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By Ljubodrag Simonović, Belgrade, Serbia

E-mail: comrade@orion.rs

CAPITALIST CREMATORIUM AND

THE GENERATION OF THE DAMNED

The truth is not in philosophy, science, art, religion...

The truth is in the eyes of a child begging for help.

The world has become a capitalistic crematorium. The most important

task for the humanist intelligentsia is to develop in contemporary man a self-
consciousness that will provide humankind with the possibility to survive. The
humanist intelligentsia has to draw attention to the increasingly dramatic
consequences of the development of capitalism as a destructive order and to the
existing objective possibilities for the creation of a new world. At the same time,
it needs to develop a political strategy that will become the starting point for the
creation of global forms of political struggle that would stop the destruction of
life on the planet and create a new world. We are not suggesting the development
of a distinctive intellectual “elite” that would declare itself “the conscience” of
humankind and thus become a group alienated from “ordinary” people, but a
commitment by people conscious of the destructive nature of capitalism and
willing to dedicate their lives to the struggle for the preservation of life and the
freedom of humankind. A genuine humanist intelligentsia needs to light the road
to the future. In the context of an increasingly dramatic existential crisis
generated by capitalism, it needs to become a lighthouse that will shine with an
expanding glow, as the darkness generated by capitalism grows thicker. The
Promethean principle has become a basic existential principle. That is why it is of
crucial importance not to make compromises and not to adjust to the current
political situation. A compromise results in the loss of the ability to create light –
without which humankind will vanish into the darkness of destructive capitalist
nothingness.

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
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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 – life-creating 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. Life-creating 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 starting from the existential challenges that capitalism, as a
destructive system, imposes on man. Man's becoming a human being (what he, in
his essence, is – a totalizing libertarian, creative and life-creating being) and the
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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 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, 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 he can complete, as
Marx asserts, 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 facing up to
capitalism as an order that destroys life.

For Marxist theoreticians, an empty stomach is man's key existential

driving force. Bloch's view is that “planning is founded on hunger, poverty and
scarcity”. Capitalism fills the stomachs of its subjects while destroying nature and
degenerating man as a natural and human being, turning him into a waste
disposal unit whose role is to destroy as much as possible of the increasingly
poisonous surrogates of the “consumer” civilization. As for man’s innate
aggressiveness as a living being, capitalism transforms man's vital aggressiveness
into a destructive power. People’s potentially change-oriented energy, deriving
from their increasing dissatisfaction, becomes, by means of capitalism’s vital and
ideological sphere, a spiritus movens of capitalism. The need for life is being
transformed into the need for destruction. Criticizing Hegel, Bloch rightfully
points out the fact that in history not all negations are necessarily a move
forward. However, he fails to realize that the capitalist negation leads towards
the destruction of the world. Not a word on capitalism as a destructive order, nor,
in that context, about the consciousness of a possible destruction of life as the
essential content of a revolutionary consciousness. The anticipation of the future,
as a concrete anticipation of a concrete future, must anticipate the development
of capitalism, that is, the consequences generated by capitalism as a destructive
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order that inevitably condition man’s freedom and, along with it, the possibility
of a future and its concrete nature.

Capitalist development of productive forces does not enhance the

certainty of human survival, as Marx argues, but questions it more and more
dramatically. Therefore, instead of engendering optimism, capitalist “progress”
generates fear of the future. The most perilous characteristic of capitalism is
related to the fact that, from the results of life-destruction, it creates a source of
profit and, thus, a basis for its own further development, where man's creative
powers become a vehicle for the development of the destructive powers of
capitalism and for acceleration of the destruction process. Capitalism has
become a self-reproducing mechanism of destruction, which, to the living world,
represents what a malignant tumor represents to an organism: it extends its own
lifetime by devouring all that provides humankind with a chance for survival.
This does not refer only to the systematic, but to the ultimate destruction of life
on the planet.

Capitalism is based on ecocidal terrorism. Life is constantly diminishing

and so is humanity. The ecological clock is striking the last hours. The issue at
stake is not only global warming, but a systematic destruction of the living world
and man as a biological and human being. Capitalism exterminated tens of
thousands of animal species. Zoos, the concentration camps for animals, clearly
show how capitalism treats the living world. Agriculture based on profit destroys
the soil with increasingly poisonous chemicals, genetically distorted plants and
monocultures. Forests are dying. Water resources are being destroyed. Hundreds
of thousands of containers full of nuclear waste have been thrown into the ocean
depths. Over 90% of the seas and oceans are polluted. The north and the south
poles are melting. The sea level is rising, which will result in the flooding of
coastal towns and vast stretches of the land. A decrease in the salinity of the
North Sea will stop the Gulf Stream and thus cause catastrophic climate changes
not only in the northern hemisphere, but in the whole world. By destroying the
ozone layer, capitalism turned the sun, the source of life, into the source of death.
Mankind is nearing the zero point, after which the climate changes will bring
about increasingly dramatic ecological changes that man will no longer be able to
influence.

A genetic distortion of man is under way, as well as a biological

destruction of nations. Air, water, food – everything is polluted. The “allowed”
amounts of additives are constantly being increased. Their total effects are
increasingly detrimental to human health and man's genetic properties. An
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increasing number of young people are suffering from serious diseases. An

increasing number of people are sterile. Even capitalistically destroyed medicine
and pharmacology are not struggling against diseases. Seeking to expand their
market, they are producing an increasing number of profitable patients. The
American Medical Association has passed a resolution that doctors should stop
using preventive medicine as it reduces the number of patients and thus
diminishes the doctors' earnings. It is estimated that in the West over 70% of all
operations are being performed for profit. To kill people, particularly children
and girls, in order to “obtain organs” is the most monstrous capitalist practice. In
England, over 40,000 girls and boys are kidnapped and massacred annually, in
France the figure is over 30,000, in USA over 100,000... The most renowned
clinics in the world “obtain” organs on the “black market”, which means that they
directly cooperate with professional murderers, who are specialized in
kidnapping and killing young people. As the organs are transplanted primarily
into people who have money, it is no coincidence that the capitalist oligarchy
does not care to deal with this criminal practice. Killing and massacring the
children of “ordinary” people in order to replace the organs of the wealthy “elite”
most convincingly illustrates the criminal nature of capitalism.

Capitalism is a genocidal order par excellence. The extermination of the

Africans, Australian aborigines, Chinese, Indians, Algerians, Koreans, Vietnamese,
Iraqis, the Afghans... fills the “most glorious” pages of the history of capitalism.
On cotton plantations in the USA, where slavery existed for over 200 years,
millions of Africans died of starvation and exhaustion. The slaves who tried to
run away had their feet cut off by the capitalists, they were castrated, whipped to
death, hanged... It should not be forgotten that the development of capitalism is
based upon one of the most atrocious crimes ever committed: the eradication of
the North American Indians. What gives a specific dimension to that crime is the
fact that American capitalists turned the extermination of the Indians into a
multi-billion dollar “business.” Not only were the North American natives
exterminated in the most brutal manner, they had to be reduced to “despicable
murderers”, and as such became “stars” in the Hollywood film industry. The
Indians, victims of the largest genocide in human history, became symbols of evil,
while those who massacred millions of Indian children became the incarnation of
audacity and goodness. The extermination of the Native Americans represents a
symbolic obliteration of life lived in harmony with nature. The “heroes” of the
“Wild West”, such as Buffalo Bill, are the incarnation of the ecocidal spirit of
capitalism: the monstrous slaughter of buffalos becomes a legendary “pastime”
and inviolable pattern of behavior for the youth in the USA and Europe. Between
the middle of the XIX century and the Japanese occupation of China, the English
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capitalists, by military actions and by opium, killed over 250 million Chinese and
destroyed and plundered over 90% of the Chinese art treasury. In XIX century
England, the cradle of capitalism, every second child died by the age of five from
illness or hunger, and every third woman died in childbirth. Nine year old girls
and boys worked 14 hours a day (!) in English mines and factories, and the same
situation existed in America, Germany, France, czarist Russia and other capitalist
countries. It is estimated that at the peak of Western industrialization tens of
millions of children perished in mines and factories from exhaustion and hunger.
In England, by the middle of the XIX century poor people caught stealing were
punished by being tied to wheels set up in town squares and having their
intestines taken out. During the great economic crisis of capitalism in 1929, in
the USA alone over 4 million workers and members of their families starved to
death. The First World War, with over 20 million casualties, which caused the
epidemic called “Spanish fever” that killed more people in Europe than the war
itself; the rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, Spain and other European countries,
as well as in Japan; World War II with over 60 million casualties (out of which
over 35 million were Slavs, 6 million Jews and 3 million Roma people) – this is
the “civilizatory legacy” of capitalism. In the aftermath of World War II, the
French colonial troops “civilized” the Africans by driving the women and children
into groups and pouring petrol over them, burning them alive. Men were thrown
from airplanes. It is estimated that in Mozambique alone over 100,000 people
were killed by these methods. In Indochina, Algeria and other colonies, the
French legionnaires committed bestial crimes killing millions of people.
American soldiers burned entire cities in Korea, and in Vietnam killed over five
million “communists”, one third of whom were children. Little girls were raped
on a mass scale. Among the most popular “souvenirs” the American “marines”
brought back from Vietnam were “necklaces” of the ears of massacred
Vietnamese. In Chile, American capitalists organized the assassination of the
legally chosen President Salvatore Allende, who had nationalized the copper
mines, and they then brought to power the Pinochet military junta, which over
the next few months, using the methods of the Catholic inquisition, killed
thousands of people who opposed the dictatorship. The same was done in
Argentina and other countries in South and Central America, as well as in South
Korea, the Philippines, Africa, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, in the Middle East...
Concentration camps are one of the most monstrous products of capitalist
civilization. The English colonial powers set up the first camps in South Africa,
and in fascist Germany they were “perfected” with gas chambers and other
means for mass destruction. The Nazis actually established the death factories,
which operated by the same principle as other capitalist plants. The bodies of
murdered children, women and men were used as a raw material. The skin,
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bones and hair of the murdered people were used to make drums, hangers,
cloth... The “total war”, the “scorched earth” strategy and, related to that, the
“carpet bombing” used to burn towns and kill the population – this is but another
“invention” of capitalism. The same “war method” was employed by the Japanese
fascists when they attacked China, the Nazi Germans (together with the Italian
fascists) during the civil war in Spain, in their attack on Poland, Yugoslavia and
the Soviet Union, as well as in the American bombing of the German towns
during the World War II and the towns in Korea and Vietnam. The use of curbed
natural forces in order to create the means of mass destruction is the most
devastating product of capitalism. In that respect, the American annihilation of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs has a symbolic meaning. The atomic,
hydrogen and neutron bombs capable of instantaneously destroying life on the
planet; viruses which could destroy life on entire continents; chemical means
which could contaminate the rivers – these are the most atrocious results of
capitalist “progress”.

