 Hello everyone and welcome to this talk. This is the 18th talk in the series organized by the Open Economics Forum and the so as economics department on the economics of COVID-19. In this series we have been discussing the recent economic developments pertaining to COVID-19 and its implications for the world ahead. Today we have with us Dr Victoria Stadheim, who is a lecturer in political economy at the Department of Applied Social Sciences, Forensics and Politics at the University of Rochester. She did her PhD from SOAS and her work includes her work focuses on particular on the political economy of the eurozone crisis and its manifestation especially in the case of Portugal. Today she just to mention the other talks have been put up online and I will share all the social media handles and do follow the various profiles. Today she will be discussing well the particular nature of the crisis examined from the perspective of Marxist political economy and well I'll let her take it from here. If you have any questions do please put them in the chat and it would be nice if you could also say which country you're from. So I think that's it I will share the things and Victoria should like to start. Okay hello everyone good afternoon. It's great to have been invited. Thank you so much for inviting me to the seminar series. It's a it's really a great initiative I've been following some of this and it's also nice to be back at SOAS even virtually. So thanks especially thanks to Sarah Stefano for organizing this and for Madhau for sharing this session. So thank you. So basically what I'm going to do is to provide some reflections or some initial reflections with regards to how we can understand the present crisis that is unfolding in front of us. How is it different from other crisis? Which theories can inform our analysis of what is going on? So these are sort of the situation is new and so are my thoughts about it obviously and as I will said in the beginning my research is primarily on the eurozone crisis and its manifestations in the case of Portugal. So I will I will provide some reflections about the nature of the present crisis particularly informed by Marxist political economy. Second well within that I will also discuss the strategies for crisis management that were implemented to address the public health crisis and the economic crisis and what part does that play in actually shaping the crisis. And then finally I will just make some very brief points about the future and possible policies. Okay so what type of crisis are we confronting? Well first of all we can say and this will come as absolutely no surprise that its initial route is in human health but it's causing a deep recession. So its initial route is not it's not a banking crisis not a currency crisis or an inflation crisis its route is in the human being basically. So when we pose the question of what type of crisis this is we are trying to understand its nature, its causes and this is not a straightforward task. So academics spend years and decades trying to grapple with the causes of crisis and they continue to disagree of course. We can also note that there are different types of economic crisis, banking crisis, current crisis etc. There are slow crisis, prolonged crisis and very sudden crisis. So the crisis of the 70s has been described as a sort of slow burning crisis and in contrast the global financial crisis was of a more kind of sudden nature. Related to this is also the question of causes of crisis versus triggers of crisis. It's easy to confuse the two triggers it is what initiates it. So in the case of the global financial crisis it was false in the subprime sector in the US but the causes are are deeper. They have to do with the underlying features of the national economy or of the global economy. Crisis theories focus on different issues across the sort of economic spectrum. They focus on policy failures, monetary policy, aggregate demand. Some focus on the falling rate of profits. One discussion with regards to the global financial crisis was whether its causes were in the sphere of finance or in the sphere of production. It's important to stress that each crisis is singular and that we cannot have one crisis theory that is able to account for every crisis. I'm sure we have all heard so far that the present slowdown caused by COVID-19 is commonly captured as a simultaneous supply and demand shock. So a shock to production and supply and at the same time a shock to demand. So for example we hear that from financial times an economist disruption has been two-fold causing havoc on both the demand and the supply side. That supply of goods is diminished with difficulty sourcing parts and staff unable to work and factory closures while the restricted movement of people and social distancing has acted to stifle demand. So delivering a double barrel blow to the economy. So it's of course both of these things. It's both supply and demand but I'm going to suggest a slightly different way of thinking about the current crisis. So I'm going to use Ben Fine and Lawrence Harris definition of crisis from the book Re-Reading Capital from 1979. It's very old but I think it's still useful and the book is about reading capital Marx's capital. So Fine and Harris they define crisis as a violent interruption in the circuit of capital and as forcible changes in the progress of capitalist accumulation not only in the pace of accumulation but also in its internal structure. So it's about capital accumulation, about production, the circuit of capital. So