Wrong Presciptions

 

- Slavoj Zizek,  "We should look to how Cuba coped with the fall of the Soviet Union to deal with our new Covid world"

It’s time to be brave enough to acknowledge that we are in a hopeless situation, and Covid has changed the way our world will work forever. But we can thrive again if we accept there will be more state control in our lives.

Europe is now paying the price for its summer complacency, when we hoped that coronavirus would be ‘burned’ by the heat. While the epidemic diminished, it did not disappear. Life opened up somewhat, though, and there was a relief that the worst seemed to be over. 

Now, in the autumn, when the virus is returning with a vengeance, we can see that the summer heat did all that it was expected to: it stalled the epidemic. Our summer was a brief moment of hope, when we all somehow believed things were returning to ‘normal’. 

Everywhere, one could hear warnings about how we should prepare for the second wave, but these warnings were mostly not acted upon. The logic of fetishist disavowal – ‘I know very well, but I don’t really believe it’ – again asserted itself with full force, and now we are surprised that what we expected to happen effectively happened. 

And another excuse is falling apart: the claim that, although infections are sharply rising, the death numbers remain low, so we are dealing with a much milder mutation of the virus. Covid deaths are now clearly on the rise in Europe.

t least two smaller European countries – the Czech Republic and my own, Slovenia –  are approaching a collapse of the entire health system. In Slovenia, the practice until recently was that, if a doctor or nurse came into close contact with an infected person, they had to quarantine. Now this measure has been canceled; medical workers are obliged to go on working until they show visible signs of illness. Although this is justified by the lack of medical personnel, it opens up the way for the virus to spread freely in hospitals that are already hotbeds of infection. 

Also, those who experience Covid symptoms have been told not to even call their doctor, but just to stay at home and wait to see if their situation worsens significantly. Worse still, the state has abandoned the tracing of cases. Individuals who experience symptoms are told they should try to remember who they have been with and inform them to behave carefully. In short, the state is capitulating to the virus.         

Throughout the summer, there was a popular argument that lockdowns and quarantines are a medicine worse than the illness itself, that they cause more damage, not only economically, but also with regard to health, thanks to the neglect of cancer and other illnesses.

The basic axiom was to avoid lockdown at any price. The economy cannot afford another extended period of life being put on hold, we were repeatedly told. But this led to a Third Way, to half-baked measures that only partially saved the economy and simply postponed the new outbreak. 

Caught between three differing viewpoints – those of medical experts, the business world, and the populist Covid deniers – governments adopted the politics of compromise. They introduced often inconsistent and ridiculously complex half-measures and now we are paying the price for these, which is not only an explosion of new Covid infections, but also the clear prospect of catastrophic economic hardship. 

Finally, reality broke through and, now, European governments are openly considering lockdowns if the upward trend of contagion is not reversed. The problem is that, within the socioeconomic coordinates of today’s global capitalism, they cannot afford another lockdown – it would bring unheard-of economic depression and chaos, social unrest, and mental crises. One lockdown is all the global system can take. 

So, here we are: the long, hot summer of compromises with the global capitalist order is over, and we are brutally confronted with the reality of what we can try to do to contain the epidemic without disturbing this order too much. 

The options of finding a solution within the existing system are exhausted. The situation is hopeless, so there is no hope of a solution within it. One has to summon the courage to openly accept this hopelessness and to envisage radical socioeconomic change: a direct ‘politicization’ (or socialization) of the economy, with a much stronger role for the state, and, simultaneously, a much greater transparency of the state apparatuses themselves for the benefit of civil society. 

To provide a general sense of the change that is required, let us look at the four components of the idea of revolutionary justice as it was elaborated by philosopher Alain Badiou: voluntarism (the belief that we can “move mountains,” ignoring “objective” laws and obstacles), terror, egalitarian justice (with no understanding for the “complex circumstances” that allegedly compel us to proceed gradually), and, last but not least, trust in the people. 

The mere mention that this idea can have some relevance for our pandemic predicament can’t do anything but trigger horror or laughter: we live in a complex postmodern society, where such procedures are not only ethically unacceptable but have also proven to be inefficient. Really?

My point is not that this vicious spread of the pandemic requires us to invent a new version of these four features, but, rather, a much stronger one: we are already doing it! When crisis hit Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union, the authorities called this new period ‘the Special Period in Time of Peace’: an era of military discipline, even though there was no war. We laughed at this name, but are we not now all in a ‘Special Period in Time of Peace’? Let’s examine things step by step.

Voluntarism: Even in countries where conservative forces are in power, more and more decisions are taken that clearly violate the ‘objective’ laws of the market: states directly intervene in industry and agriculture, distributing billions to prevent hunger or for healthcare measures. At least a partial socialization of the economy will become even more urgent with the ongoing rise in infections. It’s as in a war: healthcare will have to be expanded and reorganized without regard for the laws of the market.

Terror: Liberals are correct in their fears – although it is not the old ‘totalitarian’ police terror, serious limitations of our freedoms are now a fact of life. Not only are states forced to enact new modes of social control and regulation, but people are even solicited to report to the authorities any family member or neighbor who hides their infection or meets in a large group. In some countries, a night curfew is imposed. In the pandemic, the whistleblower is fully established as the new hero figure. The resistance of those who see informing the authorities about violations of the pandemic rules as something similar to denouncing friends to the police should be treated as a criminal act. 

