“Never let a good crisis go to waste”. This short and catchy dictum was articulated by Rahm Emanuel, former Obama White House chief of staff and mayor of Chicago at the time of the Global Financial Crisis some twelve years ago. But it can stand as a universal motto of socialism, both the revolutionary and the democratic varieties, since the time of the Paris Commune in 1871, if not earlier.

As the old saying goes, the state makes war and war makes the state.