violent changes both in the speed, pace and in the form of accumulation. I can also add another definition which is quite similar in a more recent work Fine and Saad Filio who was in your seminar last week similarly defined crisis as forcible changes in the pace of accumulation as well as its internal structure. So these definitions point us to Marx's analysis of the process of capitalist accumulation. They point us to what is called the the circuit of capital and some of you may have seen illustrations of the circuit of capital in economic books or in classes that so as elsewhere but I will just explain briefly. The circuit of capital illustrates the accumulation of capital so it involves the process of production of commodities or if you want services as well and this circuit it includes means of production and human labor or labor power. So it starts with money the illustration well it can start in several ways but it's it can start with money and so money is first expended on capital and capital includes both labor power so that is the hiring of workers for a wage and the means of production so that's machines different types of inputs whatever is produced and so they interact and the production happens and commodities are produced. These quantities are then sold for profit so this means that the circuit of capital includes two spheres the sphere of production and the sphere of exchange because it includes buying inputs and labor power as well as selling the commodity. And it also sort of illustrates social relations between classes capital and labor and so forth. There is an alarm outside I hope you can still hear me. Now let's go. So this is commonly illustrated with M then C the money invested in C then LP and MP labor power and means of production then this is converged into C but a different type of commodity and it's sold for M money M prime so it's ended with more money than it started so there's value added in this process surplus value is realized through the sale of commodities. So we can observe that the present crisis takes the form of a violent interruption in the circuit of capital and a forcible change in the pace of capital capitalist accumulation along the lines of these definitions that I provided a couple of minutes ago. So we can see an interruption in several places along the circuit an interruption by the coronavirus and an interruption interruptions by created by the measures to to confront the crisis. So I'm going to talk about three types of interruptions and probably it would be possible to add many more but these are some initial thoughts. So paradoxically while this is likely to become the deepest recession in decades its origin is neither in the sphere of production or in exchange it is a crisis of public health and of human life. Nevertheless COVID-19 affected the sphere of production straight away. It affects human beings through their health and therefore also labor power. First human beings as human beings and secondly human beings in their capacity as workers so as providers of labor power. So very quickly it affects the process of accumulation and the circuit of capital. It affects production so usually when it is argued that crisis the sources or the causes of crisis can be found in the sphere of production it refers to something very different. Marxists sometimes argue this and there are divisions between Marxists. Sometimes they say this to argue that a crisis is caused in production and more specifically they're referring to what is called Marx's law of the tendency of the profit rate to fall and the falling rate of profit there are slightly different theories about it but usually it has to do with technical change and the relationship with value and so forth. So I won't go further into this but the main point here is to say that COVID-19 as a disease as a virus it affects the sphere of production in a different way. It affects production through labor and in this context I think that social reproduction theory is probably relevant to help us add to our understanding of the crisis and Sara Stefano talked about social reproduction a few weeks ago and can say much more than I can. Basically the availability of human beings as wage workers is an essential starting point for capitalist accumulation to take place and Marx stressed this and this is an historical process. An historical process is required for human beings to be available as wage workers. So Marx identifies labor power or the capacity to labor as a special commodity that the capitalist needs to set the system in motion and to keep it running. So labor power has the inverted comma peculiar property of being a source of value because it creates commodities and value for capitalism. However the existence and availability of labor power needs to be explained and this is where social reproduction theory comes in. So Marx does this kind of historically but Marxist feminists have sort of developed the analysis of what is required for labor power to exist and for labor power to be reproduced. So I'm going to just mention three processes which are outlined as being part of the reproduction of labor power. So that is the sort of the maintenance of human beings as providers of labor the capacity to work. And Marxist feminist Titi Patelacharia she outlines three processes through which the reproduction of labor power takes place. One by reproducing fresh workers so through childbirth. Two by activities that regenerate the worker outside the production process and allow her to return to it. So this includes