Slavoj Žižek’s “End of Capitalism” and the Coronavirus

“Written in the aftermath of the Great Recession, Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? echoed the bleak skepticism of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, in arguing that it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.”

At the end of the celebrated 2015 film The Big Short, moments before the global financial crash, the audience is treated to a fleeting montage of party scenes and boozy banker selfies—all set to a flickering white noise, evocative of igniting tinder sticks. As the final image fades, all that remains is the starkness of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (2009) quotation: “Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.” In the context of the film’s narrative, Murakami’s sound bite serves as an unnerving admission of how wrong we had gotten things and how messed up things would further become.

In what began with a depreciation in the subprime mortgage market in the United States—and developed into a full-blown international financial crisis—capital’s insatiable desire for progress collapsed under the weight of its own greed. The human effects of this historic moment are portrayed in The Big Short’s penultimate scene when the paltry hedge fund Brownfield Capital visits the Lehman Brothers headquarters in the wake of the crash. As the young duo enter ground zero, they are greeted with a desolate suite of flickering monitors and half-eaten desk snacks. The chilling absence of life is all too familiar, reminiscent of Pripyat and Varosha. After the dust had settled, the collapse was understood to have absorbed trillions in pension money, real estate value and savings, with an estimated 8.8 million people losing their jobs and a further 9 million losing their homes. And that was just in the United States. It was an unprecedented global disaster, the likes of which we had not seen in our lifetime.

Today we have, regrettably, begun to hear those tag lines once again. In December of 2019, the first cases of the flu-like illness, later known as the coronavirus, were detected in Wuhan, China. In the short weeks that have followed, the virus has evolved into a worldwide pandemic, with approximately 350,000 cases and 15,000 deaths. The alarming eruption of the virus has led many to draw comparisons to a wealth of post-apocalyptic fiction, including the 1995 American medical disaster film Outbreak and Emily St. John Mandel’s award-winning 2014 novel Station Eleven, in which a virulent new strain of flu wipes out 99% of the earth’s population. However, while the similitude drawn to these dystopian narratives is seemingly preparing us for a level of devastation akin to that caused by Mandel’s Georgia flu, the reality is that even in the worst-case scenario— one where no measures are taken—“only” 80% of the population would contract the virus. And, a limited number of cases would be fatal. Assuredly, we can take some solace in that. While there are almost certainly very difficult times ahead, suitable measures are being implemented, with stay-at-home orders being issued in the areas worst affected.