What Can We Expect After the Pandemic?
Credit.John Gall
By Grace Blakeley
112 pp. Verso. Paper, $14.95.
The chasm between just how well some have thrived economically during the pandemic and just how badly others have fared is among the more startling results of this
annus horribilis. But where some see the disease as upending some industries (travel and restaurants) and boosting others (home entertainment and technology), Blakeley, an English writer, Labour Party activist and leftist theorist, sees the have and have-not divide as the latest and perhaps most egregious chapter of the sad story of capitalism.
For Blakeley, the response to Covid is twined with the great financial crisis of 2008-9: Then, states bailed out the financial industry; now, the state is bailing out all industry to maintain the system of “monopoly capitalism.” While she acknowledges that no government could just let the system collapse, she excoriates the way that officials have become handmaidens to