Major social upheavals like the Covid-19 pandemic can lead to fundamental and long-lasting changes in society. But will we find the right methods to us the experiences of this crisis to transform our societies for the better? 

Covid 19 is a challenge to which we are all seeking to respond. Some major social upheavals lead to fundamental and progressive shifts, think for example of the way the AIDS crisis accelerated the fight for LGBT rights; while others, most obviously the global financial meltdown of 2008, fail to precipitate major reform despite causing immense hardship. Indeed, the widespread assumption on the left that the financial crisis would lead to a reaction against inequality and global finance was not only disappointed but confounded as the political momentum was, in many countries, seized by nationalist populism.

Of the conditions that turn an immediate crisis into long term change, three stand out, all of which need to be in place: