„The Zeitgeist Movement“ is one of the most aggressive mondialistic movements in the contemporary world. It is allegedly based on a critique of capitalism and aspirations to make a new world. In fact, it is a scientological sect based on a quasi-religious myth about the omnipotence of science and technology, which is one of the most fatal myths created by the ideologues of capitalism. The critique of capitalism lacks a humanistic, that is, a historical, social and visionary dimension. Zeitgeist does not advocate a new historical beginning. It rather discards history and does away with man as a historical being. It does not differentiate between history and the past and reduces the past to the source of evil to be done away with. Zeitgeist abolishes the dialectics of history and the dialectic mind, which offer man a possibility to come out from the darkness of the past into the light of history. By abolishing the historicity of human society, the cultural and libertarian heritage of mankind is also being abolished, and without it there is no possibility for humanistic self-reflexion and, consequently, no way to the future. A man without historical self-consciousness is a headless man; people without history are people without a future. At the same time, without a historicity of society there is no historicity of nature, which means that without a dialectical development of society, there is no dialectical development of nature.
The Zeitgeist project of the future is a political project par excellence. It is based on the fact that capitalism alienated science and technology from the people and that these forces have become the property of the scientific and technocratic „elites“ who govern the destiny of people and „design“ the future. Instead of being the creator of his own world, man has become the instrument of a technocratic „elite“ for realizing the idea of a future that is the product of a dehumanized technocratic imagination. „Making plans“ for the future replaces a critical analysis of capitalism and the political struggle of the oppressed working people. The future is not a product of the conscious engagement of citizens as political beings capable of creating a humane world; it is the product of a political single-mindedness disguised as „science”, which acquires an “objective” and thus a super-human dimension. The Zeitgeist project of the future presupposes the existence of a political center of power which determines and directs social development, and this also involves determination of an undisputable value horizon. The authoritarian constitution of Zeitgeist is a symbolic expression of the untouchability and immutability of the basic principles on which the plan for the future is based. Zeitgeist abolishes the possibility of creating alternative worlds and thus the possibility of a future that is the result of man’s free choice and creative practice. Designing the future is reduced to its being given. Zeitgeist abolishes man as a creative being capable of creating his own world and reduces him to an instrument with which the „elite“ of scientists, led by the modern „Messiah“ (Jacque Fresco), „creates a future“ in which an artificial man will live in an artificial (denaturalized and dehumanized) world. In this „project“, people are reduced to an army of atomized idiots who are supposed to follow a „vision“ and carry out the directives of the „Leader“. It is a typical sectarian movement based on the cult of personality. The „Leader“ is the exclusive and undisputed owner of the „truth“. Zeitgeist’s design for the future is a form in which a capitalistically degenerated visionary consciousness appears based on the same principle as are both religion and the Hollywood film industry: a creation of illusory worlds replaces the political struggle of the oppressed for a humane world. Zeitgeist is one of the ways in which capitalism degenerates man’s strivings to create his own world with a humanistic visionary imagination. Instead of a humanistic vision of the future, a technocratically based vision is being offered, which reduces the world to a scientifically based and technically perfected concentration camp. It is, actually, an artificial world, based on technical devices, a technocratic mind and a technocratic practice. A capitalistically degenerated man would be closed in a world that has become a technical cage without an exit.
The ideologues of Zeitgeist discard one of the most important legacies of the French Enlightenment and classical German philosophy: the idea of the world’s being made reasonable by man as an emancipatory reasonable being. Zeitgeist follows one of the basic intentions of capitalistically degenerated science: to do away with metaphysics, philosophy, man’s poetical being, spirit, evaluative judgement, the erotic, as well as critical and visionary reason. Zeitgeist is a manifestation of a capitalistically degenerated mind. It does not differentiate between intelligence and reason and reduces reason to an instrumentalized ratio free from “evaluative prejudices” and the pursuit of truth. Instead of a dialectic and, on that basis, a visionary reason, a reductionist scientistic reason, with a mechanical nature, is imposed. At the same time, Zeitgeist is based on technocratic mysticism with an instrumental character. This mysticism is not an expression of the mystery of life based on fear of natural elements, it is rather an instrument for mystification of the ruling power, based on curbed natural forces. The basic role of Zeitgeist is to “mediate” between world and man by destroying, through tecnological mysticism, a reasonable relation of man to the world and his critical and visionary consciousness. Mystification of the existing world and destruction of reason are two sides of the Zeitgeist doctrine. The Zeitgeist ideology is one of the manifestations of destructive capitalist irrationalism. It is a precursor to the final death of homo sapiens.
Zeitgeist does not depart from the existing world as a positive but as a negative basis relative to which it develops its idea of the future starting from an idealized technical world. The problem is that the existing world also contains culture, critical consciousness, political movements that strive toward a new world, as well as emancipatory legacies offering a possibility to step out of that world. Zeitgeist primarily attacks the emancipatory heritage of the Enlightenment, the guiding ideas of the French bourgeois revolution, as well as the democratic rights and institutions established in the most developed capitalist countries in the XIX and XX centuries. The Zeitgeist universal methodological principle is the following: to mutilate emancipatory possibilities of progress and use them to combat people’s libertarian struggle. The „prediction“ of the future becomes its „creation“ through the destruction of the emancipatory heritage of mankind which opens the possiblity of stepping out of the technical world. Zeitgeist offers a „future“ that is in the sphere of a capitalistically produced time and space with a mechanical nature. The strivings to achieve the unity of technocratic reason and reality are reduced to submitting people to the totalitarian will of the ruling technocratic „elite“. The Zeitgeist gnoseology does not rely on the authority of science, but on the authority of the ruling power, which uses science as an exclusive political tool in combating the emancipatory potentials of civil society. Scientifically based „objectivism“ becomes a mask for a political (class) voluntarism expressed in the maxim auctoritas, non veritas facit legem. „Truth“ becomes the product of an instrumentalized reason and is deprived of a libertarian, moral and aesthetic dimensions. In this context, sociology is reduced to Comte’s „social physics“ (physique sociale), and the latter is reduced to politics as a dehumanized ruling technique. Ultimately, Zeitgeist seeks to bring every segment of life under control of the ruling (self)will and to abolish all those spheres that could restrict it.
