KategorijaThe Last Revolution

Naturality is man’s relation to himself as an emancipated natural being; a relation between people as emancipated natural beings; and man’s relation to nature as a life‐ generating entirety.

Man’s body represents his immediate nature, his elementary and natural existence, and the basic possibility for his achieving unity with nature, his „anorganic body” (Marx). In modern society, the relation to the body is mediated by the capitalist universe (industrial mimesis, the principle of rationality and efficiency, destructive instrumentalism…), which appears in the form of a technical sphere, alienated from and dominant over man, an immediate living environment that imposes the logic of living. It is by way of this sphere that capital rules man and nature. Just as in antiquity man’s enslavement to the ruling order was rationalized by the polytheistic realm of the Olympic gods, so under capitalism is man become the slave of the ruling order by way of science and technology. The instrumentalization of the body is based on the capitalist division of labor, that is, on specialization and, thus, on man’s mutilation. Marx speaks of man being transformed into a freak by the processes of industrial production, brilliantly illustrated by Charlie Chaplin in his movie „Modern Times”. The capitalist form of alienated labor transforms the body into a technical (working) tool, and reduces the mind to a functionalized intelligence. A capitalistically degenerated body has dulled senses and diminished motor‐skills. The dominant characteristics are that the bodily mechanism, the precision of movement, and aesthetics of the machine are deteriorated; there is hypertrophy of some and atrophy of other functions, creating mindless body movements; instead of the ancient principle of metron ariston, an aggressive muscular body prevails; the principle of optimum effort is replaced by the principle of „greater effort”; the prevailing character is (self) destructive, and the prevailing movement is adjusted to the capitalist rhythm of reproduction; etc. Thus, it is not about a humanization, but about a technologization of the body (nature). The capitalist way of industrial production has transformed man into a robotized freak. It can best be seen in sport, in the principle „Record‐holders are born in test‐tubes!”, where a robotized body is the highest aesthetic achievement.

Merleau‐Ponty claims that the body is a „way of appropriating the world”, but the body of today’s man has already been appropriated by capitalism and corresponds to the capitalistic appropriation of nature: it has an instrumental and destructive (denaturalizing) character. The relation to the world through the body is the relation of a capitalistically degenerated body (man) to a capitalistically degenerated world. An unreflective „naïve touch on the world” (Merleau‐Ponty) is determined even before birth – and it is not „naïve”. By the very nature of modern conception, more and more frequently carried out as a technical insemination of an ever‐less fecund woman with increasingly weakened male seed, a being is created that, while still in his mother’s womb, is exposed to the lethal influences of the environment. Man is not „thrown into the world” (Heidegger), but is begotten in a moribund world and inevitably acquires the features of that world. Man „enters” a degenerated world as an already degenerated being: a woman’s delivery of a child is only the manifest form in which the world delivers a man. Subjectivity is essentially determined before man has become aware of himself as a personality, before he has become a self‐conscious subject. It is precisely at the level of physicality or unreflective perception that a child unconsciously adopts the life‐style and value‐models that determine his future behavior: the body is the repository of the unconscious. The relation to the body in childhood largely conditions the development of the personality, affective nature, mind, behavior… The „embryology of the human mind” (Piaget) is conditioned by physical development and the environment in which it occurs. The way in which a child is delivered, its first contact with the world, its mother, light, the environment in which it grows, the movements it masters, the things it touches, sounds, smells, food and the rhythm of feeding, physical contact, surroundings, ways of dressing, the air, diapers, water, the movements around it, a restricted living space, toys, the relationship of its parents, tension, the aggressiveness of the environment – the entire living environment has a specific character and predetermines man’s relation to the world. In a child’s growing there is no spontaneous behavior that represents the pulsing of the original rhythm of man’s natural being; the dominant rhythm is rather that of repression, which „draws” man into the existing world by suppressing and degenerating man’s original nature and turning him into a pathological person. Already, in early childhood, the seed of evil has been sown into man, and the way it will develop and manifest itself is a matter of social circumstances, actual life and personality. The so‐called „aggressiveness”, which directly affects physical growth, does not stem from „man’s animal nature”, but is a pathological (psychological and physiological) reaction to the repression to which man is exposed from his earliest years. When it is „spontaneous”, it is a compensatory behavior that does not remove the causes of discontent, but exacerbates them.

The most immediate form of nature‐humanizing is body‐humanizing. To compete successfully with the capitalist world, dominated as it is by the dehumanization and denaturalization (robotization) of man, demands the humanization of man’s natural being, or in other words, the liberation of the body (nature) from the destructive ruling order, and the promotion of a humanized genuine natural motion for man, within which his libertarian creative essence is expressed. „Immersion in nature” is an illusory alternative to living in a „technical civilization“. What occurs here, in fact, is that man immerses himself in the existing world to a „lower” level of civilization – the way it happens in the physical culture of the Far East where man, as an emancipated personality, who, as such, in his relation to the world, tends to create a new world in his own human (libertarian and creative) image, does not exist. „Naturalism” is a sidetrack in a struggle against the „technical world”. The humanization of natural motion and not the naturalization of technical motion is what we are talking about here. „The liberating transformation of nature” (Marcuse) requires artistic motion and, therefore, a developed artistic being. Playing a violin does not merely require attaining dexterity of the fingers, hands and arms (technique of motion), but also the development of an artistic (creative) being. In that sense, human dexterity requires a creative body: the development of an aesthetic attitude is the basis for the development of sense‐based motion. It is a natural motion humanized by the emancipating legacy of human cultural and, thus, by his playing being, which manifests itself in relation to repressive (destructive) behavioral forms imposed by „technical civilization”. Play becomes the utmost form of man’s „embracing” the world and his most immediate relationship with his own natural being, as well as with nature in general. Man does not „return” to his natural being by means of play as a specific sphere, but by transforming his entire life into a humanized natural life: the „humanization of nature” is achieved through the totalization of the world by man’s playing being.

Creation must be distinguished from imitation. As with many other „naturalists”, Hebert rejected the emancipating legacy of physical culture and reduced body movement to an imitation of behavior, as in the case of the Brazilian Indians. Instead of humanizing the body and the body’s movement through the cultural (emancipating) heritage of modern society, „naturalizing” the body and its movement occurs through a re‐introduction of „primitive” movements that represent spontaneous expressions of its original naturalness, and are not limited by any imposed stereotypes that sap man’s vitality – as happens with the aristocratic and Christian physical cultures. This also applies to copying the movements of the Indians, who are reduced to being „savages”, taken out of their original historical environment (living conditions, hunting, war, religion, customs…) and are, thus, deprived of their cultural contents, and reduced to technical movements that are assigned the dimension of „naturalness”. Man cannot attain his own naturalness by imitating the movements of animals or those of the natural environment, but by means of culture, in a word, by means of a creative activity in which man’s concrete historical (social) movement towards another is dominant. Instead of „melting into nature”, where man loses individuality, development of humanness, which corresponds to creative discontent, should be the goal. Instead of immersing oneself into the existing world, a new world must be created.

A distinction should be made between civilizing and cultivating the body; between disciplining and humanizing the body; between a repressive and a libertarian pedagogy… Man as a universally creative being „corresponds” to a creative body. Instead of acquiring skills for performing certain motions (exercises), to attain the ability to create motions, to give meaning to such a body and such abilities as enable the articulation of man’s creative (playing) personality – this is one of the most significant challenges for libertarian play. In playing, the dynamics of biological rhythm obtain a human and, consequently, a cultural, that is, a libertarian (visionary) dimension. The rhythm of motion becomes a spontaneous expression of man’s creative impulse and, as such, a non‐replicable indicator of humanness, its „trademark”. In lieu of the ideals of strength, speed, rigor (which are oriented towards the creation of a liege/performer nature and consciousness that should eventually transform man into a „lethal flesh” and a vehicle for the destruction of life), the challenge should shift towards mobility, softness, coordination, self‐control, intention, spirituality, tremulousness, movement towards man and nature, harmonious development of the entire body – which corresponds to man’s universal creative potentials and to his human (individual) complexity. Creative mobility is a basic aspect of a healthy body. It requires surpassing the artistic motion as a way of producing artistic forms and sensuous effects (object, color, sound…), and affirming the genuine playing motion that represents the creation of humanness in an immediate form. Physical movement becomes an expression of man’s playing nature, meaning that its essence consists of man’s movement towards another. Man’s relationship with his own body, as an immediate nature, is possible exclusively through another human being.

Development of a universal creative body with a richness of motion is the basic condition for the development of mind, man’s libertarian and creative personality – which is one of the key objectives of libertarian play. This represents an essential difference between physical culture and sport, the latter requiring an ever‐earlier specialization that disfigures not only the body, but also the mind. Rousseau was one of those who perceived the existence of a conditioning link between the development of sensory‐based movement skills and the intellect. In his developmental psychology, Jean Piaget has indicated the fact that the achievement of sensory‐based movement is the first stage of the development of the intellect: based on concrete, action‐related operations, the body attains knowledge that becomes the foundation for all cognitive development. From this it can be concluded that stereotypical models of motion limit the development of intellect. Imposing a definite behavioral model is, at the same time, the infliction of a definite model for thinking (a stereotyping and maiming of the mind), as well as for interpersonal relations, ideas of the world and man’s place in the world. This is most clearly expressed in Pierre de Coubertin’s „utilitarian pedagogy”, which is a modern Procrustean bed. It should not be forgotten that the „physical education” dominant in the 20th century was born of the grayness of the military gymnasiums and was, thus, limited to mere physical drills. Libertarian play is an integral part of the overall culture of man as a universal freedom‐creating being. There is no cultivated body without a cultured man – there is no free movement without a free man. The intention of libertarian play is not to limit and deform man’s instincts through aggressive exercise, nor to create escape‐valves for the release of these mutilated energies as violent and destructive behavior, but to help these in‐born tendencies attain their refined expression while respecting man’s individual personality. It is, therefore, not a matter of developing a model for (physical) movement that is to be imposed on man, but to encourage the creation of motions that enable each individual to express his own specific and unique personality.

Man’s need for another is the basic quality of his life‐creating being. Therefore, man’s motion towards another, as a humanized motion of one living being towards another, is the essential motion of man as a specific natural being and, as such, is the basis for life‐creation. Eros, as a synthesized life‐creating energy, is the most important impulse motivating one being towards another, and from which life as play can be developed. Love play between a man and woman is the supreme form of play, where the unrestrained playing being is expressed, in other words: „production” of humanness in its most immediate form. It is the supreme form of the humanization of man’s natural being. Life‐creativeness is the essence of erotic union, with erotic play as its nature and basis. Without it, enjoyment of the erotic relationship is merely compensational and of an adaptive nature. Already in antiquity, with homosexual (paedophilic) relations, a neutering of man’s (society’s) life‐creating ability took place with the segregation of the erotic from natural reproduction (fecundity). In the homosexual relationship, Eros loses its life‐creative propensity and turns into an anti‐ existential principle. Narcissistic and homosexual Eros clashes with man’s natural life‐ creativeness and, therefore, eliminates the likelihood of the erotic producing a humanized natural relationship. The option of love play as a life‐creating play between genders is disappearing, and the life‐creating sexual relation is being reduced to a technical fertilization of women – to a mechanical production of children. Giving birth and raising children is the most original form of man’s life‐creating practice. Without birth and child rearing, all other forms of life‐creating practice are worthless and meaningless.

Man’s natural being is the basis for the development of genuine humanness. One of the basic criteria for determining the correctness of human practice is whether it humanizes man’s natural being. A humanizing relation to nature results in the development of man’s playing being and of society as a community of emancipated playing beings. Considering the consequences of capitalism, man’s primary objective must be to make himself natural and to humanize himself, and thus to establish the basis for his evolution as a humanized natural being. The creation of a specific human cosmos by enlivening the life‐creating potential of matter, a living nature, society and man, himself – is the highest achievement of man’s life‐ creating practice. Communism is a social order that will enable limitless space for man’s evolution as a humanized natural being. Nature will no longer be an obstacle, but will become a challenge for man to create his own world. And man will no longer be the enemy of his fellows, but will become his support in the fight for a humane world.

Man experiences nature in one way as its sheer organic part, and in another way as an emancipated human being. By man’s becoming an authentic creative being, nature ceases to be a mere living environment and the object of labor. A genuine humanization of nature implies such a transformation of nature through a humanized creative practice as that nature becomes for man an existential, social, historical, aesthetic, libertarian, visionary space… Man’s humanizing creative practice should enable nature to realize its life‐creating potential. In this way, it becomes a specific cosmos. The most important form of a life‐ creating practice is the one that eradicates the causes of the destruction of life on the Earth. The abolition of capitalism, as a totalitarian destructive order, and the establishment of a rational and humanized relation to nature is the basic precondition for re‐establishing the ecological balance and restoring man’s natural being. The fight for the world’s humanization is at once the fight for nature’s naturalization and cultivation. Neither humanness nor naturalness can be realized through an escape to nature, but only through a fight against the ever more threatening ruling order. Without a fight against capitalism, naturalist movements become a sidetrack in the fight for humanity’s survival.

By destroying natural and humane living space, capitalism creates a technical living space. Just as the capitalist time is a dead time, so is the capitalist living space a dead space. It is about a privatization and instrumentalization of natural and social space, man’s creative faculties, conquered natural forces and matter’s emancipatory potential for the purpose of ensuring the development of capitalism – at the cost of destroying humanity’s emancipatory potential and nature as a life‐creating whole. The Eiffel Tower was a precursor of the capitalist degeneration of man’s living space. It symbolizes the victory of technical civilization over the emancipatory legacy of national cultures, imposing a capitalist vision of the future. It removed Notre Dame and Montmartre, the Louvre, bridges over the Seine and all that represents French cultural heritage from the horizon of Paris. Modern architecture, like traditional architecture, has a political (ideological) nature and represents the creation of a living space suited to the nature of contemporary capitalism. It has become the means for the capitalist degeneration of humanity’s living environment. Architectural visions are not humanist or natural, but technocratic in character. They are the products of a technically totalized world. Contemporary capitalism is dominated by a dynamic rather than a static monumentality, as the expression of capitalism’s „progressive” spirit, the strivings of capitalism to transform the world through new building materials and techniques. „Unusual” building forms, with a technical character and spectacular dimension, replace those forms that express a humanist vision of the world and a humanized nature.

Manhattan is the most authentic example of a capitalistically degenerated living space. Monumental constructions, artificial materials, unnatural forms, a „defeat” of gravity… „Progress“ is indicated by the height of the buildings and number of technical innovations. Just as the ruling oligarchies during the Middle Ages sought to build as higher buildings of worship as possible and, thereby, to demonstrate their earthly power and acquire supremacy, so today the most powerful capitalist clans seek to build as higher skyscrapers as possible and thus demonstrate their power and sustainability of the ruling order. Just as the monumental places of worship were not spiritual but rather of a political or propaganda nature, the monumental capitalist „towers” are not of a humanist but an economic and advertising nature. The power of capital must have an impressive dimension and dominate the world and the people. The ever‐higher buildings are an expression of the megalomaniacal ambitions of powerful capitalists and their mercenary architects. They are built for the „business elite” that rules the world and are symbols of an order that „supersedes“ a natural and humane world. They indicate the exclusivity and self‐sufficiency of the ruling class. Automation, controlled climates, pools, gardens… All that is built into a virtual world towering above the „ordinary“ world, turned by capitalism into a wasteland. From the point of view of an „ordinary” citizen, the buildings resemble space ships ready to leave the Earth. And their stadiums are temples to capitalism meant to oppose man’s historical and live‐creating being. A stadium symbolizes man’s complete enclosure in a capitalist space, where time is not life’s natural and historical measurement, but a capitalist deathwatch.

From being a mere matter and object of transformation, nature became an aesthetic phenomenon once man developed his aesthetic being, once he became capable of perceiving and experiencing nature as a life‐creating whole. By acquiring an awareness of the aesthetic, man gained the potential to perceive nature’s original beauty. So through man as an emancipated natural being, nature, likewise, acquired aesthetic self‐consciousness: nature in itself has become nature for itself. What makes nature beautiful is nature’s life‐ creating force. Nature contains an endless number of life‐creating forms that are man’s potential aesthetic inspiration and have a symbolic dimension only if man perceives and experiences nature as a life‐creating whole. Only as an emancipated life‐creating being can man absorb the life‐creating beauty of nature. It enables man to humanize himself by attuning his senses, his visionary imagination, by coming to love life… Man’s physical and mental health is immediately conditioned by living in a healthy and humanized natural environment: homo sanus in natura sana. The concept of beauty can today be appreciated only in relation to a degenerated world, in relation to the destructive ugliness produced by capitalism. What is beautiful is what gives forth a life‐creating force that enables humanity to survive and create a humane world. The art that creates „beautiful sights” by turning global death into an aesthetic challenge has an escapist and anti‐existential nature. A spectacular aestheticization of the world through increasingly sophisticated technical means conceals the nature of a dominant destroying nothingness. Capitalism destroys natural and human beauty by destroying the life‐creative quality in nature and man. The more dazzling the artificial light of the „technical world“, the duller the life‐creating light emitted by man as a human and natural being.

Fromm’s idea of „biophilia“ is of an abstract character. A love of the living nature is a love of people as human, as emancipated, natural beings. What makes man interested in the survival of life is his need for another human being. If man does not feel that he belongs to the human community, if he is deprived of any sense of humanness, the issue of humanity’s survival becomes for him a mere technical matter. Immediate experience of another’s misfortune sets off man’s humanness, and a fight for social justice and freedom enables him to realize his human being. When man is no longer moved by another’s misery, he has ceased to be a man. A capitalistically degenerated man, rather than feeling a need for other people, regards them as enemies or as a means to the fulfillment of his private interests and pathological needs. This conditions his relation to nature: he is not capable of experiencing nature as a life‐generating whole, but regards it as an object of exploitation. For him, a forest is not an organic part of the living world and, as such, an irreplaceable condition for his own survival as well as that of all other living creatures, it is trees, wood, timber that will bring him profit. „Everything has a price!” – this is the essence of capitalist „biophilia”.

The numerous militant movements for the „protection of animals” are based on a petty bourgeois need to escape loneliness and the responsibility for the destruction of the world. „Humanness” is demonstrated by a concern for stray dogs and cats, while support for a capitalist order that with increasing intensity destroys life on the Earth and condemns tens of thousands of children daily to death from hunger or disease is never questioned. Who in the West cares about the fact that in Vietnam, following years of American carpet bombing with the herbicide „Agent Orange“, hundreds of thousands of grotesquely malformed children were born and tens of thousands more died in infancy? Who in the West cares about the children of Iraq, Serbia, Bosnia, Libya, Afghanistan, who are dying from leukemia and other malignant diseases caused by America’s „humanitarian interventions”? Man should not be inspired to fight for the survival of a living world by some abstract love for living things, but by the real suffering of a growing number of people and the increasing threat to the survival of humanity. A fight to eradicate the causes of global destruction, that is to say a fight against capitalism, is the way a love for the living world should be expressed.

Historically perceived, man was becoming human primarily through confrontations with existential challenges. The nature of those challenges conditioned the way they were resolved and, so, had an immediate impact on the development of man. The existential challenge capitalism poses to man is the greatest and the most dramatic he has ever faced. Never in history has man been faced with a task like that of the preservation of life on the planet and the prevention of the annihilation of humankind. It is a challenge that surpasses 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 who attempts to oppose it. Capitalism generates a destructive man who becomes a vehicle for the development of capitalism, that is, for the destruction of life. Concurrently, capitalism produces 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 man, which actually describes the contemporary class division of the world: a class of destructive capitalist fanatics versus a class of reasonable and uncompromising combatants for the survival of humankind. The turning of capitalism into a totalitarian destructive order conditions man’s becoming a totalizing life‐creating being – a being for whom the emancipatory (libertarian, cultural) heritage of humankind represents the basis for a critical self‐consciousness and a creative (life‐creating) will. In the struggle for the preservation of life and the creation of a new world, man will become a true man. He is not some mythological man who, like a present‐day Phoenix, rises from the ashes of capitalism, his wings unharmed. He is a concrete man who experiences the destruction of nature with his entire being, for he represents its organic part. Therefore, the creation of the new world requires man’s (self‐)purification and (self‐)development – man is becoming a humanized natural (life‐creating) being. In place of that cosmic energy (Nietzsche) that is a mere metaphor for monopoly capitalism’s driving impulse, the life‐creating forces of humankind will flow. „The will to power” will turn into a desire for freedom and survival.

Historically perceived, every ruling order has sought to create man according to its own image. As far as capitalism is concerned, the period of initial capital accumulation was marked by diligence and thriftiness and a corresponding type of man. At the time of laisser‐ faire capitalism, man was reduced to a beast (homo homini lupus) and human society to a menagerie, where every man is an enemy to his fellow man (bellum omnium contra omnes). Liberal capitalism metastasized into monopolistic capitalism, ruled by the principle „Destroy the competition!”, where man is reduced to the impersonal storm‐trooper of capitalist corporations. „Consumer society” represents the final form of capitalism’s denaturalization and dehumanization of the world. It is about the creation of a „technical civilization” and a corresponding man.

Humanness no longer finds its social and historical meaning only in opposition to non‐freedom and injustice, but now also in opposing the destruction of life. To ensure the survival of humanity is a basic criterion of authentic humanness. Capitalism has, in fact, transformed all social institutions, unto the entirety of life, into means for the growth of profit, for the destruction of life. In order to survive, man can only ask for help from 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 Marx’s basic theses from Тhe Communist Manifesto, claiming that „the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all”, could be restated. Considering that the whole of humankind is threatened when the life of any man is threatened, one can posit that the survival of each represents a basic condition for the survival of all.

The body is the elementary form of the existence of man as a social being. Physical community is the elementary form of the existence of society as a human community. Man perceives his body as a human body and relates to it as man through other people. Human society is an organic community of people dominated by man’s movement towards another individual. An emancipated relation to the body, as immediate nature, is possible only on the basis of emancipated sociability. The dehumanization of the body is concurrently the destruction of society as the community of emancipated people. The cultivation of the body is not possible without the cultivation of man’s natural being, of interpersonal relations and of man, himself. The body at play is the highest form of the cultivated body. The liberation of his body is one of the most important ways by which man liberates his personality. Man’s historicity implies the historicity of the human body. Above all, it implies a body cultivated through humanity’s emancipatory (cultural and libertarian) legacy, and becoming an emancipated human body. The struggle for man’s freedom implies the struggle for a free body. Instead of a toiling, athletic, technical or consuming body, libertarian play will develop a creative body and an abundant mobility enabling the realization of man’s creative being. It is not only about the struggle to preserve humanity’s cultural heritage and man as a cultural being, but also about the struggle for man’s survival as a natural and playing being. Libertarian play should enable the revival and development of those emancipatory achievements of physical culture that had been destroyed by „technical civilization”. Instead naturalizing a body that has been reduced to a machine, man should seek to cultivate his natural being through the development of his playing being, through a creative art that develops man as a whole being (physical, intellectual, erotic, social…). Ultimately, authentic body movement is the most elementary form of the creation of society as a community of physically emancipated human beings. Society should become an organic community of emancipated bodies united in free and creative body movement.

Endeavoring to create genuine play is not an attempt to establish a separate social sphere existing „parallel“ to the „work‐a‐day world“ (like Fink’s „oasis of happiness”), where man futilely strives to fulfill his needs for play and express his energies therein, but is rather an attempt to create a truly human world where life itself represents the realization of man’s playing being. A critique of established play (world) is not the expression of a longing for „free play”, but of an aspiration for a life that is manifested in the fulfillment of the universal creative (playing) forces of man as an emancipated member of the human community. For libertarian physical culture play is not a separate area of life, but represents the entirety of human existence within which man strives to realize himself as a playing (libertarian/creative) being. Since living is carried on as a series of interpersonal relationships, we are concerned here with a totalizing man who interacts with others not from separate areas of his life (work, science, philosophy, play…) but from his fundamental humanness: man’s life‐creating need for another human being represents the basis of man’s motion towards another individual. Life as play demands the resolution of man’s duality as both social being and „player”, insisting that man, as a concrete social being, realize his own playing being – the representation of his original social being. A sensibility for play is the supreme form of the realization of a sense of humanness, of man’s ultimate and most complex ability to experience another human being. It requires not only a creative body, but also a (life) creative mobility. The procreation of man as a playing being is the highest human act and requires the reproduction of the society as a community of free creative personalities. Man’s need for another human being, from whence derives man’s original playing motives towards another, represents a genuine scheme for play and the authentic basis for establishing a society as a human community: homo homini is a mirror of humanness.

