COVID 9-11: Paradigm Shift

 

Since the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic, Iran, with a population of 81 million, has so far reported 95,646 cases of the disease and 6,091 deaths. Meanwhile Britain, with a population of 40 million has reported 27,510 deaths from 177,454 cases. The Iranians credit the disparity in the death toll to the fact that while Britain was enduring the ravages of 1980s Thatcherism, the Islamic Revolution was busy building a world class public health system.

The global response to the current pandemic has indeed exposed the extreme depravation of public healthcare in so-called developed economies following a 40 year program of neolibersal slash and burn economics. Some on the left have even expressed the view that we are witnessing the collapse of capitalism. Alas nothing could be further from the truth. What we are seeing rather is the transformation of capitalism as it adapts to colonise and occupy the digital space of the 4^th industrial estate.

The Australian Government has recently launched its COVIDSafe app, developed by Singapore GovTech as part of its Digital Government Initiative, with data hosting provided by Amazon. The Morrison government is now blackmailing the population into downloading the app voluntarily, on pain of continued lock downs. But with the pandemic having largely run its course, this is arguably an unnecessary measure which serves no useful purpose beyond increased data gathering capability.

Could it be that COVIDSafe has little to do with public health, and much to do with establishing a permanent surveillance state? Could it be that the pandemic itself is being used as a pretext for a radical transformation of the global economy? Rather than collapsing under the weight of its internal contradictions, as Marx would have it, I suggest that capitalism is simply adapting and evolving to changing conditions.

A new system of global governance is currently being rolled out under cover of a pandemic response. One aspect of this will be a new digital financial system, with new payment platforms including cashless benefits based on digital identity to be integrated into the global surveillance state. New satellite arrays and 5G terrestrial communications are coming online to power a network of digital health passports, bio-tracing, geo-fencing and haptic feedback, integrating us into a virtual world of augmented reality. (In case you were wondering what the 5G towers were for.) Think smart contracts, smart cities, smart homes with smart appliances, and the exploitation of human capital on a scale hitherto unimagined.

The age of bio-tech brings the realisation of human capital bonds, a technocratic wet dream which was first advanced in the 1980s, but deemed too impractical to implement. Digital classrooms, digital medical consultations, digital transactions online and at the grocery store and digital interactions with government appendages such as social security will all become data collection points in this new information economy. Data is the new wealth. Pay for success is the business model. All aspects of human experience, from work to leisure to health and education outcomes will be quantised, branded, packaged and traded as financial instruments.

UN-backed pay-for-success sustainable development goals (SDGs) will be the gold standard in this new global casino. One such SDG is subtitled target 16.9 and aims to provide legal identity for approximately 1 billion undocumented people by 2030. Seems like a noble goal on its face. If only it were so innocuous.

“The ID2020 Alliance has launched a new digital identity program at its annual summit in New York, in collaboration with the Government of Bangladesh, vaccine alliance Gavi, and new partners in government, academia, and humanitarian relief.

The program to leverage immunization as an opportunity to establish digital identity was unveiled by ID2020 in partnership with the Bangladesh Government’s Access to Information (a2i) Program, the Directorate General of Health Services, and Gavi, according to the announcement.”

A combination nano and blockchain technologies will be used to create COVID-19 immunity passports. This will be achieved by injecting a quantum dot under the skin together with a vaccine. The polite name for this is a bio-metric passport. The crude name is a digital tattoo.

U.S.-based quantum dot producer Quantum Materials Corp (QMC) announced its blockchain-based QDX HealthID for transparency in disease testing and immunization for infectious diseases. The goal is to ensure the authenticity of health data and support individuals to re-join the workforce quickly.

Quantum dots are nanoparticles made up of semiconductor materials that emit different colors when illuminated by light. This color depends on their size and the way they were manufactured. QMC has developed a track and trace solution using quantum dots and blockchain to verify the origin of products and counterfeiting.

With the health data backed by blockchain, governments and health agencies can formulate new plans and safety measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases. Additionally, individual users can assess their immunization passport using a mobile application. The app features color-coded indicators — green, yellow, and red. If the app shows the green indicator, the individual has clearance to interact in social and work environments. This indicator can be shared and authenticated by others using a QR code. 

Once the digital ID is created the next step is to assign a digital wallet containing ones digital credit card, digital drivers license, and digital health record. Add to this a universal basic income and strict compliance-based service delivery and we're all set to be farmed as data commodities in the new digital panopticon.

In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn presented his notion of a paradigm shift as a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. Kuhn claimed that such a shift was akin to a religious conversion, necessitating the adoption of a whole new conceptual framework. While getting to where we are since the previous industrial revolution has been a cumulative process of continuity within a normative framework, moving forward will be a revolutionary process - one which we can only approach with “informed bewilderment”.

So far the Fourth Industrial Revolution is looking pretty ugly, but if you accept the nomenclature, we've already survived three previous ones, with plenty of resistance on the part of the working class. From wiki: “The original Luddites were British weavers and textile workers who objected to the increased use of mechanized looms and knitting frames. ... They called themselves “Luddites” after Ned Ludd, a young apprentice who was rumored to have wrecked a textile apparatus in 1779.” We see a similar phenomena today with people setting fire to the ‘5G cancer towers’.

To state the obvious, technology is not our enemy - rather the use to which it is put. Information technology offers a world of possibilities. With a free and open internet we could develop our own cryptocurrencies, freeing ourselves from debt based finance. The gathering of medical data on a scale hitherto unseen could be used to provide rapid and accurate diagnosis and optimal treatment for anyone, anywhere, rather than turning us all into factory farmed guinea pigs for a rapaciuous pharmaceutical industry.

There's a lot we're doing which we could be doing differently. We might question whether we really need those 5G towers, or an Internet of Things. Would such a technology have ever evolved if the means of production were in the hands of the workers? Maybe not. But would driverless cars? Undoubtedly. Mechanisation is indisputably a good thing, if it frees us from our daily chores and allows us to enrich our lives through leisure or learning or creativity. For those committed to the class struggle our purpose remains, as ever, to seize the means of production and put it to use for the benefit of all. A couple of obvious suggestions for what this might look like - Facebook, Google and YouTube could be turned into public utilities, and Amazon into a worker co-op.

200 years before Marx and Engels wrote their Manifesto, four prisoners in the Tower of London, Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, Master William Walwyn, Master Thomas Prince, and Master Richard Overton, tendered a peace offering in which they argued that the common people would not benefit from the overthrow of monarchy unless landlords lost their privileges and their lands were transferred to common ownership. This year we're on track to reach 8.6 million data centers around the world, not to mention 2200 artificial satellites. These are the farms and factories of the new international bourgeoisie, and the ground on which we must raise the flag of workers' power. 

As Dave Chapelle reminds us, modern problems require modern solutions. Something to keep in mind as we face the latest frontier of capitalist innovation and exploitation.