Covid Crisis as a Political Tool

The Corona crisis seems to highlight the problems and opportunities of our representative democracies and governmental systems around the globe. It provides a scenario where the shortcomings of our democracy become visible, but also a scenario on which different political discourses and visions of the future can be staged. In addition to protests, economic, political and social projects also enter this phase. However, this phase is subject to particularly intense lighting. It is a dazzling light that makes visible the critical aspects of our representative democracy and our capitalist society. The bright light of Corona, in particular, has shed light on the problems of the healthcare system. Industrial countries like Italy, Spain or the United States were faced with a collapse in their medical supply. Structural deficits such as undersized hospital capacity, insufficient supply of medical supplies such as face masks, ventilators or medications, as well as underpaid and overstretched staff have been laid bare in the pandemic. Triage has been applied in Spain and northern Italy, ensuring only the most fit patients the right to medical treatment. Elderly and already sick people could no longer be guaranteed a hospital bed or the use of a ventilator.

The contradictions between bio politics and democratic rights, which already exist, have been exacerbated in the pandemic. In this context, the deadly consequences of an austerity policy provoked by the  withdrawal of the state from critical infrastructures were also exposed. In countries like the United States, where there is no universal or compulsory health insurance and where inequalities are particularly evident in the health sector, a particular selection occurs. Those who cannot afford treatment must choose to go into debt and not provide treatment for their families. However, due to their living and working conditions, they are often high-risk patients and suffer from diabetes, heart problems or other illnesses. The potential for savings  in the health  sector and the privatization of primary health care do not pay off in times of  pandemic. Worse still, the danger of Covid19 is increasing. The refrigerated trucks storing corpses in front of hospitals in New York, the collective funerals in Brazil or the corpses lying in the open in the streets of Guayaquil provide the sad images of this crisis. Due to the pandemic, new vulnerabilities in politics and society are exposed. The scarcity of supplies, on the one hand, and the obliteration of foodstuffs, on the other, reveals the problems of an agriculture that mainly serves wholesale markets, focuses on monoculture and is totally dependent on the transport and logistics. Significant amounts of food have died on the ground due to the lockdown as consumers, who are already suffering partly economically from the Corona crisis, have to pay far more for the same products. In Germany alone, the price of vegetables has risen by an average of 26% since the start of the crisis, in some cases, such as courgettes, up to 92%. In the United States, farmers have destroyed or donated their potatoes, which are grown in large monocultures, in some cases up to 60% of the crop. In the Netherlands, 13% of  potato production was phased out during the Corona crisis. Dairy products like milk, eggs and other unprocessed foods were also destroyed. on monocultures and on long-distance transport is not only ecologically problematic, in the case of the pandemic, it is also a risk for the economy and for the supply of the population.

A third issue made visible by Corona is the flexibility of the labor market with the aim of reducing labor costs and making companies more competitive. According to Thomas Piketty, this is one of the most important sources of the rise of social inequalities in Europe. In Germany,  the Agenda 2010 reforms have led to the precariousness of working conditions for many employees and enabled  of subcontracting, a situation that he is  at the center of the Corona epidemics in the meat sector. When twenty-nine cases of Corona were discovered in a meatpacking plant in Lower Saxony in mid-May 2020, and shortly thereafter an even larger outbreak occurred in RhedaWiedenbrück near Gütersloh, the deplorable working and living conditions of workers mainly from Eastern Europe: more Unpaid working hours and overcrowded housing with moldy walls are part of the system of exploitation. Such conditions also exist in the agricultural sector and in cruise tourism. It’s not that no one was aware of the precarious working and living conditions of these workers. They have been criticized for many years, but Corona makes the problem  and  danger of infection visible to society looming. Once again, the pandemic highlights how unequal our society is. That in Paris, Bangladesh, Rio de Janeiro or Gütersloh, the virus spreads above all where dense and unhealthy living conditions prevail, therefore among the poor. While for the upper  class confinement has caused a declaration.