The theory of a “golden billion” has become a strategic landmark for the
economic and political practice of the most developed capitalist countries. The
destruction of an increasing number of people is becoming the basic condition
for the survival of fewer and fewer people. A global ecocide has become the basis
of a global genocide. Since World War II, world capitalism has been responsible
for the deaths of over one billion people, hundreds of millions of whom were
children. Thanks to global economic fascism, established by the most advanced
capitalist countries, over 30,000 children die every day from diseases, hunger
and lack of water. In respect to the repeated “argument” that “overpopulation” is
the main cause of the increasing shortages of drinking water, food and energy, it
should be said that the Americans, Europeans and Japanese, whose populations
total about one billion, use (destroy) the same amount of water, food and energy
as 500 billion people would use at today’s rates of consumption in the
underdeveloped countries. At the same time, capitalism destroys life in the seas
and oceans, which could provide quality nourishment for tens of billions of
people. The thesis that the planet is “overpopulated” is actually one of the
justifications for the destruction of entire nations so that the most powerful
capitalist corporations can get access to natural and energy resources. Not a
shortage of natural resources, but a shortage of humanity - which above all
means domination by the inhuman and destructive capitalist order – is the main
cause of the ever-deepening existential crisis.

The sterilization of the life-creating power (fecundity) of living creatures

has become a universal principle of capitalist development. Capitalism
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obliterates man as a biological being by depriving him of the ability to be a

fecund being. Men and women contain fewer and fewer organic ingredients
required for fecundity. The polluted environment, contaminated water and food,
disruption of the organism’s biological rhythm, increased existential uncertainty
that constantly keeps man under stress – this all results in increasingly serious
corporal and mental damage. The recuperation of man’s life-creating ability as a
fecund (life-creating) being represents one of the most important challenges that
capitalism poses for man. The genocidal nature of “consumer society” is evident
even in the most developed capitalist countries and it directly affects the white
race, which, due to its dominant position in the process of the reproduction of
capital, is closest to the crater where profit is made, and is thus most affected by
the rhythm of capitalist reproduction. “White plague” ravishes the most
developed capitalist countries. Capitalism destroys the family and degenerates
the relationship between the sexes. An increasing number of children live with
only one parent or without any parents, and instead of developing relationships
with the opposite sex, more and more people live alone or in homosexual
households. The ruthless devastation of the social fabric represents another
major characteristic of capitalism. A growing number of people live alone (in
large cities of the most developed West European countries almost one-half of
the citizens live in a “single member household”), and a sense of loneliness
generating the worst forms of social pathology assumes epidemic proportions.
While in some industrial sectors the workday had to be shortened, the need for a
“mobile” labor force has increased, which means that individuals who can be at a
company's disposal at all times have an advantage when applying for a new job.
And they are the ones “liberated” from all social and, in particular, family
obligations. A growing number of women agree to a “voluntary” sterilization in
order to “win the employer's confidence” – and get a job. The official duration of
the workday becomes, more and more, non-mandatory. The subordination of all
life to the growing velocity of capital reproduction is one of the key causes of the
dramatic reduction in the birth rate in developed capitalist countries. If
capitalism is not in the near future replaced by a humane society, the white race
will disappear. A biological decline of the white race in the most developed
capitalist countries, together with the destruction of the environment, has
become the key issue which will have a direct impact on political and other social
issues.

The deepening existential crisis of humanity reflects the true nature of

“progress”, based on increased consumer standards measured by the amount of
energy, water, and food used. The creation of the “consumer society” is the most
fatal “contribution” of capitalism to the “progress” of humanity. Not only does
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capitalism produce too many goods with use-value, it produces more and more
goods with no use-value at all. The production of the unnecessary leads to the
increased consumption of raw material, energy and labor, resulting in the
increased pollution of the planet, exploitation of man and disintegration of
society. Not only does increasing production not lead to an increased standard of
living, it more and more jeopardizes it. Ultimately, a growing part of capitalist
reproduction is of a destructive nature. Eating habits are a good illustration.
People are becoming containers that devour growing amounts of increasingly
poisonous food. In the USA over 150 million citizens suffer from various health
problems due to the overconsumption of junk food. At the same time, more and
more money is invested in the treatment of problems arising from obesity, far
more than in the areas of primary importance for the development of society –
such as education.

Science and technology have become the means for a planned

destruction of products. Big companies have special facilities intended to
“ensure” that the products do not last any longer than planned – in order to force
citizens to buy a new product. Durability of products used to be their most
important quality. Today, capitalist concerns seek to shorten the expiry date of
their products and, instead, lure the consumers with attractive packages (they
are sometimes more expensive than the product, itself), functionality and, of
course, “good advertising”, which, with TV commercials, becomes a spectacular
fraud. The multi-use razor blade was discovered a long time ago, but it is no
longer available in shops. The same goes for hundreds of cheap drugs which
could save the lives of millions of sick children, but which have been left in the
safes of pharmaceutical companies, as their use would decrease the profits. More
and more products are sold in a single, compact unit: because of a deficiency in
one segment one has to buy the whole part. Products are made of material that
makes them difficult to repair. The economic system, led by the banks, seeks to
make people (especially by taxation policy) join the consumer mania and thus
enable the further functioning of capitalism. “Destroy!” - this has become the
categorical imperative of the consumer society.

The dominant processes indicate the true nature of one of the original
principles of capitalism: “Competition breeds quality!”. It turns out that
capitalism accepts only the competition that results in increased profit and not
satisfaction of human needs. At the same time, instead of the “free competition”
of liberal capitalism, a directed competition has been established, dominated by
the strategic interests of the most powerful multinational concerns. They
determine the “rules of the game”, ruthlessly dealing with those who oppose
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them. Monopolistic capitalism abolishes competition between individuals and

establishes domination as the basic existential principle. “Destroy competition!”
and “Big fish devour small fish!” have become the military cries of contemporary
capitalism. In the more and more ruthless economic war, capitalist empires
devour one another, destroying life on the planet. The space for “personal
initiative”, the central legitimizing principle of “real” capitalism, is shrinking. Man
is completely subjected to a “higher force” embodied in depersonalized and
bureaucratized gigantic corporations. Huge investments, planning the “future”,
“conquering the market” - behind all this there are “teams” and “organization”.

