KategorijaArticles in English

The English writer Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) attracted public attention not only as an outstanding essayist but also as the author of the futuristic study Brave New World (1936), in which he warned about the disastrous development of Western civilization. After World War II, Huxley published The Doors of Perception (1953), in which he sought to analyze the effects of drugs (primarily mescaline) on man’s perceptual ability and his creative power. The book provoked a strong reaction and became popular in artistic circles and hippie communes, especially in the United States. In the following text, we will attempt to analyze the nature of Huxley’s thought, as well as the nature of the drug epidemic in developed capitalist countries, which kills and mentally degenerates millions of young people every year and produces mass idiocy.

Huxley’s thought does not have a revolutionary, but rather a conformist character. It is a response from a capitalistically degenerated man to a capitalistically degenerated world. Huxley’s theory is based on anthropological reductionism. Huxley abolishes man as a libertarian and visionary being, thereby stripping the world of its worldliness—that is, of its human essence. Worldliness implies that man is the creator of his own world, which means that the world is a community of people as social, historical, libertarian, creative, and visionary beings. The world Huxley speaks of is not a real world with a historical nature, but an abstract world with an ideological nature.

Huxley’s thought corresponds to the nature of the contemporary world. Huxley seeks to improve man and perfect him through chemical means and spiritual drugs in the form of religion and mysticism. Man is reduced to a biological given, to a religious fanatic, and to a mystic. In reality, man is caught between dehumanized science, which is in the hands of capitalist clans, and religion and mysticism, which are in the hands of churches and sects. Huxley seeks to prevent the oppressed working people from developing a critical consciousness that calls capitalism into question. The creation of mystical visions through chemical substances and drug-induced sessions are intended to prevent people from creating a vision of a humane world. The critic of the “brave new world” followed the dominant tendency of capitalist development. By becoming addicted to drugs, man becomes a slave to the ruling order, which turns the world into a modern concentration camp through science and technology.

Capitalism and its ideological sphere abolish man as a being capable of creating a reasonable world. Huxley does the same with his theory. His thought is not only based on dealing with the idea of a reasonable world—which represents the greatest value of enlightened thought and German classical philosophy—but also abolishes reason as the source of man’s self-awareness. Drugs prevent man from understanding the essence of the existing world and abolish visionary consciousness, without which man is lost in the capitalist hopelessness. Huxley does not strive to create a world of free and rational people, but rather a world of drug addicts. Man cannot create a humane world and, in that context, fantasize about the future of humanity — but through drugs, he can create illusory worlds within his own mind. Drugs become a means that offer the possibility of an apparent escape from the existing world to lonely people, who are lost in the nothingness of everyday life. Huxley’s thought ends in individualistic mindlessness.

Huxley abolishes man as a free and creative being and reduces him to a mere perceptive being—a recipient of sensory impressions. In truth, man is not an object situated in the world from which he receives impressions; rather, he perceives the world as a creative and libertarian being, and as such, he is an active being who relates to the world he lives in by creating a humane world. He does not experience himself as a human being solely through perception, but through an active relationship with the world—as an organic part of society as a human community, which means establishing interpersonal relationships as a fertile, emotional, creative, libertarian, and visionary being. By having an active, transformative, and creative relationship with the world, man enhances his perceptive abilities, thereby increasing his capacity to understand the world and changing relationship towards it, as well as his ability to develop interpersonal relationships and thus enrich himself as a social being. This is the basis for the development of creative sociability as the most important historical value, which offers humanity the possibility to ensure a certain existence and create a new world.

Drugs do not contribute to the development of man’s perceptive abilities, but produce mental states that generate stimuli which cripple the senses and thus man’s perceptive capacities. At the same time, drugs cripple man’s perceptive powers by depriving him of libertarian self-awareness and creative personality, and by abolishing him as a social being. Drugs degenerate man by turning him into an autistic figure and by destroying his perceptive powers as a natural and reasonable being. In their most dramatic form, drugs “stimulate” man’s mental processes in such a way that they lead to his (self)destruction.

Man’s perceptive ability is not a given, but develops alongside the growth of his human potential. The development of humanity is the foundation for the development of man as a perceptive being. At the same time, by developing his perceptive abilities, man expands his authentic human powers — he becomes a man. Every man, as a concrete social being, exists as a unique and unrepeatable perceptive being. The experience of perception and its meaning are conditioned by the nature of man as a social personality and by the nature of social conditions in a given historical period. This is what determines the quality of perception. The nature of prevailing social relations and the dominant value horizon directly and indirectly condition man’s relationship towards himself, people and the world, and thus the nature of perception. A typical example is sexuality. The belief that sex is a ‘sin’ conditions how one perceives and experiences his own body, as well as man’s relationship with other people. Likewise, throughout life, the angle of perception and therefore its meaning and quality are constantly changing. Man experiences the touch of a woman’s body in one way when he is at the peak of his vitality, and in a completely different way when he is in the twilight of his life.

Huxley’s drug-addicted initiative was not only theoretical and experimental in nature; it arose from his need to be someone else. If he started from the fact that every man is a unique and unrepeatable personality, it would not have occurred to Huxley to try to “slip into” other people and thus become another man. It is one thing to try to live in others, and another to try to live with others, respecting them as unique and unrepeatable personalities. Why would a man, who is an independent personality, have the need to take drugs and thus escape from himself and become someone else? Was Huxley using drugs to develop his perceptive powers in order to develop his authentic human personality, or to escape from himself?

Does Huxley’s thought have emancipatory potentials? Huxley states the visions of artists that are the product of their psychological states and sees them in a culturological context. Visions become symbolic phenomena through their interpretation, which is based on a way of thinking that abolishes man as a concrete historical and social being. Drugs become a means by which man “liberates” the senses and mental processes from the constraints of reason and thus from the constraints of everyday life. Through narcotics, a man acquires the ability to perceive what he cannot perceive and imagine if he is guided by the prevailing intellectual and normative horizon.

Does Huxley’s thought have a religious nature? Does his drug-addicted project enable the creation of a mental state in which it is possible to discover that, which is foreign to reason, and which has a metaphysical and transcendental character? Does the drug-induced ecstasy lead a man to the knowledge of a “truth” that has a timeless and suprahistorical nature? Do drugs allow a person to soar into the sky and experience an encounter with the divine? Huxley does not merely set a religious framework in which man should find a timeless meaning of life; in his mystical speculations he tries to uncover the truth. Huxley does not distinguish between the truth and the genuine since he abolished man as a sovereign creative being who creates a value horizon that has a visionary character. At the same time, in his theory the mental sphere itself acquires a suprahistorical and suprasocial character. A man in a drug-addicted ecstasy not only strives to reach the hidden truth, but also to experience a mental flourishing.

According to Huxley, a man “frees himself from the world” by depriving himself of what makes him a man: his social being and the visionary mind that gives him the opportunity to create a humane world. Instead of fighting with other people against the inhumane and for the creation of a humane world, Huxley strives to create a world of autistic petty bourgeoisie who will establish “their” world in their disturbed imagination. Huxley offers the slaves of capitalism a “medicine” that will turn them into drugged idiots who will not dream about the world of free people, but will be obsessed with illusions and hallucinations that abolish the critical consciousness and visionary imagination rooted in man as a social and historical being. Man’s need to realize himself as a human being, the need for other people and a certain existence, and in that context the need for nature as a humanized environment – these are the concrete life-creating sources of man’s visionary imagination.

For Huxley, human imagination does not arise from the existing world, but from the psychological reaction triggered by drugs. It brings a man to such a psychological state in which he loses contact with reality and the ability to reason. Illusions abolish the imagination that arises from concrete life and that seeks to transcend the existing world. They are not only the product of mental processes that are freed from the restraints of reason through drugs; their source lies in the sphere of the unconscious. Drugs become the key that opens the Pandora’s box of the subconscious. It brings a man into such a psychological state in which he falls into the dark labyrinths of the unconscious where he disappears as a sovereign being. Huxley does not realize that the penetration of man into himself by means of narcotics only seemingly enables an escape from the existing world. Even when he is deprived of reason, man is a social being and as such an organic part of the world in which he lives. A typical example are dreams.

Capitalistically degenerated life creates the most ruinous drug that not only produces false worlds in people’s heads, but physically and mentally distorts people. In this way, capitalism makes it impossible for man to understand the essence of the world he lives in and his true position in it. Existential uncertainty and the increasingly dramatic struggle for survival cause anxiety, fear, panic in man… and in this way condition the mental processes that determine how he perceives and experiences the world. Capitalism keeps man in a state of stress and thus destroys his nervous system, turning him into mentally disturbed person. This is reinforced by the existential logic of capitalism, which is based on the principles “Man is another man’s wolf!” and “The war of all against all!”. A man does not see another man as a friend, but as a mortal enemy. Instead of being a source of life’s joy, the world becomes a battlefield. Man finds compensation for his increasingly bloody life in the misfortune and suffering of others. It is indicative that in the “free world”, mass sports spectacles, which have an increasingly murderous character, are based on the principle “the audience likes the smell of blood!”

Living in a world based on violence and consumerism, people inevitably acquire a murderous and destructive imagination. The Hollywood entertainment industry also contributes to this. It is a factory that produces a spiritual drug whose effects on people are more devastating than those of “ordinary” drugs. It’s the same with sports and music spectacles, TV shows, gambling, with “video games” for children… Man lives in a room of distorting mirrors in which the increasingly monstrous destruction of man and nature has acquired a fateful and spectacular dimension. Guy Debord was right when he called contemporary capitalism a “spectacle society”. Consumer society and its ideological sphere, which takes on a spectacular form through the advertising industry, create a drug that produces ever more pernicious illusions. It should also be noted that the illusion that “everyone will become rich”, which corresponds to the religious illusion of “eternal life in heaven”, represents a drug that has destroyed the lives of millions of people in the “free world”.

Huxley was a capitalistically degenerated man. The phenomena that Huxley perceives indicate the nature of his thought, as well as the nature of his personality and the nature of his relationship to the world and man. Huxley was not interested in the world in which he lived; it was not the source of his perception. He does not perceive people as concrete social beings, but observes paintings and draperies… Living in Los Angeles, every day he passed by people lying on muddy pavements, begging for a crust of bread. Huxley did not notice these people. He did not perceive human misfortune and suffering, capitalist tyranny and slavery of the working classes, racism and fascist barbarism… In his world there are no black ghettos where children die of hunger and disease; there are no beaten and raped women; there are no criminal gangs that kill without mercy; there are no city neighborhoods where drugs and prostitution reign…

Did Huxley’s thought contribute to the development of drug euphoria in the West? Did Huxley contribute to the affirmation of the understanding that drugs have a “liberating” character and as such should receive public support and legal status? Did Huxley contribute to the creation of the pernicious illusion that drugs provide the opportunity for man to see the light of truth in the increasingly dark capitalist nothingness? Is the vision of the drugged world Huxley’s most important contribution to the creation of the “brave new world”?

Author: Ljubodrag Simonovic

Translated from Serbian by Vanja Zakanji

The work before the reader is an attempt to shape the self-awareness of modern man as a cosmic being endeavoring to create a humane world and thus a humane cosmos. The only genuine happening in the universe is the happening of man. Man, being a creative and historical being, represents a cosmic novum, and as such, a unique and unrepeatable cosmic being. With the emergence of human society, a new cosmic quality arose: the humane world. Love, freedom, creativity, faith, beauty, imagination… emerged in the universe. The conquest of space is only seemingly a technical process. Man’s growing as a human being is the true way in which man “conquers” the universe. Earth is a cosmic beacon radiating with libertarian and life-creating light. The creation of a humane world and, consequently, the creation of a humane universe, is the highest expression of human freedom and it gives true meaning to man’s cosmic existence.

The self-awareness of man as an emancipated cosmic being should be based on the truth that each man is a self-sovereign individual and, as such, a unique and unrepeatable cosmic  being. Since man is a social being, he can exist as a cosmic being only as an organic part of humanity. A man without humanity is a futile being. Just as there can be no humanity without people, there can be no people without humanity. Humans are cosmic brothers.

Gods and cosmic forces are not the ones who created man. Theories based on religious mysticism and mechanistic materialism negate man as a unique and unrepeatable cosmic being. What constitutes the uniqueness and unrepeatability of man at a cosmic scale is that man is a historical being. Man is not what he is, but rather what, as a libertarian and creative being, he can be. The ability of man to grow as a human being is his most crucial cosmic quality. Historicity is the characteristic of human civilization that makes it specific and unique at a cosmic scale. In its historical development, human society has undergone qualitative leaps. Just as man is not what he is but what he can be, so human society is not what it is but what it can be. The essence of the “fourth dimension” lies in the fact that humanity is capable of creating a new world. This is the source of true progress.

The time in which humanity lives out its existence has a historical nature. This is what constitutes its specific quality. It is a life-creating time, not only in an existential sense but also in an essential sense. The quality of man as a unique cosmic being lies in the fact that he is not only capable of actualizing the life-creating potentials of matter and cosmic processes, but also of actualizing the life-creating potentials of the world in which he lives. Creating new life by creating a new world, which signifies the historical nature of man as a life-creating being and thus the historicity of life-creativeness, makes man a unique cosmic being. The essence of immortality is not in the “revival of the dead” but in the actualizing of the life-creating potentials of humanity and nature. The essence of immortality is life-creativeness.

The quality of historical time is measured by the world’s becoming a humane world, which means man’s growing as a human being. A good illustration is the child. The quality of the time of a child’s life is measured by its becoming a man – whether it has developed those abilities that make it human: whether it can move, speak and sing, think and form its own judgments; whether it is a self-aware creative individual; whether it experiences other people as human beings; whether it is capable of taking responsibility for its actions and its life…

Humanity needs to once again return to the historical path, which means that man must once again become a self-aware and emancipated historical being. This should be the basis for our relationship towards the past, as well as towards the emancipatory legacy of civil society. History did not unfold based on mechanistic or naturalistic determinism, but on the confrontation of possible alternatives for development. Man not only chooses between possible alternatives for development but also creates new alternatives. These are evident today in view of the new and fatal “alternative” created by capitalism: the destruction of life on Earth.

Capitalism is the greatest and most real threat to humanity. It has transformed the creative powers of man into destructive forces that can annihilate humanity in the blink of an eye. At the same time, in the hands of the ruling order, science and technology have become a means to instill fear of a “cosmic catastrophe,” concealing the growing existential danger created by capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction. In this context, increasingly dramatic climate changes are emerging, foreshadowing the demise of life on Earth. The fundamental condition for the preservation of life on Earth is not the advancement of technology but the creation of a humane world. Essence has become the fundamental condition for existence. Humanity must dismantle capitalism, while the creative powers of man should become life-creating powers. Naturalization of nature and humanization of man as a natural being have become the most crucial existential challenges.

The relationship of man towards the cosmos is an indicator of his relationship towards himself and other people, as well as towards the world and the future. Humanism is the only true cosmic ideal and should, as such, be the foundation of man’s relationship towards the universe. A humane relationship towards other people and the Earth is a fundamental prerequisite for establishing a humane relationship towards the universe. Man’s relationship towards the universe should validate the truth that man is a humane being. In this context, man should strive to enrich nature as his living environment and cosmic habitat. Instead of serving the capitalist destruction of life, natural laws, in the form of technology, should serve man’s goal of humanizing the world and nature. By creating a humane world on Earth, man creates a humane cosmos.

The idea of the genuine is the foundation upon which the man’s growing as a human being is based, and on this basis, the world’s growing into a humane world. Wisdom grounded in the idea of the genuine and in the dialectical mind has become not only the fundamental libertarian but also the existential principle. This involves a critical relation towards mechanistic materialism and logical empiricism, cosmological esotericism, science fiction that makes no distinction between utopian and utopistic, cosmological romanticism with a mythological character, religious mysticism, and more. It is no longer about creating theories and, in this context, “great philosophies,” but about a thought that enables humanity to create a humane world and thus prevent the destruction of life on Earth.

The only genuine time is the time in which man loves and is loved. Everything else is an illusion. Love among people is the creator of true time and thereby the true history of humanity. If man ever loses the ability to love, which means if he ever loses the need for other people, he will cease to be human. Without the need for others, man will lose the need that characterizes all living beings — the need to live. Life will not only become meaningless but impossible. Only together with other people can man survive as man and prevent the destruction of life on Earth. Today, militant sociability has become the authentic sociability. It implies not only the fight to preserve life on Earth but also the fight to create a humane world.

Time and space are not a given. The most crucial quality of space and time lies in their liberating and life-creating potentials. The space where man lives has a historical nature, and thus a symbolic and visionary character. The universe by itself has a mechanical rather than a historical nature. There is no freedom in it; everything is based on mechanistic determinism. In the universe there is no future. The future is only possible as a product of the creative practice of humans who have acquired libertarian and historical self-awareness. The future is created by realizing the life-creating potentials of nature and society – through the life-creating practice of humans as creative and visionary beings.  This is what distinguishes historical from mechanical time. Capitalism destroys the very possibility of a humane future. The capitalist “future” boils down to transforming the Earth into a technically perfected concentration camp. This is the purpose of the “conquest of space.”

Man cannot reach his true cosmic essence as an abstract cosmic being but as a concrete earthly being. Earth is the cosmic habitat of man, providing him the opportunity to soar into the future. It is not a flight through time but a flight measured by historical criteria. Humanity is at the very beginning of its cosmic odyssey. The idea of eternity needs to be brought back from the cosmic expanse to Earth. The planet Earth is the only possible cosmic home for man. Earth has existed for five billion years in the same cosmic conditions it experiences today. Humanity has survived cosmic and earthly cataclysms when it had no means to counteract them. With the development of science and technology, humanity has gained new insights into the universe and an ability of having an active relationship with it, which can help ensure its survival. Ahead of humanity lie millions of years of life on Earth.

Man must be born anew. He needs to soar, like a contemporary Phoenix, from the ashes of capitalist nothingness into the future. Vision of the future should be based on life-creating optimism, meaning on the creative powers of man and his faith in fellow human beings. Creative power is something that cannot be taken away from man, but if devoid of humanity, it inevitably turns into destructive power. It is not the development of technology but the creation of a humane world that is the fundamental condition for preserving life on Earth. To liberate humanity from the ecocidal and genocidal capitalist barbarism and to create a world of free people living in unity with nature – that is a fateful task that lies before humanity.

Author: Ljubodrag Simonovic

Translated from Serbian by Igor Barjaktarevic

Translation supervisor Vanja Zakanji

In order to understand the nature of Tesla’s inventions and the myth surrounding him, one must consider the social conditions in the United States at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, during which Tesla lived and worked. This was a time of intense industrialization and the development of the military industry as an expression of the efforts of the ruling capitalist and political circles to make the U.S. the dominant world power. Science and technology became crucial tools for imperialist expansion, and on their wings, the myth of the “omnipotence of science and technology” was created. Tesla’s scientific work was also based on this wave of capitalist expansion, which in turn attributed great significance to Tesla’s inventions that provided technical means for generating energy, the driving force behind industrial development. Tesla became the master of energy and, as such, a mythological figure. He was capable of creating lightning and thunder, causing earthquakes and dramatic changes in the ionosphere, inventing “death rays” etc… Tesla became a symbol of power through which the West could conquer the world. He followed the spirit of capitalist expansion, understanding that whoever controls energy rules the world.

