In broad terms, the neoliberals have argued for the reduction of government, stripping back of welfare systems, and freeing of markets. The neoliberal ideology proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices (Harvey, 2005, p2).

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, new strains continue to emerge, posing a constant threat to human health. Although neoliberalism may have various flaws in the economic system (details in my previous blog), I still want to discuss the extent to which it can help to curb the COVID-19 pandemic in public health.

Epidemiological neoliberalism

Herd immunity is epidemiological neoliberalism. Much like the unconditional belief in the free market, herd immunity relies on the assumption that a pandemic is best overcome by leaving it unregulated. What might seem like a laissez-faire policy, is actually a refined and complex system of automated structural violence against the weak, which also shatters any possibilities of resistance.But just like neoliberalism, it results in violence against the weak and the poor: elderly and disabled people, homeless people, refugees and people with severe health conditions – many of whom are likely to also have a lower socio-economic status because of the correlation between poverty and illness. These are the people, who are at the highest risk of dying from COVID-19 – especially if the healthcare system is overwhelmed and doctors have to perform triage (Autore, 2020).

The initial reaction from most governments to the outbreak was an exercise in “epidemiological neoliberalism” (Frey, 2020). This policy bluntly exposed the politics of the whole project: pretend to do nothing while making sure that the “natural laws” of markets keep functioning, even if it means allowing people to get sick and die from “just another flu”. Encapsulated in the social-Darwinian “survival of the fittest” notion of “herd immunity”, this solution in practice consisted of voluntary behavioral guidelines – business as usual, just wash your hands and keep your distance (Šumonja, 2021). This, in effect, turned a social problem into an individual matter, thus shaking off any responsibility the authorities had for the public health crisis. When epidemic prevention has changed from a compulsory act to a personal moral issue, it is difficult to blame one person specifically because everyone has different moral values due to their level of education and cultural background.

Limited vs. unconstrained freedom

Eric Li (2021) raised the following issue:

“What good are individual rights if they result in millions of avoidable deaths, as has happened in many liberal democracies during the pandemic?”

After the initial peak of the outbreak, governments have also realized that measures such as travel restrictions and social distancing take precedence over guaranteeing unconstrained freedom for everyone.

The nine metrics used to calculate the Government Stringency Index are: school closures; workplace closures; cancellation of public events; restrictions on public gatherings; closures of public transport; stay-at-home requirements; public information campaigns; restrictions on internal movements; and international travel controls.

As we can see in figure 2, the vast majority of countries, with the exception of some in Africa, have index above 50, and the index are generally higher in developed countries than in developing countries.

A higher score indicates a stricter government response (i.e. 100 = strictest response). Although a higher score does not necessarily mean that a country’s response is ‘better’ than others lower on the index, to some extent, it implies the appropriateness or effectiveness of a country’s response.

However, comparing with figure 2 and figure 3 that people around the world are tired of the repeated outbreaks and that embargo restrictions in all countries have been reduced to varying degrees from May.  Many countries adopted epidemiological neoliberalism to the pandemic, with governments pinning their hopes of containing the virus through vaccines rather than social isolation.

Nonetheless, I still believe that the blockade restrictions were relaxed not because the vaccine was effective enough, but because people could not stand the endless lockdown.

William R. Gallaher (2021, para.19-20), a scientist from the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology, Louisiana State University Department of Health, states:

"I am, and always have been, a strong proponent of vaccines. My wife and I have been fully immunized and boosted as soon as humanly possible. Still, I feel compelled to warn that we may not be able to immunize our way out of this, as immune escape becomes increasingly prioritized as an evolutionary pressure in the generation of variants. We need to be careful about being addicted to our high tech solutions, that meet considerable resistance and global supply chain and delivery issues. As some countries have discovered, viral epidemiology 101, interrupting the chain of infection, is vital. Masking, handwashing, sanitizing and social distancing – keeping infected folks from uninfected folks – remains the surest path to reducing the reproduction number anywhere. Cheap. low tech and effective means can be most broadly applied globally.

In the United States, we are on track to have 1,000,000 Americans dead from COVID, within basically two years of onset of the pandemic here. What was inconceivable here has become almost inevitable. That we are not doing every conceivable thing to stop this carnage here and globally is beyond unacceptable."

