Abstract

DE SOUSA SANTOS, Boaventura. Initial lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. Rev.econ.inst. [online]. 2021, vol.23, n.44, pp.81-101.  Epub Apr 28, 2021. ISSN 0124-5996.  https://doi.org/10.18601/01245996.v22n44.05.

This writing is part of a more detailed study on the pandemic and the current context. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the situation to which the population has been subjected since the time when capitalism, in its neoliberal version, dismantled the social and welfare state policies that made it possible to maintain a level of income to increase mass consumption, as well as facing serious emergencies. Although human life only represents 0.01% of life on Earth, the protection of all life forms is essential for human life to continue. If our species continues to destroy other forms of life and fails to overcome the political, cultural and ideological quarantine of capitalism closed in on itself for some four decades, the effects caused are increasingly lethal. The author concludes that we can only overcome the quarantine of capitalism when we understand that the planet is our common home and nature is our original mother, to whom we owe love and respect. When we overcome that quarantine, we will be freer from the quarantines caused by pandemics.

Keywords : coronavirus; pandemic; neoliberalism; poverty; discrimination; environment; JEL: H50, I31, I32.

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