Our team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research has developed a ten-point agenda for a post-COVID-19 world. Last week, I presented this agenda at the High-Level Conference on the Post-Pandemic Economy, organized by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). We are certainly in need of a New International Economic Order.

How have Western responses to the pandemic remained within the neoliberal paradigm, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding? What does the behaviour and activities of its major leaders tell us about the new phase of neoliberalism which they will attempt to establish? Why is it almost certain to fail?

The pandemic has accelerated the growth of an economy in which most of our human interactions are mediated by the very for-profit firms for whom our identities are the product being sold to companies seeking to predict and shape human behaviour. A more cautious approach to big tech’s overweening role in society is necessary once the pandemic dust settles.

The left faces an historic disparity between its own long-depleted abilities and the hopes it has begun nursing. Its abilities—levels of union organization and votes for left-of-centre parties, to take only two of the more obvious indicators—have taken a beating amid the neoliberal assault of the past four decades. If one takes a longer historical view, its debility appears even more serious.

The shifts occurring as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are historic and volatile. While the eventual depth and duration of the twin health and economic crises are still unknown, there is no doubt that global powers are again using the shock of a crisis to consolidate power and vie for global leadership.

What will the post-coronavirus world look like? History tells us that in times of crisis, large corporations and the most vulnerable in society seek refuge under the protection of the state. The 2008 financial crisis already made clear that markets alone cannot drive competitiveness and prosperity. On the contrary, state intervention is crucial.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the second major crisis of globalization in a decade. The first was the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, from which the global economy took years to reach a semblance of recovery. We did not learn our lessons from the first, and this is perhaps why the impact of the second has been even more massive.

The present pandemic is certain to be different not because it is more lethal than previous ones (it is not), nor because it is causing havoc in financial markets (as most crises of neoliberal era have), but because it is exposing the weaknesses, distortions and imbalances of the productive apparatus that neoliberalism has shaped over four decades.

The evolution of neoliberal policies since the 1980s is highly correlated with the decline of democracy in America. Democratic norms, practices, rights and civil liberties, have been in atrophy and decay over the period. Moreover, the decline has accelerated in recent decades as neoliberalism became more aggressive in implementing its policy objectives as opposition to it has intensified.

The proposed replacement of NAFTA, is a tool for corporate interests and provides insufficient relief to address the problems for working people embedded in the original agreement. These trade agreements serve to guarantee corporate investments in foreign countries and stop elected governments from passing measures that might impact corporate profitability while offering no real guarantees to workers in exchange.