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Gospodinu Noamu Čomskom treba odati priznanje za hrabro suprotstavljanje američkoj imperijalističkoj politici. Nažalost, u intervjuu za beogradski list „Politika“ od 7. i 8. maja Čomski rešenje za krizu na Balkanu vidi u tome da se do kraja realizuje politika Vašingtona na ovim prostorima.
Na pitanje „šta Vi vidite kao odgovarajuće realistično rešenje za konačni status Kosova i koliko se to razlikuje od onoga što zagovaraju SAD sada?“ Čomski odgovara: „Već duže vreme osećam da je jedino realistično rešenje za konačni status Kosova u stvari ono što je ponudio predsednik Srbije (Dobrica Ćosić), mislim, negde oko 1993, to jest neka vrsta podele sa Srbima. Sada je ostalo vrlo malo Srba, ali ono što su bile srpske oblasti treba da bude deo Srbije, a ostalo neka bude nezavisno kako oni to zovu, što znači da će se pridružiti Albaniji. Ja prosto ne vidim, nisam video nikakvo drugo moguće rešenje ni pre deset godina.“
Čomskijeva ideja nije nova. To je, zapravo, „model“ za Kosovo koji su u Drugom svetskom ratu realizovale fašistička Italija i Nemačka. Što se tiče Čomskijevog pozivanja na Dobricu Ćosića, bivšeg predsednika Jugoslavije, radi se, zapravo, o alibiju koji je krajnje problematičan imajući u vidu motive zbog kojih se Ćosić zalaže za podelu Kosova (problem nataliteta).
Čomski je na istim pozicijama sa američkim vlastima. Naime, Čomski ne govori o principijelnom rešenju problema Kosova, već o „realističkom rešenju“. Na čemu se zapravo zasniva Čomskijev „realizam“? Pre svega na činjenici da su Albanci većina na Kosovu i da oni ne žele da žive u Srbiji. Da li bi Čomskijev „realizam“ bio moguć da iza Albanaca ne stoji Amerika? Da li bi bez toga mogao da se poštuje drugi realizam, naime, da Albanci predstavljaju oko 15% stanovništva Srbije i da Srbi, kao većinski narod, ne žele da se Kosmet otcepi od Srbije? Čomskijevo „realistično rešenje“ zasniva se, u stvari, na rezultatima etničkog čišćenju Srba i drugih nealbanaca sa Kosmeta (oko 300 000), koje su sprovele albanske terorističke grupe koje su, i po Čomskom, organizovale i naoružale SAD – kao i na naseljavanju stotine hiljada Albanaca iz Albanije na Kosmetu.
Šta bi se desilo kada bi se princip etničke majorizacije uzeo kao princip po kome bi trebalo da se rešavaju pitanja nacionalnih manjina u evropskim zemljama? Da li je za Čomskog „realistično rešenje“ da Albanci otcepe zapadnu Makedoniju i pripoje je Albaniji? Ili da Grci otcepe delove Albanije u kojima su većina? Ili da Turci otcepe delove Bugarske i Grčke u kojima su većina? Ili da Mađari otcepe delove Rumunije, Srbije i Slovačke u kojima su većina? Šta je sa Abhazijom, Južnom Osetijom, Nagorno-Karabahom, Pridnjestrovljem? Šta je se Katalonijom, Baskijom, Korzikom, Južnim Tirolom, delom Turske nastanjenoj Kurdima, sa Krimom i drugim delovima Ukrajine nastanjene Rusima, kao i sa delovima Baltičkih država u kojima je većinsko rusko stanovništvo?
Čomski nudi Albancima sa Kosmeta kao nacionalnoj manjini pravo da formiraju svoju državu i da se pripoje Albaniji, a šta je sa pravom Srba i Hrvata u Bosni i Hecegovini – koji nisu nacionalna manjina, već konstitutivni narodi – da odluče o svojoj samostalnosti?
Pitanje je da li je Čomski svestan da se njegova „realistična“ koncepcija zapravo legitimiše princip etničkog čišćenja – koje ima otvorenu podršku američke administracije. Čomskijeva koncepcija, bez obzira na njegove motive, predstavlja poziv na nasilno cepanje multi-etničkih država. Šta to znači za Srbiju u kojoj živi 24 nacija? Praktično, sva granična područja Srbije postale bi zone u kojima bi trebalo izazvati nacionalne sukobe i na taj način omogućiti njihovo pripajanje susednim zemljama. Provokacije su već prisutne u delovima zemlje u kojima žive muslimani (Stara Raška/Sandžak) i Mađari (Vojvodina).
Kako može otcepljenje dela zemlje, koja predstavlja osnov državnosti i nacionalne samosvesti Srba, da bude „mirno“ prihvaćen od srpskog naroda? Srbi su svesni da pravi okupatori Kosmeta nisu Albanci, već Amerikanci. Čomski ne pominje vojnu bazu „Bondsteel“ na Kosmetu koja je najveća američka baza izgrađena na tlu Evrope. A to je, zapravo, ključni razlog zbog čega Amerikanci nastoje da otcepe Kosmet od Srbije i pripoje ga Albaniji. Amerika nastoji da od balkanskih i istočno-evropskih država stvori vojni koridor da bi izolovala Evropu od Rusije i da bi spečila Evropu da se „spusti“ ka Bliskom Istoku. „Velika Albanija“ treba da bude glavna strateška tačka u američkim planovima da se ukopaju na evropskom tlu. Čomski je u intervjuu „zaboravio“ da pomene da je neposredni uzrok bombardovanja Jugoslavije bio odbijanje Miloševića da potpiše papir iz Rambujea u kome su Amerikanci tražili da se u Jugoslaviji rasporedi preko 30 000 hiljada NATO vojnika. Praktično, tražili su da Milošević prihvati okupaciju svoje zemlje.
Na pitanje „zašto su SAD započele taj rat?“, Čomski se poziva na knjigu Džona Norisa, „da stvarni cilj tog rata nije imao nikakve veze sa brigom za kosovske Albance. Stvarni uzrok bilo je to što Srbija nije sprovodila tražene socijalne i ekonomske reforme, što znači da je to bio poslednji ugao Evrope koji se nije povinovao neoliberalnim programima pod upravom SAD, pa je to moralo da bude uklonjeno“. U istom intervjuu Čomski kaže da je Milošević „trebalo da bude svrgnut i on bi verovatno bio svrgnut početkom 90-ih, da su Albanci glasali, to je bilo vrlo blizu“. Čomski u političkim snagama u Srbiji koje su bile „Trojanski konj“ SAD u Srbiji (i koje su dobile stotine miliona dolara od strane SAD za rušenje Miloševića) i u separatistički nastrojenim Albancima vidi snage koje je trebalo da sruše Miloševića. Kako neko može da se bori protiv zločinačke politike SAD na Balkanu, a da istovremeno podržava one političke snage koje sprovode američku politiku na Balkanu?
Kakav je odnos Čomskog prema Miloševiću? Čomski: „Milošević je počinio mnoge zločine, nije dobra ličnost, užasna osoba, ali optužbe protiv njega nikada ne bi mogle da se održe.“ Na pitanje „znači li da ste Vi „Miloševićev simpatizer?““, Čomski odgovara: „Ne, on je bio strašan. U stvari, trebalo je da bude svrgnut i on bi verovatno bio svrgnut početkom 90-ih, da su Albanci glasali, to je bilo vrlo blizu. On je uradio razne strašne stvari, ali to nije bila totalitarna država. Bili su izbori, bila je tu opozicija, mnogo mutnih radnji, ali toga ima svugde i ja svakako ne bih želeo da večeram s njim ili da razgovaram s njim. Jeste, on je zaslužio da mu se sudi za zločine, ali ovo suđenje nije nikada moglo da bude održivo, čak i da je bilo polupošteno. To je bila farsa; u stvari, oni su bili srećni što je umro.“
Za kakve “zločine“ treba da se sudi Miloševiću i zbog čega je trebalo da bude zbačen sa vlasti još početkom devedesetih čovek koji je uveo višepartijski sistem i koji je doneo ustav po kome nije nacija, već je građanin osnov političkog konstituisanja društva – protiv čega su bile političke snage za koje se Čomski zalaže? Čomski ni na ponovljeno pitanje novinara ne daje nikakav konkretni odgovor.
U suštini, Čomski nema političku viziju Balkana koja daje mogućnost balkanskim zemljama da sačuvaju samostalnost – bez čega je priča o „demokratskim slobodama“ samo farsa. Zbog toga on konstruiše „demokratsku“ opoziciju koja je trebalo da sruši Miloševića – koja u stvarnosti nije postojala. Madlen Olbrajt je više puta izjavila da je Jugoslavija bombardovana da bi na vlast došli oni koji će sprovoditi američku politiku na Balkanu. To je zapravo opozicija koja je nastojala da zbaci Miloševića sa vlasti i koja je došla na vlast 5.oktobra 2 000 – koja je Srbiju i Crnu Goru pretvorila u američku koloniju.
U „demokratiji“ koji je Zapad nametnuo Srbiji vojnom agresijom više od 50% radno sposobnog stanovništva nema posao; preko 65% mladih do 30 godina nema posao; prosečna plata je ispod 300 Eura; gotovo 80% zaposlednih u privatnom sektoru nema socijalno osiguranje; samo u Beogradu ima preko 80 000 narkomana; studenti plaćaju i do deset puta veće školarine nego što je to bilo u Miloševićevo vreme; u procesu nasilne privatizacije gotovo sve značajne fabrike, rudnici, izvori vode i druga društvena dobra prodata su za male pare zapadnim firmama i domaćim mafijaškim bandama; društveni bruto proizvod je ispod nivoa koji je bio u vreme najžešćih sankcija; nikada se više mladih ljudi nije iseljavalo iz zemlje nego što je to danas; ukidaju se novine i televizijske kuće koje su kritične prema Zapadu; ljudi svakodnevno gube posao ukoliko ne odgovaraju vladajućoj politici; svakodnevno se pljačkaju banke, ubijaju poštanski službenici, ljudi ginu u mafijaškim obračunima… Srbija je postala „demokratsko društvo“ po meri Zapada.
Sviđalo se to Čomskom ili ne, Slobodan Milošević je bio i ostao simbol slobodarske borbe srpskog naroda. Nije slučajno što je na ispraćaju Miloševića u Beogradu i Požarevcu bilo daleko više ljudi nego što je to bilo 5.oktobra 2 000. Jedna od glavnih parola bila je „Kosovo je Srbija!“ I to je realnost koju treba imati u vidu ukoliko se želi mir na Balkanu.
