Nietzsche once said that culture was only a thin apple peel over a glowing hot chaos. That is probably to say that even a small shock suffices to confront us anew with barbarism and dizzying stupidity. And now we are actually dealing with a worldwide pandemic. In effect, the thin apple peel tore at once and an abyss of the most dangerous folly has opened up. Thus one headline read in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit: “Mankind takes a break—the planet exhales.” One might simply accept as childish impudence calling the lockdown, the curfew that has practically brought the entire global society to a standstill, a “break.” But the madness lies in the presumptuousness of assuming a perspective above humans and of making oneself the voice of the “tortured” earth. Giovanni di Lorenzo, an intelligent, educated man, is the editor-in-chief of that newspaper. But today he evokes Hermann Melville’s captain Benito Cereno: The barbarians have his ship in their hands—and he can do nothing about it.
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Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has already called, with good reason, for special “corona bonds” to help EU states finance desperately needed health spending and economic rescue programs. With 20,465 coronavirus deaths as of April 14, 2020, Italy has ample reason to call for such “corona bonds.” The same applies to the other most seriously affected EU countries, Spain (18,056 deaths) and France (14,967 deaths). The idea is also welcomed by a growing number of leading global economists—but not by Austrian Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, one of the European leaders whose country and whose banks, like those of Germany and the Netherlands, were among the absolute winners in the eurozone redistribution of wealth since the 2008 crisis, to the detriment of the European South. Kurz, in many ways now the absolute trendsetter of center-right politics in Europe (at the pace that Germany’s Angela Merkel, by her perennial indecisiveness, leaves an ever bigger vacuum), was very quick to refer the suffering in Italy back to the same old European Stability Mechanism (ESM) that already caused so much stagnation in the European South since 2008. David D. Daniels III’s “Economic Democracy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Church Tradition” appears in Telos 182 (Spring 2018), a special issue commemorating the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. Read the full article at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our online store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are now available in both print and online formats. Is the concept of a “moral arc” to the economy that bends toward justice implicit in the thought of Martin Luther King, Jr.? Can a source for this concept be found in the economic justice campaigns of the Black Church? A moral arc to the economy that bends toward justice informs King’s concept of economic democracy, which frames his campaigns for economic justice. Throughout King’s writings from 1957 to 1968, he explores the economic plight of African Americans and advocates for economic remedies to the subordination of African Americans within most sectors of the American economy and the exclusion of African Americans from other sectors. He understands that parity between capital and labor is pivotal to achieving economic justice. Critical Theory of the Contemporary: Election 2016, Environmental Nationalism, and Palestinian ShameIn addition to its main focus on nature and the Anthropocene, Telos 177 (Winter 2016) features a special section of topical writing, introduced here by Russell A. Berman, that continues our ongoing commitment to setting forth a critical theory of the contemporary. Telos 177 is now available for purchase in our store. Walk around Berlin these days and you will find that you will hear almost as much English being spoken on the streets as German. While some describe this situation as a sign that Berlin has now become a cosmopolitan city, this very interpretation reveals precisely the attitude that has led to the rise of English in Germany. To speak English is to be cosmopolitan, and to speak German is to be provincial, and so it becomes a mark of pride to converse in English rather than one’s native German, at least for a certain segment of the population. And therein lies the problem. For it is precisely that segment of global business people, academics, and bureaucrats against whom nationalist sentiment has been rising all over Europe amongst the monolinguals who see themselves as excluded from the European project. As a German national living in Britain for two decades, I have followed the political debate on whether the UK should stay in, or leave, the European Union (EU) with utter dismay. The two official campaigns have prophesied disaster of biblical proportion in the event of Britain either exiting (Brexit) or remaining (Bremain). Economic doomsday and a return to the violent state of nature in case of Brexit, as the “In” camp would have us believe. Alternatively, subjugation to a sinister super-state and marauding masses of migrants in case of Bremain, so say the “Out” camp. |
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The global fallout from the miserable phytosanitary conditions at the Huanan Market in Wuhan, China, will change the fortunes of the twenty-first century. The countries at the center of the global economy, especially the eurozone, are now heading not only toward being at the receiving end of the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu of 1918–20, but also toward the abyss of an unprecedented economic recession. Amidst all this, in March 2020, the core of the European Union’s neoliberal fiscal policy framework, the Maastricht criteria, were put out of action. But what will follow next? 
