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/233/ Aufhebonus Bonus (Patreon)

Published:
2021-12-21 22:19:53
Imported:
2026-06
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For the last time in 2021, we take your questions, comments and criticisms. 

As always, lots of debate about Covid - and we start by remarking upon a possible u-turn on the issue on the British left. 

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Comments

Matthew Black

This is partially a point directed to AM, a clinician, speaking from my own experience as a primary informal caregiver. I think a specific clinical question that crystallizes what Phil and Alex are talking about is the question of how clinicians evaluate the ability of patients to grasp the clinical judgments about them. In my experience clinicians tend to err strongly on the side of assuming that patients are non-compliant and not very smart, as opposed, say, to over-compliant and too smart for their own good. For example, NPs won’t tell patients a device can be turned off, even if it can and would save them considerable distress, for fear they’d do the wrong thing. I think this is clearly how clinicians evaluate the socially embedded meaning of terms like ‘do your own research.’ There is a strong cultural tendency among clinicians to assume this means injecting yourself full of bleach or some comparably stupid thing.

Matthew Black

In parallel to Alex et al—if the response to the virus is really just a pretext to extend the sinister biopower surveillance grid, you still have to explain why the surveillance grid is bad. Maybe it’s good.

Andrew Mountford

In considering the impact of pandemic policies it isn't just necessary to consider abstract principles and quantity of life - reducing the debate to whether lockdown policies will kill or save more people (a balance sheet which will continue to be quantified for many years to come but also impossible to know how many people would have died from Covid without lockdowns) but also the profound impact on quality of life. So not just in mental wellbeing but the devestating impact of social isolation, promotion of fear, people being unable to see family (particularly if abroad) or see loved ones in care homes or have meaningful and spontaneous social existence. The point being that we also have to factor in the notion that these restrictions have reduced our lives to a stunted, fear-driven and bureaucratised tedium. The left have been unwilling to stand up for or defend a vision of a socialised world in which people draw meaning from spontaneous interaction and this was all thrown under the bus immediately without any thought to it being a problem because saving lives is the only objective of public policy.

NigelBOpinion

I respect you guys being so gracious to AM but I don't see anything particularly insightful or even clever about AM's "No True Scotsman"-type comment. As Phil points out, "lockdown" is obviously shorthand for a complex of repressive policies, which are actually fairly uniform across most western countries. But I guess the distinction between Albany and Adelaide might be lost in that point?

jkjkjkj

I don’t agree with Phil’s estimates on why Owen Jones etc... oppose lockdowns, feels like Phil’s decided it’s because they’re PMCs and just worked backwards from there. If you’re a white collar office worker then work from home has been unambiguously good for you (less commute, less oversight from management and the ability to move to cheaper areas etc...) and lockdown is generally bearable from an economic perspective (school closings provide the only wrinkle, but those do not presuppose lockdowns). My estimate is simply that Jones and gang are labourites that smell blood in the water as BoJo and the Tories pursue unforced political errors via the extremely unpopular lockdowns and hope that the British left (and Labour more broadly) can regain some steam by opposing lockdowns. Even as recently as July of 2021 Johnson’s approval seemed unsinkable and his head to heads vs starmer were dominant until November 2021. there were talks of a new era of Tory dominance as Johnson delivered Brexit, expanded the Tories imagination on the role of government-in-economy and provided a patriotic flag waiving message (without ugly UKIP style xenophobia) that Labour simply couldn’t as its base was taken over by cosmopolitan educated urbanites. The lockdowns aren’t the only thing that have hurt Johnson, but they’re bleeding him, and it’s an issue that goes far beyond the hypocrisy. If Jones etc want to return Labour (and particularly the Labour left) to prominence, then it makes sense that they would shift on lockdowns, as it’s a real point of weakness that is bringing down what otherwise looked like an electoral juggernaut in Johnson’s Tories.

