The French philosopher Alain Badiou (2020), after specifying that this epidemic is nothing new or extraordinary, adds: “we know that the world market, combined with the existence of vast under-medicalized zones and the lack of global discipline when it comes to the necessary vaccinations, inevitably produces serious and devastating epidemics.” And he goes on to say that “the planetary diffusion of this point of origin [Wuhan]” is “borne by the capitalist world market and its reliance on rapid and incessant mobility.” He is hinting that epidemics due to the worldwide (capitalist) market are completely different from those that spread in pre-capitalist times! This is of course quite absurd. I wonder what the link is between the existence of medically under-served zones (which exist of course, especially in Africa) and the origin and spread of Covid-19. What is puzzling is that Wuhan is by no means an under-medicalized zone (in fact, the Chinese response to the epidemic was highly effective) and the virus first spread in the wealthiest parts of the world, where the health system is quite efficient. In fact, Marxist philosophers must be evoking all of these problems (the capitalist market, poor areas, etc.) as if reciting a litany, as a conditioned reflex, even if these problems have no clear connection with other kinds of ills we are dealing with.
Badiou, like others, is evidently mixing up modernization and capitalism. By modernization I mean the expansion of technology and the application of scientific discoveries within society, a process that has historically coincided with the development of capitalism but does not necessarily identify with the latter. I wonder whether the anti-capitalism of so many actually conceals simply a rejection of modern technological society, a somewhat regressive aspiration.
The limit of every ideology – therefore also of the neo-Marxist or neoanarchist ones I am targeting here – is trying to force anything that happens into a predetermined framework. Of course, theories are indispensable to simplify the chaotic complexity of the world, but they always risk being a bed of Procrustes onto which reality is forced. Some refuse to admit that reality can refute or relativize their theories and will always come up with ways to find their ideas confirmed. Many academic “critical theories” lack any critical spirit. An epidemic, whether it was the plague, or cholera, and so on, used to be interpreted as a divine punishment for human sins. Today, instead, an intellectual elite interprets an epidemic as a punishment that human beings inflict upon themselves. Many think that “nature rebels against humans”. Nature has taken the place of God as the punisher. But for others, Homo sapiens ruin themselves for the sin of having generated capitalistic societies.
Sergio Benvenuto June 1, 2020
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