Cyrus Bina

Division of Social Sciences, University of Minnesota, Morris, USA

ABSTRACT

While pandemics are pervasive, this is for the first time that the capitalist mode of production reached the outer limits of biology, biosphere, ecology, economy, geography, and international relations in unison resulting in an all-encompassing crises that devastated the entire planet. The upshot of this pandemic has overwhelmed the infrastructure of public health across the globe with stunning speed and with infections in millions in just a few months and the velocity of economic damage and devastation much worse than the Great Depression of the last century. It is also the “proof of the pudding” for the “conquest of mode of production”—à la Marx and against the view of majority on the left that incorrectly identify globalization as neoliberalism—i.e., holding a doctrine as an epoch. It is implicit that this crisis must alarm those assembling within the Cox-Robinson group in heterodox international relations theory that seemingly holds unto a mirage of “neoliberal international order”—amounting to self-delusion that indeed may have its own Catch-22. Precise periodization of capitalism is inseparable from value theory. This paper underscores the authenticity of value-theoretic periodization toward the identity of our epoch.

KEYWORDS

Bio-Economic crisis; COVID- 19; globalization; neoliberalism mantra; periodization

From: International Critical Thought 2020 10 (4)

Editor: Wang Yi