Tesla believed that he could control cosmic forces and saw himself as a new Messiah who was to mediate between the earthly world and the universe. He rejected humanity’s struggle for freedom, which could create a humane world, and proclaimed science as the power that would change people and eliminate the gap between life and death. The source of Tesla’s creative inspiration was not a humanistic but rather a technical civilization. Tesla stated, “I work for the future, and my contemporaries will not understand me, but one day the scientific laws of nature whose secrets I have discovered will prevail, and in the blink of an eye everything will change. A new era of human wisdom will come, characterized by an understanding of time, the discovery of a source of infinite energy, and the shaping of matter according to the will of scientists.” Tesla abolishes the evolutionary development of life on Earth and man as its highest form. He reduces man to a material part of the cosmos directly subject to the influence of cosmic forces. At the same time, Tesla eliminates man as a self-aware, freedom-loving, creative, historical, and visionary being. The future of humanity, according to Tesla, is not achievable through the creative practices of people but as a result of the action of cosmic processes.

Just as religious fanatics create a mythological connection between man and God, scientific zealots create a mythological link between man and the universe. In both cases, man is deprived of historical being and creative self-awareness, reduced to a tool of “supernatural forces.” Would Tesla have become what he was if he had grown up in the jungle? What languages did Tesla speak and write in? Are these languages the product of a millennia-old cultural history of people, or were they a cosmic given? It is language itself that conditions the ability of thinking and acquiring individual self-awareness, including creative self-awareness and creative individuality, without which Tesla would never have become an inventor. Are mathematics and physics cosmic phenomena, or are they social phenomena created by humanity in its historical development – without which Tesla’s creativity would have been impossible? Was the invention of direct current a prerequisite for the creation of alternating current? The same applies to other discoveries embedded in Tesla’s inventions. Indeed, Tesla did not “receive” his ideas from the universe; he created them based on the creative heritage of humanity. In this way, he contributed to the creation of a humane universe.

Nikola Tesla was obsessed with “music of the spheres.” Can the structure of the universe itself enable man to become a poetic being? In order to enjoy music, man had to develop an artistic sense and thereby the ability to distinguish tones from sounds. “Cosmic music” is a dimension that a person with a developed musical sense attributes to mechanical cosmic sounds. They remind him of tones. Man acquired the ability to sing during his historical development. Early humans were not able to speak or sing. They emitted cries when they felt danger and mumbled. Singing involves the development of vocal cords, which is connected to the development of interpersonal relationships and man’s emotional and creative being. Initially, man imitated the songs of birds. Over time, he began to create primitive forms of singing with a limited tonality…

Tesla advocates a cosmological pantheism that has an energetic character and establishes a mystical relationship with light, which is a kind of „God’s spirit” and as such a source of energy that flows in man. Man is, in fact, only one of the forms in which energy appears and as such he is immortal. Light creates him and in light he experiences eternal existence. Man is abolished as a natural, social and historical being and reduced to a sort of battery whose energy potential is the source of his creative work and enthusiasm. Mental exercises are to ensure his mental strength, which means to prevent dissipation of energy and focus it on the development of the senses and mental abilities. Woman is undesirable because she takes mental and physical energy away from man. Development of the physical senses takes place by crippling the erotic being of man and his sense of humanness. The relation of man to the world does not have a social and libertarian, but a meditative nature. Since he does not conceive man as a libertarian being, Tesla is unable to grasp the nature of the Promethean fire, which means the libertarian enlightenment. His vision of the future is not based on a libertarian mind, but on a cosmological mysticism that has a technocratic nature.

Tesla does not perceive the world as a concrete historical phenomenon, and accordingly, he does not see man as a concrete social and historical being. According to him, man creates nothing and receives everything from some “cosmic core.” Tesla is not speaking here as a scientist but rather as a religious fanatic. His views are not based on scientific facts and rationally grounded conclusions but on esoteric speculations. By succumbing to the influence of Eastern “sages,” Tesla lost his historical self-awareness as a member of the European cultural heritage and got stuck in the swamp of Eastern mysticism. He was unable to follow the emancipatory path of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and German classical philosophy, and got lost in the maze of esoteric verbiage.

Tesla had limited knowledge in the fields of philosophy and social sciences. He lacked concepts essential for understanding the historical development of society and the nature of man as a sovereign cosmic being. Tesla attempted to fill this void with Far Eastern religions that represent a confrontation with the emancipatory legacy of civil society and Christianity. Simultaneously, Tesla was a victim of solitary despair. His unhealthy mental states directly influenced his relationship with the world and the cosmos. He was obsessed with cosmic forces, subconscious compulsive actions, spirits, extraterrestrials, fears… His attitude towards cosmic processes has an escapist and compensatory character. The poetic nature of Tesla’s cosmological mysticism suggests that Tesla the man surpassed Tesla the scientist. Tesla’s final letter to his mother indicates that he was a tragic human being, and as such a unique and unrepeatable cosmic being.

The key to understanding Tesla’s cosmology is not found in science but in his conception of humanity. Tesla’s cosmology is based on a condescending attitude towards people. For Tesla, man is not an emancipated social being and, as such, a constitutive subject of society as a political community. It is no coincidence that Tesla was obsessed with Eastern religions, which represent the ideology of a society in which there is no man as a sovereign historical being and citizen. Tesla abolished humanity as the protagonist of social change. He consistently emphasized that humanity is incapable of solving the problems it faces, giving himself a messianic dimension based on this belief. Tesla was convinced that, due to his physical and mental characteristics, he stood above other people. He believed he possessed special qualities not inherited from his parents but acquired from the cosmos. He saw himself as a cosmic superhuman whose task was to bring order to earthly chaos through cosmic laws and thus determine the fate of humanity.

According to Tesla, cosmic processes directly condition human behavior and thereby events on Earth as well. Cosmic laws take on a divine character, determining the nature of man and his destiny. It is not coincidental that Tesla uncritically accepted the Eastern idea of “fate” (karma). This idea aligns with a cosmos where man is not a sovereign personality and does not see himself as capable of creating a humane world. Tesla’s cosmology is a reckoning with the emancipatory legacy of civil society and of the libertarian and cultural legacy of national cultures. Instead of earthly realism, Tesla offers cosmic mysticism. He makes no distinction between mechanical and historical time and, through mechanicistic materialism, abolishes historical materialism. Tesla’s cosmology is based on technocratic mindlessness. It eliminates the rational relationship between man and the world, depriving man of the ability to create an idea of the future as a rational alternative to capitalism, where destructive mindlessness prevails.

By negating history and reducing man to a non-historical being, Tesla reduced the world to an abstract cosmic space. There is no mention of the prevailing capitalist order, or of class society and the exploitation of working classes, of racism and sexism, of colonialism and the extermination of entire peoples… Blinded by cosmic mysticism, the “genius scientist” Nikola Tesla was unable to grasp what is evident to anyone with common sense. The world is not governed by cosmic laws, but by the laws of capitalism: “Money doesn’t stink!”, “Time is money!”, “Destroy the competition!”, “Man is a wolf to another man!”… These directly condition social life, the dominant value horizon, and man’s consciousness.

Tesla projected into the cosmic space everything that he was lacking in his everyday life as a man. He departed from the earthly world and flew into a virtual cosmic realm that was a product of his imagination. Tesla experiences cosmic phenomena as if they were living beings and has an emotional relationship with them. The cosmos is a projection of Tesla’s tragic life and solitary suffering. What makes Tesla’s vision of the universe unique is that it incorporates his scientific knowledge and creative mind. For Tesla, the relationships between the numbers 3, 6, and 9 represent the “key to the universe.” Such intellectual play, which has a psychological foundation and a mystifying character, becomes an obsession for scientists who strive to reach the “essence of the universe” through formal logic and numbers.

Tesla became a victim of his subconsciousness and a creative mind devoid of the emancipatory heritage of modern society and the libertarian heritage of humanity. He deprived the real world of its worldly essence, reducing it to cosmic abstraction, and declared the virtual cosmic realm, a product of his imagination, as reality. In this realm, Tesla found solutions to earthly problems that, in his belief, humanity could not solve. The most detrimental aspect of Tesla’s cosmology is that it deprives man of those qualities that enable him to break free from capitalist barbarism and prevent the destruction of life on Earth. It never occurred to Tesla to call upon the oppressed to resist the tyranny of the powerful. He was not affiliated with those who fought for freedom but with those who sought to dominate the world. His thought did not stem from the libertarian tradition of humanity but from the ideology of the ruling class.

Holding to the myth of the omnipotence of science and technology, Tesla believed that just as he could “play” with lightning and thunder, he could also play with people and the fate of humanity. Tesla considered himself a mediator between Earth and the universe, possessing such physical and mental abilities that, through scientific laws, he could influence cosmic processes and turn them into a means for determining the future of the world. He saw himself as an all-powerful cosmic being, the embodiment of the ruling power of pagan gods, capable of establishing order on Earth. The extent to which Tesla believed in the omnipotence of science is evident in his claim that science would provide people with the ability to “talk” with the souls of the deceased, thus bridging the gap between life and death.

Tesla’s understanding of morality points to the absurdity of his cosmology. According to Tesla, morality is not a specific social phenomenon unique to man; instead, it is a cosmic given. In simple terms, the cosmos is moral, while man, as an earthly being, is immoral. For Tesla, evil is a consequence of disharmony in the pulsation of matter. Man can become moral through the harmonious pulsation of matter, bringing order to earthly life and thereby giving it a moral dimension. Tesla fails to comprehend that morality is a product of the historical development of society and that there is no morality without man’s awareness of what is good and what is evil, without man’s free will enabling him to choose between good and evil, and without his awareness of the potential consequences of his choices and the responsibility for his actions.

Tesla’s theory of war similarly reflects the mechanicistic nature of his thinking. For Tesla, war is not a concrete social phenomenon but a natural occurrence conditioned by cosmic forces and possessing an energetic character. One must be truly foolish to explain the Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia in 1914 by pulsation of cosmic energy waves. Or the Nazi Germany’s attacks on Poland and the Soviet Union. What about the monstrous crimes committed by the Ustasha in Jasenovac and the Germans in Auschwitz? What about the extermination of entire peoples by European colonizers? What about slavery and forcing children to work to death in factories, mines, and fields – which Tesla witnessed? Are these occurrences caused by pulsation of matter? Guided by the technocratic mind of a specialty-idiot, Tesla was unable to distinguish between wars of conquest and wars of defense and liberation. Tesla’s understanding of war points to the detrimental nature of the way of thinking that deprives people of their libertarian dignity and historical self-awareness.

Through his cosmology, Tesla obscured the true nature of capitalism and absolved capitalists of responsibility for wars and other crimes. Is it possible that Tesla hadn’t heard the maxim that “War is the best business!”? Is it conceivable that the “genius scientist” Nikola Tesla was unable to recognize that the speed of capital turnover is the power that conditions the speed of the passage of time in capitalism? Is it possible that Tesla, living in America where every segment of life serves to gain profit, hadn’t heard the maxim “Time is money!”? Tesla had a mode of thinking characteristic of scientific specialty-idiots. He claimed to be able to register cosmic phenomena that others couldn’t, yet he was unable to register social phenomena that are evident to “ordinary” people.

By adhering to the myth of the omnipotence of science, assigning himself the dimension of the master of the universe, and embracing Eastern mysticism, Tesla built his cosmology, which represents one of the most primitive and potentially detrimental theories to emerge in the modern era. How is it possible that Tesla didn’t hesitate to communicate blatant nonsense? Firstly, Tesla made first-rate scientific discoveries, elevating him to the status of a “genius.” In the light of his inventions, every thought he expressed became “ingenious.” Additionally, Tesla was surrounded by scientific specialty-idiots and flatterers who, following the principle of “the emperor’s new clothes,” praised the “ingenious” Tesla, avoiding questioning his absurd claims. The flatterers fed Tesla’s vanity. He was willing to speak on any topic without fear of being challenged. It was a double-edged sword. Tesla became so self-assured that he lost caution and responsibility for his spoken words. The flatterers led him onto thin ice. Tesla became a victim of the myth of the “genius scientist,” a myth in which he actively participated in creating.

Tesla’s cosmology should be understood in light of the prevailing tendency of world development. This is what gives it concrete social and historical meaning. Considering the historical development of society, the transformation of natural forces into a source of energy through science and technology was a groundbreaking achievement that opened immense possibilities for social development. Unfortunately, capitalism has turned the humanistic and life-creating potentials of science and technology into totalitarian destructive power. Tesla’s inventions suffered the same fate. They became the driving force of capitalist development and, as such, a means to destroy life on Earth. The “genius scientist” Nikola Tesla became an icon of capitalism. His scientific discoveries are a boundless inspiration for the ruling capitalist groups that produce increasingly destructive technical means capable of annihilating life on Earth. Simultaneously, Tesla’s cosmology serves as a first-rate ideological tool to annihilate the libertarian self-awareness of people and their critical-visionary mind. In Tesla’s universe, man has no right to freedom.

Taking into account the increasingly dramatic deterioration of the world, Tesla’s dealing with man as a libertarian and visionary being has a detrimental nature. By abolishing man as a libertarian and visionary being and giving science a mythological character, Tesla deprived man of the ability to resist the destructive capitalist frenzy. His way of thinking creates existential defeatism and leaves humanity to the capitalist monsters that have turned science and technology into a means to destroy life on Earth. Without a libertarian struggle, scientific and technical inventions inevitably become tools of capitalism for the destruction of man and the world. Only in the hands of a libertarian humanity can Tesla’s inventions become a means of humanizing the world and enriching nature.

Author: Ljubodrag Simonovic

Translated from Serbian by Igor Barjaktarevic

Translation supervision: Vanja Zakanji

Robotization is the final form of capitalist degeneration of humanity. Capitalism does not transform robots into humans, but humans into robots. Instead of human evolution having a historical character, it takes on a technocratic character. Capitalism destroys man’s personality and reduces him to a functional component of technical processes through which capitalism destroys the human and living world. Marx’s concept of “reification” (Verdinglichung) points to the prevailing tendency of world development. Capitalism abolishes man as a human and natural being and turns him into technical means for the development of capitalism.

Robots are a projection of the capitalistically degenerated humanity. Capitalism abolishes interpersonal relationships and, in doing so, abolishes man as social being. Society becomes a crowd of atomized individuals reduced to a labor-consumer mass. People lose the need for human connection. Man no longer seeks humanity in another man, but in virtual worlds, pets and technological devices. Robots become a substitute for human beings.

Measured by capitalist criteria, one of the most significant advantages of robots over humans is that robots, as technical “beings,” can constantly be improved based on the productivist efficiency that has a profitable character. The rate of capital turnover is the driving force behind the robotization of humans and the technization of the world. In the end, the process of robotization comes down to the development of capitalism, which involves the increasingly intensive destruction of man as a human and life-creating being. Robotization indicates that there are no limits to the capitalist future.

This is especially significant when it comes to the “conquest of space.” The technocratic approach to space and to the cosmic future of humanity is conditioned by a dehumanized technocratic mind. Man is abolished as a historical being, and thereby as a unique and irreplaceable cosmic being. Rather than endeavoring to create a humane cosmos, man is instead, through technical means, abolished as a human and natural being and reduced to cosmic processes that have an energetic and mechanical character.

Robots are an organic part of the technical world, and their characteristics are conditioned by the nature of capitalism. They are mass-produced and, as such, disposable commodities. Robots are not social or historical beings; they lack emotions, mind, libertarian dignity, cultural and national self-awareness, moral criteria, rights, they don’t get sick, they work 24 hours a day as programmed, they are replaceable, and can be instantly turned off and destroyed…

Capitalists do not strive to create robots that are increasingly similar to humans in their qualities but rather humans who are increasingly similar to robots. Humans are not the role models for robots; robots are the role models for humans. Through the spectacular model of robots, capitalist propaganda machinery imposes on people the image of the capitalist man of the future. In reality, robots are surrogates of humans turned by capitalism into ideal slaves.

Sport is an area where the robotization of humans in the existing world has reached its highest level. The human body has become a technical means to achieve records, and the “quest for records” is based on a productivistic fanaticism with a technical and destructive character. This is what defines the personality of an athlete, as well as their relation to the world and the future.

Considering that capitalism is increasingly destroying the living conditions in which man as a natural and human being can survive, the distinctive ability of robots to function in environments that are deadly to humans becomes of paramount importance. The destruction of the living environment devalues man as a human and natural being and further encourages the process of robotization.

Robotization suggests that capitalism can survive without humans. In the capitalistically degenerated world, humanity is not just superfluous; it has become an impediment to “progress.” With the development of consumer society, which means capitalism’s becoming a totalitarian order of destruction, capitalism has come to the final reckoning with the living world and with man as a human and natural being. Man has become an “obsolete being” that is to conclude his cosmic odyssey in the capitalist landfill.

Historically, capitalism, through its propaganda machinery, has created “legendary” personalities who serve as a symbol of its “developmental power”. Today, it is Elon Musk. The ruling media have created a myth out of him, to create an impression that developmental powers of capitalism are unlimited. The “genius visionary” Musk is the one who creates the technical means for the “incursion into space” and for the colonization of other planets. He creates possibilities for capitalism to become not only the ruling earthly, but also the ruling cosmic order.

Together with other capitalist “visionaries” Musk seeks to realize space projects that have a profitable character and which serve the expansion of capitalism, which ever more dramatically brings into question the survival of life on Earth. At the same time, his “cosmic vision” is an integral part of the “Star Wars” project created by the US military industry and promoted by the US president Ronald Raegan. The Myth of the “genius visionary” Musk is a mask behind which the American capitalist oligarchy that seeks to rule the world is hiding. The ultimate goal of “conquering space” is taking control of the Earth.

The idea of “conquering” other planets is not based on a reasonable view of the facts but on a phantasy of technocratic specialty-idiots, which is of a mythological and sensationalist nature. Through ruling propaganda and capitalistically degenerated science, the impression is created that star constellations are at mankind’s fingertips and that “conquering other planets” is its immediate future. Cosmic time and space are relativized and thereby the sense of the real time in which we live is lost.  Historical time is transformed into abstract time in which, in the virtual cosmic space, the capitalist world is reproduced at a „higher” technical level.  At the same time, an illusion is being imposed that technical means can secure mankind’s „eternal” existence in the universe. To link humanity’s future to the cosmic expanse is the fatal illusion created by technocratic specialty-idiots and the Hollywood film industry.

Musk deludes people with cosmic projects while capitalism systematically destroys life on Earth. Not only that huge resources are invested in space programs, resources that could instead be used to establish an ecological balance on Earth, but they also receive a spectacular dimension and as such serve to remove from the public eye scenes of children dying from hunger, thirst and disease, scenes of monstrous „humanitarian interventions” and modern concentration camps, as well as increasingly dramatic sights of the destruction of animal species, rivers, oceans, air, forests, fields and pastures, glaciers… Ultimately, the „incursion into space” does not serve humanity’s well-being and does not increase the certainty of human survival, but hampers the fight against capitalism and contributes to the development of new mechanisms of manipulation, domination and destruction.

Like Hawking, Musk creates the illusion that “humanity can survive” by having a small group of “the chosen ones” “go” to another planet. An atmosphere is being created that the Earth is man’s temporary habitat and that the future of humanity is on other planets. Presumably, man is not able to abolish capitalism and create a social order based on an economy that strives to meet authentic human needs and that has a rational and humanizing relationship with nature, while he is supposedly able to travel thousands of years through cosmic expanse and create new life on an unknown planet. The mythological projection of “cosmic worlds” becomes a means for debasing our own planet and for countering the belief that it is possible to preserve life on Earth. A technocratically based quasi-religious illusion is created about how the real history of humanity begins in outer space, together with the corresponding value challenges that degrade man as a natural and human being. It should also be said here that traditional religions, which are based on the idea of the apocalypse and other fatalistic ideas, have made a special contribution to creating an atmosphere that the Earth is man’s temporary habitat. The Earth is reduced to a “cosmic morgue” and man to a cursed man sent to Earth by God to destroy him.