In Plato’s conception of the state, philosophers, as the most reasonable people, are the rulers. The same idea is maintained in the Christian tradition, French Enlightenment and classical German philosophy. Reasonable people should rule since it is reasonable mind that leads man to the truth. Zeitgeist discards the idea of truth based on evaluative (humanistic) criteria and creates the myth of an “objective” scientific truth deprived of evaluative judgement. Truth is not within man, it is given by a scientific model of the world’s creation and has a technocratic character. Truth is not reached through reasonable thinking based on a confrontation of opinions, it is given by the undisputed positivist scientific mind. All questions and answers are contained in the central computer, which is literally the “brain” of mankind programmed and supplied with information by a self-proclaimed technocratic “elite”. “Social engineers”, who follow the “Leader”, are those who, guided by the “scientific mind”, determine what is important and what people need. It is an overt technocratic voluntarism: the world is ruled by rulers from the shadows, who hide behind computers and who do not bear any responsibility for their projects. Since the work of computers is based on scientific exactness, it can “understand” only that information with a quantitative dimension and not the “information” with an emotional, erotic, moral, philosophical, artistic, spiritual or poetic nature. In order to address the computer, man must first discard his humanity. The Zeitgeist system of education does not seek to create reasonable people, but strives for a technical mind, which means, not those who will pursue truth, but those who will seek to “solve problems” within the existing world that cannot be questioned. It would generate the “most intelligent people”, those capable of manipulating technology and ruling people, and not those with critical minds, who strive to realize new worlds. The Zeitgeist system of education is based on a “scientific truth” and it has no history and therefore no future. Hence its most important task is to prevent the development of the dialectic mind and, thus, man’s libertarian and visionary consciousness. According to Schiller, “education through art is education for art”. The Zeitgeist education is a way of mutilating people as artistic beings and educating them for a world based on technocratic functionality and efficiency.
Despite its discarding of history, Zeitgeist is based on ideas with a historical nature. It is founded in the philosophy of Francis Bacon, the predecessor of modern science and positivism; in the „social physics“ of Auguste Compte, the founder of sociology; in the political philosophy of Frédéric le Play; as well as in the maxim of Hippolyte Taine: „Taisons-nous, obeissons, vivons dans la science!“ (“Let us be quiet, let us submit, let us live in science!“), which can be proclaimed the “categorical imperative” of the Zeitgeist movement. If we compare the Zeitgeist doctrine with Bacon’s philosophy, we shall see that their common point is a discarding of spiritual authority as a criterion for the correctness of thinking and acting. According to Bacon, the purpose of science is not the creation of the spiritual, but of material wealth. It is not spirituality, but technique – as the capability for conquering nature in order to exploit it – which is the most authentic expression of man’s power and the basis for the “improvement of mankind”. Instead of pursuing truth and developing reason, it is dominated by the pursuit of knowledge, which enables the development of man’s productivistic (technical) powers in order to conquer nature. It is already in Bacon that we meet the idea of a “world civilisation”, as well as the idea that the use of science can enable man to “use his right to nature”. Bacon’s “New Science” does not only serve to increase man’s knowledge of nature, but to offer him the possibility to conquer it and thus create a better life. Bacon aspires to a “Great Instauration”, where technique is reduced to a modernized magic by which the “nature of things” is used for the development of man’s powers. In his interpretation of Bacon, Mihailo Marković, one of the most important representatives of the Yugoslavian praxis philosophy, points out Bacon’s view of nature: “The road to knowledge is, first of all, the freeing of spirit from all prejudices and fixed prejudgements (Bacon calls them ‘idols’), and then, subservient observation of nature, always with deep respect for what it has to teach us. Nature can be loved only if we listen to it first. (…) Nature should be discovered by inductive observation. Man should become its ‘servant and interpretor’, but only in order eventually to conquer nature for his own purposes. Hence people should stop fighting one another and should unite their efforts against the common enemy – unconquered nature.” In order to understand the true meaning of Bacon’s thought, we should bear in mind when it originated – when man developed his active and materialistic powers, which enabled him to get rid of religious dogmatism and natural determinism. In the modern world, technology is not the expression of the development of man’s powers and a possibility for man’s liberation from natural determinism; it is rather a means for destroying both nature and man. Instead of being libertarian, technology has become an oppressive and destructive power. The Zeitgeist project of the future is based on that. Zeitgeist does not seek to use technology in order to help the development of human powers, but in order to enable the establishment of totalitarian control over people. The Zeitgeist‘s combat with capitalism is, in fact, a combat waged against man as a libertarian being and against nature as a life-creating whole.
In Bacon, science does not have a social-critical and humanistic-visionary dimension. It has only a practical-productivistic dimension. It is not a means for liberating man from a class order and creating a humanistic vision of the future based on the development of relations between human beings, man’s creative being and his cultivation of nature; it is rather reduced to the means for conquering nature in order to satisfy man’s materialistic needs, to which social practice is also submitted. In “Novum Organum”, Bacon holds that we should get acquainted with the causes of phenomena and occurrences in order adequately to increase man’s power over nature. That principle will become one of the basic political principles of Compte’s “social physics”. Science becomes the means for studying social reality in order to preserve the ruling order in a timely and efficient manner. This is the true meaning of the maxim savoir pour prevoir, prevoir pour agir (“know in order to predict, predict in order to act”), which is the chief directive for scientists, who are reduced to “social engineers” in their relation to society and the future. Turning science from the means of conquering nature into the means for conquering people – this is the essence of Compte’s “social physics” and the supreme political principle of Zeitgeist: the cognitive-productivistic power of man becomes the power of manipulating people – which is concentrated in the hands of the technocratic “elite”. Science and technique, as the means for conquering natural laws, become the means for technocracy to do away with the emancipatory heritage of mankind and human powers and to submit society to the laws of the technical world.
In spite of the fact that it deprives science of the possibility of being a critical theory of society, Bacon sees in science a way of developing man’s powers relative to the ruling (aristocratic) order, whose power is based in a (religious) dogma, which prevents the development of man’s creative and productivistic powers. Thus, science based on facts and inductive thinking becomes the means for eliminating prejudices which prevent man from increasing the certanty of his survival and from stepping out of the existing world. Bacon’s scientific mind appears as a possibility for reviving man’s creative powers, which are capable of overcoming the existing world. Bacon seeks to create a new world corresponding to a “new philosophy“, which he sees as an “Active Science“. Its “true and lawful aim is nothing else but to enrich man’s life with new discoveries and powers“ (Marković). In this context, Bacon’s vision of the future elaborated in his work “New Atlantis“ acquires a new dimension. The imagined island of “Bensalem“ (“Land of Peace“), which is Bacon’s vision of a future world, is “free from all pollution or foulness“ and as such is “the virgin of the world“.
