This book considers how the UK government's response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic
disadvantages the working class and how mutual aid based on anarchist principles can be used
as a force for social change. The authors draw on Marxist and anarchist thought in class theory
and social movement analysis to demonstrate that the virus and its material and discursive
consequences are an active part of continuing class struggle and class interpolation. Preston
and Firth examine how plans for quarantine and social isolation systematically work against the
needs of the working class and rely on classed assumptions about how markets and altruism
operate. In the face of neoliberal methods of dealing with a pandemic ranging from
marketization disaster capitalism to a strengthening of the State Coronavirus Class and
Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom explains how radical alternatives such as social movements and
mutual aid can be implemented to better cope with current and future crises.