The prevailing relation to cosmos is a projection of the prevailing relation of capitalism towards the Earth. Instead of basing man’s relation towards Earth on coexistence with nature and its cultivation, it is based on the exploitation of nature and the destruction of life.  By creating a “consumer society”, the relationship towards the Earth is based on consumer euphoria, which is based on destructive irrationalism. The more man strives to preserve his consumerist standard of living, the more intensely he destroys life on Earth. The increasing shortage of raw materials and energy contributes to a notion that human life on Earth is of a temporary character and that its existential prospects lie in colonizing other planets. Earth becomes a springboard for „conquering space”, while celestial bodies become a source of raw materials and subject to exploitation.

Musk’s theory and practice point to the truth that technology in capitalism can develop only in the context of the sequence of the existential logic of capitalism. Indeed, technology possesses both life-creating and destructive potentials. Technology can turn energy into life, but it can also turn it into a vehicle for destruction of life. Capitalism’s becoming a totalitarian order of destruction has conditioned technology’s becoming a destructive power. In the basis of that process is the most perilous characteristic of capitalism:  from the results of life-destruction, it creates sources of profit and, thus, a basis for its own further development.

For Musk, the incursion into space is carried out through technology and is of a technical nature. His cosmology is based on a mechanistic understanding of man and nature. He does away with the humane history of human society and thus calls into question man as an emancipated cosmic being. The cosmos is getting closer to man in a technical sense, but it is further and further away from man in a natural and humane sense. When we comprehend things in the real social dimension, mankind’s “cosmic epic” reveals itself as one of the technocratic myths employed to erase the historical (self)consciousness of man and, consequently, the emancipatory heritage of national cultures and civil society. Humanist dreams are replaced by a „cosmic vision of the future” produced by the Hollywood film machinery supported by the military industry. Musk and other “cosmic visionaries” are a tool of the capitalist oligarchy to destroy the humanist vision of the future, which implies overcoming capitalist civilization.

Musk promotes cataclysmic scenarios in which the idea of “the obsolescence of traditional humanity” is developed, and the idea that a “new man” should be created who will be able to adapt mentally and physically to the challenges posed by going into the cosmos and living on other planets. The future of humanity comes down to the creation of a “cyborg race” that will be able to “compete” with “intelligent machines” and “conquer” planets. Capitalism destroys “traditional humanity” by means of technology and banishes man from the Earth. That is the purpose of the development of the space technology, technicalization of the living environment, as well as the automatization of the living processes and the robotization of man. In the “technical world”, which is the most authentic manifestation of capitalist destructive nothingness, man is “perfected” by losing his natural and human qualities and becoming a robotized freak.

“Artificial intelligence” is increasingly popular in the ruling scientific circles, which implies that intelligence is devoid of human content and has acquired a technical character. “Development of intelligence” is achieved by abolishing man as an emotional, erotic, moral, social, historical, creative and visionary being. At the same time, man is deprived of his mind and thus of the possibility to search for the truth, as well as of the possibility to create a vision of a new world and to fight for it. Man is supposed to adapt to technical challenges and become a mechanism to be managed by artificial intelligence. Musk points to the danger of uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence, and at the same time seeks to enable capitalist expansion, which inevitably leads to the deprivation of man’s mind and to his transformation into a robot.

Artificial intelligence does not in itself pose a danger to humanity. It is a danger only if it is a means for the reproduction of capitalism, which means if it is the tool for capitalists for destroying man as a human being and for creating a technical world. Through artificial intelligence, capitalism deprives man of a way of thinking that gives him the opportunity to ask questions about the essence of man as a human being and the essence of the human world, the meaning of life, the possibility to explain historical phenomena, to answer the question of what is good and what is bad, what is freedom and what is slavery, to discover the emancipatory potentials of civil society and national cultures, to create a vision of the future… Similarly, technocratic specialty-idiots reduce God to an “intelligence” that created living things in the same way that scientists create corn hybrids and pesticides. God becomes the embodiment of artificial intelligence that has become absolute and thus unquestionable power.

Like other technocratic specialty-idiots, Musk has a technically degenerated mind. It is no accident that his vocabulary is devoid of concepts that indicate the essence of man as a human being. The poverty of his vocabulary is an expression of the limited possibilities of his thinking, which has a mechanical character. He does not ask rational questions that require rational answers. There is no dialectical way of thinking, without which it is not possible to distinguish between past and history, and that means without which one cannot understand that man is a historical and visionary being. The attitude that “man is not what he is, but what he can be” is unfathomable for Musk and other technocratic specialty-idiots.

It is a way of thinking that is based on the abolition of man as a unique and unrepeatable ­­­­­­­­­­­­personality who is capable of having his own view of the world and the future. Artificial intelligence and robotization imply depriving man of human self-awareness and dignity. Man ceases to be an independent, creative, libertarian and visionary being and becomes a mechanical thing. At the same time, the development of artificial intelligence contributes to the creation of a technical world and the abolition of interpersonal relationships and thus authentic sociability. Patterns of behavior that turn human society into a mechanical anthill through artificial intelligence are imposed. Artificial intelligence doesn’t only represent the triumph of technical civilization over man as a human being, but the ultimate destruction of man as a human being.

Musk and other fanatics of capitalism convince people that the Earth will “soon be doomed” in order to deal with their visionary consciousness and will to create a new world. The possibility that capitalism will destroy life on Earth is far more likely than the possibility that life on Earth will die out – in five or ten million years. With capitalism becoming a totalitarian destructive order, the world has become a capitalist crematorium. Humanity is approaching an ecological milestone, which, if overstepped, is humanity’s doom. The increasingly dramatic deterioration of life on Earth forces humanity to unite and eradicate the causes that lead to the destruction of life. The relationship to the cosmos should be based on the protection of life on Earth and the development of man as a human being. Instead of “conquering the cosmos”, we should deal with capitalism and thus prevent the destruction of life on Earth. Man can ensure his survival in the cosmos only if he ensures his survival on Earth. This means freeing man from the illusion, created by Musk and his associates, that the future of humanity lies on other planets. What kind of “cosmic future” can capitalism offer humanity when its survival is based on the destruction of the living world? The development of capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction has led to the fact that the greatest threat to the survival of humanity does not come from cosmic bodies and cosmic cataclysms, but from capitalism. Capitalist fanatics like Elon Musk have become riders of the apocalypse and as such gravediggers of humanity.

The idea that the Earth is the only cosmic home of man gained importance during the development of environmental movements that arose as a response to the deepening ecological crisis created by capitalism. In order for the Earth to become the true cosmic home of man, a social order must be established that will not only be able to ensure the survival of humanity, but also provide the opportunity for man to realize himself as a libertarian being. Only when he stops being a slave to capitalism and turns the Earth into his home, will man become a true human being and thus a true cosmic being. At the same time, man’s turning to the Earth means man’s turning to himself as a social being, which means turning man closer to other men. Historically, the idea that “all men are brothers” is based on the original Christian romanticism, which has an abstract-humanist character. In the contemporary world, that idea should become the battle cry of an awakened humanity that is aware that only by abolishing capitalism can life on Earth be preserved and a new world created that will be a fraternal community of free people.

One of the misconceptions which both traditional and modern cosmology are based on is that man is not a cosmic being as an earthly being and that the Earth is not an organic part of the cosmos. By living on Earth, man is not in the cosmos, but is “in the cosmos” only when he leaves the Earth. This understanding comes from a way of thinking that is based on religious dogmas that establish the dualism of the earthly and “heavenly” worlds. Earth is deemed man’s temporary habitat and as such is worthless. The “true world” is in “heaven” and it provides man with “eternal bliss”. Man is humiliated as an earthly and human being and thus as a unique and unrepeatable cosmic being.

The duality of the earthly and cosmic worlds should be abolished. Man is a cosmic being as an earthly being. By living on Earth, we travel through the endless cosmic blue. Earth is our “spaceship”. Earthly nature is a unique cosmic environment that has enabled the emergence of life on Earth and man as a specific and unrepeatable living being – and thus a specific cosmic being. Man can only survive in the cosmos as an organic part of the earthly world.

Man’s relationship to the cosmos, which means man’s relationship to himself as a cosmic being, cannot be established by means of technology, but through creativity, with which man overcomes the material dimension of the cosmos and reaches his cosmic essence. It is about the relationship to the cosmos through symbols that provide the opportunity for man to experience the cosmos as a life-creating being. Through them, man transcends the apparent form of the cosmos and reaches its essence – thus abolishing the dualism of earthly and cosmic existence of man. In this context, a possibility is created for the idea of “God” as the one with which the infinite quantum of the cosmos (infinite multitude) is transcended, with a view of God not as a superhuman force but as an always new, richer product of the creative powers of man who is a symbolic embodiment of the unity of man with his cosmic essence. God becomes man’s host in his cosmic home. A new interpretation of the idea of a “god-man” is needed: the life-creating power of man is an autonomous cosmic force that enables man to be the creator of the new cosmos as an authentic cosmic being.

In the cosmos there are no qualitative leaps, but only changes in the state of matter. Man as a self-conscious and self-creating being represents a qualitative step forward from cosmic processes that have a deterministic character. Development of man as a cosmic being is not possible on the basis of mechanical cosmic laws and through the technical mastery of space and time, which turns man into a technical “being”, but through the quality that gives the possibility of “uniting” with the cosmos as one – in which the cosmic essence of man is contained. The cosmos that man creates does not have a quantitative but a qualitative dimension.

The idea of the true is what forms the essence of the human cosmos. As a human being, man is able to realize the life-creating potentials of the cosmos by developing his life-creating potentials guided by humanistic ideals. Man creates a new cosmos that is only possible as long as man exists as a human being. Man’s becoming a human being conditions the cosmos becoming a humanе cosmos. The creation of the humanе cosmos is not based on the conquest of other planets and their exploitation, but on the transformation of cosmic forces from destructive to life-creating power that increases the certainty of human survival. “Conquest of the cosmos” is achieved by humanization of the cosmic forces.

The cosmos is an unquestionable given. It is the material bearer of eternity that appears in relation to existential nothingness. The cosmos is indestructible and as such it allows man and his world not to turn into nothing. The cosmos is not an immutable given that excludes the emergence of a cosmic novum. Man does not relate to the cosmos as an immutable given because man himself is not an immutable given but a self-conscious and self-creating cosmic being. Man is not only a form in which the life-creating potentials of the cosmos appear, but a new cosmic quality that indicates that the cosmos is not what it is, but what it can be. Man is able, through his creative and visionary practice, to transform the cosmos from a timeless given into a historical space in which historical time flows that is directed towards the future. In this context, the idea of eternity appears. It needs to gain historical legitimacy and become a signpost for man in his efforts to create a humane world and ensure the survival of mankind. The humane world is the source of the new universe.

The most important historical task is before us: to abolish the destructive capitalist civilization and create a humane life-creating civilization. The ideal of society that we should strive for is society as a life-creating community of free and creative people who live in unity with nature. Life-creating pantheism should become the most important unifying idea of the world. It does not only imply the struggle to preserve life, but also the struggle to create a humane society. Life-creating sociability is the basic condition for man’s freedom and the survival of humanity.

Mankind’s space odyssey will end when man becomes an emancipated historical being and thus an emancipated space being. The true cosmic future of humanity will begin when humanity returns to the historical path. Religion, esotericism, science fiction, cosmic mysticism… – these are all ways in which man alienates himself from himself as a human being and the Earth as his cosmic home. Ultimately, these are all sidetracks that have an anti-existential character. Earth is the only living environment that provides the possibility for man to survive and be a human being. Instead of striving to escape from the Earth to other planets, man should revitalize life potentials of the Earth as a life-creating whole – by reviving the life-creating abilities of humanity as a community of free people in solidarity with one another. Not the escape to other planets, but the creation of a humane world and the humanization of nature are the basic conditions for the freedom and survival of mankind.

Only when man embraces the Earth as his space home will he be able to become an emancipated space being. Then the “heavens will open” and humanity’s true space epic will begin. Just as Odysseus, after a long and arduous wandering on the seas, returned to his native Ithaca to his faithful wife Penelope, so man, after a long and arduous wandering in illusory worlds, will return to his mother Earth and to human beings – his only cosmic brothers. 

Ljubodrag Simonovic

Belgrade, Serbia

Translated from Serbian by Vanja Zakanji

Translation supervisor: Igor Barjaktarević

Conspiracy theories did not originate from a political movement that fights to prevent the destruction of life on Earth and creates a humane world, but from a political movement that fights for capitalism. They are the product of new circumstances created in the contemporary world. It is, above all, about globalization and the emergence of the internet. Capitalist centers of power are no longer able to prevent the critical thought that arises in the world, from appearing in areas that are under their direct control. At the same time, the growing social differences, the deepening economic crisis, the decline of the middle class, the increasingly dramatic destruction of life on Earth … – condition the creation of growing dissatisfaction. Instead of striving to prevent the development of critical thought, such a critical thought is being created, which is, in fact, a diversion of changing critical thought. Ultimately, it is a about a thought that deals with the critique which brings capitalism into question. Starting from the way conspiracy theorists explain social phenomena, conspiracy theories are a capitalist conspiracy against libertarian humanity. They are, in fact, a capitalist hoax. Conspiracy theorists are not opponents of capitalism, but its jesters.

Conspiracy theorists are a kind of sect. They use the same means and methods used by the capitalist propaganda machinery. Their task is to create a wall of lies and illusions between man and the real world, and in that way prevent him from understanding the nature of the existing world and the causes of its misfortune. At the same time, they try to prevent a man from thinking for himself and to look for solutions that will enable him to step out of the existing world. The real goal of conspiracy theorists is to deal with a visionary mind that is able to create an idea of a future that transcends the horizons of the capitalist world, as well as to discourage people from fighting for a humane world.

The attitude of David Icke, one of the most prominent conspiracy theorists, towards the British royal family is indicative. He claims that members of the British royal family are alien-reptilians who drink children’s blood and change their skin – and thus rejuvenate themselves. Such stories serve to distract people from what the British Empire represents from a historical perspective, and in that context the British royal family. It is, above all, about the horrific crimes committed by the English aristocracy and capitalists, both in the world and in Great Britain. At the same time, the development of capitalism in England cost the lives of millions of workers’ children who worked 14 hours a day in factories and mines…

Only fools can believe that aliens rule the world, or that members of the British royal family are reptilians who drink the blood of children and thus rejuvenate themselves. The point of such crazy stories is not the dealing with the British monarchy, but the destruction of the minds of the oppressed and the creation of a mass of idiots out of people. Conspiracy theorists’ dealing with the libertarian heritage of national cultures and civil society, and in that context with the idea of the future, indicates the true nature of their theories. Their attitude towards increasingly devastating climate change points to the political background of spectacular lies with which they seek to deprive capitalism of responsibility for the destruction of life on Earth.

In contemporary capitalism, mystifiers who brainwash people with fairy tales about aliens, souls of the dead, demons, technocratic illusions… gain the utmost importance. Their public appearances are hypnotic sessions with which the mind is destroyed in order to prevent people from understanding of ever more dramatical existential crisis created by capitalism. They distract people from the historical path and produce spiritual food for petty bourgeoisie who do not want to fight for a new world. Conspiracy theorists criticize the rich by depriving people of their minds and turning them into idiots. They are not fighting against the causes that lead to the destruction of life on Earth and people as humane beings, but against the critique that points to the social causes of misfortune, which means the one fighting against capitalism.

There is an ongoing confrontation with a modern way of thinking based on critical rationalism which is of a visionary nature. And when it has a critical character, thinking becomes a means of distracting the mind from the essential questions on which human freedom and the survival of humanity depend. Capitalistically instrumentalized intelligence becomes a means of capitalism to deal with the critical and visionary mind. The truth is not reached by reasonable thinking and confrontation of arguments, but the “truth” is imposed on people by destroying the power of reasoning. Proving the “truth” follows the model applied by the advertising industry of capitalism.

The creation of virtual worlds only appears to be based on a scientific way of thinking and scientific arguments. In fact, it is a way of thinking which is based on destructive mindlessness. Man is reduced to an object of “superhuman forces” which acquire a mystical dimension. Gods, devils, demons, aliens, cosmic forces, Masonic lodges… – are the means of the ruling order for dealing with the libertarian and creative potentials of a man as a social and historical being.

Technocratic specialty-idiots are preachers of a technocratic religion that corresponds to the technical world. Stories about the devil, angels, heaven and hell… – are replaced by stories about cosmic rays, aliens, cosmic worlds, pulsation of matter… Technocratic specialty-idiots reduce the world to a microwave oven. They instrumentalize scientific discoveries and technical inventions in order to deal with man as a reasonable and natural being. Along with technocratic primitivism, esotericism, occultism, religious fanaticism are developed… The increasingly dramatic destruction of life on Earth produces a fatalistic consciousness. By insisting on the “apocalypse”, churches create not only essential, but also existential defeatism. Why should people organize and fight to preserve life on Earth if the world is “doomed”?

The increasingly dramatic destruction of life on Earth is leading the petty bourgeoisie, these fanatics of capitalism, to flee from the truth and falsify reality. They do not need the truth, but illusions that give them the opportunity to escape from reality. In the “free world”, the right to an illusion has become the most important human right. An illusion should provide legitimacy to the life of a man who is lost in destructive nothingness. Illusions are, in fact, the way in which petty bourgeoisie deal with a thought that indicates the true nature of the existing world and their position in it. The petty bourgeoisie do not need the truth, but spectacular lies, delusions, virtual worlds, crazy stories about aliens and demons… This is what conspiracy theorists and other professional mystifiers deal with. They use the same mechanisms as capitalists and politicians: they try to govern public opinion with lies and make money. In modern capitalism, a market of lies has been established. The spectacular form in which lies appear is their advertising packaging. In a false world, a lie has become the truth.

The cultural sphere is deprived of emancipatory content and reduced to banal entertainment. Commercialized populist primitivism has replaced cultural vanguardism. The entertainment industry raises the increasingly higher wall between man and the world and masks the increasingly inhumane capitalist reality. It produces increasing quantity of spiritual garbage that destroys the libertarian dignity of man and turns him into an idiot. Capitalism destroys man’s need for the truth as well as the possibility of creating criteria by which he can determine what the truth is. Everything is relativized.

The phrase “everyone has the right to their opinion” becomes a way to prevent the determination of what is false and what is true, what is humane and what is inhumane, what is progress and what is destruction… Everything becomes a “matter of personal choice”. The distinction between reason and intelligence is abolished and visionary consciousness, which provides an opportunity for man to establish a critical distance from the ruling order and create a humane world, is destroyed. The creation of a totalitarian positivist consciousness is in progress. Capitalism represents the “end of history” (Fukuyama).

The escape from reality has reached epidemic proportions. An increasing number of people live in virtual worlds. Instead of creating a humane world, fantastic worlds are being created in people’s heads. Everything that is not possible in reality becomes possible in an imagination based on a technically degenerated world. The deeper a man is mired in the capitalist swamp, the more productive he is in creating virtual worlds. Escapist imagination replaces visionary imagination. That’s what the entertainment industry is for. It stimulates people’s need to escape and offers them technical means and virtual contents that enhance escape from reality.

