Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret: COVID-19: The Great Reset. Cologny: Forum Publishing, 2020.
Written six months into the coronavirus pandemic, this book urges the use of the disease to accelerate the project variously known as ‘world government,’ ‘global governance,’ or ‘globalism’. Both authors are economists (the senior author no less than the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum); they keep their ultimate goal vaguely stated, but the end game is fairly obvious. More than three decades ago, I had a conversation with a young middle-management fellow who worked on Wall Street. He earnestly explained how the world would be much better off if executives of international corporations ruled it. Our authors are less blunt in their advocacy for a global oligarchy but it’s safe to say that that’s what they want.
Their rhetorical strategy cannot be described as subtle. The pandemic is “our defining moment”; “many things will change forever.” Luckily, such “deep, existential crises” as this “favor introspection and can harbor the potential for transformation.” Indeed “people feel the time for reinvention has come.” What people? People like themselves, at least for starters, and what a heady thought that is: “A new world will emerge, the contours of which are for us to both imagine and draw,” now that “a fundamental inflection point in our global trajectory” has so happily occurred. How fundamental? Well, “Radical changes of such consequence are coming that some pundits have referred to a ‘before coronovirus’ (BC) and ‘after coronovirus’ (AC) era.” That would be fundamental, all right. One could almost say ‘messianic.’
Past epidemics, notably the Black Death, have led to pogroms, wars, famines. Admittedly, this one “doesn’t pose a new existential threat,” as “whole populations will neither be exterminated nor displaced.” Nonetheless, “the pandemic is dramatically exacerbating pre-existing dangers that we’ve failed to confront adequately for too long,” the chief of which is “the partial retreat from globalization” seen in the rise of nationalism. The authors therefore undertake to show that the only cure for such a horror is a firm move towards internationalism, assuring their readers that “the possibilities for change and the resulting new order are now unlimited and only bound by our imagination, for better or for worse.” “We should take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to reimagine our world, in a bid to make it a better and more resilient one as it emerges on the other side of this crisis.” “Better and more resilient” means (they assure us) “more egalitarian” not “more authoritarian,” with “more solidarity” not “more individualism,” “favoring the interests of the many” not “the few.” Exactly how the administrative rule of organizations like the World Economic Forum would make things more egalitarian, fraternal, and people-favoring has proved a puzzle for ‘progressives’ for the last two centuries or so. For the most part, our authors tiptoe around questions regarding the underlying political question: the regime they have in mind.
Economists to the bone, they deploy textbook jargon in labeling the book’s three main topics: the “macro reset,” the “micro reset,” and “possible consequences at the individual level.” The “macro reset” consists of five categories: economic, social, geopolitical, environmental, and technological; it is noteworthy that “geopolitical” substitutes for political, which would bring up such messy problems of conflicting political regimes which rule sovereign countries. Throughout the discussions of these categories they provide a “conceptual framework” which identifies “three defining characteristics of today’s world”: interdependence, velocity, and complexity. By “interdependence” they mean “the dynamic of reciprocal dependence among the elements that compose a system.” The “system” they have in mind is of course the world itself, which they liken to a cruise ship currently afflicted with a contagious disease spreading from cabin to cabin,” owing to “global governing failure.” By “velocity” they mean the “culture of immediacy” the Internet has wrought. Velocity engenders impatience, a time lag between events and the ability of rulers to react to them, and an overload of information that slows rulers’ decision-making still further. By “complexity” they mean “what we don’t understand or find difficult to understand”—the results of categories 1 and 2 combined with “non-linearity,” which means that “a change in just one component of a system can lead to a surprising and disproportionate effect elsewhere.” One might suppose that this would lead our authors to worry that “global governance” might well prove a hopeless task. One would be mistaken. For example, “Many Asian countries reacted quickly” to the pandemic “because they were prepared logistically and organizationally,” thanks to the previous SARS epidemic, to say nothing (which is exactly what they do say) about the lack of civil liberty under those many regimes.
How would global governance work? Planning, my boy, planning. In terms of economics, we already know that because “wars destroy capital while pandemics do not” economies rebound faster in the aftermath of wars, as people rebuild their cities and factories. When, at the beginning of the pandemic, “governments worldwide made the deliberate decision to shut down much of their respective economies”—a choice the authors endorse because a higher death rate would injure economic life even more—this caused “an abrupt and unsolicited return to a form of relative autarky, with every nation trying to move towards certain forms of self-sufficiency” at the cost of “a reduction in national and global output,” especially in such countries as the United States, where the ‘service sector’ (more seriously injured by policies of ‘social distancing’ than any other) provides 80% of the jobs. “Such a scenario will almost inevitably lead to a collapse in investment among business and a surge in precautionary saving among consumers, with fallout in the entire global economy through capital flight, the rapid and uncertain movement of large amounts of money out of a country, which tends to exacerbate economic crises.” Additionally, the pandemic will accelerate replacement of jobs with machines; while this normally boosts employment in the long run, the velocity of the current shift will lead to greater dislocations, especially among “low-income workers in routine jobs.” The rich may or may not get richer, but the poor will get poorer.
