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Novak Djokovic’s Blood Money

September 7, 2014

Serbia is facing collapse and the Serbian population is vanishing… Criminal gangs are robbing our people of factories, mines, soil, water… The police are beating workers… The army lacks boats and lighting equipment… Billions of euros are transferred on an annual basis to private accounts abroad… The final act of amputating Kosovo is under way… Third-rate politicians from the West come to Belgrade only to impose ultimatums… A vast majority of young people wants to leave the country… But who really cares? Judging from newspaper reports and TV programs: nobody. The paramount concern is if tennis star Novak Djokovic won and how much he “earned’”.

In August of this year (2014), the “Novak Djokovic Foundation” invested a couple hundred thousand in refurbishing kindergartens and nursery schools. Another “humane” action of “our great champion” that was met with widespread public support. What is the hidden agenda behind these “humanitarian” acts?

Our “top” athletes, led by Djokovic and Divac, practice a method that has long been used by the plundering “elite” in the West: they use the plight of working people who have been deprived of their rights to create the illusion of being “benefictors” and to burnish their public images. No man with self-respect would take advantage of the plight of others for his own self-promotion. He who really wants to help, does good without ostentation.

In 2013 alone, Novak Djokovic “earned” over 27 million USD either from tournaments or endorsements. There is no record that, as a Serbian citizen, he has paid any taxes in his own country. How much do Novak Djokovic and other “top” athletes, coaches and sports managers owe to our country? Over the years it must amount to hundreds of millions of dollars and euros.

What is our country doing? Why are tax-evaders from the world of professional sport above the law? Is it about pleasing the masses or do top athletes systematically bribe politicians, public officials and journalists?

How is it possible that a “top” tennis player can earn over 2 million USD for winning a tournament? In order to earn 2 million USD, a worker with an average salary must work for 500 years! Djokovic and his “colleagues” from the tennis world “earn” this amount for a couple of hours of “playing”. Why are players in the tennis circus paid amounts that workers can only dream of? What social values do they promote? Their actual “work” comes down to hitting a ball back and forth over a tennis net.

The technique of play in sport, instead of being emancipatory, has an entertaining and circus character. It serves to produce a “spectacle” meant to integrate people into the ruling order. Instead of developing genuine human powers, it develops forms of manipulation and destruction of people as cultural and natural beings. By mastering the technique of play, an athlete is in conflict with his spiritual and playing being. The more he improves as a tennis player, the more he is degraded as a human being. He turns into a peculiar specialty-idiot, both in mental and physical terms. By becoming a “tennis star”, a man is alienated from his humanness.

In order to understand the true nature of “top” tennis, we need to look at those who pay the world tennis “elite”. They are, above all, Bill Gates’s “charitable” foundations, “Monsanto”, the largest world banks, “Puma”, “Adidas”, “Coca-Cola” … Djokovic, Nadal, Federer – they are but the clowns for the most powerful capitalist clans and, as such, are the trademarks of contemporary capitalism. They are the stormtroopers of the “new world (American) order” that is annihilating humankind and all life on this planet. ‘Top” athletes belong to the 1% of the titled global “elite”. Yachts, grounds and mansions, exclusive holiday resorts, accommodations in luxury hotels, large sums on their accounts in Western banks…. They are the organic part of the wealthy “elite” that rules the world. Djokovic’s “distinctive quality” is his posing for billboards on buildings and erecting monuments to himself across Serbia!

The increasing amounts paid to tennis players are in direct proportion to the increasing misery of a large number of the world’s workers. “Sport is the cheapest spiritual food for workers – and it keeps them under control!” – this is the golden rule of sport created by Pierre de Coubertin – the official “father” of modern Olympism. Athletes do not exemplify social values; they rather depoliticize the oppressed and thus serve to preserve the current order.

Rather than being the “representatives of their nations”, tennis players are an elite corps for the most powerful capitalist corporations, which use sport to destroy national cultures and national-liberatarian self-consciousness. Sport is the crown of a “mondialistic” worldview, and modern Olympism is the chief and most important mondialistic religion. Tennis players are running billboards for the largest capitalist corporations and are therefore the breeders of a consumer mentality – the driving force of a “consumer society” that increasingly threatens the survival of humanity.

The money “earned” and “donated” by Novak Djokovic is blood money taken by capitalist criminals from workers and used to pay mercenary athletes to “brainwash” the oppressed and turn them into obedient idiots.