Zeitgeist also departs from the fact that technique can be useful to people and that it can increase the certainty of their survival. However, today it is not just about discarding dogmas and prejudices, but also about doing away with the emancipatory legacy of modern society, as well as a humane future that can be created on its foundation. Zeitgeist seeks to use technique in order completely to submit man to a technical world and a technocratic “elite“ who rule that world. In that way, technique becomes a means for the destruction of mankind’s emancipatory legacy and emancipatory potential. Zeitgeist deals with the reason stemming from the fact that appealing to reason regularly meant calling man to free himself from everything existing and creating a world suited to the ideals of humanity. In spite of its positivist character, Bacon’s science opens the possibility for the development of mankind’s emancipatory potentials. By riding the wave of a destructive technical civilization created by capitalism, Zeitgeist’s project for the future does not involve only the destruction of mankind’s emancipatory potentials, but the destruction of man as a natural being and nature as a life-creating whole as well. This is at the same time the answer to the question of whether the Zeitgeist project for the future helps to prevent the destruction of life on Earth and increase the probability of mankind’s survival. Zeitgeist offers a possibility for the survival of nature and mankind by destroying the naturality of nature and the humanity of humans. It follows the basic tendency in the development of capitalism: destroying nature and man by creating a “new world“ – technical civilisation and “nature“, as well as “man“ suited to that world.
Unlike Bacon, Zeitgeist does not use the inductive method, but departs from a given political conception and in that context selects the facts and gives them meaning, coming to the conclusions that should enable its realization. In addition, Zeitgeist does not use methods that offer the possibility of empirical verification and rational proof, but expresses its stands in the form of peculiar sermons which are meant to penetrate people’s sub-conscious and win them over to its causes “from the depths of their souls”. The “Leader” does not address the public as a scientist, but as a Messiah, who must carry out his “holy mission”: to lead society to a technically produced “holy land”. Zeitgeist does not seek to create reasonable people capable of making their own judgments, but sects of loyal followers, who obediently do what they are told to do. Zeitgeist discards yearnings for the truth, dialogue, critique… It does not seek to create a “new mind”, but a new mindlessness, more precisely, a dehumanized and instrumentalized ratio becomes the means for the ruling “elite” to create a mindless world. Zeitgeist does away with man as a self-conscious being and abolishes man’s conscious relation to the world. Since man is fatally subjected to “objective” science, emancipatory consciousness, as does moral consciousness, becomes a burden preventing man from focusing on continued progress. Not the development of a critical and visionary consciousness, but the creation of a blind sectarian consciousness – that is the purpose of the Zeitgeist dogmatism: fanaticism and idiocy are the ultimate results of the Zeitgeist “enligthenment”.
In the Zeitgeist doctrine there is a conflict between progress based on the development of science and striving to establish a technocratically based social order by discarding the emancipatory possibilities of science. Indeed, the development of science means the development of human powers seeking new spaces. It is precisely science which must question the existing state in order to come to new answers, which means that there is no progress without a doubt about the existing state and striving to create (discover) a novum. In addition, the results of the scientific mind do not have limits and they represent the heritage of mankind. The conflict between striving to reduce science to a political means for stopping social development and its emancipatory potentials appears as a conflict between the technical and humanistic minds. Today, man is ever more dramatically facing a capitalistically degenerated science and technique. Instead of becoming the means for liberating man from his dependancy on nature and its cultivation, they have become the means for the destruction of both man and nature. Science does not have an “objective” dimension and cannot by itself be a ruling power. It is only in the context of a humanistic political movement based on mankind’s libertarian and cultural heritage, which means guided by a humanistic vision of the world, that the emancipatory possibilities of science and technique can be realized.
The dominant consciousness in Zeitgeist is an instrumentalized scientific consciousness seeking to eliminate the emancipatory results and potentials of the modern (scientific and philosophical) mind. Zeitgeist follows the original intention of positivist philosophy and seeks to perform a political instrumentalization of the mind. The turning of philosophy into a positivist discipline via science presupposes the turning of science into the technical means for a dehumanized and oppressive politics. The abolishment of philosophy by means of science is possible only when science is cut off from its creative and progressive nature and when it acquires a manipulative (technical-executive) character as an instrument of the ruling class for planning the “future“ and making “progress“. Science becomes the means for purifying philosophy of all that offers the possibility of a critical relation to the existing world from the aspect of emancipatory possibilities created in civil society, and from the aspect of an idea of the future which seeks to create a new world. At the same time, Zeitgeist “overcomes“ philosophy with science, which has become a technocratic religion, by depriving it of reason and criticism, that is, by depriving it of its essence and thus depriving it of the reason for its existance. “Objective“ science represents the end of philosophy.
By abolishing evaluative judgement, Zeitgeist abolishes the difference between politics and technology. More precisely, politics becomes the technique for ruling the “masses”, without a humanistic content and guided by the interests of the ruling class and the logic of technocratic efficiency. It is not the antique skill (techne) of ruling that pressupposes virtue (arete), which means a normative (religious) framework as a criterion for appraising the correct conduct. In Zeitgeist, there is no correct conduct, or more precisely, the only correct conduct is that guided by the principle of technocratic efficiency. Politics as a dehumanized technique for ruling becomes a form in which positivist science is realized. The basic interest of a new class is not the acquisition of material wealth by or for its members, but preservation of the ruling order and thus their undisputed power. The basis for acquiring class (self)consciousness is not egoism, which pursues the aquisition of personal wealth, but the ruling position and the consciousness of superiority arising from it. A hierarchical order with a technocratic character brings about a constant reproduction of the “elites” by those who are “most intelligent” and are, consequently, predestined to be “leaders”. The criterion determining the legitimacy of power is given by the very nature of the ruling order. Those who rule are predestined to rule by being in power. A critique of the ruling “elite” is excluded, since the survival of that order is based on its undisputed “intelligence”. The ruling technocratic mechanism is, in fact, only a manifestation of the quasi-religious establishment of the ruling order, while the “superior intelligence of the elite” is but a mask hiding a fanatical authoritarian consciousness.