From the data above, it seems that neoliberalism cannot contain COVID-19. Similar to economic neoliberalism, epidemiological neoliberalism allows governments to delegate power to individuals while at the same time delegating responsibility to them. However, unlike financial giants who use this power to engage in unproductive accumulation, people with no medical expertise but enormous power can be misled by incorrect information, causing the epidemic to get worse.

But could we have beaten COVID-19 completely if governments around the world had imposed strict lockdown at the start of the outbreak (although this would have been impossible)? It is also hard to say.  It is like the Cannikin Law, where the outcome depends on the shortest plank.

The pandemic is a special reminder that humankind is a community of shared destiny, that responsible and decisive government policies are necessary in the face of pandemic.

Useful Links:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Cases – Statistics and Research – Our World in Data

Policy Responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic – Statistics and Research – Our World in Data

References:

Autore, M, Corizzo, S, 2020. From health emergency to social crisis. International Viewpoint, 17 March, viewed in 15/12/2021. Available at: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article6454

Eric Li, 2021. Eric Li on the failure of liberal democracy and the rise of China’s way. The economist, 8 December 2021, viewed in 15/12/2021. Available at: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/12/08/eric-li-on-the-failure-of-liberal-democracy-and-the-rise-of-chinas-way

Frey, 2020. ‘Herd immunity’ is epidemiological neoliberalism. The Quarantimes, 19 March, viewed in 15/12/2021. Available at: https://thequarantimes.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/herd-immunity-is-epidemiological-neoliberalism

Harvey, D., 2005. The new imperialism / David Harvey., Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Šumonja, M., 2021. Neoliberalism is not dead – On political implications of Covid-19. Capital & class, 45(2), pp.215–227.

William R. Gallaher, 2021. Omicron is a Multiply Recombinant Set of Variants That Have Evolved Over Many Months, viewed in 15/12/2021. Available at: https://virological.org/t/omicron-is-a-multiply-recombinant-set-of-variants-that-have-evolved-over-many-months/775

 

 

Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices (Harvey, D., 2005, p2).

Based on the concept of neoliberalism, the market is always self-balanced, and the state cannot interfere with the internal freedom of the market upon most occasions. Thus, neoliberalism has handed over a large amount of economic power which should be regulated and supervised by the government to financial institutions or private enterprises. Under such a system, no one can restrain the unproductive accumulation of financial giants. In other words, the giant can directly rely on its own monopoly position for speculative, parasitic and deprived capital accumulation clandestinely.

However, according to Kant, the commercial peace hypothesis can be achieved. Although the pursuit of profits in business competition is ruthless, if there is no violence and exploitation in the process, it can be regarded as a kind of healthy competition (Isiksel, T., 2020). Kant expects economic interdependence to prompt states to accept reciprocal constraints on their behavior, producing a cooperative equilibrium with a cosmopolitan legal order to underwrite it (Kant, 2007). Yet, from my perspective, the interinhibitive equilibrium only exists in government agencies with strong public benefit properties. Conversely, the majority of companies do not care much about moral issues. Though the government can alleviate the gap between the rich and the poor through secondary distribution, such as taxes, big companies have the money to hire lawyers to help them avoid taxes legally, which ultimately leads to the middle class having to shoulder more social responsibilities.

Foucault stated further that there is a paradoxical relationship between liberal economic rationalism and civil society as one moves towards an economic state in that “the constitutive bond of civil society is weakened and the more the individual is isolated by the economic bond he has with everyone and anyone” (Garrett, T.M., 2020).

In conclusion, the emergence of new forms of fascism, new paradigms of liberalism, and new efforts to liquidate governments, like the Brexit are inevitable. However, if these doctrines do not address the fact that financial institutions can maintain their monopolies by reinforcing unproductive accumulation, they may not work well in the end.

 

Reference

Adam Curtis, “I’m a Modern Journalist,” by Hannah Eaves and Jonathan Marlow, in Mark Cousins and Kevin Macdonald eds., Imagining Reality: The Faber book of Documentary (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 407-411.

Garrett, T.M., 2020. Kant’s foedus pacificum: Path to peace or prolegomena to neoliberalism and authoritarian corporatist globalization in contemporary liberal democratic states? Annales etyka w życiu gospodarczym, 23(2), pp.7–20.