The solitary hopelessness and the world that has become a technically organized concentration camp condition a man to lose the ability to distinguish between the real and the virtual world. In fact, the more the real world is deprived of naturalness and humanity, the more the virtual world, in the creation of which a man participates without being aware of it, becomes a real world for a man. The virtual world becomes a spiritual drug. In it, a man finds compensation for deprived humanity and in that way falls into an ever deeper abyss of nothingness. Capitalism creates a virtual man. Man exists as a “man” in TV series and reality shows…

The capitalist propaganda machinery is based on inciting fear and hatred. It directs people’s dissatisfaction at the planted “enemies”. Their destruction becomes a fixation. The man is convinced that he will experience “liberation” if the set targets are destroyed. It is the ruling matrix of human manipulation, with new “dangers” being introduced into it, which have not only an earthly, but also a cosmic source. Stories about Satan, Freemasons, the deep state, aliens, demons, doomsday, etc., serve to cover up the real existential danger created by capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction through a virtual sphere which is of a mystical character. Instead of pointing out the social processes that lead to the destruction of life, “superhuman forces” are being planted, which are of a frightening nature. The more dramatic the existential crisis created by capitalism, the richer the “invisible” world of mystical “forces” that “rule over people”. Everything is being done to destroy critical thought that can direct the oppressed to eradicate the causes of the destruction of life on Earth and create a humane world.

Man blindly believes in illusions because he is doomed to solitary hopelessness and is afraid of perishment. In an increasingly inhumane world, man is confronted with the painful truth that no one needs him and that no one will shed a tear on his deathbed. He mistakenly believes that other people deprive him of what he needs the most: respect and love. Despair over rejection breeds hatred for others. A man finds compensation for his own misfortune in another’s misfortune. The increasingly realistic possibility that humanity will be destroyed does not provoke the need to oppose destructive processes in people, but becomes a source of pathological pleasure.

The more horrible the everyday life, the greater the need for a man to escape from reality. In the imagination of the desperate, the illusory world becomes the real world. That’s what the current religions are based on. “Paradise” is a virtual world that exists in the minds of the unfortunate and frightened. They believe in the existence of a “heavenly world” and thus try to overcome the fear of death and disappearance. The creation of illusory worlds in capitalism is based on this principle. Just as priests encourage people to believe that they can experience “eternal bliss” in heaven, so modern mystifiers encourage people to believe that they can find a cure for their fears in virtual worlds.

The highest achievement of “freedom” in capitalism is that every man can, through increasingly perfect technical means, create his own virtual world and “live” in it. The less people have the opportunity to realize themselves as human beings in the real world, the more dedicated they are to trying to create a virtual world and escape into it. The most fatal consequence is that the virtual world they create is the product of their crippled humanity and appropriate imagination. What suits their degenerate personality appears in it. Ultimately, people flee to a virtual world that is an idealized projection of the real world from which they seek to escape. The virtual world does not inspire people to be human beings, but represents the final blow with which human dignity is destroyed.

The relation to reality is mediated by the ruling ideological sphere and technical means that prevent a man to see reality with his own eyes and to think with his own head. This is what the virtual reality industry is for. Its role is to blind and stupefy a person. Virtual worlds are not only a confrontation with the truth, but also a means of degenerating people as reasonable beings. They do not form a sovereign spiritual sphere, but are an organic part of the ruling ideological sphere. The protagonists of conspiracy theories are not “independent intellectuals” but fanatics of capitalism. The worst thing is that capitalistically degenerated life deprives man of the possibility to relate to the world in a reasonable way. The endless conveyer belt of consumer society is spinning faster and faster, and man is less and less able to pursue answers to the questions on which the survival of humanity depend.

Given the fact that capitalism has privatized the public sphere, it is not surprising that no one mentions common sense anymore – which is the original form of thinking based on a direct perception of reality. Despite the increasingly numerous obstacles that capitalism poses to humanity, man must once again rely on common sense and establish an active mental relationship toward reality. It is necessary for people to look at the world with their own eyes and to think with their own head – which should become a signpost in their lives. In the contemporary world, which is on the verge of an abyss, thinking with one’s head has become not only a basic libertarian, but also a basic existential principle. 

Translated from Serbian by Vanja Zakanji

Heidegger has established a duality between Being (Sein) and man. There is a “relationship” between Being and man, with Being as prior to and independent of man and representative of that conditioning the entity which allows man to be man. Indeed, there is no “relationship” between Being and man; but man stands in relation to Being, which, as such, is the key to understanding the nature of man and, thereby, the nature of Being. Heidegger’s Being does not have a historical foundation or a historical character. Rather than being based on man’s libertarian and creative practice, it is a givenness independent of man and the world, which means it has a phenomenological character.

According to Heidegger, man can be the “neighbour” and the “shepherd of Being”, but not its creator. It is only through such a relationship of man to Being that Being can be Being, which means that only as the „shepherd of Being“ can man be  man. Man, being the „shepherd of Being“, is actually the shepherd of his authentic (tragic) existence and thus the caretaker of the world, which is the house of Being. Indeed, Heidegger’s Being is a form in which man becomes alienated from himself as a social, creative, libertarian, historical and, thus, a visionary being. Man’s need to fulfill his real human potential as a concrete social and visionary being is replaced with the „need“ for an abstract „Being“.

In Heidegger, the truth is not inside, but outside of man. Instead of being guided by humanism and emanating an aura (Benjamin) that illuminates the path leading to the future, man is human only when he is illuminated by the light emanating from Being, a gleaming that is at once above and beside man. Heidegger postulates humanism with a metaphysical nature, which means that it is independent of man. It becomes a mirror in which man can recognize his image. Heidegger’s interpretation of Hölderlin is very indicative of that. Instead of directing his gaze towards another man and the future, man should direct his gaze towards the sky, like early seafarers who navigated only by the stars.

Heidegger: “What is Being? Can we ask of Being what it is? Being remains self-explanatory and unquestioned and, therefore, unthought. Being persists in the long forgotten and fathomless truth.”

The purpose of fundamental ontology is to abolish the very possibility of questioning the nature of Being, because, according to Heidegger, it inevitably amounts to the objectification of Being and thus to the abolishment of the tragic, which is the essence of human existence. By personifying Being, Heidegger indicates that man cannot establish an immediate relation to Being by way of reason, which, by questioning its nature, conceptualizes and thus objectifies Being. In other words, reason makes it impossible for man to experience Being and to dwell in its neighbourhood.

Heidegger abolishes the possibility of an unobjectifying rational relation to Being. His fundamental ontology therefore does not seek to create a mode of thinking that would be able to think of Being without reducing it to an object, but rather seeks to abolish thinking as a mediator between man and Being, which means between man and his existence. „Poetically man dwells“ – Heidegger cites Hölderlin. This is the „long forgotten and fathomless truth where Being persists“. The truth cannot be attained by thinking, but by living a life based on the experience of Being.

Heidegger fell into the trap that he, himself, had set. If Being “remains self-explanatory and unquestioned and therefore unthought”, why does Heidegger mention being as “something”? Moreover, Heidegger declares Being to be a non-conceptual phenomenon and then determines its specific concept, reducing it thereby to an object. The specificity of Being as “something” lies, according to Heidegger, in that we cannot comprehend it, can only experience it. Also, Being has a personal nature and we cannot ask of it “what it is”. Furthermore, “Being remains self-explanatory and unquestioned and therefore unthought”. And,  “Being persists in the long forgotten and fathomless truth”.

Just as with theology, naming and personifying produces a „God“, with Heidegger’s philosophy, naming and personifying produces a „Being“. Being, however, does not exist; there is only a notion of „Being“, which is the product of Heidegger’s philosophical (religious) imagination and exists in Heidegger’s philosophical language. Just as the word „God“ denotes the synthesis of a specific and absolutized view of the world, man, ruling order and future, Heidegger’s expression „Being“ denotes a specific and absolutized ideological model of the world, man and future. Being is a givenness that is not thought because the ruling order is a givenness that cannot be questioned. Heidegger’s philosophical relation to Being is actually a theological relation to the ruling order. Instead of turning to the future, man turns towards Being, which is an instrument for deifying the existing world.

Heidegger confronts the mind because it creates concepts that mediate between man and his existence, but Heidegger must name Being, personify it and determine its concept because, without it, man cannot have a notion of Being and relate to it. In other words, it is only through the notion of Being, which is the product of Heidegger’s philosophy, that man can believe that Being exists and to „relate“ to it by experiencing it. By his philosophy, Heidegger personifies and conceptualizes Being, providing the illusion of its existence: „something“ that is an ideological product acquires the dimension of real existence. The peculiar quality of Heidegger’s philosophy is not the ideology it produces, but the way in which it does so.

Heidegger proclaimed the flaw in his thinking to be the flaw in thinking itself. However, it is Heidegger’s philosophy rather than thinking that turns a phenomenon into an object. Heidegger posed the question on the nature of “what” in an objectifying manner. What gives Heidegger’s thinking the objectifying qualify is his phenomenological relation to man and history. Rather than departing from dialectical thinking, according to which “what” has a historical nature, Heidegger departs from the kind of thinking that produces phenomenological abstractions.  “What” is an object if it is reduced to a givenness and thus separated from the creative practice of man as a historical being. Indeed, “what” is not that what is, but that what can be. Its essence is not grasped by serving Being, but through a creative practice which can give life to his emancipatory potential. It is only in the context of creating a new world that “what” can overcome objectification and thus the danger of falling into the metaphysical. In that sense, revolution is the most radical form of the abolishment of thinking as the production of objectification.

The essence is not in the question but in questioning. By posing questions, man establishes a relation to the world, whereby he changes both the world and himself by becoming an authentic creative being. By questioning the world, man indicates that the world is not a  givenness and that he is not merely a part of the world, but an authentic creative being, whereas the world is the product of his libertarian and creative practice. The relationship between man and the world is dynamic and has a dialectical and thus a historical character. In the historical process of man’s becoming a creative being, “what” loses its objectifying and acquires a historical dimension. The posing of questions is such a relation to the world that indicates its limits and opens up spaces for a possible future.

Heidegger calls for the abolishment of all that mediates between man and his existence and then, by way of his philosophy, postulates Being, which he proclaims is the unquestionable entity mediating between man and the world. This is the basis for man‘s being a “shepherd of Being”. The indisputable loyalty to Being is the basic presupposition of man’s co-existence with Being. Any doubt in Being or a critical relation to Being are excluded. Man does not have a questioning but an idolizing relation to Being. He does not relate to Being as an emancipated citizen, but as a loyal subject. Man has a religious relation to Being.

Why does man have a need for Being if he is thrown into the world where Being is forgotten? Heidegger, actually, does not address Being; he addresses man. His demand that man be a “shepherd of Being” is meaningful only if man already has a need for Being, and if he is ready and willing to be the “shepherd of Being”. Heidegger does not problematize this question, since it opens the possibility of coming to the conclusion that man, who has a need for Being and who is ready and willing to be the “shepherd of Being”, does not actually need Being. In other words, man is already that which, according to Heidegger, he is only to become as the “shepherd” and the “neighbor” of Being. Ultimately, man’s need for Being conditions man’s relation to Being and thereby the possibility of Being as Being.

In order to be the “shepherd of Being”, man, according to traditional philosophy, must know what Being is and must have a notion of Being. For Heidegger, this is an obsolete way of thinking, preventing man from having a more immediate relation to his existence and thus to Being. According to Heidegger, man’s relation to Being is based on the immediate experience of his tragic existence arising from the fear of death. Because of his fear of death, man acquires a need for Being that enables him to conquer death and experience eternal life. Man’s return to Being is actually man’s return to his immediate existence with a tragic character.

What does the “oblivion of Being” mean? Does it mean that modern man has lost his notion of Being or that he has lost his need for Being? If we have in mind Heidegger’s insistence that man has to become the “neighbor of Being” and that his relation to Being is not based on his thinking of Being, but on its experience, we can conclude that, for Heidegger, the “oblivion of Being” means that modern man has lost his need for Being. Departing from that conclusion, to insist that man should become the “shepherd” and the “neighbor” of Being becomes meaningless. According to Heidegger, in spite of falling into the abyss of nothingness created by the world of technology, man is a mortal being and the fear of death is awakened in him over and over again, creating a need for Being. The experience of the fear of death is the path leading man from the abyss of nothingness to Being.

Heidegger’s abstract Being is a mediator between man and the world, which means a mediator between people. For Heidegger, sociability does not have any importance whatsoever with respect to man’s confrontation with death, since human beings as human beings cannot conquer death and thus abolish their tragic existence. A need for people is therefore replaced with a need for Being. Being becomes the essence of man, who is deprived of authentic sociability.

Trying to determine Heidegger’s Being in a rational way is the same as trying to capture clouds with a fork. The indeterminability of Being represents its primary property. Being manifests its indeterminability when we attempt to determine it. Indeterminability is actually the expression of the elusiveness of Being. Man’s relation to Being is similar to that between a child and a ball: whenever a child tries to catch a ball, it bounces back. Heidegger attempted to establish a relationship between man and Being that will enable man to grasp Being in such a way that it remains elusive. Man cannot determine Being rationally and through his creative practice, however, he can experience Being. This is the starting point for the creation of a new thinking that insists on poetry and involves the overcoming of philosophy as a pure ratio. Instead of the thinking of Being, the dominant feeling should be a closeness with Being. That is why Heidegger insists on a “neighborhood with Being”.

Heidegger attempted philosophically to “resolve” the question of God as the embodiment of values that serves as a bulwark and prevents man from falling into the abyss of nothingness. His fundamental ontology was meant to be the basis for a new way of thinking that turns theology into ontology. God moves from Heaven to the Earth. He is no longer an abstract entity to which man relates by way of a religious dogma and the church, but a being living in man’s neighborhood, illuminating him and filling him with warmth. The experience of the presence of Being and the co-existence with Being, without the mediation of reason based on the objectification of man’s existence that leads to a doubt which is the source of nihilism, is the most important point connecting Heidegger’s philosophy to the philosophy of Kierkegaard.

In the analysis of Hölderlin’s poetry, Heidegger points out the presence of God. Talking about God and Heaven, he creates the impression of a warm certainty that brings calmness into people’s lives. Homelessness and the fear of vanishing are gone… Through science and technology, man has created a false image of himself and has acquired a false sense that he has become the master of life and death – thus creating an inauthentic existential condition. He is “thrown into the world” ruled by nihilism, which is his home only in a technical sense. Heidegger propounds an authentic existence ruled by the fear of death, since it is only on the basis of such fear that man can have a need for God, offering him a possibility to conquer death and ensuring eternal life. The “oblivion of Being” is based on the oblivion of this Earthly temporariness, and it is only relative to this oblivion that a need for Being is possible.

It is no accident that Heidegger cites Hölderlin, whose poetry brings God into people’s homes. The language of poetry connects man with Being. It becomes the language of praying: the way of addressing God is not a calling forth, but appealing to God. The poetical, which corresponds to the ancient poiesis, is the construction of the home of Being, whose roof is the sky as the divine firmament. God has returned to man’s home at this poetical call, whereby man is assured eternal life in God’s world. In his co-existence with Being, man becomes a god-man. Dasein is a deified man.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović (Petrović)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

In his endevours to confront man as a libertarian being and emancipated citizen, Heidegger imputes a fear of death to man as the basis for his tragic existence. If man’s relation to existence derives from his own immediate experience, then the basis for his authentic existence is not a fear of death, but his experience of life. Death is merely an abstraction for man as long as he is not directly faced with it. Man can only reflect on death; he cannot  “live” it.

A fear of death does not derive from the experience of death, but from the experience of life. Since Heidegger does not postulate thinking, but rather experience, as the basis for determining authentic existence, the basis for  authentic existence in Heidegger is also not a fear of death, but a fear of loss of life. Man, therefore, has no need of a Being that would enable him to conquer his fear of death through an illusion of “eternal life”; he has need of life and, thus, of people with whom he can fight for his life and for humanity’s survival.

In order for man to experience his mortality in a tragic way, he must have a need to live and a vision of the kind of life that can satisfy that need. Rather than death, the basis of a tragic existence is the kind of life that does not enable man to realize his humanness, which means to becaming a human being. Tragicality does not appear in the relation with an “eternal” heavenly life, but in relation to the actual possibilities of man becoming a human being in this earthly existence, which involves faith in a humane world and a fight for such a world.

Tragicality does not have a fatal character. Man can abolish his tragic existence if he changes the life he lives, which means, if he abolishes capitalism and creates a world that will be the expression of his authentic human powers as a social and visionary being. With respect to that, man is willing to risk his life to prevent global destruction and create a world where people will be safe and free.

Instead of being based on a fear of death, life should be based on a faith in life. Not a fear of death, but a joy of living should be the pivot of man’s entire existence. By his insistence on a lonely individual’s fear of death, Heidegger deprived man of the joy of life and human warmth. He reduced man to a walking corpse.

Interestingly, in spite of being a great “magician” with words, Heidegger calls man a “mortal”, but it does not occur to him that, presupposing man as a living being, he might call him a “living-being”.  Indeed, man is a living being in his role as a life-creating being. Not only is he a living-being, he is also a life-creating being.

Death and man’s relation to death have a historical nature. Fears faced by man, just as the very nature of fearing, are historically conditioned.   Modern man’s existence and his perception of this existance are essentially different from those of the Ancient Greeks, and, by the same token, death and modern man’s perception of death are essentially different from those of Ancient man. Modern man experiences fear in an essentially different way from his Ancient counterpart, and, consequently, his response to fear is essentially different. Traditionally, man percieved and experienced the world as a divine givenness and all that befell him as the product of a divine will. Hence he did not have an activistic-changing, but rather a passive-submissive relationship to the world. A confrontation with that fear was manifested in the form of a submissive relation to divinities.

Thanks to the development of his cognitive and creative capabilities, modern man percieves and experiences himself as the creator of the world and hence perceives and experiences the world as his own creation. This is what his fear of death is based on. Rather than kneeling before gods, man confronts death through his understanding of the concrete nature of fear and by eradicating the underlying causes thereof. Instead of a religious-submissive consciousness, the dominant consciousness is active and changing, and is shaped into a libertarian-changing practice based on man’s life-creating capabilities as an emancipated natural and social being.

Modern man, as a self-conscious historical being, can relate to the Ancient world and can understand his relation to the fear of death as a specific, historically conditioned relation. While for Ancient man there is no  future, but only an idealised past, modern man perceives his existence and death relative to a future expressed in the idea of progress, meaning that he relates to death in the context of the emancipatory potential created in modern society, a possibility for the realization of a new world.

The abolishment of a speculative mediation between man and his existence abolishes the possibility of his critical-changing relation to the world, and reduces him to a non-human.  The abolishment of thought as a mediator between man and his existence leads to man relating to his existence through a world that devalues him as a human being. “A need for God”, for suffering, a fear of death instead of a joy of life – these are all psychological responses of a man deprived by capitalism of his libertarian and creative dignity, of an authentic sociability and thus an authentic humanness.

The ruling order, which conditions the nature of the world, has objectified man, who is to experience his existence without posing the question of the true human beingness, which is the basic postulate for the evolvement of the critical and visionary consciousness that will enable the creation of a world where man will bring to life his humanness. The ruling order insists on the abolishment of man’s reflective relation to his existence and the creation of the ideal of human-beingness man should strive for, imposing at the same time a philosophy that becomes the basis for man’s self-perception and a mediator between man and his existence. This philosophy springs from a world where a human is reduced to a non-human.

A typical example can be found in Kierkegaard’s thought. His philosophy is that of a desperate man, doomed by capitalism to solitary hopelessness. As a victim of capitalism, Kierkegaard seeks the meaning of life in a spiritual sphere deriving from his solitary misery. His philosophy is not based on reason, but on unreasonableness. “A need for God” is the product of the spiritual desolation created by capitalism and not a reasonable response to man’s suffering. “God” is the product of a desparete man’s imagination, one who cannot bring his humanness to life in the existing world. Kierkegaard’s philosophy does not purport to abolish the world that produces a miserable man; it rather builds a stairway beyond the clouds. And when the clouds disperse, man faces utter emptiness ruled by absolute nothingness.