In order to control man, Zeitgeist cannot rely on his fear of natural forces. In modern times, science is the “victory” of man over natural forces – the basic source of antique mystery and the deification of nature (life). Zeitgeist seeks to deprive men of that heritage by realizing correctly that freeing man from his submission to nature creates a possibility for his liberation from submission to the alienated centers of social power. Zeitgeist does away with the demystifying power of science in order to (ab)use it and thus mystify the ruling spirit of the new order. Science becomes the means for producing a modern technocratic mystery, among other things, in the form of the “Venus Project”, which would deify the ruling principles of technical civilization and inspire man to be in awe of them. Instead of the antique unity of life and mystery, there is a political manipulation by the technocratic “elite” which tries, by means of science, to cast a veil of “mystery” over the primite (earthly) power and penetrate people’s consciousness. The Zeitgeist ideology becomes the means for mystifying the world in which man’s creative powers conquered the mystical “superhuman powers”. To prevent man from changing by developing his productive forces and his creative powers, social relations and his submissive position in society, namely, from acquiring self-consciousness as the creator of social goods and the capability of managing social processes – this is one of the most important goals of Zeitgeist. That is why its ideologues so fervently seek to cut the emancipatory (historical) roots of mankind and do away with the self-consciousness of man as a universal creative being of freedom. Zeitgeist devalues the productivistic activism of the working “masses” and turns the result into a means for establishing a new totalitarian power. It is one of the political movements that seek to turn man’s alienated creative power into the instrument for his submission. The “victory” of workers over nature becomes the victory of technocracy over the “working masses”. Man’s liberating powers and his creative practice become an anti-libertarian power: man becomes the victim of the development of his own productivistc (creative) powers. In the Hellenic world, man was the “toy of the gods” (Plato); in the world of Zeitgeist, he becomes the toy of technocracy.
The totalitarian character of the Zeitgeist future society is based on the survival of community being conditioned by efficient functioning of the technical system which, by way of a central computer serving as a “brain”, controls everything. A disturbance in the work of any segment questions the functioning of the entire system. The totalitarian character of the managing system is conditioned by the totalitarian character of the technical mechanism which ensures the functioning and survival of society. This makes “intelligence”, itself, the supreme skill of managing technique, an alienated and controlling power. The ruling “elite” does not have a humane status, but rather is the bearer of the “intelligence” which manages the mechanism providing the survival of society and as such has status similar to that of the priestly caste in ancient civilizations. Since everything is manufactured (including food) and has an artificial character, a perfectly functioning system is of a superior existential significance for the community. Human relations and man’s consciousness are conditioned by the totalitarian character of the devaluation of existence and the managing system based on it. Critical thinking does not only question the authoritarian structure of power, but also the functioning of the mechanism which ensures the survival of society. Free thinking and expression have an anti-existential character.
The project of the future advocated by Zeitgeist seeks to create an order superior to capitalism in existential terms, not in humanistic terms. It is an answer to the ever more dramatic existential threat to mankind and as such is an attempt to create a “rational alternative” to a destructive capitalist irrationalism. The problem is that it is not an answer based on the emancipatory potentials of mankind and the life-creating potentials of nature, but on a science and technique that are dehumanized and have become powers alienated from yet governing man. Zeitgeist does not seek to restore man’s creative powers, but to use them to create a new totalitarian order in which technique, as a function of a technocratic “elite”, will have an undisputed power over people. Managing technical processes, which is totalitarian in character, is a way of establishing a totalitarian power over people. The one who controls the processes that ensure the existence of society naturally becomes the master over people. Zeitgeist follows the expansionist spirit of monopolistic capitalism, which enables the new “master race” to establish a monopoly on science and technique and to globalize its power. Mastering the laws of nature becomes a means for the complete submission of man to the wilfulness of technocracy and for halting history.
Zeitgeist is a quasi-religion, which discards the cultural heritage of mankind. Scientific “enlightenment“, on which Zeitgeist insists, is not based on the emancipatory heritage of national cultures and civil society, especially not on the historical struggle of workers for a just society. As far as Zeitgeist‘s dealing with religion is concerned, it is not a combat with illusory worlds and illusory consciousness, but a combat with man as a spiritual being. A combat with the idea of transcendency, which carries within itself an idea for integrating mankind and the idea of equality, becomes one of the ways to destroy the humanistic imagination. Zeitgeist does not differentiate between emancipatory religious consciousness and the religion imposed by religious institutions, which is but a mask serving to deify private property and class order based on exploitation of workers. Religious consciousness is one of the most important historical forms of the development of man as a spiritual being. Without Hellenic spirituality, which is of a religious nature par excellence, modern civilization cannot be imagined. The same goes for Christianity and medieval civilization, as well as for the Renaissance. All that is in the spiritual “genetic code“ of mankind, without which the future is not possible. Here, also, it can be seen that Zeitgeist does not differentiate between discarding and overcoming the past and does not respect the emancipatory heritage of mankind, which, above all else, means man as a historical being.
At the political and historical levels, Zeitgeist is, actually, a form in which technocracy acquires political self-consciousness and becomes a new class – one which strives to come out from the shadow of capitalism and take power. It discards private property and money, the main levers of capitalist power, since as a technical “elite“, holding the technical means with which to rule society, it has de facto undisputed power over people. What the “Leader“ does with his “collaborators“ is to shape the class self-consciousness of technocracy as the ruling class. In Marx’s words, it is about technocracy turning from a class in itself into a class for itself. Science, deprived of evaluative judgement, is the new religion of the new class. The undisputable character of “objective“ scientific knowledge replaces the undisputability of a “God“. In the center of the „future town“ there is no university, theatre, museum, church, gallery or library, but only a technically produced deity: the omnipotent computer. It becomes the “Idol“ behind which hide self-proclaimed shadow rulers who determine people’s destiny without any responsibility for their actions. What gives Zeitgeist such significance is the fact that technique has become the chief driving force for social development and the most important means for securing power over working people. Zeitgeist, just as other similar political movements, uses humanistic rhetoric, but it is the product of capitalism, fed on the bloody milk that pours from capitalism’s steel spigots.