Harvey, D., 2005. The new imperialism / David Harvey., Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Isiksel, T., 2020. Cosmopolitanism and International Economic Institutions. The Journal of politics, 82(1), pp.211–224.

Kant, Immanuel. (1784) 2007. “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Anthropology, History, and Education. Edited and translated by Robert B. Louden and Günter Zöller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nemo means nobody in Latin, which reveals that the author thinks subjectively that no one can be Captain Nemo. This seems to presage Nemo’s tragic fate from the very beginning, and the author’s belief that his ideal will never come true.

In the second part of Verne’s trilogy, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Captain Nemo finally chose to blow up the island because of the enemy’s invasion and piloted the Nautilus to dive into the sea. Tragically, Nemo himself dies of his wounds.

However, does his death mark a defeat for anti-colonialism and freedom? When Nemo was near death, his breast was swelling with sobs and he whispered to himself, “Almighty God! enough! enough!” (Verne, 1994, part II, chapter XXII). This indicates his physical death, but at the end of the story, Professor Arronax, Conseil and Ned Land escape from the Nautilus and spread the word of what they had seen and heard on board. The story of the Nautilus may inspire readers to yearn for peace and resist aggression. Hence, to a certain extent, ideal of Nemo did not fail.

Through the story of “Mysterious Island”, we can know that Nemo is an Indian prince, he found a Spanish shipwreck containing a large amount of gold treasure at the bottom of the sea, and secretly used the treasure to support the struggle for national independence. But it did not do much to change the course of the bloody war.

Thus, Nemo tried to build a kind of self-sufficient cosmogony, which has its own rules, its own time, space, fulfilment, and even existential principle in the ship (Barthes, 2010, p.102). In this enclosed space, Nemo temporarily managed to keep everyone on board fed, clothed, and free from war, although this was in exchange for freedom. Nevertheless, from my perspective, this seemingly happy moments did not represent that Nemo had achieved his dream. The balance on the ship is fragile, and when Nemo choose to live in seclusion, they give up the right to communicate with the rest of the world, passively observing the views of others rather than exporting their own. So, in the best of circumstances, only the people on board would live in peace, and it would be very difficult for outsiders to join in.  Hence, he could hardly keep most people away from national oppression and colonialism.

 

Besides, there is no mention of the ship’s economic system in the book, whether they were distributed according to work or according to need. Why does the captain Nemo have the ultimate power and get the best food and room? All these signs suggested that the Nautilus was probably Nemo’s utopia, not all the crew’s. Then such a closed culture can possibly become totalitarian in the end.

Reference

Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea Electronic Edition, 1994, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/164/164-h/164-h.htm#chap0222

Roland Barthes. “Nautilus et Bateau ivre.” Mythologies. Édition illustrée, Jacqueline Guittard, Editor (Paris: Seuil, 2010), 102.

Herland, as a classic feminist utopian novel, tells the story of three American men who discover an isolated, all-female country while exploring. Herlandians were wise, gentle, kind, and they raise their children together. It seems to show a dreamful world made up of women. (More details…)

1. Clues

Because this is a first-person perspective book, and it is a feminist fiction in my preconceptions, I did not realize that the protagonist was a man rather than a woman until the protagonist explicitly stated that he was a male like the other two.

It is so strange, isn’t it? As a feminist utopian novel, the whole setting is still based on the logic of male-domain world, with the opposite gender idealized to fit the imagination of utopia.

 

2. Arguments

More’s utopian bliss is to be attained only through the imposition of a distinctively male hierarchy. The patriarchal family is the core of maintaining order and assigning jobs (Chris Ferns, 1998). However, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland did not break out this tradition at all. Although there is an impeccable land of healthy eating habits, helpfulness, equality, and crisis handling mechanism (Gilman, C.P., 1979), its social structure is presented by the narrative of a male, discovered and explored by the male. Their evaluation is a male interpretation of what they see and hear. And this male gaze is evidence that Herlandians still live in a patriarchal society.

Conversely, male gaze, to some extent, in Herland is progressive. At the beginning, the three heroes despised women and believed that a country must have men to build fine walls and houses. But finally, they married Herlandians and sincerely believed in the ideology of Herland. Although these men ultimately approve of Herland’s excellence, it does not stop us from thinking that a female society’s need for male approval is ridiculous. Perhaps the novel would have been more realistic if the author had included a woman in the three-man exploration team.