Crucial to our authors’ ‘globalization’ argument is their need to link the global pandemic to another main ‘globalist’ talking point, climate change. Originally, internationalists advocated world government as a cure for war, but now that nuclear weapons have made world wars considerably less palatable to ambitious rulers, climate change has taken its place. “The deep disruption caused by COVID-19 globally has offered societies an enforced pause to reflect on what is truly of value. With the economic emergency responses to the pandemic now in place, the opportunity can be seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will put economies on a new path towards a fairer, greener future.” This in turn “will require”—notice the imperative language—a “shift in the mindset of world leaders”—no longer merely statesmen—to “place greater focus and priority on the well-being of all citizens and the planet.” This means a concurrent shift in the “metrics” by which those “leaders” measure “progress”—specifically, a shift from emphasis on quantitative, material well-being measured by ‘gross domestic product’ (now much too gross and much too domestic—indeed, a form of “tyranny”) toward such ‘quality of life’ activities as “the care economy” (childcare, eldercare), education, and medicine. In keeping with the rhetoric of ‘progress,’ our authors identify “forward-looking countries” as those which “prioritize a more inclusive and sustainable approach to managing and measuring their economies, one that also drives job growth, improvement in living standards and safeguards the planet.”
This is all very well for countries that can afford it, our authors remark, but what about “emerging and developing economies”? “Most of them don’t have the fiscal space required to react to the pandemic shock.” This may well lead to a scenario that any respectable member of the World Economic Forum well might dread: politicians might push central banks into finance “major public projects, such as an infrastructure or green investment fund”—policies leading to huge financial deficits as governments give the banks’ money to their constituents and the consequent “uncontrollable inflation” as governments aim at paying for those expenditures with devalued money. Even in the affluent countries, politicians will be tempted to pursue such policies. If they occur in the United States the dollar itself—long the most trusted currency in the world and the lynchpin of the American economy as it has interacted with the rest of the world—could result in “a much reduced geopolitical role or higher taxation, or both” and more, the possible abandonment of the dollar as the world’s dominant currency.
“To a large extent, US global credibility also depends on geopolitics and the appeal of its social model.” Turning next to the “societal reset,” our authors cite the criticisms of governing institutions throughout the world, very much including the United States, and the exacerbation of social problems in the poorer countries. Countries that have fared better in the pandemic were (sure enough) those for whom “inclusivity, solidarity, and trust” are “core values.” In less hazy terms, that means “cost-effective and inclusive healthcare” systems, bureaucratic preparation, “rapid and decisive decisions,” and “citizens” (one would not wish to say ‘subjects’) who “have confidence in both the leadership and the information they provide” (not to be stigmatized as ‘propaganda’). Therefore, our authors rather breathlessly anticipate a “post-pandemic era” characterized by “massive wealth redistribution, from the rich to the poor and from capital to labor,” the “death knell of neoliberalism” which favors “competition over solidarity, creative destruction over government intervention and economic growth over social welfare.” “It is no coincidence,” they intone, “that the two countries that over the past few years embraced the policies of neoliberalism with most fervor—the US and the UK—are among those that suffered the most casualties during the pandemic.” Ah yes, the frightful Reagan and Thatcher: into the dustbin of History with them! “Massive social turmoil” is in the future of such malefactor societies, and they deserve it.
Help is on the way. “One of the great lessons of the past five centuries in Europe and America is this: acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state.” This time, too, “governments will most likely, but with different degrees of intensity, decide that it’s in the best interests of society to rewrite some of the rules of the game and permanently increase their role,” “as happened in the 1930s.” They will move toward “a broader, if not universal, provision of social assistance, social insurance, healthcare and basic quality services” and toward “enhanced protection for workers and for those currently most vulnerable.” In particular, “the COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the inadequate state of most national health systems.” One might ask, “inadequate” for what? An worldwide emergency—that is, a thing by definition insusceptible to fully effective national responses. And what might meet such an international or global crisis other than “improved global governance”? Our authors hope that you will answer, “Nothing!” and take your bearings from precisely the global crisis instead of the routine national and even regional or local crises.
