BASIS OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY OF CAPITALISM--by Dunja & Ljubodrag Simonovic

BASIS OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY OF CAPITALISM--by Dunja & Ljubodrag Simonovic

[Here's a great explanation of how advanced Waste Capitalism works--how it wastes every thing and everyone in the name of progress. Adorno and Benjamin had serious doubts about the bourgeois concept of 'progress'. I refuse to use the French term for the continuous tenses in English, 'les temps progressif', as an expression of my doubts that the production team working on this unhappy project we call 'The New American Century' is really improving anything at all with its shock'n awful rewrites. Simonovic writes in Serbo-Croation--yeah, I know, you miserable Ustasi fuck, you blue-eyed jihadist tool, you war-loving petty nationalist mark, but that's what it was called when there was a Yugoslavia and that's what I'll call the language until there's another Yugoslavia! This English translation has passed through a real linguistic Gitmo/Abu Ghraib gauntlet, edited to within an inch of its life. But I think Simonovic's voice is important, and those of you who share my feelings on this will listen through his Serbian accent (yebega) in this very Frankfurtian analysis of the hopeless falsity of our current consciousness. And may I repeat what an honor it is to have exceeded our bandwidth, and gotten CM/P kicked into a higher bracket, with Simonovic's writing. --mc]

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Introduction to the book “The New World is Possible”, pub. 2005 by Dunja and Ljubodrag Simonovic, Belgrade (Serbia). E-mail: simonovic@simonovic.info



BASIS OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY OF CAPITALISM


The final stage of a mortal combat between mankind and capitalism is in progress. A specificity of capitalism is that, in contrast to "classical" barbarism (which is of destructive, murderous and plundering nature), it annihilates life by creating a "new world" – a "technical civilization" and an adequate, dehumanized and denaturalized man. Capitalism has eradicated the man from his (natural) environment and has cut off the roots through which he had drawn life-creating force. Cities are "gardens" of capitalism where degenerated creatures "grow". Dog excrement, gasoline and sewerage stench, glaring advertisements and police car rotating lights that howl through the night – this is the environment of the "free world" man. By destroying the natural environment capitalism creates increasingly extreme climatic conditions in which the man is struggling harder and harder to survive – and creates artificial living conditions accessible solely to the richest layer of population, which cause definitive degeneration of man as a natural being. "Humanization of life" is being limited to creation of micro-climatic conditions, of special capitalistic incubators – completely commercialized artificial living conditions to which degenerated people are appropriate.

The most dramatic truth is: capitalism can survive the death of Man as a human and biological being. For capitalism a “traditional man” is merely a temporary means of its own reproduction. "Consumer-man" represents a transitional phase in the capitalism-caused process of mutation of man towards the "highest" form of capitalistic man: a robot-man. "Terminators" and other robotized freaks which are products of the Hollywood entertainment industry which creates a "vision of the future" degenerated in a capitalist manner, incarnate creative powers, alienated from the man, which become vehicles for destruction of man and life. A new "super race" of robotized humanoids is being created, which should clash with "traditional mankind", meaning with people capable of loving, thinking, daydreaming, fighting for freedom and survival – and impose their rule over the Earth. Instead of the new world, the “new man” is being created – who has been reduced to a level of humanity which cannot jeopardize the ruling order.

Science and technology have become the basic lever of capital for the destruction of the world and the creation of "technical civilization". It is not only about destruction achieved by the use of technical means. It is about technicization of social institutions, of interpersonal relations, of the human body. Increasing transformation of nature into a surrogate of "nature", increasing dehumanization of the society and increasing denaturalization of man are direct consequences of capital's effort, within an increasingly merciless global economic war, to achieve complete commercialization of both natural and the social environment. The Optimism of the Enlightenment could hardly be unreservedly supported nowadays, the notion of Marx that man imposes on himself only such tasks as he can solve, particularly the optimism based on the myth of the "omnipotence" of science and technology. The race for profits has already caused irreparable and still unpredictable damage to both man and his environment. By the creation of "consumer society", which means through the transition of capitalism into a phase of pure destruction, such a qualitative rise in destruction of nature and mankind has been performed that life on the planet is literally facing a "countdown". Instead of the "withering away" (Engels) of institutions of the capitalist society, the withering away of life is taking place. The thesis of conservative bourgeois theoreticians, according to which the history of mankind ends with capitalism, becomes more and more convincing. Unless it is prevented, capitalism will, already by the beginning of the third millennium, finish off what remains of the world.

Scientists are a human form in which capitalism instrumentalizes natural forces in order to control men and nature. They have been reduced to specialty-idiots who, in a technical world, where everything operates by "pressing a button" and where "everything is under control", see an ideal world that should be longed for, and in a machine-man the "culmination of progress". Scientists, for whom "obtaining expertise" is paid for with their humanity, perceive people as enemies and machines as "friends". The same way profit and not man is essential to capitalists, "progress" and not man is essential to scientists – progress being another name for profit, and "profit" being another name for destruction. "The technical intelligentsia" are mutilated people not able to express their humanity. Fear of people transforms into hatred of people. They consciously deprive themselves of all those features that make them men, and they escape into a technical world where they can "experiment" with machines, people, the living world.… The Power of science and technology becomes the power of manipulation and destruction. For them the technical world becomes the "natural" world and the highest esthetic challenge, like Eiffel's tower, this capitalistic Tyrannosaurus, which symbolizes domination of "technical civilization" over man.