But the crisis of the system was not the only problem that became visible on the Corona scene. Especially during confinement, but also afterwards, the State’s logic of prevention – legitimized by medical-scientific expertise – took center stage. States have the minimum obligation to ensure security and peace. According to Thomas Hobbes, the Leviathan must use any means necessary to this end. In modern times, this duty extends to safeguarding the health of the population. Michel Foucault highlighted this new paradigm when he spoke of bio politics. In a democracy, however, the state has another duty: it must guarantee the fundamental rights and freedoms of each individual. Security (Hobbes) and the administration of life (Foucault), on the one hand, and the democratic guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms, on the other, are in tension. A democratic state must not, like the Leviathan,  use  all means and its bio political measures are balanced by human rights and ethics. Checks and balances, mass media and basic citizens’ rights limit the power of the state. Decisions must be approved by parliamentary committees and are debated in public. However, in an extreme situation, there is no time for this. The state must act quickly and this action tilts the balance of power in favour of  Leviathan and bio politics. The state now functions in the mode of prevention, legitimized by the imminent catastrophe made plausible by the crisis scenario. The first news from Wuhan around Christmas 2019 sounded like a distant disaster movie. But one after another, several countries began to experience the pandemic. Most governments have reacted in logic of prevention in the face of an unpredictable aggressor, since “the fight against terrorism” is known. Viruses and terrorists have something in common: they operate in the dark and you never know when they will strike. Both collide with prevention. What is interesting in the logic of prevention is that, whatever happens, prevention is always legitimate but can also be called into question. If the worst does not happen, we can say that the prevention has succeeded. At the same time, however, one could argue that prevention is unnecessary because no danger is visible. If a disaster occurs, even more means are needed to fight the enemy, be it a virus or a terrorist, because it becomes clear that the initial measures were insufficient. The fact is that in both cases it is not possible to establish a clear causality. However, it is precisely this lack of proven causality between government action and disaster prevention that is the lever with which the State can legitimize new restrictive measures. Since there can be no proof of the effectiveness of prevention, such measures are always subject to suspicion of manipulation.

A concordance between the logic of prevention and democracy is impossible. Therefore, a struggle between the justification of  preventive measures and the restoration of democratic standards is inevitable. Although the logic of prevention cannot be maintained indefinitely in a democracy, the effects of restricting democratic rights in an extreme situation are extremely dangerous. Even limited in time, these restrictions cause a dynamic that cannot always be controlled. In his article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on April 25, 2020,  German jurist and journalist Heribert Prantl described how restrictions on democratic rights due to alleged security threats ultimately tend to stay in place longer than expected. This is the case of the “fight against terrorist terrorization” in the 1970s (RAF) and in opposition to Islamist extremism since September 11th. Prantl shows that these restrictions then become part of the norm or set the standard for the implementation of similar measures in the proposed new law, albeit in a weakened form. The application of the logic of prevention and the restrictive measures that it implies is therefore always problematic for democracy.

However,  to be accepted, the logic of prevention needs the fear of catastrophe. Citizens must be convinced that the crisis is worse than the desire for freedom and the validity of fundamental rights. Whenever the scenario of a catastrophe presents itself, not emotionally felt, or overshadowed by major collective or individual catastrophes – for example the loss of one’s material existence – suspicions and criticisms arise. This explains the protests against the lockdown in countries that have lower death rates due to Covid19, such as Germany, as well as in countries with weak welfare states, such as the United States and Brazil. . In this situation, the Corona crisis sets the stage for a wide variety of protests. Emerging conspiracy theories that are already circulating in the fragmented world of the internet. Sheet metal hats offer one of the most curious images of these manifestations, but they are not the only ones. Vaccine opponents are entering the fray, while right-wing extremists are articulating reactionary critique of anti-capitalism with anti-Semitic rhetoric and contemplating Jewish control of the global marketplace. But there are also less strident protesters. They are concerned about the restrictions of civil rights and the expansion of state control. These protesters are an important corrective to the hour of executive power. To the  potpourri of protests are also added those who suffer  the economic consequences of confinement and worry about their own material existence.

Beyond protests and debates, the crisis also seems to open up the political imagination to new social and political visions. While the status quo of our society is not radically challenged, new practices and new projects for the future are emerging. The resurgence of politico-economic measures that renounce economic austerity are an indication of this. In one of his essays on the malaise of democracy, Pierre Rosanvallon argues that there are moments of deadlock in which the imagination of new concepts and alternative scenarios is no longer possible. The imagination is then no longer able to produce visions of the future. It’s TINA time as “There is no alternative”. Some political scientists consider this an anti-political moment in which the refusal to discuss decisions and collective projects becomes a dominant attitude. What makes democracy so special, namely the creation of a space where political opinions are discussed and common conceptions of society are produced, is shrinking. The preventive logic during the first confinement favoured and legitimized this very attitude of TINA. Paradoxically, the initially widespread endorsement of state measures to fight the Corona has created the ground for protests and alternative scenarios – democratic and undemocratic – which challenge the status quo not only of the management of Covid19, but also with regard to our democratic, economic and socio-cultural way of life. In addition to political protests, protagonists of new visions of the future are also taking advantage of the situation. Whether Corona apps, increased individual monitoring, ecological demands as a condition for government support for the economy, basic income, criticism of liberalism or anti-capitalist positions, reactionary projects and right: Tackling the Corona pandemic lifts the blockade of  political imagery and opens up new ideas and discourses. It seems that the company can only reflect  and question itself  after the Corona restrictions are lifted. But what is the decisive factor in this liberating effect? Perhaps it was the disagreement with the Covid crisis scenarios and the experience of the logic of prevention as the norm for politics that made the political imagination fluid. Crisis is a situation where you lose direction and demand new standards of thought and action. After the pandemic has exposed the critical points of democratic society and unlocked the political imagination now is the time to discuss not only corrections but also new paths to democracy. Just enjoy this moment.