The contemporary world is dominated by a vision of the future reduced to the development of „technical civilization”. It is interpersonal relations, rather thаn technology and material goods, that make up the human world. The most important humanist criterion for measuring a society’s development is the extent to which interpersonal relations have developed. The struggle for a new world should create the sort of relations that enable man to express his specific humanness in an authentic and complete way. The abundance of forms of play is a function of the abundance of interpersonal relations. The importance of playing is not in the production of objectivity or form, but in the immediate development of humanness. The abundance of forms of play indicates an affluence of genuine interpersonal relations. By means of playing, man’s creative being is fulfilled in such a way that a need for artistic expression, as a compensation for non‐expressed (non‐fulfilled) humanness, is superseded. From the sphere of production of works of art by isolated individuals, who displace their own desires for humanness through their works, play establishes the immediate relations between people, within which the wealth of man’s playing (creative) being is realized. Play, as an interpersonal relationship, requires an emancipated man for whom „the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all”. This does not refer to people who know what „freedom” signifies, but to those who experience other people as their kin, in every sense of the word. Play is the supreme form of expressing humanness – the utmost human act of which the immediate result is a contented man. The attempt to preserve „humanness” in the form of normative confinement, or in some artistic form, is an expression of no confidence in human beings and the possibility for human freedom. Replacing the „imperfect” normative conscious with a „perfect” one does not imply the creation of the „perfect” man. The normative sphere is not the one that must be changed. The sphere of fundamental interpersonal relations, that is, the ruling order, is what must be changed.

In a world of fulfilled humanness, it is futile to establish normative criteria upon which human existence is to be determined. In it, there is no longer a dualistic approach to man, where the real and the ideal worlds coexist, and a model of man – a projection of life alienated from man ‐ has been eliminated. In a society where man is genuinely happy, it is absolute nonsense to determine the ideal of „happiness”: life itself becomes the actualization of the ideal of humanness. In the same way, the „aesthetic sphere”, which counters the un‐aesthetic (ugly) world, is disappearing. Instead of striving for „perfection”, for a constrained world, the development of an unconstrained humanness becomes the supreme challenge. This requires the abolition of separate spheres, including the sphere within which the novum is sought. Homo homini represents the supreme challenge for libertarian play and is, as such, a mirror of humanness, and not an idealized (abstracted) „man” that represents an incarnation of the „future” society for which struggle is waged. So, not a yearning for „the future” as an abstraction, or even as a real utopian project confronting the existing world on an intellectual level and turning it into a certain normative idea of the future, but the life‐creating need of one man for another, a necessity being developed in response to an increasingly dramatic destruction of life, becomes the basis for the creative life that will generate the future. In play, what man can be is being fulfilled: man’s becoming a human being is the criterion for genuine progress. Only when the development of his playing being becomes the „measure” of humanness will the real development of man’s universal creative powers take place – something that today we can only look forward to. The „tenseness” of which Marcuse speaks will always exist, because man will always strive to be more than he is, and will always have a critical/transformational‐ aspiring attitude towards the world in which he lives with an eye toward the creation of a new and better one. However, the nature of this „tenseness” will be conditioned by the fulfillment of two key preconditions of freedom: freedom from natural imminence (natural forces overcome) and freedom of man from man (abolition of class society and of exploitation). The third precondition for freedom still remains the liberation of man’s universal creative powers – which will be dominant in a future society and which requires humanization of nature and the development of interpersonal relations. „Tenseness” in play does not result from the development of the theoretical mind, but from man’s striving to realize his own freedom and his own creative universality – through the superseding of forms of play in which limitations imposed on man by the existing order are manifested. Aspiration towards play, in its essence, represents an impulse for the free expression of humanness; basically, it is the supreme form of determination for being man – the creation of humanum in an elemental form. Freedom, creativity, humanized naturalness and sociability – these are the characteristics of playing and of play. Man’s authentic nature is the genuine origin of authentic play.

In libertarian play, skill does not present itself as independent from man, from the (objective) social sphere, but rather as a form of specific (individual) human expression. Skill and the way of playing do not derive from play as a separate social sphere that possesses its own mechanics of development and its own rules, but from a spontaneous, creative relationship between individuals, where one man is another’s inspiration for play. In this context the playing skills developed in sport (giving up the ball, dribbling, etc.) can be productive. Genuine playing skills require the supersession of the technical sphere as an intermediary in fulfillment of man’s playing potential, in the context of a surmounting of institutional (repressive) intermediation between men. The range of creative spirituality, a wealth of sensuality and of interpersonal relations based upon solidarity and tolerance – which means a fullness of man’s playing being – this represents the basis of the playing skills and playing manner. Instead of „motion control technique”, body, glance and vocal conversation should be introduced… The acquiring of skills through (body) motion control requires the development of human powers, of a rich and unique individuality, and, thus, the satisfaction of individual predilections, and not the pushing (destroying) of humanness into the background and the adaptation of man into a „model citizen” mold. Development of playing skills becomes a function of the development of man’s universal creative (playing) powers. Genuine human motion is aimed at the great many impediments to man’s conquest of the existing world that restricts, shapes, and degrades him… This represents the basis for the development of the creative physical activity that finds its expression in physical movement. Health, spirituality, harmony of motion – all are comprised in physical mobility as the supreme spontaneous interaction of nerves, muscles, tendons, joints, heart, lungs… Genuine physical motion requires a genuine engagement of the organism. This does not merely mean „the exertion of a large number of muscles”, but rather the harmonious activity of the entire body, from whence derives the „softness” of motion which determines physical „elegance” or grace. The ideal of harmonious physical development corresponds to man’s creative universality.

Man’s prolific creative life should become the basis for the development of his playing being. No free and contented personality can exist if man does not liberate his body and his movements from the destructive capitalist civilization. The supremacy of libertarian and creative (playing) motion must be established, and this motion turned in favor of man and a living world (nature) that has no intermediary but represents man’s genuine necessity for others. Development of playing skills is manifested as openness to the future, as creation of novum, and not as „improvement” of a playing model composed of ritualized expressions of submissiveness to the ruling order, within which man is reduced to a mechanical doll. The most important task of libertarian play is to enable physical motion, through the development of man’s artistic being, to become the playing motion by means of which man will attain „unity” with himself as an whole creative being, and society will become a playing community. Schiller’s position that „education by means of art is education for art“ is one of the most significant postulates of libertarian play, because education by means of libertarian play is education for a free society.

Regarding the universal grammar of motion (skills), it provides the possibilities for establishing a comprehensive approach to physical exercise, while at the same time enabling the creation of an artificial body language that is more of a technical (strictly defined motions, repetition, „objectivity” of form being developed as an area alien to man, space defined in advance…) than a cultural nature. Instead of assigning a distinct model of body and motion, which is, in essence, of a repressive nature, a spontaneous motion that is expressive of man’s playing being should be sought: richness of motion is conditioned by richness of the playing personality and by the development of interpersonal relations.

Play is not an immediate relation of man with himself, but requires the existence of a playing community of emancipated, creative personalities, where the movement of one man towards another dominates, and where homo homini mirrors humanness. Therefore, the development of interpersonal relations is a conditio sine qua non of play. The playing disposition is potentially a human disposition that can be actualized exclusively within a community of free and creative personalities. Giving up the ball is not the act of throwing an object from one position to another, an action that has an „objective” form and a technical character, but is a humanized (by means of cultural heritage) gesture by one man towards another and, as such, establishes human community in an immediate form. This is what constitutes its concrete historical (social) nature and endows it with a „soul”. Play is a result but, at the same time, also a supreme spontaneous form of man’s self‐creation and a supreme mode for forming society into a community of free people. The spontaneity of play requires an emancipated personality. If this is lacking, the effort to express uniqueness leads to extremism, narcissism, aggression, destruction… Richness of personality is a basic precondition for the richness of interpersonal relations and vice versa. Each new friendship opens up a new human space inside man, develops his sense of humanness, in the same way a developed aesthetic sense provides opportunity for distinction in music or painting, the experience and creation of an abundance of tones, forms and colors. It is essential to develop a communal spirit while developing, rather than destroying, individuality. The immediate goal of libertarian play is not to set records, improve playing techniques, develop play as a normative sphere and create a healthy body, but to create a healthy society within which creative personalities will be developed.

A distinction should be made between playing as fulfillment of man’s playing being (the act of playing) and play as behavior in accordance with imposed norms. Play as a normative constraint has no tendency towards the improvement of man and interpersonal relations, but tends to reduce („discipline”) him to the model of a usable citizen (subject). It is a matter of striving to preserve the ruling order and to reduce man to the „dimension” that corresponds to that order. The ruling historical forms of play are behavioral forms deprived of humane (playing) content, alienated from man. They are reduced to a behavioral model that is, in fact, a form of play in which the ruling relations are being manifested. Playing is reduced to an action that is most consistently mimics the consensus model of play, the rules of which should not be violated at any cost. Therefore, play’s „immutability“ (Huizinga) becomes its crucial feature. The ideal of „perfection”, by means of which „cultural” legitimacy and the infinity of the ruling forms of play are provided, is reduced to the complete submission of man to the rules of play, as well as to the imposed aesthetic pattern – which represents the „décor” of the ruling order. Man’s longing for another is mediated by relations that alienate man from others and reduce him to a role imposed on him from outside. A typical example is the „sport play”: it becomes a mechanism by which man is made to express the non‐liberty of others. The intellectual sphere cannot be man’s compensation for the senseless life he lives; in the same way a love song cannot make up for a lack of human closeness. Instead of trying to define the concept of a genuine life, which is the typical reaction to a false life, a genuine human life must be lived.

In a repressive society play is a form of repressive normative confinement that impedes the fulfillment of man’s authentic playing being. Attempting to get through to the essence of humanness and to „catch” it by fixing human existence at the level of certain forms, structures, spiritual formations – inevitably leads to the preservation of the world in which such forms and structures are possible. The expression of play has to be of such a nature as to enable man to realize his own playing being. Genuine creativity does not go into the creation of playing forms, but into the enrichment of the human personality and development of interpersonal relations. Play is neither transcendental nor trans‐subjective, but an immanent and inter‐subjective phenomenon: it is an immediate interpersonal relation and, as such, represents the supreme form of establishing a society as a community of free persons, in a word, the creation of the humanum in the untainted sense. Commitment to play means a struggle for the fulfillment of man’s need and capability for play, and not just becoming skilled and imitating the imposed model of play – which appears as the „supreme human challenge”. Instead of play as a „cultural form” representing the basic possibility of playing, there is man as a cultural (playing) being: the authenticity of play is the expression of the authenticity of man. Play is not a criterion for determining a playing disposition and playing, reduced to the transcendental normative form, but the free realization of human playing (universally creative) powers. Play is the highest and the most immediate form of experiencing the world through creating it, which means that it represents the most immediate and the most authentic form of man’s becoming human. In genuine play the dualism between the „being” (Sein) and the „should” (Sollen) has been resolved. Nothing is before man, above man or outside to man. The so‐called „universally human” does not exist outside of man anymore (as an imposed or transcendental sphere); it is no longer the image of „man” for which man longs and exclusively within which he can distinguish „his own (human) look” – but man as a free and dignified person becomes the creator and the „image” of humanness. Instead of being the model of „perfection”, the free man becomes a source of aesthetic inspiration: freedom is the substance of beauty. Schiller indicated the correct path: instinct for play is the instinct for freedom. Playing turns into the awakening of the lethargic (deterred) playing being, „enlivening” the senses, surmounting anxiety and shedding the snakeskin of the (petty) bourgeois. Instead of giving vent to the deterred being, spontaneity in play requires breaking through the barriers that constrain man. What develops the playing disposition is not play per se, but the humanness that develops as man faces the limitations, misfortunes, and challenges imposed by life. A rich creative life is the basic precondition for the development and improvement of the playing being. Genuine play extends the horizon of the freedom achieved, of the enthusiasm for life, and is the consummate expression of man’s life‐creating powers. The joy of play comes from the contentment of an engagement with living; intimacy in play is possible only because of the closeness that comes from the process of struggle for a new world: man’s movement towards another is, at the same time, man’s movement towards new worlds. The actual outcome of playing is not play, but an enrichment of man’s spirit, emotions, sensuality, and the improvement of his interpersonal relations. The completed experience of humanness represents the „measure” of the richness of playing.

A distinction should be made between man as being at play, and man as playing being. In the first case he is the object, while play is the subject; in the second case he is the subject, and play is a result of the fulfillment of his playing being. Huizinga’s homo ludens is not man‐as‐player but man‐as‐toy of superhuman forces. It is exactly the same with antique and Christian man, as well as with Nietzsche’s Übermensch: he is a toy of cosmic forces. With Fink and Gadamer the notion of play is being used to reduce man to a phenomenological abstraction which is merely a masque behind which the concrete man, reduced to a toy of capitalism, is hiding. The emancipated playing personality requires a man as a unique life‐ creating being, and, as such, a creator of his world – and, thus, a self‐creator. Through playing, the playing disposition turns into play that becomes the basis for identification of the limitations of playing and of the possibilities for its development. Instead of the development of play as a separate social area, we should be moving toward the development of the playing disposition „inside man” and, on that basis, toward establishing society as a playing community, where (potentially) each form of human activity is at the same time an expression of his playing being. Libertarian play attempts to eliminate the fragmented man that has been degraded by the requirements of a fragmented world, where a need for „synthesis” is reduced to the development of technical expressions that seek to impress with their lavish color, sound and form, and become a „compensation” for an increasingly impoverished humanness. It is a matter of superseding the world divided between „misfortune” and „happiness”, and a matter of „restoring” to man his powers from the alienated social spheres and of establishing the human Ego as an integral core of man’s relations toward the whole world. Along these lines, man should not seek to cultivate technique through art, but to cultivate man through the development of his universal creative being, thus abolishing technique as a mediation with nature that has been alienated from him, while art remains a separate social sphere. Instead of a relation between alienated social spheres, people should develop immediate relations as emancipated playing beings. The world as a work of art – this is the purpose of the struggle for the future.

Libertarian play rejects competition that is reduced to personal combat aimed at preserving and developing the ruling order, and advocates out‐playing (similar to the „out‐ singing” common to traditional folk music) that, in essence, represents a struggle against the established order of destruction and for the development of man’s universal creative powers. In out‐playing, man is inspired by others, suggesting that man’s movement toward another person is dominant in it – which is only possible because of man’s need for another individual. In this context Rousseau’s principle homo homini homo attains its true value. Out‐playing requires striving to supersede what has already been achieved (for creation of a novum) through the development of interpersonal relations, and not through clashes between individuals based upon the Social Darwinist principle of bellum omnium contra omnes and the progressistic principle citius, altius, fortius. Its internal principles of domination and elimination have been abolished and replaced by the principles of tolerance and solidarity, and all that creates life is in opposition to whatever destroys life and restricts freedom. Instead of striving for record‐breaking victory, out‐playing calls for working to „enlarge” humanness and to create a new world. The key issue here is not how much, but by what means – where the starting point for defining humanness is not the repressive aesthetic stereotype that tends towards „perfection”, but man, himself. Development of the „quality” of play requires a development of rich individuality and of interpersonal relations. In this context, the skills are not manifested in relation to man as an independent („objectivized”) force (reduced to a dehumanized and denaturalized „playing technique”), but as a specific (individual) human expression. Out‐playing in the elements of play, where the playing of one individual becomes the inspiration for the playing of another (like in traditional folk dances, jazz, love play…), creates the possibility for anyone freely to express his own playing being. Spontaneity, creativity, imagination – are all expressed as a playing uniqueness, as an originally human uniqueness.

Instead of the martial contests that dominate sport, life‐creating competition should be introduced based upon out‐playing, where there are no winners and no losers, and where a physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually enriched man is being created. It is not the intention of out‐playing to eliminate the „weak” and celebrate the „strong”, but to yield up a humanized man, an individual who experiences himself in his own way, developing his own individuality. Instead of escaping into himself, man should aspire to enrichment the contents of interpersonal relations. Life as play means that creation of interpersonal relations is the supreme manifestation of the playing disposition: man’s social being becomes the fulfillment of his playing being. The joy of creative fulfillment, attaining true respect through companionship (playing), is demonstrated in relation to the „ecstasy”, which is, in the existing world, the highest expression of slavery’s passing for an illusionary „spontaneity”. Physical and mental activities, without which no play can exist, require creative efforts: creativity determines the rhythm of play. It is aimed at establishing and developing interpersonal relations and represents the basis for attaining (self) respect. Play turns into midwifery – delivering humanness through creative effort, that is, through the most immediate form of man’s self‐creation. The specificity of play as creativity is, in its being, based on man’s spontaneous, unconditioned and unmediated need for another human being. Genuine play is based on the authentic love developed in creative (libertarian) exaltation, rather than the petty bourgeois love that comes from a place of struggle for money and power, where, instead of human symbols, status symbols incarnating the prevailing values are dominant. The development of a need for man, a true belief in man, the opening of new spaces of the mind, the development of a creative personality – these are all impulses toward genuine play. Homo homini homo becomes the supreme challenge, rather than a mere vehicle for the fulfillment of pathological „needs” imposed by capitalist civilization. Man’s experience always returns to an option for the new, the more complete, the more beautiful… Human intimacy becomes the source of life’s warmth. Cohabitation has no temporal and spatial limitations, only a human dimension. Instead of being an escape from nothingness, play becomes an eruption of unrestrained humanness.

Through playing, man’s external‐reality the world is disappearing and becoming man’s self‐existence. The variety of forms in the exterior world is no longer a challenge but is being replaced by the richness of the interior and the interpersonal… The world is what man carries inside himself and what he can establish together with other people. Authentic creativity is the „transformation” of the outer world into an experience of human intensity, happiness… Instead of the world of misfortune as a negative basis for play, which is, therefore, an expression of a hopeless attempt at escaping society, the world of happy people will become the grounds and inspiration for the development of a rich playing personality. Genuine play is not merely man’s supreme intellectual relation with the world; it does not only represent man’s self‐knowledge and self‐expression; but also his self‐ creation, and is, as such, the most comprehensive form of experiencing the world. No more will man live in a world he refers to as something (im)posed and extra‐human (alien). Instead, he will perceive the world as his own creation, in a word, as his manifested (and not „infested”) humanness. This is not a question of a simulated totalizing of the world by means of simple subjectivism, as is the case with romanticism, but of totalizing the libertarian (creative) activism from which is „produced” a society that is a community of free people. Playing becomes the supreme form of man’s „appropriation” of the world, and eventually represents the „appropriation” of himself without „residue”. Man will not achieve „unity with the world“ through labor, technology, play, art… – but will make the world: the creation of the world will become man’s self‐creation; „unity with the world” will become the „unity“ of man with another human being. The development of man as a universal free creative being and the advancement of interpersonal relations will become the „measure” of the development of the world. Life, itself, will become the supreme symbol of humanness.

In the capitalist world, play is a vehicle for sucking the repressed working „masses” into the spiritual orbit of the bourgeoisie and, so, has a „classless” determination – clearly expressed in the well‐known maxim „sport has nothing to do with politics”. Libertarian play is not apolitical, but represents an inherent part of the political struggle against class society. According to Nietzsche, play is a vehicle for the creation of a „new aristocracy” in an exclusive organic (class) community. So at issue is the creation through play of an organic community of free creative personalities. The new society cannot be created solely by means of play but requires political struggle. However, there is no true political struggle without a concurrent struggle for the liberation and development of man’s playing being. Schiller’s fascination with play was directly encouraged by the French Revolution, which opened the gates to the new era. Likewise with Goethe, Klopstock, Fait… The struggle of the oppressed and the awakened and, in that context, the belief that man is capable of realizing his libertarian being, give meaning to play. Without the struggle for a free world, play remains an escapist and empty form.

In a humane society, every word will mirror the human. As the poet says: „ … but one day where heart was, Sun will stand and human speech will no longer have words which poem would deny, everyone shall write poetry, truth will exist in all the words, in the places where poem is the most beautiful, the one who started it first will retreat, leaving the poem to the others…“ (Branko Miljković) Not only shall everyone write poetry, but everyone will sing poetry – each in his own way. Man will become a song‐bird, and society will be a flock singing on its way to the future. Singing is the most authentic way for man to realize himself as a social being. It is genuine speech because it comes from the very essence of man as a human being. There is an old saying, „The one who sings does not mean evil!” Singing is the most authentic call to humanness. It is the highest form of a cultured nature and a cultivated sociability. Through singing, birds express their essence as natural beings; through singing, man expresses his nature as a cultivated, natural and human being. Just as tone is a sound cultivated in a human way (John Blacking), so is singing a tune cultivated in a human way. A singing speech is the most authentic way of producing a cultivated sociability and, as such, should become an integral part of pedagogical work with young people.

Interestingly, it did not occur to bourgeois anthropologists when considering man’s need and ability to sing, to proclaim man a song‐bird, instead of a wolf – who does not sing, but howls, barks and growls. In ancient mythology, sirens gained control over mariners with their song, and Orpheus gives the world its true form and meaning through his singing, setting animals in motion and stopping the flow of rivers, bringing his beloved Eurydice back from the dead… Religious communities have long known the magic of singing. A prayer, when sung, penetrates deep into the human heart and becomes a way of rising above earthly life and spiritually connecting with what is beyond the phenomenal world. Even without words a song sends an intense message. It is the language of the emotions. Through singing, man emanates his humanness – it is the most authentic human way in which the aura of Walter Benjamin is created. Man’s emotional being, cultivated in aesthetics, enables man to grow his natural capabilities (vocal cords, nervous system…) and sing. Singing is the most authentic way of creating sociability. It abolishes all forms of man’s alienation and establishes an immediate relation between individuals at the level of their essence. An authentic song is the most efficient way to man’s purification and the most humane way to man’s cultivation.

The growing threat to the lives of more and more people is the impetus for humanity’s integrated fight against ecocidal capitalist barbarism. In the struggle for the preservation of life on Earth with the creation of a new world, humankind will be so united that it will obviate all forms of mediation that have kept man separated from his fellows and turned him into a „tool” of „superhuman” forces working for 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 need for another will become the motive for making interpersonal connections. Instead of living the life of the chosen, as with Nietzsche, the pinnacle of life will be to live as free, creative people; instead of the plutocracy as an organic community united by parasitism and by existential fear of the laboring many, the man’s overriding goal will be the formation of society as an organic community of free creative personalities; instead of having to hide the repressive normative confinement and the repressive aesthetic canons (by means of which the elitist class status is rationalized), man’s physical and spiritual need for another like being will predominate; instead of the child’s subordination to repressive normative stereotypes, that children be educated by allowing them to live as free creative personalities will become the basic pedagogical principle… It is an matter of superseding the „fragmentized” and attaining the „synthesized” man who represents a unity of Apollonian and Dionysian, that will not be, as with Nietzsche, a privilege of the „new nobility”, but a basic human right.

Creativity is the basis and the result of the historical development of society. It is the expression of human authenticity. Creativity is the common denominator of man’s general life‐creating activism. Creative efforts are the most authentic form of realization of his life‐creating energy. Unless it is realized in a humane way, man’s creative power can become a fatal anti‐humane and anti‐life force. In that context, the expression „evil genius” represents the glorification of creativity as a destructive power, which for a capitalistically degenerated man is the highest challenge to his life and values. By becoming a totalitarian destructive order and by depriving man of the possibility of realizing his creative potentials in everyday life and in a humane way, capitalism produced the most atrocious crimes. Capitalism deprives man’s creative power of its human dimension by giving it a technical character. Capitalism destroys the existing world through the creation of a technical world. Destruction through creation – this is the basis of the dialectics of capitalist progress.

The emergence of Nazi Germany is a historical example of how man, through his creative powers, can be integrated into an order that can turn those powers into a totalitarian criminal practice. One of the most important reasons why the Nazi regime had, up until its downfall, the support of the vast majority of Germans, is that the Nazis managed, through labor and other „constructive” activities, to „mobilize the masses” and thus make them identify with the ruling order. „The Father” of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, in praise of Hitler, pointed out that the greatest success of the Berlin Olympic Games (of 1936) is that the Nazis „managed to mobilize the entire German nation to participate in the preparations for the Berlin Olympic Games”. From there, Coubertin proclaimed Hitler „one of the greatest builders of modern time”. By engaging citizens in the „building” campaign, the Nazis managed to make the Germans perceive Fascist Germany as their own creation. What the Nazis managed to do with their „building” euphoria, contemporary capitalism has done with its „consumer” euphoria: it has integrated workers into its value and existential sphere and made them accomplices in global destruction.