Egalitarian justice. It is commonly accepted that the eventual vaccine should be accessible to everybody, and that no part of the world population should be sacrificed to the virus – the cure is either global or inefficient. Can it be done? As Immanuel Kant wrote apropos duty: “Du kannst denn du sollst” – ‘you can because you ought to.’ Of course there will be a lot of cheating going on, but this cheating should be treated as what it is: a crime that is to be severely punished. States who try to control the eventual vaccine at the expense of others should be treated as rogue states. 

Trust in the people: We all know that most of the measures against the pandemic work only if people follow the recommendations, and no state control can do all the work. The appeal to compassion is not enough here; people should be informed about the dangers and also be sufficiently scared to follow the regulations. And, of course, they should not fully trust their state institutions; these institutions themselves should feel the ‘terrorist’ pressure of the people.   

Resistance to these measures will persist from all sides, but that is all it is – resistance against what science is telling us. No wonder most of the resistance comes from the populist new right. There is no space for compromise here. We already threw away the precious summer interlude in the search for compromises, and we clearly lost that battle. Now it’s time to act ruthlessly.

Where Zizek Goes Wrong from Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons":

ASSUMPTIONS NECESSARY TO AVOID THE TRAGEDY

"In passing the technically insoluble problems over to the political and social realm for solution, Hardin (Zixek) made three critical assumptions:

(1) that there exists, or can be developed, a 'criterion of judgment and system of weighting . . .' that will 'render the incommensurables . . . commensurable . . . ' in real life;

(2) that, possessing this criterion of judgment, 'coercion can be mutually agreed upon,' and that the application of coercion to effect a solution to problems will be effective in modern society; and

(3) that the administrative system, supported by the criterion of judgment and access to coercion, can and will protect the commons from further desecration." [p. 55]

ERODING MYTH OF THE COMMON VALUE SYSTEM

"In America there existed, until very recently, a set of conditions which perhaps made the solution to Hardin's subset possible; we lived with the myth that we were 'one people, indivisible. . . .' This myth postulated that we were the great 'melting pot' of the world wherein the diverse cultural ores of Europe were poured into the crucible of the frontier experience to produce a new alloy -- an American civilization. This new civilization was presumably united by a common value system that was democratic, equalitarian, and existing under universally enforceable rules contained in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

"In the United States today, however, there is emerging a new set of behavior patterns which suggest that the myth is either dead or dying. Instead of believing and behaving in accordance with the myth, large sectors of the population are developing life-styles and value hierarchies that give contemporary Americans an appearance more closely analogous to the particularistic, primitive forms of 'tribal' organizations in geographic proximity than to that shining new alloy, the American civilization." [p. 56]

"Looking at a more recent analysis of the sickness of the core city, Wallace F. Smith has argued that the productive model of the city is no longer viable for the purposes of economic analysis. Instead, he develops a model of the city as a site for leisure consumption, and then seems to suggest that the nature of this model is such is such that the city cannot regain its health because the leisure demands are value-based and, hence do not admit to compromise and accommodation; consequently there is no way of deciding among these value- oriented demands that are being made on the core city.

"In looking for the cause of the erosion of the myth of a common value system, it seems to me that so long as our perceptions and knowledge of other groups were formed largely through the written media of communication, the American myth that we were a giant melting pot of equalitarians could be sustained. In such a perceptual field it is tenable, if not obvious, that men are motivated by interests. Interests can always be compromised and accommodated without undermining our very being by sacrificing values. Under the impact of electronic media, however, this psychological distance has broken down and now we discover that these people with whom we could formerly compromise on interests are not, after all, really motivated by interests but by values. Their behavior in our very living room betrays a set of values, moreover, that are incompatible with our own, and consequently the compromises that we make are not those of contract but of culture. While the former are acceptable, any form of compromise on the latter is not a form of rational behavior but is rather a clear case of either apostasy or heresy. Thus we have arrived not at an age of accommodation but one of confrontation. In such an age 'incommensurables' remain 'incommensurable' in real life." [p. 59]

EROSION OF THE MYTH OF THE MONOPOLY OF COERCIVE FORCE

"In the past, those who no longer subscribed to the values of the dominant culture were held in check by the myth that the state possessed a monopoly on coercive force. This myth has undergone continual erosion since the end of World War II owing to the success of the strategy of guerrilla warfare, as first revealed to the French in Indochina, and later conclusively demonstrated in Algeria. Suffering as we do from what Senator Fulbright has called 'the arrogance of power,' we have been extremely slow to learn the lesson in Vietnam, although we now realize that war is political and cannot be won by military means. It is apparent that the myth of the monopoly of coercive force as it was first qualified in the civil rights conflict in the South, then in our urban ghettos, next on the streets of Chicago, and now on our college campuses has lost its hold over the minds of Americans. The technology of guerrilla warfare has made it evident that, while the state can win battles, it cannot win wars of values. Coercive force which is centered in the modern state cannot be sustained in the face of the active resistance of some 10 percent of the population unless the state is willing to embark on a deliberate policy of genocide directed against the value dissident groups. The factor that sustained the myth of coercive force in the past was the acceptance of a common value system. Whether the latter exists is questionable in the modern nation-state." [p.p. 59-60]

EROSION OF THE MYTH OF ADMINISTRATORS OF THE COMMONS

"Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that one writer postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to develop regulatory policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so widespread and demanding that it generates enough political force to bring about establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest in the commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of the offended as the agency goes into operation, developing a period of political quiescence among the great majority of those who hold a general but unorganized interest in the commons. Once this political quiescence has developed, the highly organized and specifically interested groups who wish to make incursions into the commons bring sufficient pressure to bear through other political processes to convert the agency to the protection and furthering of their interests. In the last phase even staffing of the regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the agency administrators from the ranks of the regulated." [p.p. 60-61]