Death and "resurrection." We wrote it two issues ago, we repeat it. These are words from G. Caffentzis in 1980:

… Every period of capitalist development has its revelatory visions… I am referring to the functional Revelations that mark each period of significant changes in capitalist development and thought. Because Revelation appeared in other periods of capitalist history when … class competition reached a level of intensity that challenged capital's control… Revelation is not an accident. Whenever the current model of exploitation becomes unsustainable, capital begins to hint at death in the form of the end of the world…

The spectacle of death as a threat is always accompanied by some kind of “..unless”. What is required is discipline in the norms of the 4th industrial revolution. There is also a reward: immortality—or some imitation of it...
On June 20 of last year, in the American mainstream Wall Street Journal, author and literary critic Adam Kirsch, under the title Looking Forward to the end of humanity, wrote among other things:

... Covid-19 may prove to be exactly the kind of crisis necessary to trigger a violent leap in efforts toward what its supporters call a "transhuman future." Now that our biological vulnerability is more evident than ever, many may be ready to adopt the "Transhumanist Declaration," an 8-point program published in 1998: "We envision the possibility of extending human abilities by transcending aging, unconsciousness, involuntary pain, and our limitations on planet Earth."

Although "transhumanism" initially appeared as an artistic-political project, it quickly drew the attention of various entrepreneurs in cutting-edge technologies. Not by chance: the transformation of human bodies is at the forefront of capitalist restructuring, even if it is not openly declared as such: such a thing would be frightening. However, the closest possible fusion between the biological aspect of our species and the hyper-machines of the bio-informational model has been declared countless times.

While the myth of immortality as a power capability is old, and while "transhumanism" is a term that restructuring demagogues avoid using, the representation of Death due to covid-19 and the complementary representation of Salvation through genetic engineering vaccines being prepared are parts of this invisible "Death/Life" bipolarity in terms of capitalist exploitation and technocratic governance.

But it is not only the blackmail of genetic engineering that has been placed before us. The spectrum of blackmail is particularly extensive and concerns what various experts and entrepreneurs have been pursuing for years: controlled (and mass) behavioral change. Technological applications, whether for commercial prospects or state use, have been in a state called "bottleneck" for years. It is usually used as slang for the narrowing that occurs on a wide road, causing bottlenecks. For technological applications of the 4th industrial revolution in most fields, bottleneck means that the mass of consumers either does not want or cannot (due to economic, ethical, cognitive, or other limitations) proceed to consume all successive achievements at the speed at which they are produced.

Because THIS is the problem in the sphere of consumption, the sacred of neoliberalism, individual freedoms and rights (freedoms and rights that for the most part "materialized" in the sphere of consumption) are considered obsolete. This is not said openly by name. It is said, however, practically: through the chain of prohibitions that abolish even the recently valid constitutions.

Abolition of institutions (and ideology) 200 years old related to freedom, and establishment of mechanisms for continuous control and "correction" of behaviors—this is capital's immortality at this historical moment. It offers salvation to the subordinates from a hygienic threat artificially constructed. (We do not mean the virus itself but its management).
There are far too many people who cannot understand how or why such a giga-enterprise is developing in most parts of the world. The (almost global) scale impresses them and convinces them that the rhetoric of bosses and their experts is sincere and the risk real. These are people who either were born and grew up in the last 3-4 decades or abandoned any timely deep and substantive criticism for the sake of "success" during the same period: the beneficiaries and good wards of neoliberalism, regardless of their ideological rhetoric and obsessions. And yet, although until a year ago they enjoyed individual freedoms (of their own) in whatever ways they could, they are willing, thinking they are simply living a temporary transaction, to concede whatever is demanded of them for the sake of what they have been convinced is "salvation from Death."

There is another well-known term, which many know but take care not to use in the current context. It is the term creative destruction. Destruction indeed for most; clearance of the field so that it can be "re-cultivated" under new terms, creating additional profits and disciplines... The paternity of the term belongs to economist Schumpeter: facilitating more efficient adaptation to new conditions presupposes shock and a chaos where fear and uncertainty reign, and where the expectation of a new solution is leveraged so intensely as to throw its rational evaluation into the trash...

Ziggy Stardust