Heidegger bases his notion of the tragic on man having an existential fear. Instead of pointing out concrete social causes of this existential fear, Heidegger imputes to man a fear of death, which becomes a projected sublimation of the concrete existential fear experienced by man on a daily basis. The existential fear in the contemporary world, however, springs not from a fear of death, but from a fear of capitalism. With capitalism’s increasingly ruthless confrontation with people and nature, the fear of capitalism has an increasingly devastating effect on man and leads to disastrous forms of social pathology.

The fear of losing the basic means of survival is a “Sword of Damocles” hovering over the heads of people whose livelihoods depend on their work and is the most important instrument in guaranteeing people’s submission. In developed capitalist countries, a majority of people live in debt slavery and in fear that they will not be able to pay off their loan and that their family will end up in the street or in prison. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people commit suicide because they cannot repay their debts.

In contemporary capitalism, man has a concern with a specific historical character: a concern over the survival of life on the planet and thus a concern over the survival of humankind. This concern is a product of capitalism and, with the growing destruction of life, it acquires an increasingly dramatical character. If humankind does not stamp out capitalism in due course, if it does not establish a production aimed at satisfying genuine human needs and does not start treating nature in a more rational way, this concern will turn into an existential panic, which, after a possible nuclear devastation, will reduce the world to an ash heap.

Since death is inevitable, Heidegger placed the tragic into a sphere beyond man as a libertarian and creative being. Man has no other option but to resign to his tragic existence and resort to illusions which are meant to compensate for his tragic life. Hence the need for the metaphysical as an active mediator between man’s “temporary” earthly existence and the “eternal” heavenly world. When man’s life is reduced to meaningless suffering, then the fear of death turns into faith in “eternal life”, producing a religious imagination that breeds illusory worlds.

By abolishing man’s rational relation to his existence and by reducing man’s relation to his existence to its experience, Heidegger separated the existence of man from the existence of humankind, creating the possibility for man to perceive his existence regardless of what is befalling humankind – i.e., to become an abstract being and in an abstract manner. For man’s existence to be concrete, it must be viewed in terms of the concrete existential situation in which the world finds itself.  In other words, man’s existence is inseparably bound up with the existence of the world. If man is to experience his concrete existence, he has to have an idea of the existential prospects of humankind.

A starting point for people’s mutual struggle against capitalism should not be a fear of death, but the growing destruction of life on the planet and the resulting concern for global survival. By becoming a totalitarian and global order of destruction, capitalism has placed all people on the planet in the same existential situation. We are all sailing on a ship heading for an abyss – regardless of our way of life and the way in which we relate to human and humankind’s existence. If man is not capable of reasonably assessing the increasingly dramatic existential situation brought about by capitalism, his relation to his existence will be based on a mental state leading to escapism and madness.

The euphory of consumerism is the most widespread and the most devastating form of escapism from humanity’s concrete existential situation. This escapism actually comes down to man’s cooperation in global destruction. It represents the most direct embodiment of the destructive spirit of capitalism. This escapism from destruction produces the destruction of man as a destructive being.

Death is not necessarily the source of tragicality. A fear of death is but one possible way in which man relates to death. The nature of one’s relation to death is conditioned by the nature of one’s life: the experience of death is conditioned by the experience of life. For a man who gambled away his life – death is the worst punishment; for a man who lives in hopeless misery – death is salvation; for a man who had a rich and creative life – death is a deserved repose…

In Heidegger, man does not have a conscious relation to death. Actually, a conscious relation to death and man’s sociability are the basic presuppositions of a fear of death. Tragicality is possible from the very moment man becomes aware of his mortality. A child is not aware that he/she will die, nor is an animal. They cannot have a tragic existence. On the other hand, man can have a fear of death only as a social being. Man cannot experience his death, he acquires an idea of his (human) mortality only through the death of another human being.

Heidegger abolishes man’s emancipated (reasonable) relation to death because such a relation questions the idea of the tragicality of human existence on which his philosophy is based. Death is the basic presupposition of the totality of human activism. Without death, there can be no wish or will to live. If man were immortal, life would be absolutely meaningless. A happy life is possible precisely because of its finitude. An „eternal life“ is the greatest curse.

As did Christian theologists, Heidegger imputed to man a fear of death. Death, by itself, is not the source of the tragic; it becomes such only if it involves man’s vanishing. Although this is implied by Heidegger‘s thought, eternity is not as sured through man’s creative practice as a social and historical being, but through co-existence with Being.

A fear of vanishing means that man fears he will fall into oblivion after death, which actually means that his life devalues him to such an extent that it is not worth mentioning. A worthless life makes man a worthless being. This devalued life wipes man from human memory by preventing him from leaving behind any legacy through which he might be remembered. He does not vanish as a human being, but as an individual who failed to become a human being. Death is tragical in so far as it finally deprives a man of the possibility of becoming human. By depriving him of life, death deprives man of the possibility to realize his humanness.

Those who are not capable of a great achievement in their lifetime will mark their lives by means of the grave. For a man who did not leave a trace behind him, the grave becomes the only proof of his previous existence. The grave is a life turned into stone. A destroyed man appears in the form of indestructible stone. The grave is not a trace of the joy of life. It is a stony misery.

As long as we remember our ancestors and respect their legacy – they are alive. As long as their creativeness permeates our life – they are alive. As long as their libertarian struggle inspires us to fight on – they are alive. As long as our noble ancestors can be discerned in our grandchildren – they are alive. As long as a tear appears in our eye when we look at a family photograph and see the caring look in the eyes of our dear parents – they are alive…

Not only does Heidegger not make a distinction between death and vanishing, he does not make a distinction between death and destruction,  either. What faces modern man as a concrete, natural, historical and social being, is not just a fear of death, but a fear of the destruction of humanity and all life on the Earth. Man is scared of a possible nuclear war; he fears climate change; he fears viruses that might wipe out humanity; he fears fanatics ready to kill billions of people. Instead of imaginary fears based on religious illusions, he has real fears produced by capitalism.

With capitalism becoming a totalitarian destructive order, man’s creative potential has turned into a destructive power in the form of science and technology. Instead of enabling man to provide for his existence and further develop his creative potential, science and technology, misused by capitalism, have become tools for global destruction and, as such, are a means for the production of an existential fear that is slowly becoming an existential panic.

By abolishing man as a social being, Heidegger overlooked the fact that what makes man human is his responsibility for the lives of others. An atomized man lacks the most vital life forces: love and respect.  As a human being, he has nothing to lose as he is deprived of the very thing that makes him human. Man is not miserable because he is mortal, but because he is discarded as a human being and cannot realize his humanness as a social being.  This moment is dominant in Kerkegaard: despair over being discarded. His tragic thought  is the hopeless cry of a desperate man lost in the icy land of capitalist nothingness. It should be pointed out here that truth is not to be found in philosophy, science, art and religion, but in the eyes of a child begging for help.

By reducing man to an abstract being and by abolishing reason as a mediator between man and his existence, Heidegger abolishes man as a valuable being. Man’s tragicality in capitalism is based on his evaluating himself through a value model that depreciates him as a human being and on his attempts to provide for his existence through an existential sphere that calls into question the very survival of humanity and nature. If we consider the nature of man’s existence as a concrete historical (social) being, which is the concrete existence of man in capitalism, then man’s very existence has an anti-existential character.

Heidegger’s accounts of man’s tragic existence lead us to the conclusion that a “happy life” in a miserable world is but a fake existence, specifically, an existence based on lies. Only by way of experiencing the tragic existence can man set out to find a way out of everyday nothingness – instead of resorting to the destructive hedonism offered by capitalism in the form of “consumer society”. However, Heidegger deprives man of faith in a happy life and thus of any possibility of happiness. A fear of death is deeply set in man’s soul and prevents him from being happy. The anxiety created by the fear of death is a primary effect on how man experiences his existence.  Instead of the joy of life, the fear of death becomes the basis of human self-recognition. Striving for a happy life leads to the oblivion of death and thus to the obliviation of Being.

For Heidegger, the true source of anxiety is death, rather than slavery, oppression, humiliation, increasingly threatened life, lack of love and respect, lack of possibility for man to realize himself as a creative and social being … Everything that shows the anti-libertarian, oppressive, exploitive and destructive nature of capitalism is removed from the scene. The reduction of man’s authentic existence to a fear of death and strivings for Being serves Heidegger by doing away with the peculiar human qualities that make man a libertarian and creative being.

The tragic existence based on a fear of death becomes a non-historical existence and as such an abolishment of history and man as a historical being. By declaring the fear of death the basis of human tragic existence, Heidegger reduces man’s tragicality to a non-historical givenness. The meaning of the tragic as a concrete historical phenomenon can be determined only relative to the concrete historical (social) possibilities of overcoming the tragic, which are based on the emancipatory legacy and life-creating potential of people as social beings.

If Heidegger’s notion of the tragic is viewed in the context of the ever more dramatic destruction of the world, it has an anti-existential character. Heidegger separates man’s existence from the tendency in the development of capitalism toward a destructive totalitarian order and, in that context, from the existence of humanity and nature in a life-creating totality. In view of the existential plight created by capitalism, the most important task before man is not to provide eternal life for the individual by way of an illusory heavenly realm, but to secure humanity’s survival by preserving the earthly life-creating sphere. The indisputable point of departure for the experience of human existence is not an abstract “Being”, but nature as a life-creating entirety. Nature as a life-creating entirety and man as an emancipated natural being and the organic part of nature as a life-creating entirety – this is the basis of human existence.

By becoming a destructive totalitarian order, capitalism compels man directly to confront the increasing threat of destruction. The capitalist zunami has swept through all doors. The smell of death is all around. No longer does man need science or philosophy to be aware of his dramatic existential situation. Man relates to his existence by experiencing it immediately as a growing threat to life on this planet. By becoming a global order of destruction, capitalism has abolished the duality between individual and common interests – between the existential interest of an individual and the existential interest of humanity. By increasingly threatening life on the Earth, capitalism threatens the life of the individual and at the same time the life of the whole of humanity. This is potentially the most important integrative link enabling humanity to unite and become a force capable of destroying capitalism.

It is up to us to initiate this vital historical turn. Instead of a cult of death, we should build a cult of life. Similarly to religious fanatics, guided by the idea of apocalypse, the ideologists of capitalism are creating an existential defeatism and, through an increasingly aggressive production of illusions, offering virtual cosmic worlds as the spaces for humanity’s future existence. The idea of eternity must be brought back from the illusory “worlds” and the vastness of the universe and placed within the framework of our earthly life. People should become aware that the Earth is our only home and the only place in the universe that gives us a chance to survive. This awareness should be the impetus for a will to fight for survival and thereby secure the future of humanity.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović (Petrović)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

In order for a question to be authentic, it has to be a concrete historical question, which means that it should take into consideration the governing tendency in the development of the world. The question of the nature of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy should also be a concrete historical question. It is one thing when a question is asked in a blossoming field and quite the other when it is asked on the brink of the abyss. The concrete historical question is the following: Does Heidegger’s thought indicate the processes that lead to the destruction of man and nature, and does it offer a possibility to step out from capitalist civilization into a civilization of freedom, where man will live in harmony with nature?

Heidegger’s philosophy should be given a chance to appear as concrete historical thought in the relation of destruction to life-creation, i.e., destructive mindlessness to life-creating mind. Only relative to the mind’s libertarian and life-creating potential can a concrete historical meaning of Heidegger’s philosophy be perceived. Life on Earth is increasingly threatened and everything that possesses a life-creating potential should be included in the fight for survival. The essential criterion to determine whether a thought is reasonable is whether it contributes to the preservation of life on Earth.

A life-creating humanism should become the basis for the mind’s self-reflextion and, as such, the source of the self-consciouness of man as a life-creating being that, through his life-creating practice, should confront capitalism as a destructive totalitarian order. Guided by the life-creating mind and relying on a combative sociability, man should abolish the “consumer society” and “technical civilisation” and create a humane society and a life-creating civilisation, which will be the organic part of nature as a  life-creating totality. We are talking about a life-creating pantheism, which creates not only a new life, but a new world.

For Heidegger’s followers, his philosophy is the only framework within which the question of its essence and meaning is possible. Philosophical legitimacy of any discussion of Heidegger’s philosophy is acquired by its becoming a self-reflexion of Heidegger’s philosophy. “Fundamental ontology” becomes a synthesis of everything valuable that appears in the realm of the mind. It acquires the status of the only true philosophy and as such becomes the criterion used to determine the legitimacy of philosophical thought. „Fundamental ontology” becomes the other name for true mindfulness.

Bourgeiois theoreticians seek to analyse Heidegger’s thought departing from philosophy as an „objective“ sphere with a supra-historical character. Thus, Heidegger’s philosophy becomes an abstract thought. They use Heidegger’s philosophy to eliminate the visionary mind and, thereby, any possible spaces for the future. Heidegger’s philosophy heralds the end of history. At the same time, bourgeois philosophers appeal to Heidegger so that, in the shadow of his philosophy, they might obtain philosophical legitimacy for their own writings. They treat Heidegger in the same way Heidegger treats Being (Sein). To be in Heidegger’s „neighbourhood“ ensures „immortality“ in the world of philosophy.

The most important reason for Heidegger’s popularity with the bourgeois intelligentsia is that his philosophy enables the preservation of the elitist status of philosophy and thus the elitist status of the academic intelligentsia. His “fundamental ontology” becomes the philosophical “Holy Scripture”, whereas his “interpretors” become the guardians of the keys of wisdom. Bourgeois philosophy turned Heidegger into a myth and made his philosophy one of the key intelllectual pillars of Western civilization.

The production of the myth of Heidegger and other “great” philosophers serves to create a sectarian single-mindedness and elitist self-sufficiency of the bourgeois intelligentsia. Its members voluntarily accept the ghettoization of the mind at academic faculties and other exclusive „intellectual” domains, since it gives them “freedom” and a comfortable life. Such social position releases them from responsibility for the survival of life on the planet and from the risk that a struggle against the ruling order entails.

The representatives of traditional philosophy base their relation to Heidegger’s philosophy on existential apriorism. By becoming a totalitarian order of destruction, capitalism descredited that point of departure. The insistance on such an approach deprives Heidegger’s thought of a concrete historical dimension and turns the discussion of Heidegger’s thought into intellectual gymnastics with an abstract character. The traditional philosophical approach to Heidegger not only sterilizes the life-creating potentials of his thought, but also averts the mind from the basic existential issues currently facing humankind ever more dramatically. “Consumer society” is the final confrontation with a thought grounded in existential apriorism.

A demystification of Heidegger’s philosophy involves the emancipation of Heidegger’s thought from philosophy, which means discarding the philosophical veil under which his thought loses any concrete historical character and becomes abstract thought. Heidegger must be drawn away from the gloominess of philosophical gibberish into the light of history and treated as a concrete social being, whereas his philosophy should be treated as  concrete historical thought. Only then can we discover both its limits and its emancipatory potential. At the same time, a concrete historical discussion of Heidegger’s philosophy is possible only if it does not fall into the trap of his philosophical rhetoric. It is a labyrinth without exit, where, in hopeless wandering, the mind loses its life-creating power.

In addition to ancient Greek philosophy, Heidegger found the source and inspiration for his ideas in the philosophy of St. Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Franz Brentano, Fridrich Schelling, Friedrich Hölderline, Sørene Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, in thaoism and other Far-Easterm religions. In order to grasp the true nature of Heidegger’s philosophy, we should also bear in mind the ideas and political movements relative to which Heidegger sought to build his philosophy.

Rather than in theory, a concrete historical source of Heidegger’s thought is to be found in the reality of life in Germany in the first half of the 20^th century. Only when Heidegger’s philosophy is viewed in the context of historical events in which it occurred can we discover its true nature. We are talking about German expansionism; the crisis of capitalism and the First World War; Germany’s defeat and the collapse of the German Empire; the Munich Revolution and the development of the communist movement; the founding and fall of the Weimer Republic; the development of German revanchism and the rise of fascism; the “thrust toward the East” and the collapse of Nazi Germany… Heidegger’s philosophy was only possible on German soil.

There is no denying that Heidegger’s philosophy has an authenticity reflected not only in its specific parlance, but also in the specific treatment of basic philosophical questions. Essentially, Heidegger sought to answer the question of the future of Germany in the form of a philosophical treatise. That is, most importantly, what makes Heidegger a „German philosopher“ and determines both the self-consciousness of Heidegger’s philosophy and Heidegger’s notion of himself as a philosopher. Without such an approach to Heidegger’s thought, we cannot correctly answer the question of the political essence of his philosophy and, in that context, of the nature of Heidegger’s relation to Nazism.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović (Petrović)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

Before the modern era, religion played the most important role in the contemplative life of European peoples. However, the development of artisanship and trade, the appearance of the first towns, the advancement of science and techniques, the appearance of the bourgeois intelligentsia and “The Gutenberg Galaxy”, as well as the development of schools and universities and civil political movements – all that created new sources of thinking. Along with the philosophical mind, the scientific mind started to have an increasingly important role in man’s thinking, throwing off the religious schackles. A new way of life and a new position of man in the world gave rise to a new art, which sought to create its own autonomous thinking. The thinking life in Europe became multi-faceted and multi-layered. It was now based on the capitalist division of labour, which separated manual from intellectual labour and institutionalised spheres of thought wherein people became alienated from their creative powers. At the same time, the dynamics of the thinking life were conditioned by scientific discoveries, conquests of new territories, technical inventions, industrial development, increased literacy of the general population, the introduction of a non-working time, which increased the number of readers and gave rise to the theater, opera houses, galleries and other cultural institutions.

The modern age saw a struggle between different world views, whereas the bearers of religious, scientific, philosophical and artistic thought sought to turn their respective fields into the sum total of all wisdom and the pillar of the thinking life. At the same time, under the influence of political pluralism, there appeared various schools of thought, each of them seeking to make its view the basis of all thought. Rather than being founded on the mind, this tendency to establish a domination of one world view over all others is the consequence of a struggle for power between political and economic centers, which instrumentalised the mind. This is what the idea of fundamentalism is based on. It does not strive for truth, which can be found only by opposing different views, but for the establishment of a centre of power with an indisputable monopoly on the „truth”.

Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is developed in a world divided into spheres that are alienated from and dominant over man. Without that division, a demand for fundamentalism would be meaningless. Fundamental ontology is a synthesized essence of separate areas of suprastructure, where the powers alienated from man are institutionalized, becoming the means by which the ruling order oppresses man and destroys nature. Heidegger does not seek to reconcile the divided world and give man back his powers, those taken from him in the form of alienated spheres of the capitalist suprastructure. He does not seek to abolish the sphere of philosophy by people becoming reasonable beings; to abolish the sphere of art by people becoming artistic beings; to abolish the sphere of technique by turning the conquered forces of nature into the means for satisfying genuine human needs and increasing the likelihood of human survival; to abolish class society by abolishing private ownership over the means of production and the repressive institutions of bourgeois society and by man becoming the agent of social life and the master of his destiny.

Fundamental ontology has an integrative character. It is based on an integrative ontological point, which is the source of thought and is indisputable. If fundamental ontology is the source of overall thinking, then it is not possible to pose an autonomous ontological question about its essence, which means to establish an autonomous critical standpoint, from which it may be brought into question. A discussion of the nature of fundamental ontology is possible as its self-reflexion.