За Маркса рад је „размена материјалних и духовних добара између природе и човека“ и као такав начин хуманизовања природе и човека. Он је стваралац свеукупног друштвеног богатства; средство са којим човек прерађује природу у корисне ствари; средство за савладавање природних сила и за њихово инструментализовање ради ослобађања човека од робовања природној стихији; основни егзистенцијални и есенцијални начин произвођења друштвености; начин на који човек реализује своје стваралачке моћи и ствара свој свет; основни начин самопроизвођења човека као самосвесног и самосвојног бића; начин реализовања еманципаторских потенцијала материје и живе природе; основна могућност за „скок из царства нужности у царство слободе“ (Енгелс) и за стварање хуманог (комунистичког) друштва… Као такав, рад је „прва животна потреба“ (Маркс) и делатност са којом човек повећава извесност опстанка човечанства.
Маркс критикује капиталистички (индустријски) рад јер се у њему човек појављује као роб капитала; постаје део (индустријских) процеса производње који се заснивају на подели рада и на механичком понављању радних операција које телесно и ментално сакате радника; што се обавља у нехуманим условима; што се путем рада природа отуђује од човека која је његово „анорганско тело“; што прекомерно исцрпљује земљиште и лишава га плодности… „Отуђени рад“ могућ је зато што је човек “више” од онога на шта је сведен као оруђе за рад и најамник. Он подразумева дистанцу према раду с аспекта човека као слободарског и универзално-стваралачког (играчког) бића. Радећи, човек је стварао себи окове и отуђио се од свог аутентичног играчког бића, али је истовремено развијао своје стваралачке моћи које му пружају могућност да стекне слободарско-стваралачку самосвест. Дијалектика праксиса заснива се на сукобу између стваралачких способности које је човек стекао и немогућности да их реализује тако, да се у њима потврди као човек, што значи да створи хумани свет.
Једна од најважнијих карактеристика капиталистичког рада је та, да је створио могућност за упостављање нерадног као потенцијално слободног времена у коме радници могу да се образују, организују и боре за своја радничка, грађанска и људска права. Маркузе наводи Марксов став о дејству слободног времена на човека: “Слободно вријеме мијења оног који га посједује у другачији субјект; он тад улази у непосредан производни процес као тај измијењени субјект.” (32) Овде треба додати: као потенцијално измењени субјект под условом да се стварно ради о слободном времену, а не о привиду “слободног времена” у коме се репродукују владајући односи и вредности, као што је то са владајућим облицима игре. Нерадно време је “слободно” од рада, али не и од капитализма, као и од последица које рад производи: сакаћење еротског бића човека, његово телесно и ментално деформисање, дегенерисање међуљудских односа и уништавање хумане друштвености… Маркузе ствара психолошки профил човека будућности у односу према човеку-раднику који ствара употребне вредности, а не у односу према човеку-уништитељу који је постао део деструктивне радно-потрошачке машинерије. Постајући homo faber човек је потискивао и губио своје аутентичне људске особине (еротску природу), што је до врхунца доведено у капиталистичком друштву које је постало „техничка цивилизација“ у којој је дошло не само до дехуманизовања, већ и до денатурализовања човека. Маркузе не схвата да технички прогрес у капитализму не служи само као „инструмент доминације и експлоатације“, већ као инструмент са којим се уништава живи свет, клима, човек као биолошко и људско биће, међуљудски односи… Истовремено, технички прогрес створио је таква разорна индустријска постројења (пре свега атомске електране) и војна средства са којима човечанство може бити моментално уништено.
У “потрошачком друштву” радно и нерадно време постали су „периоди“ времена капиталистичке репродукције. Истовремено, садржај нерадног времена условљен је класним односима, што значи борбом за инструментализовање нерадног времена ради остваривања интереса владајуће класе. Буржоазија чини све да спречи да нерадно време постане слободно време радника. Стадиони, који су пројектовани по узору на римски Колосеум, изграђени су крајем 19. века када су се радници изборили за осмочасовно радно време, да би капиталисти и у нерадном времену држали радне „масе“ под контролом. Владајући облици игре постали су доминирајући садржај нерадног времена и као такви “слободно време” које буржоазија намеће радницима. Нерадно време не сме да постане време самоосвешћивања радника, већ средство за њихово увлачење у духовну орбиту буржоазије и за оплодњу капитала, што значи конзумерско време. Поготову је то актуелно данас када, због наметнуте динамике иновирања као основног услова преживљавања на тржишту, нису више хале и машине, већ је човек најважнија «инвестиција». Стваралачки ум постао је spiritus movens савременог капитализма, што указује на то да су створене објективне могућности за слободарску тотализацију света од стране (ослобођеног) човека.
У историји створене су идеје рада које се битно разликују од капиталистичког рада који се заснива на профитерском принципу. Оне у раду виде средство за задовољавање људских потреба, за реализовање еротске природе човека и за остваривање „виших циљева“. За Лутера рад је „служење богу“. Фурије инсистира на антрополошком полазишту. Природа рада одређена је еротском природом човека: рад постаје „свечаност“. Код Фрома рад добија лични печат и уметничку димензију. Енгелс у Анти-Дирингу пише о „производном раду» који „уместо да буде средство за поробљавање, постаје средство за ослобађање људи, пружајући сваком појединцу прилику да све своје способности, како телесне тако и духовне, усавршава и примењује у свим правцима, и у којој се рад тако претвара у задовољство место да буде терет». (33) Маркс критикује онај рад који је споља наметнута принуда и у коме је човек најамник, и залаже се за рад слободних људи који је постао „прва животна потреба» човека. Пишући о слободи у раду у социјалистичком друштву Маркс закључује: «Слобода се у овој области може састојати само у томе да удружени човек, удружени произвођачи рационално уреде овај свој промет материје с природом, да га доведу под своју заједничку контролу, уместо да он њима господари као нека слепа сила; да га врше с најмањим утрошком снаге и под условима који су најдостојнији и најадекватнији њиховој људској природи. Али то увек остаје царством нужности. Са оне стране њега почиње развитак људске снаге, који је сврха самом себи, право царство слободе, али које може да процвета само на оном царству нужности као својој основици. Скраћење радног дана основни је услов.» (34) За наведене идеје карактеристично је то, што се заснивају на апстрактној антрополошкој слици човека као духовног, уметничког и слободарског бића. Када се има у виду све драматичније пропадање света, природа рада у будућности биће условљена последицама деструктивне капиталистичке праксе. Да би постао „прва животна потреба“ (Маркс), рад претходно мора да постане егзистенцијални императив. Уништавајући природне животне услове капитализам намеће човечанству задатке које мора да реши да би обезбедило опстанак. Другим речима, да би могао да постане облик реализовања човека као универзалног стваралачког бића слободе, рад мора претходно да постане начин санирања последица капиталистичког „прогреса“. Егзистенцијални изазови које капитализам као деструктивни тоталитарни поредак поставља пред човека условиће природу будућег рада, природу односа према природи и природу целокупног животног и друштвеног ангажовања човека.
До истинске идеје рада (као и праксиса и поиезиса) не може се доћи полазећи од фрагментизованог света, већ од човека као целовитог и тотализујућег стваралачког бића, што значи да се рад појављује као један од специфичних облика у коме се оживотворује његово универзално стваралачко биће. Теза да је игра могућа само у односу према раду значи да се полази од игре као области, а не од човека као играчког бића који је субјект тотализовања (хуманизовања) друштвеног живота и природе, чему подлеже и рад као међуљудски однос и као самостваралачка делатност човека. Уместо рада и игре као од човека отуђених сфера, полазиште треба да буде човек као универзално стваралачко биће које се односи према раду у целокупности његове тотализујуће слободарско-стваралачке (животворне) праксе. Тада неће бити могуће применити механицистичку шему о «повратном дејству игре на рад», при чему је човек само посредник између од њега отуђених друштвених сфера. Укидањем дуализма рада и игре укида се дуализам човека као homo fabera и homo ludensa тако што човек постаје еманциповани homo libertas.
Што се тиче идеје о укидању рада, анализирајући процесе аутоматизације Маркузе упућује на Марксово схватање рада: «Естетске категорије би ушле у технологију пацификације сразмјерно конструираности производне машинерије с обзиром на слободну игру способности. Али, насупрот «технолошком Еросу» и сличним неспоразумима, «рад не може постати игра …»; Марксов став непопустљиво искључује свако романтично интерпретирање «укидања рада». Идеја о благодети такве врсте је једнако идеолошка у развијеној индустријској цивилизацији као што је била у средњем вијеку, можда и више. Јер, човјекова борба с природом је све више борба с његовим друштвом, чије моћи над појединцем постају све «рационалније» и зато нужније него икада раније. Па ипак, док сфера нужности остаје, организирање ове сфере с обзиром на квалитативно различите циљеве промијенило би не само начин већ и опсег друштвено нужне производње. Ова промјена би, пак, утјецала на људске актере производње и њихове потребе.» (35) Човекова борба с природом није све више „борба с његовим друштвом“, већ пре свега борба с капитализмом у коме је владајући ratio само облик у коме се појављује деструктивни капиталистички ирационализам. Исто тако, на основама отуђеног (деструктивног) рада не ствара се слободно, већ нерадно време које постаје конзумерско време у коме човек уништава робу да би створио нови простор на тржишту. Капитализам претвара радно и нерадно време у време у коме се репродукују владајући односи и вредности, што значи да су радно и „слободно“ време постали облици тотализујућег капиталистичког временовања.
Развој аутоматизације претставља највећи допринос капитализма укидању рада као исцрпљујуће телесне активности и стварању техничких могућности за радикално скраћивање радног времена. Међутим, аутоматизација сама по себи не укида репресију већ је, у постојећим условима капиталистичке репродукције, чини безличнијом и ефикаснијом. Неограничене могућности научног и технолошког развоја не заснивају се на неограниченим могућностима развоја капитализма, већ на неограниченим могућностима развоја стваралачких способности човека. Капитализам је покренуо те моћи и усмерио њиховог развој на уништење живота. «Моћ технике» постала је од човека отуђена и на капиталистички начин дегенерисана стваралачка моћ човека. Истинска вредност технолошког развоја није у стварању «материјалног благостања», већ у развоју стваралачких моћи човека које пружају могућност да се очува и хуманизује живот. У том контексту истинска игра постаје могућа. Играчко биће човека може да се развије у својој пуноћи тек када рад постане облик слободног оживотворења универзалних стваралачких моћи човека. Тада игра неће бити супротност раду и као таква компензациона активност за прикраћену људскост, већ стваралачка активност комплементарна раду, што значи највиши облик спонтаног реализовања човека као играчког бића. Што човек у раду буде могао слободније да испољи своју стваралачку личност, утолико ће његово играчко биће моћи да се слободније и целовитије изрази у игри – што ће бити нови потстицај за хуманистичко иновирање радних процеса. То што је рад циљно-рационална делатност не значи да начин постизања задатих ефеката не може бити остварен тако да се човек оплемењује, што значи да рад све више добија уметнички карактер. И рад који подразумева могућност стваралачког испољавања човека може бити игра, с тим што он нема ону потпуност и спонтаност коју има игра у којој човек у целости потврђује своје играчко биће, као што је то љубавна игра која је произвођење људског у чистом смислу.
