Reversing the catastrophe of neoliberal-led global capitalism in the time of coronavirus: Towards a democratic socialist alternative

Abstract

This article first outlines key arguments that demonstrate how the ‘neoliberal model of development’s’ global unleashing of capital is leading human civilisation to the brink of collapse. This ‘intellectual pessimism’ informs the ‘optimistic will’ central to the second part of this article which outlines an alternative democratic socialist model of development. This alternative is founded on a project of global cooperation to construct a national-trans-national regulatory architecture that can facilitate an ecologically balanced, materially secure, flexible and democratically solidaristic collection of local accumulation regimes that in aggregate would comprise a sustainable, progressive and pandemic-preventing planetary mode of accumulation.