Everything Must Change!: The World after Covid-19

by Srećko Horvat (Editor), Renata Avila (Editor), Tariq Ali (Contributor)

Everything Must Change! brings together prominent commentators from around the world to present a rich and nuanced weighing of progressive possibilities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In these pages you’ll encounter influential voices across the left, ranging from Roger Waters to Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Žižek to Saskia Sassen. Gael García Bernal, Brian Eno, and Larry Charles examine the pandemic’s more cultural and artistic consequences, touching on topics of love, play, comedy, dreaming, and time. Their words sit alongside analyses of the paradoxes and possibilities of debt, internationalism, and solidarity by Astra Taylor, David Graeber, Vijay Prashad, and Stephanie Kelton.

Burgeoning surveillance and control measures in the name of public health are a concern for many of the contributors here, including Shoshana Zuboff and Evgeny Morozov, as are the opportunities presented by the crisis for exploitation by financiers, technocrats, and the far right.

Against a return to the normal and, indeed, the notion that there ever was such a thing, these conversations insist that urgent, systemic change is needed to tackle not only the pandemics arising from the human destruction of nature, but also the ceaseless debilitations of contemporary global capitalism.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Philosophy, Science

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2020

About the author

Srećko Horvat is a Croatian philosopher, author and political activist.

Reviews

[สฤณี อาชวานันทกุล · Rating 3 out of 5]

(อ่านต้นฉบับภาษาอังกฤษ)

สนุกกว่าที่คิด กลุ่มนักประชาธิปไตยยุโรป DiEM25 เอานักคิดฝ่ายซ้ายชื่อดังหลายแขนง ทั้งนักเศรษฐศาสตร์ นักปรัชญา นักประวัติศาสตร์ นักกิจกรรม นักเขียน ฯลฯ มานั่งคุยออนไลน์กันช่วงที่ต้องอยู่ติดบ้านเพราะโควิด-19 และถ่ายทอดวงสนทนาแต่ละวงออกมาเป็นหนังสือ บางบทอ่านแล้วไม่ค่อยอิน เช่น ตอนที่บ่นกันเรื่องชะตากรรมของ Julian Assange แต่หลายตอนก็น่าสนใจทีเดียว เช่น บทที่คุยกันเรื่องแนวโน้มภูมิรัฐศาสตร์หลังโควิด-19 การขยายตัวของเทคโนโลยีสอดแนมของรัฐภายใต้ข้ออ้างสุขภาพในช่วงโควิด-19 และบทบาทที่ฝ่ายซ้ายควรทำหลังโควิด-19 ชอบบทที่คุยกับ Noam Chomsky, David Graeber, Shoshana Zuboff และ Slavoy Zizek เป็นพิเศษ แต่คิดว่าหนังสือควรจะใส่เชิงอรรถและแนะนำแหล่งข้อมูลอ้างอิงเพิ่มเติม มากกว่าประวัติย่อ(มาก)ที่ใส่มาท้ายเล่ม คนที่ไม่รู้จักนักคิดเหล่านี้จะได้ไปติดตามผลงานต่อ

[Jonatan Senior]

This book is a collection of conversations/Interviews with some great and interesting people of culture and poltitical science and activism. It's a great still picture of the situation as the world came to a sudden grinding halt under the Covid-19 lockdowns. Includes descriptions of what was going on and how people experienced the lockdowns in practical, economic, politicial and social contexts. The overall theme is social change, solidarity and how to seize the moment in a collective effort to create a lasting change.

[Doni · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of interviews by seminal leftist thinkers such as Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varofakis, and Slavoj Zizek.

My strongest reaction to this book was that it was published in 2020 and it is already woefully out of date. People railed at Trump & for Bernie, and at least we have that election behind us. But though it consisted of a bunch of different thinkers, they all started to sound the same. The left is a valuable perspective, but it would have been better if the collection represented more political diversity.

The only thing that really grabbed my attention was that Daniel Ellsubrg claimed that Nixon would have waged nuclear war in Vietnam were it not for a General Strike that happened a month before the targets were scheduled (Oct. 15, 1969). I had never heard of that before.

Favorite quote: "This pandemic feels incredibly person and many people are asking themselves some variation of 'why me?' and 'why now?'"

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Timely and widely interesting. This books structure is casual; a series of conversations. I quite enjoyed the topics and style. If you are looking to motivate yourself to make a better world, post COVID, this is a great place to start.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

V good book, I learned ab more specific examples of how and why the disparities between big corps and everyone else exacerbated, how individualism in America contributed to the virus getting worse, the morality of debt/work and also j how capitalism is internalized.