Радикално скраћивање радног времена намеће се само по себи уколико рад није више средство за капиталистичку репродукцију, већ средство за задовољавање и развој истинских људских потреба. Успостављањем производње за људске потребе укида се производња непотребног и сувишног и уводи се производња неопходног чији су основни квалитети функционалност и дуготрајност. Она омогућава да се драстично скрати време које је потребно за производњу добара која су неопходна да би човек могао нормално да живи. Човек као еманциповано стваралачко биће и друштво као заједница слободних људи претстављају извориште истинских људских потреба.
Имајући у виду да је капитализам постао тоталитарни поредак деструкције, рад може да постане аутентична стваралачка делатност једино у контексту борбе човека за слободу и за повећање извесности преживљавања човечанства. Полазећи од тога, Марксови ставови из Капитала о слободи у раду у социјалистичком друштву могу да добију конкретну еманципаторску вредност. Капиталистички развој производних снага постао је негативни основ за развој стваралачких моћи радника и тиме њихове способности да преузму управљање друштвеним животом. Еманципаторски потенцијали производних снага треба да се „преместе“ из сфере материјалне производње у сферу политичке праксе која настоји да спречи уништење живота и створи нови свет. Није више рад, већ је борба за искорењивање узрока који доводе до уништења живота постала најважнији облик животворне праксе. Само политичком борбом против капитализма радници могу да стекну савремену класну, што значи еманциповану еколошку, самосвест и да спрече да буду сведени на оруђе за уништавање природе и човечанства. У капитализму радник само привидно производи друштвена добра. Он, заправо, производи уништење живота. Савремена пољопривреда не производи здраву храну, већ отров у облику пољопривредних производа истовремено уништавајући земљиште; медицина и фармација не настоје да излече људе, већ производе болеснике и генетски изобличују човека; школство не ствара умне људе, већ фах-идиоте; спорт не производи људска достигнућа, већ уништава човека као људско и биолошко биће; „информациони медији“ не настоје да обавесте људе о најважнијим збивањима, већ да сакрију битно и створе масовни идиотизам…
Савремени капитализам „ујединио“ је егзистенцијалну са есенцијалном сфером: борба за слободу постала је егзистенцијална нужност, а борба за опстанак основни слободарски изазов. Нису више сфере рада, уметности, игре – полазиште слободарске праксе, већ је то човек као тотализујуће животворно биће које читав свој живот сагледава у егзистенцијално-есенцијалној равни, што значи у контексту борбе против капитализма који је претворио законе природе, друштвене институције и човека у средство за уништење живота. У том контексту рад, којим се реализују стваралачке (животворне) моћи човека и ствара истински људски свет, постаје основна есенцијална делатност. Као што је данас произвођење робе истовремено уништавање живота, тако ће у будућем друштву произвођење добара истовремено бити произвођење здравих животних услова (оплемењене природе) и стварање здравог (оплемењеног) човека. Основни задатак човечанства у будућности биће да наново успостави еколошку равнотежу и на тај начин створи животне услове у којима може да опстане. Томе ће бити подређен развој производних снага, сами радни процеси, активности у слободном времену, практично – читав живот. Борба за опстанак постала је савремено «царство нужности» и на њеном темељу развиће се човек као тотализујуће животворно биће.
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Ljubodrag Simonović
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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.
Direct democracy
Capitalism has fully captured the political sphere into its existential orbit. Man’s political being has been alienated from him and absorbed into a „public sphere” that is now the private property of corrupt party oligarchies. The „public sphere” has become a vehicle for eliminating sociability, with its implications of a community of emancipated political beings. The citizen is reduced to a part of the voting machinery, with „elections” providing a „democratic” legitimacy to the ruling order. The political sphere has become a political circus, and the „political struggle” between parties is now a struggle for power between the most powerful capitalist groups. The elections are always won by capitalism, while workers remain defeated.
The economic sphere of capitalism has become the undisputed totalizing power over all social life. It confronts the citizen as a constitutive agent of (bourgeois) society and reduces him, through the „consumer” way of life, to a depoliticized and depersonalized subject. A vast majority of citizens in the most advanced capitalist countries live in debt-slavery. What „freedom” can man enjoy if he is literally a slave to the banks and thus to the current capitalist order? His life, as well as the life of his family, is immediately conditioned by his „indebtedness”. For millions of citizens in the most developed capitalist countries, „freedom” is just the choice between prison, begging and suicide.
The destruction of nature and its transformation into man’s enemy constitutes the destruction of humanity’s emancipatory legacy, the possibility of creating a humane society and developing man as a humane and natural being. By destroying nature, capitalism makes man increasingly dependent on it and thus reduces the existential space necessary to realize the emancipatory potential of civil society. The increasingly dramatic destruction of the fundamentals of human existence leads to the rise of new forms of totalitarianism. The creation of a „new world order”, under which the most powerful capitalist concerns intend to destroy the institutional structure that enables citizens to express their sovereign political will and defend their existential interests, is brought about by capitalist destruction. The rise of totalitarianism goes hand in hand with the destruction of life: capitalism destroys democratic institutions and the germ of a novum created by bourgeois society and establishes a global fascism based on an ecocidal terrorism. In this context, the political struggle of the oppressed is degenerated with their criminalization, with their resentment over being coerced into large-scale, murderous violence. By destroying the emancipatory legacy of civil society, capitalism destroys the critical-changing and visionary mind, moral reasoning, spirituality, man’s erotic and social being – all the qualities that make man human – and, thus, calls into question the very existence of the visionary and changing practice necessary to realizing the objective possibilities of creating a new world.
„Indirect democracy” implies intellectual elitism and thus an intellectual „elite” that mediates between man and the world and makes the decisions that determine the future of humanity. The members of the French Enlightenment and Classical German philosophers, as well as the philosophers belonging to the school of English Liberalism, maintained that the world should be pervaded by the mind through the rule of an „enlightened elite” over „common citizens”. They sought to shape modern reason as the expression of an idea of the world of the newly elevated bourgeois class that will mediate between man and the world, and as an undisputed criterion for determining „truth” and „correct conduct”. Reason can no longer be the privilege of the intellectual „elite”, it must become man’s basic right. All the more significant was the intention to „return” reason to the people by eradicating the class order, for man’s ability to relate to the world and the future in a reasonable way is not only a basic preconditions of human freedom, but also a basic preconditions for humanity’s survival.
Instead of a new „great philosophy”, which would mediate between man and the world, thereby forming the basis of human self-consciousness and the starting point for social practice, people must develop a way of thinking that will lead their thinking about vital existential and essential issues and enable them to develop a combative sociability to bring an end to capitalism and create a new world. Only within a political struggle can reason take on a changing dimension. Without everyday political engagement, reason, in itself, regardless of its „quality”, can only hinder the struggle for survival and freedom. In this context, people should not use philosophy to mystify and defend the ruling order. Reasonable people should become the leading force in the demystification of capitalist „progress” and the creation of a vision of the future. It is in this context that Marx’s XI Thesis on Feuerbach, together with the idea that the „correct theory is the consciousness of a world-changing practice”, reveals its true value.
The increasingly dramatic threat to man’s immediate existence is the basis for the integration of the objective and subjective factors of changes. Capitalism’s existential menacing, perhaps, explains a concern expressed by Martin Jay to Marcuse in The Dialectical Imagination: „Indeed, to make this short digression, the key question of the possibility of a change in a society that controls the consciousness of its members remains in the major part of Marcuse’s later work, especially in One-Dimensional Man, as a disturbing issue.“ (31) Capitalism can control the consciousness of its citizens and depoliticize them only as long as it offers them the possibility of participating in the development of a „consumer society”, as long as it can reduce them to a „consuming mass”. The development of „consumer society“ is immediately conditioned by the severe devastation of natural resources and the creation of climate changes that seriously threaten the survival of a growing number of people. These processes will inevitably call into question the consumer fanaticism and conformist consciousness, which are, in actual fact, the most important instruments available to the ruling order for pulling citizens into the spiritual and social orbits of capitalism and keeping them under control. In this context, a call for „justice” takes on a new relevance. It implies the right to a healthy environment, to clean air and water and healthy food… The immediate existential threat caused by the destruction of nature, as well as the deepening economic and social crises that affect an ever larger number of „middle class” citizens, undermines the petty bourgeois spiritual sphere that „protects” man from any responsibility for global demise and leads to the development of a critical thinking and increasingly radical forms of struggle against capitalism. A positive aspect of the development of capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order is that it imposes the existential necessity for a reasonable alternative, forces man to become a totalizing life-creating being, and, as a global order, leads humanity to integrate its efforts to create a reasonable and humane world.
All forms of mediation between man and (his) world will be obviated by man’s becoming an active participant in the management of social processes. As an authentic being, man should, in close cooperation with other people, become the creator of his own world. It is about the affirmation of existential humanism, based on a life-creating relation to the world as the basis for determining man’s being. In spite of the increasingly aggressive brainwashing man undergoes on a daily basis, the growingly acute existential crisis compels people to turn to essential issues and begin to think in a serious, that is, a reasonable way. The immediate threat looming over the lives of more and more people enables the broadest layers of society to be pervaded by reason and to take control over their social lives. The ever-deepening crisis of capitalism creates concrete social conditions under which the critical and visionary mind can become a concrete possibility for „ordinary” people, those whose existence is ever more directly and dramatically jeopardized by capitalism. Only a reasonable man can foresee and prevent the consequences of the development of capitalism, and only a reasonable man can create a reasonable world. The a priori character of a possible socialist revolution gives reason a superb political significance.
Capitalism has brought humanity to the edge of the abyss, rendering the „traditional“ theoretical discussions meaningless. It confronts man in the most direct way, compelling him to grasp the essence of capitalism without a mystifying theoretical mediation. Conditions have been created for discarding the way of thinking and the ideas that serve to relativize destruction and turn concrete issues into theoretical questions – thus mutilating the active power of a changing intention. The only meaningful thought is the one that directs man to fight for survival, whereas the creation of a new world involves a confrontation not only with capitalism, but also with the consequences of capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order. The increasingly threatened and thus increasingly dangerous environment leads to the experience of a global demise becoming the driving force of political practice, thereby replacing theoretical considerations. Capitalism has discarded all ideological masks and demystified the truth. Man no longer needs science or philosophy in order to understand that capitalism destroys life along with man as a human and biological being. Capitalism, itself, as a totalitarian destructive order, has created an excellent starting point for a critique of capitalism that, at the same time, represents an undisputed guideline for the political struggle: the truth has become survival, while the struggle for the truth has become the struggle for survival. This immediately conditions the relation between theory and practice. The increasingly dramatic destruction of global life means that „changing of the world” amounts to preventing its destruction. Social phenomena obtain a concrete (affirmative and negative) meaning only in terms of efforts to stop the destruction of life and to create a new world. Only a political practice that eradicates the causes of global destruction is legitimate, only the practice that abolishes capitalism. When the relation between theory and practice is viewed in this way, to increase the certainty of human survival becomes a necessary, though insufficient, condition for verifying the correctness of political practice. This qualification is necessary because the destruction of „superfluous” populations, as advocated by representatives of the contemporary „new world order”, cannot be accepted as a way to increase the certainty of human survival.