When it comes to social justice, the dominant tendency in the capitalist

world is a decreasing number of rich people as against an increasing number of
the poor. Barely 3% of the population of the USA owns almost 70% of the
country’s social wealth. Millions of people live in the streets, in containers and
sewage. Every fourth child lives beneath the poverty line. An increasing number
of people are starving. Over 50 million American citizens do not have basic
health insurance. A total criminalization of society is under way. Violence and
crimes have reached outrageous proportions. Bulletproof doors and windows,
security systems and cameras – apartments and houses in the “free world” have
turned into bunkers. Hundreds of mafia organizations operate in the USA alone,
holding in their hands not only the markets for drugs, gambling, prostitution,
“white slavery”, sports, human organs and nuclear waste, but also an increasing
part of the economy and the banks, politicians, policemen and journalists... In
addition, the USA is home to over 100,000 “local” professional gangs and
countless street gangs. Between 1901 and 1991, in the USA the murder rate has
increased ten fold and now amounts to over 80,000 murders a year. The number
of the wounded is five times greater. The number of the murdered and wounded
in the USA in the XX century exponentially exceeded the total number of
American casualties in the First and Second World Wars, in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq,
Afghanistan... In USA prisons, which have become peculiar concentration camps
for the “colored”, there are millions of people. School violence has reached
horrendous proportions. In spite of stronger police protection, weapons
scanners, video surveillance, steel bars and wire fences, in the USA students kill
and injure over 30,000 peers and teachers a year. The number of the increasingly
lethal firearms owned by the citizens exceeds 300 million. Millions of women are
beaten and raped every year. Millions of women and children are engaged in
prostitution. In the developed capitalist countries, trafficking in “white slaves”
has become one of the most profitable businesses. It is estimated that over half a
million girls, mostly from Eastern Europe and Asia, “disappear” every year into
the deepening network of prostitution in the West. At private projections, the
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most popular films are those ending with a ritual slaughter of young girls. Tens of
millions of citizens regularly use drugs and alcohol. Each year hundreds of
thousands of young people die from drugs and alcohol, or suffer serious physical
and mental damage. The majority of people live under constant mental stress. In
the USA alone, every year over one million people die of heart attacks and other
coronary diseases caused by stress. Over 50 million Americans are estimated to
suffer from serious mental disorders. The usage of sedatives has dramatically
spread. People take billions of pills yearly. Suicide is a mass phenomenon. Every
year millions of people attempt suicide, while hundreds of thousands succeed in
killing themselves. The system of education is undergoing a deep crisis. At the
same time, the increasingly aggressive entertainment industry produces mass
idiocy. In the USA over one hundred million people are practically illiterate.
Instead of education, they are offered gambling. The creation of gambling
euphoria is the most perfidious way of corrupting people with the dominant
spirit of capitalism based on the separation of value from its appropriation. The
unemployment rate is rising dramatically. More and more girls are being
subjected to “voluntary” sterilization in order to get a job. A vast majority of
people live on credit and are in debt slavery. More and more people have two
jobs in order to get by. Life has become a constant humiliation. Democratic
institutions are destroyed along with elementary human and civil rights. Fear is
widespread. In the USA, the police and secret services “have the right” to enter
homes and arrest people without a warrant, to keep them imprisoned without
time limits and without the right to a lawyer, to subject them to bestial torture
and to kill them. Capitalist terror against citizens is justified by the “fight against
terrorism”. American secret services perform spectacular crimes following the
Nazi model (burning of the Reichstag), such as the destruction of the Twin
Towers in New York and the “attack” on the Pentagon, when nearly 3,000
American people died so that the ruling capitalist groups could freely establish a
police state and produce new wars, all that in order to ensure sustainability of
the military/industrial complex at the core of the American economy. Spreading
fear is the most horrible and most efficient way by which capitalists ensure
people's submission. Hence the escape from everyday life to a world of illusion,
offered by the Hollywood film industry and TV stations, has become the most
important preoccupation of the citizens of the “free world”.

Capitalism destroys both the basic emancipatory impulses with which

the advanced bourgeoisie tore down the walls of feudal society (Enlightenment,
the guiding ideas of the French Revolution, philanthropic movement...) and the
civilizing (cultural) legacy of civil society without which there is no future. In that
way capitalism destroys the historical origins of bourgeois society and
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establishes a “new” fascism. The champions of contemporary fascism are not the
groups of young people “adorned” with the Nazi symbols, but capitalist
corporations that, generating the increasing existential and, therefore, overall
social crisis, generate a fascist ideology. The ruling principle of monopoly
capitalism, “Destroy the competition!”, is a generator of the contemporary fascist
practice both in the economic and in the political spheres. The capitalist
destruction of the environment and of man as a cultural and biological being
conditions the establishment and strengthening of the most reactionary political
forces. Not only the possibility of a new society, but also of a “new” (ecocidal)
barbarism, is being established by capitalism. There is a conflict within
capitalism between these two tendencies. It is both the basis and the framework
of the contemporary class struggle, which is not solely about fighting for social
justice, but also about fighting for survival. Marx himself indicates the possibility
of establishing a (long) period of capitalist barbarism (as well as the possibility
of the common destruction of both the ruling and the labor classes), however,
this position is not given substantial significance in his theory (and is, therefore,
without any obligatory nature) to elaborate any such forms of the development
of capitalism and the corresponding forms of a political struggle against it. At the
same time, potential capitalist barbarism, according to him, is not of a
destructive, but of an anti-libertarian nature. Marx fails to perceive that
capitalism, in its essence, represents an ecocidal barbarism of a technical form,
and, consequently, that capitalists are ecocidal barbarians.

Ideologues of capitalism use “fascism” as a waste container in which they

throw everything which actually presents the crimes of capitalism and speaks of
its true nature. At the same time, fascistic darkness becomes a phenomenon
relative to which capitalist democracy demonstrates its “humane” value. Instead
of a concrete historical antipode: capitalism – humane society, a false antipode is
offered: “democracy” – “totalitarianism” (“fascism” and “communism”). In that
context, ideologues of capitalism seek to prove that fascism is a phenomenon sui
generis and has nothing to do with capitalism. Indeed, fascism is one of the
political manifestations of capitalism, more precisely, fascism is the clenched fist
of capitalism in crisis – when ruling capitalist groups, to prevent the demise of
the ruling order, abolish basic human and civil rights and use the state in order to
establish a direct and limitless capitalist dictatorship over the working class and
for their (genocidal and ecocidal) colonial expansion. The contemporary
situation in the USA and Europe suggests that German fascism was but one of the
historical manifestations of fascism and that fascism is the enfant terrible of
capitalism.
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Capitalism deprives life of its human purpose and thus of the essential.
We are witnessing a capitalist leveling: everything is standardized, everything is
on the consumer assembly-line turning faster and faster. The promotional
postcard of capitalism does not display an imagined man. The “society of the
spectacle” (Debord) is the manifestation of a world ruled by destructive
nothingness. There are no great events. There is no vision. An impression is
being made that everything important that could happen has already happened.
All ideas of the past have been “used up”. A great idea does exist, but its voice
does not reach the people deafened by commercial ads. A mountain looms out of
the fog, but people are blinded by the spotlights of “consumer society” and are
unable to see it. There is no thought which could be a critical reflection of life.
There is no speculative mediation. In his relation to the world man does not seek
to create a humane society. Life itself has become a destruction of reason and the
need for reason. The terror of a positive life and a positive ratio has been
established. All is a given. The colors of life have waned under the dazzling lights
of the “consumer society”. The darkness of death is hidden under colorful
propaganda messages. In commercials, everybody is “happy”. The tragic has
drowned in “Coca Cola”. Consumer-man has killed homo sapiens.

