THE DEEP ALIENATION UNVEILED BY COVID-19

This article is written to honor those who have tackled Covid-19 as a concrete problem that required concrete solutions in different scenarios in order to avoid greater harm, suffering, and death. Above all, because they have had to constantly deal with ideological positions that, rather than helping, sabotage their efforts. 

One can clearly see two poles within the same logic. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a health problem that affects the entire planet, the search for solutions has been marked—rather, distorted—by ideological positions, by political tensions, and by deep alienation or off-the-mark postures produced by these positions.

Let us go to the case of ideological distortion over the policies Sweden has embarked upon as it confronts the Covid-19 pandemic. Some on the Right elevate as an example the greater flexibility in the Swedish government’s public health policies regarding Covid-19, but, to be polite, neither seeing nor showing the entire picture. As I have learned from Nietzsche, many times it is more useful to philosophize with a hammer as artisans in order to carefully knock at ideological constructions to thus demonstrate how empty they are. We only need a few simple facts, because it does not take a lot to undermine this ideological position.  

First, Swedish society supports the state, via high taxes compared to other countries, so that the state can execute various social programs including health and education—personal income tax can range up to 59%.[1] It is important to highlight that Sweden has doubled the number of intensive care unit (ICU) beds since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.[2] We should also add that the country has sufficient health personnel to attend these beds. Another crucial point is that Sweden spends 11% of its GDP on the health of its population, of which 84% alone comes from the state.[3] That is, the Swedish state directs 9.2% of the GDP to health.[4] This 9.2% comes out to USD51.160 billion every year for a population of a little more than 10 million.[5]

Second, the Swedish state has invested for years in a strong education policy that is recognized the world over. This country devotes 7.67% of its GDP to education, which comes out to USD42.652 billion a year.[6]

Keeping in mind these investments from citizens in their state and from the state in its citizens, which is quite particular to this country, it is not strange that Sweden’s public health strategy is based on trust in the citizenry complying with preventative measures that are more flexible. The mutual investment and trust between state and society has been of long construction. Without this long-standing pact, it is impossible to fully understand the strategy.

Given all of this, as of May 21, 2020 according to Johns Hopkins and Worldometer, Sweden has 32,172 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 3,871 deaths. This gives us a case fatality rate of 12%. This does not mean that Sweden’s policies are bad; it means that no one was entirely prepared to confront this kind of problem, not even a country where citizens strongly support the state, in paying taxes and following norms, coming from a time-honored policy of social security and education.

The conclusion is very obvious regarding the disconnect from reality in the Right’s distorted ideological use of Sweden’s policies, but even so, I want to spell it out.

The participation of both state and society in the health policy strategy that Sweden has undertaken is very high and is not solely limited to this present moment of global pandemic. Sweden has world-renowned social security, education, and health policies and these were possible thanks to the strong presence of the state in these policies and the support of its citizens.

Now I will turn to those on the Left. Some use capitalism the way some religious people use their different places of eternal suffering. You can also see the clear the divide between “good” and “evil” that they draw. Within that division, for example, business owners are “evil” for letting their employees go in the midst of a pandemic, when, in reality, many business owners have even had to shut down their businesses. That neat division between “good” and “evil” ignores, rather, that there is a system that places capital as the leitmotif of the movement of history, at least according to dialectical materialism. From the perspective that capital determines social relations, people cannot be “good” or “evil” because, obviously, it is capital that determines social relations. Indeed, according to this conceptualization, without capital there would be neither the possibility of employment nor of business. Nevertheless, some seek to find the blame only in “evil business owners” for job losses.

It is crucial to analyze the exitless labyrinth of some on the Left. One path through this is what I have learned from Marx and, especially, Hegel.

Marx wrote about the material conditions in which a great part of the population of England found itself during the beginning of the industrial revolution, based on reports by professionals and intellectuals submitted to the House of Commons. However, in his desire to change those material conditions, he proposed that a class of people forged by the capitalist logic of accumulation would become the liberators. What does this achieve? To further imprison everyone within the same logic, which, through hoping to strengthen the position of “the weakest part,” only achieves that “the strongest part” seeks to intensify its own position within that same logic. That last part I learned from Hegel. According to what Hegel’s dialectic, more specificially his book on the Phenomenology of Spirit, taught me, I have come to the following conclusion: the more that one position is intensified against another, the only thing achieved is that the other position also intensifies, diminishing the possibility of a search for a synthesis that might free us from that very logic that binds and tightens those two positions. It is necessary to go beyond what these two positions offer us, at least if we want to be free from implacable logics.  

