Much has already been said of COVID-19 that any additional commentary may seem superfluous. Perhaps the most obvious observation has been that COVID-19 has clearly shown the failure of free-market systems to provide anything nearing an adequate response to a global pandemic and has clearly demonstrated the virtues of a centrally planned economic system. It has also clearly demonstrated the complete lack of anything nearing an adequate healthcare infrastructure in countries such as the United States but including others as well.

With the economic hardships proffered by mass unemployment due to COVID-19, with millions facing evictions, the necessity of universal programs has become all-too apparent, including, of course, universal healthcare. The pandemic also presages the death of the nation-state, the death of borders, as the universality of the pandemic wipes away any local particularities and renders them superfluous.

Much has also been made of individual responses to not only the pandemic but also the necessary measures in order to decrease its spread. The United States stands out as a unique example of a death cult hellbent on mass suicide through refusal to follow standard safety procedures such as wearing masks and social distancing, and this country’s uniqueness in this aspect appears to stem from the foundation myth that ideologically determines what the notion of “being American” entails.

While wrapped up in grand notions of “freedom,” the foundation myth of the United States ultimately involves going to war over the price of tea. This is literally embodied through the foundation of the “Tea Party,” a reference to the historic and truly revolutionary act of throwing tea off of a ship because it was tariffed a bit too highly for bourgeois sensibilities. In other words, the American Revolution was ultimately a bourgeois revolution. Thus we are left with absolutely no reference to what “freedom” actually looks like in material, concrete practice, since although the “Tea Party” directly references what freedom meant to the Founders, which was freedom to enjoy untaxed tea, this surely cannot be the basis of a political movement, which is why “freedom” can only remain an abstract concept. This is what leads to its ultimate mutilation in COVID-19: freedom becomes the freedom to kill other people, which is what the freedom to not wear a mask or the freedom to congregate ultimately entails.

As Marx stated in The Manifesto of the Communist Party, “in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, [the bourgeoisie] has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade.” Freedom becomes the freedom to be exploited, the freedom to murder or anything except what would actually constitute freedom. One would imagine that not being killed by others would be a prerequisite to any other freedom, but supposedly not.

There is yet another obvious reference point in regard to the insistence on frequenting establishments, which is that in capitalism the subject is reduced to a consumer. The capitalist injunction is the injunction to enjoy. Therefore, those who refuse social distancing measures and insist on going to restaurants, bars, gatherings, etc. are the perfect neoliberal subjects.

Regardless of their conscious awareness (in fact, only so long as they are not conscious of it), they are simply fulfilling the imperative that capitalism has enjoined them with: enjoy, consume. Freedom becomes the freedom to consume, the freedom from consequence.

The point here, simply, is to take note of the fact that enjoyment is always partial, and that the only enjoyment is enjoyment through the other’s enjoyment. In the pursuit of full, direct enjoyment, there is only dissatisfaction. At risk of oversimplification, I may hazard to say that one cannot enjoy if one is dead.

Ultimately, COVID-19 has shown the necessity of creating a collectivity with which to identify. The notion of the nation-state is a false collective that retains its particularity, as it defines itself on the basis of the exclusion of the rest. As a sidenote, with international flights shuttered, many mainlanders decided to vacation in Puerto Rico, which had its cases under control until irresponsible mainlanders flagrantly violated the most basic safety precautions and continued spreading the virus. Interesting to note here is that the notion of the nation-state never aligns with the (empirical) nation-state itself.

A truly universal collectivity is the only way to prevent the situation just described. Building that collectivity in the hyper-individualism of late capitalism is another question, although the formation of a party would not be a bad place to start.