To “support” Novak Djokovic and his tennis cohorts actually means to help the executioners of humanity finish their monstrous “work”: to deliver a final blow to the critical-changing mind and annihilate life on this planet.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Petrović (Todorović)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

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The true picture of sport – The death of Birgit Dressel

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Articles in English

August 14, 2013

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Over twenty years ago, in April 1987, a twenty-six year-old heptathlete, Birgit Dressel, died in West Germany. An investigation was opened at the request of her parents. The findings of the criminal investigator and the medical investigating committee in charge of establishing the cause of death stripped away the veil of deceit with which the sports officials and politicians misled the domestic and international publics. The truth came to light: just as with the Eastern European countries of “real socialism“, the countries of the capitalist West created their own sports industry of death that would mutilate and kill thousands of young people. For the first time in the history of sport the world had the chance to gain a detailed insight into the “documents of horror“ (“Der Spiegel“) that had been, in all places where “world-class sport“ is nurtured, carefully hidden from the public gaze. (1)

The story of the tragic death of Birgit Dressel is a warning to young people carried away by dreams of “athletic fame“, to parents, doctors, teachers of physical education and all those who, as victims of these illusion of “world-class sport“, can contribute, by their idolatrous relation to the mania over record-breaking and the blind promotion of the idea that “sport is the best ambassador“, to the development of increasingly cruel mechanisms for the destruction of young people in sport. The death of Birgit Dressel clearly showed that the road to “optimal results“ had become the road to self-destruction. Birgit died in April of 1987, but her death is still present as it reflects the fate of an increasing number of young people who have become the victims of “world-class sport“. At the same time, the epilogue to her death indicates the organic link between the sports mafia and politics: nobody was punished, nobody was held accountable. The murderers in white uniforms, protected by those who gave them orders from the world of politics and capital, continued their criminal activity. The desperate cry of Birgit’s mother: “They did not try to help my daughter, they finished her off!“ – most dramatically speaks to the true nature of contemporary sports medicine. An even greater irony is that, immediately after Birgit’s death, Willi Daume, then the President of the National Olympic Committee of West Germany and one of the heads of the international sports mafia, nominated Armin Klümper, the man who developed the doping mechanisms in West Germany to monstrous proportions and who was directly responsible for Birgit’s death, as the Olympic team physician! (2)

Daily doses of tablets taken by athletes are proof that medication has become indispensable in achieving victories and breaking records: they start with harmless pills, only to continue with real medicines, usually against inflammation and pain, which are always given by prescription. In the end, man becomes the slave of devastating, legally prescribed, doping drugs. “Birgit is the victim of the pharmaceutical industry!“ – said Birgit’s father after her death. International competitions are regularly visited by international drug peddlers, many of whom carry a doctor’s title along with their sample cases full of the newly developed products of the doping industry. They come to recruit the young. The practice is tacitly accepted by sports associations. In such a state of affairs, the struggle against doping is doomed to failure.

The tragic death of Birgit Dressel forced people like Willi Daume to admit: “I dread to think that athletes, for example, take anabolic to increase muscle mass, while in a number of countries the use of anabolic steroids in livestock farming is forbidden.“ In spite of that, the main authorities on sports medicine in the West continue to recommend anabolic to all those who want to become muscular “macho men“ and “Amazons“ in order to achieve “optimum results“.

Nineteen eighty-six was a successful year for Birgit Dressel. She managed to move up from 33^rd to be ranked no. 6 in the world. She was preparing for the light athletics world championship in Rome (September 1987) and for the Olympic Games in Seoul. She had to remain in good shape at all cost. Birgit did not want to live forever in her little attic flat. She was determined to do everything necessary to set a record that would bring her money and fame and a peaceful retirement. Others had managed, why couldn’t she?

Every day, from her well-equipped medicine cabinet, Birgit would take nine pills on average and wash them down with an ampoule of some liquid med. The investigation found that she had used up to 101 different medications! Among them vitamins B1, B12 and C; meds containing copper, magnesium, and pills claimed by the manufacturer to treat arteriosclerosis, swelling of the legs, allergies, osteoporosis, inflammation of the intestines, weak heart, arterial cramps, swelling… Their names are the products of pure fantasy: “Pascovenol“, “Frubiase“, “Oxypangam’, “Dreisafer“… Birgit also used to drink “Megagrisevit“, an anabolic listed as a forbidden doping substance. She managed to obtain it “anonymously“, through the mail. (It would turn out later that the “anonymous“ sellers were the top level athletic coaches, who obtained these medications on the black market and sold them with an important mark-up, even to their own “protégés“!) This medication is prescribed to people suffering from serious diseases, especially to cancer patients during the final stage of their illness. Dressler used to drink it on a daily basis in order to get muscle gain. She became increasingly masculine. This, however, did not keep her from regularly dosing with “Megagrisevit“, a steroid sold with the warning that it is a sexual hormone used to help the transformation of a feminine into a masculine body. Since 1986, Dressel had been using the anabolic “Stromba“, with similar side effects.