Just as the nature of what is being criticized conditions the nature of the critique, the nature of the ruling order conditions the nature of the struggle against it. In order to prevent people from understanding the true nature of capitalism and plotting an appropriate strategy of struggle against it, Zeitgeist reduces capitalism to the qualities which do not indicate the necessity for a radical political struggle by the oppressed workers and other citizens against capitalism. In that context, the Zeitgeist propagandists conceal the fact that their analysis and critique of capitalism are based on a political project which discards the struggle of the oppressed workers for freedom. Under the guise of a “scientific objectivism“, it eliminates a political analysis of capitalism, indicating that it is a class society based on the power of capitalists over workers, ensured by the police, army, secret agencies (in the USA alone there are about 3200 (!) agencies employing almost 850 000 people), paramilitary, crime and mafia groups, public media, entertainment industries, churches… The Zeitgeist’s combat with history is actually a combat with the historical struggle of the working people against the class movement and colonialism. The leaders of Zeitgeist do not even think about dealing with the American and French revolutions, as it is through them that the bourgeois class came to power, but they ruthlessly deal with the Russian and Chinese revolutions – since they helped workers and peasants overthrow capitalists and free themselves from the colonial yoke. Workers’ and anti-colonial revolutions are reduced to a “crime“. Likewise, the leaders of Zeitgeist do not bother to speak about the monstrous crimes of capitalists and their colonial phalanges, since in the light of those crimes the peasants’, workers’ and anti-colonial revolutions acquire a true, emancipatory and existential dimension. They do not mention the monstrous campaign of eradication of tens of millions of Native Americans by American capitalists; bestial murders and death from exhaustion of tens of millions of Africans who worked as slaves on the plantations of American land owners; tens of millions of children who, at the time of the industrial revolution, died in mines and factories where they worked for 14 hours per day; tens of millions of workers and peasants who died in the First and Second World Wars, launched by European, American and Japanese capitalists; about atrocious crimes of European capitalists in China, India, Africa, Central and South America and the Middle East, and over 200 million killed, including millions of children; dozens of criminal “humanitarian interventions“, which were launched after the Second World War by the American capitalists in order to steal other people’s territories and enable the development of a military-industrial complex which is the spine of a “new world order“ and the biggest threat to the survival of mankind; the fact that, thanks to the economic fascism of the most powerful capitalist states in the world, over 30 000 children die every day from starvation; the „consumer society“ with which capitalism seeks to “solve“ the problem of hyper-production and ensure further development has brought about such ecological destruction of the Earth and such climate changes that the survival of mankind is being called into question… At the same time, the ideologues of Zeitgeist are concealing the destructive potential of the capitalist way of developing the productive forces and the fascist potential of capitalist “democracy“ and, in that context, the monstrous plans of the most powerful capitalist groups in the West to kill, by technological and biological means, the “surplus“ of over 6 billion people. They do not speak of the true nature of capitalism, since in view of the tendency of developing capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction, the true nature and political reach of the Zeitgeist movement would be manifested, and this only means that it is but one of the detours in the struggle against capitalism and as such serves to buy time for capitalism and, thus, contribute to the destruction of mankind and life on the Earth.
Unlike Saint-Simon, Fourier and Marx, who see in conflicts between social groups (classes) the engine of social progress, the ideologues of Zeitgeist think, like Compte and Spencer, that political conflicts jeopardise the development of society – which should be an organic, harmoniously functioning, whole. Political pluralism is removed from the Zeitgeist project of the future. Zeitgeist is based on the “fact“, upon which the ideologues of capitalism insist and which is in the basis of Compte’s social theory, that the history of class struggles is over. By fighting to establish an order based on the undisputed rule of technocracy, Zeitgeist sees in the struggle of the oppressed for freedom the worst form of social pathology. Not only are freedom and progress incompatible, they are opposed. Everything is eliminated from the legacy of mankind that can contribute to the development of the consciousness of the oppressed working “masses“ that they are the creators of social goods and bearers of social progress. Hence Zeitgeist abolishes evaluative criteria and evaluative judgements. The ideals of the French bourgeois revolution (Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité), on which modern humanism is based, do not exist in the Zeitgeist project of the future. The ultimate political goal of the Zeitgeist doctrine and practice is the elimination of the emancipatory heritage of mankind which offers the possibility of the creation of a new world and a complete and irrevocable blending of man with the ruling order. “Reconciliation” (Compte) of those deprived of their rights with the established order of non-freedom and inequality is conditio sine qua non of the “new order” in the development of society advocated by Zeitgeist. The world as a space where workers are dominated by an undisputed and eternal technocratic “elite”– this is the ultimate goal of Zeitgeist progress. It represents the end of the evolution of a society based on conflict. “Reconciliation” and “perfection” become the foundation of social life. The principle of competitiveness is abolished by the principle of totalitarian technocratic domination.
Zeitgeist is akin to Compte’s idea of order, which exists in society when there is a stability of ruling principles and when all members of society are of the same opinion. According to Compte, such a state existed in the feudal period, in places ruled by Catholicism. Following the Catholic counter-revolutionary thinkers Lois de Bonald and Joseph-Marie de Maistre, Compte deals with Protestantism as a “negative ideology” (Maistre), which only creates “intellectual anarchy”. With the development of the science of society, as its spiritual pillar, people will again think in the same way, ensuring the stability of society. Compte came to the idea that was to become the fundamental political principle of Zeitgeist: a new (scientist) religion should be created, as well as a new clergy, which would unite society like the Catholic Church did in the Middle Ages. Achieving one-mindedness based on undisputed “objective” scientific knowledge is the basis of both Compte’s and Zeitgeist’s political conception. Basically, Zeitgeist abolishes the right of people to have their own opinion, as well as a capacity to resolve, as rational beings, (inevitable) conflicts in a reasonable way, in the interests of society. By abolishing people’s capability to settle their disputes as rational beings, as well as their relation to nature and the future, Zeitgeist abolishes the most important potential of human society, making the rule of a technocratic “elite” unnecessary. By striving to establish a technocratic totalitarianism, Zeitgeist, in fact, strives to destroy man’s political being, which is his emancipated social being. Zeitgeist doctrine deals with Aristotle’s thesis that man is a zoon politikon, which is the alpha and omega of the political constitution of modern society. Zeitgeist abolishes the state as a political community of citizens and society as a community of free and rational people. There is no Rousseau’s “social contract”, according to which society is the result of mutual agreements between people, nor Compte’s sociability, which “results spontaneously from human nature itself”. Basically, Zeitgeist abolishes the citizen as a constitutive factor of society as a political community, and thus abolishes civil society.