Capitalism brings people into a special mental state. Consumer madness

is not only a manifestation of the destructive madness of capitalism; it is an
expression of the need to suppress the pain caused by solitary hopelessness, one
of the most fatal products of capitalist civilization. For a hopelessly lonely man to
think, he must dive into the abyss. At the same time, to reject thinking means to
reject responsibility for cooperating in the destruction of the world. Escape from
an increasingly gloomy everyday life becomes an obsession. The less a man is
capable of expressing his humanity in the existing world, the more the virtual
world becomes a real world. TV programs have become a mental guide for “the
masses”. Along with the further development of the existential crisis, the
governing regime creates an increasingly aggressive “entertainment industry” by
means of which it intends to keep man “in a good mood”, in order to prevent man
from experiencing his own existence, from confronting his own misery and
pursuing the ways toward liberation. What we have here is the “Titanic
syndrome”: as the ship sinks – the music gets louder. Using all available means,
the major media make every effort to immerse man in the swamp of “Coca Cola
culture”, for only at the point when man poses the question of the future, when
he becomes aware of the scale of global destruction – only then does the entire
threat of the established “progress” become obvious. It is not by accident that the
new generations are, for the first time in history, worse educated than their
parents. At the same time, increasingly aggressive and inhuman commercial
 14

video clips become “spiritual food” for people. “The average” citizen of the USA is
exposed to over 3,000 commercial messages a day. The school system, as an
educational institution, faces a growing crisis. The entire cultural heritage of
Western civilization, as well as the humanist achievements of other civilizations,
is endangered. What we are facing here is a development dictated by the
governing system with the task of adjusting the intellectual (educational) level of
citizens to its own existential interests, hindering the development of a critical
mind that points both at the perils of capitalism and the opportunities for the
creation of a new world generated within civil society. The fact is that man has
developed production capacities to such an extent and has become so skilled
(proficient) that he is able to take into his own hands not only the production
management processes, but also the administration of the entirety of social
existence. Therefore, the ultimate liberation of humankind from oppression and
existential uncertainty is no longer a fantasy, but a realistic prospect. The basic
objective of the entertainment industry is to impede the formation of an active,
change-oriented connection between established technological development and
man's endeavors to utilize it in order to fulfill his own real needs and provide a
more certain future. The increasingly ruthless attacks by the capitalist media on
critical reason represent a capitalist response to the growing devastation
generated by capitalism and to the already established objective possibilities for
man to step beyond the capitalist world into a civilization of freedom. In that
context, capitalism deals with humanist education and humanist intelligentsia.
On the one hand, capitalism creates “white collars” – a technical intelligentsia,
the leading power in the destruction of the planet, which is reduced to specialty
idiots, and, on the other hand, “blue collars” – a manipulated work force deprived
of even an elementary education. The consequences are more and more visible.
After living so many years in a capitalist civilization and after such “progress”, an
increasing number of people become the victims of the darkest ideologies, the
morbidity of which exceeds anything that history has seen so far. In the USA
alone there are thousands of “satanic” sects, the direct result of a ruthless
destruction of people's spiritual integrity. “Consumer society” throws man into
the abyss of spiritual hopelessness, where he is met by dark powers offering to
“fulfill his needs” by manipulative means with which capital turns them into
mindless “consumers”. For a man lost in the darkness even the burning stake
represents a source of light and a signpost.

The myth of “free media” and “democratic publicity” in the West is finally
dead. It is now clear just how united the Western propaganda machinery is when
it comes to the protection of the strategic interests of the most powerful
capitalist states. By using scientifically led and technically perfected propaganda,
 15

a specific “mood” is created so that the public begins to accept the annihilation of
whole nations as a “humane” act. Instead of, by the “development of democracy”,
enabling the citizens to make independent judgments on vital social issues, we
have a “public opinion” which is the product of the biggest information centers,
peculiar fabricators of lies and half-truths in the hands of the most powerful
capitalist clans and leading political groups. At the same time, thanks to new
technical devices, the leading information media established a global monopoly
over information. “Western democracy” is on the road to beating the practices of
the worst totalitarian regimes. In light of the governing tendencies in the
development of capitalism, even the darkest Orwellian hunches resemble a
children's story.

What is the point of philosophy in the contemporary capitalist world

dominated by destruction, 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, which means 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 a commercial for capitalism. It provides and
strengthens a way of thinking which, 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 which via 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 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 of 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
 16

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 as they do
not develop a philosophy that departs from the emancipatory legacy of civil
society and national cultures, they rather adjust to a ruling order that does not
need a wise man, but an idiotized consumer. Philosophy becomes an entertaining
skill, while philosophers become the “fools” of capitalism.

Purposefulness and thus the quality of philosophic thought are

determined by whether this thought poses concrete historic questions. Today, in
a world which faces an ever more realistic possibility of destruction, that
principle means that concrete historical questions might be the last questions
posed by man. It is that quality which makes a difference between today’s
concrete historical questions and all the earlier concrete historical 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, meaning,
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 a trivial way of
thinking and direct the mind towards the essential issues. Riding on 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 be the guiding thought of the last revolution in the history of
mankind. It is not the howl of Minerva’s owl in the twilight, but a 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
 17

it is not capable of answering the questions that are of vital importance for
human destiny?

The 1854 letter from the chief of the Seattle tribe to the American
President Franklin Pierce indicates the important limitations on modern
philosophy with respect to basic existential issues. It is a sobering truth that
modern man does not turn to the greatest thinkers of the modern age in order to
find answers to the critical existential issues, but turns to a man who by the
predominant criteria for evaluation has the status of a “savage”. The Indian
chief's letter indicates that all modern Western thought has gone astray. It
depicts the true nature of capitalism and the basic tendency of its development
better than all the philosophical and sociological thought of the XIX and XX
centuries. The Indian chief's letter, at the same time, indicates that the question
of being, as one of the central “traditional” philosophical questions, cannot be
viewed any longer at the essential level. Being, as a symbolic source of authentic
humanity and a mirror where man can see his authentic human image, above all
else means the affirmation of man's life-creating powers acquiring a concrete
historical dimension with respect to capitalism as a totalitarian destructive
order. The fact that the letter was written in the mid-XIX century is of primary
importance as it refutes the claim that at that time it was not possible to see the
ecocidal nature of capitalism. The words of the Indian chief not only show the
limitations of Western scientific and philosophical thought, but also that it is not
necessary to have science and philosophy in order to recognize the true nature of
capitalism. The truth that capitalism is an anti-existential order is based on
immediate empirical evidence. This was the guiding thought of Fourier when, in
the early XIX century, he questioned (capitalist) “progress”, suggesting that it is
based on the destruction of forests, fields, sources of water, climate...

A specificity of the contemporary historical moment, that is, a specificity

of capitalism as a system of destruction, also conditions the specific view of the
past. The ruling ideology sterilizes the libertarian and change-oriented charge of
philosophical thought and reduces it to a lifeless “history of philosophy”, which
becomes a vehicle for the destruction of the libertarian and life-creating power of
reason. Critical theory, based upon existential humanism, needs to create the
possibility for “reviving” the creative and libertarian spirit of our ancestors by
engaging it in the fight for survival and for the creation of a new world. In the
struggle for humankind’s survival, the past thought has to realize its own
humanistic, i.e., existential and libertarian, potential. The deepening existential
crisis forces man to focus on the basic existential issues and, in that context, to
integrate the libertarian and cultural heritage of humankind and to rid it of any
 18

“tails” that only weaken the combat and drive the mind astray. The “fullness of
humanity”, in the sense of perceiving man from a historical prospective, is
conditioned by increasingly dramatic existential challenges. The libertarian past
needs to become a source of man's life-creating energy in the struggle for the
survival of humankind. A “return” to the mythological past is justified only if it is
to revitalize libertarian and life-creating myths. Otherwise, it amounts to driving
reason astray, and is, regardless of personal motives, of an anti-existential nature.

In relation to man, the capitalist world has become a totalitarian and

destructive power to such an extent that it loses the need for scientific
knowledge, as it has become, in the hands of capitalists, an anti-humane and
anti-living power. At the same time, an escape from knowledge becomes an
escape from responsibility for the world's survival. The awareness that a group
of capitalist fanatics can momentarily destroy the world, as well as the
awareness of an increasing possibility of destroying the environment and thus
humanity, itself, bring man, stuck in the living mud of “consumer society”, to the
brink of madness. An escape from knowledge is a “natural” defense mechanism.
The ruling scientific thought reduces the reality of capitalism to the “facts”
enabling a “scientific view” according to which capitalism has no alternative,
which means that all “problems” can be “overcome” in capitalism itself by
“perfecting” it in a technical way and by technical means. The capitalist vision of
the future has a “scientific” character. The myth of the “omnipotence of science
and technology” has become a means for the creation of a capitalistically
degenerated religious consciousness and, in that context, the image of the future.
The vision of “paradise”, in which the “souls of the deceased are united in God”, is
replaced by the vision of a “perfect technical world”. Everything is mediated by
money; everything acquires a trivial dimension – including the relation towards
death. Ideologues of capitalism promise man (rich “elite”) “immortality”, which
will be provided by creating technical devices that will enable the “revival” of
frozen corpses. Scientists have become the capitalists paid murderers and the
driving force in the destruction of the world. A vast majority of scientists are
engaged in the production of weapons of mass destruction, devices for mass
control, the genetic distortion of man, the destruction of nature, the
manipulation and idiotization of people... Scientific knowledge has been deprived
not only of its human purpose; it has acquired an anti-existential nature.

