This book considers how the UK government's response to the recent
COVID-19 pandemic disadvantages the working class, and how mutual aid,
based on anarchist principles, can be used as a force for social change.
The authors draw on Marxist and anarchist thought in class theory and
social movement analysis to demonstrate that the virus and its material
and discursive consequences are an active part of continuing class
struggle and class interpolation. Preston and Firth examine how plans
for quarantine and social isolation systematically work against the
needs of the working class, and rely on classed assumptions about how
markets and altruism operate.
In the face of neoliberal methods of dealing with a pandemic, ranging
from marketization, disaster capitalism, to a strengthening of the
State, Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom
explains how radical alternatives such as social movements and mutual
aid can be implemented to better cope with current and future crises.