Every crisis creates differences in the way we experience life and, in some cases, death. The crisis generated by Covid-19 has forced us to see the worst of life and death, but it has also opened up the possibility to imagine better times. The crisis is transforming our ways of envisioning the world and how we live in the world. This is why it is not a health crisis, as some have called it. The coronavirus pandemic has the potential to become a crisis of civilization that could disrupt social relations, the organization of production, the role of states, the path neoliberal globalisation, and even the place of humans in history and nature.
This crisis has also exposed some facets of capitalism that are sometimes hidden behind colonial, racist, sexist or efficiency driven discourses associated with the ideologies that seek to reduce the size of the state. Firstly, the crisis allows us to clearly see the killer phase of capitalism. This has always been a key characteristic of capitalism, whose techniques of extreme devaluation of life has resulted in people becoming vulnerable to marginalisation, exploitation and even death
However, things look different when bodies fill an ice rink in Madrid or a mass grave is opened in a New York park compared to when the dead are African migrants crossing the Mediterranean or people from Central America whose remains are scattered on the deadly road to the United States. The level of alarm and awareness of death and vulnerability are heightened when the victims are closer to the centres of power. The 70 military trucks carrying corpses out of Bergamo contributed more to the visibility of the lethal phase of capitalism than the burnt bodies in the streets of Guayaquil.
