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Ljubodrag Simonovi
E-mail:comrade@orion.rs

DESTRUCTION OF THE BODY

The body is the basic vessel of human existence in the world

and mans 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
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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
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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 mans 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
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food distracts the mind from crucial existential and essential issues and
affects visionary consciousness. Dreams about food (just like dreams
about luxury cars, swimming pools, houses, yachts... which constantly
feed the capitalist value horizon manifested by an increasingly aggressive
entertainment industry) replace dreams about the world of free people. At
the same time, the forms of escapism created by the entertainment
industry destroy man's need for intellectual activities. Capitalism mentally
mutilates people by destroying their need for science, philosophy, poetry,
music, enlightened conversation... There exists but one area of interest:
money and the political power it buys, concerns which ultimately serve to
rationalize the existing order that enables the accumulation of wealth
through the plundering of workers and the destruction of the environment.
The relation to his own body is man's most immediate relation to
himself. Hence, the basic form of alienation from oneself is ones
alienation from one's own body. Most people in the West experience
frustration every single day because their physical appearance does not
correspond to the prevailing (mass-marketed) model of the body as the
basis for social worth. Man experiences his body as a punishment, as
something alien, and tries to transform it through strenuous physical
exercises, treatments, plastic surgeries... It is fashionable to submit
the body to the dominant aesthetic model and thus to submit man to
the ruling order. Everything is turned upside down. To be reduced to a
dehumanized and denaturalized idiot becomes the highest moral
challenge - especially if it might bring fame and fortune.
Modeling is one of the spectacular forms of the capitalist
degeneration of man. By torturing their bodies and personalities, girls are
transformed into advertising dolls and self-destructive zombies. To walk
the runways, at the cost of destroying their authenticity and health,
becomes the highest challenge for young people, who are hypnotized by
the capitalist propaganda machinery and invalidated by the capitalist
value system. Humiliation is masked as spontaneity, just as with
prostitutes: giggling serves to conceal the truth that a girl is reduced to
flesh and as such is the object of sexual exploitation. The treatment of
models differs from the treatment of livestock exhibited at agricultural
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fairs only in that the biological rhythms of the cattle must not be
interrupted, while, on the other hand, models are forced to starve.
Moreover, cattle are not humiliated in the same way these girls are. Cattle
are not forced to deform their bodies and faces in order to fit a profile
created by the capitalist clans in the shadows and by modern slave
drivers who pass themselves off as catwalk magicians.
Physical existence in the world is not a matter of free choice. Man
as a physical being is destined to live in the existing world. Reason, by
virtue of imagination and illusions, can escape from the existing world.
The body is chained to the existing world and is a part of it. Man is a slave
of capitalism because he is a slave to his own body. To be freed from
slavery means to be freed from the body. This is the essence of suicide.
The person who commits suicide kills his body in order to free himself
from slavery in an inhuman world. Killing of the body is the final way in
which capitalism deals with man. Suicide is not the act of a free will, but
rather a way in which an inhuman world inflicts a lethal blow to man. The
man who jumps off a cliff is actually pushed off by the prevailing order. To
choose between life and death is not a matter of free will. Freedom
presupposes a choice between possible forms of life and not between life
and death. The decision to choose death is the decision of a man who has
not only lost his freedom, but also lost the need to be free.
By becoming a totalitarian destructive order, capitalism absorbs
into its existential orbit, and thus degenerates and destroys, everything
that enables man to be a human being. Capitalism has deprived man of
love, respect, family, friends, a healthy environment, a secure existence,
happiness, a future... Man is left only with his body, which, itself, is also
capitalistically mutilated. The body is man's sole retreat, the sole
otherness he can resort to at any given moment and the only thing he
owns. Capitalistically conditioned narcissism has become a pathological
obsession with the body in terms of its instrumentalization for the
purposes of achieving social status and ensuring a predictable existence.
Man, as a social being, is reduced to a physical being. Given man's
loneliness and capitalistically degenerated mutual relations, the
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instrumental, destructive and spectacular character of man's relation to