The “invasion of space” has made man face the immense universe in a
way that reduces the earth to a tiny cosmic speck that can disappear at any
moment. The awareness of the cosmic position of the earth and humanity makes
any striving for survival meaningless. Scientific knowledge produces a fear of
 19

survival but does not offer any solutions – since solutions do not abide in the
sphere of science but in everyday life. Asteroids, comets, supernovas, black holes,
anti-matter – all these phenomena become the projections of a fear of
destruction created by capitalism as a destructive order. Relations between
people are not based on man's need for another man, which means on man's
need to do something which will contribute to a better humanity, but are
mediated by catastrophic scenarios, which make meaningless any engagement
that can open new spaces of freedom and increase the possibility of man's
survival. Thus capitalism, which more and more dramatically jeopardizes
mankind's survival, as the only real danger for mankind, “disappears” in the
cataclysmic projection of the “future”. It is not his inability to confront natural
cataclysms, but his conformism and loneliness that make modern man turn to
mysticism and other forms of escapism and find the meaning of life in irrational
spheres. It is not the endless universe, but his lonely hopelessness that produces
fear when man looks up at the skies. Understanding the infinite as an openness,
which means as a possibility of endless development of man's creative powers
and the space of freedom, is conditioned by the creation of a humane social order
here on the earth. Only the development of human relations, which means the
feeling that he is not alone on the earth, creates the feeling that man is not alone
in the universe and gives meaning to human life. Young people embracing in the
vast blue universe do not see danger but only an endless space of future.

As for the justification of “cosmic programs”, their primary purpose is not

to make money, but their military character. They also serve to create an
impression that man's life on the earth is temporary and that technical means
can ensure the “eternal” existence of humanity in the universe. The earth
becomes insignificant relative to the vast cosmic space offered to man by the
entertainment industry as a virtual world. Young people are enchanted by
spectacular cosmic visions at the same time that capitalism systematically
destroys life on the planet. The Hollywood film industry creates the impression
that cosmic constellations are reachable and that “conquering other planets” is
the imminent future. Time and universe are relativized and thus the notion of the
real time in which we live is lost. To link humanity's near future to cosmic
vastness is the fatal illusion created by the Hollywood film industry. At the same
time, historical time is turned into abstract time in which, in the virtual cosmic
space, the capitalist world is reproduced at a “higher” technological level.
Technology becomes a means for creating the illusion that the cosmic “world” is
established by the ruling principles of the capitalist order: the principle of profit
becomes the ruling cosmic principle. The earth becomes a springboard for
“conquering the universe”, and celestial bodies are the raw material and, as such,
 20

are subject to exploitation. The universe becomes the source of capitalist

expansion where the struggle is led for controlling the resources and where
there is a constant danger (in the form of bloodthirsty “aliens” acquiring the
status of cosmic “terrorists”), which inevitably conditions and justifies the
development of increasingly lethal military weapons that will, of course, be used
to eliminate the “surplus” of the “maladjusted” here on the earth so that the most
powerful capitalist corporations can gain control over the earthly sources of raw
materials and energy. Importantly, “space projects” are not meant to create the
myth of “the limitless possibilities of the development of science and technology“
- they become the means for creating the myth of “the limitless possibilities of
the development of capitalism”. Ultimately, the “invasion of space” does not
improve the state of humanity and does not increase the possibility of human
survival, but hinders the fight against capitalism and contributes to the
development of new mechanisms of domination, manipulation and destruction.

Since manipulation of people does not proceed only in the ideological,

but above all in the psychological sphere, art reduced to the technique of
manipulation with images and symbols acquires the utmost importance. Its
primary role is not to create a “cultural” decor for the ruling order, but to distort
man and all the symbols by which he can reach his libertarian, creative, life-
creating and social being. Capitalistically degenerated art mutilates the human
with an “artistic” form, which acquires a spectacular dimension. The “spectacle”
does not only serve to deceive – it does not only prevent man from seeing the
important, but kills in him his human being and thus the very possibility to see
the important. A blind man is not blind. Blind is the man who cannot see
humanity in the other. Capitalism eliminates from culture the esthetic criteria for
evaluation based on traditional forms of artistic expression and the
emancipatory legacy of civil society – which seek to confront formalism and the
destruction of the human. Instead of something new, a variety of the same is
offered. Instead of ideas opening a space in the future, new techniques are
offered, destroying man's need to fantasize and his visionary consciousness.
Capitalistically degenerated art has become a spectacular kitsch. Its value is
determined not according to esthetical, but to market criteria, whereas the
success of an advertizing campaign determines the “value” of a work of art, while
depriving money of any value equivalent. As for the “mondialistic culture”, how
can universal cultural values be reached if the legacy of national cultures is
discarded? The emancipatory legacy of national cultures is not only the source of
people's cultural, but also of their libertarian and life-creating consciousness.
The overcoming of national cultures by a universal human culture is possible
only through the development of the emancipatory legacy of national cultures.
 21

When it comes to the relation between universality and collectivism, they need
not be opposed to each other if collectivism is not based on “the masses”, but on
emancipated personalities. Universal human values should be the basis of
collectivism, whereas collectivity should not mean the abolishment of
individuality, but a community of emancipated human beings. At the same time,
universality cannot be the privilege of individuals who perceive themselves as
the “elite”. It is actually the class principle, but behind the veil of a “struggle for
the individual”. A typical example is Nietzsche, who speaks of a “superman” as,
actually, the anthropological manifestation of a “new nobility”, which means of
the ruling class (plutocracy). Walter Benjamin believed that technical means can
supersede the elitist character of art and bring it closer to the workers. A
capitalistically degenerated technique deprived art of elitist exclusivity by
depriving it of its humane essence. It destroys man's creative being and thus does
away with art’s possessing an aura that emanates from the human, which
contains an emancipatory heritage of humanity and suggests what is not yet, but
what might be. The development of an “esthetical sense” is achieved by
destroying the sense of the human. It turns out that there is no use in making art
a means for changing the world if it is not an integral part of a comprehensive
political movement seeking to create a new world. Thus a distinction should be
made between a false (capitalistically degenerated) art and a libertarian and
genuine art. The role of a libertarian art is to unmask the true nature of
capitalism; to create the vision of a new world; to indicate objective possibilities
for the creation of a new world and, most importantly, to develop man's need for
another man – as the basis of a genuine socialization without which no political
movement can save the world from destruction. As to art as a reflection of human
misery, which is as such an alienated form of de-alienation, a vision of life
appears as an artistic act where man's social being becomes his realized creative
being.

Capitalism destroys man as a spiritual being. Metaphysical mysticism and

religious fanaticism are but another side of the “technical civilization”, which
deprived life of meaning and turned man into the means for capital reproduction.
Religion is less and less a spiritual need, and more and more an escape from
capitalist nothingness and the expression of a fear of disappearance. In
contemporary capitalism, to appeal to God is, actually, a way in which the petite-
bourgeoisie gets rid of its responsibility for destroying the world. Religion used
to be a means for the development of capitalism (Protestantism), only to become
a tool for doing away with spirituality and life. In spite of the fact that capitalism
destroys spirituality, churches do their best to preserve it. They survive by
discarding the humanist legacy of religion, which offered a possibility of
 22

establishing a critical relation towards capitalism and the spiritual integration of

humanity, and become part of the mechanism of capitalist reproduction and as
such are lay institutions using religion in order to deify private property and
class order. The leading religions are not only a means for doing away with the
emancipatory legacy of bourgeois society, but also with the faith that life on the
earth can be preserved. The claim that man is “but a guest on this Earth”, the
concept of “judgment day”, the idea that life on the earth is “worthless” and that
“true life” begins in heaven – indicate that the so called “great religions”
complement capitalism as a destructive order. The idea of an illusory “heavenly
world” (“paradise”) becomes not only a means for devaluating the fight for a just
world, but also a means for devaluating life and escaping responsibility for the
destruction of the world. Apocalyptic fatalism breeds defeatism. From a means
for destroying man's libertarian dignity, religion turned into a tool for destroying
the will to live. In spite of everything, religion cannot be identified with church
dogmas and church activities. Although church religion has become an anti-
existential thought, an increasing number of religious people, who are aware of
the fatal character of capitalist “progress”, are trying to affirm the idea that the
“world is God's creation” and that man must fight to preserve it. Ultimately,
people are not divided into atheists and theists, but into those who fight for
capitalism and those who fight against capitalism – to preserve life on the planet
and create a humane world.

