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COVID Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Jodi Dean
Jodi Dean*
Affiliation:
Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York, USA
*
E-mail: jdean@hws.edu
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Abstract

Revolution only occurs when people are willing to die for it. The last few days of May 2020 showed that thousands of people were willing to risk their lives in the struggle against the racist capitalist system. Rage at four hundred years of oppression, exploitation, and denigration, at the systemic murder of black, brown, and indigenous people, and at wanton, visible, and permissible police violence could no longer be contained. Between the virus and the economy, there was nothing left to lose.

Keywords

capitalismcoronaviruscoviddemocracyracismrevolution

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References

Canetti, Elias. 1984. Crowds and Power. Trans. Carol, Stewart. Cambridge, UK: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lenin, Vladimir Ilych. n.d. “Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder,” available at www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm. Accessed July 17 , 2020.Google Scholar