Introduction

Today, we are passing through another world, a world crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic which, as we well know, is no longer just a health crisis but a profound social, political and economic crisis, which will bring about as yet unknown longterm consequences. There is no doubt that we are moving towards a profound change at the global level. We have a historic responsibility, in terms of challenging this world order and the capacity for action to build another order, another world.

This crisis has revealed the nature of our patriarchalcapitalist-colonial social order, deeply unequal, sharpened by the implementation of neoliberal policies and by the philosophical, ideological, political and epistemological assumptions that support them. That social order promotes hyper-individualism and the logic of ‘every man for himself’. It promoted the notion that social inequalities were going to be magically solved through the invisible hand of the market and the ‘trickle down’ theory. Today we know that the supposed invisible hand was not such because it is visibly trying to save the world's rich and their financial capital at the expense of the poor.

Precisely, with this crisis it was also made clear that finance and financial speculation are like a house of cards that, at the first blow, collapses and that finance in no way replaces the real economy of the people. In this sense, the crisis has put the irreplaceable place of the state at the centre of the debate.

The market has fled in a cowardly manner and we only see on the scene in many countries the presence of the state as guarantor of the rights and protection of citizens, as well as the active and supportive presence of social movements and popular organisations. The great story of neoliberalism has exploded into a thousand pieces and everything that seemed so solid has vanished into thin air. As social workers, we need to have a global debate, which takes into account the structural social inequalities that constitute the most hidden side of the pandemic. Social inequalities that have historically been invisible and naturalised and that today need to be highlighted in the face of a hegemonic political and medical discourse that focuses merely on the biological and epidemiological problem of COVID-19.