From social control to genetic control. Pandemic, authoritarianism, and social resistance

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic causes widespread uncertainty, to the point of paralyzing productive apparatus on a planetary scale. Rarely has capitalism experienced such a complex crisis. After two years of sanitary emergency, the real situation and the possible evolution of the pandemic are still uncertain. Contrary to what the devotees of neoliberalism proclaim, the end of history is finally the metaphor of the unviability of capitalism. The answers have been diverse, but global powers have sought to take advantage of the crisis to increase their control over society. On the other hand, community logics have tried to respond with more collective, solidarity-based and even ancestral alternatives, as was the case with the management of pandemic. The greatest threat is the use of fear to increase not only the mechanism of bio-surveillance of people, but also the individualized control of the entire population. The development of genetics, accelerated by the fight against coronavirus, enhances the possibilities of political action over genetic structure of people. Face to this threat, peoples around the world have the option of empowering their resistance from cultural diversity. The enormous mobilizations in 2019 exposed a multiplicity of agendas and identities, so wide that they become uncontrollable from the centrality of power. Capitalism can be besieged from a great variety of positions that intervene simultaneously.