However, the importance of the letter written by the chief of the Seattle
tribe to American President Franklin Pierce suggests that there is a change in
attitude towards religions that insist on the “maternal” principle and see in the
earth the “weaving factory of life”. The “principle of Earth” (as the “Great
Mother”) appears as the antipode to the “principle of heaven” (“God the Father”).
At the same time, man is not the “master and owner of nature” (Descartes), nor is
he the one who by way of labor and the conquered powers of nature
(technology) turns it into useful objects (Marx), but is a “thread in the weaving
factory of life”. Man is part of nature and his survival is directly dependent on the
survival of nature as a whole. The world is a life-creating organic whole by which
everything, being mutually conditioned, is interconnected. The survival of the
whole depends on the survival of the parts, which are existentially
interdependent, whereas the survival of each and every part is conditioned by
the survival of the whole. The fight for survival is not based on the Social
Darwinist principle “the fight of all against all” (on which liberal capitalism is
based), but on the coexistence of everybody with everybody including (both
living and non-living) nature, which enables human survival. Instead of a
“perfecting” of the animal species according to the principle “the survival of the
 23

fittest”, the dominant principle is that the survival of every living being is the
basic precondition for the survival of all, whereas the survival of living beings
extends to the environment – without which there is no life. That is why the
Indian chief anthropomorphizes or humanizes rivers, prairies, mountains...
According to Darwin, living beings mutate by adapting to the environment, and
those who fail shall perish. The Indian chief bears in mind the natural
environment in which he lives, which means he has in mind man's struggle to
stop changes in nature and the living world that might jeopardize his survival.
His interpretation of the relation between man and nature does not appear in
relation to natural processes, but in relation to a new way of treating nature
brought about by the white man (capitalism) and thus to people living in natural
surroundings. The white man is to blame for spoiling the existential balance in
nature, based on the coexistence of living beings and the natural (living)
environment, threatening the survival of both animals and man. It is no more a
question of man's mutation caused by man's adjustment to his natural living
environment, but the question of man's mutation brought about by capitalism
and adjustment by technical means to a technical world. It does not lead to the
perfection of the human species, but to its degeneration and destruction. Darwin
concerned himself with the origin and evolvement of animal species; the Indian
chief is concerned with the survival of the animal species – and man. Nature
becomes a unique living (life-creating) organism and acquires an integrating
ontological dimension through the idea of “mother” as the “weaver of life”. The
Indian chief argues for a life-creating pantheism. His philosophy of life comes
from the philosophy of life of the Indians: the way of providing the means for
living determines the relation to nature. By living as part of nature and unable to
influence nature and thus ensure existence, the Indians were particularly
vulnerable to the disturbance of the established balance in nature. Their relation
to the buffalo is highly illustrative. For existential reasons, they did not want to
decrease the number of buffalo and killed only as many as was necessary.
Capitalism “overcame” the maternal (generative) and paternal (creative)
principle by the productive principle based on the absolutized principle of profit
with a technical form and destructive nature. Today man should treat nature in a
way that can enable the revival of its life-creating powers – as a life-creating
whole. Instead of domination of the generative or creative principle, they should
be united so that the creative principle becomes a humanized generative
principle. In that context, technology can acquire an artistic dimension.

In the jaws of capitalism everything acquires a distorted (commercialized

and destructive) dimension: “means for information” become the means for
misinforming the citizens and distorting the truth; “philosophy” becomes the
 24

means for destroying the mind; “science” becomes the means for controlling the
natural laws in a way that destroys nature and man as a biological being; “art”
becomes the means for destroying man's creative being; “play” (sport, above all)
becomes the means for destroying man's playing being; “medicine” and
“pharmacology” become the means for creating the profitably diseased;
“religion” becomes the means for destroying spirituality and life...

Traditionally, the woman is reduced to the procreative principle. Her

social position was determined by her generative functions. In that context, the
man as an emancipated social being is not the basis for the constitution of
society, it is the family reduced to the biological cell of society, whereas the man
is the pater familias and as such an undisputed authority in the formation of the
social hierarchy of power. By becoming an emancipated working force, which
means by becoming financially independent from her father and husband, the
woman only formally acquired political rights and competed with men on the
labor market as a consumer: the body becomes the “source of pleasure”
(liberation of sensuality, right to feeling satisfaction in sexual relations, active
role in searching for a partner). In contemporary capitalism, instead of being an
incubator enabling the biological reproduction of society, the woman has become
a tool ensuring the reproduction of capital; instead of the martyr’s saintly halo,
the woman has acquired a working-hedonistic aura; instead of a one-sided
exploitation of women, capitalism has established a universal exploitation of
women. She is reduced to a housewife and prostitute, a working force and
consumer, mother and advertising doll, policewoman and soldier, capitalist and
politician... At the same time, the woman's body has become the object of total
exploitation. Literally every part of the woman's body, from nails to womb, has
become the means for the creation of profit. A “sportswoman” is a typical
example of how capitalism degenerates women. She seeks, through the value
(“productive”) mechanism that devalues her as a human being and destroys her
as a natural being, to acquire affirmation and ensure existence. It is not only a
virilisation, but also a robotization of the woman, who, as a “record breaker“ has
become a moving billboard for capitalist companies and the means for proving
the “progressive” character of capitalism. Writing about “feminist socialism”,
Marcuse sees in the “female principle” the opposite of the productive principle as
the ruling principle of capitalism. The woman, by her specificities, appears as a
potential carrier of human emancipation. Without reducing the woman to her
generative function, the “female principle” can be considered as a life-creating
principle. The woman is an anthropological manifestation of the life-creating
power of the living world and thus is a symbolical being. The process of evolution
of the living world proceeds from the womb. The position of the woman in
 25

society shows the anti-existential nature of capitalism. The capitalist form of

“woman's emancipation” turned into destruction of the woman as a generative
being, and thus the destruction of society's reproductive ability. The assurance of
biological reproduction is an example of socialization (giving birth and bringing
up children as a social question) being the basic existential and in that context
the basic essential principle of society.

Capitalism destroys man as a social being. Loneliness is spreading like

the plague. There are no longer any authentic human relations in which man can
be realized as an erotic, emotional, spiritual and creative being. Capitalist
“socialization” is reduced to a struggle between people, to lies, frauds, crimes... In
the modern world, which degenerated human relations, nothing is more efficient
in destroying man's need for another man as man's contact with another man. A
man's fear of another man is one of the most horrible crimes committed by
capitalism against humanity. Human relations acquire a technical and destructive
character, while man becomes a mechanical and destructive being. Sports and
music “spectacles”, beer festivals, disco-clubs, supermarkets and shopping malls,
pedestrian areas in town centers and the like – all these are but forms of the
capitalist production of “socialization” deprived of spontaneity and humanity. It
is reduced to the creation of a “mass”, whose behavior conditions the process of a
destructive (“consumer”) capitalist reproduction, which means a totally
commercialized life. Capitalism turns man from a social being into a consumer
being, and society from a community of emancipated people into a consumer
crowd. The mega-market has become the most important social space and
queuing in front of the cashier is the most authentic form of socialization in
modern capitalism. Sales and the accompanying “consumer stampede” are some
of the most monstrous forms of capitalist humiliation.

As far as the Internet is concerned, the increasing possibilities of

technical “communication” are becoming a substitute for the decreasing
possibilities of authentic human communication. Instead of establishing direct
contacts, people establish “relationships” via a “tailored” image after the model
of a “successful bloke” according to the standards of the ruling values, which
means through man's self-degradation and self-mutilation. Anonymity, the
possibility of an interruption at any moment, the possibility of constant
“transformation” and “upgrading” - all these are mediators in the
“communication”. The computer screen does not show the true picture of a man,
but his mask. The Internet does not serve to establish interpersonal contacts, but
technical relations where people are “freed” from the sensual, erotic, emotional,
and ultimately from social existence and social mediation. The screen shows the
 26

images one cannot feel, touch, look in the eyes of... Images without a smell, voice,
warmth... One becomes “free” from the world where man cannot realize his
humanity as he is reduced to a technically disguised apparition. The worst thing
is that young people accept being thrown into the virtual world. It is the
conformist “answer” for a lonely man stuck in the mud of capitalist hopelessness.
To accept the virtual world means, in fact, to accept the existing world where
there is no place for youth, love, future... Ultimately, it is about removing any
possibility of people getting together and acting as political subjects – striving to
eradicate the causes of misery. To destroy man as a social being by means of
technology and the “consumer” way of life is the most efficient way toward his
depolitization.

