A new social street economy : an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Corona is not the first epidemic that the human race encountered, and similar to previous epidemic crises, it has confronted humanity with many social, political, cultural, and economic catastrophes. However, what distinguishes COVID-19 from the previous epidemic crisis is that it has spread throughout the world, and has been directing and transforming world politics, peoples, economy, and social life since the beginning of the Modern era, which has Industrial revolution as its starting point. The effort of humans to objectify nature, to transform it into the position of the Other, and to transform it to his own benefit as much as possible gained speed especially after the industrial revolution. The global trade-based market economy and capitalism began to dominate the global world from the sixteenth century onwards, after a six-century development and maturation process. As a product of capitalism, instrumental reason arises that operates according to cost– benefit analysis and seeks the importance of everything, including humans and nature, from a utilitarian point of view, not in its being humanitarian, moral, or coherent, but in the relationship between cost and benefit. The main purpose of industrialisation together with capitalism is the transformation of nature, sweeping the world reserves, taking the technology and science at its service. As a socioeconomic and political structure specific to modern society, capitalism continues its existence by constantly renewing itself with its internal contradictions. The COVID-19 crisis has come to overshadow the ongoing economic crisis, deepening in many different dimensions since 2018. The leaders of neoliberal market economy policies of the last 40 years are trying to overcome the deep depression they caused, thanks to the Corona crisis. All world countries, especially the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China, continue to offer a wide variety of solutions to the existing business world for months with measures such as incentives, supports, tax reductions, interest-free loans, and debt delays. The surplus values accumulated in the safe-deposits of international and supranational institutions such as the World Bank and the International Money Fund (IMF) continue to serve the governments in the form of gratuitous grants in some countries and interest-bearing loans in some countries to sustain the capitalist accumulation.