Eine Neuordnung der Zeit? Zum Verhältnis von Zeitlichkeit, Kapitalismus und Staat im Zeichen der Pandemie

Does the corona pandemic allow for a departure from the capitalist time regime? Can the crisis induce a more sustainable order of time? This article looks at the COVID-19 pandemic and the state interventions in response to it from the perspective of sociology of time and economic sociology. It shows that the social and economic disruptions attributed to the pandemic can be understood as the result of a collision of opposing temporal logics. In order to fight the pandemic, the state initially enforced ways of dealing with time that contradict the capitalist time regime and its major principles—commodification and rational use of time, acceleration, as well as appropriation of the future. However, and contrary to what e.g. Hartmut Rosa hopes, this “return of the state” as a time-political ordering power does not yet imply a path change towards a “new order of time” that lasts beyond the current state of emergency. The article shows that especially those state interventions that go beyond mere pandemic control can often be understood as attempts to mediate between different temporal logics. While they cushion the collision of opposing temporal logics, they are essentially intended to facilitate a “return” to the capitalist time regime. In doing so, they perpetuate time-related inequalities.