The continuity of the neoliberal state in Peru in the post-Covid-19 era

Abstract

The measures taken by the Peruvian government to contain the coronavirus have not prevented the expansion of the virus during the months of total lockdown. Thepolicies that have been implemented to reduce the economic effects of Covid-19 on business and workers, show that the pre-Covid-19 neoliberal model was not adjusted to confront the economic, social and health crisis. The interests of capital maintained themselves as the principal guides for decisionmaking by the governing class. This article argues that economic and political restrictions impede a post-Covid-19 state transformation in Peru. The dialectical triangle of the dependent character of peripheral countries, the internal expressions of the economic and business structure of dependency, and the particularities of the state in the periphery of world capitalism, provide the theoretical starting point for the analysis of the continuity of the neoliberal state in Peru’s post-Covid society. The economic restrictions refer to Peru’s role in the international division of labor, the power of extractive capital, the economic weakness of small and micro-enterprises, and the economic interests of the Peruvian bureaucratic state apparatus. The political restrictions relate to the political power of capital in the state apparatus, the political and social weakness of the progressive forces of social change and the political interests of the Peruvian state bureaucracy.