Pablo Atencio

Produce or perish, a myth to rethink in times of COVID-19 Pablo Atencio

The present work does not pretend to be an economic analysis on the fall of the world GDP (Gross Domestic Product or Gross Domestic Product) from the COVID-19 pandemic; but rather an ethical problematization, that the pandemic of the year 2020 precipitated to think about that which hides this economic indicator. The COVID-19 not only configures an infectious disease that threatens life; but it also exposes, perhaps as never seen before, what excludes a system of social organization that subordinates life(s) (Bio/Zoe) to a formal mathematical criterion (GDP), when the hegemonic economic theory (Neoliberal and Capitalist) of the central countries prescribes for all peripheral countries to adhere uncritically to the colonizing dogma of "produce or die". This is how it is established that the only valuable time is productive time. But in the face of the crisis generated by the pandemic of the year 2020, times become less productive and this situation perhaps constitutes a didactic opportunity to decolonize the GDP, from a Polytemporality (Morin, 2004) where unproductive time is also valuable.