food a bit to sleep in and also care in physical ways that keep the person whole. And finally third activities that maintain and regenerate non-workers outside of the production process. So in relation to COVID-19 it is the second aspect that is relevant. Food, bed, etc but care in a physical way. People need to be healthy to be able to participate in the labor market or to be able to offer their labor power for a wage. So COVID-19 starts with human health. It attacks human beings and therefore also human beings in their capacity as labor power. And thereby it affects production and capitalist accumulation straight away. We can just add to this that as we know the virus started in China so at the high global factory. So this opened the possibility of a very severe disruption of global supply chains. And of course industry in China production is China was certainly affected by the virus. I think in Wuhan which was the main region in the beginning automobile production was the most important sector but the containment of the virus in China was very effective. So we can say that it could have been much worse in terms of disturbing the global factory. Then moving on and coming back to the circuit of capital. A second moment of the crisis caused by COVID-19. The circuit of capital and process of accumulation are interrupted once again in a slightly different way. It's interrupted by the policies to contain the virus. So governments across the world stepped in and implemented the great lockdown as well as social distancing measures. So by seeking to stop the spread of the virus they simultaneously put capital accumulation on hold. That is a sudden interruption in the pace of capital accumulation. So as we know lockdowns and social distancing measures prevented people from going to work. So as a second moment of production is disrupted once again. This time through labor, directly through labor, labor human beings as labor power and not as human beings outside of the spare production. So that means that when we look at the economic crisis generated by the virus the state in a particular way is a major source of it. The state needs to form part of our analysis of this crisis. The state action interfered in capital accumulation. So usually the state often comes up in discussions about crisis. But usually when the state is a source of crisis it means something very different. It's about fiscal profligacy, policy failures, the Greek government has spent beyond it means and things like that. So that's not what I mean. I'm not saying it in that sense. I'm not saying it to blame the state. The state had to create an economic crisis if it were to save lives, at least at a certain stage in the contagion of the virus. So of course lockdown we know this lockdowns and social distancing measures they had a huge impact on the world of work. And in April the ILO wrote in one of its reports that the proportion of workers living in countries with recommended or required workplace closures has decreased from 81 to 68% over the last two weeks mainly driven by the lifting of workplace closures in China. So in other words earlier on it was 81% proportion of workers living in countries with required workplace closures and so forth. So that is a huge part of the global working population that was potentially affected by restrictions in terms of going to work of one kind or another. But the same report says that 80% of employers and 66% of own account workers live in working countries affected by such measures. And it says that it speaks of an unprecedented reduction in economic activity and working time. So yes for the state to basically stop capitalist accumulation or not stop it entirely but slow it down significantly. This is of course in normal times this is absurd it's entirely against the logic of capitalist accumulation. Capitalism always has to move in order to work it has to be constantly on the move. So this is strange. Of course some might say that actually the state didn't interrupts capitalism or puts it on hold it saved it well in a sense that's also true if we think in terms of capitalist accumulation if many people lose their lives or have ill health from the point of view of capital it won't work either unlike one I think it was a sage member he said something to the effects that if people don't people don't produce any value when they are dead. So one might might say that lockdowns and social distancing issues put a temporary break on capitalist accumulation while it did that in the medium term it was needed not only to save human lives but also capitalism. State intervention in the form of lockdowns also affected the circuit of capital in a third way through the sphere of exchange through demand the implementation of lockdowns and social distancing led to a collapse in aggregate demand as we know and it affected exchange if we think of this circuit it affected the sphere of exchange within it and the realization of circles value commodities were left unsolved. So to sum up so far COVID-19 is initially not an economic crisis but a human health crisis but it affected the sphere of production through labor straight away and in a second moment capital accumulation was affected once again through lockdowns and social distancing matters. So it's affected both through production and exchange. I will just well part of what I've said has been about crisis management but I will just provide a few very brief points on that. To understand a crisis we need to look at the strategies for crisis management policies that are