Hence their central “reset,” the “geopolitical reset.” In this century, “the determining element of geopolitical instability is the progressive rebalancing from the West to the East,” particularly the confrontation between the “rising power,” China, and the “ruling power,” the United States. The “progressive disengagement” of the United States from the world additionally causes countries which had relied on the United States for such “global public goods” as defense of sea lanes and counterterrorism “to tend to their own backyards themselves.” “The 21st century will most likely be an era devoid of an absolute hegemon”; “as a result, power and influence will be redistributed chaotically and in some cases grudgingly.”
Economic globalization will continue, although the pandemic will slow and even reverse it for a time. Our authors instead maintain that economic globalization, political democracy, and the nation state are “mutually irreconcilable.” One of them will need to go, and it isn’t hard to anticipate which one they would like to kiss goodbye. “The rise of nationalism” is their bugbear, “global governance” their preference. As they define it, global governance isn’t exactly equivalent to a world government, at least not yet. Global governance is “the process of cooperation among transnational actors aimed at providing responses to global problems,” encompassing “the totality of institutions, policies, norms, procedures and initiative through which nation states try to bring more predictability and stability to their responses to transnational challenges”—an “effort bound to be toothless without the cooperation of national governments and their ability to act and legislate to support their aims.” That is, global government resembles the law of nations, except that “transnational actors” must seek to bring national actors into line with what transnationalists want to do. For this, the pandemic (added to climate change) may prove a useful crisis, as “COVID-19 has reminded us that the biggest problems we face are global in nature,” yet it hasn’t “triggered a set of measures coordinated globally,” but has instead done the opposite: “a stream of border closures, restrictions in international travel and trade introduced almost without any coordination, the frequent interruption of medical supply distribution and the ensuing competition for resources.” “In a functioning global governance network, nations should have come together to fight a global and coordinated ‘war’ against the pandemic” but the existing system “failed, proving either non-existent or dysfunctional.” Alas, the authors sigh, “the United Nations organization has no power to compel information sharing or enforce pandemic preparedness.”
You can tell that a contemporary political writer is getting desperate when he reaches for analogies to quantum mechanics. Supposedly, the quantum mechanics model teaches us that when it comes to political principles and regimes, “there isn’t a ‘right’ view and a ‘wrong’ view, but different and often diverging interpretations that frequently correlate with the origin, culture, and personal history of those who profess them.” That is, nature as seen through the lens of quantum mechanics yields moral and cultural relativism in world politics. You may “think that observation and measurement define an ‘objective’ opinion, but the micro-world of atoms and particles (like the macro-world of geopolitics) is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics in which two different observers are entitled to their own opinion (this is called a ‘superposition’: ‘particles can be in several places or states at once’).” Therefore, “a ‘Chinese’ view and a ‘US’ view can co-exist, together with multiple other views along that continuum—all of them real!”
What an entertaining sophistry! I exclaim, demonstrating that I too can deploy exclamation points. If nation-states are like subatomic particles, then they too should be capable of being in several places or states at once. But they’re not. A nation-state has borders over which it is sovereign. Those borders may change but they scarcely act as subatomic particles act, or seem to act, depending upon the position of the observer. What our authors could argue to make their argument coherent, if still dubious, is this: habits of mind and heart generally shared in one regime—or, more broadly, in one civilization—often differ radically from habits of heart and mind generally shared in another; the differences between those sets of habits may differ so radically that citizens or subjects within those regimes may form far different opinions concerning moral and political phenomena. Their divergent opinions are indeed equally ‘real’ in the sense that they are sincerely and deeply held. This reality must be taken into account by statesmen—sorry, ‘global leaders.’ But that doesn’t mean that “two different observers are entitled to their own opinion.” It only means that each does in fact have one.
As with almost every political appeal to moral or cultural relativism, our authors’ quantum-mechanics jive covers their own political agendum. Sure enough, a few pages after instructing us on modern physics’ correlation to political science we read: “Wealthier countries ignore the tragedy unfolding in fragile and failing countries at their peril.” A consistent quantum mechanist in politics would add, “or not.” But now our authors have discovered themselves entitled to make such judgments despite their self-alleged incapacity to do so.
