Conclusion: the Frankfurt School beyond recognition

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated the tragic inequalities and irrationalities of neoliberalism. But is has also emboldened activists and academics to return to the primary research questions which first inspired critical theory. How is this irrational and exploitative social formation maintained? Why has the pandemic not brought about a permanent qualitative social transformation? Where is the revolutionary agent who could make such a change happen? Writing outside the Frankfurt School register, Andreas Malm (2020a) in Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century presses these concerns expertly. Malm asks the crucial question: if global capitalism can