questions feel free to tweet them out Alfredo I've left his Twitter handle at the top of the chat so that's all right with you Alfredo it looks like your afternoon might be taken up with answering those and thank you so much Sarah thanks everybody if you've got any concluding remarks actually you'd like like now you've got about 30 seconds no this is great it's fantastic to be in the sawers economic department lovely people and I think this department is amazing so thank you thank you so much just to remind everyone who is still on the webinar that the next webinar in the series will be on the subject of Requiem for the Africa rising narrative with Indunga Sambosala taking place on wednesday the 10th of june at three o'clock so stay well stay safe during lockdown you love yourselves and Alfredo thank you once again for a fantastic webinar thank you thanks very much bye bye thanks very much good bye