A Great Reset or a Half-Truth Dump: Will the Post-Pandemic World Become More Just?

Alexander Buzgalin

Andrey Kolganov

• Occupation: Head of the Laboratory for Comparative Research of Socio-Economic Systems; Head Researcher of the Center for Methodological and Historical and Economic Research
• Affiliation:
  Lomonosov Moscow State University
  Institute of Economics of RAS
  
• Address: Russian Federation, Moscow

The authors analyze the work of the founder of the Davos Forum, K. Schwab and T. Malleret, devoted to the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic. The book mainly describes the changes that have occurred, points out some of the consequences caused by the pandemic, and formulates a number of general appeals to be more socially responsible addressed to business and governments. The authors of the book also note that some changes are taking place in the content and forms of the market-capitalist system, relations and institutions that lie outside the space of market competition and private-proprietary egoism. At the same time, Schwab and Malleret do not show meaningful reasons for the fact that the market and capital could not provide an adequate response to the challenges of the pandemic, do not investigate the foundations of social contradictions exacerbated by the pandemic, do not offer solutions that could ensure the removal of these causes and contradictions. The authors of the article substantiate the conclusion that global problems and, in particular, the pandemic, determine the need to increase the role of public regulation, the advancement of universal access to basic goods, the progression of solidarity relations, i.e., progress towards a qualitatively different society than the capitalist one.