wl-1082- An Inevitable Pandemic

This article critically analyzes Sandipan Baksi’s (2020) Epidemics and Capitalism, examining how capitalism exacerbated the COVID-19 crisis while reinforcing class reproduction and ideological control. While Baksi highlights the erosion of public health systems under capitalism, he underestimates capitalism’s systemic role in the outbreak. This paper challenges Baksi’s categorization of the pandemic as a "conjunction crisis" and instead argues that capitalism’s relentless exploitation of ecosystems and its post-pandemic restructuring of labor and ideology have further entrenched capitalist structures. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Hardt & Negri, Althusser, and Gramsci, this paper explores how the pandemic became a tool for global capitalist reproduction. Finally, it calls for future research on how capitalism has framed "economic recovery" as a new ideological construct and how post-pandemic transformations have reshaped global power structures.