As for Christianity, according to official Christian dogma, labor is a „curse”, and the worker is, accordingly, a cursed man. On the other hand, according to the Christian „doctrine of creation”, labor, as a creative activity, represents the very origin of the cosmic mystery from which life on the Earth derives. Through creative work, the life‐creating potential of the cosmos has turned into man’s life‐creative power. Creative work has brought about the emergence of the world, whereas the shaping of matter and its being brought to life through reason has enabled man to become man. „God” was originally humanized as the being that created the world through labor. „God” did not create the world by waving a magic wand or pronouncing magic words, but rather „He labored for six days” so hard that on the seventh day „He had to rest“. „God” is a laboring‐creator and, consequently, all creation is a divine activity. It is the umbilical cord that links man to „Тhe Creator”. „The divine within man” is his ability to create the world through his creative activity and in his („divine“) image. In his endeavors to create a new world, man should take „God” as his model.

By becoming a totalitarian order of destruction, capitalism has given faith in „God“ an existential dimension. Those who believe in „God” should insist that all living beings on Earth are „God’s creatures” and should fight to protect them, as such, from capitalist calamity. The idea of „the second coming of Jesus Christ” implies the struggle for survival of living beings. Where will Christ „return” if capitalism destroys life on the planet? Who will be there to greet him? The skeletons of the children scattered by desert storms and the frozen corpses of capitalist monsters?

Today, authentic creativity is defined against the growing probability of global destruction. Hence, its essence is life‐creation. To create is the purpose of genuine human practice, and the creation of a humane world while increasing the certainty of its survival is its immediate and highest outcome. It is in this context that creative work should be perceived. It supersedes the classical division of labor and the fragmentized man reduced to a „specialized working force”. Instead of being reduced to the instrumentalized intellect, to a technological means for the production of „innovations” and capital accumulation, the creative mind should become the basis for creative work toward social integration. It involves not only the production of creative goods, but also of the visionary: the creation of humanum becomes the creation of novum and vice versa. Creative work involves realizing the human in a human way and providing livelihood through the cultivation of nature in a way that does not spoil it and that humanizes man’s natural being. A need for work becomes a need for the development of creative energies and interpersonal relations. It overcomes a stunted man, and it promotes the integration of humanity around a creative mind. Ultimately, labor becomes not just a way of providing existence, but also a way of enriching interpersonal relations, and it implies man’s return to his human essence. Creative work is the immediate form of the reproduction of society as a community of emancipated individuals with a creative and totalizing sociability. The results of creative work are immeasurable. They cannot be private property, but are the „property” of humankind. Creative work is by its nature limitless both in terms of the development of man’s creative powers and in terms of its influence through time and space. It does not involve only the creation of useful goods or of man as a universal creative being, but is also the creation of a human world.

With the introduction of automation, conditions have been established for eliminating repressive and degenerating labor, and for introducing creative work that offers opportunities for the development of man’s playing being and, thus, creating possibilities for the refinement of his natural being. On the basis of creative work, which can only come out of libertarian struggle and cannot be a mere consequence of the development of technical processes, a division of labor between intellectual and physical, as well as between „private” and „public” domains, that is to say, between the institutionalized political powers alienated from man ‐ can eventually be abolished. When the rule of creative work is applied, the most important source of the split perception of the world as a „world of dread” (labor, suffering, misfortune) and a „world of joy” (imaginary „play”) disappears. Work becomes not only „life’s prime want” (Marx), but also the human’s prime want, while play ceases to be a compensatory activity and becomes the supreme form of man’s spontaneous creative self‐realization and the supreme form of interpersonal intimacy. Only when work stops being an activity where man is alienated from himself as a creative and libertarian being; when the dichotomy between homo faber and homo ludens is resolved within a creative man; when creative work becomes the affirmation of human freedom ‐ only then can man’s playing being be liberated from all forms of compulsions and only then does true play become possible. It is a matter of the „atonement” of the playing being, playing and play – in a free, spontaneous and creative endeavor, that is, of play as a realization of the playing disposition through a creative effort – through the comprehensive self‐creation of man (human community). With creative work, man transforms not only his own existence, but at the same time he regenerates himself as a creative and social being. Creative collectivism represents the basis of playing collectivism.

Humanness is the genuine basis for the development of man’s creative being. Children should be encouraged with love, from their earliest years, to develop their creative being. Creativity is the basis of true sociability. An upbringing suffused with creativity is an upbringing for a creative society. Without humanness, creativity becomes a technical capability and, as such, a potential source of atrocious crimes. It is no accident that the most important creative power of capitalism is not poets, but the technological intelligentsia. It is about specialty‐idiots deprived of a historical self‐consciousness and a humanist vision of the future. The true result of creativity is not the creation of objects, but the development of humanness, which involves the development of the creator’s individuality and the begetting of a society as a brotherly community of free people. The principle of the aura has become the principle of the beacon: the emanation of humanness appears as a light indicating the true nature of the existing world ‐ it awakens humanness and illuminates the road to the future.

Man cannot revitalize his genuine human needs from an abstract anthropological model of man as a universal creative being of freedom and the visionary consciousness derived from it. As a concrete human being, he can realize his genuine human needs only in relation to the lethal consequences of capitalist „progress”. More precisely, man can develop his genuine human needs and faculties only when he confronts the immediate existential threat posed by capitalism and when he restores that natural being crippled by capitalism. Man cannot become an authentic creator as long as he faces the (ever more certain) possibility of global annihilation. Only when he frees himself from the deadly capitalist embrace and heals the consequences of capitalist destruction will man be able to realize his universal creative being and transform life into a work of art.

The following are the principal ideas that offer humankind the possibility of survival and to create a humane world: direct democracy; production for meeting genuine human needs; a radical reduction in labor time; the development of man’s creative being; the development of interpersonal relations and the establishment of a humanized relation to nature. These ideas constitute an integral part of modern visionary thought, and their substantial relevance today lies in their opposition to the totalitarian destructive order that is capitalism, their relation to the very real possibility of global annihilation. They are no longer a libertarian challenge, but, instead, have become an existential imperative.

What is the point of philosophy in a contemporary capitalist world dominated by destruction and where humanity has been pushed to the edge of the abyss? Ideologues of capitalism create an illusion that the ruling relation to reality is based on a certain way of thinking,  that  it  has  a  rational  nature.  Philosophy  has  become  a  „rational”  echo  of destructive capitalist irrationality. It is but one of the humanist masks of an inhumane and destructive   civilization   and,   as   such,   is   advertising   for   capitalism.   It   provides   and strengthens a way of thinking that, like religion, is deprived of critical self‐reflection and prevents man from becoming aware of the tendencies of global development and the objective possibilities of liberation that through subjective practice (political struggle) can turn into real possibilities for freedom. At the same time, „philosophizing” is reduced to the creation of a network of formally and logically consistent concepts that are supposed to mediate between man and the world. Philosophy has become a means for confusing reason and distracting it from the crucial questions. Contemporary bourgeois philosophers disqualify reason as the most authentic and most important human means for ensuring survival and freedom. It is reduced to an instrumentalized ratio and has become the means for mystification of the existing world and for the destruction of a visionary consciousness that offers a possibility for overcoming capitalism and creating a new world. Philosophy has become a technical subject and, as such, is a means for turning concrete existential and essential questions into abstract theoretical questions. Instead of a revolutionary concept, the dominant concept is that of conformism. Instead of a fight to eradicate the causes of non‐ freedom and destruction, a theoretical discussion about consequences is being imposed. The bourgeois theory offers a critique of capitalism which does not question it and which seeks to „perfect”  it.  „The  essence  of  capitalism”  acquires  an  idolized  dimension  and becomes the basis for criticizing capitalist reality. Thus the mythologized past becomes the basis for criticizing the present. Everything that might and should happen has already happened. A struggle for the future becomes a struggle for the past. The bourgeois intelligentsia multiplies the „field of research” by creating numerous „grey areas”, primarily to expand its space as much as possible. It acts like the market: it produces increased quantities of intellectual goods with ever‐lower quality, which are sold in the form of books, lectures, studies, and reports.

Max Horkheimer came to the conclusion half a century ago that serious philosophy was nearing its end and that society was becoming an anthill. Philosophers contribute to that state of affairs by not developing a philosophy that is grounded in the emancipatory legacy of civil society and national cultures, they rather adapt to a ruling order that, rather than a wise man, needs an stupefied consumer. Philosophy becomes an entertainment skill and, as such, is a part of show‐business, while philosophers become the „jesters” of capitalism. The philosophical mind is being integrated into capitalism by the destruction of its emancipatory potential and by turning philosophy into another commodity in the marketplace  of consumer society.  The  amount  of  the  commission  fee  becomes  the „measure” of the quality of the philosophical thought. Even when significant matters are communicated, they are expressed in such a manner as to lose their political dimension and obtain an entertainment or clownish dimension. Philosophers like Slavoj Zizek and Bernard‐Henri Lévy are typical examples of Coca‐Cola intellectuals. Their „reflections” are being tailored to provide „philosophical” legitimacy to the ecocidal and genocidal activities of the stakeholders in the „new world order”. Their thought represents a philosophical merit badge on the chests of the capitalist executioners who obliterate nature and humankind. At the same time, the leftist bourgeois intelligentsia, headed by Jürgen Habermas, Oskar Negt and Oskar Lafontaine, create an illusion that capitalism could be „brought to reason” by means of enlightened thought. It does not address the workers, but an abstract „citizen”, a petty bourgeois who has been degenerated by the consumer way of life and who cannot be bothered with radical social changes that might jeopardize his consumer’s standard of living. „Bringing to reason” does not imply the development of combative sociability and the nullification of the capitalist order as it is reduced to the „pacification” of workers and the technical development that implies the obliteration of man as a social being and of nature as life‐generating entirety. Even when the ruling political circle (alienated from the citizens) is being threatened by an insistence on the necessity of the direct participation in political life of the largest possible number of citizens, this is performed in a manner that does not stand for an appeal to the citizens to fight against the ruling order. The „social peace” needs to be preserved at all cost in order to prevent economic crisis and the ensuing social crisis – without which the petty bourgeois consciousness and its „consumer society” cannot be eliminated. At the same time, a critique of capitalism is increasingly present. But it is of an academic nature and is deprived of any political,   change‐creating   dimension.   It   does   not  address   the   destructive  nature  of capitalism and is not moved toward a vision of the future based upon a radical step away from the capitalist world.

The purposefulness of philosophic thought is determined by whether this thought poses concrete historic questions. Today, in a world that faces an ever more realistic possibility of destruction, that principle means concrete historical questions might be the last questions posed by man. It is this quality that makes a difference between today’s concrete historical questions and all earlier such questions. The development of capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction imposes the question of survival as the most important concrete historical question. Actually, by bringing humanity to the brink of destruction, capitalism „has answered” all crucial questions. Bearing in mind the intensity of the capitalist destruction  of  life,  all  questions  come  down  to  one:  what  can  be  done  to  prevent  the destruction of humanity? The only meaningful thought is of an existential character, that is, it creates the possibility for a political (changing) practice that will prevent the world’s destruction. In that context, philosophy is meaningful as a critique of capitalism and a visionary projection of a future world. There is a need for creating an integrating critical and visionary thought with an existential nature, which will contain the emancipatory legacy of civil society and national cultures. Humanity will again appreciate the importance of serious thinking when people return to the basic existential questions. The seriousness of those questions will make people serious: crucial existential issues will eliminate any trivial ways of thinking and direct the mind towards the essential issues. Riding the wave of the French Bourgeois  Revolution,  classical  German  philosophy  shaped  the  self‐consciousness  of modern man. Today, the humanist intelligentsia should shape a thought that will guide the last revolution in the history of mankind. It is not the hoot of Minerva’s owl in the twilight, but the war cry of a man who has been awakened and who is ready not only to liberate humanity from oppression, but to prevent its destruction. Ultimately, what is philosophy if it is not capable of answering the questions that are of vital importance to human destiny?

The  1854  letter  from  the  Chief  of  the  Seattle  tribe  to  the  American  President Franklin Pierce indicates the important limitations on modern philosophy with respect to basic existential issues. It is a sobering fact that modern man does not turn to the greatest thinkers of the modern age to find solutions to the critical existential issues but, rather, to someone who, by the predominant criteria for evaluation, is considered a „savage”. The Indian Chief’s letter indicates that all modern Western thought has gone astray. It depicts the true nature of capitalism, and the basic tendency of its development, better than all the philosophical and sociological thinking of the 19th  and 20th  centuries. The Chief’s letter, at the same time, indicates that the question of being, as one of the central „traditional” philosophical questions, can no longer be viewed at the essential level. Being, as a symbolic source of authentic humanity and the mirror in which man can see his authentic human image, above all, is the affirmation of man’s life‐creating powers acquiring a concrete historical dimension with respect to capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order. The fact that the letter was written in the mid‐19th  century is of primary importance as it refutes the claim that at that time it was not possible to see the ecocidal nature of capitalism. The words of the Indian Chief not only show the limitations of Western scientific and philosophical thought,  but  also  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  have  science  and  philosophy  in  order  to recognize the true nature of capitalism. The truth that capitalism is an anti‐existential order is based on immediate empirical evidence. This was the guiding thought of Fourier when, in the early 19th  century, he questioned (capitalist) „progress”, suggesting that it is based on the destruction of forests, fields, sources of water, climate…

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 humankind’s survival, the thinking of the past has to realize its own humanistic, i.e., existential and libertarian, potential. The deepening existential crisis forces man to focus on the 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 it in combat and drive the mind astray. The „fullness of humanity”, in the sense of perceiving man from a historical perspective, 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. A „return” to the mythological past is justified only if it is to revitalize libertarian and life‐creating myths. Otherwise, it amounts to driving reason astray and has, regardless of personal motives, an anti‐existential nature.

What provides a certain thought with a concrete historical dimension is the actual historical position toward it. Only a life‐creating critique of the existing world, from the point of view of a future (humane) world, can „revive” previous thoughts. Bourgeois thought does not revive but sterilizes the legacy of reason in an analytical, mythological or some other form. It exterminates its effective historical potential, which deprives it of its mutative charge and turns it into a lifeless thought. A typical example is the position of Leszek Kolakowski toward Marxist thought (Main Currents of Marxism). His analytical approach to the development of Marxism does not open up but rather closes down the horizons of the future. The „balance” principle, which he asserts as the starting point of his theoretical (political) analyses, is formally logical, of abstract nature. What sort of „balance” could be offered to capitalism if it has already become a totalitarian destructive order? Kolakowski’s „balance” has no existential and, in that context, no libertarian nature, but, rather, it has a politically compromising and, therefore, an anti‐existential nature. Kolakowski’s contradiction  between „skeptical”  and  „utopian”  philosophy  is  of  a  formally  logical character. It represents an obvious example of the failure to perceive phenomena in the context of their actual historical development and of the creation of an abstract reflective stance  toward  reality.  Kolakowski does  not  comprehend  that  the  concrete  idea  of  the utopian is conceivable only when related to the ruling capitalist order with its destructive nature, or in other words, that turning capitalism into a totalitarian destructive order preconditions the nature of the utopian as a political confrontation with capitalism. The utopian does not merely imply the creation of a new world, but also the preservation of life on the planet. Kolakowski opted for the „objectivist” critique of Marx, which is based on the bourgeois ideology within which „democracy” does not have a concrete historical nature, but rather a mythological nature. His point of departure is „democracy”, which represents just one of the ideological forms in which capitalism presents itself, and not the actual nature of capitalism. He also insists on a false antipode ‐ „democracy” v „totalitarianism”, which counterfeits the actual historical antipode: capitalism v humane (communist) society. In that context, he fails to indicate the emancipatory and life‐creating potential of the Marxist thought with respect to capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction.

The gradual deviation of the bourgeois thought toward the right well suits the development of capitalism which, by the means of the „consumer” way of life, has integrated a majority of workers into its own existential and moral orbit. At the same time, in order to impede the class‐based organizing of workers and the ensuing class struggle, the bourgeois intelligentsia has adapted the „nature” of capitalism to the political project for which it advocates and has thus hindered the development of an adequate critical consciousness for a political struggle against capitalism. Bourgeois philosophy is a form within which the mind is alienated from man and made to serve as an intermediary between man and reality. It blurs the image of the world and creates an optical distortion that keeps man from perceiving the truest course that leads toward the future. Bourgeois thought is a theoretical form of ideation within which capitalism suppresses or annihilates the political struggle of the oppressed and their endeavors to prevent the destruction of the world. The bourgeois intelligentsia has been, and still is, a mace in the hands of the capitalists, a weapon wielded for the elimination of the libertarian and visionary consciousness of the working class. It neuters the mind as a force in the political struggle against capitalism and pulls it off its historical course. In that way, it buys some additional time for capitalism and contributes to the destruction of the world. When capitalism turned into a totalitarian order of destruction, bourgeois thought became an anti‐existential thought, and the bourgeois theorists became the horsemen of the apocalypse. The obliteration of the emancipatory possibilities of bourgeois society also implies the destruction of the emancipatory potential of the civil thought.  By  annihilating  the  effective historical  nature  of  bourgeois  society,  capitalism sterilizes bourgeois philosophy and turns it into lifeless thought. Capitalism marginalizes the bourgeois intelligentsia and turns it into a „cleaner” of its own bloodstained crime scenes. Capitalism, thus, devours its own (ideological) children.

In  becoming  a  totalitarian  order  of  destruction,  capitalism  has  imposed  the necessity for a new (possibly a final!) historical „reading” of the philosophers whose thoughts have defined the contemporary epoch. The authentic humanistic potential of their thinking stands in stark contrast before an increasingly gloomy background of capitalist nothingness. It seems as if great thought no longer exists. What currently is nonexistent is any political movement capable of providing a great idea with an appropriate practical (change‐creating)  dimension.   However,   the   deepening   existential   crisis   created   by capitalism conditions the inception of such a global political movement as would be capable of eliminating capitalism and creating a new world in which „spiritual riches will be the measure of human wealth” (Marx). The true historical quality of the critical thought is represented by the width of the aperture it opens on reality.

In relation to man, the capitalist world has become a totalitarian and destructive power to such an extent that it has lost any need for scientific knowledge, and it has become, in the hands of the capitalists, an anti‐humane and anti‐living power. At the same time, an escape from knowledge becomes an escape from any responsibility for the world’s survival. The realization that a group of capitalist fanatics can in an instant destroy the world, along with an awareness of the increasing possibility of environmental destruction and, thus, the end of humanity, itself, bring man, mired in the quicksand of „consumer society”, to the brink of madness. An escape from knowledge is a „natural” defense mechanism. The predominant science  reduces  the  reality  of  capitalism  to  certain  „facts”  that  enable  a „scientific view” according to which there is no alternative to capitalism, that all „problems” can  be „overcome”  by  capitalism,  itself,  through  technologically  „perfectioning”.  The capitalist vision of the future has a „scientific” character. The myth of the „omnipotence of science and technology” has become a means for the creation of a capitalistically degenerated religious consciousness and, in that context, the image of the future. The vision of a „paradise”, in which the „souls of the deceased are reunited in God”, is replaced by the vision of a „perfect technical world”. Everything is mediated by money; everything acquires a trivial dimension – including the individual’s relation to death. Ideologues of capitalism promise man (the rich „elite”) „immortality”, which will be provided by creating technical devices that will enable the „revival” of frozen corpses. Scientists have become the capitalists’ contract killers and the driving force for the destruction of the world. A vast majority of scientists are engaged in the production of weapons of mass destruction, devices for mass control,  the  genetic  distortion of  man,  the  destruction  of  nature,  the  manipulation  and idiotization  of  people… Scientific knowledge  has  been  deprived  not  only  of  its  human purpose; it has acquired an anti‐existential motive.

Since manipulation of people does not proceed only in the realm of ideology but, more importantly, in the psychological sphere, art, reduced to a technique of using images and symbols for manipulation, becomes of the utmost importance. Its primary role is not to create a „cultural” decor for the ruling order, but to distort man and all the symbols by which he can reach his libertarian, creative, life‐creating and social being. Capitalistically degenerated art mutilates the human being with an „artistic” form given a spectacular dimension. The „spectacle” does not only serve to deceive – it does not only prevent man from seeing the important ‐ but it kills in him his humanity and, thus, any possibility of ever seeing the important. A blind man is not blind. Blind is the man who cannot see humanity in the other. Capitalism eliminates from culture the aesthetic criteria for an evaluation based on traditional forms of artistic expression and the emancipatory legacy of civil society – the traditional need to confront formalism and the destruction of the human. Instead of something new, a variety of the same‐old is offered. Instead of ideas opening a space in the future, new techniques are offered that destroy man’s need to fantasize along with his visionary consciousness. Capitalistically degenerated art has become a spectacular kitsch. Its value is determined not according to aesthetic value but to market impact: so, the success of an advertising campaign sets the „value” of a work of art, while depriving money of any value equivalent. As for the „globalist culture”, how can universal cultural values be ascertained if the legacy of national cultures is discarded? The emancipatory legacy of national cultures is not only the source of people’s aesthetic heritage, but also of their libertarian and life‐creating consciousness. The superseding of national cultures by a universal human culture is possible only through the development of the emancipatory legacy of national cultures. As to the relation between universality and collectivism, there need be no counter‐opposition here if collectivism, rather than being based on „the masses”, is based on emancipated personalities. Universal human values should be the basis for collectivism, whereas collectivity should not mean the elimination of individuality, but, rather, the establishment of a community of emancipated human beings. At the same time, universality cannot be the privilege of individuals who perceive themselves as an „elite”. It is, in actual fact, a class principle, but veiled by a „struggle for the individual”. A typical example is found in Nietzsche, who speaks of a „Superman” as the anthropological manifestation of a „new nobility”, of a new ruling class (plutocracy). Walter Benjamin believed that technical means can obviate the elitist character of art and bring it closer to the workers. A capitalistically degenerated technique has deprived art of its elitist exclusivity by depriving it of its humane essence. It has destroyed man’s creative being and thus does away with art’s aura, that human emanation, which contains the emancipatory heritage of humanity and suggests what has not yet been but might come to be. The development of an „aesthetical sense” has been achieved by destroying the sense of the human. It turns out that there is no point in making art as a means for changing the world if it is not an integral part of a comprehensive political movement seeking to create a new world. Thus a distinction should be made between a false (capitalistically degenerated) art and a libertarian and genuine art. The role of libertarian art is to unmask the true nature of capitalism; to create a vision of the new world; to indicate objective possibilities for the creation of a new world and, most importantly, to develop man’s need for his fellow man – as the basis for a genuine socialization without which no political movement can save the world from destruction. As for art as a reflection of human misery, which is, as such, an alienated form of de‐alienation ‐ a vision of life appears as an artistic act where man’s social being realizes his libertarian and creative being.

Dialectics is an authentic and genuine force for social development, delineated in the laws of dialectics that represent the logic of history and are, therefore, the self‐ consciousness of the historical development of society. As a method, dialectics is a vehicle for determining, by means of the laws of dialectics, the nature of social phenomena, or more precisely, it is a vehicle for their „transformation” from abstract into concrete historical phenomena. By means of the laws of dialectics, the bare facticity of the past turns into the historical development of society. Within that context, dialectics can be comprehended as the supreme regulating historical principle that opens wide on the horizons of the future: it represents the basis of society’s historicity. By means of dialectics, man emerges from the obscurity of the past and steps into the bright light of history, becoming a self‐conscious historical being. Only upon dialectical self‐consciousness can man base a position on the world that will enable him to create a future.