Since it deals with history, Zeitgeist abolishes the idea of progress created in the New Age, which insists on scientific development being associated with the realization of man’s “natural rights”, social justice and overall social development (Jacques Turgot, Nicolas de Condorcet). Similarly, Zeitgeist discards Compte’s historical conception and thus the “theological” and “metaphysical” phase in the development of mankind. For Zeitgeist, mankind’s past is on the same temporal plane, which means that strivings to step out of the existing world are meaningless. The Zeitgeist ideology does away with the idea of progress, which involves not only quantitive shifts, but also qualitative leaps in the development of society and the creation of a novum. Here we should recall Vindelband’s warning that the transformation of society in itself does not necessarily mean progress and that we should differentiate between a “higher” and a “more valuable” social order. Zeitgeist has not advanced much from the old Roman progressus, which consists of progress without a novum. Only (endless) quantitative shifts are possible, progress in the given spatial and temporal dimensions – progressing without progress. What is “new” is that progressing is reduced to the eventual abolishment of any possibility of stepping out of the technical world.
The Zeitgeist conception of progress has an instrumental character and is based on the development of science and technology, which become the exclusive means for the new ruling class to establishing totalitarian power: man becomes the slave of his own productivistic (creative) practice. The Zeitgeist progress is based on a positivistic scientific mind, which departs from the maxim savoir pour prevoir, prevoir pour agir, which means that planning for the future, as an undisputed privilege of the ruling “elite”, is the alpha and omega of the Zeitgeist theory of progress. The instrumental character of the Zeitgeist doctrine comes from its endeavour to rationally plan the future, which involves the prediction of obstacles that can jeopardize established “progress”, as well as being the means for their efficient elimination. Zeitgeist is a peculiar service of the technocracy for “planning the future”. Its antidemocratic nature indicates the true (antidemocratic) nature of capitalism. While Compte insists on the “development” and “perfectioning” of society, in Zeitgeist, the dominant idea is that of a “new beginning”, based on the cult of the “Leader” and the scientific practice of the technocratic “elite”. The creation of a new world does not involve the realization of a particular evaluative ideal, but a complete integration of man into the new order. Instead of advocating a change in social relations and the development of productive forces and man’s creative powers, Zeitgeist advocates the creation of a new “master elite”, which will manage efficiently to do away with the emancipatory heritage of mankind and the libertarian movement. Zeitgeist is akin to Spencer: “perfectioning” is based on the dying out of the improper and the survival of the proper functions of the social organism. Zeitgeist also does not seek to preserve the world as it is, but to “perfect” it by eliminating all that can jeopardize the order on which it is based. It seeks to do away with the emancipatory heritage of mankind and thus its theory means calling on technocracy to embark upon a crusade against all that leads to stepping out of the existing world. Zeitgeist‘s activistic intention is based on the strivings of the technocratic elite to rearrange society to suit its own interests and to colonize the planet. The world as a technically perfected concentration camp where all hope for a true human world is gone – this is the ideal of the “perfect” world sought by Zeitgeist. Nothing can halt the pace of progress, which means the self-willingness of the ruling “elite”. The Zeitgeist conception, in the form of technocracy, “unites” an absolutized voluntarism and an absolutized progressism. The authoritarian establishment of Zeitgeist is, among other things, based on this: the leaders of Zeitgeist are not responsible to anyone. They are self-proclaimed guardians of the holy “scientific spirit” that rules the world and on which the survival and “perfectioning” of society is based. The creation of a “new world” involves the destruction of critical consciousness and the pacification of workers: the public (political) sphere is the privilege of the ruling “elite”. The struggle for a “new society” involves a pedagogical reform, which will bring about the creation of a uniform personal character and a uniform view of the world. The ultimate reach of this struggle is the complete elimination of the critical and a changing mind and the idea of the future, that is, the realization of the idea of “order” and of “progress” as the establishment of a complete and final domination by technocracy over man (mankind) and the planet (nature) – which is reduced to being the source of energy and raw material. Zeitgeist seeks to prevent the development of the productivistic (potentially creative) powers of workers from allowing them to appear on the political scene by challenging the undisputed power of the technocratic “elite”. Zeitgeist seeks to prevent man from acquiring, by way of a productivistic (creative) practice, consciousness of himself as a libertarian being and the creator of (his own) history. The “negative” starting point of the Zeitgeist doctrine is the truth that man is capable of creating a world in his own image.
The idea of progress advocated by Zeitgeist has a technocratic nature and does away with the progress which involves the realization of man’s humanistic potential and mankind’s humanistic ideals, both having a historical character. It is based on strivings to realize the manipulative possibilities of technique in the context of conquering nature and establishing control over people. Hence the future is a product of a technocratic rather than a humanistic imagination. Zeitgeist does not find the ideal of a perfect world in the past, but in some totalitarian technical world. By abolishing history, Zeitgeist deprived progress of purpose and meaning, which means that in a cultural time-frame, which is the “true space of history” (Marx), it turned progress into a physical, “purely mechanical passage of time” (Ernst Bloch) beyond history. Unlike the predecessors of modernity, who strove to be visionaries (Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Owen, Charles Fourier…), Zeitgeist seeks to destroy the vision of the future along with the visionary mind. It does away with the “fantasy” of overcoming the capitalist world, at the same time as it seeks to create with the “Project Venus” a fantastic manifestation of the principle on which the existing world is based. The pictures of a “future world” become the means for destroying the visionary imagination and the need to dream. Zeitgeist “overcomes” Leibniz’s theodicy: the designed world is not “one of the best worlds”, it is the only possible world. It is the only alternative to capitalism, and it is not reached by critical confrontation with other alternatives, but by imposing it on mankind through technical means and advertising methods used by the capitalist propaganda machine. Like Compte’s philosophy, the Zeitgeist project of the future heralds the “end of utopia”, the difference being that it does not do away only with the idea of utopia, but with the possibility of its realization as well. The Zeitgeist ideology is a means for preventing the objective possibilities of freedom from becoming realistic possibilities for man’s liberation through the destruction of critical consciousness and workers’ and citizens’ practices for (potentially revolutionary) change. This is what gives Zeitgeist a repressive character: the bigger the objective possibilities for man to step out of a repressive civilization into a civilization of freedom, the more aggressively the technocracy tries to destroy his libertarian dignity and visionary mind. Zeitgeist is one of the manifestations of the ruling principle of monopolistic capitalism, “Destroy the competition!”, which has a universal character and involves destruction of all those political ideas and movements which offer a humanistic alternative to capitalism. It is not a coincidence that the Zeitgeist propagandists do not speak of a libertarian history of mankind and human communities that lived in unity with nature. They do not want to incite people to fight for freedom, nor do they want to suggest that people could establish a rational and cultivating relation with nature, without becoming slaves of the technocratic order headed by the self-proclaimed “elite” of scientists.