Birgit’s doctor and unquestioned “health advisor“ was a sports medicine professor, a graduated radiologist (!), Armin Klümper, who was recognized as the “top authority“ (“Ober-Guru“) in West German sports medicine. His “Special Clinic for Sports Traumatology“ near Freiburg is the “haven“ for Germany’s ”top athletes“. In the 1990s, the average number of “top“ West German athletes who annually received “treatment“ in his “special clinic“ was 2,400, or 70% of all German athletes. For decathlon competitor Kurt Bendlin, Klümper is the “most important person in West German sport“. According to Dietmar Mögenburg, Olympic champion in men’s high jump, Klümper is a “miracle worker“. Some world champions openly admit that Armin Klümper should be credited for their medals. The extent to which athletes are willing to submit to monster-doctors, who treat them like laboratory rats, can be seen in the case of “Schalke“ football player Wolfgang Patzke, who allowed Klümper to inject his back with seventy “cocktails“ within a period of twenty days, despite the fact that, in his own words, after each shot he got “a sick feeling“.

Birgit Dressel was not so lucky, nor did she have a true mentor. She blindly trusted the “miracle worker” and regularly visited his clinic. She last saw him on 24 February 1987. On that occasion the “Injection Guru” gave her a shot containing 15 different medicines, along with 12 additional capsules. On the same day, Klümper gave his “patient” a substance called “NeyDop“, containing a mixture of “standardized macromolecules of soluble organic lysates” obtained from the cerebral cortex, midbrain, hindbrain and placenta. The manufacturer recommends the use of this medication only for the treatment of paralysis agitans and severe brain damage caused by syphilis and epilepsy. Birgit certainly did not suffer from these conditions. This “cytoplasmic therapy with cell injections“ or, in ordinary language, a therapy using fresh cells in a conserved form, is one of Klümper’s specialties. As long ago as 1985, Klümper allowed Dressel to inject herself with fresh cells despite many previous warnings by a number of colleagues about possible negative effects on the immune system. (This was found out later to be one of the main causes of Birgit’s death). Early in August 1987, several months after Birgit’s death, the West German Ministry of Health prohibited the use of this medication. On the same day, Klümper injected Dressel’s painful lower back with “Discus Compositum“, a mixture containing 37 different substances. Among those were vitamins, zinc, silver, calcium-phosphate, even sulphur. In addition, Klümper “treated“ Dressel’s ischialgia with “Cefossin, Cefak”, a drug containing gold, with negative side effects, that was found during the autopsy.

Over the course of her career, Klümper gave Dressler over 400 “special“ injections and recommended the use of a large number of medications, among which were those with severe effects on the organs. As with many “top athletes“, Dressel was convinced that her body was capable of easily coping with anything injected into it. Birgit’s mother Lisa, who used to play volleyball, warned Brigit a number of times about the possible consequences of medications. Brigit’s response was typical: “Mom, I need them. Everyone takes them. It’s nothing at all. Decathletes take twice as many.“

According to the report by the “miracle worker“ Armin Klümper (dated 24 February), Birgit Dressel was “healthy to the highest degree” and “at the peak of fitness”. After the autopsy and according to the medical records, the official report revealed that, since 1981, Dressel had been suffering from ever-recurrent hip pain, lateral bending of the spinal column, damage to the disks and fusion of the vertebrae, displacement of the pelvis by two centimeters, degeneration of both kneecaps and fallen arches. In addition, her body was “extremely susceptible to infections”, and she suffered from occasional high blood pressure. As a result of constant straining, her heart muscle contained a number of connective tissues instead of muscle tissues. The “healthy to the highest degree” Birgit Dressel, according to Klümper’s statement in the Police Investigation, was in truth a chronically ill girl, whose body was overloaded with hundreds of drugs. Sport has made a cripple of her long before her death, destroying her joints and prematurely ruining her internal organs.