According to Marx, „into the positive comprehension of the existing, dialectics, at the same time, also introduces understanding of its negation, its necessary downfall; for it comprehends all generated forms in the course of motion, that is, in its transient aspect; because it cannot be tutored by anything and because it is, in its essence, critically analytical and revolutionary.” (21) This quotation points out the fact that dialectics asserts moving forward, which means that capitalism, as a historical order does not close but opens the space of the future. Indeed, not all downfalls mean, at the same time, a negation. More precisely, a downfall represents not only a possibility for creating something new, but also the opportunity for the destruction of everything that exists. The nature of what is negated conditions the nature of the negation and, therefore, the concrete possibility and the nature of the novum. In order to represent a concrete historical principle, the principle of totality has to take into consideration the specificity of the capitalist totality, and that goes not only for the emancipatory possibilities but also for the destructive potential of capitalism. „The negative dialectics” (Adorno), which means that dialectics as a method of critique and as a libertarian practice, has significance solely if it is developing in relation to the process in which capitalism develops into capitalism ‐ turns into a totalitarian destructive order. While criticizing Hegel, and having in mind fascism, Bloch rightfully indicates that not every negation in history concomitantly represents a step forward. However, he does not realize that the capitalist negation does lead toward the destruction of the world. He never refers to capitalism  as  a  destructive  order,  and,  in  that  context,  there  is  no  perception  of  the possibility of the obliteration of life as a crucial content of the revolutionary conscience.

Marx fails to notice that capitalism acts in advance by annihilating life ‐ by generating consequences which question the very possibility of the future and not only in the essential, but also in the existential sense. „Temporariness“ does not imply solely moving forward, but also the development of the destructive processes that threaten the very survival of mankind. This is what Fourier asserted by his claim that mankind was in a state of „material regression”  because  (capitalist)  „progress“  was  devastating  forests,  mountain  slopes, natural fountains… Marx fails to notice that capitalism has a destructive potential and overlooks the fact that negation also implies the possibility of its realization, which means that the downfall of capitalism at the same time implies the possibility of the obliteration of life on the planet. Related to this possibility, a concrete possibility arises for attaining man’s creative, libertarian and life‐creating abilities. Turning the objective possibilities of freedom into realistic possibilities of man’s liberation stands against the more and more likely probability of the annihilation of the world.

Hegel’s dialectics implies the likelihood of a future based upon existential certainty. Life is an a priori quality that is not being questioned, and it represents the foundation of his dialectic pyramid of freedom. With Hegel existential certainty represents the basis for the libertarian  optimism  (reasonable  freedom)  upon  which  faith  in  the  future  is  founded. Within his thought there is a contradiction between mind and senses, between intellect and nature, subjective and objective…, but not between life and non‐life (destruction). Hegel’s „abolition” (Auflösung) and „overcoming” (Aufhebung) imply the existential certainty and the improvement of life based upon it. The dialectic course, as a process by which life becomes life through its own mind‐pervading, occurs on an unquestionable existential level. The identity of essence (idea) and of existence (reality) has been determined: „All that is real is reasonable, and all that is reasonable is real“ (Hegel). Reasonable life implies existential certainty, and genuine reality represents full implementation of its own developmental potential. Until it does not realize its own developmental potential, reality does not exist in a concrete sense – it is an abstraction. When reality becomes what it might be,  only  then does  it  becomes  real  in  the  veritable  sense.  The  dogmatism  of  Hegel’s dialectics is based upon the assertion that the abstract (non‐historical) idea of the phenomenon  represents  the  basis for  determination  of  its  concreteness  (historicity).  In other words, the essence of the phenomenon was determined before it became a concrete historical phenomenon, which is, before its developmental potential was realized, thus creating a new reality with new developmental potential that surmounts the very idea that represents a criterion for determining the genuineness (historicity) of the phenomenon. When matters are perceived in relation to capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order, in Hegel the real does not encompass its destructive potency, and the reasonable does not indicate its destructive intention.

In Marx, just like in Hegel, the openness of the future is dominant, implying existential certainty. This represents the basis for his notion of progress:  „in the bosom“ of capitalism possibilities are generated for a „leaping from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom”. This connotes that capitalism marks the end of „the prehistory of human society” (Marx). Marx does not raise the issue of existence, but that of true history, which means of the society in which man has achieved freedom. In Marx’s concept of the historical development of society, libertarian optimism is dominant, and existential optimism deriving from it. It is based upon faith in man as a universal creative being of freedom and upon the emancipatory potential of the productive forces. At the same time, within capitalism, the sprout  of  the  new world  is  being  generated,  which  means  that  capitalism  possesses historical   fecundity.  The   specificity   of   capitalism   as   a   historically   fecund   order,   in comparison to the preceding historical periods, is that with it ends the prehistory and commences the true history of mankind. Unlike the bourgeois theorists, who perceive capitalism as the completion of history, thus sterilizing its change‐creating possibilities, Marx perceives the true values of capitalism in the fact that within it possibilities are generated for a step forward into the new society that will represent the achievement of the supreme humanistic endeavors of mankind. Despite its cessations and sidesteps, capitalism creates the historical time that streams forwards.

Marx was a dedicated advocate of Hegel’s dialectics of history. He envisaged the specific dialectics of the development of capitalism, or, more precisely, he sacrificed the dialectics of capitalism for the dialectics of pre‐capitalist history. The development of capitalism is being perceived through a prism of the dialectics of the previous historical periods and, deriving from this, the issue of its development and temporariness is being raised. The specificity of capitalism, as a concrete social‐economic formation, does not represent an integral part of that history upon which the dialectics of history is derived. Based on Marx’s most significant methodological postulate, that the last actual form in the development of society represents the key for decoding the essence of the preceding forms, there is being imposed a conclusion that the nature of the laws of dialectics cannot be determined by an analysis of pre‐capitalist history, but that capitalism, as the most developed historical order, represents the mirror in which the dialectics of history can be discerned. In other words, if history represents the starting place and the confirmation of the veracity of dialectics, then capitalism, as the highest form in the development of society, represents the starting point for the determination of the veracity of dialectics, that is, of the historical nature of social development.

There is no linear continuity in the development of historical processes, that is, of the flow of historical time. Each historical epoch has its own momentum, the nature of which conditions the nature of the historical course, and therefore also its own direction. The main momentum of the capitalist temporalization is the velocity of capital turnover. This is what conditions the course, the dynamics and the quality of the flow of time in capitalism. Specificity of the capitalist temporalization is that it destroys the evolution of the living world and the historical temporalization by turning evolution and history into mechanical occurrences, that is, into a positive nothing. Capitalist temporalization has a mechanical form and a destructive nature. It is not a life‐generating, but an annihilating temporalization. The constantly accelerating course of capitalist time results in the faster and faster expiring of historical time and the life‐time of humankind. The substantial occurrence within capitalism does not stand for the creation of a humane world or for an increased certainty of human survival, but represents the destruction of nature and of man as a biological and humane being, as well as the creation of a technical world.  In the preceding historical periods, time was streaming forward. The more and more dramatic climate changes and the obliteration of life on the planet cause real time, that is to say, the life‐time of humankind, to stop streaming forward – instead, it started flowing backwards from the zero‐point ecological delimiter, a break over which has resulted in sealing the fate of humankind. At the same time, the ecological delimiter became the perimeter of the humanistic visionary conscience. Crossing over this delimiter will trigger existential panic that will cause a fight for survival in the course of which all that makes men human and all that makes nature a life‐generating whole will be destroyed.

Capitalism is neither a conservative nor a regressive order. It does not attempt to preserve the existing world, and it does not invest efforts to take humankind back to some preceding forms of social life. However, it is a destructive order, which means that it obliterates not merely the humanistic heritage of humankind, but also life itself. Capitalism is a specific historical order by being anti‐historical as an anti‐existential order. The specific nature of capitalism conditions the specificity of capitalist development and, therefore, the specificity of  its  temporariness,  which  is  of  an  annihilating  and  totalitarian  nature. Capitalism „overcomes“  its  historical  temporariness  by  annihilating  history  as  it  turns historical time into a mechanical process and destroys man as a natural and historical being. Capitalism annihilates  temporalization  as  the  libertarian  practice  of  man  by  which  the future is being created. It became, per se, a sort of a „black hole“ that absorbs and consumes both the past and the future, turning them into a positive nothing. The ideologists of capitalism do not speak casually about the „end of the history”. Capitalist temporalization is not only of an anti‐historical nature, but is also anti‐existential (mechanical‐destructive) in nature. Capitalism is not only positioned beneath the lowest historical level, but also below the level of the lowest natural forms of life.

Historicity  is  of  a  dialectic  nature.  It  implies  the  development  of  history  into history, which means the development of man into a man, and, therefore, the turning of the world into a human world. At the same time, the development of history into history implies the development of dialectics into dialectics. It is a concrete historical dialectics as opposed to the abstract dialectics by which the essence of historical processes is being alienated from the  concrete   historical   antagonisms   and   concrete   historical   processes,   which eventually means alienated from man as a creative and libertarian being. By means of abstract  dialectics,  history  is  being  deprived  of  its  historicity.  Therefore,  freedom  also implies liberation of man from the „laws of dialectics” by which the man is deprived of his authentic (change‐creating) forces. The concrete dialectics of history implies a qualitative change of the very historical process of changes that is conditioned by the nature of concrete historical antagonisms. This concept is also present in Marx. The dialectics of history based on class struggle stands, according to Marx, for the „prehistory” of mankind that ends with capitalism. The dialectics of communism essentially differs from the dialectics of capitalism. With the emerging of communism, within which there are no classes or class struggles, begins the true development of the society and thus the true history of humankind.

Natural laws have a deterministic character and are independent of man. He can learn them and apply them, but cannot influence them, and, particularly, he cannot create new laws. The laws of dialectics do not have the power of natural laws and do not act per se, but have a historical nature which is conditioned by man’s libertarian struggle and by creative practice. Without them there is no history and, therefore, no dialectics of history. Man is not a mere object of historical laws, but is the creator of history and, therefore, the creator of dialectic processes. At the same time, the concrete historical nature of the laws of dialectics is also conditioned by destructive practice. Man cannot abolish natural laws, but he can, through the capitalist order, abolish the dialectics of history, primarily by destroying the emancipatory legacy and the visionary conscience of humankind. In that way the alternatives to the ruling order are being nullified, and so, also, is the category of possibility, or the libertarian practice capable of creating a humane world. The most radical way to abolish the dialectics of history is through the annihilation of man as a libertarian and creative  being. Actually,  the development  of  capitalism  into  a  totalitarian  order  of destruction conditions the nature of the man’s subjective practice and, therefore, conditions the development of man. In Marx, the subjective practice, as the basic condition of the man’s freedom, achieves its concrete definition in relation to determinism, which acts as a natural law,  and  not  in relation  to capitalist  determinism,  which  has  an  annihilating  nature.

Subjective practice occurs nowadays in relation to the destructive capitalist practice that is totalitarian in nature and does not derogate only man’s freedom, but also the very survival of humankind. It is not only libertarian but also existential in nature. Only in relation to the ever more plausible possibility of the destruction of the world does the subjective practice obtain a concrete historical meaning.

Dialectics,  as  a  fundamental  historical  principle,  is  based  on  the  fact  that  the development  of  society  is  based  upon  the  struggle  between  contradictions.  The  actual nature of the contradictions that predominate during a certain historical period also conditions the concrete nature of the struggle between them, as well as the spaces of the future that these struggle open. Capitalism is based on specific contradictions, which means that it has a specific dialectics of development and, therefore, creates a specific future. The nature of the concrete dialectics of capitalism is conditioned by the destructive nature of the capitalist way of developing the productive forces. Destructiveness is „the quality” of capitalism that determines it as a specific historical order and invalidates the Hegelian dialectical  pyramid  of  freedom  and  derogates  the  progressive  nature  of  the  laws  of dialectics. In Marx, too, there is no conflict between the possibility of freedom and the possibility  of  the  obliteration  of  humankind.  According  to  Marx,  a  possibility  is  being created in the bosom of capitalism for man’s liberation from necessity, but not in relation to the possibility of the obliteration of the world. The key contradiction within capitalism, between the destructive and the life‐creating processes, is nullified. The fundamental and irreconcilable existential contradiction, which directly conditions the future of humankind, stands for the fact that man is a life‐creating being that can survive only as part of nature, the life‐generating whole, while capitalism represents a totalitarian destructive order the endurance of which is based upon obliteration of nature as a life‐generating entirety and of man as the life‐creating being. It is the development of capitalism into a totalitarian destructive order that resolves the struggle between contradictions intended to be a fight to the death between capitalism and the humankind. The thesis that capitalism „at once” destroys  the  basis  of  human  existence  and  opens  the  spaces  of  the  future,  and  that capitalism develops based on the confrontation of these two antagonistic ideas, represents the changing of the concrete dialectic principle into an abstract formally logical principle of an anti‐existential nature. If capitalism obliterates the basis of human existence, it cannot at the same time open up the spaces of the future. More precisely, it can do this in a technical, or an abstract way. Also, this does not stand for a confrontation between „good” and „bad”, but rather for of looking at the nature of certain phenomena in the context of concrete historical totality. Fascism, too, has its „good sides”, but its concrete nature can be seen solely in the context of the fascist (capitalist) totality. Unless it is seen in the context of the horrible  effects of  exploding  the  atomic  bomb,  even  the  atomic  mushroom  cloud  is „beautiful”.

Every phenomenon holds within itself its own opposite – something that „negates” it. In fact, one phenomenon becomes a historical phenomenon by obtaining historical fecundity, which implies contains the seed of novum. The specificity of capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction comes from the fact that it absorbs the opposites it creates into its own existential orbit. „The negative“ becomes the phenomenal form of the positive, like the dominant „reasoning” that is only a manifestation of destructive capitalist mindlessness. In the actual social context „the negative” becomes a phenomenal form of capitalist totalization of the world: capitalism turns negation into its own affirmation. The existential logic of capitalism that conditions the fact that capitalism creates sources of profit based on consequences of the obliteration of life, and, therefore, the vehicle for its own development, pulls into the existential and ideological orbit of capitalism everything that  provides  possibilities  for overcoming  capitalism.  Capitalism  absorbs  into  its  own sphere of life even those social forces which, according to Marx, capitalism generates as its own (potential) negation (the working class), and not only through the ideological and economic spheres, but also through the totalitarian nature of the very way of life under capitalism. „The synthesis“ is reduced to an absorbing of the antagonisms into the ruling order and to its turning into a vehicle for the development of capitalism. In that sense, capitalism abrogates the dialectics of history based on the conflict of antagonisms and turns history into a mechanical process. The space is being created for otherness, but not for newness.

Turning quantity into quality is an abstract principle. It does not imply, per se, clearing a space for the future. Quantity can facilitate qualitative changes only if within it there is a potential for novum. In capitalism, quantity does not imply only those phenomena that   provide   the   possibility   for   qualitative   leaps,   but   also   those   that   destroy   the emancipatory legacy of humankind, as well as human life, itself. Marx’s analysis of history refers to the unavoidable downfall of capitalism. Capitalism collapses because in its womb gestates the embryo of a new society in the form of the working class, which is its own negation and feeds on the life‐generating force of capitalism based on the development of the productive forces and on the emancipatory possibilities of civil society. According to Marx, the future (communist) world is a negation of capitalism, meaning that it surmounts capitalism  by  enabling  the  development  of  the  seed  of  the  future  generated  within capitalism. It came out that capitalism develops by destroying the seed of novum generated within civil society, which means that it destroys its specific historicity, and in that way liquidates the dialectics of history. By obliterating the emancipatory legacy of civil society, the idea of novum and the visionary conscience, capitalism sterilizes civil society by depriving it of its historical fecundity. Moreover, the destructive capitalist totalization of the world implies turning all that provides the possibility for a quality rise into a vehicle for the destruction of the world. This is what determines the concrete historical nature of the category of the possible in contemporary capitalism.

Critique of capitalism, in terms of the concept of the future, which means starting off from man as a (realized) universal creative being of freedom, is feasible as a concrete critique only in relation to capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order that directly conditions the nature of the post‐capitalist world by obliterating both nature and man. Since its emergence, capitalism has sown the seeds of destruction, that it then germinated, and threatens to destroy the living world. Every day of capitalist life represents a new wound on the body of the living world, injuries that force man, more and more dramatically, to face the imperative of a struggle for survival. By destroying life, capitalism most directly predetermines the future of humankind. The history of humankind in an existential and, therefore, also an essential sense, is conditioned by consequences generated by capitalism – consequences  that  are  capitalism’s  „legacy”  for  the  future.  Capitalism  has  a  specific dialectics of development that is not only anti‐libertarian, but also of anti‐existential in nature. It is not only dehumanizing, but is also a de‐naturalizing barbarism. Capitalism destroys the human and the natural world by creating a technological world. As an order that de‐naturalizes nature, capitalism does not only liquidate the dialectics of history, but also the dialectics of nature. The forces of nature, overpowered by the forms of capitalist technology, with their destructive character, derogate the very dialectics of nature by calling the survival of the living world into question. The way capitalism „overpowers” historicity and annihilates history, also „overpowers” naturalness by annihilating nature as a life‐ generating entirety and man as a life‐creating being.

Failing to notice the destructive nature of capitalism, Marx does not raise the issue of potential threats to the survival of humankind from the capitalism’s mastering of the forces of nature through science and technology. The dialectics of capitalist destruction is based on the fact that capitalist development of the productive forces obliterates, more and more dramatically, the basis of human survival and, at the same time, amplifies the possibilities  for the  immediate  destruction  of  humankind  by  applying  technical  and biological means. The faster capital turnover reduces the probability of human survival, the clearer it is that capitalist determinism is lethal in nature. Capitalism eliminates uncertainty by obliterating life and, therefore, the very existential basis that is necessary for man to have freedom of choice. The development of capitalism into a totalitarian order of destruction indicates that the laws of dialectics are not merely principles of progress, but also principles for the destruction of the world. What‐has‐not‐yet‐been as a concrete historical principle does not only imply the coming of an emancipator, but also of the destructive possibilities of capitalism. The category of possibility opens the space not only for freedom and for providing a certain existence, but also for obliterating the world. The growing intensity of the destruction of life makes the issue of the survival of humankind the most important human issue, and optimizing the possibilities for human survival the most basic criterion for assessing the correctness of human actions.

Marx does not envision the possibility of stepping out of and beyond capitalism into a civilization of freedom, as it relates to the development of capitalism as a destructive order. In Marx, the category of possibility implies existential apriorism. The dialectics is encompassed within the necessity‐freedom relationship that is mediated by the critical and change‐creating mind. This results in reasonable freedom, which implies existential certainty. The category of possibility has both a developmental and libertarian, as well as an existential character. In Marx, the category of possibility implies a step out of and beyond the capitalist world, but not also the possible ways of capitalist development. Indeed, only in relationship to the possible forms of capitalist development can the concept of the new world obtain a concrete historical dimension. The what‐has‐not‐yet‐been also refers to tendencies of the development of capitalism: it becomes the order of destruction, which means that it develops by expanding the destructive powers it achieved in the form of „technical civilization”, by obliterating life. The category of possibility is of a historical nature. Starting from a category defined in relation to slavery, the essence of which is freedom, another category was reached, defined in relation to the destruction of life and the essence that is survival. The possibility for the creation of the new world occurs in relation to the more and more plausible possibility of the destruction of life on the planet. On that level, the dialectics of the heightening of contradictions attains a concrete historical dimension. Capitalism does not create a possibility for а „leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom”, but for a fall into an abyss of no return.

By becoming a totalitarian order of destruction, capitalism causes man to be the only potential negation of capitalism. The ever‐more realistic possibility of the destruction of humankind represents a starting point for the development of the ever‐more radical life‐ creating practice that represents the actual „negation” of the world based upon totalitarian and destructive capitalist practices. This needs to become the contemporary form by which the revolutionary struggle manifests itself. It is necessary to create a new self‐consciousness of man as a revolutionary subject, one who will avert the obliteration of life by becoming a totalizing life‐creating being. The issue here is the development of man into an authentic being rather than the petit bourgeois who represents a capitalistically degenerated man.

The true „Superman” is, in fact, the man who is adept at eliminating capitalism and creating a new world that will be the realization of the life‐creating possibilities of both nature and humankind.

Capitalism  is  a  nihilistic  order,  not  only  for  its  rejection  of  the  value‐based judgment, but also because it destroys the life‐creating potential of man and nature. Capitalist nihilism is not merely characterized by its anti‐human but also by its anti‐ existential nature. Nature „knows” that death is a precondition for rebirth, but it does not „know” the annihilation of life. In nature as in history, death opens a possibility for new life: by  its nature death  is  life‐generating.  Capitalism  destroys  the  very  cycle  of  death  and rebirth, that is, the life‐generating potential of death, and produces a destructive nothingness.

Capitalism does not generate merely a totalitarian state, but also a totalitarian society. As a matter of fact, life, itself, became a totalizing force that forms men’s characters, their consciousness, interpersonal relations, their position toward nature… Man becomes a destroyer, not only by means of his work and his consuming attitude, but also as an instrument of the capitalist life‐sphere, that is, by living the capitalist way of life, which goes on 24 hours a day and spares no one. Capitalism compels people to live a destructive style of life and, thus, become accessories to the obliteration of the world. The growingly ruthless way of life, based on the ever‐accelerating process of capitalist reproduction, allows men to survive only if they behave in accordance with the ruling processes. This is the cause of one of the most ruinous forms of social pathology: people actively depriving themselves of basic human characteristics in order to survive within a capitalistically totalized world. Under capitalism, man does not „improve” himself through the development of his own specific human potential, that is, as a historical being, but through an imposed ruling model of living that deprives him of naturalness and humanness. The basis of the petit bourgeois’ tragicquality is in the fact that the petit bourgeois assesses his own values by applying the ruling value‐model that depreciates him as a man. The sacrosanct authority of the principle „Money does not stink!” makes the individual expose himself to the worst humiliation and indignity and makes him perform the most awful crimes in order to obtain money and social affirmation. What is dominant in the most developed capitalist societies is no longer the „escape from freedom” (Fromm), but the escape from responsibility for the destruction of life. That represents the basis for contemporary conformity. It is not only of an anti‐ libertarian  but  of  a  primarily  anti‐existential  nature.  The  petit  bourgeois  denies  any personal responsibility for the destruction of life and transposes it onto „God”, onto the Sun, the stars, Biblical and other prophecies, onto „clandestine earthly forces” materialized in the form of „Freemason lodges” and other groups acting „from the shadows”. Instead of being motivated by the growingly dramatic crisis of existence to struggle against capitalism, the petit  bourgeois  allows  himself  to  be  directed  by  that  crisis  toward  an  escape  into  the illusory worlds of the entertainment industry by religious movements, churches and sects, by narcotics, alcohol… At the same time, consumption represents the most significant form of escape from the responsibility for the destruction of the world. Development of the shop‐ a‐holic mentality, which stands for man’s ultimate drowning in the capitalist swamp, is the most ruinous form of escape from reality. This, again, confirms the universal nature of the notion that capitalism turns the consequences of the destruction of the world and of man into its own sources of profit.

Capitalist totalitarianism is the most perilous form of totalitarianism ever created. It is based upon the total commercialization of nature and society. Every part of the planet, each segment of social and individual life has become an integral part of the destructive capitalist growth‐mechanism. Other historical forms of totalitarianism are manifested as related either to the idea of the past, or a certain transcendental idea, or an idea of the future – all of which open possibilities for a 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 nullifies the very possibility of establishing a critical distance from the existing world. At the beginning of its development, capitalism generated a visionary consciousness that opened space not only for the development of capitalism, but also for overcoming it (More, Campanella, Hobbes, Bacon, Owen, Saint‐Simon, Fourier…). In 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   occurrences,   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, which appears in the form of a capitalistically degenerated u‐topos.

Capitalism nullifies history by turning historical time into mechanized sequence of events, that is, into a positive nothingness. With capitalism begins the non‐historical time of the destruction of nature, which represents a period of the obliteration of life on Earth. Capitalist temporalization is not only anti‐historical, but it is also anti‐existential in character. „Nothing” is not merely a pointless (non‐reflected) life, but the extinction of life. Capitalism is a totalized annihilating power that generates absolute nothingness and therefore induces a fatal and hopeless tragicquality. What on a vital, human scale occurs as real phenomenon, within the existential parameters of the capitalist value system is turned into a non‐event. Capitalism annihilates the human, in order to give a spectacular dimension to the non‐human and the anti‐human. In that process a fetish‐quality is being attributed to the very process of annihilation, instead of just to specific objects or phenomena. Devoted to the myth of the „revolutionary” character of capitalism, Marx never recognized that capitalism does not primarily project itself into the future by developing the productive forces and emancipatory possibilities of the civil society, but through the destruction of nature and of man, and by obliterating the emancipatory legacy of bourgeois society. Capitalism will become „stable” when it obliterates all life on the planet and reaches the „absolute zero” of inanimate nature.