implemented to address an economic crisis might help to get out of recession but it might also do the opposite. It might deepen a recession as many would argue that the austerity and internal devaluation did when it was implemented in the context of the Eurozone crisis. So we can say that crisis management can shape the trajectory and anatomy of an economic crisis so but in the case of a pandemic which leads to a recession the task of assessing the policies of crisis management is different for the obvious reason that there is a public health and an economic aspect. So what characterised the management of this public health and economic crisis? Well I will just briefly say that there's a huge deal of national variation. On the one hand we've had responses from authoritarian right-wing governments with leaders that have expressed either outright skepticism of the coronavirus or at the very least fail to grasp the danger of the disease and to take it seriously marked also by geopolitical rivalries, conspiracy theory directed at China as well as bottom-up support expressed through protest export support for leaders particularly the US, Brazil, the UK's more subtle version of some of these elements and on the other hand we know about many countries that have been successful in containing the virus through different strategies implementing manual contract tracing early on testing social distancing measures including internal travel restrictions and so forth at a much earlier stage. Some of them implemented complete lockdowns very early on others were able to avoid implementing full-scale lockdowns. So I just want to mention also that in Europe there is not a one-to-one or in the Eurozone as well there is not a one-to-one relationship between state capacity and economic policy space on the one hand and the ability to tackle the pandemic on the other hand among the most successful countries in terms of well the effects of the disease are peripheral Eurozone countries that were subjected to harsh austerity measures and structural adjustment in the previous crisis and the Eurozone crisis and these measures included the health sector so Portugal had 1522 deaths so far for a long time it was considerably lower but comparatively it's still low and this is in a sense impressive particularly given its border with Spain Greece has only 185 deaths so far and in the case how much time do I have yeah in the case of the UK I want to elaborate on the various measures because I'm sure many people here will have followed that very very closely but I would argue that that heart of the public health crisis and the recession is a spectacular failure to protect human lives and to take the virus seriously at an early stage this of course you know in many ways it's exposed to true colors of the society a deeply hierarchical society at heart of this crisis is also a complete unwillingness to take any lessons from other countries there were lessons to be learned early on they could have paid attention to Italy they could have learned formation economies but they let the virus get out of control here social distancing measures were initially left to voluntary market decisions taken by individuals please don't go to the pub and they waited to implement the lockdown until the public was ready to obey thus when thousands and thousands had died so if testing pp contract tracing and so forth had been in place early on many lives could have been saved and perhaps a full lockdown would would not have been necessary thus and of course the lockdown played such an important role in in creating the recession so perhaps that was at least a degree the degree of it could have been avoided this the scale of mortality has also been consistently toned down by the government's press conferences until the death toll surpassed italy when it was suddenly too early to make international comparisons so and i think the whole time they've hidden between two mantras we're taking the right steps at the right time and we are guided by the science both of these measures justifies just about anything at any time um so what next there is much that we don't know about what will come the the future and are we talking about the global economy national economies and so forth much will of course depend on how the actual pandemic develops when there will be a vaccine and so forth the epicenter of the pandemic has of course moved from from europe to latin america that's what the official numbers tell us within new outbreaks in china so the virus itself and its outbreaks will be a major determination in terms of the depth and duration of the recession and on top of this there are other kind of drivers of recession depending on countries or oil prices oil prices have fallen by almost 50 percent in the last crisis commodity prices for a very important mechanism of transmission of the crisis in developing and emerging economies um capital flight was also a huge challenge for developing countries for an exchange earnings etc but one thing that is for sure is that public debt will be a key feature or even a permanent feature in in many parts of the world um we might see very high public debt combined with extremely high unemployment specifically about the uk we don't know the scale of this yet there has been a job-brontainment scheme which i think was a good idea to implement but we don't know um whether it will have been effective some many employers will have used a furlough scheme but may never the less let go of their workers so one key question is about what will happen with