It becomes more and more obvious that capitalism creates an increasingly deep social and ecological crisis that it cannot control. The transition of capitalism is going on, from the stage of "controlled" into a stage of uncontrolled chaos which is the ultimate "answer" of the ruling order to its own incapacity to manage the increasingly dramatic existential crisis – out of which either the tearing down of capitalism and the creating of the new world, or the destruction of mankind and life on Earth, can be generated. The consequences of capitalism cannot be controlled by means of social institutions, for those have also become tools of capitalist corporations and are being used to achieve their interests. Men are deprived of basic human rights: the right to live, to labor, to a healthy environment, family, happiness, a future.… A process of depersonalization by the capitalist governance shows no responsibility for its own actions. Invisible and impossible to seize, the spirit of capitalism, which becomes the fatal force of destiny, rules the world. Multinational corporations destroy the international legal system, democratic institutions, the "social state".… The political arena becomes a political circus, politicians become capital's court jesters. Public disputes on essential social issues are being replaced with fabricated affairs. "Rule of law" becomes an ideological mask of capitalist tyranny. Eventually, the political sphere becomes a vehicle of the ruling class used for depolitization of citizens and extermination of trust in democratic institutions and hope for the possibility of creating a rational social order that would be an incarnation of the guiding principles of the French Revolution – upon which modern humanism is based. It turned out that (Western) democracy is a political form of the rule of capital over man. Multinational corporations destroy the emancipating legacy of civil society, and the institutions that should offer a possibility for expression of the citizens' political will become the means for achieving their interests instead. The possibilities for the political articulation of increasing citizens' discontent through institutions are diminishing. A declining number of issues determining the destiny of men are being raised in "representative bodies". A declining number of people take an active part in the elections. Instead of being a political subject, the citizen becomes a consumer of political programs. Everything occurs in accordance with the principles of market economics, within which good advertising is of utmost importance for the sale of products. "Money does not stink!" becomes the basic political principle. Politics becomes an industry for production of "democratic" falsehoods and illusions.

The more the crisis of capitalism develops, accompanied by the increasing discontent of people – which unavoidably generates the need for creation of the new world, for this is an existential imperative – the more aggressive are the efforts of the ruling class to prevent its disintegration. The most important task of the governing politics is to make it impossible that the objective possibilities for the change of the existing world become real potential for changes, through the change-oriented practice of the oppressed. Therefore, destruction of (critical) mind and "pacification" of the oppressed through idiotization become the most important task of the governing propaganda machinery. Degenerated capitalist rulers of the world develop increasingly horrible mechanisms for physical and mental destruction of people. Governing politics is limited to techniques for the manipulation of the oppressed by which the emancipating legacy of civil society is being annihilated while an increasingly aggressive relationship between races, nations, religions, genders is being developed.… Artificially provoked and controlled conflicts between people are being imposed, in which trust in man and change-oriented energy should burn out. "General suspects" are being labeled so as to be accountable for the causes of discontent and at which anger of citizens deprived of their rights should be vented. In this manner a critical and change-oriented relation toward the world and any class awareness are being annihilated, while contemporary fascism is being created. Production of fear, used to prepare the public for the use of the means of mass destruction (including atomic and neutron bombs) by the "bad guys" around the globe, becomes the most important task of the ruling propaganda machinery. The capitalist perpetuum mobile is in action: capitalism generates increasing discontent which is transformed, by means of politics limited to the technique of redirection of people's discontent toward the accomplishment of anti-human political and economic goals, into a driving power for repression and destruction. The governing regime tries to accomplish total criminalizing of the society, which means that chaos is created – controlled by that very way of life based on the totalizing principle of "Big fish devours small fish!"- within which all efforts to create a human world are being degenerated. Criminalizing of the society becomes the most important form of integration of the oppressed into a spiritual and existential orbit of capitalism and a way of dealing with the libertarian (class) struggle. The specifics of the capitalist criminalizing of the society go toward the expectation that it should eliminate a population "surplus", in other words, the "non usable labor force". Biological destruction of the oppressed becomes the most efficient way of controlling them. This method was "successfully" used by the American administration with Indians in "reservations" all over the USA: methanol and blankets infected with smallpox once played the role now assigned to AIDS, cigarettes, drugs, poisoned food.…

The faster the operating of capital, the less space remains for humanity. Capitalism destroys the family and all other forms of social life and produces the lonely man, for whom it becomes increasingly difficult to accept responsibility and to oppose the capitalist craze. This is a psychological moment of extraordinary importance for the ruling order. The growing misfortune becomes a generator of the growing evil into which the average citizen (petit bourgeois) masochistically blends so as to avoid responsibility for the annihilation of the world – in which process he, actively or passively, participates. No one raises the issue in public any more of man's responsibility for the established global "development" – for this responsibility implies the right to freedom and life. Therefore, the concept of "future happiness" was replaced by the fear for life as the main behavioral motivation factor. Capitalistically degenerated man has lost faith that he can do anything in the social area, so he tries to barricade himself within his own atomized hopelessness and to create his own micro-world. "Freedom" of the slaves of capitalism is limited to the possibility of purchasing an increasing variety of ever more destructive ways to "escape" from everyday life offered by the entertainment industry. Capitalism generates the pathological man that accepts destruction as way of life – the petit bourgeois is a man degenerated in a capitalist way. He has become a victim of capitalist nothingness to such an extent that he finds relief from the everyday agony he experiences in a vision of an ultimate and spectacular annihilation of mankind: instinct for life transforms into instinct for destruction.

