Mack Penner is a writer and a PhD student in history at McMaster University.
In 2022, we limped out of the pandemic frying pan into the fire of resumed capitalist crises. Popular yearning to “get back to normal” is a desire for the good life — and making such a desire a reality will require fighting for socialism.
Recent announcements of neoliberalism’s demise in the wake of the pandemic are mistaken. Ending neoliberalism will require purposeful effort and struggle, not just economic and political crises.
The leadership race for Alberta’s United Conservative Party signals a further shift to the right in Canada’s most conservative province. But the province’s conservatism isn’t innate — it is a result of carbon producers’ domination of the economy.
We may be exhausted by the effects of the pandemic, but the desire to return to business as usual is a blind alley. The pandemic is simply one facet of the broader crises we face — crises that were forged in yesterday’s normal.