Unlike the ideas of the future generated at the onset of capitalism, which are based on existential optimism, the Zeitgeist project of the future is a direct result of the ever more dramatic existential crisis into which mankind has been brought by capitalism. The truth is that capitalism brought the world to the edge of an abyss, enabling inhumane visions like the Zeitgeist project of the future to acquire legitimacy, public promotion and popularity in Western “democracies“. The same goes for Stephen Hawking’s call to do away with ”traditional mankind“, as well as for his claim that human beings must leave the Earth within the next 200 years; for the idea of a “man-cyborg“, “terminators“, “androids“, Hollywood “cosmic epopee“; for the “argument“ that over 6 billion people must be killed in order for mankind to survive – which is gaining popularity in the West… Zeitgeist is one of the projects of the future that avers that capitalism cannot resolve the existential crisis it creates departing from its proclaimed “democratic principles“. The increasing ruthlessness with which capitalists abuse basic human and civil rights is the expression of an existential panic created by capitalism – which could turn into a political movement to destroy capitalism. At the same time, the increasingly inhumane projects of the future indicate the fascist potential of capitalism and its accumulated destructive powers, which at any moment could get out of control and destroy mankind.
The Zeitgeist idea of the future relies on the idea that science and technology are the means by which man conquers natural forces and becomes the “master and possessor of nature“ (maître et possesseur de la nature – René Descartes). It deals with the notion that regards nature as man‘s life-creating, aesthetic and historical space. In that context, the world is not a life-creating and spiritual whole, but the source of energy and raw material. The dominant logic is a primitive economic logic imposed by capitalism, which cuts the life-creating bond between nature and man, according to the North American chief of the Seattle tribe, the “spinning wheel of life“, of which man is an organic part. Zeitgeist abolishes the humanity and naturality of man’s living space, and, thus, his life-creating, historical, visionary and aesthetic potential, reducing his to a technically degenerated living environment. There is no creative spontaneity, nothing is unexpected, there is no openness to this living space of the future… The world is not a humane, but a technocratic whole. Cities do not reflect man’s life as a visionary, but as a technical being. Zeitgeist cities do not have an artistic, but a technical form. It is not man’s artistic being and creative spontaneity, but a dehumanised scientific mind and technocratic efficiency that are the integrative force of society. The living environment is reduced to a technically produced ghetto, in which man is forced to live as he has no other living space. The insistance on a technocratic existential principle, which is but an embodiment of the capitalist life style and a projection into the future of the capitalist way of life, abolishes the essential life principle. The Zeitgeist project of the future is the reincarnation of the capitalist world in a technically perfected form. That is why Zeitgeist discards the idea of the genuine sociability and the development of human relations as the most important precondition for the creation of a humane society.
The project of future cities created by the Zeitgeist designers is based on the notion that in a human settlement one sees not a humanized natural space and, as such, the realization of man as a historical, social, cultural, libertarian, life-creating, aesthetic and visionary being, but rather a technically organized life space. In them, people are deprived of unity with nature and natural living, and thus of their genuine natural being. A city as a concrete historical space is the embodiment of the ruling order and the ruling way of life in a direct material sense. It is a degenerated space taken from nature and thus is a violation of nature. It is the concentration of power by the ruling order in physical, spiritual and functional sense. At the same time, a city is a class creation and a form of class domination. The way of life, nature and structure of human relations – all this is conditioned by the nature of the ruling order and the mechanisms of its functioning. In the form of a “citizen“, man becomes a corporal, spiritual and functional member of the ruling order. Man’s emancipation from being a “citizen“ involves the abolishment of the city as a space alienated from nature and the creation of such human habitats as will enable man to realize himself as an emancipated natural being. Architecture should be based on the principle of humanized, and not technicized, natural surroundings. Instead of a humanized technical space, the world should become a humanized natural space. In fact, the world should become a global village, where man will live in direct unity with nature. At the same time, a living space should be open to the future, and not given by the manipulative powers of technique. Man’s creative powers as a libertarian being and the life-creating potential of nature are the basis on which a living environment and man’s life within it should be created and developed. Instead of a technical project, the living environment should be a work of art.
Zeitgeist does not only abolish history, but also the evolution of living beings. It creates a “new beginning“ of the living world and man, which is based on scientific ideas and technical innovations. This is also the basis for the production of food. It creates technical gardens which will produce scientifically raised (artificial) plants in a scientifically produced (artificial) soil. In a biologically healthy soil, one cubic meter contains over 270 living species. Each species creates its own micro world, and all those worlds together create the quality of the soil based on the evolution of the living world over the last 3 billion years. The same goes for plants, which Zeitgeist deprives of natural surroundings and original naturality and creates their surrogates in an industrial way using computer regulation. There are no free natural surroundings, no multiculturality and, thus, no co-existence of plants, there is no renovation of the abundance of natural forms, no insects (bees, above all), birds nor hundreds of animal species, which means that there is no co-existence of plant and animal species on which the life-creating totality of nature is based. Zeitgeist does not strive for the naturalization of the living world and renewal of nature’s life-creating force. Hence, there can be no historical character to the struggle for the preservation and humanization of nature and, in that context, no Paul-Henri Holbach, Claude Helvétius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Charles Fourier, Ludwig Feuerbach, nor Karl Marx with his principle “humanism-naturalism“ and the thesis that nature is man’s “anorganic body“. The starting point of the Zeitgeist project of the future is an ecologically barren land produced by capitalist “progress“.