Capitalism as a totalitarian order crushes the emancipating legacy of civil society which opens a possibility for creation of the new world – and it produces forms of political struggle that have a destructive nature. Terrorism is a capitalistically degenerated form of the fight against capitalism – destructive violence that uses capitalist means and methods – and only contributes to the intensification of the process of destruction. It does not long for creation of the new world, but for annihilation of the existing world. This is the essential difference between revolutionary struggle and terrorist actions. Fanaticism, and not a visionary conscience based on reason and freedom, dominates terrorist violence. Fanaticism is a consequence of an increasingly merciless destruction of the world and people performed by capitalist monopolies. A typical example is so-called "Muslim extremism": it is an unavoidable consequence of the more and more obvious Western effort to crush the Muslims and take full control over oil deposits. At the same time, the "fight against terrorism" is a new ideological mask of American imperialism which is analogous to the "fight against Judaic bolshevism", a mask of the Nazi Drang nach Osten, annihilation of Jews and Slavs and conquering of Lebensraum for German capital. "Fight against terrorism" becomes a pretext for introduction of global terror by the most powerful capitalist corporations. Those who terrorize the world in the form of the "fight against terrorism" try to crush all those who threaten their efforts to transform the entire world into their own concentration camp. The offered "protection" from terrorism is of a mafia nature: those who do not accept the iron embrace of the "global policeman" will be exposed to the worst American terror. "Global terrorism" becomes the “main danger that threatens mankind" – this is being constantly repeated by servants of the American politics around the globe. From its position toward terrorism one can view the real outreach and the real objectives of the American politics: terrorism is neither ideological nor alignment-related, but of a global and anti-existential nature.

Ruling oligarchies of the most developed capitalist countries are "solving" the increasingly deep existential crisis within their respective societies by shifting it onto the shoulders of the poor of the world. The survival of capitalism is directly conditioned by the robbing and destruction of the entire world. Contemporary imperialism (which has been named "globalism" by Coca Cola intellectuals), unlike its earlier historical forms that were exploitative (Rob!) and genocidal (Kill!) in nature, is of an ecocidal nature (Annihilate!). NATO, IMF and other "international organizations" are only a vehicle the West uses for carrying out its ecocide terrorism and the genocide politics based on it. A new fascism is being established, based on total global capitalist terror: each part of the planet, and each segment of life become means for capitalist reproduction – which means that life itself becomes terror over man and the destruction of humanity. The always more intensive destruction of life leads toward a radicalization of the genocide politics: destruction of an increasingly large number of people becomes a precondition for the survival of an ever-smaller number of people. Within that context a theory of the "golden billion" has been established which represents a strategic landmark for the political practice of the most developed capitalist countries. This ecocide capitalist craze generates a growing fear for survival and consequently, based on this fear, establishes conditions for radicalization of political decisions and political action. The use of atomic and neutron bombs, artificial viruses (such as HIV) and other lethal means becomes a legitimate "defense" tool. In almost all reports produced by the Western "experts", "overpopulation" of the planet is "the greatest danger for survival of mankind". Fear for survival is being redirected toward nations of the world that "excessively procreate" thus jeopardizing the survival of all. The solution is being imposed by itself: destruction of the billions of "superfluous" is essential for the survival of mankind. Those who unsparingly destroy nature and exterminate peoples become "saviors of mankind". The West has ample experience with destruction of nations: extermination of the North American Indians by American capitalism, and the Chinese and the Australian Aborigines by British imperialism – show the Western "traditions" of elimination of the "surplus" of humanity. At the same time, based on the American "new world order", "globalism" provides conditions for establishing new "national" genocide plutocracies that have the task of destroying the "excessive population" in their respective territory, by applying of economic and other measures. Further development of capitalism will be paid for by billions of innocent people, by a growing number of wildlife species that are facing extinction, by the entire living world... Eventually, it all serves to enable several million of the mentally degenerated "rich" to continue "enjoying" the material wealth created for them from the ashes and blood, tolerance for which is being provided by the use of police, mafia and military tyranny, and the illusions created by the entertainment industry. Fanatics of capitalism are the worst sort of terrorists: they are destroying life on Earth.