his body is now considered normal.
Young people used to wear long hair and extravagant clothes
in order to attract attention. Today, they mutilate their bodies in order to
look fashionable. An increasing number of young people subject
themselves to painful treatments so as to adjust to the ruling value
model. Physical pain becomes the most important way in which young
people can experience their existence. Every year, millions of hopeless
people have pins, rings and chains forced into and through their ears,
tongues, eyebrows, noses, belly buttons, nipples, vaginas, penises... Every
year, millions of humiliated people deface their bodies with tattoos and
plastic surgery... It is the price young people will pay to adjust to and
obtain some value in a capitalistically degenerated world. Physical
deformity is the manifestation of human deformity. A man who is lost in
the destructive nothingness of capitalism does not have human
authenticity. To deform oneself as a human being is a way by which young
people try to adjust to the ruling spirit of destruction and, thus, feel that
they belong to the existing world. They try to be somebody by turning
into nothing into capitalist nobodies. A complete, self-destructive
subjection to the ruling order is a hopeless man's conformist response to
attempts by the order to completely subdue him through his invalidation
as a human being. Man tries to cripple himself as a human being to an
extent that he will no longer feel the pain of a life deprived of humanity.
He seeks to adjust to an inhuman world by completely destroying his own
humanity, by destroying his libertarian dignity as a basis for his refusal to
accept the existing world and as the source of a humanist visionary
consciousness. To be cool means to attain such a mental state that the
inhuman has irrevocably quashed all humanity.
Capitalism offered man a body in the same way a bad master
offers a meatless bone to a hungry dog. With fewer possibilities to realize
his humanity, man becomes more and more obsessed with his body. This
is the most important reason why people fight so fiercely for sexual
freedom and for indulging in anything (food, drugs, alcohol...) that might
seem to alleviate the pain caused by capitalism as it deprives them of
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their humanity. The nature of concrete sexual relations cannot be

separated from the nature of a given society. Sex is a mutual relation
mediated by man's nature as a concrete social being and thus by
prevailing relations and values. It is only as a social being that man can be
a sexual being. Capitalism, as a specific historical order, produces a
specific sociability and, thus, a specific sexuality. On the one hand,
masturbation is a typical example of autistic-narcissistic compensatory
behavior. On the other hand, there is a total sex, which involves the
reduction of one anothers bodies to being the objects of sexual
exploitation. At the same time, public promotion of the body, sexual
organs and sexual relations has obtained a spectacular self-marketing
dimension. The need for sexual exhibitionism is a consequence of man's
lacking the possibility of realizing himself as a social being in a humane
way. What used to be called love exists no more. Eroticism lacks
naturality and humanness. Sexual relations come down to a mechanical
exchange between two denaturalized and dehumanized bodies. Sexual
arousal is achieved through increasingly perverted forms of, often
violent, humiliation. Almost 80% of Americans cannot reach orgasm
unless they engage in violent acts or imagine violence during intercourse.
Daydreaming about sex is reduced to daydreaming about the sadistic
degradation of the partner, whose body is reduced to the object of
sexual exhibitionism.
Group sex is one of the most disgusting and most alluring forms
of freedom that capitalism offers its slaves. A crowd of malodorous buttholes and vaginas, phalluses and breasts, drunken and doped-up heads,
smeared in sperm and saliva this is the true image of the contemporary
capitalist apocalypse. The freedom offered by capitalism to its slaves is
limitless, which can clearly be seen in the fact that sodomy has become a
normal form of sexual intercourse. More and more respectable
citizens in the West enjoy sexual relations with dogs. The raping of
home pets and their subjection to various forms of sexual perversion
have become widespread. The organizations dealing with the protection
of animals do not bother to oppose this obnoxious form of torture, since
it is an untouchable sphere of sexual freedoms guaranteed by
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democracy to its citizens. Finally, sex dolls have become extremely

popular on the sex market. This represents the denouement of capitalist
humanism: plastic corpses have replaced human beings. Democracy
has finally created the ideal sexual partners for its slaves, who are
manipulated in every possible way that comes to their (increasingly
morbid) minds, and without any responsibility.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorovi (Petrovi)

English translation supervisor Mick Collins
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