J P 3

In the U.S., the thing that was driving COVID policy wasn't the "PMC" or technocrats (it may have been different elsewhere). Policy was being driven by a combination of labor and business interests. In areas where labor has some actual power, the rules tended to offer more protection for workers. In areas where business interests dominate the push to feed workers into the meat grinder was higher. On balance, the biggest beneficiaries of COVID response measures in the U.S. wasn't the PMC, it was biggest capitalists. A guy like Elon Musk was pushing hard to keep his business open and production running throughout the pandemic (and he is much, much richer now than he was even a year ago). Same with Jeff Bezos. In terms of the use of the Defense Production Act -- a law that effectively gives the federal government the power to compel business to produce certain goods -- the Trump administration failed to invoke this authority when we were dealing with shortages of PPE early in the pandemic to provide protective gear for health care workers. However, the Trump administration did invoke this authority for slaughterhouse and meatpacking facilities. What this meant for workers in these jobs is that they weren't eligible for some of the temporary generous unemployment benefits that were available to laid off service sector workers. Even during "good times" conditions in these facilities are not great. There were several hundreds deaths directly linked to work in these jobs, tens of thousands of COVID cases (second and third order effects were almost certainly higher). There were record profits though for the business owners and investors in these interests. As far as the "wins" for the PMC, it really depends. For people who were able to work from home, some of these "wins" were double-edged. e.g. now some of these workers get to have the "advantage" of being on call 24/7 with work from home being constantly monitored by employers with work issued computers. Educators are facing a backlash for school closures, however, a lot of this backlash wasn't initially coming from working class parents, it was coming from social conservatives and wealthier suburbs. There's also been a lot of money from billionaires like the Koch network who have opportunistically used the crisis as a way of advancing a school privatization agenda. The Koch network also used the crisis to push a "herd immunity" strategy (e.g. see recent reporting on the Great Barrington Declaration by Walter Bragman and Alex Kotch).

dshamz_

Hey guys, great work as always. A couple of episodes back, Phil made some interesting comments on the nature of existing labour unions and how their bureaucratization and integration with the state has made them into ineffective vehicles for challenging the domination of capital. I largely agree with this assessment (though I think the idea of independent trade unionism is useful and necessary), and I think an episode exploring this would be very interesting and practically useful to organizers in sectors without an existing union presence. Thanks again for keeping your show rolling and consistently bringing original perspectives!

Jennifer Baldwin

Really good episode. One thing that I wanted to ask was about working class political organisation as Phil made reference to the fact it doesn’t exist. I feel quite the opposite as the opposition to the lockdowns and vaccine mandates/passports has seen a massive worldwide demonstration of working class engagement in politics. This definitely has a majority working class participation. It is certainly crossing left/right boundaries And though there is a chaotic nature to it it is very passionate and strongly felt. It is true that the politics is often crude and chaotic but there is an appetite for political engagement and knowledge that I haven’t witnessed in my lifetime in the UK. The closest you could come would be opposition to the Iraq war or the campaign for Brexit. But in terms of ground up local organising it is new and persistent regardless of the lack of any support from mainstream political parties or trade unions or civil liberties groups.

Jennifer Baldwin

The question I wanted to ask was what counts as political organisation.

AM

This was a thoughtful and generous response and I enjoyed listening to it. Thanks! I think your points about expertise versus technocracy were well made. One last comment on the ambiguity of the term “lockdown” as both a catch-all shorthand for government responses to covid, and as the key point of focus for criticism. From all corners there seems to have been a coupling of restrictive policies with (for want of a better word) supportive ones: furlough pay, free testing, childcare, other forms of income and housing support, healthcare funding and so on. Invariably, these policies have been rolled out and rolled back simultaneously and the “living with covid” rhetoric has been explicitly positioned as a move from collective response to an individual one. This approach will always favour people with money, power and good health over those without, and has been convenient for governments with no real interest in the health and living standards of their populations. So, while it looks like lockdowns are probably behind us for good in Australia and the UK, there is still plenty of space for critique of cynical and undemocratic responses to a pandemic that is very much still in progress.