The economic logic of monopolist capitalism, which is based upon the notion of "Big fish devours small fish!", has become the ruling political rationale that determines relations between states. What the Nazis did not achieve with weapons and concentration camps, the Western capitalist corporations accomplished with money and economic extortion: the transformation of former "Eastern block" countries into their own "living space", while transforming their citizens into contemporary (Coca Cola) slaves. The ruling European political circles identify Europe with the “European Union” in the same way as the nazi ideologists declared Europe "the new European order". It is exactly those who advocate Europe as a community of equal nations and who insist on its emancipating heritage – who are the most bitter enemies of the “European Union” as a vehicle for the largest European corporations toward their destruction of the emancipating heritage of European nations. The so called "European Union" is being built upon an illusion that joining the "Union" guarantees all European nations “prosperity and a better life”. It should be remembered here that the main goal proclaimed by the Nazi "new European order" was to make "all European nations happy"! The European Union is (1) an anti-human and destructive order based upon the ruling principles of monopolist capitalism, "Big fish devours small fish!" and "Money does not stink!"; (2) its ruling political sphere does not provide opportunity for expression of the citizens' political will but represents a political form of the rule of capital over people; (3) the entire institutional, normative and propaganda area of that order is directed toward destruction of the cultural and libertarian self-consciousness of people and toward their integration into a spiritual orbit of capitalism at the level of the idiotized labor-consumer "mass". The “European Union” is not a "democratic community of nations", but a form of integration of the European multinational corporations in their fight against the American corporations – which use the American state as a vehicle for the achievement of their interest at the global level. The “European Union” is not based upon the emancipating traditions of European nations, but upon the imperialist traditions of European capitalism. It is not a humanistic goal but a vehicle of the most powerful capitalist corporations for the achievement, by economic and political "measures", of the very same goals that Hitler was expected to achieve for German capital – by military means. It is a transitional phase in "European development" that leads toward the creation of a new (ecocide) fascist order. Appropriately, this violent, capitalistically established "integration of European people" cause nationalism and racism to thrive in response to people's deprivation of basic human and civil rights – which is an introduction to new increasingly dramatic clashes that will develop based on the prevalent logic impose by monopolist capitalism, and also based on the increasingly contaminated natural environment and on the biological deterioration of European peoples. The ecocide capitalist terrorism unavoidably generates nationalism which is no longer based on the struggle to obtain and preserve a job or a living standard, but on the struggle for survival. It becomes more and more obvious that "the uniting of Europe", instead of developing optimism and an atmosphere of tolerance, which would correspond to the "humanist ideals" referred to by politicians, the citizens' fear of the future and intolerance are growing. "Humanist speeches" cannot conceal the growing crime, unemployment, falling apart of the "welfare state" and, along with it, of social protection, devastation of environment, drug abuse, violence, suicides, fanaticism, extremism, the flourishing of Satanist sects and of fascism, the breaking up of the family, the growing number of parentless children, human-trafficking and child-trafficking aimed at sexual abuse or the taking of their lives to "obtain" organs (in England alone more than 40,000 underage children "disappear" annually), the spreading of AIDS and other diseases that would decimate the poor, loneliness that has achieved epidemic dimensions.… "The "United Europe" generates racism, similar to that developed in the U.S.A. East European and Balkan peoples are getting the status of "people with no culture", which means "lesser creatures". The languages spoken by the Gastarbeiter population are not being perceived as part of the European cultural heritage, but become a motive for discrimination. As a mass phenomenon, migrant laborers keep their children from learning their own mother tongue in order to mask their origin and avoid humiliation. Bearing in mind that an insignificant number of children of migrant labor achieve college and university educations, it becomes clear that depriving them of their mother tongue represents obliteration of their cultural being, through which act they are predestined to be the "dirty labor force" predestined to perform the hardest and the most dangerous jobs. Within the “European Union” one can clearly discern the racist pyramid of power based upon economic, political and military supremacy: Germany, France and England are on the top, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium... are bellow them, the Balkan peoples are located at the bottom the pyramid. In the "United Europe", the place reserved for them is the one Afro-Americans occupy in the United States of America. On the "road toward Europe" the Balkan people will lose their own historical (cultural) self-consciousness and libertarian dignity in order to become a garbage collector labor force, while the Balkans become the septic tank of Europe. The Balkan peoples are commanded to renounce the libertarian myths that are the basis of their historical and libertarian self- consciousness, while at the same time, they are expected to cling to the myth of "Europe" as a "community of free nations": libertarian myths are being replaced by colonial ones. The "uniting of Europe" in accordance with the American model, which means to be based upon the interests of multinational corporations and their struggle for supremacy, leads toward annihilation of "nationalism" which translates into annihilation of the cultural heritage of European nations and their right to make sovereign political decisions. The U.S.A. is populated by the dregs of European and other nations, degenerated with the "American way of life" and the Coca Cola "culture". In Europe, we refer to historical nations who associate their national, civil and cultural identity with their own country, in which they were born, and for the freedom of which their ancestors fought. This country is their vital and spiritual homeland and the basis of their human self-image. "European identity" cannot be built on formal principles (such as a constitution), but based on a libertarian tradition and on the cultural heritage of European nations. Europeans must be judicious and resolute people who defy the processes of destruction of cultural heritage and of life in general; people who would, through political struggle, turn objectively accumulated potential for creation of a new world based on reason and freedom into the realistic potential for liberation. Europe (world) should become a garden where flowers of all European (international) cultures flourish together. It is of no importance which flower is "bigger", but that each of them emanates its own scent. It is about implementation of the leading ideas of the French revolution, ideas that are not only humanistic, but have become basic existential principles. Only based upon a struggle for the new world can the emancipating legacy of the European and other nations living in Europe be achieved. Europe will overcome the growing social crisis by creating the new world – or it will collapse. For the European peoples, acceptance of the "American way of life" means suicide.