The Christian cataclysm stands for the end of a worldly existence and the beginning of „real” life. But it is not conceivable if man is deprived of his soul, that is, if his deep inner faith in the “real” world is destroyed. Capitalism deprives man of his soul, that symbol of his vitality as a spiritual being in which is contained the basic prospect of his deification. The capitalist cataclysm nullifies the possibility of the Christian cataclysm: there is no sin and no redemption, no repentance and no absolution… Capitalism turns the world into its own advertising space, and turns man into a destructive hedonistic fanatic who does not feel the need for moral challenges that aim beyond the existing world. Human relations have lost their spiritual and moral dimension. Money as a spectacular nothingness became a vehicle for nullifying spiritual values, and the principle of „Money does not stink!” became the supreme „religious” tenet. The contemporary apocalypse is not based upon religious consciousness and does not have an illusory character. It represents the ever more probable reality that is resulting from the development of capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order.

A ruthless demolition of the social tissue, and, thus, the destruction of man as a social being, represents another „quality” of capitalism. Capitalism degenerates man as a natural (erotic) and social being by degenerating interpersonal relations between individuals. It annihilates man’s need for another human being and creates a morbid character,  primarily  by destroying,  from  earliest  childhood,  any  need  for  other  human beings, and, thereby, any possibility for the development of his sense of humanness. Capitalism creates a lonely man who is lost within the nothingness of capitalism and predisposed to escape from the real world into one of illusion. Men become technologized Leibniz monads. Moreover, and even worse, inducing man’s fear of other men represents the basis for capitalist „sociability”. Turning man into an enemy of other men is one of capitalism’s most horrible crimes. By nullifying man as a social being through the creation of atomized individuals who are perpetually at war with one another, capitalism heightens the contradiction between reproducing individual existence and ensuring the survival of humankind. In fact, ensuring man’s immediate existence by means of the capitalist system’s reproductive machinery, which turns the individual into a destructive egotist, dramatically threatens the possibility for humankind to ensure its own survival. The atomization of mankind, which represents the most ruinous form of its de‐politicization, further aggravates this situation.

Capitalism generates such forms of „sociability” as to degenerate man as a social being. „Sociability” is being reduced to interpersonal conflict, to dishonesty, fraud, crime… Nothing in the contemporary world destroys man’s need for others more effectively than do contemporary interpersonal contacts. The authentic interpersonal relations in which man can realize himself as a libertarian, erotic, emotional, spiritual and creative being are nullified, causing relations between people to take on a technical and destructive nature, leaving man a mechanical and destructive being. Capitalism creates counterfeit‐sociability in the form of „consumers”, „spectators”, „fans”, „Facebook addicts”… Sport is one of the main vehicles for the degeneration unto annihilation of human sociability. Athletes are reduced to a quasi‐militaristic, circus‐trick‐performing and suicidal‐stunt class, and the audience is turned into a „mindless mass of frenzied supporters”. Musical „spectacles”, beer festivals and other mass drinking parties, disco clubs, supermarkets and malls, pedestrian zones in commercial parts of the city, etc. – these are all varieties of the capitalist production of a „sociability” that is deprived of naturalness and humanness. It is reduced the creation of a „mass consumption” that is conditioned by the capitalist process of destructive reproduction, and stands for a totally commercialized existence. Capitalism turns man from a social being into a consumer‐being, and turns the society from a community of emancipated individuals into a crowd of consumers. The mega‐mall has become the most important social space, and „sales”, with their „consumer stampedes”, represent the most authentic expressions of the capitalist sociability.

As  far  as  the  Internet  is  concerned,  the  increasing  possibilities  for  technical „communication” are replacing the decreasing possibilities for authentic human communication. Instead of establishing direct contacts, people establish „relationships” via an image „concocted” to appear to be a „stable and successful” individual in terms of the dominant values, that is, in terms of man’s self‐degradation and self‐mutilation. Anonymity, the    possibility    of    an    interruption    at    any    moment,    the    possibility    of  constant „transformation” and „upgrading” ‐ all these are mediators in this „communication”. The computer screen does not show the true picture of an individual, only a mask. The Internet does  not  serve  to  establish  interpersonal  contacts,  but  only  creates  technical  relations where people are „freed” from sensuous, erotic, emotional, and, ultimately, from social existence and social mediation. The screen shows images one cannot feel, touch, or look in the eyes of… Images without odour, voice, warmth… One is „freed” from that world where man cannot realize his humanity because he is reduced to a technically disguised apparition.

Internet‐populism is the most inhuman form of populism. Deceptively, everyone can appear in the „public”, but that is only a virtual „public” of anonymous people who are hiding behind their computer screens. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of texts diffused on Internet are without cultural sophistication and being imposed by means of ever more aggressive „technical presentations” produced from the machinery of the advertising industry  driving  consumer  society.  The  worst  thing  is  that  young  people  accept  being thrown into this virtual world. It is a conformist solution for a lonely soul mired in capitalist hopelessness. To accept this virtual world means, in fact, to accept the existing world in which there is no place for youth, love, future… Ultimately, it is about removing any possibility of people’s coming together and acting as political subjects – striving to eradicate the causes of misery. The annihilation of man as a social being by means of technology and the „consumer” way of life represents the most efficient way to bring about his de‐ politicization. Without the oppressed having any immediate interconnection and organization based on a clear vision of a future world that should be fought for, street rallies are being reduced to mass expressions of discontent that, instead of contributing to the re‐ humanization of an inhuman world, are more and more a factor in the regeneration of new forms of oppression and exploitation.

In contemporary capitalism, movements are created of growing numbers of homosexuals, which would, according to Marx’s „humanism‐naturalism”, fall under the classification of degenerated sociability and, consequently, degenerated naturalness. Homosexuality does not have to do with the „deranged” biological nature of man (man is a heterosexual being and has an organic predisposition for pederasty), but rather with the ruling social relations and the corresponding value challenges. It is not about the „sick man”, but a sick society. We should, therefore, not treat people, but create a „healthy society” (Fromm), in which healthy people could develop. Homosexuality is a concrete social (historical) phenomenon which is conditioned by the nature of the ruling order. It is a form in which a certain value system manifests itself, which governs relations between the sexes and as such is a concrete type of social functioning. The ancient homosexual Eros has had a significantly different nature from the capitalistically conditioned homosexuality. The homosexual community of today is one of the forms in which capitalistically degenerated sociability manifests itself. The development of homosexual relations corresponds to the disintegration of the family as a humanized natural community and conversion of marriage into   an   economic   community.  Homosexual   communities   receive   the   legitimacy  of „sociability” not in relation to family as a humanized natural community, but in relation to the desperate loneliness created by capitalism. Homosexual community is the ultimate form of capitalistically degenerated family, whereas the development of pederasty contributes to removing the possibility of making the family a humanized natural community. At the same time, by destroying man as a natural and human being, capitalism destroys authentic sociability, sterilizing Eros and, thereby, destroying the society’s capacity for biological reproduction. „Reproduction of society” has become a segment of destructive capitalist reproduction, which is, like all other areas of life, based on the principle of „Money does not stink!”. Artificial insemination, the sale of semen materials, the rental of uteruses, the sale of children ‐ these are all legal and legitimate forms of capitalist reproduction. Capitalism draws into its existential and value orbit the increasingly pernicious consequences that it produces, assigning them an institutional status and turning them into a means for its own development.

In light of the fact that capitalism destroys man as a natural and human being, the goal of marriage should be the survival of humanity as a humanized and natural community. Marriage   is   an   institutionalized   community   of   woman   and   man   that   provides   an opportunity for a stable biological reproduction of society and for raising children. When marriage is devoid of the life‐creating (fecund) dimension, it loses its primary reason for existence. At the same time, without the life‐creating dimension, marriage becomes a shell in which it is possible to insert the most diverse content. If we accept homosexuality as a basis  for  establishing  a  marital  community,  then  why  not  permit  marriage  between brothers, between sisters, between mothers and their daughters, fathers and sons, grandmothers and granddaughters, grandfathers and grandsons…? The importance of family‐relationships lies above all in its prospects for biological survival, i.e., it is grounded in the fact that incest leads to the physical and mental degeneration of offspring. In homosexual relationships, which do not have the life‐creating character, this problem does not exist. By having homosexuality serves as a fundamental principle of marriage, all boundaries fall and, with them, the traditional notion of family ties that are based on heterosexual   relationships.  Furthermore,   the   historical   dimension   of   man   is   being abolished, as is, in that context, the humanist and existential vision of the future of mankind. The question is not only what the society will look like, but how its very survival will be possible if it is converted into a population of gays and lesbians? To this question capitalism cannot find a humanistic answer, but only a technological one: the artificial insemination, meaning a mechanical production of children. In the contemporary world, homosexuality has become an anti‐existential principle. It is one of the means for destroying mankind’s reproductive capability and for sterilizing society. Homosexuality appears today as a phenomenon  befitting  a  world  that  is  collapsing  biologically  and  destroying  man  as  a natural, social and historical being.

The true nature of „gay rights” can be seen in their relation to the rights of children. What is „humane” about contesting the basic needs and rights of children? In place of the struggle to preserve family and, in that context, the right of children to have both parents and their love and care, it is insisted that „homosexuals have the right to adopt children.” At the same time, the community of children and same‐sex „parents” becomes a model for „the family of the future”. In that way, the dialectics of erotic relations between man and woman, which  is  the basis  for  the  healthy  development  of  children’s  sexuality  (personality), is destroyed. Finally, why should children have parents at all? Why not establish farms for producing and raising of children ‐ as suggested by Plato and as practiced by the Nazis? Adoption of children is not only a way of „solving the problem” of children without parents, but has become the fundamental justification for homosexual marriage. The adoption solution  is  built  upon  the consequences  created  by  capitalism  as  the  epitome  of  an inhumane order, namely, based up on children‘s basic human needs going unaddressed. Adoption implies that children are without their natural parents, that is, they have been denied the right to live with their biological fathers and mothers. In the identity documents of Western countries, instead of referring to a „father” and „mother”, increasingly, reference is being made to „the first and second parent.” One set of people „produces” and abandons children, while another adopts them. Adoption of children has become a commodity‐ exchange and a mechanical operation. Children are bought and sold as things. There is a „warranty period” like for any other commodity. Together with the rejection of the rights of children to have parents, humanist pedagogy is rejected, that is, the pedagogical system based on an effort to humanize the natural human being by means of family as a humanized natural community. At the same time, depriving children of parental love and respect is the cause of the most serious mental illnesses and the worst forms of social pathology.

The fundamental right of children is their right to a future, which means their right to a humane world and a healthy environment. Meeting the needs of children as human and natural beings has become a matter of mankind’s survival. The efforts of the most reactionary capitalist groups to reduce the planet’s population to fewer than one billion people include sterilization  and  the  extermination  of  „surplus  people”.  In  this  context,  children are  no longer viewed as „the greatest treasure”, but, rather, as the greatest threat to the survival of mankind. The future is not perceived as being determined by the creative potential of man and the humanist vision of the world, but is premised on the „fact” that natural resources are limited and that the number of people on the planet should be adjusted to that. Instead of striving to eradicate the consumer frenzy that dominates the most developed capitalist countries of the West and is the main cause of the increasingly dramatic deterioration of the planet, ever‐louder are becoming the demands for the extermination of billions of „surplus people”, which predominantly means children. By destroying children, capitalism destroys the life force of humanity and transforms human society into a world of physically and mentally degenerate Methuselahs.

In the homosexual relationship, the human body loses its genuine erotic dimension and is instrumentalized in an unnatural and inhuman way. It becomes an object of sexual exhibitionism in which the most important role is given to body parts that are unrelated to any genuine erotic nature, and especially alien to the life‐creating nature of man. It is no longer  a  humanized  natural  relation,  but  a  denaturalized  and  therefore  dehumanized relation in which the body of the „partner” is reduced to a means for achieving an orgasm. Penetration  of  the  penis  into  the  anus  is  a  painful  and  injurious  violence  against the „partner’s” organism and (as with „oral sex”) a degrading form of „sexual intercourse”. The psychological basis of homosexuality is not the emancipated human beings’ need for love, but the fear of loneliness, of rejection, of uncertainty… Instead of relations of equality between the „partners”, subjugation and submission are established, which means a sado‐ masochistic relationship that is a direct expression of the position of man in capitalism as a class order based on the principle of „Trample or be trampled!”. The need for domination and subjugation becomes a basis for the dialectic of „sex play”. „Inherited” is the model of social relations that is the basis for the ruling relation between women and men, in which women are reduced to an object of sexual humiliation.

Striving for the realization of man as a human being goes far beyond the (homo)sexual dimension of man. The insisting on homosexuality as a central issue determining human identity becomes a means for mutilation of man’s humanity and for producing „one‐dimensional” (Marcuse) man. Being human is reduced to a certain type of sexuality. To be „someone” means to be either a „gay” or a „macho‐man”. It becomes the main form of social affirmation of man, removing other forms of affirmation of man as a sovereign being. In this way man is abolished as a historic, visionary and freedom‐loving being. The „gay movement” is based on a reduced humanity and a degenerated sociability. Man achieves his human selfhood and sociality by way of his sexuality, rather than through his civil status, class and national self‐awareness, family, culture, political and religious beliefs… „Pride” is not linked to the struggle for man’s freedom, national survival and social justice, to preserving nature and mankind… but to (homo)sexuality, which has an anti‐ existential character. Homosexuals are not „proud” because they are humans, but because they are „gay” and „lesbian”. Sexuality is no longer a personal matter, but gets a spectacular public promotion. The need for sociability is reduced to a sexist exhibitionism that has a banal circus‐like character. The reduced humanness of today is of a substantially different nature from that of the past. It manifests itself in relation to an increasingly real possibility of destruction of the world and in relation to the creative powers of man, who is able to abolish class society and create a new world.

„The struggle for gay rights” indicates the hypocrisy of the capitalist world. Why is the „struggle for gay rights” deprived of the humanist and visionary dimensions? Why don’t those who call upon „humanity” for the sake of homosexuals, not fight against the inhumane and for a humane world for all? „The struggle for gay rights” does not have a humanistic, but rather a political character, and contributes to the preservation of the existing world. Gay „Pride Parades” are the highest manifestations of „democracy”, and “respect for the rights of homosexuals” the highest affirmation of the ruling order’s „humanity”. By imposing the issue of „exercising the rights of homosexuals”, any questions concerning the survival of humanity and the freedom of man are removed from public awareness: the biological degradation of the people, the ruthless plundering of the working class, dying from disease, hunger and thirst, drugs, the criminalization of society, the rise of the police state, illiteracy, loneliness, the destruction of entire peoples by the „democratic” West, experiments with genetic material, production of the increasingly potent means for mass destruction, the „spraying” of the population and land, mental illnesses, destruction of soil and living organisms with genetically modified plants, breakdowns of nuclear facilities, suicide, violence, increasingly expensive medical services and an increasingly destructive use of pharmaceuticals, the growing social disparities and the growing misery of the working class, children and retirees, an increasingly polluted environment, toxic food, the capitalists’ monopoly of the media… At the same time, „the struggle for gay rights” becomes a way to install division among people based on their sexual orientation, which works to destroy those forms of sociality (civil, national and class integration) that provide opportunities for man to survive and to achieve freedom.

The matter of (homo)sexuality can be understood in a humanistic way only in the context of realization of an integral humanity of man, from the perspective of the struggle for the preservation  of  life  on  Earth  and  the  creation  of  a  humane  world.  The  critical distance between capitalism and a humane society also implies a critical distance between homosexuality and man as a humanized natural (life‐creating) and social being. On this basis homosexuals as emancipated people could contribute to the development of social relations that would provide the ability to overcome (homo)sexual one‐dimensionality. A distinction must be made between gay people who are emancipated human beings and those whose view of the world and the future is based on their sexual orientation. The first are able to perceive homosexuality as a social phenomenon in the context of the struggle for survival of mankind and the creation of a humane world; the latter are deprived of critical and visionary consciousness, and are hopelessly mired in the mud of capitalism. The emancipation of homosexuals, as people, from homosexuality is one of the forms of freeing man from unnatural and inhuman needs that capitalism has created in man. In fact, the emancipation of homosexuals from homosexuality is one of the forms of emancipation of man from capitalism. Man, who is aware of the disastrous consequences of the development of capitalism, should confront the demon that capitalism has instilled in him and in a manner that he, together with others, could fight against capitalism and for a humane world. We are all victims of capitalism. All of us carry within ourselves from early childhood a germ of evil that, in the inhumane world, eventually destroys the human in us. We are all inclined towards violence; we are all jealous, selfish, „perverse”, destructive… It is only a question of the extent to which we are able to control and conceal the evil that is in us. The only way for man to win against the evil that is instilled in him is to fight against the social order that creates this evil and fosters its development. Loneliness is the soil in which the capitalist seed of evil develops best. The development of social relations and the turning of society into a community of free people is the best way one may confront the evil and develop one’s own humanity. It, in fact, means the development of an emancipated and fighting sociability. That is why civil initiatives and working‐class movements that pull people out of their solitary burrows and provide them the opportunity, through fighting against the inhumane world, to experience themselves as social beings, are of great importance. In the fight for the survival of  mankind and  the  creation  of  a  humane  world  will  break  to  the  surface  those  human qualities that connect people together and make them humans.

Instead of striving for a humane world and the true humanity of man, the answer to the „gay question” is sought within capitalism, which produces the worst forms of social pathology. In an inhumane society, human problems can be „solved” only in an inhumane way. Only in a humane society can human problems be resolved in a humane way.

The body is the basic vessel of human existence in the world and man’s basic connection to the world. It is not a natural given or a phenomenon sui generis. It is rather the product of the historical development of society. Each civilization creates a specific body and a specific relation to the body and, thus, a specific man. Even in Ancient Greece, people realized that the production of a particular body also implies the production of a particular type of man (masters and slaves). Class and racial physiognomic is given great importance in bourgeois anthropology and concentrated on particularly by bourgeois Hellenic scholars who idealized Ancient Greece. At the same time, man does not experience his body immediately but through a concrete totality of the epoch in which he lives and the prevailing ideological „model” of the body, as a concrete human (social) being.

The answer to the question of what is the human body in the contemporary world can be reached only in the context of the prevailing tendency of capitalist development. Capitalism produces an individual who is in functional unity with it and who enables its development, above all, by producing an appropriate body. The prevailing relation to the body is mediated by „technical civilization”. In other words, the body is reduced to being a peculiar machine, while bodily movement is reduced to the mechanics of motion. Technical functionality and efficiency become the basic features of the capitalist body. Basically, a dominant instrumental and exploitative relation to nature is fundamental to the relation to the human body. Rather than being a harmonious part of the living environment that, as such, should be respected, the body is reduced to being the object of transformation and an instrument for the attainment of inhuman goals. In „consumer society”, consumption has become the dominant form of bodily activity. The body has become part of the consumer way of life, and it responds to the demands of consumer civilization. The relation to the body has an instrumental character: it ceases to be an integral part of the human being and becomes a tool for the reproduction of the ruling order. The body is completely commercialized as the „greatest” achievement of the capitalist degeneration of man. Putatively, man is the „owner” of his body. In reality, he treats his body in the same way capitalism treats him as a man: by dehumanizing man, capitalism dehumanized man’s relation to his own body. It is a capitalistically created narcissism with an instrumental, destructive and spectacular nature.

The capitalist totalization of the world involves the capitalist totalization of the body, its deformation and the creation of a chronically ill man. The prevailing rhythm is that of capitalist reproduction, which destroys the biological rhythm of life – without which there is no healthy man. Not only is man guided by consumption as his moral challenge, but his body cannot  survive  without  an  increasing  number  of  devices  and  substances,  along  with  an artificial environment. Man’s survival is more and more mediated by artificial means that turn him into an invalid. The body has lost its natural needs: it can no longer process natural food, and it lives on and through medication. Man’s entire life is in „treatment”, meant ultimately to enable him to carry on in the functional harmony with the ruling order. The devolution of the body clearly shows that a developing „standard of consumption” brings on an erosion of the living standard. Labor, livelihood, movement, bio‐rhythms, diet, sleep, living space as a modern ghetto (cities), air, water, food, tobacco, drugs, sugary beverages (including alcohol), ways of life that destroy man’s natural being, his night life, forced pace and ways of eating ‐ almost all life‐styles  lead  to  man’s  degeneration.  Cholesterol,  cellulite,  diabetes, cancer,  coronary diseases, neurasthenia, depression, AIDS, etc., are not „modern diseases”, but are rather a capitalist form of man’s physical and mental degeneration. It is about man’s transformation by capitalism, which deprives him of his natural and human life‐creating quality and turns him into a plastic and technological „being”. At the same time, rather than being naturally conditioned and having a natural character, an increasing number of potential diseases are the products of laboratories and have a genocidal and for‐profit character. Capitalism produces diseases that are then „cured” through man’s transformation into a profit‐generating patient, that  is,  a  chronic  patient.  The  propaganda  machine  and his  social  position  determine  the „physical  needs”  of  contemporary  man.  Man,  who constantly  devours  larger  and  larger amounts of lower and lower quality food, is the most important strategic target of the food industry. This industry is producing a more and more gravely sick man, who is, of course, „taken in charge” by the medical and pharmaceutical industry. The consumption of larger and larger quantities of food does not reflect a need of the body; it is intended to compensate for a frustrated humanity. The same goes for smoking, drug taking, alcoholism, consumer physical exercise like aerobics, body‐building and similar activities. Capitalism turns the consequences of the destruction of man and nature into the sources of profit and invents increasingly dangerous and destructive mechanisms. The human body becomes a universal destructive machine and a universal waste bin meant to swallow the ever‐more poisonous products of capitalist civilization. At the same time, existential anxiety, daily humiliations, loneliness and hopelessness affect man’s mental health and further exacerbate his physical degeneration.

As part of the capitalistically degenerated world, man’s body has become the vehicle for the destruction of naturality and humanity and, as such, the enemy of nature and man. Capitalism has transformed man into a destructive labor force and, at the same time, into a consumer set to devour the greatest number of products in the least possible time. The nature of these commodities, the use‐value of which continually decreases from the perspective of man as a biological and human being, and the nature of man’s relationship to these goods and services, which is nothing more than to consume them, inevitably result in man’s degeneration as a biological and human being. The consumer way of life produces a denaturalized and dehumanized consumer body and a consumer mentality, and, ultimately, a consumer view of the world and a consumer (destructive) imagination. The constant focusing on devouring food distracts the mind from crucial existential and essential issues and affects visionary consciousness.  Dreams  about  food  (just  like  dreams  about  luxury  cars, swimming  pools, houses, yachts… – which constantly feed the capitalist value horizon manifested by an increasingly  aggressive  entertainment  industry)  replace  dreams  about  the  world  of  free people. At the same time, the forms of escapism created by the entertainment industry destroy man’s need for intellectual activities. Capitalism mentally mutilates people by destroying  their need for science, philosophy, poetry, music, enlightened conversation… There exists but one area of interest: money and the political power it buys, concerns which ultimately serve to rationalize the existing order that enables the accumulation of wealth through the plundering of workers and the destruction of the environment.

The relation to his own body is man’s most immediate relation to himself. Hence, the basic form of alienation from oneself is one’s alienation from one’s own body. Most people in the West experience frustration every single day because their physical appearance does not correspond to the prevailing (mass‐marketed) model of the body as the basis for social worth. Man experiences his body as a punishment, as something alien, and tries to transform it through strenuous physical exercises, „treatments”, plastic surgeries… It is „fashionable” to submit the body to the dominant „aesthetic” model and thus to submit man to the ruling order. Everything is turned upside down. To be reduced to a dehumanized and denaturalized idiot becomes the highest moral challenge ‐ especially if it might bring „fame and fortune”.

Modeling is one of the spectacular forms of the capitalist degeneration of man. By torturing their bodies and personalities, girls are transformed into advertising dolls and self‐ destructive zombies. To „walk the runways“, at the cost of destroying their authenticity and health, becomes the highest challenge for young people, who are hypnotized by the capitalist propaganda machinery and invalidated by the capitalist value system. Humiliation is masked as „spontaneity”, just as with prostitutes: giggling serves to conceal the truth that a girl is reduced to „flesh“ and as such is the object of sexual exploitation. The treatment of models differs from the treatment of livestock exhibited at agricultural fairs only in that the biological rhythms of the cattle must not be interrupted, while, on the other hand, models are forced to starve. Moreover, cattle are not humiliated in the same way these girls are. Cattle are not forced to deform their bodies and faces in order to fit a „profile” created by the capitalist clans in the shadows and by modern slave drivers who pass themselves off as catwalk „magicians”.