The self-reflexion of fundamental ontology is based on all principal standpoints of thought being contained in it, and through it they obtain their ontological legitimacy. Self-reflexion of the ontological as ontological is possible only via fundamental ontology. In other words, the very nature of the ontological is conditioned by the nature of fundamentalism as a totalizing way of thinking. Every ontological approach that does not correspond to the totalizing intention of fundamental ontology is eliminated. The ontical excludes the struggle of opposites and thus the historical development of society, whereas ontology excludes the confrontation of opposites as a way of finding the truth. Fundamental ontology is opposed to the dialectic of history and the dialectical mind.

For an ontology to justify itself, it should be capable of posing the question of the truthfulness of fundamental ontology. Fundamental ontology is legitimate only as ontology, which means that the self-reflexion of fundamental ontology is possible only through the ontological. Since fundamentalism, as a synthetic-totalizing principle questions the essence of the ontological, fundamental ontology does not have the legitimacy of the ontological. In fundamental ontology, ontology has lost its ontological essence.

Fundamentalism as a principle of thought is opposed to the emancipatory nature of the ontological. It deprives ontology of the visionary. Since the ontological is self-conscious of the ontical, by abolishing the openness of the ontological towards the future, the ontical is deprived of an emancipatory self-consciousness. What should be affirmed instead of the principle of fundamentalism is the principle of ontological openness, which then enables the thought to soar into the future. This is the basic presupposition for the life-creating potential of the ontical to acquire a visionary self-consciousness.

Fundamental ontology is not a thought opening the horizons of new worlds; it is rather a strengthening of the foundations of the existing world. The fact that it is a “path” (Heidegger) does not mean searching for or opening new ontological standpoints, but rather projecting the given fundamental ontological point into the future.

Bearing in mind that the contemporary world is based on a totalitarian destruction, we can conclude that fundamental ontology draws thinking into the sphere of a totalizing anti-existential mindlessness. With capitalism becoming a totalitarian destructive order, the question of the truthfulness of fundamental ontology as a concrete historical question is possible only from an existental and, in that context, a libertarian standpoint.

Heidegger developed a new philosophy which should indicate the essence of human existence. Philosophy is abolished by philosophy. This contradicts Heidegger’s demand that all forms of mediation between man and his existence be abolished. Rather than by replacing all other philosophies with his so that his philosophy becomes the only mode of mediation between man and his existence, Heidegger seeks to abolish philosophy altogether as a mediator between man and his existence. His fundamental ontology does not strive to develop a philosophy, but rather represents the end of philosophy and the birth of the poetic. It does not only carry the seed of a new thought, but also of a new relation of man to his existence.

The essence of Heidegger’s novum is that man’s relation to being is not grounded in the thinking of being, but on its experience. Hence the self-reflexion of Heidegger’s philosophy is not possible through philosophy as  wisdom alienated from man, which as such is the criterion for determening its own truthfullness, but rather through a way of life based on immediate experience of a tragic existence and thus on co-existence with Being.

If the basis of its self-reflexion is not thinking but rather the experience of a tragic existence, why then fundamental ontology? Is it a source of wisdom needed for man to understand the nature of his tragic existence and the nihilism into which he is thrown so that new social conditions can be created enabling him to re-experience his tragic existence and return to Being, or is it but a means for eliminating the mind as a mediator between man and his existence?

Heidegger called into question philosophy as a mediator between man and his existence, and this is one of the most significant emancipatory possibilities of his thought. His analysis of the history of philosophy indicates that Post-Socratic philosophy, which mediates between man and his existence by reducing them to the objects of analysis, resulted in the “obliviation of Being”, and this led man to nihilism. Hence we should go back to Pre-Socratic Helada, where man was in unity with Being and where philosophy was a self-reflexion of Being. If this Heideggerian appeal is viewed in light of the fact that capitalism increasingly threatens the survival of life and in the context of a demand to eliminate all forms of mediation between man and world, which was insisted upon by Marx and Nietzsche, he can have not only an emancipatory, but also an existential significance.

Heidegger’s philosophy has a critical undertone and thereby offers  the possibility of being present and alive in a world that, inspite of falling deeper and deeper into existential hopelessness, does not seek to overcome capitalism and create a new world. It offers the possibility of being critical without crossing the „red line“ dividing a „politically correct“ thought from a thought that seeks to confront capitalism and step out into the future, where the emancipatory potential of a civil society might be realised. Heidegger’s philosophy is a critique of the capitalist reality that does not bring capitalism into question. It is an anti-visionary critique of capitalism.

Heidegger’s philosophy does not see itself as a concrete historical thought that is conditioned and thus qualified by the nature of the time in which it was developed. Heidegger determines the idea of “fundamental ontology” as the starting point for the self-reflexion of his philosophy. Heidegger’s undestanding of man and his existence, in effect, comes from philosophy as a separate area of the capitalist spiritual sphere. His thought is based on and framed by a capitalistically divided world. Although Heidegger sought to create an impression that his fundamental ontology has a supra-historical character, his philosophy belongs to the capitalist spiritual supra-structure alienated from man. With his philosophical rethoric, Heidegger built a labyrinth for the mind, which is but an addition to the capitalist ideological sphere.

Heidegger gave to philosophy an inadequate social and historical dimension. Ancient Greek philosophers did not determine the nature of the governing thought; it was the governing order that, indirectly and directly, conditioned man’s thinking and the nature of philosophy. The same goes for the modern age. The nature of the governing thought is not conditioned by philosophy, but by capitalism as a destructive totalitarian order. The capitalist ratio, which rules bourgeois philosophy, is but a rational manifestation of  destructive capitalist mindlessness. It corresponds with philosophy as a mystificatory skill that sterilizes the life-creating power of the mind and thus confronts visionary consciousness and changing practice. Traditional philosophy fits into this by turning concrete existential issues into abstract theoretical questions.

As with other “great philosophies”, Heidegger’s faces the issue of its logical consistency. Heidegger created specific terms that he sought to “fill up” with notions having a hierarchical order. To create the illusion that this pyramid of notions is non-contradictory, Heidegger had to resort to verbal juggling. As he developed his philosophy, he elaborated and changed the content of the notions with which he set out toward Olympus. On that increasingly strenuous and uncertain trek, the notions behaved as a flock of sheep that the shepherd cannot keep together. Some sheep fell off a cliff, some got lost, and the shepherd had to eat some of them in order to keep moving on. Ultimately, it turned out that the path Heidegger took led not to Olympus but to Auschwitz.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović (Petrović)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

The destruction of the mind is the ultimate consequence of the development of capitalism. This destruction of the human scentience is based on the following “logic” : live to work; work to shop; shop to discard; discard to enable the process of global destruction to proceed smoothly…

Capitalism turns people into “good for nothing” petty-bourgoises. Guided by the illusions created by the capitalist propaganda machinery, people become alienated from the processes that determine their destiny and thus the capitalist villains are able to become masters over their lives.

We are currently in the process of erasing the national and, thereby, historical self-consciousness. The world has turned into a container of “coca-cola” idiocy. “Mass events” destroy the mind and sterilise man’s change-creating energy. Sports stadiums and centers have become the cult venues of the modern world. It is no accident that robotised gladiators and circus players are paid enormous amounts for their performances. Instead of looking to the future, young people are fixated on football or basketball ball or the tennis racket or the blood stained boxer’s fist…

“New” forms of “entertainment” designed for the young appear on a daily basis and instead of drawing on cultural heritige, they are copying the “mass production” in the West aimed at destroying the national identity and creating a mondialistic idiocy. The importance attached by the media to manifestations such as “Halloween” (Night of the Witches) shows the extent to which the “public space” has become the property of the capitalist clans, those seeking to woo the West by destroying our culture and consequently eradicating our people from the historical arena.

The space given by the media to illiterate “prophets” instead of educated and wise people also shows the extent to which the mind is degraded in today’s world. This is the culmination of the development of “democracy”.

I remember a neighbor I once had, Granny Novka, who was a professional medium and an amateur  “Madame”. Her “predictions” turned out to be completely true. She, for example, correctly predicted the death of our friend, Auntie Ruzica and her husband, Uncle Bata. She also foresaw the death of our dog Luci and that the lavatory in her yard was going to collapse. She correctly predicted that she would get a certificate of virginity in spite of being married for 40 years. She foresaw that the local authorities would demolish her house, which in 1804 used to be the home of one of the first schools in Serbia, and that a local grocery would be erected in its place. She was also correct in saying that keeping pigs in the town and washing them on the Ibar river town beach would be banned. She predicted that she would be run over by a truck and that nobody would attend her funeral. And she was correct in that, too…

Today, Granny Novka would stand a good chance of becoming the president of the country. Considering the people in our political arena and the extent to which people have lost any hope of becoming the masters of their own destinies, many of them would look for a guiding star in the illiterate clairvoyant. We are now  “going through a transition,” anyway. What is the end of our journey? Granny Novka would surely know the answer. Once, when she was cross with me, she uttered the words that might become her most relevant prophecy: “You all shall perish!”. If we do not confront the capitalist barbarians, Granny Novka’s words may turn out to be a deadly curse.

“Mondialism” is a global ecocidal and genocidal order with a technocratic character, based on the destruction of nations and national cultures; on the eradication of historical, and thus, libertarian human self-consciousness; on the splitting of countries into “regions” so that the most powerful capitalist concerns can achieve their monstrous goals by bribing the local oligarchs and preventing an organised resistance by the oppressed working people… The true purpose of  “mondialism” is the transformation of the world into the object of exploitation and human beings into the means of a destructive capitalist reproduction. This is also the true purpose of the “non-governmental” organisations. They are an exclusive political instrument of the most powerful capitalist groups in the West meant for the destruction of nations, states and democratic institutions, which enable people to express their political will.

As a reaction to this mondialistic barbarism, we see a rise of national movements based on religious single-mindedness. They are also incapable of offering any meaningful solutions as they are all based on the destructive capitalist mindlessness. They are also led by the “horsemen of the apocalypse”. Both of these ideologies are based on the absolutized principles of private property and class society, and both fight against the emancipatory legacy of civil society and the idea of a future based on a life-creating mind and social justice. The only difference is that one of them promises “gardens of Eden” in the existing world, while the other promises them in heaven.

As far as “belief in God” is concerned, are we talking about the “God” of the Catholic church? Or the “God” referred to by the Nazis and featured on the belt buckles of the German SS divisions? Or the “God” of the Americans, whose fascistoid terror-bombing of Serbian villages and towns was cynically called “Merciful Angel”?

And what about the “omnipotent, omnipresent and merciful God” of the Christian colonists who, in the name of “God”, killed millions of American Indian children and almost obliterated the Indians from the Earth. What was the “omnipresent, omnipotent and merciful God” thinking when the American Christians, in his name, whipped African boys to death, castrated and hanged their fathers and raped their sisters and mothers? What was the “omnipresent, omnipotent and merciful God” doing in Auschwitz when, in his name, the German Christians killed the Jewish children in the gas chambers? What was the “omnipotent, omnipresent and merciful God” doing in Jasenovac, when the Christian Ustasha, in his name, butchered Orthodox Serbian children and gouged out their eyes – and while the children were praying for salvation? What was the “omnipotent, omnipresent and merciful God” doing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the American Christians, in his name, killed tens of thousands of children with their atomic bombs? What was the “omnipotent, omnipresent and merciful God” doing in Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Chile, Argentina, Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Lybia …. – where the Americans, in his name, killed millions of children, leaving behind only burnt villages and nuclear battlefields? Why doesn’t the “omnipresent, omnipotent and merciful God” respond to the pleadings of millions of children who are asking him for help, and why doesn’t he deal with the capitalist monsters who, in his name, are slaughtering the weak and destroying the world, which is the “work of God”?

As far as “paradise” is concerned, it does not seem to be such a wonderful place as they would like us to believe. No one can possibly be delighted by a “paradise” inhabited by the likes of Hitler, Musolini, Franco, Horti, Pavelic… If we add to the list millions of murderers who have been granted indulgences by the Christian churches so that they can enter the “gardens of Eden”, very little is left of the enthusiasm with which people refer to that “heaven”. Not to mention the prospect of “eternal life” in the company of murderers, which certainly cannot bring us “blissfulness”.

What are the choices offered to man after his earthly life?  Is it the “hell”, where he will be burning on a ceaseless fire? Or is it “paradise”, filled with monstrous killers? Is there a place in the universe where man can find peace? I wish there were a planet inhabited only by children. By dear, carefree, happy children… If only there were a place where children lived happily without being tortured, starved, raped and killed, I wouldn’t mind going to “hell” and endure the most  brutal torture. Could that place still be our planet Earth?

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović (Petrović)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

The ongoing events in the Arab world are just another episode in the global war waged by the West against Russia. The crisis of the Arab world results from the attempts by the ruling capitalist clans in the West to instrumentalize the Muslims in their conflict with Russia.

The first move was the destruction of the Arab states that maintained friendly relations with Russia and had the power to oppose Western policy in the Arab world. The second move was the creation of radical Islamic military formations that would eventually be united under the command of the most powerful Islamic leaders. In that context, the Islamic state gained a leading position among the radical Islamic groups. Its first and foremost task is to eliminate all political forces in the Arab world that cooperate with Russia and penetrate the territory of the former Soviet republics with predominantly Muslim populations. Ultimately, the entire Middle Asia was to become a new Caliphate, which would, with economic aid and military assistance provided by the West, take the Caucasus away from Russia and turn millions of Russian Muslims living against their homeland. To turn Islamic Asia against Orthodox Russia is the primary strategic goal of the West.

Thanks to Russia’s decisive opposition this aggressive Western policy was defeated in the Arab world, and the consequences of the aggression have spilled over into Europe. The “refugee crisis“ arose from the failed attempt by the West to turn the Arab world against Russia.

Europe is a collaborator in the American policy to destroy the Arab states and peoples. The leading European politicians, guided as they were by the economic interests of the most powerful European companies, “failed” because they followed the American policy with docile enthusiasm, underestimating the danger of the crisis spilling over from the Arab space into Europe.

The „refugee crisis” revealed the true nature of Europe. Europe was not ready for the “refugee crisis“ because it was confronted with issues that it could not solve. The “refugee crisis“ is the result of the anti-humane and destructive character of European capitalism. If Europe were based on solidarity, the refugee issue would have been solved long ago. However, Europe is not based on solidarity, but on the ruling principles of monopoly capitalism: “Destroy the competition!“ and “Big fish devour small fish!“. Concentration camps, barbed wire, police, army, attacks on refugees, arson, fascist hysteria … – this is the only response to the “refugee crisis“ that a capitalist Europe, with its ongoing colonial spirit, can offer.

The “refugee crisis“ has brought to light the increasing existential crisis of the European peoples. A panic reaction to the coming of “Others“ indicates the dramatic biological demise of the European people. The spectacular screen of the “consumer society“ conceals the last act of the European existential crisis, with its fatal outcome. The “refugee crisis“ reveals that capitalism has brought the European peoples to the edge of the abyss.

The “refugee crisis“ once again shows that human problems cannot be solved humanely in an inhumane society. It is only in a humane society that human problems can be solved in a humane way.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović (Petrović)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

Breivik’s crime has a profoundly symbolic value.

The massacre on the island of Utøya is a concrete manifestation of the destructive nature of the ruling order.

Breivik is the authentic product of contemporary capitalism.

He is one of the crusaders of a „new world order“ based on the ruling principle of monopolistic capitalism: „Destroy the competition!“

The most powerful American and European capitalist circles do not hide the fact that their goal is to annihilate billions of „surplus“ people.

How many „Breiviks“ are there in NATO uniforms?

The „problem“ is that Breivik killed independently.

If he were a NATO mercenary slaughtering children and pregnant women in Afghanistan, he would be praised as a „fighter for democracy“.

His crime indicates that the destructive potential of capitalism may turn against the society in which it was generated and that the ruling establishment cannot keep it under control.

Breivik is „mentaly sick“ just as are Bush, Clinton, Blair, Merkel, Sarkozy, Obama; just as are the owners of the American military industry and NATO commanders; just as are hundreds of thousands of scientists who manufacture the most atrocious mass-killing devices; just as are the bloodthirsty journalists of the most powerful media concerns; just as are the capitalist petty bourgeoisie, who are capable of committing the most horrible crimes in order to protect their standard of living…

Breivik demonstrated the fascist potential of capitalist „democracy“.

He did what tens of millions of capitalist zealots all over Europe and America would like to do.

He is their „hero“.

The trial in Norway is not intended to convict Breivik; its purpose is rather to conceal the true nature of capitalism.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

1. What is the purpose of spectacular sports manifestations such as the World Championship in football?

From a historical point of view, each regime has had its own festivals celebrating its highest values. Sport is the embodiment of the ruling spirit of the capitalist order and thus has a cult character. Hence the importance of the sports stadium. It is a modern pagan temple, where in the form of a „sports competition“ spectacular services to the deities that rule the world are performed. The calendar of the greatest sports competitions has become a pattern determining the course of time – just like the Olympic Games in ancient Greece. Pierre de Coubertin, official „father“ of modern Olympic Games, maintained that sports is the „cult of  the existing world“ and as such the most important means for dealing with the political struggle of „working masses“ and for integrating the „lower races“ into the capitalist order – at the level of slaves. „Sportivization“ of the world has become the most important instrument of „mondialists“ for destroying the emancipatory heritage of the civil society and national cultures and for dragging people into the existential and value orbit of capitalism. Considering the scope of misery and poverty in Africa, it is a sad truth that increasing amounts of money are invested in Africa into stadiums and the development of sports show-business, instead of investing in agriculture, education, waterpipes, health…. Obviously, the black rulers use the same governing mechanisms as their white colonial masters in recent past.

2. How should we direct children regarding their attitude to sports spectacles?

We should help them to develop from early years their creative powers, which means their creative being. A developed artistic being is the best „defence“ against primitive sports spectacles. Schiller’s view that „upbringing through art is upbringing for art“ should be the guiding principle in their upbringing. In sport, we have established upbringing without education, which is one of the most fatal postulates of Coubertin’s „utilitarian pedagogy“. It is no accident that Nazis, particularly Hitler, were delighted with Coubertin and his Olympism.

3. It is not possible to isolate children from their environment. What do you think can be done with respect to that? 

Children cannot be kept under the „glass bell“ of „playgrounds“ and „special schools“. The only answer to the increasingly inhumane world is to develop their humane being and their will to fight for a humane world. Bearing in mind the ever more dramatic destruction of nature, such an answer is not only a cultural and libertarian imperative it used to be at the time of Goethe and Schiller, it has become an existential imperative. Hence the development of young people’s emancipated ecological consciousness is one of the most important tasks of modern pedagogy. Ecologically, sport has fatal consequences for young people. In sport, destructive instrumentalization of the body, involving the development of a self-destructive character and consciousness, has reached its peak. Sport is not only one of the most radical forms of dehumanization, it is also man’s denaturalization. It completely corresponds to the „technical civilization“, which destructs nature and man as a human and natural being. In no other social sphere has the monstruous idea of a „man-robot“ been realized to such an extent as in sport.

4. What makes children decide to engage in sport? 

Money and affirmation in the existing world – these things make sport attractive for young people. Millions of dollars, expensive cars, yachts, „macho“ iconography, attractive girls, spectacular photographies of super-built bodies, spotlights, yelling crowds…. Sportsmen appear on TV as modern „supermen“, attractive to young people who are lost in a world where they see no future. The „grandiosity“ of sports spectacles stands in opposition to everyday misery of the majority of young people. Coubertin was right: sport is the „cheapest spiritual food for proletarian youth, keeping it under control“.

