The coronavirus pandemic is both a crisis of care and a market crisis like no other. After three decades of rabid neoliberal capitalism, it appears that the “rules of the [business] game” have now abruptly altered, no longer congruent with famous free-market capitalists such as Milton Friedman. Facing the possibility of a huge surge in mortality, people have, for once, been put before profits, if only temporarily
Facing the possibility of a huge surge in mortality, people have, for once, been put before profits.
The resulting upheaval is cataclysmic, and not just for key business sectors. More profoundly, it has disrupted dominant ideas about society and our role within it. The notion that we depend more upon those “invisible hearts” that care for others, rather than the “invisible hands” that run our economies, appears to be the new-found wisdom, as feminist economists such as Nancy Folbre always asserted.
This was evident in our noisy collective claps of appreciation and solidarity with all our health and care workers. At odds with everything we have been hearing for decades, it is now all too apparent that, when it comes to care provision, we cannot rely on markets. We have instead turned to states hoping for radical investment in health infrastructures, to our underfunded communities for the provision of local care and solidarity networks, and to our families and friends for love and comfort.