In the increasingly merciless global economic war between the most powerful multinational corporations, social institutions become an instrument used to assure "stable development" of the capitalist order. Everything is in the game: the entire institutional mechanism has to develop in accordance with the growing demands imposed by the interest on the assets. It is not true that “politics ceased to depend on economy in a classic way", as Habermas claims, but, on the contrary, it is entirely controlled by the logic of economic relations in an attempt to turn the society into a producing-consuming base camp within which the reasoning and behavior of people would be entirely subdued to the existential interest of the capital. The state becomes the vehicle for "introduction" into a society of the basic relationship logic as a supreme principle for the organizing of social life, so that "efficiency" (once "righteousness") becomes the key political principle. "Superstructure" becomes the means that should make the logic of basic relations become a driving force of the entire social life and play an active part in its dehumanization. Its activity primarily goes for "planning the future" as an active impact for increasing the certainty for survival of the established order. With the descending of the superstructure towards the base, the circle has been closed: the state becomes a totalizing ratio of the huge capital that needs to integrate the society (primarily to preserve "social peace") and enable stable development of capitalism. In insisting on "the introduction of elements of superstructure into the base" there is the intention to prove that reason has won over chaos (the so-called "organized capitalism"). In fact, "reason" has become a form of manifestation of the irrational processes of capitalist reproduction. The basic support of "reason" becomes the instrumentalized (destructive) ratio turned into a vehicle for development (science, technology, organization, etc.) and protection (economic, police, ideological and other forms of repression) of the established order. Its sterilization has been successfully performed; it has been cleansed of all "valued-related prejudices" and has become a blind and efficient vehicle for control over man. It is about the so-called "technical mind" that has accepted contemporary forms of technological planning, applying them (adapted and improved) to human behavior planning. In that sense, the very political make up of the society, the way it "carries out of policy", becomes more and more separated from the people and accepts the logic of technocratic efficiency as a basis for establishing a "rational" social order. However, the attempt to constitute a society, set within the tumult of global events, based on "reason", is like attempting to reenforce the walls of one apartment in a building that is falling down. The stability of each separate capitalist society depends on the stability of the global capitalist order. If its foundations are in crisis, with "rational measures", which means through integration of the society under the sponsorship of the state, the crisis can only be alleviated (a so-called "controlled crisis"), its blows can be received less painfully, but the crisis cannot be solved. The "rational policy" of the most developed capitalist states is limited to the building of a sort of breakwater that blocks the waves of crisis and makes them spill over those less capable (the least developed countries) to resist the crisis.

The capitalist ratio is the means for destruction of the critical mind that enables a vision of the future and a possibility for building the free world based on reason. Instead of being oriented towards creation of social relations where man would have a chance to be a man and to provide for his own existence, reason becomes an extended arm of the economic (profit-oriented) strategy which tends to transform all social relations into segments of its own development. Destruction of mind by the entertainment industry, in which sports have a key role, is an integral part of the process of destruction of "traditional humanity" and the creation of the "new man" reduced to a robotized freak. The capitalist totalizing of the world implies degeneration of the man by imposing the "one-dimensional" (Marcuse) way of thinking which requires: a positivist attitude toward the world; instrumentalization of everything and of everyone; quantitative dimension; mysticism in a "spectacular" package; progressivism based on the principle of absolute efficiency, which in turn is based on the principle of absolute profit... It is a way of thinking which abolishes not only the essence (freedom, justice) but also the existence (biological survival, nature), which means that it is of a fatalistic nature. At the same time, an idealized image of the classical and of the medieval periods becomes the foundation for development of an idea of transcendence that becomes a vehicle for annulling the visionary mind and the idea of a future. Christian (and almost all the other) churches are natural allies of capital, which attempts to destroy the self-consciousness of the modern man (citizen) as a constituent subject of a civil society and the creator of his own world. Christianity and other apocalyptic religions contribute to a development of the awareness that the destruction of the world is unavoidable. It is one thing to preach such ideologies in a situation where there is no real threat of global destruction, as it used to be in the medieval period, and something completely different when such a threat becomes more and more real.