The Zeitgeist anthropological model indicates the way in which existential reductionism, conditioned by the development of capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction, conditions anthropological (and any other forms of) reductionism. The Zeitgeist project of the future appears in the form of a one-dimensional world deprived of historicity and limited by technical borders within which there is no room for naturality and humanity. A dehumanized and denaturalized world produces a dehumanized and denaturalized man. It is a “one-dimensional man“ (Herbert Marcuse), whose one-dimensionality is conditioned by the technical world that reduces society to a mechanised ant hill. The Zeitgeist ideology is based on a mutilated notion of man. It is one of the curved mirrors created by capitalism in which man can see only his degenerated image. According to Zeitgeist, it is not capitalism that causes the destruction of the world, but the evil contained in man, which appears in the form of a class, national and religious consciousness. By way of the “objective“ scientific mind, we can drive out the demons from people’s heads and thus resolve conflicts threatening the survival of mankind. It is a peculiar scientistic exorcism by which an empty man is created, deprived of a cultural and libertarian self-consciousness, and, as such, is rendered a raw material for the making of a “new man“, suited to the technocratic project of the future that Zeitgeist seeks to realize.
The anthropological project of Zeitgeist can best be seen viewed against the humanistic ideas of man created through history. The ideal of man who lived in unity with nature, the antique kalokagathos, the Christian contemplative man, the Renaissance l’uomo universale, Rousseau’s Emile, Nietzsche’s “synthetical“ man, Marx’s man as a universal creative being of freedom – all these are ideas of man with an emancipatory nature and are as such superior to the idea of man offered by Zeitgeist. In its anti-humane potential, the anthropological project of Zeitgeist is akin to the Nazi project of a “Superman“ (Übermensch). As did the Nazis, the ideologues of Zeitgeist discard the libertarian and cultural heritage of mankind and seek to create a “new man“ according to scientific criteria and in a technical way, a man suited to the nature of a technical world. Unlike the Nazi “Superman“, whose self-consciousness is rooted in the mythological past of the German race (the myth of Sigfried and Nibelungen), the Zeitgeist “new man“ is deprived of both historical and mythological consciousness. If we use historical analogies, the Zeitgeist “new man“ is most akin to Compte’s “positive man“, apart from the fact that Compte’s is dominated by a positive scientific consciousness, while in Zeitgest he is genetically disfigured. The creation of a surrogate-man corresponds to the basic intention of modern capitalism – to destroy “traditional mankind“ and create a “new man“ (cyborg) suited to the technical world in which everything is produced in laboratories. We should bear in mind that the Zeitgeist movement sprouted from American soil, where the only (native) people with a history, who lived in unity with nature, were destroyed; in a world where nothing has an enduring value; in a world where anything can be “produced“ and turned into money – including man.
The Zeitgeist project by itself is a technocratic phantasm, but the most important thing is the concrete social (political) effect it produces. Zeitgeist appeals to lonely young people who are lost in the destructive capitalist nothingness and who lack historical self-consciousness and social being. It does not seek to awaken in them humanity and motivate them to fight against capitalism and for a humane world, it rather seeks to instrumentalize their desolation. Zeitgeist offers young people, the victims of capitalism, a technically degenerated picture of the future, which is but one of the ideological forms in which the capitalist world appears. It is, in fact, about a technocratic illusion emanating from the capitalist propaganda sphere. The owners of the Zeitgeist movement have money and organisation and use the Internet as a means for imposing on young people a “vision of the future“, using the mechanisms of manipulation on which the advertising industry is based. The “vision of the future“ becomes a commodity in the capitalist market place of illusions, one that is spectacularly packaged. Zeitgeist eliminates from people’s heads the real world and creates a virtual one that destroys the humanistic and produces a technocratic imagination. Just as the capitalist propaganda machinery turns people’s need for clear mountain water into a “need“ for a tasteless “coca-cola“, so is their craving for a humane world turned into “craving“ for a dehumanized and denaturalized world. The technocratic vision of the world becomes a modern illusion that appeals to young people stuck to computer screens, whose social, which means political, being has been destroyed. They live in a virtual world and their consciousness and imagination are but a reflexion of what is offered to them every day through their computer screens. Their mental activism is reduced to receiving and sending e-mails and to the creation of a computer phantom, who will represent them in a virtual facebook world. Zeitgeist addresses the “computer generation“, which means technically degenerated young people who do not care for the cultural and libertarian heritage of mankind. To make matters worse, they personalize their relation to the computer, and it becomes everything they are missing: a friend, a lover, a brother… That is why many of them are confused by the critique of the Zeitgeist doctrine. It is a decoy for atomized people, which creates an illusion of sociability and engagement. Zeitgeist offers them the possibility to be “critical“ and to continue to live in “their“ world. It is an alibi for those who are not strong enough to leave their caves and to come, along with other young people, into the daylight. The “Leader“ is a connection between the virtual world, on computer screens, and the real world where young people should be engaged. Their “engagement“ is actually reduced to waiting for the “Messiah“ to send them a message by way of the Internet, after which they will “change the world“. They are not people who live and act as social beings, but rather lonely people who respond to a button that will be pressed by the one who has the remote control. The “fans“ of Zeitgeist are reduced to teledirected rats. By destroying people’s historical and social self-consciousness, capitalism turns them into idiots who are willing to rely on a mystified power of technique and resigned to the loss of elementary human and civil rights, since these rights, in their desolate hopelessness, mean nothing to them. What does the right to fly the skies mean to a falcon, if its wings have been cut off and it is locked in a cage, condemned to death?
The Zeitgeist picture of a future world is, actually, a combat with man’s humanistic potential and humanistic imagination. It is not the world of free people, but a technically perfected concentration camp, where technically degenerated people live their futile lives. The Zeitgeist project of the future is one of the manifestations of the idea of the end of history. We can only imagine today how people who manage to free themselves from the chains of capitalism and create a humane world will live, think and dream. We are all victims of capitalism and bear its stamp. Our vision of the future is not the vision of free people, but a vision created on the basis of and relative to capitalism, which means that it is conditioned by the capitalist civilisation. A struggle for the future cannot be based on designing plans in which future generations are given a way of living, but on a struggle to liberate mankind from the capitalist (technical) tyranny. Young people should become capable of taking over the management of the entire process of social reproduction. The basic precondition is to leave their lonely dams and to get organised for a struggle in the real world. Fighting sociability, with which all modes of mediation between man and (his) world will be abolished, is the only true force that can prevent the destruction of life on the Earth and create a humane world.