Indeed, they insist on it. Both the pandemic and climate change amount to “existential threats to humankind”—objectively speaking, in their opinion. They share five attributes: first, “they are known…systemic risks that propagate very fast in our interconnected world and, in so doing, amplify other risks from different categories; second, “they are non-linear, meaning that beyond a certain threshold, or tipping point, they can exercise catastrophic effects” regionally or globally; third, “the probabilities and distribution of their impacts are very hard, if not impossible to measure”; fourth, and crucially for the ‘globalist’ argument, “they are global in nature and therefore can only be properly addressed in a globally coordinated fashion”; fifth, “they affect disproportionately the already most vulnerable countries and segments of the population.” Finally, both are tied to worldwide population growth, as crowding facilitates viral contagion and larger populations expend more of the pollutants that are said to contribute significantly to global warming. To combat both, “it will be incumbent on us all to rethink our relationship with nature and question why we have become so alienated from it.”
I can answer that last one. We have become alienated from nature because nature can be harsh, with or without global warming. The same science that has theorized quantum mechanics was inaugurated as an effort to conquer nature for the relief of man’s estate—deemed to be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short by one of modern science’s earliest advocates. One need not take so extreme a view, or project so optimistic a solution, to see the point.
But to return to our authors. They propose four main preliminary approaches to these troubles. “Enlightened leadership” will “make ‘good use’ of the pandemic by not letting the crisis go to waste.” They “may want to take advantage of the shock inflicted by the pandemic to implement long-lasting and wider environmental changes”—clearly the intention behind this book. They will emphasize that “we ignore science and expertise at our peril”; that is, we should be more compliant with policies proposed and enforced by people like our authors. This means we must change our “behavior,” acknowledging that we have “no choice but to adopt ‘greener living.'” We should applaud “the motivation for change” which has been “emboldened” by the pandemic, “trigger[ing] new tools and strategies in terms of social activism.” How those “tools” differ from those familiar to anyone who recalls the ‘Movement’ politics of the 1960s remains unclear. However, unlike many on the old New Left, and many in the environmentalist movement, our authors would have us embrace technology, especially contact. But will technology turn into a tool of social and political oppression, as it has done in many of those regimes whose ‘points of view’ (we’ve been assured) are entitled to their own opinions? “It is for those who govern and each of us personally to control and harness the benefits of technology without sacrificing our individual and collective values and freedoms,” they intone, neglecting to suggest how they, and we, might go about doing that. They hurry on to the next level, the “Micro Reset.”
Our authors define “micro” institutions as those governing business and industry. The message is simple: Get on board, or fail. Forget about “a return to business as usual. This won’t happen because it can’t happen.” For capitalists, “the key issue will be to find the apposite balance between what functioned before and what is needed now to prosper in the new normal.” More specifically, this means accelerating the trend toward “stakeholder capitalism,” a term that evidently denotes not simply concern for the demands of consumers and of workers but for the those of climate change activists, advocates of “gender diversity,” and similar groups self-classified as proponents of social justice (typically defined as social egalitarianism). “The pandemic leaves no doubt in boardrooms that the absence” of such considerations “has the potential to destroy substantial value and even threaten the viability of a business” through the “reputational cost” of lawsuits and boycotts. “The ‘price’ of not doing so will be too high in terms of the wrath of activists, both activist investors and social activists.” If sufficiently frightened by the scarecrow of activism, capitalists too can be deployed in cooperation with rather than in opposition to the global governors; both ‘sides’ will work (intentionally or not) at the service of globalists.
As Tocqueville taught his readers nearly two centuries ago, such ‘intermediate’ institutions as townships and counties can inhibit the ambitions of statist centralizers and maintain the spirit of liberty among citizens. On the level of globalism, nation-states serve that function, but so do many capitalist institutions, cities, and universities. Our authors therefore applaud what they take to be the likelihood of de-urbanization in the pandemic’s wake, as companies shift their employees from working in offices to working at home. This will result in “far fewer tenants to rent empty office buildings,” “puncturing the global real estate bubble that [has] been years in the making” and bringing much of the residential real estate market in cities down with it. Same for universities (“particularly the expensive ones in the Anglo-Saxon world”): they, too, “will have to alter their business model or go bankrupt because COVID-19 has made it obsolete.” Why pay “the same high tuition for [the] virtual education” to which universities have resorted? Sure, the online model of education, or some hybrid form resulting from mating it with in-person education, “has the disadvantage of erasing a large aspect of social life and personal interactions on a campus.” Too bad, but that’s the way it will be. The noteworthy, if unstated, theme here is ‘divide and conquer.’ The fewer social “interactions” at work and at school and the more social life becomes ‘virtual.’ the less real resistance to global governance there can be. Traditional institutions capable of resisting globalism will weaken, and flash mobs organized by online agitators won’t stand up for long against well-organized, trained law enforcement officers—especially if they learn to talk the talk of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ which are becoming the (largely rhetorical) price of doing real business.