Manipulation moves from an ideological to a psychological level. Consciousness has been "outgrown" – the sub-conscious matters. Both the advertising industry and the political (ideological) sphere operate based on that principle. All efforts are being invested to keep man from understanding his own tragic position in the world, where destructive nothingness rules. It is media terror dominated by the entertainment industry and advertisement video clips – which create distorted mirrors where man can only see “his own degenerated” image. Capitalism systematically destroys man's ability and need to raise essential questions about his own (social) existence, as well as his potential to answers them. Almost the entire media space is controlled by those who destroy life and marginalize the essential, while attributing a crucial dimension to the marginal. "Sensational affairs", "historical matches", media "star" shows, "spectacular" Hollywood films and TV soap operas – become the vehicles for averting people's attention from the issues which determine the survival of mankind or its idiotization. Blocking conscience and giving vent to the man's repressed being, his growing discontent, fear, anxiety – and insemination of man by the ruling spirit of capitalism wherefrom the "positive man" is to be born – this is the essence of the "spectacle". Therefore, the growing importance of sport. Psychological manipulation in it is based on the Iuvenal's maxim panem et circences innovated in a capitalist manner: the less bread there is, the more abundant bloody games there are. The growing discontent of the oppressed is burning in stadiums – those fire-stakes of capitalism. Sport is a spectacular form in which destructive capitalist irrationalism emerges – based upon the absolute principle of performance (profit) and upon the capitalistically mutated social-Darwinist principle. If existential and humanist (mind–related) criteria are taken as an overall goal, it is clear that longing to break records leads toward the self-destruction of man, and toward the destruction of his cultural being: "progress" becomes a way of obtaining legitimacy for destructive sport practices. Only when the tendencies of development of sport are adequately perceived; only then can its essence – namely, its destructive character – be understood. Therefore, one of the key tasks of sport is to eliminate visionary conscience. It represents an educational model that recognizes its own outcome in the present way of living elevated to the level of a mythic phenomenon. Sport is one of the most usable ways for transforming man's life-creating energy into destructive practice. Sportification of society has become one of the key forms of capitalist totalizing of the world. In the same way the Nazi Olympic Games were used to disguise the real intentions of the Nazis, contemporary sport is being used to conceal the existential "match" between the West and the remainder of the world, in which there are no winners and losers, but only the exterminated and those left alive.

The story of the "American dream" is over. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, John Lennon and numerous other people who fought for a humane world have clearly demonstrated that the notion of "a better society" represented the greatest threat to the ruling capitalist groups because it provided a possibility for the development of a political platform that could direct the growing discontent of the oppressed toward the creation of a new (righteous) world. The major goal of the capitalist propaganda machinery is to kill the people's hope that the future is possible and that fighting for it does make sense. Capitalism is not to blame for the people's growing discontent, but those "irresponsible" politicians who promised a "happy" future are. The "vision of the future" becomes a commodity that is being sold to people through TV shows by nullifying their need to fantasize about freedom and justice. This commodity glorifies (destructive) technology thus creating the illusion of the "progressive nature of capitalism". Scientists are "concerned" with what will happen to the planet in 5 million years from now but show no interest in what will happen to humanity within the next hundred years. Instead of reliance on the "American dream", which was till recently used by the capitalist propaganda machinery for integration of citizens into the ruling order, the main vehicle for strengthening the global capitalist dictatorship today is the intimidation of citizens with the "terrorist threat".

Ideologists of capitalism represent life as if nothing serious was going on – as if the world were not on the very edge of total ruin. The bourgeois critique of capitalism is not directed against capitalism but against the very critique that tends to raise essential issues, primarily the issue related to the trend of development of capitalism – which is a precondition for determining its essence. Bourgeois theoreticians treat capitalism as a non-historical order, meaning, as a given fact which cannot be questioned. From this position result statements on the "necessity" of capitalist globalization, based on the interest of multinational corporations and the annihilation of life, which fail to mention the unavoidable fall of capitalism as one of the historical stages of the development of mankind. Coca Cola intellectuals, by definition, use the expression "communism" while talking about the USSR and other countries of "real-socialism" - intending to "prove" that "communism failed" and to repudiate the Marxist critique of capitalism and the idea of a future. In their ideological blindness they fail to notice that while criticizing Marx they actually employ his own historical concept, only adjusted to the requirements of preservation of capitalism. Francis Fukuyama in his book "The End of History and the Last Man" finds that the main reason for the failure of "communism" in the East is related to the fact that this order was based on "social justice": struggle for social justice becomes an anti-existential principle. Long before Fukuyama, this notion was "assessed" by Auguste Comte, and by his follower Pierre de Coubertin: the struggle of the oppressed for freedom and justice hinders "progress" – incarnated in the bourgeoisie – which means that it jeopardizes the very survival of mankind. Fukuyama's critique of the former "communist" societies remains limited to rejection based upon an intention to create a rationally founded economic order that serves the fulfillment of human needs – which would enable man to overcome the increasingly deep existential crisis generated by capitalism. His theory, too, points out the leading tendencies in the development of Western political thought: things are no longer being placed on an essential level, but onto a purely existential level. This means that all vehicles that provide a possibility for the survival of capitalism are legitimate – at the price of erasing the emancipating legacy of civil society and of "traditional humanity". For Marx socialism is a transitional phase between capitalism and communism – which represents the ultimate superseding of capitalism and the beginning of the real history of mankind. This means that (re)establishing capitalism is not possible if communism was previously achieved. The dimensions of the bourgeois theory's absurdity can be perceived in the context of the notion that declares capitalism to be "post-communism"! At the same time, theoreticians such as Habermas speak about "late capitalism" that is of a completely different nature from that of the capitalism Marx is dealing with. It achieves those characteristics Marx attributed to socialism, which means that "late capitalism" implements Marx's idea of "socialism". Their "critique" of capitalism is in fact directed at the very critical thought which advocates the superseding of capitalism and the creation of the new world. Horkheimer treats his own analyses in "Dialectic of Enlightenment" as a purely academic stance. His attitude toward sport indicates that he sterilizes the critical, change-aspiring charge when dealing with the concrete political sphere, thus crafting entirely arbitrary structures in order to preserve the ideological vault of capitalism, which appears in sport in a condensed form. As for the Heidegger's Sorge, it is of an abstract nature for it relates to the abstract "world" and the abstract "man". The focus should, instead, be on the concrete concern of the concrete man, meaning the man who lives in the capitalist world where destruction prevails. It is no longer man’s fear that he has to face his own unavoidable, natural death, but the anxiety that he has to confront the increasingly realistic possibility of destruction of life on Earth, and consequently of mankind itself. In the first case, the concern remains in the sphere of necessity; in the second case the concern is related to the sphere of freedom: man cannot avoid his own death, but he is in a position to prevent the destruction of humankind and to create a human world. In this context the issue of death and extinction can be broached. Death does not have to mean extinction if man leaves behind him his opus for which he will be remembered, meaning an opus that eventually contributes to the survival of mankind. In the context of the natural (life) cycle, death is a precondition for the birth of new life – it is life-creating. The essence of the capitalist death is the destruction of mechanical nature and of technical form, which is also the destruction of man and life, and consequently of the death-birth chain which creates life. Capitalism has not only deprived the man of his spiritual homeland (Heimatlosigkeit), but also of his vital environment through the annihilation of nature and of man as biological being; it does not only deprive man of his human essence, but questions his survival. Capitalism has "blended" the existential and the essential concern: struggle for survival becomes struggle for freedom, and struggle for freedom turns into struggle for survival.

