Unbridled liberalism and a pandemic: At a crossroads between techno authoritarianism and a new social order

Abstract

This paper analyses some of the trends in global capitalism prior to the pandemic and some specificities of the latter that are likely to place the global economy at a crossroads between maintaining the prevailing trend of techno authoritarianism in the governance of countries and a change in the social order. It describes the arrival of the pandemic amid increasing technologization and a fragile socioeconomic architecture, which has been deteriorating since the emergence of neoliberalism in the 1980s and, especially, since the 2008–2009 financial crisis. The major trends analysed are: globalization and the rise of China, wage stagnation and the gap between productivity and wages, along with the explosion in the rate of profit, in addition to (financial and non-financial) corporate profits and the convergence of artificial intelligence and automation. It also outlines a number of lessons to be learned from the pandemic.