All that was the consequence of “stereotypical extreme exertion“, as this torture is called in sports science. Within seconds, the lower back is hit by the entire kinetic energy of the weight of the body. The simulation apparatus showed that during a career the “successful” heptathlete must endure between 200 000 and 300 000 instances of extreme physical pressure, which even the strongest woman cannot achieve. Wildor Hollmann, a sports physician and professor from Cologne, claims that “there is no job that even remotely approaches the world-class sport in its adverse effects on the body”. Thus, for example, when practicing on the rings, a gymnast must endure a pressure on his wrists in excess of five times his bodyweight; in a quickly taken penalty kick the ball hits with the strength of a 150kg shot; skiers expose their knees to a pressure higher than that endured by astronauts at lift-off of a rocket; in sports requiring endurance, the heart becomes three times its normal size, it beats arhythmically and only 35 times per minute. Professor Hollman thinks that athletes, due to intense training and increased practice time, have reached their “biological limits”. Fatigue, disease and organ failure are inevitable consequences of such trends. It is fair to say that “top athletes“ are becoming a “bunch of sports cripples and premature invalids” – as the “Der Spiegel“ journalists claim.

Not so long ago, Bertolt Brecht said that “great sport begins at the point it ceases to be healthy“. Former rhythmic gymnast Herta Löwenberg wrote in her diary: “Sport is death”. The medical journal “Ärztliche Praxis” concludes that “high-level sport has nothing to do with health“. An increasing number of doctors are facing sport and illness. Every second orthopedist lives off the injuries suffered in sport.

It is 8 April 1987. The beginning of the end. Birgit sets out to her last practice. Shot-put. She suddenly feels a sharp pain in her lower back extending to her pelvis. The pain is familiar to her. Since the beginning of the year, she has twice stopped a practice for the same reason. Dressel and her coach conclude that it was a severe muscle strain. The same afternoon, they visited the orthopedist, Dr. A (the texts dealing with this case do not mention doctors’ names, using single letters instead!), with a good reputation among the athletes. He gave her two or three milliliters of “Xylonest” as a local anesthetic, then “Voltaren”, commonly administered for the treatment of rheumatism. About 6pm, Dr. A used his syringe again, this time at the sports centre. Since Dressel continued to feel pain, Dr. A gave her “Myo-Melcain”, a combination of a local anesthetic and honey.

The next day in the afternoon, Birgit visited Dr. A again. Her condition had deteriorated. Her leg and butt had become extremely sensitive to touch and cold. After an x-ray examination, instead of honey, Dr. A injected “Voltaren” and then “Baralgin”. Both medicines are considered “strong pain-relievers”. For use at home, Dr. A gave her “Godamed” and “Tranquase-5” tablets, as well as “Optipyrin” suppositories. They contain, among other ingredients, tranquilizers and codeine, an opiate like morphine. In spite of warnings by independent experts, such medications are widely used in Germany. Doctors believe in the so-called shotgun effect, while patients have a silly belief that “more medications work more”. This belief is especially widespread among athletes. Birgit Dressel also believed that, and it cost her life.

At home, according to reports from the official investigation, Dressel had between 10 and 15 tablets of “Godamed“ in her system. The same afternoon, a neurologist, Dr. B, visited her along with Dr. A and diagnosed her with “lumbago without neurological disorders”, recommending the application of ice. She did not get any better. Birgit did not sleep a wink that night. In the meantime, her coach called Dr. A three times asking for help. His recommendation was: “Godamed”, but “not too many“. He also consulted Dr C, an emergency physician, who recommended “Aspirin” and “Heparin” ointment. And that was it.

The next morning, at 6:30am, Dr. A visited Dressel again. She was in “excruciating pain”, but had a “strong pulse”. He did not observe any indication of a shock, allergic symptoms or neurological disorder. Because of the “excruciating pain”, his diagnosis was: “kidney attack”. It was one of a number of false assumptions and wrong diagnoses that were made on that day. Sixteen hours and twenty-four new treatments stood between Birgit and death. Almost every new diagnosis was followed by a new therapy. Tens of new medications would be pumped into Birgit’s dying body. This time, Dr A injected a large ampoule of “Meta-Attritin”, another medicinal compound. This “shot” was supposed to be injected into her back muscle. But however hard he tried, he could not effect the injection. The muscle was so tight that the syringe bent. Dr. A gave her the injection in the right buttock.