A difference should be made between naive and realistic optimism. A naive optimism has a fatalist character and is based on the principle of tout va bien, which implies existential apriorism and an idealized conception of man. A libertarian optimism, based on existential apriorism, is a side-step in the struggle for a future. It offers false hope and, so, masks the true nature of capitalism, hindering the struggle for survival. It posits that though capitalist globalism has its bad sides, it will nevertheless result in a better world. A realistic optimism is based on a realistic analysis of the tendencies of global development and man’s will to create a humane world. It appears in relation to the destructive tendencies of capitalist development and is based on a reasonable man’s struggle against capitalism to create a new world. The mounting destruction of life and the rapidly approaching deadline for preventing global extinction abrogate a naive optimism and produce, on the one hand, a capitulating consciousness, coaxing humanity toward death, and on the other hand, an increasingly radical consciousness that refuses to reconcile itself with global annihilation. This consciousness is not humanist in itself, that is, it does not appear only in the form of a leftist movement that seeks to abolish capitalism; it rather appears in the form of a rightist movement that seeks to preserve capitalism at any price and sees the „solution” to the survival of humanity in the destruction of „superfluous” populations (the theory of the „golden billion”).
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Ljubodrag Simonović
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“Alienation” is a basic concept upon which Marx’s critique of capitalism is founded, and “dealienation” is a key idea upon which the libertarian intention of his critique of capitalism and his vision of the future are based. Capitalism’s becoming a totalitarian order of destruction rendered Marx’s concept of “alienation” insufficient to providing the opportunity for the establishment of an adequate starting point for a critique of capitalism. Man’s contemporary alienation has not merely an inhuman nature, but a destructive nature as well. It implies the obliteration of nature as a life-generating whole, of man as a biological and human being, and of the emancipatory legacy of national cultures and of civil society, that is, of the visionary mind and the idea of novum. By the annihilation of cultural and libertarian consciousness, the possibility of man’s becoming aware of his own alienation and establishing a critical and change-creating remove from capitalism is destroyed.
When capitalism became a totalitarian order of destruction, not just private property, labor and the market, but even life, itself, became means for man’s alienation from his natural and human being. Unlike the previous ruling classes, the bourgeoisie endeavors to amalgamate not only its own values but also its life-sphere into the working world. A worker is not merely a producer, but a consumer of commodities, as well, and, as such, a creator of the market, that is, an instrument for solving the crisis of over-production. Destructive consumer practices have become the dominant form of the man’s living activity and the principal mode for entrapping the worker in the existential orbit of capitalism and its values. “Consumer society” becomes a totalizing power that spares no one and that no one can escape. Commercialization of life is the worst form of totalitarianism that has ever been created in the course of human history because it completely subordinates nature, society and man to the destructive machinery of capitalist reproduction. Its essence is encoded in the monstrous maxim “Money does not stink!” which also expresses the essence of ecocidal capitalist barbarism.
In Marx, humanity, which primarily implies freedom and creativity, represents the most important quality of man, the quality toward which the concept of “alienation” is applied. It is possible for man to be, in his essence, a human being: man can become inhuman precisely because he is a man. According to Marx, though humanity can be suppressed and degenerated, it cannot be annihilated. In spite of being manipulated and repressed, in Goethe’s words: “a good man in his inarticulate impulse is entirely aware of his true course”. The concept of man’s “alienation” is manifested in relation to the possibility of his “dealienation”, which means, in spite of the capitalist totalization of life, capitalism cannot succeed in obliterating the humanity within man, so that, at an appropriate historical moment (an economic crisis of capitalism) it can be manifested in the form of revolutionary consciousness and practice. “Dealienation” represents a universal principle and implies man’s liberation from the inhuman role which capitalism imposes on him. It is of crucial importance that Marx’s idea of “alienation” refers to the fact that under capitalism man becomes alienated from his own humanity by being alienated from his authentic human potential, alienated from what he can become as a universal creative being. Each man carries inside the unlimited potential of humanity – this is Marx’s most important humanistic message and represents the basis of his vision of the future. As for the capitalist, he, being a capitalist, cannot become a human being unless he, as a man, does not emancipate himself from capitalism, which is done primarily by ensuring his own existence through his own work. The elimination of class distinctions and class relations does not merely imply the reinstatement of the worker to his authentic human being, but also a return of the capitalist to his own state of being a man. The socialist revolution, by means of which the elimination of class society based on the private ownership of the means of production takes place, also deprives capitalists of their inhumanity: capitalists do not exist without capitalism. The objective of the socialist revolution is not to exterminate capitalists, but to bring an end to class society and to create such social relations as would make it possible for each man to realize his authentic human capacities in the community of others.
In light of the prevailing tendency in the development of capitalism, instead of Marx’s concept of “alienation”, the idea of destruction should become the starting point in the critique of capitalism. This idea provides an opportunity to perceive the most significant and, for humankind and the living world, the most ruinous possibilities of capitalism. The concept of destruction does not merely define the status of man under capitalism and his relation to nature as an object of labor and the “anorganic body” (Marx) of man; it also describes the relation of capitalism to the living world, to nature as an ecological whole, and, in that context, to man as a biological and human being. Capitalism does not only alienate the natural world from man, but, by destroying it, also turns nature into man’s mortal enemy. It is not alienation, but the destructiveness of labor that is dominant in capitalism; it is not the processing but obliteration of nature; not the suppression of man’s erotic nature and the coarsening of his senses, but the degeneration of man’s human and biological (genetic) being; not only making man look foolish, but wiping out his mind… As it becomes more and more a totalitarian order of destruction, capitalism nullifies any possibility of a conflict between the human and the inhuman by destroying the human and thereby eliminating the possibility of alienation: the less man remains man, the smaller is the possibility of his alienation from himself as a man.
The development of capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction poses the question: can capitalism so degenerate man as to remove absolutely all his human characteristics? Considering the destructive madness prevalent in the most developed capitalist countries, it is not unreasonable to conclude that capitalism has exceeded the anthropological limits imagined by Marx with his concept of “alienation”: that it would merely succeed in degenerating man to such an extent that his destructive “needs” would turn into the power that motivated him and provided meaning to his life. It is not merely man’s „alienation“ from his human essence, but his degeneration as a human and biological being. Capitalism not only dehumanizes man, but it also denaturalizes him, deprives him of the characteristics that are distinctive to living beings. Capitalism does not merely compel man to act like a mechanical part of the industrial labor process, thereby distorting him physiologically, as Marx claims, but it also deforms him genetically and mutilates him as a living being. It is a capitalistically caused mutation of man from a natural and cultural being into a destructive working (consuming) machine. The “reification” of man by the capitalist market was also followed by his being turned, as worker and consumer, into an accomplice in the destruction of the world. Destruction became an authentic need of the capitalistically degenerated man.
Life based upon destructive capitalist totalitarianism has become the cause of physical and mental degeneration among people. “Consumer society” forces man to adapt to the ruling order through destructive consumer activity which “solves” the crisis of over-production with an ever more intensive destruction of commodities (dynamics of destruction), thus clearing new space in the market. In the most immediate way it conditions the way of life, the mentality and the value-horizon of the contemporary (petit) bourgeois. The difference between “classical” and the contemporary capitalism is that contemporary capitalism disfigures and degenerates people not only by reducing all human necessity to the “need to possess” (Marx), but also to the need to destroy. “Possession” implies the permanent ownership and exploitation of assets. Durability, which once represented the highest quality of commodities, in a “consumer society” has become the largest obstacle to renewed demand and the growth of capital. Goods (commodities) are no longer a fetish, as Marx claims, but it is destruction, itself, that has become the fetish. Capitalism turns man’s life-creating (erotic) energy into a drive for destruction. It thus destroys authentic sociability and creates destructive sociability. Destroying the largest quantity of goods in the shortest time has become the ultimate goal for the contemporary capitalist fanatic. During the 2011 New Year’s sales, a commercial slogan appeared at one London shopping center: “I shop, therefore I am!” This grotesque knock-off of Descartes’ maxim, cogito ergo sum, unequivocally indicates the nature of the contemporary capitalist degeneration of man. The ultimate and most ruinous result of the development of the “consumer society” is the destruction of man as a reasoning being and the turning of the human community into a crowd of destructive capitalist fanatics.
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Ljubodrag Simonović
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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 stupified 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 can not 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 citizenry) 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?
Ljubodrag Simonović
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
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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.
Ljubodrag Simonović
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
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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.”
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.“ 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.“ “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”. 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’.” 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.”
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Ljubodrag Simonović
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One of the most important ideas from the Manifesto of the Communist Party called into question by contemporary capitalism is that of capitalism’s being a “revolutionary“ order and, consequently, the bourgeoisie’s being is a “revolutionary“ class. According to Marx, the main historical “task“ of the bourgeoisie is to enable man to gain control over natural laws and thereby free himself from his dependency on nature and exhausting physical labor, so as to enable him to develop his universal creative powers. The “revolutionary role“ of the bourgeoisie is to create conditions for a “leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom“ (Engels). This is the main reason why Marx attaches primary importance to the development of productive forces. At the same time, the bourgeoisie is an exploiting class that becomes reactionary when capitalist private ownership starts to hinder the development of the productive forces. That is the right moment for a socialist revolution.
For Marx, the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is dialectical. The bourgeoisie produces the proletariat as its antipode: the nature of the bourgeoisie conditions the nature of the proletariat. According to Marx, the revolutionary character of capitalism, which, above all, strives for the abolishment of man’s dependency on nature through the capitalist development of productive forces, offers workers the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of society. The conquered natural elements open the possibility of establishing a form of labor that will enable man to realize his creative powers and a social order that will put an end to man’s exploitation by others. For Marx, the most important task of the working class is to liberate humankind from inhuman living conditions and the class order. It is clearly stated in Marx’s “categorical imperative”: “To overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being…” In The Holy Family, Marx writes: “When socialist writers ascribe this historic role to the proletariat, it is not, as critical criticism would have one think, because they consider the proletarians to be gods. Quite the contrary. Since the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete in the fully-formed proletariat; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman and acute form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through the no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need—the practical expression of necessity—is driven directly to revolt against that inhumanity: it follows that the proletariat can and must free itself. But it cannot free itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which are summed up in its own situation.”
