Call for Papers PROKLA 206

Corona and the consequences: Winners, Losers and Opportunities for a New Societal Policy (Issue 1, March 2022)

The COVID 19 pandemic began one and a half years ago. In the political and social science debate, it has often been emphasised that the pandemic acts like a burning glass and shows where social priorities lie, along which lines inequalities structure society, what works well and what does not work so well. This became particularly clear in the health systems: In view of scarce medical treatment and bed capacities as well as supply and production bottlenecks of various kinds, the necessity of a functioning emergency, health and medicine supply has suddenly become the focus of politics, science and the public.

But the effects of the pandemic are not limited to the health sector. The specific combination of collapses on the supply and demand side of the economy have led to declines on a global scale that exceed the effects of previous crises such as the financial crisis of 2008/2009. A special feature this time was that government action could not simply aim to stimulate economic recovery with relevant measures. On the contrary, restrictions in the form of lockdowns had to be imposed to combat the pandemic, which almost brought the economy to a standstill, especially in the consumption-oriented service sectors. To compensate, economic and social policy measures were taken to varying degrees. In Germany, for example, access to short-time allowances was made easier and a Corona economic stimulus programme was launched. More than 130 billion euros were used to deal with the consequences of the Corona pandemic and the biggest economic crisis of the post-war period. The EU decided on a 750 billion euro reconstruction fund. And in the USA, the Biden administration presented a 1.9 trillion US dollar economic stimulus package.

The pandemic not only led to an economic crisis and extensive government intervention that seemed completely unthinkable as long as the fiscal dogma of the "black zero" was upheld. It has also exposed social inequalities that affect access to health care as well as income and wealth within nation states and on a global scale. The risk of contracting corona and possibly suffering severe disease progression is extremely unequally distributed and affects people with lower incomes much more than the better-off everywhere. Decisive factors here are housing as well as working conditions. While many who had a better health status in the first place were able to retire to home offices in large flats, others had to continue working in direct contact in mail-order warehouses, hospitals, slaughterhouses etc. and were at the mercy of corona outbreaks. The stark inequalities continued in access to vaccinations. In the US, for example, Blacks, Latinos and Latinas or other poor people had to go to the back of the queue for vaccinations given the common system of prioritisation. The picture is similar at the international level. By mid-May 2021, 820 million people worldwide had received at least one primary vaccination, but 88 per cent of them live in the rich countries of the North and only 0.2 per cent in the 50 least developed countries according to UN criteria.

In addition to the serious inequalities in health care, winners and losers must also be asked about income and wealth. The support programmes in many countries have at least temporarily prevented blatant forms of hardship for those who lost their jobs or otherwise suffered significant income losses. Massive support was also given to the self-employed and businesses, although the criteria according to which substantial sums were distributed often remained obscure. Nevertheless, initial findings show that those who own particularly large fortunes have benefited especially. It is precisely the very richest - billionaires - who are the clear winners of the redistribution that has taken place in the wake of the pandemic and the measures associated with it. The world's 2,700 billionaires have increased their wealth by six percent in 2020.

On the one hand, the booklet wants to take stock, on the other hand, possible perspectives are to be discussed. What will happen after the pandemic? Questions that interest us and on which contributions are welcome include the following aspects:

• Can we assume a permanent "return of the state"? If so, what does that mean in concrete terms? Is there really a chance to strengthen the health care system while pushing back market and profit logics? Can Covid-19 be a "wake-up call for a new public goods policy" (Berthold Vogel)?
  Have new forms of solidarity between workers developed in the pandemic that contain potentials for a new politics of labour and its democratisation?Whereas in the financial crisis of 2007/2008 the financial system was considered systemically relevant, in the Corona crisis it is professions and activities in the field of personal services. These are often lower paid and less recognised than other professions. What are the chances of achieving real upgrading here and what measures are needed to achieve this?
• The distribution of income and wealth has become increasingly unequal in recent decades and, according to Thomas Piketty, is approaching the situation that prevailed in many countries before the First World War. To what extent has the pandemic reinforced these trends among companies and households alike?
• In the crisis, the discourse on "organisational resilience" has received attention. Does this discourse offer points of departure from a politically progressive and critical social science perspective or does it rather obscure the view of radical socio-political solutions?
• On the international level, to what extent have the contrasts between the Global North and the Global South been further exacerbated by differences in access to vaccines?

The editors invite submissions of exposés of 1-2 pages by 6 September 2021. Finished articles should be submitted by 12 December 2021 and should not exceed 45,000 characters (including spaces, footnotes and bibliography). Please send to: redaktion@prokla.de, martin.beckmann@verdi.de and dorothea.schmidt@hwr-berlin.de