The most pathetic outcome for these ideological tendencies is, in the case of the Right, when they pretend to be “entrepreneurs” who love freedom and seek to offer the best to society, instead seeking a compensation while acting like a feudal lord or vassal. On the other hand, one cannot claim to study social phenomena using a dialectical materialist method and be an “ideologically dogmatic marxist.” The first step toward transcendance, evidently, is to leave the absurd. Escape the constraining binds of a single implacable logic that leads to the absurd.

There is a mathematical rule: the opposite of a number is the same number, but with the opposite sign. The more you reaffirm the existence of one number in a logic, the same number with the other sign is also reaffirmed within that same logic. But we also know that there aren’t just two numbers, opposites, in math. Numbers are infinite; and so are possibilities. It’s much better to choose other numbers, not just the sign opposite of a number. Or, to say it another way, to not lose the ability to question norms, logical tendencies, and social tensions with the object of freeing our minds and granting us new perspectives on the path of our lives.

One thing that might serve as a base is reciprocity. Other forms of reciprocity, beginning with our relationship to land. I think that the greatest alienation comes from this: from the alienation of our relationship to the earth, the disconnection of our very selves from land or the distorsion of that relationship. If we repair our relationship to land (including all living things), we can work with the earth to yield fruit that truly helps us to become self-sustaining, to make products that serve us and might be exchanged with others; and from that, to build a greater respect and care for the earth in recognition of all that it offers, and then to generate new reciprocities with others as well. We should do this from “intelligent selfishness,” since the earth and others give us what we need to survive and thrive. In other words, cultivating the land, ourselves, and our relationships with others in respect and balance grants us great freedom and wellbeing, much moreso than if we cultivate hatred of those who have a different ideological tendency.

It’s clear that in order to have a new perspective, it’s necessary to get out of the trap of the two positions bound within the same logic. This is the greatest of alienations because there’s no single Logic. Taking the first step is difficult, but it’s more urgent every day.

Under the influence of the powerful alienation produced by these kinds of “positions,” it is no surprise to see so many seduced or submerged in all kinds of baseless fantasies and ridiculous conspiracy theories. The impact of “ideologies” in debates over how best to handle the global health crisis allows us to see that ideological antipodes actually coincide in certain points that are alienated from reality and which impede the careful thought required to seek out pragmatic options that might be better in distinct scenarios. But most notable is the propensity for these two positions to create and fervorously spread conspiracy theories rather than seek out solutions or alternatives.

If there is one force that has demonstrated that we’re capable of wondrous deeds, that force is creativity. There are always nuances, but the truth is that there are also tendencies. We have the capacity to go beyond those tendencies that bind us. We have the ability to create better relationships, better conditions, and quality of life for ourselves alongwith the earth and others. The worst alienation that exists is that which incites us to believe that we live apart from the land, apart from others, and thus not seek to improve those relationships or, worse still, to neither see nor deal with the consequences of our actions toward the earth and toward others.

I apologize, I must say it—adapted from Dante at his arrival at the Inferno—if we continue in this ramshackle logical tension, constantly seeking and creating enemies, we should abandon all hope right then and there, before taking another step.

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REFERENCES

[1] PwC. Taxes in Sweden. https://www.pwc.se/en/business-sweden/taxes-sweden.html Accessed May 19, 2020. Personal income tax ranges from 29-59 percent. 

[2] Anderson, Jenny. “Sweden’s very different approach to Covid-19”. Quartz Daily Brief. 27 abril 2020. https://qz.com/1842183/sweden-is-taking-a-very-different-approach-to-covid-19/

Rocklov, Joacim. “COVID-19 healthcare demand and mortality in Sweden in response to non-pharmaceutical (NPIs) mitigation and suppression scenarios”. COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 preprints from medRxiv and bioRxiv. 10 mayo 2020.  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.20.20039594v3

[3] OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2017). Sweden: Country Health Profile 2017, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels. http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/355998/Health-Profile-Sweden-Eng.pdf?ua=1

[4] World Health Organization Global Health Expenditure database. Domestic general government health expenditure (% of GDP) – Sweden. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.GHED.GD.ZS?locations=SE.  Accessed May 19, 2020.

[5] World Bank. Country Data: Sweden. https://data.worldbank.org/country/sweden.

Accessed May 19, 2020. The most recent data on health expenses are from 2018. The World Bank’s most recent number for Sweden’s GIP is USD556.086 billion in 2018. Extrapolating to the present: 9.2% by USD556.086 billion yields USD51.160 billion.

[6]  UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Government expenditure on education, total (% of GDP) – Sweden. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS?locations=SE. Accessed May 19, 2020. The most recent data on education expenses are from 2016. Extrapolating to the present: 7.67% by USD556.086 billion is USD42.652 billion.