5. What is the role of parents?

Many parents are prepared to mercilesly push their children into the sports arena in the belief that they will get rich, thus making them rich too. Only a small number of children succeed – others fall to the bottom of society. Those who manage to acquire some money lose through that process the most important human qualities  – those which money cannot buy. Self-respect, which is acquired from the development of one’s own creative being and intelligence, cannot be bought, and nor can love and respect.

6. What kind of sports activities do you recommend? 

Children should not engage in sport, they should engage in physical culture. And this means in such physical activities which develop their cultural being, enrich relations between people and cultivize their natural being. Sport is predominantly characterized by movement of man against another man and the absolutized principle of a quantitatively measurable performance expressed in the Olympic maxim citius, altius, fortius (faster, farther, stronger). (Genuine) physical culture is characterized by a movement of man towards another man and the performance which affirms man’s peculiar quality as an independent creative being – as is the case in art. In addition, sport creates an artificial (technical) space intended to enable new records – which are not manifestations of the development of human powers, but of man’s destruction as a human and natural being. In opposition to that, in (genuine) physical culture man seeks a cultivated natural movement – in a cultivated natural environement. As far as human relations are concerned, it is legal and legitimate in sport to inflict serious injuries to one’s „opponent“ and kill him. Likewise, there is a segregation with respect to gender, women being the symbol of „weakness“, who are consequently treated as „lower beings“. Comparing boys to girls is the most offensive thing a coach can say to his boys in order to make them „fight“ in games. The ways in which coaches humiliate and destroy young people are unbelievable…. This, of course, is never talked about in order to keep the „humane“ mask which conceals the truth that sport has become the main spiritual drug depolitizing increasingly dissatisfied young people and ensuring the survival of the ruling order.

 7. Do you know what has happened with physical education in schools? 

Physical education in schools is completely degraded and so is the pedagogical role of the teacher of physical education. This is reflected in the change in the name of the „Faculty for Physical Culture“ into the „Faculty for Sport and Physical Education“. Instead of establishing the much needed critical distance from sport from the aspect of a humanistic physical culture, sport has been idealized, while pedagogy of physical culture serves to glorify sport. As far as the expression „physical education“ is concerned, even a lay man can see that physical exercises do not educate the body, but the man. This was emphasized as long ago as in ancient Hellad, as well as in the philantropic movement which developed in Germany after the French Revolution. Even in the most developed capitalist countries in the West the dominant tendency is to eliminate „physical culture“ from the pedagogical theory and practice and introduce „sports education“, thus dealing finally with the efforts to create space in school for the development of young people’s playing being. At the same time, the so-called „mass physical culture“ of the general public has been abolished by a commercialized physical activism and various „body treatments“ aimed at „healing“ the consequences created by the „consumer society“ – which turned man into a consuming idiot and the body into a container devouring increasingly poisonous surrogates of the capitalist civilization.

The most important task for the humanist intelligentsia is to develop in contemporary man a self- consciousness that will provide humankind with the possibility to survive. The humanist intelligentsia needs to point out the increasingly dramatic consequences of the development of capitalism as a destructive order, as well as the existing objective possibilities for the creation of a new world. At the same time, it needs to develop a political strategy that will become a starting point for the creation of global forms of political struggle that would impede the destruction of life on the planet and create a new world.

The critique of capitalism should observe two methodological postulates. First: the nature of a certain social (historical) phenomenon is determined by the tendencies of its development – of what it develops into. Second: the nature of a social (historical) phenomenon conditions the nature of its critique. The nature of capitalism, that is, a tendency of its development as a destructive system, conditions both the nature of the critique of capitalism and the political strategy for the fight against capitalism. This is not to suggest the creation of a uniform way of thinking, but a way of thinking that endeavors to ask questions of an existential and essential nature. Such a way of thinking represents a contraposition to the ruling ideology, manifested in the “Coca Cola culture” that tends to marginalize the essential in order to assign a spectacular dimension to the marginal.

A specificity of the contemporary historical moment, that is, a specificity of capitalism as a system of destruction, also conditions the specific view of the past. The ruling ideology sterilizes the libertarian and change-oriented charge of philosophical thought and reduces it to a lifeless “history of philosophy”, which becomes a vehicle for the destruction of the libertarian and life-creating power of reason. Critical theory, based upon existential humanism, needs to create the possibility for “reviving” the creative and libertarian spirit of our ancestors by engaging it in the fight for survival and for the creation of a new world. In the struggle for the survival of humankind, the thinking of the past has to realize its own humanistic, i.e., existential  and  libertarian,  potential. The  deepening  crisis  of  existence  forces  man  to  focus  on  basic existential issues and, in that context, to integrate the libertarian and cultural heritage of humankind and to rid it of any “tails” that only weaken the combat and drive the mind astray. “Fullness of humanity”, in the sense of perceiving man from a historical prospective, is conditioned by increasingly dramatic existential challenges. The libertarian past needs to become a source of man’s life-creating energy in the struggle for the survival of humankind. “Return” to the mythological past is justified only for the revitalization of libertarian and life-creating myths.  Otherwise, it amounts to driving reason astray, and is, regardless of  personal motives, of an anti-existential nature.

A concrete critique of capitalism cannot be based solely upon essential humanism, but must be based upon existential humanism as well. The ideals of the French Revolution – Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – present a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the future. The struggle for preservation of life on the planet and for increasing the certainty of the survival of man as a cultural (social) and biological (natural) being represents a conditio sine qua non of the struggle for the future. Instead of the Marx’s notion of “alienation” (Entfremdung), the key notion in the critique of capitalism should be destruction. Marx’s revolutionary humanism emerges in relation to capitalism as a system of non-freedom, injustice, and non-reason, and advocates freedom, social justice, and a reasonable world, which means that it appears in the essential sphere. Existential humanism emerges in relation to capitalism as a destructive order that annihilates nature and man as a biological and human being – and places the struggle for the survival of the living world in the foreground, which means that it appears in the existential sphere. Affirmation of man as a creative and libertarian being is a response to the world where man is alienated from himself as a creative and libertarian being. The assertion that man is a life-creating being is a response to the world based upon the destruction of life: the struggle for freedom becomes the struggle for survival. The struggle for a reasonable world does not only represent an essential, but also an existential challenge. At the same time, Hegel’s (Marx’s) dialectic can be accepted only conditionally as a starting point for the development of a critique of capitalism, for its (historical) pyramid of freedom is founded upon existential certainty.

The “traditional” Marxist critique of capitalism, from the point of view of what-is-yet-to-be (Bloch’s noch- nicht-Sein), is of an abstract nature. The concrete nature of the capitalist positive also conditions the nature of the negative, which is a critical consciousness and a political practice based on it. Contemporary man cannot attain an  appropriate historical self-consciousness starting from  an  absolutized and  idealized anthropological model of man as a universal creative being of freedom, but starting from the existential challenges that capitalism, as a destructive system, imposes on man. Man’s becoming a human being (what he, in his essence, is – a totalizing libertarian, creative and life-creating being) and the world’s becoming a human world are conditioned by capitalism’s becoming capitalism (that is, its turning into what it, in its essence, is – a totalitarian destructive order). A concrete future cannot be grounded in what man desires to do based on his own true human needs, but in what man must do for humankind to survive. The essential level of the future is directly conditioned by existential challenges. The development of capitalism has caused further impossibility for the future as a product of the man’s free (visionary) creative practice (Bloch’s “openness“), but is conditioned by consequences generated by capitalism as a destructive order. Objective possibilities for the creation of a new world, and the possibility for the realization of man as a universal free creative being, are conditioned by the developmental capacities of capitalism as a destructive order. This is the basis for a concrete dialectic of the future. Decimated nature, mutilated man, the accumulated destructive powers of capitalism that could momentarily destroy humankind – this also represents an objective situation that inevitably conditions the probability of the future and its planning. Man does not assign to himself tasks that he can complete, as Marx asserts, but it is capitalism that imposes a crucial task on man: to preserve life on the planet and to save humankind from destruction. Being a match to the historical task imposed on man by capitalism means facing up to capitalism as an order that destroys life.

For Marxist theoreticians, an empty stomach is man’s key existential driving force. Typical is Bloch’s position that “in the foundation of planning should lie hunger, poverty and scarcity”. Capitalism fills the stomachs of its subjects while destroying nature and degenerating man as a natural and human being, turning him into a waste disposal whose role is to destroy as much as possible of the increasingly poisonous surrogates of “consumer” civilization. As for the inborn aggressiveness of man as a living being, capitalism transforms man’s vital aggressiveness into destructive power. The potentially change-oriented energy of people, deriving from their increasing dissatisfaction, becomes, by means of capitalism’s vital and ideological sphere, a spiritus movens of capitalism. Need for life is being transformed into need for destruction. Criticizing Hegel, Bloch rightfully points out the fact that in history not all negations are necessarily a move forward. However, he fails to realize that the capitalist negation leads towards the destruction of the world. Not a word on capitalism as a destructive order, nor, in that context, about consciousness of the possible destruction of life as an essential content of revolutionary consciousness. Anticipation of the future, as a concrete anticipation of a concrete future, must anticipate the development of capitalism, that is, the consequences generated by capitalism as a destructive order that unavoidably condition the freedom of man, and, along with it, the possibility of a future and its concrete nature.

There are two historical bases of human interconnecting: spontaneous, that is, man’s need for other men (man’s erotic nature, symbolically “love“), and repressive, primarily related to providing immediate existence (labor  and  all  it  conditions,  symbolically  “duty“).  In  previous  historical  periods,  complying  with  the repressive basis of human interconnecting was to the detriment of human interconnecting. By becoming homo faber, man restrained and was losing his own authentic human characteristics (erotic nature), which culminated in the capitalist society that became a “technical civilization” within which not only the dehumanization but also the denaturalization of man has taken place. As a totalitarian and global order of destruction, capitalism has imposed the issues of necessity and freedom in a new and far more dramatic manner. Man’s most important existential duty is no longer labor per se, but to struggle for the preservation of life (and the labor related to it). Struggle for survival has imposed itself as a contemporary “realm of necessity”, and on this foundation, man as a totalizing, life-creating being will develop. Contemporary capitalism has “unified” the existential with the essential sphere: the fight for freedom becomes an existential necessity, and the struggle for survival a basic libertarian challenge. Spheres of labor, art, and play are no longer starting points of libertarian practice. Instead, the starting point is man as a totalizing being that perceives his entire life on the existential-essential level, that is, in the context of the fight against capitalism, which has transformed natural laws, social institutions and man into a vehicle for the destruction of life. In that context, labor, through which man’s creative (life-creating) powers are being realized and the true human world created, becomes an essential activity. As the present day production of commodities (goods) concomitantly represents the destruction of life, in that very same way, in the future society, production of commodities will mean production of healthy living conditions and the creation of a healthy man. In the future, the basic task of humanity will be to re-establish environmental balance and, thus, create living conditions in which man can survive. Development of productive forces, the very labor processes, spare time activities, practically all life – will be subordinated to it. In such conditions, competition that has been reduced to struggle for victory through the achievement of a better result (record), as in sports, will remain merely a part of the pre-history of humankind.

What should constitute the new quality of interconnection between people on the basis of struggle for the preservation of life on the planet is the very same thing that should provide incentives for the development of human foundations for human interconnections, which means that it should be conditioned by one man’s need for the other. The fact is that capitalism transformed all social institutions, and the entirety of life, into a vehicle for the growth of profit, that is, for the destruction of life. In order to survive, man has no one to address for assistance but another man: sociability is an existential imperative. In the dialectic sense, man as a fulfilled social being becomes a totalizing life-creating being – in relation to capitalism as a totalizing order of destruction. In that context, one of the basic Marx’s theses from “The Communist Manifesto“, claiming that “the freedom of each is a basic condition for the freedom of all”, could be rephrased. Starting from the fact that humankind is jeopardized when the life of each man is jeopardized, one can arrive at the thesis that the survival of each represents the basic condition for the survival of all.

Capitalist totalitarianism is the most perilous form of totalitarianism ever created. It is based upon the total commercialization of nature and of society. Each part of the planet, each segment of social and individual life has become an integral part of the destructive capitalist growth mechanism. Life itself becomes a totalizing power that shapes the character of men, their consciousness, interpersonal relationships, their relation to nature… Other historical forms of totalitarianism are either manifested as related to the idea of the past, or a certain  transcendental  idea,  or  an  idea  of  the  future  –  all  of  which  open  possibilities  for  critique. Contemporary capitalist totalitarianism is based upon destructive nihilism: it annihilates both the idea of transcendence and the idea of a future (past) and thus it also annuls the very possibility of establishing a critical distance from the existing world. At the beginning of its development, capitalism generated a visionary consciousness that not only opened space for the development of capitalism, but also for overcoming it (More, Campanella, Hobbes, Bacon, Owen, Fourier…). By becoming a totalitarian destructive order, capitalism exterminates visionary consciousness and creates a totalitarian positivist consciousness – to which corresponds the concept of the “end of history” and “the last man” (Fukuyama). Capitalism abolishes history, transforming historical time into mechanical occurrence, that is, into a positive nothingness. Simultaneously, capitalist periodicity is not only of an anti-historical, but also of an anti-existential nature. Capitalism destroys the very possibility of a future: it appears in the form of a capitalistically degenerated u- topos.

Capitalist development of productive forces does not enhance the certainty of human survival, as Marx argues, but questions it more and more dramatically. Therefore, instead of engendering optimism, capitalist “progress” generates fear of the future. The most perilous characteristic of capitalism is related to the fact that, from the results of life-destruction, it creates a source of profit and, thus, a basis for its own further development, where man’s creative powers become a vehicle for the development of the destructive powers of capitalism and for acceleration of the destruction process. Capitalism has become a self-reproducing mechanism of destruction, which, to the living world, represents what a malignant tumor represents to an organism: it extends its own lifetime by devouring all that provides humankind with a chance for survival. This does not refer only to the systematic, but to the ultimate destruction of life on the planet.

Contemporary man does not only face the ideological, military and police terror of the governing order, as used to occur in the past, but also the accumulated destructive powers of capitalism. The spirit of destructive barbarism dominates capitalism, conditioning both the activities of the ruling class and its defense strategy. Usage of atomic, hydrogen and neutron bombs, lethal viruses, starvation of populations, pollution and devastation of water supplies, etc., (that will exterminate hundreds of millions of people and irreversibly contaminate the natural environment) represents – for the capitalistically degenerated international plutocratic “elite” – a “justified measure”, if in that manner the existence of capitalism can be prolonged. In order to prevent the fall of capitalism, the fanatics of capitalism are ready to destroy humankind and life on the planet. The NATO aggression on Serbia in the spring 1999, which compelled Serbia to become a part of the American “new world order”, demonstrates the actual nature of capitalism. More than 32,000 depleted uranium  missiles  were  dropped  on  Serbia,  thus  causing  a  contamination  of  the  natural  environment equivalent to the effects of more than 470 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seven years after the bombing of Serbia, the number of people with cancer has increased by 40%, with a tendency towards a dramatic increase in the number of diseased and deceased. In the course of the next 500 years, the life of people living in the bombed areas will be directly conditioned by the consequences of nuclear contamination of the soil, water, air, animals, plants… What happened to the citizens of Serbia occurs all over the planet. Their future is predetermined by consequences generated by destructive capitalist barbarism of a global and totalitarian nature.

Capitalism destroys the emancipatory legacy of civil society and the concept of novum, and establishes a “new” fascism. The champions of contemporary fascism are not the groups of young people “adorned” with Nazi symbols, but capitalist corporations that, generating the increasing existential and, therefore, overall social crisis, generate the fascist ideology. The ruling principle of monopoly capitalism, “Destroy the competition!”, is a generator of the contemporary fascist practice both in the economic and in the political spheres. The capitalist destruction of nature and of man as a cultural and biological being conditions the foundation and strengthening of the most reactionary political forces. Not only the possibility of a new society, but also of a “new” (ecocidal) barbarism, is being established within capitalism. Within capitalism itself there exists a conflict between these two tendencies. It is both the basis and the framework of the contemporary class struggle, which is not solely about fighting for social justice, but also for survival. Marx himself indicates a  possibility for  establishing a  (long)  period  of  capitalist barbarism (as  well  as  the possibility of common ruin for both the ruling and the labor classes), however, this position does not have substantial enough a significance in his theory (and is, therefore, without any obligatory nature) for Marx to elaborate any such possible forms of development of capitalism and the corresponding forms of political struggle against it. At the same time, potential capitalist barbarism, according to him, is not of a destructive, but of an anti-libertarian nature. Marx fails to perceive that capitalism, in its essence, represents an ecocidal barbarism, of a technical form, and, consequently, that capitalists are ecocidal barbarians.

The capitalist system’s ecocidal attitude towards nature generates the genocidal attitude of the most powerful capitalist states towards “third world” nations. Particularly those developed states whose consumption of commodities is several hundred times larger than consumption in the underdeveloped world; those who spend far more foodstuff and energy on their household pets than billions of people in “third world” countries do to survive; those who have been destroying life on the planet for several hundred years and building their own “progress” on the systematic eradication of “primitive peoples”; those who invest increasingly large sums of money each year in burning down mountains of foodstuffs while millions of children throughout the world die of starvation; those who use grain for the production of fuel, those who stir up consumer euphoria in their own environments and block food production in underdeveloped countries in order to force them to purchase their grain crop surpluses and thus tighten even further the debt-noose around their necks – they especially spread fear of “endangering the planet by over-population”. The thesis of “over-population” of the planet becomes a tool for attaining legitimacy for the extermination of entire nations so that the most powerful capitalist corporations can eventually get hold of raw materials and energy resources.

Capital’s ruthless attitude towards nature and humankind generates man’s ruthless attitude towards other men. Driven by capital’s ecocidal frenzy, the average citizen (petit bourgeois) in the West is characterized by an increasing lack of receptivity to the suffering and the “human rights” of other nations. The leading Western TV channels cover the rescue of a stranded whale for days, where millions of dollars are being invested – in order to impress the international audience with their “care for the living world” – but they never even consider reporting on the horrendous dimensions of misery and poverty in “third world” countries, which are an immediate consequence of the economic fascism to which those countries are exposed. Those scenes “are not interesting for their audience”. And this is true. The overstuffed and idiotized petit bourgeois of the “free world” does not want to confront the consequences of his own insatiable craving for consumption and devastation, in the same way that the average German petit bourgeois did not want to (and does not want to even now) know anything about the horrible crimes committed by the German army in World War II, particularly about the “death camps” where in a monstrous manner millions of children, women, and elderly people were killed…The alarming truth is that in the eyes of the today’s German petit bourgeois Hitler committed one single “mistake”: he did not win. And this conception is not a remnant of the past but a product of capitalist development, which deteriorated and destroyed the German natural environment to such an extent that the notion of the conquest of “living space” (Lebensraum) is being more and more dramatically imposed as a basic existential issue. Ecocidal capital is what invigorates ghosts of the Nazi past, once again pushing German youth towards them, young people idiotized by the “Coca Cola culture” and dazzled by consumer fanaticism, youth that could once again serve as a tool for the extermination of “lesser races”, or, as the contemporary rightist propaganda in the West prefers to put it, of “peoples with no culture” (those being all the nations interfering with the achievement of the West’s neo-colonial interests).

It should not be forgotten that the development of capitalism is based upon one of the most atrocious crimes ever committed: the eradication of the North American Indians. What gives a specific dimension to that crime is the fact that American capitalists turned the extermination of the Indians into a multi-billion dollar “business”. It did not suffice that the North American natives were exterminated in the most brutal manner, but they had to be reduced to “despicable murderers”, and as such became “stars” in the Hollywood film industry. Indians, victims of the largest genocide in human history, became symbols of evil, while those who massacred millions of Indian children became the incarnation of audacity and goodness. The extermination of the Indians represents a symbolic obliteration of life lived in harmony with nature. “Heroes” of the “Wild West”, such as Buffalo Bill, are an incarnation of the ecocidal spirit of capitalism: the monstrous slaughter of the buffalo becomes a legendary “pastime” and inviolable pattern of behavior for the youth in the U.S.A. and Europe.

