Neoliberalism and the Pandemic

Abstract

This paper offers a political economy interpretation of the covid-19 pandemic, framed around its relationship to the dynamics, contradictions and limitations of global neoliberalism. It argues that the pandemic emerged in a context of growing inequalities and deepening crises in neoliberal economies and their political systems, and that the pandemic is likely to reinforce the exclusionary tendencies in the current phase of capitalism, with detrimental implications for democracy. In turn, the pandemic has revealed the limitations of neoliberalism like never before, with adverse consequences for the legitimacy of capitalism itself, and opening unprecedented spaces for left political activity.