After the second visit, Dr. A decided to send Birgit to a clinic, two days after she first felt the fatal pain. With a presumed “kidney attack” and in severe pain, Dressel was transported to the Urology Department at Mainz University Medical Centre, which, like other similar institutions, enjoyed a good reputation. A number of specialists gathered around Dressel. After three long hours, a team of specialists, that had already been convened, gave the priority to the urologist, Dr. C. After an x-ray examination, he concluded that, as far as his area of expertise was concerned, he could not detect any impairment. His colleague, Dr. D, agreed with this conclusion and notified his superior, primarius Dr. E, accordingly. In the meantime, to relieve her pain, she was given an injection of “Buscopan”.

It was 1pm. Birgit was transported to the emergency surgical ward. She was moaning in pain. Four surgeons tended to her. The first, Dr. F, thought that the most important thing was to relieve the pain. Birgit then received intravenous therapy, in which, over the course of several hours, she was given two ampoules of “Buscopan Compositum” deluted with “Sterofundin”. “Buscopan Compositum” also contains five grams of a substance called metamizol, which, due to its severe side-effects, was later banned by the Ministry of Health of the Federal Republic of Germany. According to the forensics report, Dressel may have received a fatal dose. Birgit survived this treatment, but the pain remained.

Emergency surgeons, F, G, H, and I, finally came to the correct conclusion that it was not a sports injury, but “multiple organ failure” or, as an ancillary assumption, a “disc or spinal cord disease”. The autopsy showed that their suspicion was right. Birgit had a severe inflammation of the spinal nerves, and this caused the pain. Acting on this diagnosis, a general surgery specialist, primarius J, and two neurosurgeons, doctors K and L, were called in. Seven hours after being admitted to the clinic, Dressel was still able to “orient herself in time and space“ and was complaining of great thirst. In their joint report, the neurosurgeons recorded that Birgit “was talking a lot”. At the same time, her lips and nails turned blue. There was also some white crusting on her lips. While answering questions, Dressel “uncontrollably released urine“. The diagnosis of the surgeons was: “There is no indication of a neurological disorder; suspected pill poisoning.”

In addition to the team of neurologist, a team of internal medicine specialists was convened and computer tomography of the head was performed. Neurologists Dr. M and Dr. N were called in, but there was nothing they could do. The doctors could only conclude that she had endured a “shock, threatening her vital functions”. Birgit’s athletic heart began to beat faster and faster, and she had difficulty breathing. Such an urgent case required an anesthesiologist. Doctors O, P, Q, R, S, T, and U, were called in. In response to the energetic voice of the internal medicine specialist, Birgit moved her arm and opened her eyes for the last time. They put an oxygen mask on her face and she was moved to the emergency room, where she would be placed in an induced coma and put on a respirator. An hour later, at 19h 45min, the dying Birgit was put in an emergency vehicle and, under constant supervision, transported to the intensive care unit. The diagnosis was now: “Suspected blood poisoning, blood decomposition”. The diagnosis was correct but belated. At that moment, Birgit was already in the claws of death.

Doctors V and W made a last attempt to save her life. Among other medications, they gave her four units of blood and high doses of natural hormones. All in vain. Birgit’s tortured body could no longer fight for life. “World-class athletics“ and thousands of pills and injections had done their job. On 10 April 1987, Birgit passed away.

Footnotes

1) The text is based on the article published on 7 September 1987, by the German magazine “Der Spiegel” under the title “Tod einer Sportlerin” (“The Death of an Athlete”).

2) Compare: „Der Spiegel“, 9/1992.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović (Petrović)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins

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Ljubodrag Simonović Duci: Olympism and fascism, sport, capitalism and destruction

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Video in English

August 7, 2013

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Olympism and fascism, sport, capitalism and destruction

Link to the video: on YouTube
Video report can be downloaded from this site.

“In this interview Duci talks about:

• the connection between olympism and fascism
• depoliticization of workers through sport
• destruction of children in sport
• the need for the development of visionary consciousness which needs to be guiding principle in struggle against capitalism
• Breivik representing destructive spirit of contemporary capitalism
• idea of communism as the only idea that has rational relationship towards the environment, giving chance to the humanity to exist and to preserve life on the planet”.

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Ljubodrag Simonović: Vision of the future

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Uncategorized

June 15, 2013

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Ljubodrag Simonović
e-mail: comrade@orion.rs
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VISION OF THE FUTURE

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: Alienation and destruction

Autor: ducisimonovic

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May 21, 2013

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Ljubodrag Simonović
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“ALIENATION” AND DESTRUCTION

“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: Contemporary Bourgeois Thought

Autor: ducisimonovic

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May 6, 2013

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Ljubodrag Simonović
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CONTEMPORARY BOURGEOIS THOUGHT

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?