this public debt will this lead to sort of accelerate austerity continuity of austerity or will it lead to a break with that will it be possible to pay back um this this level of debt um perhaps the public debt will be so high that it will force uh you know a paradigmatic change in terms of uh how we approach public debt and and and fiscal policy of course for many years the idea that one should shall always pay back the debts whether it's individuals or states that has been sort of an important mantra will that simply be impossible will there have to be some kind of ordered restructuring of debts um then very high unemployment is a possibility and um and in in in that context so so in terms of the public debt we could see that huge pressure on on public debt uh triggered by you know increasing interest rates um speculation and so forth and I think you know the loose monetary policy continuation with loose monetary policy will be important to to avoid that but of course in the case of the eurozone crisis um high high high interest rates and public debt you know that was speculation etc that contributed to forcing a you know a profound restructuring um yes and there may be a need for of course a huge employment generation program a green new deal perhaps simultaneous job creation and an environmental shift so yeah i think i'll i'll leave it there okay thank you so much many questions thanks for that very enlightening lecture um how would you like it would you like yeah would you like to ask the questions uh one at a time or uh sure yeah should i read them or are you reading them no i'll read them yeah um no sir um i think the first thing that we maybe can discuss that is quite pertinent to the last part of your lecture from raza remand is that what does it mean for what does the virus mean for the future of labour and what are the implications for precarious work and precarity okay yeah the world of labour okay i suppose this might be a potentially very depressing topic um of course many people have lost their jobs already um i think in the uk as i mentioned uh there is much that we haven't yet seen it depends what will happen when the government scales back the the furlough scheme the job retention scheme so we could see huge increases in in in unemployment we already have uh i don't know maybe some people here have actually seen it i haven't been able to go to london recently for obvious reasons uh but we read about like a new group of homeless people from the service sector restaurants hotels and so forth so you know on the one hand uh for a moment we saw all these alternatives i oh wow the homeless people were given hotels but at the same time we have a new group of homeless people and of course that's connected to the labour market and um so unemployment of you know we don't know the full extent who will um who will be the first ones to go of course uh the uk has a huge amount of so-called precarious workers the issue of casualization is is a defining feature of of the labour market here and precariousness what does it mean it refers to various types of so-called irregular employment from from fixed term contracts to contracts such as self-employment zero hour contracts and so forth the gig economy and etc and many of these will be very easy to fire easy to make redundant they will be the first ones to go and we see it clearly in the case of the university sector which i kind of um i'm part of uh the um yeah the the casualized workforce in universities are amongst many workforces who are who are extremely vulnerable um of course it will become more difficult to get a job uh also i think uh working life for those who maintain their jobs will change um there will be pressures to accept things that have been perhaps unthinkable so far um when there is this immediate threat of unemployment people are willing to accept much more um there is no doubt that many businesses will become front in real crisis and i'm not saying that um this is a limited situation at all but but in addition to the the very real pressures the crisis can also offer opportunities for employers to implement measures that they might have fantasized about before but am i been able to unable to to implement and those things can have to do with working time arrangements it's all called flexible working hours that might benefit employers far more than employees uh working pay forms of contractual arrangements and so forth and then i think there is one other aspect which has come up and that hasn't really been discussed so much i don't think in the academic literature at least is with very much to working from home so for the time being like being able to work from home is is a privilege because you are able to protect yourself against the virus and in certain jobs you you you have that opportunity whereas in other jobs essential workers don't have the opportunity to avoid human contact um but in the longer term well it is possible that this will become much more generalized much more permanent and well maybe well some people see benefits from this but at the same time that implies that you know employers will save a huge amount of money on offices it's employers that we are lending out our homes to employers so in a sense it's a huge transfers from employees to employers okay yeah thank you for that um actually if i um a question asked by sofiya earlier on uh it sort of it sort of follows on from this in that she mentions that in particular say the government industry where labor's only performed by women of color what do you think