Marx points out “social” and “historical” causes that provoke workers to initiate the struggle against capitalism. Paramount among these are the immediate existential (economic) threat, the ruthless exploitation, the inhuman working and living conditions that jeopardize workers’ health, the humiliation to which they are regularly subjected… Ecological conditions do not count as the proletariat’s “living conditions”. The proletariat will not be “historically compelled” to stop the destruction of life on the planet and save humankind from obliteration. If Marx had regarded capitalism as an order that threatens nature and man as a human and natural being, then the awareness of the need to preserve life on the planet would have been the basis for shaping the workers’ class consciousness and a signpost in the struggle against capitalism. Marx does not mention capitalism’s destructive relation to nature as a possible precondition for a socialist revolution. His view of capitalism as a “revolutionary order” that marks the end of the “pre-history“ of humankind and the creation of the “material conditions” for a new society (just like Engels’ view that capitalism creates the possibilities for a “leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom”) indicates his relation to capitalism. Marx’s “categorical imperative”, which is the basis for the formation of workers’ class(self)-consciousness and as such is the supreme political principle, does not imply the ecocidal nature of capitalism and does not seek to develop in workers an emancipated (belligerent) ecological consciousness. Marx withheld the most important aspect of the workers’ class-consciousness: the concept that capitalism is a destructive order and that capitalist class domination has an ecocidal character. According to Marx, capitalism reaches its end primarily by causing the economic crisis that occurs because of the productive relations (private ownership) becoming an obstacle to further growth of the productive forces, and not by the development of any processes that are detrimental to nature and man. The starting point in the struggle against capitalism is not its (potentially) destructive character, because the only force that will bring man to struggle is an immediate threat to his survival. These Marxian views are imbued with political realism. However, Marx’s indication that capitalism exhausts the soil and thus jeopardizes the survival of future generations (humankind) leads to the conclusion that, instead of “waiting” for the productive forces to come into conflict with the productive (proprietary) relations, workers should be moved to start a decisive fight against capitalism by the increasingly dramatic destruction of nature.
The capitalism’s development as an ecocidal order leads to society’s increasing fragmentation, not only along the lines of wealth but also as to the accessibility to protection against more and more lethal climate changes, the pollution of food, water, air… Class divisions within a society have long been defined by natural living conditions and the possibilities for protection against the consequences of environmental degradation. Those most affected are on the lowest rung of the social ladder and on the margins of “globalization”. Workers and their children are more directly impacted by both the economic crises of capitalism and global ecological degradation. Indeed, in his Early Writings, Marx indicates that contaminated water and air have become the workers’ way of life, but he has in mind the daily existence of workers in factories and mines, as well as in the apartment blocks built in the immediate vicinity of industrial and mining sites, and not the planet-wide ecological pauperism brought about by the obliteration of nature as a life-generating whole and the production of a technical world.
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Ljubodrag Simonović
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Marx’s analysis in Capital of the capitalist exploitation of the soil indicates his understanding of the relationship of capitalism to nature. Marx: “Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centers, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of urban population, on the one hand, concentrates the historical driving force of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of those of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and fabric; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to the continued fertility of the soil. By so doing, it at once destroys the health of the urban laborer and the intellectual life of the rural laborer… In modern agriculture, as in the manufacturing industries, the increased productivity and output of labor are bought at the cost of pathologically laying waste to labor-power, itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art not only of robbing the laborer, but of robbing the soil, as well; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a period of time is progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country bases its development on the foundation of modern industry, as does the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction.”
Marx does not relate to nature in terms of its possible obliteration as a life-generating whole, but as an object of labor, and he criticizes capitalism for its excessive exhaustion of the soil, which deprives it of fertility. The same critique can be applied to previous historical periods: exhaustion of the soil and the working people is typical of both slavery and feudalism. What is the specificity of capitalist exploitation of nature and man? Departing from Marx’s critique of capitalism, the key difference between capitalism and previous social-economic formations is that production under capitalism is aimed at making profit and not at meeting human needs. Rather than the “ever-increasing preponderance of urban populations”, itself, it is the intensified process of agricultural production aimed at profit that results in the increased exhaustion of the soil, regardless of its potential for fertility and people’s real needs. In addition, capitalism increases the fertility of the soil by ruining the soil as the “lasting source of that fertility”. Marx realized that the problem is not primarily in the limited potential of the soil, but in the capitalist method of soil cultivation, which deprives it of its most important quality – natural fertility. However, Marx does not understand that the specificity of the capitalist method of soil exploitation is that it ruins the natural fertility of the soil through artificial fertilization, which means by turning the soil into a technical space and man into a technical vehicle for ruining nature. Moreover, contemporary food production indicates that capitalism does not even need the soil. In the food industry, raw material is obtained artificially and the whole process of production is carried out in technical conditions, by technical means and in a technical manner. The ultimate result of capitalism’s ecocidal barbarism is that capitalism obviates not only the soil, but also the very planet on which we live, as well as man as a natural and human being. Capitalistically degenerated scientists and their “sponsors” from the world of capital and politics have discarded the Earth as man’s cosmic home, along with “traditional humanity”.
Marx’s critique of the capitalist exploitation of nature is presented within the context of the critique of hyper-production. For Marx, capitalism is not an ecocidal, but an exploitative order. The issues are taken at the level of production and consumption. Marx overlooks the fact that capitalist production implies not only the consumption of raw materials, energy and human labor, but also the destruction of nature as a life-generating force and man as a natural and human being. For Marx, rather than implying the ecocidal nature of capitalism, and, in that context, the endangered survival of humanity, ruining the soil is one of the harmful effects of industrialization. At the same time, Marx overlooks the fact that the exhaustion of natural resources does not only have a mechanical and quantitative character, but also a qualitative character, which means that it conditions the concrete nature of capitalist progress, the nature of the bourgeoisie and the working class, the nature of the class struggle and socialist revolution, the relationship to the future and even the possibility of a future… As far as the working process is concerned, by developing technical means intensively to cultivate of the soil, capitalism magnifies the productivity of labor and reduced the amount of physical labor and, thus, the physical exhaustion of workers.
According to Marx, capitalism transforms nature by turning it into useful objects and thus increases the certainty of human survival and expands the borders of human freedom through material goods and the development of man’s creative powers. At the same time, Marx indicates the danger in exploiting the soil to such an extent that it is robbed of its natural fertility and the survival of future generations is threatened, because a future society should be based on a rational cultivation of nature that involves its regeneration. Marx relativizes the importance of the truth that capitalism threatens the survival of future generations. He criticizes capitalism for its exhaustion of the soil, but the consequences are projected into the future, which acquires an abstract dimension. Given the fact that capitalism creates possibilities for artificial fertilization of the soil and manages increasingly to penetrate the Earth and thus provide new raw materials and energy resources, and their more efficient exploitation, the question of the soil’s exhaustion is being relativized. Indeed, capitalism has been threatening the survival of future generations by increasingly ruining nature ever since its beginning. What was perceived by Marx as a possible existential danger, unless in the meantime the working class abolishes capitalism and establishes a qualitatively different relation to the soil, has actually been in place since the emergence of capitalism (which was indicated by Fourier in early 19th century and, half a century later, by the chief of the Seattle tribe), reaching its peak in the “consumer society“. What appears in Marx as a potential existential threat to future generations, in the form of excessive exhaustion of the soil, has turned today into a real threat to the survival of humankind, in the form of the destruction of nature as a life-generating whole. At the same time, capitalism threatens humankind’s survival not only by robbing the soil, but also by robbing man of his own fertility. As a totalitarian destructive order, capitalism will make future generations face in an increasingly dramatic way not only a fatal ecological crisis, but also their own biological degeneration. The capitalist mode of developing the productive forces has doomed man to biological demise not only by cutting the organic link between man and nature, but also by robbing nature of its natural qualities and man of his human qualities. This comes about by the de-naturalizing of nature and the de-humanizing and de-naturalizing of man, turning nature into a technical space and man into a technical object.
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Ljubodrag Simonović
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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 status, 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.” 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 critical changing 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 the 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 “leaping from the reign of necessity into the reign of freedom” (Engels). 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 socio-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.
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Simonović Ljubodrag
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The critique of capitalism should be based on two methodological postulates. First: the nature of a certain social (historical) phenomenon is determined by the tendencies of its development – of what it is developing into. Second: the nature of a social (historical) phenomenon conditions the nature of its critique. The nature of capitalism, that is, the tendency of its development as a destructive system, conditions both the nature of the critique of capitalism and the political strategy for the fight against capitalism. This is not to suggest the creation of a uniform way of thinking, but a way of thinking that endeavors to ask questions of an existential and essential nature. Such a way of thinking represents a contraposition to the ruling ideology, manifested in the “Coca Cola culture” that tends to marginalize the essential in order to assign a spectacular dimension to the marginal.
A concrete critique of capitalism cannot be based solely upon essential humanism; it must also be based upon existential humanism. The ideals of the French Revolution – Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – present a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the future. The struggle to preserve life on the planet and increase the certainty of man’s survival as a cultural (social) and biological (natural) being represents a conditio sine qua non of the struggle for the future. Instead of the Marx’s notion of “alienation” (Entfremdung), the key notion in the critique of capitalism should be destruction. Marx’s revolutionary humanism opposes capitalism as a system of non-freedom, injustice, and non-reason, and advocates freedom, social justice, and a reasonable world, which means that it appears in the essential sphere. Existential humanism emerges in relation to capitalism as a destructive order that annihilates nature and man as a biological and human being – and places the struggle for the survival of the living world in the foreground, which means that it appears in the existential sphere. The affirmation of man as a creative and libertarian being is a response to the world where man is alienated from himself as a creative and libertarian being. The assertion that man is a life-creating being is a response to the world based upon the destruction of life: the struggle for freedom becomes the struggle for survival. The struggle for a reasonable world does not only represent an essential, but also an existential challenge. At the same time, Hegel’s (Marx’s) dialectic can be accepted only conditionally as the starting point for the development of a critique of capitalism, for its (historical) pyramid of freedom is founded upon existential certainty.
The “traditional” Marxist critique of capitalism, from the point of view of what-is-yet-to-be (Bloch’s noch-nicht-Sein), is of an abstract nature. The concrete nature of the capitalist positive also conditions the nature of the negative, which is a critical consciousness and a political practice based on it. Contemporary man cannot attain an appropriate historical self-consciousness starting from an absolutized and idealized anthropological model of man as a universal creative being of freedom, but only by starting from the existential challenges that capitalism, as a destructive system, poses to man. Man’s becoming a human being (what he, in his essence, is – a totalizing libertarian, creative and life-creating being) and the world’s becoming a human world is conditioned by capitalism’s becoming capitalism (that is, its turning into what it essentially is – a totalitarian destructive order). A concrete future cannot be grounded in what man desires to do based on his own authentic human needs, but only in what man must do if humankind is to survive. The essential level of the future is directly conditioned by existential challenges. The development of capitalism has further diminished the chances for the future to be the product of man’s free (visionary) creative practice (Bloch’s “openness“), which is in turn conditioned by consequences generated by capitalism as a destructive order. Objective possibilities for the creation of a new world and the possibility of man’s realization as a universal free creative being are conditioned by the developmental capacities of capitalism as a destructive order. This is the basis for a concrete dialectic of the future. A destroyed nature, a mutilated man, the accumulated destructive powers of capitalism that could momentarily destroy humankind – this also represents an objective situation that inevitably conditions the probability of the future and its planning. It is not man who assigns to himself tasks that, as Marx asserts, he can complete, it is capitalism that imposes a crucial task on man: to preserve life on the planet and to save humankind from destruction. To meet the challenge of the historical task imposed on man by capitalism means to face up to capitalism as an order that destroys life.
