The French geographer Christophe Guilluy has described how today the rich “are leaving” the rest of the layers of society, even if it has not been explicitly declared, becoming protagonists of an increasingly evident independence movement: in rules that are valid for all others, they require exceptions for themselves. And in this situation, no matter how those in the upper layers of society are right or left, according to Guilluy, Macron understood this when he articulated a political offer for the left and right bourgeoisies.

I would say that similar things have also begun to appear in the coronavirus crisis, which have resulted in a couple of attitudes.

One: “Nothing happens to get me out”

The fact that instead of the people who know how to manage this situation, the rulers of public institutions have epileptic cymerians does not mean that they do not have to assume their responsibilities. On Saturday afternoon, not a day has passed in #Etxean Since we have started to use the hashtag on Twitter firmly, the convictions of more than one have started to crack. “Well, but if I leave alone, nothing happens, right?” messages like.

No, of course: you're special, you can go out, you had a plan today; all those who stay at home are anemones without social life and they don't care at home or on the street, they do it with pleasure.

Indeed, if we behave so selfishly in a situation of risk, we have the possibility of changing something of truth, not to mention revolution, that in everyday life it would require doses of generosity and slaughter per tonne. If the coronavirus could be contested with a national manifestation and the subsequent poteo, then our people would give a lesson back to the world.

Two: “People are silly”

Well, there are people who are playing a little hysterical these days. Yes, we've all laughed at people who are buying toilet paper for the next 5,000,000 bites. But when the social alarm and media bombardment on a subject is so big, maybe we should also try to be a little bit more understanding. We are all immersed in a situation we do not know, we are all trying to do the best we can. And I, at least, think it is normal for fear to appear in a situation like this. Fear spreads more easily than any virus. And I don't think it's helpful for him to keep laughing at people who are afraid.

The moral arrogance that some people have extended these days surely shows what is the biggest problem among those who say that they want to turn this order of things around: that they do not have the least capacity for empathy, that they do not understand the cultural code in which those people who plunder the supermarket, which is, by the way, a significant percentage of the population, work. Do we care about those people? Or is the Basque community also at ease separated from society?

Swallowing individualistic frameworks

I am concerned about the unanimity of the “I stay at home” campaign: it is the framework that leaves all responsibility in the hands of individuals and many sectors of society, in addition to the obligation to work, imposes the blame for not staying at home. I refer not only to the professionals who work in hospitals, but also to those who work in the food shops and in supermarkets, to the caretakers in the residences, to the transporters who travel here and there so that there is no shortage of food supplies, to all those who have continued to work these days for fear of losing their jobs.

We think our community is very left-wing, but middle-class trends are seen in a situation like this: we have swallowed in a very uncritical way that the solution to this situation will be resolved primarily on individual decisions.

It was, therefore, for this state.

The decision that has surprised me most in recent days is that taken in several workplaces dependent on public institutions: although services have not been provided, teachers or staff from different cultural centres have been asked, among other things, to go to the work centre until Friday. In other words, despite the fact that the representatives of our organizations have been participating for years in conferences on the challenges of industry 4.0 and other issues related to cools, in the midst of a health crisis they behave like old fordist patterns and want to make sure that all public employees fice, even though they collaborate in the spread of the disease forcing them to go to work. What is the point of that, apart from showing control over workers?

I would think that they are the traces of a past way of understanding the work, if I did not see a shadow beginning to appear in this crisis: an authoritarian Chinese-style state capitalism that is proving more effective than the laissez faire model of the West, not only in the transmission of the disease, but in the disciplined operation of the capitalist machinery. The State, in its essence, is that: a way of organising capitalism, which, according to the historical moment, has more or less put its hand in our lives so that the benefits of some of them are assured – health, social aid and the other benefits that citizens receive from it are not essential characteristics, but the concessions that workers obtain.

That is why the State is now taking control, saying what yes and what no: production is not interrupted, everything else can wait. At home. Under the threat of police.