uh how do you think this would affect as you've been mentioning the world of work but in terms of a particular industry um in terms of i think especially you know increase the exploitation or increase forget it okay interesting question the government industry okay i i don't work specifically on the government industry myself it sort of comes into some of my work because it's been an important industry in in in portugal um specifically in portugal at one point there was quite a lot of discussion about uh a reliable of textile certain textile gives like production of of pp uh so production of of masks and so forth so perhaps for certain businesses in certain economies this you know this could be uh well an opportunity to produce something that is very much needed in in the global economy then women etc in the government industry uh i i this is not at all sort of my my area of expertise but i suppose some of that work happens in the factory some of it happens within home i know alessandra mesadra uh from so has analyzed the sort of nexus between um productive work and reproductive work and the next has been the factory real and the home and the integration of home female home workers um into the government sector in in india so i i suppose you could say that people who are integrated into the labor market through these forms of contractual arrangements are well extremely vulnerable to to redundancies they're very easy to get rid of so they're vulnerable in in that situation and i guess there will be a sort of nexus between formality and informality in this type of setting as well but it will depend partly on the demands of the global demand for what they produce right thanks okay so then our question from uh dr sara stifano um what what she's asked is that what many people have been talking about sort of the the oppositional relationship between we see between the economy and public health and yeah how it's in house house you know how true is that and how much has it been visible here that is the economy managed you know in opposition to the promotion of health outcomes and yeah that's interesting yeah uh i haven't totally sort of decided on on that question well clearly we see that the so-called needs of the economy as if the economy just except exists out there without us being part of it the economy has certain needs the economy or capitalism has a need to be in movement in order to kind of stay afloat when people stop going to work when they fail to pay back the mortgages and so forth everything can spiral out of control so like there is this need of the logic of the system which is sort of in contrast with the needs of of public health or of individual health but at the same time it's sort of the economy versus public health it almost assumes that human beings are not part of the economy and as this expert said the sage member i think well people don't produce much commodities when they're when they are dead or when they are ill so in that sense of course there's a policy question also that is part of the the economy versus public health like i mean i i think we need to prioritize public health part of huge failure is to you know the failure to protect human lives which which has created economic consequences as well and not just human okay and i think okay one a question another question from sofia and i think this is a question that so many people have been asking is that this is now universal unconditional basic income do you think that this is one of the possible solution and if so what you know what what do we need to keep in mind before implementing or having such a solution yeah yeah it's true many people have discussed that um it's not something that i've been sort of very focused on on before i've heard that many people um do focus on on on that now um yes if i mean i in general i think job retention i'd rather see job retention than universal income but if if we see a huge spike in unemployment perhaps universal income will be necessary of course we like we have to along with all other parts of public spending we we have to look at like what is the cost of this and what will be the general regime in terms of public debt fiscal consolidation and the idea of paying back public debt universal income i i don't know if it's a sort of massive public investment to generate jobs if that is a better alternative or if the two can go hand in hand obviously it doesn't have to be either or but yeah it's it's a possibility actually i'm i'm going to ask the question that i that i wanted to ask if that's okay yeah sure that i thought of i spent you know you were mentioning um you know this is sort of the unique nature of the state intervening in capitalist accumulation at this particular juncture and whether that you know we don't know how it's going to turn up but whether it's save capitalism or not whereas at the same time many people are saying that many people have said that this is so hello i'm losing you i can't hear you now hi i think mother is having some internet difficulties okay i had a question about basically what you're thinking is about the future of the system and what coronavirus has meant you know for it has shown the vulnerabilities of the capitalist system yeah um what do you think the future could be and what the future would hold and do you think the there's political momentum enough to actually get that change that isn't so desperately needed yeah yes um we have yeah we have seen vulnerabilities and we have also had sort of it may sound like i'm romanticizing but i think we have