The “crisis of the left“ as an organized political movement has resulted from the conflict between capitalism and the emancipating patrimony of civil society, in the course of which all those political movements and concepts that open a possibility for the creation of a new world are being degenerated and eliminated. The “crisis of  the  left”  is  actually a  crisis of  civil society’s  political institutions, because capitalism, as  a totalitarian order, has drawn the entire “public sphere” into its own interest-orbit and thus instrumentalized the process of political decision-making. Politics has turned into one of the technical areas of capitalism and, as such, into business – just like all the other areas of social life. Capitalism has turned the political sphere into a political market where each party strives to optimally sell its own political program (political commodities) and to convert its social influence into cash, starting from the interest of bureaucratized and corrupt party oligarchies. Political parties have become private property of their “leaders”, as is the case with many trade unions and other organizations that provide a merely formal opportunity for the mobilization of citizens for the protection of their human and civil rights.

An immediate effect of the corruption of (nominally) “leftist” parties is the establishing of an increasingly large anti-capitalist movement that does not consent to a dominant role for parties belonging to the political establishment. The original leftist thought, the one that insists on freedom and social justice, is mostly present among the most deprived working layers and the young – those who are vitally interested in the realization of the  original leftist ideas. Therefore, every effort is  being made by  the  ruling regime to  eliminate the oppressed from the public sphere and de-politicize them, and to transform their children – in stadiums, in pop star concerts, in disco clubs, by means of the Hollywood entertainment industry – into zombies, drug addicts, delinquents, fascists… Capitalism endeavors to destroy man as  a social being and, in that context, all authentic forms of political (social) organizing of citizens, and to transform man into an atomized laboring- consuming idiot who will base his behavior upon a “logic” of destructive irrationalism.

The confusion over what “the left” is creates a bourgeoisie, which strives to annihilate the labor movement by embracing the ideas of the left and transforming them into demagogical slogans, thus trying to present itself as a “combatant for workers’ rights” and consequently weaken the actual left. A typical example of leftist demagogy is Hitler’s political campaign during the Weimar Republic period. The same political logic is being applied by the contemporary bourgeoisie. The leftist demagogy should “bridge” the growing gap between the bourgeoisie and the labor layers, and should also create confusion in which any notions about the future would disappear.

Though leftist thought is more and more present at Western universities, it is ghettoized and transformed into a  vehicle for annihilation of the political struggle of the oppressed. It turns basic existential and essential matters into “philosophical” and “theoretical” issues  and thus deprives them of  a  concrete social and historical substance. The struggle for survival and freedom is being replaced by “theoretical debates” and endless  “dialogues”  that  disfigure  critical  consciousness  and  hinder  change-oriented practice.  Political combat against capitalism is degenerating into “science projects” and “philosophical conferences”, – where everyone within his own field of expertise deals with the consequences generated by capitalism while not touching its origins. Intellect is being removed from concrete social reality and ghettoized in faculties, institutes, workshops and congresses. Concrete existential and essential issues become subjects of theoretical debates, and, as such, by means of specific linguistic expressions, a privilege of “intellectuals”. Philosophical thought becomes a formalistic thought, a distinctive technique of thought of a positivist and, therefore, anti- libertarian and anti-existential nature. The “intellectual sphere“ becomes an institutional form of the citizens’ deprivation of critical reason and of their right to brainpower – and, as such, the basic form of their spiritual and, consequently, every other enslavement.

“Consumer society“ represents the last offensive of capitalism and announces its complete and definitive disintegration. It prolongs the life of capitalism by annihilating man as a cultural and biological being, as well as by annihilating nature. This is what determines a specificity of the contemporary left: the victory of the left has become the necessary condition for the survival of humankind.

As for the concept of the reasonable world, it represents not merely a humanistic desire, but an existential imperative as well. Only a reasonable man can demolish capitalism and create a new world. Therefore, the annihilation of man as a reasonable being represents one of the most significant tasks of the ruling order. In that context, capitalism annihilates humanist education and the humanist intelligentsia. Capitalism generates, on the one hand, “white collars” – a technical intelligentsia, the leading force for the destruction of the planet, reduced to specialty-idiots, and on the other hand, “blue collars” – a manipulated labor force deprived of a basic education. The consequences are more and more visible. After so many years of life within capitalist civilization and after such “progress” achieved within it, an increasing number of people become victims of the gloomiest ideologies, the morbidity of which by far exceeds anything seen thus far in history. Several thousand “Satanist” and similar cults are active in the United States of America alone, which is an immediate consequence of the ruthless obliteration of human spiritual integrity. “Consumer society” throws a man into the abyss of spiritual desperation, where dark forces await offering to “fulfill his needs” by means of the kind of manipulation that capital applies to transform him into a brainless “consumer”. For the man lost in the darkness, even the burning stake represents a source of light and a guidepost.

All the symbols by which man could once distinguish his own human image and attain, at least partially, his own humaneness, have been disfigured by the capitalist propaganda machinery. The commercial message “Coca-cola, it’s the real thing!” is given the status of a supreme philosophical stance; a detached pork head laughs inciting the man to buy parts of its body; toilets are advertised by means of outstanding artistic creations; champion sport teams become commercial billboards for producers of tobacco and alcoholic beverages; the greatest artists are being used as vehicles for communication of commercial messages; the nude female body in a humiliating position makes an inevitable part of a “successful advertising campaign“; very young children are being exposed to the most repulsive forms of advertising manipulation… All that possesses or might possess a human (cultural) value becomes a tool for rendering man worthless. By privatization of the public media, capital offers citizens “democracy” in the form of “a room of distorted mirrors”: in one of the mirrors man can observe “himself” as a crazed “consumer”; in another as a frantic “spectator”; in a third as a maniacal “murderer”; in the forth as a robotized “champion”… All possible efforts are being made to prevent him from perceiving his actual libertarian and creative image.

Along with the further development of the existential crisis, the governing regime creates an increasingly aggressive “entertainment industry” by means of which it intends to keep man “in a good mood” (in accordance with the principle “Don’t worry, be happy!”), in order to impede the human experience of his own existence, his confrontation with his own misfortune and his pursuit of the ways towards liberation from it. What we have here is the “Titanic syndrome”: as the ship sinks – the music gets louder. Using all available means, the major media make every effort to immerse man in the swamp of “Coca Cola culture”, for only at a point when man poses the question of future, when he becomes aware of the scale of global destruction – only then does the entire threat of established “progress” become obvious. It is not by accident that the new generations are, for the first time in history, more badly educated than were their parents. In the most developed capitalist country in the world, the U.S.A., over one hundred million people are practically illiterate. At the same time, the increasingly aggressive and inhuman commercial video clips become “spiritual food” for people. “The average” citizen of the U.S.A. receives over 3,000 commercial messages a day. The school system, as educational institution, faces a growing crisis. The entire cultural heritage of Western civilization, as well as the humanist achievements of other civilizations, is endangered. What we are facing here is development dictated by the governing system with the task of adjusting the intellectual (educational) level of citizens to its own existential interests, hindering the development of a critical mind that points out both the peril that capitalism represents and the opportunities for the creation of a new world generated within civil society.

The fact is that man has developed production capacities to such an extent, and has become sufficiently skilled (proficient) as to be able to take into his own hands not only production management processes, but also  the  administration  of  all  social  existence.  Therefore,  the  ultimate  liberation  of  humankind  from oppression and existential uncertainty is no longer a fantasy, but a realistic prospect. The basic objective of the entertainment industry is to impede the forming of  an active, change-oriented connection between established technological development and man’s endeavors to utilize it in order to fulfill his own actual needs and provide a more certain future. The increasingly ruthless attacks by the capitalist media on critical reason represent a capitalist response to the growing devastation capitalism generates, and to the already established objective possibilities for man to step beyond the capitalist world into a civilization of freedom. Mafia  gangs,  “kings”  of  the  underworld, leaders  of  “Satanist” cults  and  fascist  clans,  owners  of  the entertainment industry (where sport occupies the most significant position), dealers of narcotics, major religious organizations, writers of horoscopes and other “clairvoyants” and fortune-tellers – all of those playing a part in the obliteration of mind capable of confronting the established destructive processes – are all “natural” allies of capitalism. Metaphysical mysticism and religious fanaticism represent the other side of a “technical civilization” that deprived life of its significance and transformed man into a vehicle for the reproduction of profit. In contemporary capitalism, referring to God actually represents one of the forms for the petit bourgeois to renounce his own responsibility for the destruction of the world. Major religions have become a vehicle for the annihilation of civil society’s emancipating patrimony and for the obliteration of faith in the possibility of creating a just world – if we fight for it.

Developing  man’s  “normal”  needs  up  to  a  pathological  (self-destructive)  extent,  capital  endeavors  to transform man into a consumer-destructor, and to generate “new needs” aimed at extending the markets (areas of destruction). Maniacal and destructive hedonism has become spiritus movens of social life. The velocity and intensity of the “fulfillment of needs” are being dictated by the needs of the capital, and ultimately, by the dynamics of its turnover. According to Allen Bloom, author of “The Closing of the American  Mind”,  life  has  been  transformed  into  an  incessant,  commercially  arranged  masturbation machinery. What  we  have  here  is  such  a  sort  of  “needs  fulfillment” as  causes  the  degeneration and destruction of man. The genetic distortion of man is going on, that could result in such mutations as would allow the creation of the “ideal citizen”, “adjusted” to the requirements of the governing order of destruction. Man’s degenerated “needs” become a propellant for the development of capitalism. Concurrently, there are a growing number of interpositions to their fulfillment, of an unsurprisingly commercial nature. The very manner of need-fulfillment becomes technical, which only indicates the fact that man perceives himself more and more as a robotized and less as a natural and human being.

The model of “successful sexual intercourse” is a typical example of the capitalist degeneration of instincts and of the destruction of man as a social being. “Sexual intercourse” is being reduced to the techniques of “love making”, where the partner’s body becomes a tool for achieving orgasm – along with the usage (interposing) of a growing number of “devices”. “Successful sex” in a “consumer society” requires: adequate lighting, mirrors, bed, mattress, pillows, linen, rugs, curtains, TV, video, camcorder, porn films, sexy underwear, appropriate drinks, special food, dishware, home audio system, CDs and cassettes, adequate bathroom, towels, soaps, cosmetics, air conditioners, contraceptives and manuals for their application, remedies to cure consequences of those, potions for stimulation of sexual ability and devices in a form of prosthesis and artificial penises (which vary in dimension, color and swiftness), belts, chains, handcuffs, wigs, whips, artificial teeth, breast-pump (the latest “hit” given the increasing number of artificial breast implants), blood pressure measuring device, light and heavy narcotics and, of course, the appropriate “partner”. Along with the impoverishment of the world of true love and interpersonal respect, the “world of sexual fantasy”, generated by capital, becomes more and more prosperous.

Sterilization of the life-creating (fecund) power of living creatures has become a universal principle of capitalist development. Capitalism obliterates man as a biological being by depriving him of the ability to be a fecund being. Men and women contain fewer and fewer of the organic ingredients required for fecundity. The polluted environment, poisoned water and foodstuffs, the spoiling of the biological rhythm of the organism’s functioning, increasing existential uncertainty that incessantly keeps man in a condition of stress – they all result in increasingly serious corporal and mental damage. The recuperation of life-creating ability by man as a fecund (life-creating) being represents one of the most important tasks that capitalism poses for man.

The ruthless devastation of the social fabric represents another major characteristic of capitalism. A growing number of people live alone (in large cities of the most developed West European countries almost one-half of the citizens live in a “single member household”), while a sense of loneliness generating the worst forms of social pathology assumes epidemic proportions. While in some industrial sectors the workday had to be shortened, the need for a “mobile” labor force has increased, which means that individuals in a position to be at the company’s disposal at all times have an advantage while applying for a new job. And those are the ones “liberated” from all social and, in particular, family obligations. A growing number of women expose them to “voluntary” sterilization in order to “win employer’s confidence” – and get a job. The official duration of the workday becomes, more and more, a non-mandatory form. The subordination of all life to the growing velocity of capital’s reproduction is one of the key causes of the dramatic reduction in the birth rate in developed capitalist countries.

Speaking of family, capital annihilates the biological ties between parents and children. More specifically, in a growing number of cases, one cannot use the term “parents” because paternity, as well as maternity, are being obtained by means of a cash-for-commodity transaction: an individual intent on becoming a “parent” purchases  at  the  market  “child  generating  material”  (along  with  a  mandatory  “commodity  quality guarantee”), contracts (most often through a newspaper ad) renting a uterus and after a nine-month period “is provided”  with   a   child.  Traditional  inter-family  relationships  are   being   annulled  by   transgender transformation of parents and other household members. Thanks to medical “progress”, by means of a surgical intervention, a mother becomes a man, a father a woman; brother turns into a girl, and sister into a boy… This “progress” is never ending. Medicine will soon be in a position to provide the opportunity to a man who “feels like a dog” to even look like one (or like a horse, a swine, a rhinoceros…). This will represent the ultimate outreach of “freedom” that capitalism, riding on the wave of scientific and technological “progress”, will offer to citizens. What sort of possibilities will open there? Try to imagine a rugby match between bulldog-men and boar-men: what a performance!

The myth about “omnipotent science and technology” is the ruling regime’s favorite vehicle for preserving the already considerably shaken confidence in the “progressive power” of capitalism. Similar to Hitler’s propaganda machinery at the time of the agony of the Nazi regime, the current propaganda machinery of capitalism attempts to convince the world that scientific and technological “miracles” will save it from destruction. Until recently, nuclear power plants were a symbol of “progress”. Now, like specters of death, they have become symbols of the destructive nature of capitalism. Abominable cargos are being transported throughout the “free world”, hundreds of thousands of containers packed with the most poisonous nuclear waste have been dumped into the oceans thus far. The planet is warming up, glaciers are melting, the level of the ocean is rising, the ozone layer is vanishing, climate is changing, soil is more and more polluted, forests are disappearing, drinking water has become a “strategic raw material”… It has turned out that even the most horrifying natural disasters represent merely innocuous phenomena in comparison with ecocidal terrorism to which capital exposes nature every day. When the dimensions of the destruction expected to result from the further development of capitalism are taken into consideration, one can conclude that even the most primitive human communities are superior to capitalism. The fight against the illusion that it is possible to prevent the global Apocalypse within the capitalist system, by means of science and technology and “environmental projects”, is one of the most important tasks of the humanist intelligentsia.

Marcuse’s concept of the “liberating transformation of nature” attains a concrete historical dimension only when it refers to the process of capitalism’s destructive “transformation” of nature. In capitalism, the spirit (Geist) by means of which nature attains self-consciousness (Hegel) has been abolished by technology that possesses not only an anti-spiritual (anti-intellectual) but also an anti-existential nature. It is a form within which the natural forces have been instrumentalized in a capitalist manner and turned into an anti-natural power. The “liberating transformation of nature” is not only of a libertarian, but also of an existential nature. The key defect of mere nature is not that it is non-intellectual, but that it cannot prevent the destruction of life on Earth. Preventing the instrumentalization of natural forces for the purposes of the destruction of life, and the preservation of life on Earth through the preservation of nature as a life-creating whole by means of its humanization – this is a crucial task for humankind. Not the liberation of man from nature, but the liberation of man and nature from capitalism represents the basic condition for both freedom and survival.

Historically perceived, man was becoming a man primarily through confronting existential challenges. The nature of those challenges conditioned the way they were solved and, thus, had an immediate impact on development of man. The existential challenge capitalism imposes on man is the largest and the most dramatic one he has ever faced. Never in history has man confronted a task related to the preservation of life on the planet and to preventing the annihilation of humankind. It is a challenge that supersedes the classical humanist anthropologic definition of man as a universal creative being of freedom. A specificity of capitalism as an order of destruction conditions both the specific nature of the man that defends it, and the specific nature of the man that attempts to oppose it. Capitalism generates a destructive man that becomes a vehicle for the development of capitalism, that is, for the destruction of life. Concurrently, capitalism generates the increasingly militant anti-capitalist man who identifies the meaning of life in destroying capitalism and preserving life on Earth, through the creation of a new world. An increasingly intensive destruction of life results in a more and more ruthless conflict between these two types of men, which actually represent the contemporary class division of the world: a class of destructive fanatics of capitalism and a class of reasonable and uncompromising combatants for the survival of humankind.

The turning of capitalism into a totalitarian destructive order conditions man’s turning into a totalizing life- creating being – for whom the emancipatory (libertarian, cultural) heritage of humankind represents the basis for critical self-consciousness and creative (life-creating) will-power. In the struggle for the preservation of life and the creation of the new world, man will become a true man. He is not a mythological man who will, like a present-day Phoenix, ascend from the ashes of capitalism, with his wings unharmed. He is a concrete man who  will experience the  consequences of  the  destruction of  nature with his entire being, for  he represents its organic part. Therefore, creation of the new world requires man’s (self)purification and (self)development – man is becoming a humanized natural (life-creating) being. Instead of cosmic energy (Nietzsche), which is merely a metaphorical presentation of monopolist capitalism’s vital power, within man the life-creating forces of humankind will start to run. “The will to power” will turn into a desire for freedom and survival.

In the struggle for the preservation of life on Earth by the creation of a new world, humankind will be so united that it will supersede all forms of mediation that have kept man apart from other men and turned him into a “tool” of “superhuman” forces for the achievement of anti-human goals. Instead of moral principles, upon which a repressive normative consciousness is being developed and used for the preservation of the ruling order, man’s essential and existential necessity for another man will become the basis for interpersonal connecting. The anti-globalization movement has a historical and existential meaning solely if it represents an integral part of the international anti-capitalist movement. It does not rely upon one social subject of changes alone, as  was  the  case with the  industrial proletariat of  Marx,  but upon  a widespread social movement that comprises all the deprived and all those conscious of the fact that capitalism leads humankind into destruction. Movements for the emancipation of women, hundreds of millions of solitary people whose lives were ruined by capitalism – they are all potential members of the movement that will fight against capitalism. At the same time, the decline of the “welfare state” will re-trigger class conflict in the developed capitalist countries. Immediate participation in the political articulation of the contemporary proletariat and other layers and groups ruined by capitalism – this represents one of the most important tasks of the movement. The international anti-capitalist movement needs to unite all those political forces and political movements of the world that oppose contemporary imperialism, which is not only of a genocidal but also of ecocidal nature. At the same time, it needs to have a critical stance towards developmental programs in any part of the world that are based on the destruction of nature and aim at developing a consumer mentality.

We are not suggesting the development of a distinctive intellectual “elite” that would declare itself “the conscience” of humankind and thus become a group alienated from “ordinary” people, but a commitment by people conscious of the destructive nature of capitalism and willing to dedicate their lives to the struggle for the preservation of life and the freedom of humankind. A genuine humanist intelligentsia needs to light the road to the future. In the context of an increasingly dramatic existential crisis generated by capitalism, it needs to become a lighthouse that will shine with an expanding glow, as the darkness generated by capitalism grows thicker. The Promethean principle has become a basic existential principle. That is why it is of crucial importance not to make compromises and not to adjust to the current political situation. A compromise results in the loss  of the ability to create light –  without which humankind will vanish into the darkness  of destructive capitalist nothingness.

English translation supervisor, Mick Collins

Paris, E-mail: cirqueminime@club-internet.fr