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Ljubodrag Simonović: Destruction of the body

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Uncategorized

April 29, 2013

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Ljubodrag Simonović
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DESTRUCTION OF THE BODY

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.

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Ljubodrag Simonović: Capitalist exploitation of soil

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Uncategorized

March 20, 2013

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CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION OF SOIL

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 19^th 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: Dialectics and history

Autor: ducisimonovic

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March 7, 2013

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Ljubodrag Simonović
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
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DIALECTICS AND HISTORY

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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Ljubodrag Simonović: Contemporary critique of capitalism

Autor: ducisimonovic

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February 16, 2013

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Simonović Ljubodrag
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
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CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM

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:The integration of people into capitalism

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Uncategorized

February 11, 2013

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Ljubodrag Simonović
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
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THE INTEGRATION OF PEOPLE INTO CAPITALISM

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 Simonović: Revolutionary violence

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Uncategorized

January 27, 2013

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Ljubodrag Simonovic
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
Ljubodrag Simonović: Revolutionary violence
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REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE

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)

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The London Olympics. The Death Games

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Articles in English

August 1, 2012

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The Olympic Games.
The most important festival of the capitalist world.
“The blue lodge” is full.
The executioners of humankind are getting together.
The Queen is also present.
The British Royal Family…
The bloodiest criminal organization in history.
London is celebrating!
The battle ships, military planes, missiles, police forces, commandos…
The true Olympic surroundings.
Fanfares, marches…
The robots are paraded.
Ave cæsar! Morituri te salutant!
The Queen is waving.
The Queen is laughing.
The Queen is yawning.
“The doves of peace” are disappearing in the darkness of a poisoned sky.
Those are The Olympic Games, dummy!
Laugh!
All must be happy!
“Sport is the cheapest spiritual food for the working masses –
keeping them under control.”
Good old Coubertin.
He knew how sport could rule the people.
The Olympic Games.
They were “The Festival of Youth”.
Today, they are The Festival of Death.
The Queen fell asleep.
Let her.
Let her fall into the endless dream.
Along with Blair, Bush, Clinton, Sarkozy, Obama…
Along with all capitalist criminals.
Sleep! – you Olympic Angels.
Sleep! – you Olympic Bastards.
And never wake up.

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Ljubodrag Simonović – EU’s dirty truths, capitalism and global genocide

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Video in English

July 26, 2012

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Ljubodrag Simonović – EU’s dirty truths, capitalism and global genocide

Link to this video on:http://www.youtube.com/
You can download this video by following this instructions.

In this recent interview Duci talks about:

the lack of radical critique of capitalism within the circles of the world’s top philosophers and publicists;
genocidal plans of the developed capitalist countries against the majority of the world’s population;
existance of Fascism in Germany from the World War II untill today;
sickening truths from the EU that nobody mentions in the media (pedofilia, missing children);
the rights of children versus the rights of homosexuals;
the Zeitgeist movement and it’s technocratic fascist character…

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Ljubodrag Simonović: Capitalism is ecocidal and genocidal totalitarian order

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Video in English

January 7, 2012

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Ljubodrag Simonović: Capitalism is ecocidal and genocidal totalitarian order

Link to video on: http://www.youtube.com
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In one of his latest interviews Duci speaks about the need for the environmental consciousness to become the landmark within the leftist movement since Marx’s critique of capitalism became completely surpassed, because capitalism became genocidal and ecocidal totalitarian order of destruction. Duci is also reflecting on global issues, demonstrations around the world, situation in Serbia, plans of global capitalism to decrease the worlds population by few billions through various means (pouting the earth, air, water etc) so that the resources are left to be exploited by the capitalist elites!

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Ljubodrag Duci Simonović: The True Nature of Sport

Autor: ducisimonovic

Kategorija: Video in English

July 14, 2009

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Duci speaks about professional sport from behind the scenes. Professional sport has a glamorous front that we are used to seeing in the media. However it also has its dark side. One of major issues connected with professional sport is the use of performance enhancing drugs – known as doping.
We were discussing this subject with a former professional basketball player, who is also a philosopher and an author, Ljubodrag Simonović. He shared his personal experience of what goes on behind the scenes of the sports arena.

Ljubodrag Duci Simonovic the true nature of sport

Link to video on: http://www.youtube.com/
You can download this video by using this site.

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