Physical existence in the world is not a matter of free choice. Man as a physical being is destined to live in the existing world. Reason, by virtue of imagination and illusions, can „escape“ from the existing world. The body is chained to the existing world and is a part of it. Man is a slave of capitalism because he is a slave to his own body. To be freed from slavery means to be freed from the body. This is the essence of suicide. The person who commits suicide kills his body in order to free himself from slavery in an inhuman world. Killing of the body is the final way in which capitalism deals with man. Suicide is not the act of a free will, but rather a way in which an inhuman world inflicts a lethal blow to man. The man who jumps off a cliff is actually pushed off by the prevailing order. To choose between life and death is not a matter of free will. Freedom presupposes a choice between possible forms of life and not between life and death. The decision to choose death is the decision of a man who has not only lost his freedom, but also lost the need to be free.

By becoming a totalitarian destructive order, capitalism absorbs into its existential orbit, and thus degenerates and destroys, everything that enables man to be a human being. Capitalism has deprived man of love, respect, family, friends, a healthy environment, a secure existence, happiness,  a  future…  Man  is  left  only  with  his  body,  which,  itself,  is  also capitalistically mutilated. The body is man’s sole retreat, the sole „otherness” he can „resort to” at any given moment and the only thing he „owns”. Capitalistically conditioned narcissism has become a pathological obsession with the body in terms of its instrumentalization for the purposes of achieving social status and ensuring a predictable existence. Man, as a social being, is reduced to a physical being. Given man’s loneliness and capitalistically degenerated mutual relations, the instrumental, destructive and spectacular character of man’s relation to his body is now considered „normal”.

Young people used to wear long hair and „extravagant” clothes in order to attract attention. Today, they mutilate their bodies in order to look „fashionable”. An increasing number of young people subject themselves to painful „treatments” so as to adjust to the ruling value model. Physical pain becomes the most important way in which young people can experience their existence. Every year, millions of hopeless people have pins, rings and chains forced into and through their ears, tongues, eyebrows, noses, belly buttons, nipples, vaginas, penises… Every year, millions of humiliated people deface their bodies with tattoos and plastic surgery… It is the price young people will pay to „adjust” to and obtain some „value” in a capitalistically degenerated world. Physical deformity is the manifestation of human deformity. A man who is lost in the destructive nothingness of capitalism does not have human authenticity. To deform oneself as a human being is a way by which young people try to adjust to the ruling spirit of destruction and, thus, feel that they belong to the existing world. They try to be „somebody” by turning into nothing – into capitalist nobodies. A complete, self‐destructive subjection to the ruling order is a hopeless man’s conformist response to attempts by the order  to  completely subdue  him  through  his  invalidation  as  a human being.  Man  tries to cripple himself as a human being to an extent that he will no longer feel the pain of a life deprived of humanity. He seeks to adjust to an inhuman world by completely destroying his own humanity, by destroying his libertarian dignity as a basis for his refusal to accept the existing world and as the source of a humanist visionary consciousness. „To be cool” means to attain such a mental state that the inhuman has irrevocably quashed all humanity.

Capitalism offered man a body in the same way a bad master offers a meatless bone to a hungry dog. With fewer possibilities to realize his humanity, man becomes more and more obsessed with his body. This is the most important reason why people fight so fiercely for „sexual freedom” and for indulging in anything (food, drugs, alcohol…) that might seem to alleviate the pain caused by capitalism as it deprives them of their humanity. The nature of concrete sexual relations cannot be separated from the nature of a given society. Sex is a mutual relation mediated by man’s nature as a concrete social being and thus by prevailing relations and values. It is only as a social being that man can be a sexual being. Capitalism, as a specific historical order, produces a specific sociability and, thus, a specific sexuality. On the one hand, masturbation is a typical example of autistic‐narcissistic compensatory behavior. On the other hand, there is a „total sex”, which involves the reduction of one another’s bodies to being the objects of sexual exploitation. At the same time, public promotion of the body, sexual organs and sexual relations has obtained a spectacular self‐marketing dimension. The need for sexual exhibitionism is a consequence of man’s lacking the possibility of realizing himself as a social being in a humane way. What used to be called „love” exists no more. Eroticism lacks naturality and humanness. „Sexual relations” come down to a mechanical exchange between two denaturalized and dehumanized bodies. „Sexual arousal” is achieved through increasingly perverted forms of, often violent, humiliation. Almost 80% of Americans cannot reach orgasm unless they engage in violent acts or imagine violence during intercourse. Daydreaming about sex is reduced to daydreaming about the sadistic degradation of the „partner”, whose body is reduced to the object of sexual exhibitionism.

„Group sex” is one of the most disgusting and most alluring forms of „freedom” that capitalism offers its slaves. A crowd of malodorous butt‐holes and vaginas, phalluses and breasts, drunken and doped‐up heads, smeared in sperm and saliva – this is the true image of the contemporary capitalist apocalypse. The „freedom” offered by capitalism to its slaves is limitless, which can clearly be seen in the fact that sodomy has become a „normal” form of „sexual intercourse”. More and more „respectable citizens” in the West enjoy „sexual relations” with  dogs.  The  raping  of  „home  pets”  and  their  subjection  to  various  forms of sexual perversion  have  become  widespread.  The  organizations  dealing  with  the „protection  of animals” do not bother to oppose this obnoxious form of torture, since it is an untouchable sphere of „sexual freedoms” guaranteed by „democracy” to its citizens. Finally, „sex dolls” have become extremely popular on the sex market. This represents the denouement of capitalist humanism: plastic corpses have replaced human beings. „Democracy” has finally created the ideal „sexual partners” for its slaves, who are manipulated in every possible way that comes to their (increasingly morbid) minds, and without any responsibility.

Humanity is transitioning from the terrestrial into a cosmic existence. Thanks to scientific knowledge and technical innovation, the notion of nature in the contemporary world has extended to outer space, and the emergence and survival of mankind is viewed from the cosmic viewpoint, i.e., in the context of the emergence and evolution of the cosmos. The relation to the cosmos is no longer one based on superstition, religious delusions and astrological hypotheses, but one based on scientific knowledge and technical inventions. The cosmos becomes a concrete („external”) living space for man and he begins to see himself as a concrete cosmic being. This adds a new quality to the historical development of humanity and to its understanding of nature, as well as to the (self)consciousness of man as an (emancipated) natural (cosmic) being.

In the capitalist vision of the future, Earth is reduced to a source of raw materials and energy and relation to the land is based on an exploitative‐profiteering logic. 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 as such subject to exploitation. The cosmos becomes a field for capitalist expansion where battles are fought for control of the resources and where danger constantly lurks (in the form of bloodthirsty „aliens” acquiring the status of cosmic „terrorists”), which inevitably prompts and justifies the development of the increasingly lethal military equipment that will, needless to say, be used for destruction of „the superfluous” and „the misfits” on Earth so that the most powerful capitalist corporations can take over earthly raw material and energy resources. They also serve to create an impression that technical means can secure „eternal” existence for mankind in the universe. Notable in this context is the warning of one of the most famous contemporary physicists, Stephen Hawking, that humans must move to another planet during the next 200 years. But even if that takes place, what is really „solved”? What social order will man establish on other planets? According to Hawking, it can only be capitalism. By colonizing other planets, capitalism becomes the cosmic order, and the absolutized principle of profit becomes the dominant cosmic principle. Hawking abolishes man as a life‐creating and libertarian being and reduces man’s nature to the destructive nature of capitalism. Proceeding from this, he advocates man’s escape from Earth to other planets. However, if people as such are the cause of the demise of life on Earth, then those who successfully reach another planet will do the same as they have done on Earth: fight for power and money and thus destroy life on that planet too. In other words, escape to other planets is pointless because man cannot escape from his „evil” nature. If man is by his nature a „destructive being,” there is no place in the cosmos where he can build his home and manage to survive. Man becomes a cosmic homeless person sentenced to eternal wandering ‐ because he destroys everything.

Based on cataclysmic scenarios, an idea is developed about „the obsolescence of traditional humanity”, the one that in both an essential and existential sense is tied to the Earth, and about the need to create „a new humanity” that will be able to soar into space. Man is supposed to adapt mentally and physically to the challenges posed by this „cosmic epic”. Mankind’s future is thus reduced to creating a „race of cyborgs” that will be able to „compete” with „intelligent machines” and „conquer” planets. Contemporary science directs man to a mechanistic conception of himself and the cosmos. The natural and human history of society is being done away with, and man himself is thereby called into question as an emancipated natural and human being. The universe is coming closer to man only in the technical sense, but is becoming increasingly distant in natural and human terms. When we comprehend things in the real social dimension, the „cosmic epic” reveals itself as one of the technocratic myths employed to erase the historic (self)consciousness of man and, consequently, the emancipatory heritage of national cultures and civil society, which are the foundations of the idea of novum, i.e., the idea of a future (humane) world. Libertarian dreams are replaced by a „cosmic vision of the future” produced by the Hollywood film machinery supported by the military industry. The mythological projections of „cosmic worlds” become a means for debasing our own planet and for countering the belief that it is possible to preserve life on Earth. A technocratic‐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. Hollywood film industry creates the impression that heavenly bodies are now 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. To link humanity’s near  future  to  the  cosmic  expanse  is  the  fatal  illusion  created  by  the  Hollywood  film industry. At the same time, historical time is transformed into abstract time in which, in the virtual cosmic space, the capitalist world is reproduced at a „higher” technical level.

„The incursion into space” has prompted man to face the infinite vastness of the universe in a way that Earth is seen as a mere cosmic particle that can disappear at any moment. Earth becomes insignificant, relative to the cosmic expanse offered to man as a virtual world by the entertainment industry. The awareness of the cosmic position of the Earth  and  humanity makes  any  striving  for  survival  meaningless.  Scientific  discoveries evoke fear for survival, rather than offering a solution – this is because the solutions do not lie in the realm of science, but in everyday life. Asteroids, comets, supernovae, black holes, anti‐matter ‐ all these phenomena become the projections of a fear of destruction created by capitalism as a destructive order. Relations between people are not based on man’s need for another man, which means, on man’s need to do something that will contribute to the betterment of humanity, but are mediated by catastrophic scenarios that make futile any attempts to open new spaces of freedom and increase the likelihood of human survival. Thus capitalism, which in increasingly dramatic ways calls into question the survival of humanity, meaning it is the only real threat to humanity, „disappears” in the cataclysmic projections of „the future”. At the same time, by degenerating man as a natural and human being, capitalism destroys the possibility of the survival and evolution of man as an emancipated cosmic being who creates his own, human cosmos.

The Hollywood film industry deludes young people with cosmic visions while, at the same time, 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 mass 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… Importantly, „space projects” are used to support the myth of „unlimited possibilities for the development of science and technology” ‐ which becomes the basis for the myth of „unlimited possibilities for the development of capitalism”. 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 domination, manipulation and destruction.

Rather  than  an  inability  to  confront  natural  disasters,  it  is  the  conformity and loneliness of contemporary man that drives his need for mysticism and other forms of escape from life, which lead him to search for the meaning of life in irrational spheres. Rather than infinite cosmic space, it is lonely despair that induces fear in man when he glances towards heaven. Understanding the infinite as an openness, which means as a possibility of unlimited development of the creative powers of man and the spaces of freedom, depends on the creation of a humane social order on Earth. Only the development of human relations and a feeling that he is not alone on Earth can create in man a sense that he is not alone in the universe, and give meaning to human life. When young people are embraced together, they do not see in the endless deep blue of the cosmos a source of danger, but an unlimited field of the future.

That the extent of the capitalist destructive madness is limitless is demonstrated by the fact that capitalists are trying to turn cosmic space into a military platform from which they will be able to destroy life on Earth. The development of capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction has led to a situation where the greatest threat to the survival of humanity and our planet does not come from the countless celestial bodies and cosmic cataclysms, but from capitalism! In the essential and existential projection of the future, development of productive forces should be aimed at humanizing the world and enriching nature, that is, at increasing the certainty of the survival of mankind. In this context, man’s „incursion” into the cosmos should be focused on the development of technical means that can prevent potential threats to Earth that come from outer space, such as the impact of a celestial body, or excessive radiation that can occur as a result of explosions on the Sun or some distant celestial bodies, and the like. At the same time, „incursion” into the cosmos should contribute not only to increasing the certainty of mankind’s survival, but also to its unification in order to solve the basic existential and essential issues. In this sense, the most immediate consequence of a „incursion” into the cosmos should be to create a humane world.

Regarding the question of whether there are beings in the universe similar to us, the problem is that things are perceived as quantitative relations and in the dimension of the given, which has a static character, which means, in a technical and, thus, in an abstract way. The whole issue, in fact, lies outside of the plane of quantitative measurement and probability theory. There is nothing in the universe that is similar to and, especially, nothing that can be identified with the human world. The human world is a part of the infinite universe only in the material sense. Indeed, in the qualitative sense, the human world is substantially different from the cosmos that surrounds it. It is incommensurable with the possible cosmic life forms. The essence of the human world is its historicity, which means that it continuously experiences qualitative transformation ‐ becoming a human world, where man continuously becomes man. As a historical and social being, man is a unique cosmic being, and this makes for the specificity and uniqueness of the human world on the cosmic scale. The openness of the future based on the unlimited creative and libertarian potential of man is the essence and the uniqueness of the human cosmos. At the same time, starting from the idea of infinity, one can come to the conclusion that there are countless variations of life forms in the universe, which means countless possibilities of existence of qualitatively different organisms and beings.

In the context of cosmological thought, the perception of man’s cosmic essence by Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest scientists of modern times, as stated in an interview with John Smith in 1899, merits attention. Tesla advocates a cosmological pantheism that has an energetic character. He 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. There is no nature as a specific kind of matter, there is no evolution of the living world and man as the highest form of the development of nature; there is no human world as a specific universe and man as a specific cosmic being… 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.

As for the idea of „God”, it is not based on respect for the laws of nature or on faith in the creative power of man as a libertarian being, but rather on the fear of natural forces and of death (perishment). If „God” existed, we would insist on an empirical and rational, rather than on the theological mystificatory verbiage aimed at blocking reason, or on prayer and liturgical rituals aimed at causing psychological effects for producing a fatalistic and subservient consciousness. How can one „not believe in God” if „He” is „omnipresent” and „omnipotent”? Similarly, if „God” existed, each of us would have a direct relationship with „Him“, which means that the church as a „mediator” between „God” and man would be meaningless. The basis for religion is the religious consciousness that results from the historical development of society. The seminal form of religious consciousness is animism, followed by totemism and polytheism. Monotheism is the highest form in the development of religious consciousness. Rather than „God” creating the world, it was man at a certain stage of historical development that created the idea of „God”, later to be stolen from him and to become the private property of the clergy. The great Serbian educator Vasa Pelagić claimed that churches are „shops” in which priests sell people lies about „God”.

Historically, „God” appears as a creative principle alienated from man, a principle by which man is deprived of (self)creative (self)consciousness and libertarian dignity. Through the idea of „God” as „The Creator of the world,” the creative powers of man are alienated from him and become a means for his subjugation by the ruling class and for the deification of the class order itself based on the „sanctity” of private property (while the church, itself, is based on collective ownership ‐ what hypocrisy!) and the exploitation of peasants and workers. Throughout history, man has been in a subordinate position in relation to the (imaginary or real) cosmos that has had a metaphorical and politically instrumental role in obtaining eternal life for the ruling order. The human ability to create life  is  made  imaginary:  the creation  of  imaginary  religious  consciousness  becomes  a „compensation” for depriving man of his ability to create this earthly world in his image. Instead of the idea of „God” as a creativistic principle being used for development of the self‐ consciousness of man as a sovereign cosmic being, for the development of his libertarian dignity and the unification of humanity in the struggle for the preservation of life on Earth, it is rather a tool of the ruling class for erasing the emancipatory heritage and for producing a fatalistic consciousness that leads humanity to its demise (the idea of „heavenly people”, „paradise,” „eternal life in heaven” and the like). Christianity sends humanity a terrible message: man must, and deserves to, suffer. If man were happy on Earth, then the „garden of Eden” would be meaningless. As for death, it gives meaning to life. „Eternal life” is the worst kind of curse.

In the emancipatory sense, the idea of „God as the creator of the world” is the result of the historical development of society and it signifies man’s becoming a sovereign cosmic being. The development of the self‐consciousness of man as a creative being and a creator of (his own) world is the basis for the theory of the world as „God’s creation”. „God” is an expression of man’s becoming independent from nature and placing his powers „above” the powers of nature. Through the idea of „God”, man becomes an autonomous creative power and, in that sense, a sovereign cosmic being: the creation of the world is a conscious and volitional act. „God” is not the creator of the human world, but a symbolic expression of the specific relationship of man as a sovereign cosmic being to the universe. He appears as a historical quality through which man comes to an idea of the world as a specific cosmos and to an idea of himself as a specific cosmic being, and as a quality that provides the possibility for  man  as a  specific  cosmic  being  to  overcome  the  infinite  (physical)  quantum  of  the cosmos and perceive the cosmos as a life‐creating whole. At the same time, the idea that spirit can create matter may mean that man’s creative powers and his creative imagination are the forces that can create the non‐existent. Man with his creative spirit and creative abilities cannot produce matter out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), but is able through the creative processing of matter to enable it to realize its life‐creating potential. This is the affirmation  of  the life‐creating principle  as  a  universal  cosmic  principle  and  man  as  a specific  cosmic being  that  is the highest  form  in  which  the  life‐creating  nature  of  the universe is realized.

The notion that the true essence, which enables man to overcome the existing world, lies not outside, but within man, is one of the most important emancipatory ideas of Christianity. Rather than lightening him from the outside, it is the inner illumination (enlightenment) that is the fundamental principle of spiritualization of man. It follows that the emanating radiance of man’s humanity, from which Walter Benjamin’s aura is derived, is the basis for establishing society as a fraternal community of „radiant” people. At the same time, the humanity emanating from man is the light that illuminates the road ahead. One of the most dramatic truths, which enables man in the face of the worst tyranny to keep the faith that he can fight for a just world, is this: the faintest light penetrates the densest darkness. Candle flame is the symbol of that truth. Exposure of churches to artificial light is a way of sterilizing their power of enlightenment and of converting them into the scenery of the existing world. The purpose of their existence is to radiate light that enables man to see that which  is invisible.  They  should  emanate  the  true  light  that  does  not  lighten  but enlighten man. „Grandiose” places of worship are not beacons of the light of truth, but an embodiment of the Earthly political and economic power of the ecclesiastical oligarchy. Rather than enlighten, they astonish the (philistine) citizenry with their monumentality. Greatness of faith is not measured by the size of places of worship, but with the depth of conceiving what is true. Faith does not inhabit the walls of churches, but the hearts of people. A false faith is based on a spectacular illusion; true faith is based on an invisible truth.

The question of „God” is really a question about the essence of man and the cosmos. As such, it is a „mediator” between mankind and the universe. With man’s emancipation as a cosmic being,  the  idea  of  „God”  acquires  a  new  dimension.  In  the  era  of  the  cosmic expansion of humanity, it no longer has anything to do with „heaven”. The idea of „God” can survive only in the depths of the human being, primarily as an aesthetic idea, which enables man to comprehend the cosmos in a human way and treat it as a life‐creating whole. At the same time, it has a reason to exist as one of the unifying ideas for humanity within the anti‐ capitalist movement ‐ as a symbolic synthesis of the humanistic heritage and the humanist potentials of mankind in relation to the technical world and the reduction of man to mere matter, meaning, in relation to the mechanistic materialism that has an anti‐spiritual and anti‐life character.

Marx’s idea of „humanism‐naturalism” from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts indicates the possibility of overcoming the antagonism between nature and man through their mutual cooperation resulting in a simultaneous fulfillment of both man’s and nature’s emancipatory potential. Marx: „Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self‐estrangement and, therefore, as man’s complete atonement as a social (i.e., human) being – a reunion accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. Thus communism, as fully developed naturalism, is humanism, and as fully developed humanism, is naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the tension between existence and essence, between objectification and self‐affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of History solved, and it knows itself to be this resolution.” (4)

The idea of „humanism‐naturalism”, as a concrete historical concept and not as an ideal that can only be dreamed of, indicates that Marx does not consider a future relative to capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order. Marx’s „humanism‐naturalism” does not have a concrete historical dimension, but rather is based on the abstract determination of the essence of nature and man. „Humanism‐naturalism” is projected into a future space where man and nature appear on a mythological level and correspond to their idealized concepts. For Marx, man’s liberation from his enslavement to nature and the possibility of nature’s humanization represent the resolution of their antagonistic relation. It is, however, based on the  capitalist mode  of  development  of  the  productive  forces,  a  process  that  does  not promote man’s liberation from nature, but rather makes him more dependent on it. According to Marx, the domination of nature and its exploitation, through technology, is the domination and exploitation of man. Indeed, capitalist technology consists of natural forces turned by capitalism into an anti‐natural power. Capitalism „masters” nature by destroying it and thus creates man’s increasingly dangerous enemy. Only relative to the destructive tendencies of capitalist development can Marx’s idea of „humanism‐naturalism” take on a concrete historical, critical and visionary meaning.

On man’s relation to nature, Marx writes in Capital: „By acting on the external world and changing it, man at the same time changes his own nature.“ (5) It follows that man’s relation to nature conditions man’s nature. Marx based his thesis on the view that, by transforming nature into useful objects, man conquers natural forces and, thus, develops his own  creative powers.  The  transformation  of  nature  has  a  libertarian  and existential character. Following the same principle, if man transforms nature by destroying it, he simultaneously destroys himself as a natural and human being and becomes a destructive mechanism. Because  of  capitalistically  degenerated  labor,  man  does  not develop  his universal creative powers but, instead, is crippled as a natural, creative and social being and reduced to being a mechanical part of working processes – to being a destructive specialty‐ idiot. At the same time, capitalism, through the „consumer” way of life, has turned even non‐ work time into time for capitalist reproduction, that is, into time for the (self)destruction of man and nature. In capitalism, however, the relation to nature only appears to be mediated by human practice. Since man is instrumentalized, from his earliest youth, by a capitalistically conditioned way of life, human practice is but one of the manifestations of capitalism’s relation to nature and essentially corresponds to capitalism’s destructive character. At the same time, this destructive relation to nature conditions man’s relation to both society and the future, as well as man’s relation to himself as a natural and human being. Only if man, as an emancipated natural being, has a humanizing relation to nature, can he have a humanizing relation to his own body as his immediate nature and to himself as a human being.

As for the glorification of nature, in One‐Dimensional Man, Marcuse comes to the following conclusion: „All joy and all happiness derive from the ability to transcend Nature – a transcendence in which the mastery of Nature is itself subordinated to the liberation and pacification of existence. (…) Glorification of the natural is part of the ideology that protects an unnatural society in its struggle against liberation. (…) Civilization produces the means for freeing Nature from its own brutality, its own insufficiency, its own blindness, by virtue of the cognitive and transforming power of Reason. And Reason can fulfill this function only as   post‐technological   rationality,   in   which   technics   is   itself   the   instrumentality   of pacification, organon of the ‘art of life’. The function of Reason then converges with the function  of  Art.“  (6)  „The  brutality”  of  nature  has  an  existential  and  life‐generating character, unlike capitalist brutality, which has a destructive character and conditions man’s anthropological image: instead of being a „beast”, man has become a „(self)destructive” being. In capitalism, „nature ceases to be merely nature” by being deprived of its life‐ creating quality and reduced to the object of exploitation and destruction. In sport, which is a mirror of the true image of capitalism, nature does not free itself from its insufficiencies and brutality, but rather becomes the object of exploitation and destruction. In sport, the body, as man’s immediate nature, becomes the opponent who must be conquered and used for the attainment of inhuman ends. Man does not free himself in sport from natural determinism; he rather „frees” himself from life.

