The behavior of the world economy in crisis, with its flighty stock markets, faithless investors, and sloshy capital is reminiscent of the withdrawal of a severe addiction. We already have the intuition that this is the nature of the profit motive. But perhaps a brief examination of these dynamics? In the abstract anyway, as we like to do it here.
The issue with an addiction in general, is that a dependency is established with a specific substance, which in a limited way targets something limited and removed like a neurological reward system or some such, which, when deprived of the altering substance, sends the altered reward system itself into freefall, a system which is connected to many other functioning parts of the body.
Further, addictive substances and practices tend to compete with nutritious substances and practices, so that by the time withdrawal sets in, the system is already in a weakened state. Through an addictive substance then, the body becomes alienated from itself, and requires constant input of the substance to reproduce both the body's continued functioning and its self-alienation. With the substance removed, the alienation remains, and the body comes into conflict with itself. Abstracting this state of affairs, we can compare this to the money relation.
The money relation has the characteristics of an addictive substance. Sure small amounts of it are fine and even useful, but too much over a sustained period and a quality change occurs. Once money becomes the dominant productive relation in society, its circulation touches every corner of every functioning component of that society, so that accumulating it amounts to power over society, and the more the accumulation, the more incomparable ecstasy and possibility one enjoys. One can never have enough of it.
But now that the system depends wholly on that money to run, the money must not be deprived or the whole system seizes up and enters into antagonism with itself. So a society becomes alienated to itself, and through money, that alienation is reproduced, but can continue to function. There are additional intricacies to consider, such as the dynamics of money and the necessity for economic growth, and comparisons of that to growing resistance and dependency to an addictive substance, but that will outstrip my intended scope here. The point I have been imperfectly getting at here is that addictive substances - or addictive entities for that matter - tend to increase the brittleness of the bodies they affect to further shocks. Of course, it is a certain sort of brittleness that is required in the first place to encourage the ascendancy of a given addictive entity, but anyway, moving on to a more immediate point.
Back to physical bodies: if one runs out of food and needs to fast, that fasting is much more manageable given a certain previous regimen of nutrition and habit, and can even be pleasurable if done right. But if one needs to suddenly fast and one has been eating junkfood, or is deprived of a certain addictive substance, then things can get uncomfortable really fast. Processed grains and refined sugars for example are notorious for encouraging the growth of certain yeasts and bacteria that send painful hunger messages to the brain when deprived, messages that are not necessarily related to a fundamental hunger, but more of a craving for that deprived substance.
Depending on the substance and the health complication, this can become deadly. And this complication is in addition to simply being deprived of food, which on an otherwise healthier diet, could be endured for much longer before the danger of starvation and death.
Similarly, a shock like C-19 is even more acute when it is tested against a political economy such as ours, which is no longer tooled to circulate resources and satisfy a number of fundamental needs, but which makes use of those needs to pursue a massive process of accumulation above and beyond those needs, and which requires a sustained accumulation to continuously function.
One can only imagine the greater robustness of a steady state economy - driven by concerns other than profit and accumulation - in the face of a pandemic. Indeed, as any given wave of disruption becomes more severe, whether we are talking about pandemics, natural disasters, or wars, it is easy to imagine that we will be positively clamoring for a steady state economy. Whether we actually get one or not is another matter.
