We've been witnessing a coordinated ideological project unfold for the last five years, and the left appears to have ceded the field almost entirely.
Between 2020-2021, estimates for excess mortality (globally) range from 5 million to 14 million and beyond.
Pharmaceutical companies raked in hundreds of billions over the same period, some portion of which inevitably was subject to capital spillage -- and during the same time there was vaccine apartheid and a strict favoring of IP against life across the globe.
Wealth inequality became significantly more compounded over the period during and after the official recognition of the ongoing pandemic; and so on.
And what do we now see in this year 2025? An onslaught of books and articles from ostensibly liberal and left-liberal publishers that discuss how a tepid government response with halfhearted lockdowns was a 'overreaction based on bad models and evidence' where the costs outweighed the benefits. That mask mandates were in many cases probably too heavy handed. That the pandemic either was never very deadly in the first place, or quickly became flu-like in its virulence.
See 'An Abundance of Caution' published by MIT Press.
See 'In Covid's Wake', published by Princeton Press.
But based on Biden's term and the sociological production of the 'end of the pandemic', this liberal revisionism has been mounting for years. This rewriting of history comes as no surprise.
What I am surprised about, however, is the vacuum of useful literature on the left -- where is the Marxist analysis of this critical historical moment?
We had a real-time demonstration of:
- How capitalism prioritizes profit over public health
- The mechanics of disaster capitalism in action
- State power mobilized for capital while abandoning workers
- International solidarity crushed by IP regimes
- The manufacture of consent around "acceptable" death rates
But beyond Radhika Desai's Capitalism, Coronavirus and War and scattered podcast episodes, I've found virtually nothing.
Did I miss something? Does history move too quickly for us?
Between the other thread complaining that there is little Marxist theory on AI/LLMs and this complaining there is little Marxist theory on COVID, I would just like to point out that there is a lack of leftist theory on pretty much anything. We simply don't have a lot of people who are super well versed in historical theory who are also willing/capable of building a framework for the present. Out of what does exist, a lot of it is focused on history, especially of the 19th and 20th century.
Is there any theory that intellectuals from the CPC have written about these global problems that haven't been translated?
Interesting that both mention capitalist pearl-clutching of ✌️IP✌️