Marcuse overlooks the fact that nature itself is humanizing. In Emile, Rousseau writes about the „art of living” learned by the child in nature, which „calls him to a human life”. (7) For the North American Chief, life in nature enables the cultivation of the senses and, thus, the development of man’s aesthetical being, whereas the cutting of man’s organic bond with nature leads to a degeneration of the senses and, consequently, of man, himself. He says that the white man cannot hear the life sounds of nature, smell its scents, discern its colors… This is because the capitalist way of life has degenerated his senses and destroyed the need to enjoy the beauty of both nature and life, a pleasure possible only when man is an organic part of nature. Unlike Goethe and Schiller, Marx did not have a romantic relation to nature (for Klopstock, skates are „wings on the feet”, enabling man to fly to the future) and did not attach a particular importance to the aesthetical dimension of nature. Since capitalism, by destroying nature, abolishes natural brutality, it is necessary to fight for nature’s naturalization, for its liberation from the capitalist exploitation and destruction. Natural forces should be transformed into vehicles for nature’s preservation and humanization. Nature’s liberating potential is contained in its life‐creating quality – in the creation of new forms of life. Man is by nature a life‐creating being, who can be humanized only if his life‐creating quality is recognized as an integral part of nature. Humanization becomes the development (overcoming) of the original naturality, and not its subordination to a rational pattern, to the model of the „humanized” and the like. Only as an emancipated natural being can man truly experience the fullness of his human being. Instead of being a form through which nature can be overcome by the „spirit”, which means to attain a notion of itself and relate to itself, man should overcome his original natural life‐creating quality through the development of his creative being, meaning that it should become the basis for the totalization of the world. It is about the transformation of the principle of fecundity into the life‐creating  principle  and  the  life‐creating  principle  into  the  universal  creative principle.

As far as the relation between reason and nature is concerned, Marcuse writes about this in One‐Dimensional Man in the context of his discussion of Hegel’s concept of freedom, with respect to which Marx develops his emancipatory thought. Marcuse: „Hegel’s concept of freedom presupposes consciousness throughout (in Hegel’s terminology: self‐ consciousness). Consequently, the ‘realization’ of Nature is not, and never can be, Nature’s own work: But inasmuch as Nature is in itself negative (i.e., wanting in its own existence), the historical transformation of Nature by Man is, as the overcoming of this negativity, the liberation of Nature. Or, in Hegel’s words, Nature is in its essence non‐natural‐‘Geist’.” (8) And he continues: „History is the negation of Nature. What is only natural is overcome and recreated by the power of Reason. The metaphysical notion that Nature comes to itself in history points to the unconquered limits of Reason. It claims them as historical limits – as a task yet to be accomplished or, rather, yet to be undertaken. Nature is in itself a rational, legitimate object of science, thus it is the legitimate object not only of Reason as power, but also  of  Reason  as  freedom;  not  only  of  domination,  but  also  of  liberation.  With  the emergence of man as the animal rationale – capable of transforming Nature in accordance with the faculties of the mind and the capacities of matter – the merely natural, as the sub‐ rational, assumes negative status. It becomes a realm to be comprehended and organized by Reason.” (9)

The character of capitalist „domination“ over nature differs from domination in the pre‐capitalist era. Apparently, man as a rational being faces nature as a non‐rational order. Indeed, it is not about man’s rational relation to nature, as in Hegel, but about an irrational relation conditioned by the nature of capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order. The relation  between  nature  and  man  is  not  mediated  by  reason,  but  by  a  destructive irrationality based on the market economy and the absolutized principle of profit. If the relation   to   nature   were   rational,   then   the   awareness   of   the   increasingly   dramatic destruction of nature and thus of life would be the starting point of the entirety of human practice. The prevailing „conscious relation” to nature is but a manifestation of a destructive capitalist mindlessness based on the struggle of capitalist corporations to survive and expressed in the principles „Money does not stink!” and „Destroy the competition!”. In capitalism, the spirit through which nature attains self‐consciousness is abolished by virtue of technology, which not only has an anti‐rational, but also an anti‐existential character. It is a form in which the natural forces are capitalistically instrumentalized and have become an anti‐natural force. The idea of a „liberating transformation of nature”, on which Marcuse insists, acquires a concrete historical dimension only relative to the process of a destructive capitalist „transformation” of nature. The main insufficiency of pure nature is not its non‐ rationality, but that it cannot prevent the destruction of life on the Earth. The „liberating transformation of nature” has not only a libertarian character but, more importantly, an existential character as well. The basic pre‐condition for both freedom and survival is not man’s  liberation  from  nature,  but  man’s  liberation  from  capitalism.  The  main  task  of humanity is to stop the instrumentalization of natural forces (in the form of technology) which is aimed at destroying life and to preserve life on the planet by preserving nature as a life‐creating whole through its humanization. As for history, it is not (any longer) the negation of nature, because capitalism destroys history and turns it into a mechanical process that corresponds to the mechanistic materialism that prevails in capitalistically degenerated science, and is the most important instrument for capitalist global destruction.

In German Ideology, Marx claims: „We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be contemplated from two sides: it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be separated; as long as man exists, the history of nature and the history of man are mutually conditioned.” (10) Starting from Marx’s principle of „sociability”, we can conclude that nature does not have its own history. It acquires a historical dimension by virtue of man’s active (changing and creative) relation to it, which, above all, implies man’s becoming a historical being. The history of nature is actually the history of human society. Reasoning from historical materialism,  nature,  without   man’s   changing   and   creative   relation   to   it,   is   but  an abstraction, merely pure matter. Historical materialism involves human practice, which brings to life the teleological principles of matter and thus supersedes its pure materiality. At the same time, through the development of productive forces, man brings to life his creative potential as the highest form of living matter and, thus, creates the possibility of his (changing and creative) relation to nature. Marx sees historical materialism as man’s active and changing relation to nature and to himself in a historical (visionary) dimension, but the historical‐materialistic conception of nature itself is the result of the historical development of society and, in that context, implies the fulfillment of matter’s emancipatory potential. In contemporary capitalism, historical materialism is not „replaced” by natural‐scientific materialism, according to which man is reduced to the living nature subject to natural laws, but  by  mechanistic  materialism, according  to  which  man  is  reduced  to  that  non‐living matter subject to physical laws. The nature of contemporary materialism is conditioned by the nature of contemporary capitalism, which destroys man’s and nature’s historicity and thus destroys man’s and matter’s life‐creating potential. At the same time, by producing increasingly destructive technical means, capitalism creates the possibility of turning, in a matter of seconds, the highest forms of organized matter in the known universe, created during the course of almost five billion years, into cosmic dust.

According to Marx, nature in itself does not have a dialectical character. In The Concept of Nature in Marx, Alfred Schmidt writes: „Nature, that preceded human society, leads only to a polarity and opposition of mutually external moments, at best to their mutual interaction, but not to dialectical contradiction.“ (11) Speaking of Marx’s conception of the dialectics of nature, Schmidt concludes: „Nature becomes dialectical by creating man as a mutable agent, as a consciously active agent, who approaches nature, itself, as a ‘natural force’. In man, the means of labor and the object of labor are inter‐related. Nature is the subject‐object of labor. Its dialectics consists in people’s changing their nature by removing the  alienation  and externality  from  external  nature,  mediating  it  by  themselves,  and allowing  it  to  work purposefully  for  them.  –  Since  people’s  relationships  with nature constitute a presupposition for people’s relationships with one another, the dialectics of the labor process as a natural process extends to the dialectics of human history in general.“ (12) So, there is no destructive relation of capitalism to nature and, in that context, no specific dialectics of the relation between capitalism and nature. Capitalism does not bring nature closer to people but rather, through mutilation, turns it into man’s increasingly dangerous enemy. In view of capitalistically degenerated labor’s destructive relation to nature, a fight to preserve nature, which implies the prevention of its technization, and a fight for its humanization by way of its naturalization become man’s most important tasks. At the same time, the dialectics of nature conditions the dialectics of life, through the perfecting of animal species and the ecological balance on which nature, as a life‐creating whole, is based. Within nature, itself, there are dialectical relations between the living and non‐living worlds (including climate changes), as well as relations strictly within living nature (relations generating higher forms of life). Everything is mutually conditioned, and that is what the dynamics of ecological balance is based on. At the same time, the dialectics of nature has a deterministic and, as such, a fatalistic character. There is no subjective practice,  that  is, there  is  no  freedom  of  choice nor  the  creation  of  alternatives,  and, therefore, no idea of novum and the future.

Capitalism’s instrumental relation to nature, which reduced it to the object of exploitation and destruction, conditions the instrumental relation to the human body as man’s immediate nature. What happens in nature happens to the body. Capitalist denaturalization of nature is at the same time the denaturalization of man. Capitalism denaturalizes man directly, by turning him into the instrument for the destruction of life, and indirectly, by turning the natural living environment into a technical space. In order to protect themselves from increasingly dangerous climate changes, people spend more and more time in artificial living conditions and thus are inevitably degraded as natural and human beings. Flats, business premises, restaurants, supermarkets, cars, public transport, hospitals, shopping malls… ‐ all have artificial living conditions. Man loses his life force as a natural being and becomes increasingly dependent on technical means and a technicized living environment. The creation of artificial living conditions alleviates effects of the increasingly dangerous climate changes and thus buys time for capitalism, which, unless it is soon destroyed, will degenerate nature to such an extent that man will no longer be able to survive even with the help of technical devices and technicized living conditions.

Marx overlooks the fact that the neutering of the life‐creating force of living human beings is a universal principle of capitalist development. By destroying man as a natural being, capitalism destroys man as a life‐creating being. By becoming a consuming (destructive) instrument of capital, the body loses its reproductive capabilities and becomes a dead body. The rise of the „consumer standard” is achieved through the destruction of man’s life‐creating faculties and life‐creating needs. Men and women have fewer and fewer organic substances  enabling  them  to  be  fertile  beings.  A  polluted  environment, contaminated water and food, the destruction of the organism’s biological rhythm, an increased existential uncertainty that keeps man under constant stress… ‐ all this leads to serious physical and mental disorders and causes man’s sterility. By destroying nature, capitalism destroys man’s organic (genetic) relation to nature and degenerates man as a natural (biological) being. The creation of a „technical civilization” implies the transformation of nature into a technical space and man into a technical „being” – a walking corpse. Having children is less and less a humanized natural process and more and more a technical feat. In vitro fertilization, sperm banking, surrogate motherhood, the birthing, itself – all this bespeaks a commercial and technical character. In the so‐called „great religions”, the woman is reduced to a breeder sow with a saint’s halo; in capitalism, the woman is reduced to a technical instrument for the production of children. The worst thing is that the very process of the capital reproduction destroys man as a fertile being. In some areas of production, the working day is reduced while, at the same time, there is a greater need for work force „mobility”, which means that people who can constantly be available to their bosses are given priority when applying for a job. These are the people „freed” from social,   particularly   family,   obligations.   An  increasing   number   of   women   submit   to „voluntary“ sterilization in order to „gain the confidence of an employer“ and get a job. The official working hours are more and more flexible. The subordination of all life to the ever‐ quickening rhythm of capital reproduction is one of the chief causes of the dramatic fall in the birth rates in the most advanced capitalist countries. The restoration of the life‐creating potential of man as a fertile being is one of the most important challenges that capitalism makes to humanity.

In his early writings Marx attaches a special importance to sensuality. Schmidt wrote: „Anybody who is concerned today with Marx’s conception of nature must consider the emancipatory role of human nature, the liberating power of ‘sensuality’, in the thoughts of the young  Marx.“  (13)  By  destroying  nature  as  a  life‐generating  whole,  capitalism destroys man as a life‐creating part of nature. This leads to the degeneration of the senses and, thus, to the reduction and degeneration of sensual impressions and, consequently, to the degradation of the relation to the natural environment, that being man’s relation to himself as a (humanized) natural being and to other people as (humanized) natural beings. Capitalism abolishes  man’s  immediate  relation  to  nature  and  reduces  it  to  a  technical relation by technical means. Man develops his senses through the technical world in which he  lives  and not  through  his  humanization,  but  through  the  destruction  of  his  original naturalness. Through the reduction of the natural and the human, capitalism reduces man as a natural and human being and thus reduces his spheres of interest. Living in an environment that is less and less natural and human, man loses his ability to perceive the natural and the human. At the same time, the individual who sits in front of a computer every single day loses interest in the surrounding world. For him, the „world” that appears on the screen becomes the real world, while nature and society are experienced as the virtual world. To perceive the world through one’s own experience and, thus, to perceive oneself as a human being immediately conditions the field of one’s perception and, thereby, the development of one’s senses. Capitalism degenerates man by mutilating his senses and transforming them into „sensors” that absorb only such impressions as enable the functioning of man as a working‐consuming mechanism. The Chief of the Seattle tribe pointed this out. The white man does not hear the sounds of nature and does not smell the odor  created  by  capitalist  progress  ‐  just  like  a  dying  man.  At  its  „consumer”  stage, capitalism destroys man’s senses by turning him into the means for the destruction of life and a container devouring the increasingly poisonous surrogates of „consumer” civilization. The destruction of the senses leads to the destruction of reason. Man experiences the world through his mutilated senses and degenerated reason, which is not capable of discerning the important and establishing a critical and changing relation to the world. The „after‐effects” on the brain are far worse than those on the body since they create a capitalistically degenerated reason. Instead of a critical and visionary mind, the prevailing ratio is instrumentalized and destructive, based on the value‐model ingrained into people from early childhood that becomes the criterion distinguishing „good” from „bad”, „beautiful” from „ugly”… The „need” for Coca‐Cola, the „holy water” of capitalism, is not a bodily need but a value challenge. The same goes for the food produced in McDonald’s restaurants, which symbolize the „American way of life” and, as such, are the temples of capitalism. A petty bourgeois takes his child to a McDonald’s restaurant to have a „hamburger” in the same spirit with which a religious man takes his child to church to receive communion. By eating a „hamburger”, a petty bourgeois does not seek to satisfy his hunger, he rather satisfies his need to become a part of the world symbolized by McDonald’s restaurants. At the same time, a meaningless life deprives man of the possibility of dedicating himself to serious thinking without which he cannot find answers to vital existential and essential questions. The ruling capitalist centers of power are doing their best to keep man from independent thinking. To think means to step off the conveyer belt of „consumer society”; to think means not to be under the control of „Big Brother”; to think means to face one’s fear; to think means to realize that capitalism leads humankind to disaster; to think means to get organized; to think means to protest; to think means to be inventive; to think means to create a new world… If man is ready to fight for his life and freedom, capitalism is doomed to failure.

By degenerating the senses, capitalism degenerates man’s erotic being. In contrast to ancient man, whose prevailing Eros was homosexual (pedophilic) and who insisted on a graceful (seductive)  movement  and  physical  suppleness,  today  we  have  a  de‐eroticized body deprived of the natural and the human, whose movement is based on a technical mimesis that bring the body to a destructive instrumentalism. Capitalism has degenerated man as an erotic being by reducing him to the vehicle for capital accumulation. In Capital, Marx points out man’s de‐eroticization in the process of industrial production. Yet this desensitization is not about man’s genetic degeneration but rather about his physical deformation through one‐sided physical activity. According to Marx, man’s dehumanization and denaturalization do not derive from capitalist development of the productive forces, but from mechanized labor and specialization, which turn man into a mechanical part of the process of industrial production (a machine) that compels him to behave in a way that mechanizes his body. The capitalist form of industrial labor turns man into a „freak” (Marx), but not into a technical object. In the post‐industrial forms of labor, the exhausting and degenerating one‐sided physical activity is abolished, but the processes that dehumanize and denaturalize man by turning labor into a destructive activity are not. At the same time, capitalism degenerates man not only through destructive labor, but also through a consumer way of life that turns man’s body into a container, and through a commercialized form of physical activity that has a destructive character. Ultimately, the nature of the process of man’s   dehumanization   and  denaturalization   can   be   clearly   seen   in   the   context   of capitalism’s despoiling of climate, water, air, soil, the biological rhythm of the organism, constant  mental  stress, overeating,  sterility,  alcoholism,  excessive  use  of  pills,  drug addiction, loneliness, the death of entire nations… The ever deeper capitalist swamp breeds ever more dangerous diseases that affect man’s life‐creating power and, thus, humankind’s reproductive capability.

The destruction of nature means the destruction of humankind’s cultural heritage, created over thousands of years and based on man’s organic connection to nature, from which  develops   man’s   life‐creating   consciousness.   Writing   about   the   domination  of „technological rationality” in a „fully developed industrial society”, Marcuse concludes: „In fully developed industrial society, this insoluble core is progressively whittled down by technological rationality. Obviously, the physical transformation of the world implies the mental  transformation  of  its  symbols,  images  and  ideas.  Obviously,  when  cities  and highways and National Parks replace the villages, valleys, and forests; when motorboats race over the lakes and planes cut through the skies – then these areas lose their character as a qualitatively different reality, as areas of contradiction.“ (14)

Marcuse’s term, „technological rationality”, based on the „physical transformation of the world”, is but another name for destructive capitalist irrationalism, which deals with nature as a life‐creating whole and man as a humanized life‐creating part of nature, as well as with the emancipatory legacy of bourgeois society and the germ of novum created in it, that is, with capitalism as a historically fecund order. Hence the primary existential importance of the preservation of the cultural legacy of man’s life‐creating unity with nature and the perception of nature as a historical, aesthetical and visionary space. In this context, we can clearly see the lethal character of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and other escapist and apocalyptic  ideologies  that  deal  with  man  as  a  natural  being,  offering  him  an illusory „heavenly world” to make it easier for him to renounce his fight for the preservation of this world, to renounce his fight against capitalism.

As a reproduction of the capitalist system in its pure sense, sport, with its spectacular character, is the most radical form of capitalism’s degeneration of man. In sport, man is reduced to the object of labor, to the instrument of labor, and to the power of labor. The athlete’s body is a typical product of „technical civilization”, a capitalistically degenerated body. In the process of training, an athlete’s body is „processed” into a „useful object” through the destruction of all naturality and humanity. Sport is dominated by physical mechanics, precision of movements, aesthetics of the machine, de‐eroticization, hypertrophy of some and atrophy of other bodily functions and organs, a spiritless body and movement; instead of the ancient principle metron ariston, the dominant body is aggressive and muscular; the principle of optimum effort is replaced by the principle of „greater effort”; there is an early specialization leading to mental and physical one‐sidedness… Considering the fact that sport is dominated by the absolutized principle of performance with a quantitative character, it is clear why the destruction of man as a biological and human being  in  sport  (capitalism) becomes  inevitable.  Habermas,  Plessner,  Lash,  Krockow, Huizinga, Caillois, Lenk, and other bourgeois theorists have a superficial relation to sport, not because they cannot grasp its essence, but because to indicate the essence of sport means at once to indicate the destructive nature of capitalism, which they are keen to avoid at all costs.

In considering the relation between the use value and the exchange value of goods, more precisely, from the domination of the exchange over the use value, we will arrive at an apt starting point in the critique of record‐mania, the corner stone of modern sport. Record‐ mania  is  based  on  the  absolutized  principle  of  quantitatively  measurable  performance, which is a reflection of the market economy. A record is not a human accomplishment; it is rather the market value of the result. It does not acquire value in terms of the development of human powers, but in terms of the circulation of capital. The ideology of record‐mania is based on destructive irrationalism: the principle citius, altius, fortius, does not indicate man’s creative powers; it rather corresponds to the process of unlimited profit accumulation. The record achievement is „progressive” only in technical terms. The results achieved in sport are not conditioned by man’s qualities as a biological and human being but are the expression of the „progressive” nature of capitalism. A striving to set new records leads to the complete destruction of man as a natural and human being. In the process of breaking records, man’s creative powers become a destructive force, while man as a biological and human being becomes a technical object. Sport is the machinery producing (self)destructive people. It is a clear example of how capitalism, through the absolutized principle of quantitative performance (profit) produces a degenerated body and a degenerated consciousness. It reflects man’s mental transformation in monopolistic capitalism: from „the man beast”, the anthropological model corresponding to laisser‐faire capitalism, we have come to the man „self‐destructor” who represents the anthropological model suited to monopolistic capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order. In Hellenic society, the cult of the winner had a religious character and a festive form; in capitalist society, the cult of the winner has a destructive character and a spectacular form. The capitalist propaganda machinery has turned the robotized „champions” into „Supermen”, who have become the highest value challenge for young people.

Sport is a typical example of people’s identification with the prevailing model of „man” imposed by contemporary capitalism, which is based on the destruction of man as a human and natural being. Guided by the value and existential model imposed by capitalist „progress”, sportsmen  „voluntarily”  ruin their  bodies  and  readily  sacrifice  their lives  in order to win a medal. Physical doping is based on mental doping. It is a fanatically self‐ destructive  consciousness   deriving   from   social   conditions   that   deprive   man   of  the possibility to realize his human qualities and, thus, earn respect and ensure his existence. An athlete’s body is destroyed by the excessive use of medications and doping substances and by subjecting it to the sort of strenuous exertion in the process of training that turns the body into a machine and man into a self‐destructive fanatic. Enduring or blocking pain, which is the organism’s natural defensive response to over‐exertion, is one of the most important prerequisites for achieving „top” results. The purpose of pharmaceutical substances is, above all, to enable the athlete to „conquer pain” in order to subject his body to excessive, (self)destructive levels of exertion. The road to victory and record‐breaking leads to the destruction of man’s instinctive nature, hypertrophy of some and atrophy of other organic functions, mutilation of organs and limbs, deformation of the erotic being and biological  rhythm  of  the  organism,  modification  of  cells  and  metabolism,  muscular and nerve structure, genetic degeneration, creation of (self)destructive, sado‐masochistic character…

Capitalism is dominated by the ecocidal principle fully expressed in sport. Man’s relation to the living world is marked by his readiness to be self‐destructive and his systematic work toward self‐destruction. Considering that the body is man’s immediate nature, man’s relation to the body in sport indicates his relation to nature. A man whose body is the means for realizing inhuman goals cannot recognize nature as a life‐generating whole. Sport is one of the most efficient means for the destruction of man’s natural being and the creation of an ecocidal consciousness. Sport turns the body into a mechanism and nature into a technical space, while society is transformed into a horde of dehumanized and denaturalized „competitors”. An athlete (just like a coach, a physician, or the entire „sports machine”) does not perceive his body as a natural organism; he rather treats it as the instrument for a better performance. Instead of humanizing man’s natural existence and being dominated by a humanized natural movement, sport transforms man’s body into a machine and turns movement into a mechanical motion. Instead of a bodily poetics, it is dominated by a bodily mechanics. The „development of human powers“ is based on the criteria that inevitably result in the destruction of man as a human and biological being. Sport is not only the „cheapest spiritual food for the working masses that keeps them under control” (Coubertin), but it also serves as an instrument for the destruction of humanistic sociability and humanistic naturality, which are the basic links to humankind’s integration in the fight for the survival of life. At the same time, stadiums and sports centers have become the most important „natural” and „social” spaces for young people. The need for a natural and social life has become the need for a stadium and a sports center, just as the need for healthy water and food has become the need for Coca‐Cola and „hamburgers”. The „sportivization” of the world is one of the most aggressive and most efficient ways of dealing with „traditional humankind” ‐ with man as a human and natural being. A „sports machinery” has become the laboratory where capitalism produces the prototype of a „new man”, one meant to become the driving force in the creation of a capitalistically degenerated future. It is no accident that the principle „Record‐holders are born in test tubes!” has become a guide for „top” sport. Sports „progress” suggests that man as a natural and human being has become the main obstacle to the development of capitalism.

When creating a vision of the future, we should bear in mind the consequences of capitalism as a destructive order. The question of the humanization of man as a natural being can be posed as a concrete historical question only in relation to the capitalist destruction of nature and man as a natural being. Capitalism specifically eliminates man’s organic bond with nature through the destruction of nature and man as a sensual (natural) being by transforming nature into a technical space and man into a robot. Capitalistically mutated man has become part of „technical civilization”, and he is no longer capable of living in nature as an organic component. The way of life and the sensual impressions coming from a capitalistically degenerated world mutilate man as a natural and human being: the process of denaturalization is, at the same time, the process of man’s dehumanization. Instead of being a „force for liberation”, the senses have become the instrument for the development of a destructive („consumer“) man and, thus, the means for the destruction of man and nature. The destruction of nature as a life‐creating whole obliterates man’s life‐creating being, the basis for the humanization of the senses and the development of his creative being. If man does not perceive nature as a life‐creating whole, he cannot perceive himself as an autonomous life‐creating being. Without a life‐creating nature, man cannot be a humanized life‐creating being. Nature is an ecological whole with its own life‐creating rhythm. Man can survive as a life‐creating being only when he is in synch with the beat of the original natural rhythm of life that is overcome (humanized) by a libertarian‐creative rhythm. As part of a „technical civilization” dominated by the rhythm of capitalist reproduction, man is doomed to degeneration and destruction. Since capitalism denaturalizes man, his „de‐alienation“ demands not only man’s humanization, but also his naturalization, a regeneration of his original natural being. Man is part of nature, and it is only in a healthy natural environment that he can develop as an authentic natural being. Only in a humane society can the emancipatory potentials of the human senses be brought to life. Human eroticism should be a humanized and not a mechanized naturality. From Marx’s concept of alienation, it can be assumed that human sensuality can be redeemed by a re‐activation of the senses in a way that promotes the development of man’s universal creative being. But if capitalism destroys man as a human and natural being, then more than a mere reactivation is needed: there must be a restoration of the capitalistically degenerated and mutilated senses.

