What is COVID capitalism?

ABSTRACT

The term ‘COVID capitalism’ designates the ways capitalism and the novel coronavirus alter and amplify one another. In this paper, I look at four major features that characterize this relationship so far. (1) Capitalist extraction and urbanization increase exposure to new viruses. (2) Capitalism increases the spread of infectious disease. (3) COVID amplifies inequalities that benefit capitalists. (4) COVID has led to profits, bailouts, and deregulation for capitalists.

The increasing frequency of COVID and other pandemics not only amplifies existing capitalist structures but feeds back into those structures and becomes an advantage to capitalism. I argue here that COVID is not a threat to capitalism but rather a mutagen altering and magnifying it.

KEYWORDS:

• Capitalism
• COVID
• COVID capitalism
• climate
• migration
• inequality
• politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See thesis number four below for a brief review of the literature on COVID capitalism.

2 See later in this paper for more details on this issue.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Nail

Thomas Nail is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and author of numerous books, including The Figure of the Migrant, Theory of the Border, Marx in Motion, Theory of the Image, Theory of the Object, Theory of the Earth, Lucretius I, II, III, Returning to Revolution, and Being and Motion. His research focuses on the philosophy of movement.