The so called "leftist thought" did not adequately respond to the development of capitalism. It invested most of its energy into a futile dispute about the past – instead of directing its focus toward the future and uniting its efforts to criticize capitalism as a life-annulling order. Instead of designing contemporary notions that would enable the creation of a political concept that would be a road sign for the radical fight with capitalism as a destructive order, it continues to use the conceptual tool set created by Marx and Engels, "swept away" by capitalism long ago, as well as Hegel's (Marx's) dialectic, which can be taken for the starting point for the critique of capitalism only conditionally – for its (historical) pyramid of freedom is based upon existential certainty. The capitalist train did not halt in the station in which, according to Marx, it should have been stopped (by means of the socialist revolution), and it continued to move – dragging the entirety of humankind towards the abyss. The theory of so-called "scientific socialism" which is an ideological match to the theory of capitalism as the "end of history", insists on the absolute performance principle and, in that context, on quantitative indicators of "progress" – thus hopelessly drowning in the muddy waters of capitalism. It is not by chance that sport (as well as the other repressive forms of physical exercise), meaning the ideology of "record-mania", was granted such importance in Soviet society. Deprived of its humanist essence, Marx's idea of socialism was transformed into Stalinist practice in the East; in the West many "communist parties", taking the dogma of "realized socialism" in the USSR for granted, transformed the Soviet practice into the "idea of socialism" that should be longed for. The offered "project of the future" is still based on the notion that capitalism is an unjust, not a destructive order. The most important task of the global anti-capitalist movement is not only to liberate humanity from oppression, but to prevent its annihilation. Therefore awareness of consequences of development of capitalism represents a conditio sine qua non of the struggle against capitalism.

Struggle for the survival of life and, in that context, the fight against capitalism open a possibility for the creation of a wide political movement that will surpass the classical class divisions and class struggle, but also open a possibility for the dilution of the fight against capitalism with directing of the change-aspiring energy toward "ecological projects" that remain limited to the hopeless curing of the consequences of capitalism and its "improvement". Capitalism has "solved" the conflict between determinism and freedom – between "objective potentials" for revolution and revolutionary voluntarism – by destroying the emancipating (cultural) heritage of humanity, man as a biological being and nature. The only real (existential and essential) solution would be an overall war of humankind against capitalism, which implies using every means that might bring about its destruction. This fight would be not only defensive, liberating, or revolutionary, but a fight like has never been fought before: a fight for the survival of mankind and for the preservation of life on Earth. Having in mind the intensity of global destruction, it becomes obvious that communism is not merely a libertarian possibility, as it is for Marx, but an existential necessity.