had sort of a very small opening a very small image of something completely different sort of you know homeless people being given uh hotel accommodation uh no pollution because of lockdowns uh and so forth and we have seen that there are alternatives we've been told for decades that there are no alternatives there are alternatives and the monetary is there as soon as you switch it off and it's a matter of of political will and of political projects but like will this be a turning point in terms of economic policy i don't know i don't think we can take it for granted in terms of austerity paying back your debts and fiscal consolidating it's possible it's very possible that this if i mean if it is if it's possible to pay it back but it's quite likely that this will just continue and that we will be very squeezed through taxation to pay this back which will be in line with the sort of the previous padding but we have seen that you know it can be different so it's very much technically we know all that things can be different uh so it's very much a political question is there an alternative project and like i don't see like a huge popular revolt in this country about the government's failure to address the coronavirus there is a huge revolt around racial injustice here in the uk and in in the world so this is you know this is a complete this is a well the response is partly related to the coronavirus but it's something that goes back much further historically but we would need like a a much bigger project and a political alliances that have an alternative project in terms of employment public investment debt and monetary policy and so of course unfortunately we have an opposition that is very ineffective at this point we do not an opposition that says that we need uh uh you know an exit strategy uh at the time when this came labor party was not what we needed at the time so we need you know we need different forces to to co-join and it's possible that that can be done union movements um perhaps black lives matter i don't know but different progressive forces but it would it will need to be a big alliance it can't be left to small tiny small left-wing groups yeah i think i'm just following on from that point from miss uh from lorenzo monoco the question is uh do you think that this will lead to a sort of class recomposition uh she asked to a class recomposition class recomposition okay so who is the question at the your from lorenzo monoco oh okay oh very nice hi lorenzo um well i think that class and many people will disagree i think that class there are many things that are connected to class but class is the determinations of class are found in in the sort of the relations of production so social relations so i think this is a question about labor markets and and production people's interconnection into the labor markets um are they you know mass wage workers as self-employed and so forth uh so that is yes i think it's absolutely possible that a recomposition of class is part of of of this violent rupture in in the form of capitalist accumulation so far in my presentation i talked about the change in the pace of accumulation the speeds caused by the virus and by government measures but if we might see also a change in the form of accumulation and that's too too early to tell and that could consist of well changes to do with precariousness self-employment wage labor are you know do people mainly work from home or not and this has political implications if people only work from home despite that we've seen like some quite amazing events academic and political online working from home means being isolated we need to see each other we need to meet to have political projects okay i think that's the last of the questions uh would you like to summarize quickly if we have a few minutes um yeah so well uh just um wants to summarize that these are some well initial reflections about you know a potential a possible perspective for analyzing the present crisis i focus very much on sort of accumulation and production there are of course um other other shifts that we might see that are at a different scale and that's a different different type of of changes geopolitical changes um political projects um and so forth so what i've addressed it is is just part of a big a much bigger picture and um well this crisis are often turning points this could be a turning point in a in a different way and it's been in very dangerous ways i think it's we see quite dangerous things when we when we hear about all of the kind of geopolitical rivalries that have been exacerbated in this uh in the context of of this virus so in terms of economic policy you know we need an entirely different project and well and and we we need the project that is peaceful uh which well you know which well i'm not saying that we're confronting a new world war but um public investment that um fostered this will be will be important um yeah and thank you very much for any interesting questions thanks for organizing this yeah thank you so much for coming and just before ending i'd like to say that um on the 22nd there's a talk um the open economics forum uh webinar series continues there's a talk on the economics of COVID-19 in Africa African feminist perspectives um hope you all can join us for that as well and there's further talks in the coming few weeks um so i would like to thank everyone for joining us and thank you especially to Victoria for thank you very much thank you for uh convening this um very much appreciate it okay have a lovely afternoon bye