We live on a crisis-struck planet where surplus lives are struggling to survive in the wastelands of a rapidly shrinking economic order. The specter of a wageless life now befalls the billions.

COVID-19, just beginning its rampage, is battering our feeble institutions, revealing and exacerbating preexisting social and racial vulnerabilities, and laying bare the inadequacies of even the most robust social safety nets. The U.S. is staring at its sharpest unemployment rise in history.

As reported by Markets Insider, just in the three weeks leading up to April 11, more than 17 percent of U.S. workers (22 million) have filed for unemployment. Across the globe, the virus is profaning all that is sacred. Among the piles of bodies and financial debris, the legitimacy of capitalism is surely in doubt.

Read the whole op-ed.