The capitalist destruction of nature and man as a biological and human being has not had a significant influence on the development of the left-wing critique of capitalism, the formation of the proletariat’s class-consciousness and socialist revolutions. An analysis of capitalism as a destructive order cannot be found in Marxist theorists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Engels’ view that capitalism creates the possibility for “the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom” suggests a radical break with capitalism, but it overlooks the fact that humanity’s future is directly conditioned by the destructive consequences of capitalism. Bloch’s theory clearly shows the limitations of the Marxist critique of capitalism. It repeatedly associates utopia with “happiness”, “dignity”… Utopia appears essentially opposed to capitalism. When Bloch writes about capitalistically produced “objective possibilities” for the creation of a new world, he has in mind the development of productive forces, but he does not consider the consequences of these productive forces on the environment and man or the potential threats to the survival of man and the living world posed by capitalist technique. His theory is also based on existential apriorism: capitalism is the order of non-freedom, not the order of destruction. Even in Lukacs (History and Class Consciousness), workers’ class-consciousness does not include the consciousness of capitalism as a destructive order, so, consequently, workers’ self-consciousness does not involve the consciousness of the need to fight for the survival of nature and humanity. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics takes up the existing (capitalist) world as a world of non-freedom and injustice and not as a world of destruction. This conditions the nature of the “negative”, meaning a critical and changing relation to the existing world, as well as the idea of the future. Even in his later works (published in the West in 1970, and in Serbia in 1978, under the title The Criteria of Time), Marcuse does not write about the destructive nature of capitalism; about the consciousness of the destructive nature of capitalism as an integral part of contemporary revolutionary consciousness; about a possible integration of humanity based on the efforts to stop the destruction of global life… Instead of the destruction of nature, what is emphasized is its “impoverishment” and the need for its cultivation through a cultivation of senses. The main motives for fighting against capitalism are liberation from oppression, women’s emancipation, the establishment of creative work… A strategic target in the fight against capitalism is discerned primarily in its oppressive and not its ecocidal character. The revolutionary and post-revolutionary thought in the USSR is dominated by the principle of absolutized productivity (“Stakhanovism”), whereas possible global destruction is never discussed. The Yugoslav Praxis philosophy is also not concerned with the development of capitalism as a destructive order, and its relation to capitalism is primarily founded on Marx’s critique and the concept of “alienation”. Its vision of the future, based on the idea that man is a universal creative being of freedom, has an abstract character since it does not consider capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order. Praxis philosophy is dominated by Hegel’s dialectics, which involves existential certainty and an open future. The capitalist destruction of nature is not of primary importance, with emphasis being put on the finite amount of natural resources. The questions asked are essential and not existential. Kangrga’s “speculation”, which amounts to searching for the meaning of life regardless of the trends in the development of capitalism as a totalitarian order of destruction and the lethal consequences of capitalism is a typical example of the abstract relationship of Praxis philosophy to the future. It is no accident that its adherents are not concerned with a critique of sport, which embodies the underlying principles of capitalism and, as such, is an industry of death. At the political level, the Praxis critique is primarily aimed not at capitalism, but at Stalinism and the USSR. This is the main reason why the West held its doors wide open to the Praxis philosophers. Considering that the development of capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order remained outside the reach of their critique, it can be said that Praxis philosophy remained historically marginalized.
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Ljubodrag Simonović
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
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Capitalism, as a totalitarian order of destruction, created appropriate means and methods to destroy critical and visionary consciousness and such other forms of mediation between man and world as prevent man from abolishing capitalism and creating a new world. In the past, people’s consciousness was controlled by the clergy. Today, it is controlled by TV presenters and other capitalist manipulators, united in show-business, who use the results of modern science and technology, and the myths based on them, in conjunction with an instrumentalized mysticism that produces a quasi-religious consciousness. Instead of being directed towards disclosing the destructive processes that call man’s survival on the planet into question or towards creating a vision of the new world, the mind is directed towards the production of spectacular phantasms that destroy man’s critical mind and visionary consciousness. Hence the popularity of various “Coca-Cola” mystifiers and intellectual con artists with their stories about mysterious “world rulers”, “extra-terrestrials”, “mystical forces”, “parallel worlds”… The art of mystification replaces historical analyses, while mysticism replaces visionary imagination. Modern, technocratically based “fairy-tales” are one of the ways by which capitalism degenerates the mind and creates a mass idiocy. With the existing world being less and less human and with man being more and more lonely and, thus, less capable of changing his life, the need to retreat into an illusory world is increasing. Illusions are the most demanded commodity on the “consumer society” market, resulting in a hyper-production of illusory worlds. The production of illusions has become one of the most important ways by which capitalists deal with humanistic visionary consciousness and the efforts of the oppressed to organize and fight against capitalism. Manipulation no longer resides in the ideological, but in the psychological sphere. The story about a “bright future” and the “American dream” is gone. To flee from that ever darker reality has become the obsession of the average (petty) bourgeois in the “democratic world”.
The destruction of the mind and the historical self-consciousness of the oppressed is a link between the contemporary entertainment industry and Nazi propaganda machinery. Here are Adolf Hitler’s instructions to the Nazi leaders (1942) intended to “help” them establish efficient domination over the “conquered peoples”: “Hence we should not allow the appearance of teachers who might suddenly ask for compulsory education for the conquered nations. The knowledge of the Russians, Ukrainians, the Kyrgyz people and others, of reading and writing would only do us harm. It would enable those with bright intelligence to acquire certain knowledge about history and thus develop political ideas, which could somehow be directed against us. – It is much better to set up a radio in each village, in order to inform people and offer them some entertainment, than to enable them to acquire their own political, scientific and other forms of erudition. Also, rather than telling the conquered peoples their history on the radio shows, we should play music, the more the better. Because popular music improves work efficiency. And, if people insist on dancing, according to our information and systematic approach, this we could welcome.” (Cursive Lj.S.) Hitler’s instructions on how to manipulate the consciousness of “lower races” are, actually, the basis of the contemporary capitalist strategy for establishing domination over the working class in the most developed capitalist countries and over the peoples on the “margins of capitalism”, who are doomed to be exterminated by the West.
Giving a spectacular dimension to the marginal – on which both the advertising industry and the entire ideological sphere of capitalism are based – is one of the most important ways for destroying the quality criteria. As a result, people cannot realize the true nature of the ruling order and, at the same time, see the actual possibilities for the creation of a new world. Without the possibility of recognizing quality, it is not possible to acquire a true visionary consciousness. When everything becomes “fantastic”, “ingenious”, “incredible” – then the true values sink into the mud of the trivial. The public “dispute” over sports events is a typical example of marginalizing the important, of people’s depoliticization, of the creation of false sociability and mass idiocy. The ruling media are broadcasting increasingly aggressive and primitive entertainment programs in order to destroy people’s interest in truth and separate their mind from the real world created by capitalism: the destruction of nature, mass deaths from lack of food, water, and from diseases, the criminalization of society, the creation of a police state, increased chances of using nuclear weapons, monstrous technical projects for causing earthquakes and fatal climate changes, mass killings of children to “obtain” their organs, the disposal of nuclear waste in the oceans, nuclear plant accidents, white plague, increased illiteracy, destruction of national cultures and historical self-consciousness … In the “curved mirrors” of capitalist ideology and in the lights of spectacular advertisements of “consumer society”, the important things become distorted and marginalized, while the marginal acquires a fatal and spectacular dimension. Advertising slogans, such as the “Coca-Cola“ slogan: “Can’t beat the Real Thing!”, which are constantly broadcast by TV and radio stations, impair man’s ability to discern and comprehend what is really important. Contemporary spectacles do not involve the creation of classical illusions through mental manipulation, which means the “seduction” of man by way of his prejudices, fears and desires, but on the creation of spectacular illusions, devoid of all content, which comes down to aggressive stimulation of senses by technical means. Instead of a melody, what we hear is a deafening noise; instead of a visual effect, we have a dazzling light… There is no emotion, no imagination, no reason… In addition to being marked by escapism, the creation of illusions serves to impair the senses and destroy the need and possibility for meditating about a humane world. The illusion is not only a spectacular manifestation of a destructive capitalist nothingness. It is also a technical means for destroying humanity.
Life, itself, degenerated by capitalism, has become the means for drawing people into the values and existential orbit of capitalism. The “consumer society” is directly reflected in the political sphere. For Marx, workers’ disposable time is the result of their struggle against capitalist exploitation, which gave them a chance to develop class-consciousness and start an organized political struggle. In the “consumer society”, non-work time has become consumer-time, which pulls workers into the spiritual and existential orbit of capitalism. Through the “consumer society”, capitalists created a new market, enabled further development of capitalism, and (temporarily) purchased “social peace”. At the same time, they drove people into debt-slavery and thus integrate them into the ruling order. Capitalism has degenerated the workers’ class consciousness by creating a consumer mentality. The need for freedom has turned into the need to purchase and destroy. Workers have become “consumers”, who contribute, through their working and consuming, to the development of capitalism. Not only do they make “their own chains” (Marx), they also destroy life and cause their own perishing as biological and human beings. At the same time, the increasingly deep existential crisis turned proletarian youth in the most developed capitalist countries into mercenary soldiers, the tool of the most powerful capitalist concerns with which to deal with “rebellious” peoples and establish the (American) “new world order”.
As far as the “social state” is concerned, the official ideology claims that it is the result of a “compromise” between the bourgeoisie and the working class. Indeed, the “social state” is one of the established forms of bourgeois class domination over the workers. Rather than being founded on humanism, it is the political answer from the bourgeoisie to the ever deepening crisis of capitalism and the changing (revolutionary) potential of the workers movement in the most developed capitalist countries of the West. Its purpose is to establish a “bearable exploitation” of workers by capitalists, which means to reduce their existential threat and thus prevent the workers’ class struggle and enable a stable development of capitalism. Essentially, the “social state” is a legal form of plundering the workers, who, through the taxation system imposed by the capitalist state, finance their own “social contributions”, which should enable them to survive the capitalistically created existential crisis without any complaints. At the same time, the “social state” serves to destroy workers’ class consciousness and pull them, by instilling a consumer mentality, toward the value horizon of the “middle class”, as one of the pillars of capitalism. Ultimately, the “social state” enables the survival of capitalism and consequently contributes to the destruction of life on the planet.