 

3. Conclusion

From my perspective, the respectable and evil of human nature is never caused by either man or woman. Hence, a utopian world like Herland cannot be achieved without innovation in the political and economic system. Though the author tries to make people face up to women’s contribution to society, the book is more like a fantasy novel, which only satisfies the author’s perfect imagination of women in the patriarchal system.

In addition, there are other implicit discrimination issues in the book, you could click it if you are interested.

Reference

Ferns, Chris “Rewriting Male Myths: Herland and the Utopian Tradition.” A Very Different Story: Studies on the Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, edited by Val Gough and Jill Rudd, 1st ed., vol. 14, Liverpool University Press, 1998, pp. 24–37. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjjgp.8

Gilman, C.P., 1979. Herland / by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; with an introduction by Ann J. Lane., London: Women’s Press.

Further reading

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/30/herland-forgotten-feminist-classic-about-civilisation-without-men

S_Beard_Charlotte.pdf (uncg.edu)

For the younger generation, the last time you saw the word “utopia” was probably in a survival show called Girls Planet 999. However, the utopia we refer to today is a traditional philosophical concept.

1. What is Utopia?

“Utopia” was first proposed in 1516 by Thomas More in on the Best State of a Commonwealth and on the New Island of Utopia, or Utopia for short.

The Greek adverb ou-‘not’-with the noun topos-‘place’- and giving the resulting compound a Latin ending. (More et al., 2002, p.xi.)

In this highly attractive place, no one goes hungry or homeless, because Utopian regimes practiced a planned economy and advocated plain living, which makes  strikingly egalitarian. Instead, to ensure the livelihood of the citizens, both men and women must be engaged in agricultural labor 6 hours per day. Besides, their personal freedom is restricted in ways large and small. (more details…)

Dystopia took off when people realized that utopia had its flaws.

 

2. Flaw：Gender Inequality

Although Utopia is problematic in many ways, I want to focus on gender inequality.

Utopia advocates equality between men and women apparently, such as adhering to monogamy, however, wives still need to serve their husbands at home.

But to return to their manner of living in society: the
oldest man of every family, as has been already said, is
its governor; wives serve their husbands, and children
their parents, and always the younger serves the elder. (Stephen Duncombe, Thomas More’s Utopia, p.103)

Hence, Utopia is still a world based on patriarchy.

As mentioned previously, the author of Utopia states that each woman had to work, like each man. However, More’s starting point was for the country to have more labour to do production and not to keep idle people, rather than really regarding men and women as equal.

For example, some jobs that would have been considered inferior in the 16th century were reserved for women only.

All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are performed by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking their meat, and the ordering their tables, belong only to the women, all those of every family taking it by turns. (Stephen Duncombe, Thomas More’s Utopia, p.106)

In 2007, the TV series adapted from the dystopia novel the Handmaid’s Tale became popular in the United States, making more people, particularly women, reflect on the meaning of survival and existential.

This video shows the life of women under totalitarian rule. The heroine has received such a decent education that she has experienced discontent, distress, unease, and in existential anxiety.

Fortunately, neither the real world nor the utopian world is that bad.

In fact, there are some constructive laws in Utopia can effectively relieve existential anxiety of female and contribute to gender equality.

For instance, both bride and groom are required to naked each other before marriage for premarital examination (Stephen Duncombe, Thomas More’s Utopia, pp.142-143).

 

3. Conclusion

It might have given way to a more just and egalitarian society, if the regime can make men and women equal and respect for human rights. More specifically, it formulates that the value of human existence is greater than the value that human can create.

Hopefully utopia will be transformed into a truly attractive and perfect world in the future.

 

Part of the lyrics of Utopia:

기대하고 있어 큰 소리로 외쳐 (I’m looking forward to it. Shout it out)
오랫동안 기다려왔던 빛을 향해서 (Towards the long-awaited light)
기다려 왔는걸 (I’ve been waiting)
저 높이 날아볼까 두 눈 앞에 펼쳐진 나의 (I’m gonna fly high)
Utopia (Utopia)

Reference:

More et al., 2002. Thomas More : Utopia / edited by George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams. Rev., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas More’s Utopia, 1516, Thomas More open|Utopia Edited and with an Introduction by Stephen Duncombe