The final process of the capitalist degeneration of man as a human and

biological being is under way. It is about the creation of a “mondialist man” suited
to the nature of contemporary capitalism. He is deprived of a libertarian and
visionary consciousness, particularly of the responsibility for the destruction of
the world. The basic task of the “mondialists” is to purify the world of its
libertarian history and national cultures and turn it into a capitalist
concentration camp. The Indian chief observes, better than any theoretician, that
capitalism degenerates the senses and thus prevents man from perceiving the
world in the right way, which above all means as a human being, and
consequently from experiencing the world in which he lives. Capitalism turns
nature into waste material and forces man to adapt to the new “surroundings” -
depriving him of qualities peculiar to living beings and turning him into a
zombie. This is the purpose of bourgeois philosophy, art, science, the
entertainment industry – the “consumer” way of life. The Indian chief indicates
that the white man does not sense bad smell – just like a person on his deathbed.
“Bad smell” is synonymous not only with the destruction of life, but also with the
destruction of man as a living being: “bad smell” is a synonym for death.
Hollywood freaks, like “terminators”, are symbolic representations of the
mondialist spirit of contemporary capitalism. Their anthropomorphic
appearance enables people to identify with the limitless destructive powers of
technоlogy. The suppressed needs are satisfied in a way that kills the human
element. In the cosmological version offered by positivist science, man becomes
part of the universe at an atomized level, which means by being deprived of his
specific nature as a living and spiritual being. From such a conception arises the
idea of a man-machine cyborg – a modern Frankenstein. Contrary to that,
religion deprives man of his body and reduces him to the “spirit.” In both cases,
man is deprived of his peculiar human nature, which means of his (self)creative
 27

being and libertarian dignity – and that is what makes man a specific cosmic
being and the human world a specific universe.

The current crisis of capitalism is not a “temporary” crisis that will

disappear all by itself. It is not about an “economic”, “financial” or
“organizational” crisis, but about the existential crisis of capitalism which arises
from its nature. It is based on the development of capitalism as a destructive
order which experienced its climax in the so-called “consumer society”, which
questioned not only the emancipatory heritage of bourgeois society, including
elementary human and civil rights, but also the survival of mankind. The
financial crisis did not cause the crisis of capitalism, it is but one of the
consequences of the crisis of capitalism based on the absolutized principle of
private property. It was caused by the need to resolve the problem of hyper-
production by providing an accelerated capitalist development. The increase in
demand was not caused by an increase in productivity and volume of production
and thus an increase in the workers' salaries, but by excessive sub-prime credits,
ultimately by uncovered securities. Money became worthless as it was no longer
covered by real production. It existed only on paper and on computer screens.
Zeros were added through financial transactions. The financial world has become
the virtual world of capitalism.

By becoming a global order, capitalism created a global existential crisis.

The Western world used to be the synonym for the “capitalist world”. Today,
there are globally dispersed economic centers, which question the dominance of
the West by conquering world markets through an ever-increasing destruction of
nature and man as a human and biological being. In the increasingly ruthless
struggle for survival, capitalist concerns destroy the very foundations of
mankind's survival. It is a fatal illusion that mankind can create a new world by
tracing the path of capitalist globalism, as Antonio Negri claims. It is only in the
fight against capitalism that the emancipatory heritage of bourgeois society,
which means the germ of a novum, can give life to a new society. At the same
time, it is only in the fight against capitalism that the destruction of life on the
planet can be stopped. Capitalistically degenerated mankind cannot create a new
world on burned forests, in hopelessly contaminated soil, on polluted rivers and
seas, on nuclear wastes, in the remorselessly scorching sun... The capitalist
development of productive forces does not enhance the certainty of human
survival, as Marx argues, but questions it more and more dramatically. Therefore,
instead of engendering optimism, capitalist “progress” generates fear of the
future. The most perilous characteristic of capitalism is related to the fact that,
from the results of life-destruction, it creates a source of profit and, thus, a basis
 28

for its own further development, where man's creative powers become a vehicle
for the development of the destructive powers of capitalism and for acceleration
of the destruction process. Capitalism has become a self-reproducing mechanism
of destruction, which, to the living world, represents what a malignant tumor
represents to an organism: it extends its own lifetime by devouring all that
provides humankind with a chance for survival. This does not refer only to the
systematic, but to the ultimate destruction of life on the planet.

The row over the “ecological destruction of the planet” made by political
leaders of the most advanced capitalist states does not express the true
endeavors to prevent the destruction of the earth; it expresses the strivings to
prevent the ecological destruction of the world from becoming a political
platform for the oppressed to unite themselves and radicalize their struggle
against capitalism. At the same time, the capitalist centers of power strive to use
the ecological destruction of the planet, brought about by their ecocidal
practices, to seize the territories that are not already under their direct control
and establish a (neo)colonial domination over all the world. As far as “ecological
engineering” is concerned, it primarily serves to create the illusion that
capitalism can, by means of science and technology, heal its fatal effects. The
employment of science and technology for the purpose of “repairing” the eco-
system, on the basis of the growth of capitalism, will only lead to even more fatal
climate changes. Man cannot (and should not) manage the ecological system, but
must eliminate the causes of its destruction. The destruction of capitalism, which
became a totalitarian order of destruction and the establishment of a human
relation to nature, is the basic precondition for reestablishing the ecological
balance and renewing man’s natural being.

In capitalism, politics is reduced to the technique of directing people's

discontent toward the achievement of the political and economic interests of the
ruling class. This is a logic suited to the nature of the “consumer society”, the last
stage in the development of capitalism, where the consequences of the
destruction of nature and man as a natural and reasonable being become the
means for the reproduction of capitalism. At the same time, the dominant logic of
monopolistic capitalism, appearing as the principles “Destroy the competition!”
and “Big fish devour small fish!”, has become the totalizing logic which, via the
media held by capitalist clans, acquires a fatal dimension. This is the basis of the
view that “globalization”, which implies the neo-liberal model of capitalism, is a
“must”. Political decisions are not based on objective scientific analysis; on the
contrary, scientific analysis is based on the strategic interests of the ruling order.
Science is reduced to the means of enabling the survival of capitalism. In this
 29

respect, the basic scientific, historical and philosophical truth that is rejected a
priori is that capitalism is a historical order, implying that its demise is
unavoidable. Without a fierce human action that will eliminate the causes of the
general misery, dissatisfaction created by the deepening crisis of capitalism can
become a driving force in the development of (contemporary) fascism – which
happened in Germany and other European countries after the great depression
of 1929.

Those who fight for “Western democracy” point out the “freedom of
capital” as the main criterion defining its existence. Capital acquired the status of
an earthly divinity and as such has become an undisputed power over man. Here
we shall again point out that “democracy” is a political form of the domination of
capital over people. It implies that the “development of democracy” means to
reinforce the rule of capital over people and that “democracy is threatened” not
only when basic human and civil rights are in danger, but when the power of
capital over man is jeopardized. This truth is confirmed every day in the most
advanced capitalist countries of the West, particularly in the USA. In practice,
“democracy” has become the means for dealing with the guiding ideas of the
French bourgeois revolution on which modern humanism is based, as well as
with the basic human (droits de l'homme) and civil rights (droits de citoyen) as
the foundation of modern law. The more man's right to life, to freedom, to health
and a healthy environment, to work and a certain quality of existence, to freedom
of speech, a family and unquestionable living space and personal life, is
endangered, the more politicians praise “democracy”. Ironically, democracy,
which originally meant the “rule of the people” (demos kratein), in capitalism
means an order in which citizens are reduced to a working and consuming crowd
– to slaves of capital. Capitalist “democracy” is not based on human and civil
rights, but on the absolutized principle of profit, which in turn is based on the
absolutized principle of private property. All that protects private property and
enables a “free” increase in profit is justified and welcome. When private
property is the absolute principle, then the worst crimes are legal and legitimate
if they serve to prevent the disintegration of the ruling order. Man's right to
freedom and life is subordinated to the right of capitalism to survival. The great
economic crisis in the 1930s, as well as the current deepening capitalist crisis,
suggests that capitalists are ready to use all available means to cope with the
consequences of the crisis that can jeopardize the ruling system. The destruction
of the Twin Towers in New York and the “attack” on the Pentagon speak of the
nature of capitalism and tell us that capitalists are prepared to commit all
manner of crimes in order to maintain the established order.
 30

Contemporary man does not only face the ideological, military and
police terror of the governing order, as occurred in the past, but also the
accumulated destructive powers of capitalism. The spirit of destructive
barbarism dominates capitalism, conditioning both the activities of the ruling
class and its defense strategy. Usage of atomic, hydrogen and neutron bombs,
lethal viruses, starvation of populations, pollution and devastation of water
supplies, etc., (that will exterminate hundreds of millions of people and
irreversibly contaminate the natural environment) represents - for the
capitalistically degenerated international plutocratic “elite” - a “justified
measure”, if in that manner the existence of capitalism can be prolonged. In order
to prevent the fall of capitalism, the fanatics of capitalism are ready to destroy
humankind and all life on the planet. The NATO aggression on Serbia in the
spring 1999, which compelled Serbia to become a part of the American “new
world order”, demonstrates the actual nature of capitalism. More than 32,000
depleted uranium missiles were dropped on Serbia, thus causing a
contamination of the natural environment equivalent to the effects of more than
470 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seven years after
the bombing of Serbia, the number of people with cancer has increased by 40%,
with a tendency towards a dramatic increase in the number of diseased and
deceased. In the course of the next 500 years, the life of people living in the
bombed areas will be directly conditioned by the consequences of nuclear
contamination of the soil, water, air, animals, plants... What happened to the
citizens of Serbia occurs all over the planet. Their future is predetermined by
consequences generated by destructive capitalist barbarism of a global and
totalitarian nature.