According to Marx, nature by itself, which means as a self‐contained entity, does not exist for man. Nature as a given is an abstraction, more precisely, for man, it is sheer externality. It is only through man’s (self)conscious, active and changing relation to his natural environment that it becomes for him a specific (concrete) externity. For „primitive” man, nature was an immediate living environment and as such the source of life and death. By man’s becoming, primarily through labor, a self‐conscious and authentic human being, nature becames for him a concrete otherness and his natural being acquired a human dimension. It is about the relation of man to nature and the concrete historical character of that relation which depends on the degree of man’s liberation from nature. Without his active and changing relation to nature, man cannot acquire the notion of nature as such, nor can he acquire the notion of himself as a specific natural and authentic human being.

The thesis that „nature is a social category” (Marx) means that a concrete, historically conditioned, sociability is the basis of a concrete relation to nature and that as such it is a starting point for understanding man’s relation to nature. The same can be said both for capitalism and for other social‐economic formations: sociability is based on labor. The characteristics of the capitalist labor make it akin to previous forms of labor: it is a means for liberating man from his dependance on the elements of nature and the mode of development of man’s creative powers. In other words, through labor, man ensures survival and  opens  spaces  of  freedom.  The  specific  character  of  capitalist  labor  conditions  the specific character of sociability and thus a specific relation of man to nature. According to Marx, capitalist labor is based on the absolutized principle of profit and it insists on the increasingly more productive exploitation of nature. It causes alienation of man from nature by depriving him of nature as the „object of his production”. Marx overlooked the fact that capitalist labor does not only involve „possession” and „use”, but also destruction of nature, which means that it makes man increasingly dependent on a mutilated nature. Ultimately, man’s relation to himself, other people and nature is not mediated by „alienated labor”, but by  the  destructive  nature  of  the  capitalist  way  of  reproduction.  Since  nature  is  man’s „anorganic body” (Marx), the destruction of nature is at the same time the destruction of man as a natural and therefore a human being. In the process of capitalist reproduction, man is „alienated” not only from himself and his „organic” nature, but, by becoming a tool for the reproduction of capital, he is degenerated as a natural and human being. At the same time, the destruction of nature produces an ever bigger existential crisis, which affects the overall social life and which, ultimately, leads to the destruction of humanity.

In modern times, the relation to nature and the conception of nature are conditioned by the specific character of capitalist mastering over nature by capitalistically developed productive forces. In the contemporary world, the governing relation to nature and man appears in the form of a totalizing commercialization of nature and society. It is about a „consumer society” dominated by destructive labor and consumerism with a destructive and totalitarian character, which means that the capitalistically conditioned life has turned into the destruction of nature and man. If we depart from Marx’s most important methodological postulate that the „anatomy of man is key to understanding the anatomy of a monkey”, then „consumer society”, as the highest level in the development of capitalism, is the starting point for determining the sociability which mediates between man and nature. And this historical period is missing from Marx’s critique of capitalism.

Marx does not come to the concept of nature relative to the destructive capitalist practice, based on the capitalist mode of development of the productive forces, which processes nature by reducing it to the space of the reproduction of capital and destroys its life‐creating potential,  but  on  the  basis  of  human  practice  as  a  process  of  change  that realizes the emancipatory potential of the material world. In fact, it is only relative to the ever increasing possibility of the destruction of the living world that nature becomes for man what in its essence it really is: a life‐creating whole. Sociability does not only involve man’s concrete relation to nature, but also nature as a life‐generating whole and man as a life‐creating  being, who  is  an  integral  part  of  nature.  Nature  is  a  specifically  organized matter with its own „dialectic” of development, which conditioned man’s becoming the highest form in the development of matter. It has an authenticity, which man must respect in order to survive as a living and a human being. Man’s relation to nature is possible because nature is an authentic life‐generating whole and is conditioned by its character, i.e, by the character of man as a natural being. Nature as a life‐generating whole is a concrete material world for man and, as such, is, above all, the living environment which conditions man’s development as a physical, intellectual, erotic, life‐creating, historical, aesthetical, social, visionary, libertarian being… Man’s authenticity as an emancipated natural being is directly conditioned by nature’s authenticity as a life‐creating (generative) organic whole. Man „carries” nature in his body and draws strength in the natural environment in which he lives. Changes in nature directly affect man as a natural (physical) and human being. The ever more dramatic consequences of the capitalist destructive relation to nature indicate that man can survive only as its life‐creating part. This was realized, as long ago as the middle of the 19th century, by the Chief of the North‐American Seattle tribe, who, together with his people, directly experienced the ecocidal and genocidal nature of capitalism.

The cult of nature in „primitive peoples” was based on their fear of natural forces. In the Native‐American Chief, it is not the fear of natural forces that is the basis of a cultish relation to nature, but the natives’ existential dependancy on nature and their fear of white colonizers, who destroy the living world and thus the foundation of their survival. His cult of nature does not  express  his  fear  of  nature,  but  his  feeling  of  gratitude  because  nature enables his people to live and to survive. Nature acquires the status of a beneficent mother, who supplies her children with air, water, food, light, warmth… For the Native‐American Chief, nature is not just simple matter, but a life‐creating organism. Hence, he anthropomorphizes or personalizes not only animals, but also mountains, rivers, prairies… Nature is not a raw material and, as such, the object of processing and usage, it is rather a life‐creating whole and, as such, a „great being” from which man originated. Man is not the „master and possessor of nature” (Descartes), nor someone who, by way of labor and conquered natural forces (technique), turns it into useful objects (Marx), but a „thread in spinning wheel of life”. The world is a life‐creating organic whole, where everything is connected through mutual conditioning. The survival of the whole is conditioned by the survival of its parts, which are existentially interdependent, whereas the survival of each part is conditioned by the survival of the whole. At the same time, nature represents a peculiar womb, where man can survive only as its organic part. The Chief indicates that it is not only the body but, together with the body, the entire animate and inanimate nature that represents man’s selfness. The Chief’s belief that nature is the „spinning wheel of life“ and that man is „but a thread” indicates the ontic dimension of nature and that man can survive only as a part of nature and if nature as a whole is not threatened. A life‐creating pantheism is the basis of the ontological conception of nature and man as a natural being. The life‐ creating character of nature as a life‐creating whole is the basis, boundary and landmark of human activity. At the same time, for the Native‐American Chief, the human community is not a specifically social, but a natural community and as such a mere part of nature as a life‐ generating whole. Consequently, man is not a social, but a natural being.

The Chief does not talk about liberation of man from natural elements, and man’s certain existence is not achieved by conquering them but by complete subjection to natural forces. Nature is not man’s „enemy”, it is not a „source of danger and uncertainty”, it is not „wild” and „cruel”, but, as a life‐generating whole, it makes man more noble. The Chief is not starting from a „progress” and „emancipation”, but from the endangered living world and man,  and,  in  that  context,  from  the  destructive  relation  of  capitalism  to  nature,  which appears in the shape of European colonizers, and thus to man as a part of nature. His naturalism does not have a libertarian and visionary, but a conservative and adaptive character. He does not strive for a world of free people, but to preserve a life where man is completely subjugated to nature. His approach to nature has an anti‐exploitatory and, at the same time, an anti‐emancipatory character. In the Chief, nature’s life‐creating potentials are not manifested by human creative and cultivating practice. For him, the life of a man who is in complete harmony with natural processes is at the same time in a noble (life‐creating) relation to nature. In that context, there appears the native religion that is, in fact, a deification (and thus eternalization) of the life of man as an integral part of nature, wheares, by way of man’s life activity, natural processes have an antropological manifestation. The North‐American native is the embodiment of a man who lives in complete „unity” with nature and as such is the highest possible (natural) form of man. It is precisely by living „at one” with nature that man asserts his human nature and vice versa: the breaking of that unity with nature leads to man’s deformation as a natural and thus a human being and to the destruction of life (humanity). Humanism is reduced to a deified naturalism.

The notion that man is a libertarian being is the starting point of Marx’s relation to nature. From there it follows that man’s relation to nature is based on the conflict between determinism and freedom: nature is non‐freedom – man is freedom. Unconstrained nature restricts man’s freedom and threatens his survival. The purpose of history is to liberate man from natural determinism and promote his becoming a free human being – which means an emancipated natural being. According to Marx, man in a natural state is a mere attribute of nature and as such its slave. At the same time, his existence is constantly threatened since he is not able to produce food, to create a safe shelter, to cure himself… Marx sees in the liberation of man from his subjugation to natural forces and his liberation from mere naturalness (by overcoming man’s instinctive nature through the development of universal creative powers and thus man’s becoming an emancipated natural being) the basic precondition for human freedom and, at the same time, the basic precondition for ensuring humanity’s certain existence. There is no „reconciliation” with nature as long as man does not  conquer  natural forces.  Nature  acquires  the  possibility  of  being made  „rational”  by man’s acquiring control over it through the development of productive forces. Capitalism, as an order which establishes man’s power over natural forces and uses them as a means to turn nature into useful objects, creates the possibility for a „leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom” (Engels), which means for a leap from an uncertain to a certain existence. On the historical road to freedom, nature is reduced to the object of processing, while the capitalist development of productive forces has a revolutionary and thus a progressive character.

According to the North‐American Chief, the struggle for survival is not based on the Social Darwinist principle of the „war of all against all” (on which liberal capitalism is based), but on the co‐existence of all with all, including both animate and inanimate nature, which enables man’s survival. Instead of a „perfectioning” of the animal species according to the principle of the „survival of the fittest”, the dominant principle is that the survival of each living being is the basic condition for the survival of all, whereas the survival of living beings is viewed in the context of the survival of the natural living environment. According to Darwin, living beings mutate while adapting to their surroundings, and those who do not manage to adapt must perish. The Chief has in mind a harmonious co‐existence of living beings and man’s active adaptation to the natural conditions in which he lives, which means that he has in mind man’s struggle to prevent changes in nature and the living world which will call his survival into  question.  His  interpretation  of  the relation between man and nature does not appear relative to natural processes, but relative to a new mode of interacting with nature and thus to people living in nature brought by the white man (capitalism). The white man is the one who disturbs the existential balance in nature, which is based on the co‐existence of living beings and the natural (living) environment, and thus jeopardizes the survival of animals and humans. It is no longer about man’s mutation being conditioned by his adaptation to the natural living environment, but about the capitalist mutation, which is conditioned by man’s adaptation to the technical world through technical means and in a technical way. It does not bring about the perfecting of the human race, but it rather leads to its degeneration and destruction. Darwin is concerned with the origin and development of animal species; the Chief is concerned with the threatened existence of animal species and man. Nature becomes the unique living (life‐creating) organism and acquires an integrating ontological dimension though the idea of a „mother” as the „spinning wheel of life“.

Marx’s „humanism‐naturalism” does not only appear relative to sheer nature, but (just as with the Chief) relative to capitalism. „Humanism” is not only the overcoming of the natural order,  but  also  of  the  social  order  based  on  people’s  struggle  for  survival.  The critique of the natural state becomes the critique of liberal capitalism, which is based on Social Darwinism. A ruthless struggle for survival between animal species, the „right of might” – all that is derived from the „natural state” and becomes a „natural” excuse for capitalism as well as proof of its eternal character. Marx overlooks the specific character of the capitalist struggle for survival. In nature, the struggle for survival is the basis of the survival and development of the living world. It conditions the existential totality of the living world and the development from lower to higher life principles, which means the creation of qualitatively new living forms: it has a life‐creating (generative) character. In capitalism,  the struggle  for  survival  is  led  by  way  of  the  absolutized  principle  of performance with a quantifying character, which is based on the principle of an endless increase  in  profit.  The struggle  for  victory  (elimination)  which  is  achieved  through  an increased quantitatively measurable performance is the capitalist way of „overcoming” natural selection. Capitalist Darwinism is a capitalistically degenerated natural selection, based on the absolutized principle of quantitatively measurable performance (market‐ profit), meaning, on the destruction of the generative (life‐creating) character of natural selection, which offers the possibility of creating higher living forms – a new quality of life. Instead of creating new forms, capitalism destroys the existing living forms and degenerates man by depriving him of naturalness (denaturalization) and humanity (dehumanization). Actually, it destroys man as a living being and turns him into a robot, while turning nature and society into a technical world. The capitalist struggle for survival does not have a life‐ creating, but a destructive (annihilating) character. In monopolistic capitalism, ruled by the principles „Big fish devour small fish!” and „Destroy the competition!”, there is a final struggle with the principle „Competition breeds quality!”, on which „progress” in liberal capitalism is based. The struggle for survival is sublated by the destruction of life. It is not based on the struggle among people for survival, but on the struggle for survival among capitalist concerns, which means that the struggle is not guided by the existential needs of human beings, as is the case in nature, but on inhuman interests of capitalism, which are oppossed to life. It is not driven by poverty, but by acquisition of profit and the development of a „consumer society” based on that process, where creation and acquisition of commodities become a way of destroying man as a cultural and biological being, and as a part of nature. Ultimatelly, competition does not only involve elimination of the weaker, but also destruction of man as a living being and nature as a life‐generating whole.

Unlike the North‐American Chief, who regards man as a part of nature and who creates a mythological bond between man and nature, for Marx, man has become an emancipated natural being by acquiring the ability to have, as a specifically creative and liberating  being, an  evolving  relation  to  nature.  Hence  the  idea  of  the  humanization  of nature elaborated in Marx’s Economic and Phylosophic Manuscripts of 1844. According to Marx, nature does not have its life‐creating authenticity and ecological unity; it is rather reduced to chaotic processes. Marx deals with the idea that nature has an ontic dimension, which means that the conception of nature is independent of man’s concrete historical relation to it and thus has a non‐social and non‐historical character. When writing about the „destructiveness” of capitalism (in Outline of a Critique of Political Economy), Marx has in mind the overcoming of the „idolatric relation to nature”, since „capital constantly revolutionizes everything by destroying the obstacles which prevent the development of productive  forces,  expansion  of needs,  diversity  of  production  and  exploitation  and exchange of natural and intelectual forces”. (1) Marx overlooks the fact that capitalist destruction of the idolatric relation to nature, which he welcomes, does not have a life‐creating and emancipatory, but an anti‐existential character. To deal with the idolatric relation to nature which relies on the „revolutionary” character of capitalism means, at the same time, to deal with nature as a life‐creating (generative) whole, and man as but an organic part of it. In „primitive” prehistoric as well as precapitalist forms of life, man, in spite of his subjugated position relative to nature, lived, developed and survived – just as the living world on Earth. After two centuries of living under capitalism, humanity is on the brink of the abyss. Considering the scope of the destruction caused by capitalism, it can be concluded that, in terms of existence, even the most primitive human communities are superior to capitalism. Hence it is no surprise that an increasing number of people turn to religions that  have an  idolatric  relation  to  nature.  In that  context,  the  letter  of  the  Seattle  Chief became something of a icon particularly because it, in an exceptionally vivid and visionary way,  indicates  the  tendencies  in capitalist  development  that  lead  to  the  destruction  of nature and man. In the contemporary world, the issue of the North‐American natives’ perishing has become the issue of humanity’s survival. This is what has brought the Chief’s letter so close to an growing number of people, who rightfully view the perishing of life on the planet as their own perishing.

The philosophy of life of the Seattle Chief comes from the life philosophy of North‐ American natives: the way of ensuring existence conditioned their relation to nature. They do not treat nature based on the labor used to turn nature into useful objects; they treat it as users of nature’s gifts (gatherers and hunters). By living as part of nature and being unable to change it and thereby ensure their existence, natives were particularly vulnerable when it came to disturbing the established balance in nature. Their relation to buffaloes is indicative of their attitude. They were vitally concerned about a decrease in the number of buffaloes and killed only as many as was necessary to ensure their existence. The way in which American capitalism destroyed North‐American natives indicates the true nature of capitalism: genocide over the natives is based on an ecocidal relation to the living environment. The economic expansion of capitalism, which means turning nature into an economic space through its technicization, brought about a systematic destruction of nature and thus the destruction of indigenous peoples. American natives were primarily destroyed by the elimination of their living environment beginning with the animal species on which they depended. Starting from that fact, the Chief arrived at a truth with a fatal significance for humanity: that which befalls animals, befalls man as well. The Chief’s „prediction” does not have a religious or speculative, but an empirical character: it is based on the immediate life experience of the North‐American natives. By living in unity with nature, they experienced the ecocidal nature of capitalisam in the most dramatic way and thus were able to understand its essence and its consequences, which will enevitably befall humanity with the destruction of nature. As far as towns are concerned, they are totalized capitalist spaces and thus are capitalist ghettoes. In towns, nature is shrunken into „green spaces”, into a surrogate for the natural environment, which is ogranized on the principles of technical rationality and escapist functionality.

By trying to create a model based on the life of North‐American natives toward which contemporary man can strive, fanatical „naturalists” overlook important „details” of the life of North‐American natives that do not fit into the idyllic picture they are trying to create. A direct existential dependency on nature conditioned the relations among native tribes. Their attempt to protect the territory that represented their living space (above all, their hunting grounds) led to constant fights. Native tribes were in a state of constant warfare that led to extermination. It directly affected the way of life, customs, morals and religion of North‐American natives. The role model of young natives was not a peace‐loving and reasonable man, but a „great warrior”, who bravely fights for the survival of his tribe and ruthlessly deals with members of enemy tribes. European colonizers skillfully used the conflicts among indigenous peoples – by siding alternately with one or another – in order to subdue and exterminate them. The currently much‐idealized life of North‐American natives was, in fact, one of the causes of their downfall. It was only when man managed to ensure his existence through labor, and thus liberate himself from direct dependency on nature, that real social conditions for a peaceful co‐existence of peoples were created. The creation of a class society prevented the pacifist potential of the human community, whose survival is based on labor, from being realized.

By becoming a totalitarian destructive order, capitalism called into question the modern way of thinking based on existential apriorism and the corresponding idea of progress.  In  that context,  humanism  with  its  essential  character  and  its  critique  of capitalism that departs from the essential criteria were also called into question. By increasingly destroying life on Earth, capitalism abolishes that ontological relativism based on existential certainty. What indeed exists is, thus, determined by capitalist annihilation with its totalitarian character. Nothing is no longer just not being or essential nothingness, but a complete and final perishing of humankind.

It is necessary to create a way of thinking that will enable proper understanding of the  ruling tendency  of  global  development  and,  on  the  basis  of  the  humanist  legacy, establish a broad social movement that will work to prevent the destruction of life. From a historical point of view, the mind acquired self‐consciousness from man’s struggle for freedom. Considering the fact that capitalism dramatically threatens the survival of the living world, the contemporary mind can acquire self‐consciousness from the struggle of humankind for survival. The criticism of capitalism based on essential relativism should be replaced by a criticism that departs from the existential challenges capitalism poses for humankind. Instead of a dominating destructive mindlessness, which leads to total annihilation, a life‐ creating mind should be affirmed, a mind that can create a humane world.

The life‐creating quality as a universal and totalizing principle should become the starting point in the struggle against capitalism. It acquires a concrete historical meaning relative to capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order from the life‐creating potential of nature and man. The life‐creating quality means bringing to life the life‐creating potential of the matter, living nature, man, history, human society… The most important result of the practice of life‐creating must be a society that is a community of free and creative people and nature as a cultivated life‐creating whole. Capitalism does not animate but rather destroys the life‐creating potential of matter, living nature, history… It instrumentalizes and degenerates man’s life‐creating powers: they are used to create a „technical world“, where there is no place for either nature or man.

The human life‐creating quality involves freedom, which means overcoming sheer naturalness through an active and changing relation to nature and through the creation of a new world. The specific life‐creating potentials of man, as the highest form in the evolution of nature, represent a bond between nature and man and are the bases for the evolution of man as a specific natural being. It is about turning man from a sheer natural being into a libertarian being. Through a cultivated life‐creating practice, man turns from a generic being into an emancipated life‐creating being, which does not only reproduce its life‐creating capacity, but creates his own world. In that sense, we should differentiate between the life‐ creating quality as the creation of sheer life and the life‐creating quality as the creation of a humane world. In other words, a difference should be made between naturalistic and historical life‐creating principles: the essence of the naturalistic life‐creating principle is determinism; the essence of the historical life‐creating principle is freedom.

The life‐creating nature of man, as a natural and human being, can be realized only in nature as a life‐generating whole. Man’s active relation to nature gives a possibility to overcome sheer naturalness, if that means the preservation and development of nature’s life‐creating powers. The life‐creating principle is the umbilical cord connecting man and nature and turning them into a life‐creating whole. Living nature is not mere matter, but, through the life‐creating process of evolution, a formed and thus specific matter, which as such forms the basis of the human world as a specific universe. It is organized as a life‐ creating organic whole that creates higher living forms, which means that it is characterized by a life‐creating activism. Man is the highest life‐creating form in the evolution of living matter through which nature became a self‐conscious, life‐creating whole. Man’s libertarian and creative practice is the power which gives matter a historical dimension, which means that through it a meaningless mechanical movement becomes a meaningful historical movement. Man’s universal and creative being, which has limitless self‐reproductive potential, represents the basis of the human life‐creating principle. Each creative act opens in man a new creative space, and so on, ad infinitum. Man’s becoming a self‐conscious historical being, which means a being of the future, is the most important result of the realization of nature’s life‐creating potentials, and the ability to create its future is the most authentic expression of the life‐creating force of human society.

Not only does capitalism, as a totalitarian destructive order, destroy history, it also destroys the  evolution  of  living  beings,  which  above  all  means  the  evolution  of  human beings as the highest form of life on the Earth. It is a capitalistically conditioned mutation of man, which amounts to a his degeneration as a natural, creative and social being. Capitalism destroys man’s naturally‐and historically‐conditioned life‐creating potential and reduces him to a technically organized entity, at the same time reducing human society to a mechanical ant colony. Thus, it degenerates and destroys the life‐creating potential of living matter accumulated in the human genome over more than three billion years of evolution, as well as man’s creative capabilities, which are the product of historical development and can only be realized within society as a humanized natural community. In essence, capitalism devalues and abolishes man as a humane and natural being. The ever more present thesis that „traditional humankind” has become obsolete and that a race of cyborgs should be created, indicates that man as a human and natural being has become an obstacle to the further development of capitalism and, as such, is an unnecessary being.

The bridge to the future man has built during his historical existence has begun to crumble. The capitalist propaganda machinery works to prevent man from becoming aware of that process. To make matters worse, capitalistically degenerated life creates a type of consciousness that prevents people from realizing the nature of the looming threat against humankind. Capitalism imposes a way of thinking that does not allow man to pursue answers to questions that are of vital importance to his survival and freedom. At the same time, the economic downfall of capitalism, which directly threatens the lives of an growing number of people, marginalizes the questions which are of paramount importance to the survival of humankind and relativizes their dramatic character. How important is the destruction of forests and the melting of glaciers to a man whose family is dying in poverty? The most fatal consequences come from the fact that the existential challenge posed by capitalism to humankind stands in complete contradiction to the nature of man created by capitalism. That man is a petty bourgeois, who does not feel any responsibility for the survival of the world or for whom the question of survival comes down to the question of his personal survival. A spontaneous reaction of the atomized petty bourgeois to the increasingly realistic possibility of global annihilation is not to prevent global demise, but rather to find a safe retreat for himself. All the more so as the preservation of the bridge poses a challenge which far surpasses man’s individual powers, and man, as a lonely individual, feels helplessness before the imminent cataclysm. The most important task of the life‐creating mind is to point out the existential importance of sociability and, thus, to increase the need of man for his fellows. Without an emancipated and fighting sociability, man is condemned to a solitary and lethal hopelessness.