Finally, the “individual reset.” Whereas natural disasters usually “bring people together,” pandemics “drive them apart.” “Psychologically, the most important consequence of the pandemic is to generate a phenomenal amount of uncertainty that often becomes a source of angst,” then shame, as we hesitate to step up and help one another for fear of infection. “Often, the fear of death ends up overriding all other human emotions.” Fueled by such fear, false rumors and conspiracy theories erode social trust. But this too is only one more crisis not to be wasted, as it invites a debate over what the common good is. For example, in the United States and Britain—those two bastions of the ‘neoliberalism’ our authors earlier scorned—there are persons who argue that recessions kill people as surely as diseases do, and that governments should not be too quick to shut down economic activity in an attempt to control the coronavirus. Ah, yes, our authors riposte, “in the US, recessions do indeed kill a lot of people because the absence of limited nature of any social safety net makes them life-threatening.” And so we are left with what is “ultimately a moral choice about whether to prioritize the qualities of individualism or those that favor the destiny of the community.” Individuals, too, stand in the way of global governance. Community “destiny” ‘must’—as a matter of both historical and moral necessity—take precedence. From complacency about social life in workplaces and schools, our authors now veer toward an endorsement of sociality. “We are social animals for whom the many minor and often nonverbal clues that normally occur during physical social interactions are vital in terms of communication and mutual understanding”; without such communicative clues, our brain is “simply overwhelm[ed], and “we get the feeling of being drained of energy and left with a sense of profound dissatisfaction,” which “in turn negatively affects our sense of mental well-being.” This points to a “reset” of sociality, away from workplaces and schools—let alone the civil associations of self-government Tocqueville admired in America—towards a bureaucratized society, its global governors well out of the reach of its subjects, in which sociality is somehow experienced through government-sponsored social welfare programs. It will be called a worldwide ‘social democracy’ but it will be a socialist oligarchy.
In preparation for this new order, ‘we’ shouldn’t let the crisis go to waste. “Offering as it did the gifts of more time, greater stillness, more solitude (even if an excess of the latter sometimes resulted in loneliness), the pandemic provided an opportunity to think more deeply about who we are, what really matters and what we want, both as individuals and as a society.” Alone, we can undergo a “period of enforced collective reflection”—a very fine turn of phrase, indeed, for connoisseurs of adroit self-contradiction. And what shall ‘we’ think about? Our authors stand ready with helpful suggestions: “Do we know what is important? Are we too selfish and overfocused on ourselves? Do we give too great a priority and excessive time to our career? Are we slaves to consumerism?” Having already pointed us toward their preferred answers, Mssrs. Schwab and Malleret hit their ‘environmentalist’ key: “One clear message has emerged from this: nature is a formidable antidote to many of today’s ills.” “Nature makes us feel good.” Very well then, as the Sixties Left once insisted, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Forward with global governance in the name of climate protection.
“We need to change; we should change. But can we?” “Simply put, will we put into motion the Great Reset?” The Great Reset is “about making the world less divisive, less polluting, less destructive, more inclusive, more equitable and fairer than we left it in the pre-pandemic era.” And what can ‘we’ do to effect this consummation so devoutly to be wished? “The absolute prerequisite for a proper reset is greater collaboration and cooperation within and between countries.” Without “shared intentionality” to “act together towards a common goal” we “simply cannot progress.” In the face of the prospect of a world “even more divided, nationalistic and prone to conflicts than it is today,” ‘we’ have “an opportunity to embed greater societal equality and sustainability into the recovery, accelerating rather than delaying progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and unleashing a new era of prosperity.” For those so benighted as not to know what the “Goals” are, suffice it to say that they were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 (during the Obama administration) and center on the rather ambitious goal of ending poverty in the world.
Our authors are confident that this can be done because “a multitude of surveys conclude that we collectively desire change,” including “international surveys finding that a large majority of citizens around the world want the economic recovery from the corona crisis to prioritize climate change and to support a green recovery.” Quite apart from the question of how effective wishful thinking is likely to be, this raises a problem our authors do not consider. What “international survey” of public opinion could register public opinion in, say, China, Russia, or any of the other illiberal oligarchies? And if regimes still matter, where does that leave the claim that all ‘opinions,’ like all subatomic particles, are entitled to vibrate with equal velocity? And if they are, where does that leave this rather dodgy ‘we’ for which our authors so confidently speak?
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