Bitter Bread

Trump is madly, disastrously wrong (no surprise) in his threat to reopen the economy sooner than public health experts advise—thereby disrupting what may be humanity's last possible chance to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Besides, the economic damage is going to come from the virus's transmission and its impact on our health system, as much as from trying to shut the economy down—and these effects will be even worse if we end the time of social distancing.

All of that is true and notorious. That does not mean, however, it is entirely false to point out there are costs on both sides of the policy question, where this virus is concerned.

The costs of social distancing will be relatively light for some of us, and easy to bear. If we can work from home without loss of income, the worst we have to face is boredom and loneliness. But for those who are losing paychecks, unable to make rent, unable to find customers, unable to pay utility bills, living precarious existences in the informal economies that support vast sectors of humanity—it is true that recessions, in addition to viruses, take lives.

It is the height of human perversity that this has become a right-wing talking point in the last few days. The same pundits now making this claim are the same people who have done the most to eliminate protections for low-wage workers, gut spending on social programs, introduce "work requirements" for people who need public benefits to live, etc.

The hypocrisy is palpable among conservatives who are invoking the specter of human suffering from the economic shutdown, when they just torpedoed a Congressional relief package because of their unwillingness to include employment protections for workers at companies receiving massive cash bailouts.

But forget them. The knee-jerk response from the left makes little more sense. The trending hashtag of the day puts it: NotDying4WallStreet, and they are right to point out the avarice and callousness undergirding the right's gathering backlash against the practice of social distancing. What they are missing, however, is that it is not only the wealthy with large stock portfolios who are going to feel the consequences of recession.

Indeed, they will bear very few of those costs—at most having to watch as the size of their portfolios temporarily contracts, but it will be for them mostly a number on a screen. Not something that affects their ability to feed themselves, to house themselves.

The situation is altogether different for contractors, temporary workers, people working without papers, low-wage workers, restaurant workers, coffeeshop workers, gig economy workers, owners of their own small businesses. Those who have experienced already the cascading and compounding effects of poverty will know how these grind down upon one another—a missed rent check, utility bill, car or mortgage payment can deprive one of one's most basic needs.

And a missed parking ticket, citation, or summons could be even worse—leading to a bench warrant that could entangle you in the criminal justice system.

When these are the stakes, which is the worse social sin? Which the greater act of uncharity? To go to a nearby coffeeshop and risk making a tiny contribution to spreading the coronavirus? Or not to go and risk making a tiny contribution to putting more people out of work?

Probably the former, given the horrors of this disease and the damage it has wrought to the people and health systems of the countries where it has spread the furthest. But to say that the choice is patently obvious, that there are no costs whatsoever on that side of the ledger, is an instance of moral hedgehoggery of the worst sort.

I suppose the left's response to all this is of course to agree about the devastating consequences of recession on people whose livelihoods were already precarious, but to insist that this is simply an argument for making a massive deployment of public resources to protect people's jobs and basic needs in the interval, rather than making a disastrous attempt to revive normal economic activity at a time when it will lead to cascading health effects (and anyways destroy the economic recovery we are seeking in the process, through further spreading the disease and overwhelming health systems).

Yes, they are right again. But so frustratingly one-dimensional in their rightness. Some are even positively gleeful at the prospect of social transformation that they imagine to be the inevitable result of all this. At last, we are in an age when governments will have virtually no choice but to implement "modern monetary theory," push deficit spending to its limits, mobilize unprecedented public resources, and provide a universal basic income. At last, we will tackle inequality and maybe even have a Green New Deal to boot!

I see something else. The present moment may create unprecedented opportunities for public spending. But by the same token, it creates unprecedented opportunities for centralization—including the centralization of economic power. A shut-down of virtually all economic activity that does not take place online, or by means of home delivery, is going to prove a massive accelerant to long-term trends in our economy that were already underway—the demise of brick-and-mortar retail, the concentration of economic power in a small number of tech giants and companies with existing nationwide distribution systems.

An infusion of public spending in the form of direct cash transfers to people is needed and warranted in such a world. I certainly support it. But it does not, on its own, do anything to limit the concentration of economic power in a small number of hands that we have already seen in recent decades; nor, in some of the most important senses, therefore, does it strike at the heart of inequality in our society.

To take away people's livelihoods and make up for it with dole checks (and this is essentially what the formula of social distancing+massive cash transfers amounts to) may be the best anyone can do for the immediate future, in the face of a global pandemic. But it is certainly not a utopian transformation and golden opportunity for social democracy. People for the most part do not actually want their jobs, small businesses, and livelihoods to be entirely swept away, with only the promise of a government check to replace them.

Why? Partly because it leaves their survival and basic needs entirely at the mercy of a political class that has proven wondrously ineffective at meeting these needs in a non-discriminatory manner—and dysfunctional at accomplishing much else besides. And perhaps it is precisely the resulting distrust of public institutions that has operated as a self-fulfilling prophecy: there is a Pygmalion effect at play here. When people refuse to see government as a potential solution to large social problems, it never will be, because it will never be granted the resources and latitude to operate as such.

However this may be, we still have to live in the world we have. And I wonder how many of us, when it came down to it, would really like to trade in our paychecks for an annual contribution from the U.S. Congress, and just have to trust that, year after year, until our death, the legislative branch will continue to appropriate the money to meet our basic needs, without ever withdrawing it. Surely this would be the essence of the misery of dependence—to have one's survival hang upon the decisions of the state.

Even if we were to guarantee such government-funded incomes on some more solid or seemingly permanent basis—perhaps as a Constitutional amendment, say—I still doubt that people would prefer it. Capitalism has proven successful at many things; where it has proven evil and iniquitous, always, is in the ways it deprives people of a sense of control over their lives and futures. It uproots, displaces, disrupts, forces people to leave their communities and traditional livelihoods.

A massive shut-down of economic activity, to be replaced with transfer payments from the government, is hardly a solution to this evil. It may be the best or only course of action under certain conditions, but it is not the cure for capitalism's greatest ills. That will only come from practices of industrial democracy and support for small-scale economic activities that meaningfully distribute economic power throughout more hands in our society.

Shaw's Major Barbara may have argued that to fill people's bellies is more important than to save their souls. What this basic and oft-expressed idea—echoing through left-wing history from Engel's speech at Marx's graveside on— leaves out, however, is that people rightly have the audacity to demand that both their souls and their bellies will be satisfied. They want bread and roses.

To simply promise to meet people's needs indefinitely without offering them a chance to exert control over their livelihoods and immediate surroundings is to offer bread alone—and a bitter bread at that. In Pushkin's tale "The Queen of Spades," he speaks of the "bitterness of dependence," citing a line of Dante's: "The bread of the stranger is bitter [...] and his staircase hard to climb." (Keane trans.)

To live on government largesse is to taste only bread that has been offered on the sufferance of politicians, and may the next day be withdrawn. It may be necessary to tide us all over, but it should not be the social end we seek, which is to restore human economies to a structure and constitution that will allow each of us to exert some control over—as Gandhi put it—our "own life and destiny."