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Ljubodrag Simonovic
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
Ljubodrag Simonović: Revolutionary violence
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The notion of violence has a historical nature. In modern times, it is determined according to the basic human and civil rights, proclaimed in the French Revolution, which form the basis of modern humanism. Concretely, the nature of the ruling order conditions the nature of the prevailing violence. In liberal capitalism, the prevailing violence was based on the principle bellum omnium contra omnes. In monopolistic capitalism, the prevailing violence is based on the principle “Destroy the competition!”. It is not characterized by a struggle between citizens, who are reduced to atomized private subjects, but by a struggle between gigantic corporations. The prevailing contemporary violence results from capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order.
From the historical point of view, violence has an emancipatory dimension. Departing from the American and French Revolutions, Marx came to the conclusion that “violence is the midwife of history”. From the onset of capitalism, bourgeois theorists insisted on the right to combat the prevailing violence, including the armed struggle. Locke and Kant share the view that free citizens not only have the right to oppose the violence threatening their freedoms, but that the opposition to violence is their most important civic duty. For Njegos, “to place a foot upon tyranny’s neck, this is the most sacred of man’s duties”. Following in the footsteps of this emancipatory legacy, Lenin put forward a theory of ”unjust” (conquering) and “just” (liberating) wars. According to Marx, violence in a proletarian revolution is not the aim, but the means for doing away with capitalist tyranny. With the development of political institutions, revolutionary violence has become one of the available means for abolishing capitalism. Engels’ insistence on a ”dictatorship of the proletariat” is meaningless, because, after a (true) socialist revolution, classes will no longer exist, and there will only be free people whose livelihoods will derive from their own work.
In the contemporary world, the violence directed towards the capitalist order and contemporary imperialism is referred to as “terrorism”. Following the class and the colonial principles, the ideologues of capitalism do not make a distinction between the struggle for freedom and terrorism; more precisely, they equate the workers’ struggle against capitalism and the struggle of oppressed peoples against imperialism with “terrorism”. In conquered countries, colonial masters refer to those who fight against the colonial yoke as “bandits”, “murderers”, “thugs”… The notion of “terrorism” comprises all traditional qualities of fighters against the class order and colonialism. At the same time, it also involves the spontaneous opposition of enraged young people to the capitalist order, which has deprived them of their future.
It is not “terrorism” when capitalists, guided by greed, cause accidents in nuclear power plants, with lethal consequences to the living world; when they start thousands of fires in the Brazilian jungles every single day; when they contaminate the soil and water with poisonous heavy metals dropped from aircraft; when they empty thousands of nuclear waste containers into the oceans every single day and contaminate the seas and the coastlands with oil, killing millions of animals; when they burn entire towns with phosphorus bombs and contaminate rivers and the earth with projectiles tipped with depleted uranium; when, thanks to economic fascism, they force people to produce and consume contaminated food and genetically modified crops; when they fire millions of people from work and force women to undergo sterilization in order to get a job; when the most developed capitalist countries, through economic measures and political and military pressures, destroy the economies of less developed countries, causing suffering and death to tens of millions of children; when people are pushed into debt-slavery and deprived of their basic human and civil rights; when American capitalists provoke wars and create a war hysteria in order to ensure the survival of the American military industry; when the CIA forms terrorist groups to incite civil wars and destroy existing states … However, it is “terrorism” when a group of dissatisfied young people from the Parisian suburbs, who live on the margins of society, smash the windows of limousines or of the shops in posh areas, or throw stones at armored police vehicles and heavily armed police forces, who protect the ruling order, which creates social poverty and destroys life on Earth.
Capitalism is opposed to the emancipatory legacy of bourgeois society and produces forms of political struggle with a destructive character. Contemporary “terrorism” is a capitalistically degenerated struggle against capitalism, namely, a destructive violence that uses the capitalist means and methods and thus further intensifies the process of destruction. It is a manifestation of the ruling spirit of destructive capitalist irrationalism. It does not seek to create a new world, but to destroy the existing one. That is the basic difference between a revolutionary struggle and terrorist acts. Terrorism is not marked by a visionary consciousness, but by fanaticism, as a result of the increasingly ruthless destruction of entire nations by the most powerful capitalist corporations.
The ever-deeper existential crisis in the world creates conditions for the development of religious fanaticism, with a fatalistic and destructive character. For fanatics, who glorify an illusory world “in the heavens”, this world is but a springboard for their departure into “eternity”. By killing the “infidels”, they acquire their tickets for “The Pearly Gates”. Terrorism, under the veil of religious fanaticism, is based on anti-existential nihilism. However, only a naive person can believe that the eradication of religion would bring the eradication of violence. Over 99% of young “terrorists” have not read a single religious book, a fact Michel Onfray, in his “Atheist Manifesto”, claims is the source of their violent behavior. At the same time, the main “spiritual sustenance” for almost all “terrorists” in the West is the products of the capitalist entertainment industry: Hollywood films, “video games” and sports, where violence acquires a spectacular dimension. Onfray “overlooks” the most important point: young people’s violence results from their positions in society and the nature of the ruling order. It is the consequence of reducing young people, particularly those living in ghettos, to “hooliganism”. Onfray’s intention is clear: by shifting the responsibility to religion, he relieves the ruling capitalist order of any responsibility for the increasing violence in society. At the same time, he does not see the difference between the violent character and the violent consciousness. He also does not make any distinction between the violence of the young, who just mimic the model behavior, and the violence used to express dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. The destructive behavior of the young is a capitalistically degenerated expression of their justified dissatisfaction with their life and the world in which they live. Just as do existing religions, Onfray conceals the true nature of monopolistic capitalism and resorts to an “anthropological argument”, which holds man at the social-Darwinist level that characterizes liberal capitalism. Onfray: “The primitive still exists in the post-modern, the animal still endures in man, the beast still lives in homo sapiens …” (30)
Ljubodrag Simonović
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
Marx’s critique of capitalism is, in essence, the thought of a socialist revolution. It is the fundamental idea for determining the integrity and relativity of the “Marxist” attribute’s authenticity. The view that a “correct theory is the consciousness of a world-changing practice” is the self-consciousness of Marx’s revolutionary thought. Based on this self-consciousness, and relative to it, Marx’s own thoughts acquire a Marxist legitimacy. Marx’s views do not all correspond to his theory of revolution. Marx’s thought was not the theory of a socialist revolution from the very beginning, it became so later, with the development of capitalism and the workers’ movement. Marx’s thought became the theory of a socialist revolution when the proletariat in the most developed capitalist countries in Europe became a political force capable of changing the world.
According to Marx, the existential and, thus, the general social crises are the result of the economic crisis of capitalism when the relations of production (proprietary relations) become obstructive to the development of the productive forces. This is clearly indicated by Marx’s view in „A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, the founding stone of his theory of revolution: “At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, which turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.” The working class is “wedged” between productive forces and productive (proprietary) relations. Class consciousness tells the worker not to try to abolish capitalism as long as it continues to develop its productive forces and thus enables his existence. Since the capitalist mode of developing the productive forces is progressive, the workers’ struggle against capitalism, as long as it continues to develop its productive forces, hinders progress and is therefore unacceptable. At the same time, a socialist order, as the final overcoming of capitalism, can be created only when capitalism has exhausted its potential for development. Without such conditions, a revolution is not based on objective historical conditions, but on political voluntarism. The elimination of the bourgeoisie from the political arena by the proletariat is historically legitimate only when the bourgeoisie becomes a reactionary force, precisely, when capitalism has exhausted all potential for the development of productive forces and when the bourgeoisie, through repression, struggles to safeguard private ownership, which hinders further development of productive forces. According to Marx, the proletariat can become the “grave digger” of capitalism only on the basis of the economic and the resulting general social crises, which cannot be resolved without a radical step out of the capitalist world.
By overlooking that capitalism is essentially a destructive order, Marx overlooked the specificity of capitalist dialectics. According to Marx, the development of capitalism involves the development of conflicts between the productive forces and productive (proprietary) relations, but not between the capitalist development of productive forces, on the one hand, and nature as a life-creating whole and man as a natural and human being, on the other. In spite of Marx’s critique of the plundering and destructive capitalist relation towards the soil, according to Marx, capitalism is progressive as long as it continues to develop its productive forces. Actually, for him, the problem is not in the productive forces of capitalism and the fatal consequences of their development, but in the limited possibilities presented by the relations of production, that is to say, by private ownership, which will stop further growth of the productive forces, “compelling” capitalism to “self-destruction”. It turns out that it is precisely the development of productive forces based on private ownership that leads to the increasingly dramatic existential and, thus, the general social crises, as they arise from an mounting destruction of nature and man as a human and biological being. The increasingly dramatic destruction of the world indicates that capitalist “progress” and the survival of humankind are antagonistic to one another. Marx’s view of soil exhaustion suggests that the survival of humankind is threatened precisely by the economic development of capitalism. It follows that workers should fight against the economic development of capitalism, which means against the capitalist mode of development of productive forces, and not “wait” for productive (proprietary) relations to become an obstacle for further development of productive forces. A contemporary socialist revolution can result from the existential crisis caused by capitalism, but it can also serve as a bulwark preventing capitalism from destroying the environment and climate to such an extent that life would be impossible on the planet. A contemporary socialist revolution cannot be of an aposteriori and essential character, but, rather, of an apriori and existential character.
With capitalism becoming a destructive totalitarian order, Marx’s conception of socialist revolution has become obsolete. Marx does not arrive at the concept of socialist revolution relative to capitalism as a destructive totalitarian order, but relative to capitalism as an exploitatory order with a “revolutionary” character. For Marx, a socialist revolution is the last revolution in the history of humankind and therefore the final act in man’s struggle for freedom. At the same time, by sticking to existential apriorism, Marx does not regard the socialist revolution as the beginning of a decisive struggle for survival, but as the end of the historical process of man’s bonding with nature and the beginning of the true history of humankind. Following that idea, Gajo Petrovic, one of the most distinguished representatives of Yugoslav praxis philosophy, regards Marx’s notion of the revolution as the overcoming of the social and political moment and the final resolution of man’s relation to nature and to himself as a natural being. In those terms, the socialist revolution is the “essence of being” (“The Thought of Revolution”). However, the concrete “essence of being” cannot be acquired from an abstract notion of nature and man, but only in relation to the totalitarian and destructive practices of capitalism. Capitalist “progress” has brought humankind to the brink of an abyss and thus “resolved” all contradictions within it and completed the critique of capitalism. Capitalism does not liberate man from his dependence on nature. It rather makes him, through its destruction of nature, more dependent on it. Not only does it not create the possibilities of “leaping from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom”, it creates a new – destructive and, thus, totalitarian realm of necessity. A socialist revolution can acquire its concrete historical dimensions only in relation to the lethal consequences of the development of capitalism and with respect to its destructive potential. Rather than being the beginning of man’s true freedom, it is the beginning of a decisive struggle for the survival of humankind, which will alleviate the consequences of the capitalist destruction of nature and man and open the possibilities for man’s liberation from the natural elements and class society, enabling him to realize his universal creative powers and turn society into a familial community of free people.