The "positive side" of capitalist globalization is that it inevitably generates the international anti-globalist movement that, with time, will develop into a more radical international anti-capitalist front. From confrontation with the existing world, it will develop into the struggle for the new world. Marx's exclamation from the "Communist Manifest": "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" – becomes a libertarian end existential cry of awakened and fully aware humankind. Mass anti-globalist rallies are important, but only if they make up a part of the day-to-day fight against capitalism. If not, they become a part of the political circus and lead the change-aspiring energies astray. The issue of political struggle is primarily organizational. Individual forms of confrontation are not irrelevant, however, though they are not sufficient for essential achievements. If organized struggle is lacking, their impact remains as limited as that of stones thrown into a rising river – which only unified efforts can overpower. Organized struggle does not mean the domination of man by organization, if it is based upon self-initiative and if each individual is aware of the fact that the fight for survival of mankind is the issue. It is a challenge compared to which all other issues in dispute become almost insignificant. Among those discussing the "workers issue", some are unhappy with the conformist behavior of a considerable part of the working class in the most developed countries. However, that results from its position in the society. That it is not "terminated" as a political subject in the fight against capitalism confirms in the best way the "concern" of the capitalists for the creation of working class (self)consciousness and for prevention of its political engagement. In fact, the workers' discontent is growing and so the forms to confront it are increasingly merciless. The "consumer society" has not only exhausted its own potential for integrating workers into the capitalist world, but it is, itself, disintegrating, and, consequently, the walls of the concentration camp – in which a majority of workers are still kept – are falling down. Regarding American “democracy”, US citizens never had an opportunity to hear the truth about one single issue on which their freedom and destiny depend, and never, as emancipated citizens, took part in defining and implementing the strategy of social development. They live in a world that is a total lie and never had an opportunity for real choice. What will happen when the fence comes down – in a society where no democratic institutions exist to offer the possibility to articulate people's discontent over the achievement of general social goals?

The prevailing philosophy does not identify the confirmation of the authenticity of its positions in life, but only in philosophy – and so on ad infinitum. It becomes an institutionalized reason, alienated from man and thus a vehicle for averting man’s attentions from making key vital decisions – which only assists the ruling order. A phenomenological conceptual vault becomes the way to the creation of the virtual conscience in people's minds and of the destruction of the man's reasonable relation to the world. The right issue can only be the concrete historical issue. Today, it is the issue of survival. "Traditional" philosophical issues can be discussed exclusively in the context of this basic historical (existential) issue. Otherwise, they turn into the creation of a labyrinth where the reason capable of revealing the destructive tendencies of capitalist development, preventing annihilation of life and winning the cause for a humane world, should disappear. One of the most important tasks of critical theory is to liberate the mind from "traditional" philosophy – which diverts the attention of reason away from concrete existential and essential issues, the solutions of which require radical confrontation with the ruling order and the creation of a new society – which is a privilege of "philosophers" (now reduced to intellectual technicians) and a means for suppressing man's libertarian struggle: the struggle for freedom (survival) becomes "non-reasonable" activity and consequently loses the legitimacy of an authentic change-aspiring practice. Political engagement indicates the true nature of philosophy – which is just a snail's shell in which a capitalistically degenerated reason is hiding. It mediates between man and the world, facilitating the annihilation of life and of man as reasonable being. The truth is not a super-historical fact, reachable through science and philosophy alienated from man. It has always been concretely historical, as is, also, the struggle to achieve it: today the truth is survival, and the way to reach it is the struggle for survival. This is the concrete basis of the "will to power" of contemporary man and the criteria for determining the appropriateness of political action.

Critical theory does not hide behind philosophical "objectivism" but has a clear value-based political orientation: it invests efforts for the annihilation of capitalism and is based upon man's right to life and freedom. It does not attempt to create a new philosophy, but tends to abolish philosophy as a separate sphere that mediates between man and the world and to implement the emancipating legacy of modern society symbolically expressed in the guiding principles of the French Revolution: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. In classical German philosophy, which shaped the self-consciousness of modern man, the notion of reason was related to the notion of freedom. Today reason is not only the basic precondition for freedom, but also for existence: the struggle for reason becomes the struggle for survival.

The critical theory of capitalism should be modernized through the introduction of new notions, having in mind the fact that the trend of the development of capitalism also influences the critique of it. Two key notions should become the basis for the creation of the modern critical theory of capitalism: the capitalist destruction of life and, opposed to it, the life-creating human practice. They are dialectically opposed: the totalitarian capitalist destruction of life leads to an integration of humankind based upon a totalizing life-creating practice. If in the past it was still possible to claim that no clear starting point for the foundation and development of the critical theory of society existed, today the increasingly dramatic annihilation of life, meaning the ecocide-nature of capitalism, does represent the unifying starting point for both critical thought and change-aspiring (political) practice. This is related to the subjective nature of freedom and to the transformation of the objective potential of freedom, established within civil society, into a realistic potential for the liberation of man. The real significance of struggle is not in achieving some super-human goal, but in the development of human potential and of the society as a brotherhood community of emancipated individuals who are capable of directly managing their own (social) life. It is not a task for an abstract man, but for every man. Humanity is endangered, for the life of each individual man is directly endangered. Historically, man had a chance to achieve his own humanity through the struggle against tyranny; today, he has a chance to achieve his own humanity, and a chance to survive thereby – by fighting against the life-annihilating order. The readiness to sacrifice his own life for freedom becomes the readiness to offer his life for the survival of humankind.

The capitalist maelstrom of death transforms everything that man created – social institutions, technology, science, economy, education, medicine, art, religion, sport, media – into a vehicle for the operating of capital, which means for the annihilation of life. No social sphere remains man's ally. There is no one else from whom he could seek help but other men: sociability is an existential imperative. Only now, when he has been abandoned, alone in his struggle against capitalism, has man the opportunity to express his own human values, to become the real Man and to transform the world into a community of free people. The most extensive and the most dramatic battle ever fought is in progress: either man will triumph over capitalism, preserve life on this planet and create the world compatible with his own image – or he will be annihilated.




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