Jacobin Radio: Mike Davis and Robert Brenner

  Podcasting in the time of coronavirus: Suzi's new episode of Jacobin Radio features interviews with Marxist greats Mike Davis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Davis_(scholar)) and Robert Brenner (https://www.versobooks.com/authors/443-robert-brenner). Mike Davis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Davis_(scholar)) is writing widely on the COVID-19 pandemic in Jacobin (https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/mike-davis-coronavirus-outbreak-capitalism-left-international-solidarity) and the Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mike-davis-covid-19-essay/). Fifteen years ago, Davis published The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu, and he sees the coronavirus pandemic as the familiar monster now at our door. We get his views on the huge challenges coronavirus poses for humanity, and the impotence of global capitalism in the face of biological crisis. He calls it a “Medical Katrina” that exposes the woeful unpreparedness of our disinvested public health system as well as the stark class divide of health care in the United States. Suzi then turns to Robert Brenner (https://www.versobooks.com/authors/443-robert-brenner) for his analysis of the deepening crisis and its political implications. Brenner says that the economic meltdown was triggered by COVID-19 but not caused by it. We get his account of the politics — that is of the way wealth is now attained by political rather than the old-fashioned means: how an alliance of top corporate managers and the very rich, plus leading politicians from both political parties, have rigged the political economy in favor of the 1 percent. It is from the standpoint of this transition from capitalism (back) to feudalism that we need to understand how the crisis is unfolding and the various political responses to it, from the establishment and from the Left.