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Текст са полеђине књиге:
“Време живота човечанства истиче. Све интензивнији процес деструктивне капиталистичке репродукције све драматичније скраћује период у којем човечанство може да спречи уништење живота на планети. Време је почело да тече уназад – од нултог еколошког граничника чијим је прекорачењем судбина човечанства запечаћена. Почело је одбројавање. Човеку не преостаје друго него да се бори за опстанак. Он мора да верује да човечанство може да опстане, што значи да је могуће укинути капитализам и створити нови свет. Човек не сме да дозволи да га свакодневни живот и владајућа пропагандна машинерија доведу у такво психичко стање да дигне руке од свега и преда се ништавилу – које га води у смрт. Вера у будућност постала је не само основни есенцијални, већ основни егзистенцијални императив. Зато је усамљеност најопаснија болест коју ствара капитализам. Усамљени човек који је изгубљен у деструктивном капиталистичком ништавилу доживљава уништење живота и човечанства као коначно ослобођење од свих мука и од обавезе да буде човек, што значи да има одговорност за опстанак света. Најгоре што човеку може да се деси је да изгуби људску топлину, а то значи потребу за људима. Само човек који није изгубио најсуштаственију људску особеност, потребу за људима, може да жуди за хуманим светом. Када у човеку нестане људске топлине он постаје мртвац који хода.
Невероватна је величина зла које капитализам наноси људима… Невероватна је количина патње коју човечанство доживљава… А нови, хумани свет је на дохват руке. Треба се, само, организовати и борити.”
Books in english
Articles in Italian
Articles in Spanish
Introducción al libro “Novi svet je moguć” (Un mundo nuevo es posible), autoría de Dunja y Ljubodrag Simonović
Nuevo
Articles in Norwegian
Articles in Czech
From the book “Philosophy of Olympism”
Articles in Russian
Articles in Turkish
Thisi article is from the magazine of Turkish labor party “Utopia and science”
Articles in Portuguese
Videos in English, or synchronized and subtitled in English
Videos in Russian
Это видео синхронизирован на русском языке
Videos in Spanish
Este video está subtitulado en español
Videos in Greek
Latest Duci’s articles will be placed at the beginning of section. “Other articles“.
About the situation of Kosovo and Metohija
Introduction to the book “A New World is Possible”, pub. 2007. by Dunja and Ljubodrag Simonovic, Belgrade (Serbia)
Excerpt from the book “The Olympic Deceit of The ‘Divine Baron’ – Pierre de Coubertin”
Excerpts from the book “Philosophy of Olympism” (pub.2004.)
On the occasion of the 160th anniversary of the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”
Others articles
(The newest will be on the top)
Najnovija Ducijeva TV gostovanja biće postavljana na samom početku rubrike: “Video prilozi”, a najnovija gostovanja na radiju, na samom početku rubrike: “Radio emisije u kojima je gostovao Ljubodrag Simonović – Duci“.
Video prilozi (45)
Video arhiva (12)
Radio emisije u kojima je gostovao Ljubodrag Simonović – Duci (08)
Najnoviji Ducijevi tekstovi biće postavljani na samom početku rubrike: “Ostali tekstovi“, dok će najnoviji intervjui sa njim biti postavljani na samom početku rubrike: “Intervjui“.
Izvodi iz knjige “Olimpijska podvala”, četvrto (autorsko) izdanje, Beograd,2007
Izvodi iz knjige „Filozofski aspekti modernog olimpizma“, Beograd, 2001.
Izvodi iz knjige “Sport, kapitalizam, destrukcija”, Beograd, 1995.
Ovde možete pročitati Ducijev odgovor na stavove Noama Čomskog o pitanju Kosova i Metohije
Izvodi iz knjige “Novi svet je moguć”, autori Dunja i Ljubodrag Duci Simonović, Beograd, 2007.
Prikaz knjige „Philosophy of Olympism“ Ljubodraga Simonovića koji je objavljen u češkom časopisu «Telesna kultura», 2007, sv. 30, koju je napisao profesor Ivo Jirásek.
Intervjui
Ostali tekstovi
U ovoj rubrici biće objavljivani najnoviji tekstovi, koji će biti na samom vrhu.
Od sada pa nadalje Duciju se obraćajte oko kupovine knjiga i ostalih relevantnih informacija na sledećoj E- mail adresi: comrade@orion.rs
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Izvodi iz knjige “Olimpijska podvala”, četvrto (autorsko) izdanje, Beograd,2007
Olimpizam i fašizam
Dosije “Samaranč”
Izvodi iz knjige „Filozofski aspekti modernog olimpizma“, Beograd, 2001.
Uvod
Olimpizam i pozitivizam
Moderni i antički olimpizam
Olimpizam kao pozitivna religija
Olimpizam i moderna telesna kultura
Olimpizam i igra
Olimpizam i demokratija
Izvodi iz knjige “Sport, kapitalizam, destrukcija”, Beograd, 1995.
Uvod
Kritika građanske kritike sporta
Sport i politika
Takozvani “socijalistički sport”
Sport i nasilje
Sport i rasizam
Priroda rekorda
Sport u močvari droge
Da se ne zaboravi – smrt Birgit Dresel
Sport i zdravlje
Ovde možete pročitati Ducijev odgovor na stavove Noama Čomskog o pitanju Kosova i Metohije
Ljubodrag Simonović : odgovor Noamu Čomskom
Izvodi iz knjige “Novi svet je moguć”, autori Dunja i Ljubodrag Duci Simonović, Beograd, 2007.
Pismo Indijanskog poglavice
Osnovi savremene kritičke teorije kapitalizma
Sport i kult
Sport i kultura
Sport i filozofija
Sport i umetnost
Sport i pedagogija
Sport i rad
Život kao igra
Prikaz knjige „Philosophy of Olympism“ Ljubodraga Simonovića koji je objavljen u češkom časopisu «Telesna kultura», 2007, sv. 30, koju je napisao profesor Ivo Jirásek.
Najnoviji tekstovi
Manifest egzistencijalnog humanizma
Aktuelnost Marksovog “Manifesta komunističke partije”
Kapitalistički krematorijum i generacija proklertih
“Olimpijska podvala” – prvi deo
“Olimpijska podvala” – drugi deo
You should click on underline links below to read the articles.
If you interested for Duci’s books, contact him on his E-mail address:
comrade@orion.rs
About the situation of Kosovo and Metohija
Ljubodrag Simonović – a Replay to Noam Chomsky
Introduction to the book “A New World is Possible”, pub. 2007. by Dunja and Ljubodrag Simonovic, Belgrade (Serbia)
Basis of contemporary critical theory of capitalism
Sport and cult
Sport and culture
Sport and philosophy
Sport and art
Sport and pedagogy
Sport and labour
Life as play
Excerpt from the book “The Olympic Deceit of The ‘Divine Baron’ – Pierre de Coubertin”
Excerpts from the book “Philosophy of Olympism” (pub.2004.)
Introduction
Oympism and social darwinism
Coubertin and Nietzsche’s “Will to power”
Olympism and positivism
Modern and ancient olympism
Olympism as a positive religion
Olympism and modern physical culture
Olympism and play
Olympism and democracy
New
October revolution
Who is Anders Breivik?
Ljubodrag Simonović: Zeitgeist fascism
The cosmic dimension of man
Homosexuality
Interview with Ljubodrag Duci Simonović: Sport and Pedagogy
Capitalist crematorium and the generation of the damned
The Manifesto of Existential Humanism
On the occasion of the 160th anniversary of the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”
Today’s importance of Marx’s “Manifesto of the Communist Party”
Thisi article is from the magazine of Turkish labor party “Utopia and science”
Olimpizmin felsefesi
Olİmpİzm ve Sosyal Darwİnİzm
Pozİtİf bİr dİn olarak Olİmpİzm
Norwegian article about Coubertin
Симонович Любодраг – портрет
Перевод на русский язык: Татьяна Джурашкович
Любодраг Симонович
ОЛИМПИЗМ И НОВЫЙ МИРОВОЙ ПОРЯДОК
Перевод на русский язык:
Татьяна Джурашкович
Издатель:
“ЛОРКА”, Белград
СОДЕРЖАНИЕ
ВВЕДЕНИЕ
ОЛИМПИЗМ И ФАШИЗМ
КОММЕНТАРИЙ “ИЗБРАННЫХ ТЕКСТОВ“
ИЗ ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЙ ПЬЕРА ДЕ КУБЕРТЕНА
– Колониализм и расизм
– “Народное просвещение”
– Педагогия
– Нацизм .
– Аматеризм (Любительский спорт)
ДОСЬЕ “САМАРАНЧ“
– Путь к Олимпу
– Самаранч – живой памятник фашизму
– Самаранч – могильщик олимпийской идеи Кубертена
КРИТИКА КАПИТАЛИЗМА
ИСХОДНАЯ ТОЧКА ОСВОБОДИТЕЛЬСКОЙ КРИТИКИ СПОРТА …
СПОРТ И КУЛЬТУРА
– Критика спорта Хуизинга
СПОРТ И ПОЛИТИКА
– Олимпийское движение
– Спорт в США
– Спорт и великопрусский экспансионизм
– Спорт и эмансипация
ТАК НАЗЫВАЕМЫЙ “СОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКИЙ СПОРТ“
СПОРТ И НАСИЛЬЕ.
– Стадионы – современные концентрационные
лагеря
– “Состязательская мотивировка”
– Спорт и война
– И детей убивают, не так ли?.
“ХЛЕБА И ИГР“ – ПРИРОДА СПОРТИВНОГО “СПЕКТАКЛЯ“
СПОРТ И РАСИЗМ
ПРИРОДА РЕКОРДА
СПОРТ В БОЛОТЕ НАРКОТИКОВ
СМЕРТЬ БИРГИТ ДРЕССЕЛ
СПОРТ И ЗДОРОВЬЕ
СПОРТ И ФИЗИЧЕСКАЯ КУЛЬТУРА
ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ К МАНИФЕСТУ ОСВОБОДИТЕЛЬНОГО
ФИЗИЧЕСКОГО АКТИВИЗМА
ЛИТЕРАТУРА
Geen Paniek – Marco van Duijn – 12 februari 2006
You should click on underline links below to read the articles.
If you interested for Duci’s books, contact him on his E-mail address:
comrade@sezampro.rs
Introducción al libro “Novi svet je moguć” (Un mundo nuevo es posible), autoría de Dunja y Ljubodrag Simonović
Introducción
Una respuesta a Noam Chomsky
Nuevo
Manifiesto del Humanismo Existencial
Las Dos Vidas de Duci Simonovic de mitos y malditos
You should click on underline links below to read the articles.
If you interested for Duci’s books, contact him on his E-mail address:
comrade@orion.rs
Una risposta a Noam Chomsky