In the light of the fire caused by the bombing of Serbia by NATO, we can
reach the true answer to the question of what can be expected from “civilized”
Europe. The entire European political “elite” knew that NATO would bomb Serbia
by cluster bombs and projectiles containing depleted uranium, just as it was
aware of the lethal consequences for the population and the environment.
Instead of opposing the ecocide that inevitably leads to a “silent” genocide in the
bombed region, the ruling European politicians with a slavish enthusiasm
participated in the American crime. As far as the European intellectuals are
concerned, the disquieting truth is that many of them joined the bombing
campaign under a monstrous motto: “As soon and as much as possible!” .
Considering the scale of demonization of the Serbian people in “civilized” Europe
and the USA, people like Harold Pinter and Peter Handke, should be credited for
daring to speak up in opposition to the modern ecocidal fascism and for being in
the frontline of defending the dignity of the European humanist heritage.
 31

The deepening crisis of capitalism creates the atmosphere of a final class

struggle on a global scale. The fear among the ruling capitalist cliques that “the
masses might rise up”, created a “terrorist threat” that became an excuse for
abolishing basic human and civil rights. The main objective of the “fight against
terrorism” is to create, through controlled media, an existential panic that will
make citizens obediently accept such “protection from the terrorist threat” as
provided by the ruling order, which involves depriving the citizens of their basic
human and civil rights. We are witnessing a totalitarian “integration of society”
under the domination of the most reactionary political forces. Tens of millions of
cameras, implanted bugs and chips, similar to the chips implanted in dogs and
cattle, entering flats, kidnapping, torture, “silent” liquidations, total control of the
media, deployment of special military units in towns… “The fight against
terrorism” is, actually, a form of open dictatorship, by which capitalists declare
war against their fellow citizens.

In contemporary capitalism man does not lose his freedom, as Peter

Sloterdijk claims, he becomes fettered in new chains. Basically, it is about
establishing totalitarian control over man, which is possible only because people
are stuck in the mud of the consumer society and there is a dominant conformist
mentality. A petit-bourgeois accepts the loss of basic human and civil rights only
to increase his consumer standard. The “freedom” of a petit-bourgeois comes
down to his ability to buy and destroy. For him, the capitalist order is acceptable
as long as it offers him the possibility to “enjoy” spending and destruction.
Actually, a petit-bourgeois actively participates in the creation of a totalitarian
state and totalitarian society based on the fact that capitalistically conditioned
life has become man’s terror. The capitalistically degenerated petit-bourgeois is
full of a discontent increasingly manifested as a destructive mania directed
towards everything living. Instead of a need for a just and free world, the
dominant need is for destruction with more and more destructive technical
means. The purpose of “action” is to vent discontent in the way and by the means
imposed by capitalism as a destructive order. A typical example is the frequent
mass murders committed by individuals. It is a protest by a capitalistically
degenerated man who employs capitalistically degenerated methods and means
of “struggle”. Considering the growing number of increasingly lethal weapons in
the hands of more and more people, there is an ever-greater possibility that
people will mutually exterminate each other. The destruction carried out by
technical means which can achieve an instant effect becomes a model for
behavior imposed by the life-ruling logic of capitalism expressed in the principle
“Destroy the competition!”. This logic conditions both relations among
 32

individuals, races, nations, states, capitalist corporations, and the relation

towards the living world and environment... Destruction of people and nature
becomes the basic condition of the “development” of capitalist “democracy”.
What madness!

As far as American “foreign policy” is concerned, it is a response to the

deepening economic crisis in the USA and comes down to the endeavors to
“control” the world so as to transfer the burden of the crisis in their own society
to other peoples and thus prevent the economic collapse of the USA. At the same
time, there is a monopoly of a small circle of people, representing the most
powerful capitalist clans, over the military means with which mankind can be
destroyed in seconds. In this way a possibility is created for the self-will of
individuals and their deranged mental state (alcohol, drugs, political and
religious fanaticism, hatred towards the “opponent” and the human race, feelings
of inferiority, cowardice, blind revenge and the like) might bring about the
destruction of humanity. Concerning the strategy of survival of “small countries”,
events in the world evermore dramatically indicate how fatal is the strategy of
“defending the national interests” based on crawling before the mighty. This
strategy has turned out to be not only humiliating, but fatal for national survival.

Capitalism has not only degenerated nature, but society as well. It has
criminalized everyday life to such an extent that it is doubtful that by restoration
and further development of democratic institutions crime can be eradicated and
a humane world created. The capitalist societies, going through a deepening
crisis, are facing increasingly realistic possibilities that gangs of criminals might
take over the power and establish a dictatorship. They would, of course, be
supported by capitalists and the bourgeoisie – if this could prevent radical social
changes and provide sustainability to capitalism. We should not forget that
fascists in Italy and Germany, at the time of the economic crisis of capitalism,
were financed and brought to power by the aristocracy and capitalists
(supported by the bourgeoisie) in order to deal with the workers' movement. By
destroying social institutions capitalism creates conditions for gangs of criminals
to become the only real social power that can do away with the workers and stop
the demise of capitalism. Indeed, the link between mafia and ruling capitalist
groups has for decades been the basis for providing power in the most developed
capitalist states. The destruction of the emancipatory legacy of civil society,
increasing ecological and economic crises, an increasing unemployment rate,
devaluation of democratic institutions, mafia links between capitalists and
politicians, greater social differences, general criminalization of society, religious
fanaticism, the flourishing of fascism – all this creates presuppositions that the
 33

deepening crisis of capitalism can turn into a general chaos that can produce a
new barbarism. The general chaos is, actually, a “response” by capitalism to the
existential crisis it creates and to the existing objective possibilities of the
creation of a new world.

Capitalist totalitarianism is the most perilous form of totalitarianism

ever created. It is based upon the total commercialization of nature and of
society. Each part of the planet, each segment of social and individual life has
become an integral part of the destructive capitalist growth mechanism. Life
itself becomes a totalizing power that shapes the character of men, their
consciousness, interpersonal relationships, their relation to nature... Other
historical forms of totalitarianism are either manifested as related to the idea of
the past, or a certain transcendental idea, or an idea of the future – all of which
open possibilities for critique. Contemporary capitalist totalitarianism is based
upon destructive nihilism: it annihilates both the idea of transcendence and the
idea of a future (past) and thus it also annuls the very possibility of establishing a
critical distance from the existing world. At the beginning of its development,
capitalism generated a visionary consciousness that not only opened space for
the development of capitalism, but also for overcoming it (More, Campanella,
Hobbes, Bacon, Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier...). By becoming a totalitarian
destructive order, capitalism exterminates visionary consciousness and creates a
totalitarian positivist consciousness – to which corresponds the concept of the
“end of history” and “the last man” (Fukuyama). Capitalism abolishes history,
transforming historical time into mechanical occurrence, that is, into a positive
nothingness. Simultaneously, capitalist periodicity is not only of an anti-
historical, but also of an anti-existential nature. Capitalism destroys the very
possibility of a future: it appears in the form of a capitalistically degenerated u-
topos.

The myth of an “organized” capitalism, which should help prevent the

demise of capitalism, only prolongs the agony of humanity. Unless the ruling
order is abolished we cannot make a step forward in creating the possibilities for
the survival of humanity and the freedom of man. At the same time,
contemporary Nostradamuses, foretelling the “cataclysm of capitalism” by
rejecting the emancipatory legacy of civil society and changing potential of the
suppressed working layers, only contribute to the struggle with the possibility of
creating a reasonable world and thus contribute to the destruction of the world
being brought to its close.
 34

The “crisis of the left“ as an organized political movement has resulted

from the conflict between capitalism and the emancipating patrimony of civil
society, in the course of which all those political movements and concepts that
open a possibility for the creation of a new world are being degenerated and
eliminated. The “crisis of the left” is actually a crisis of civil society’s political
institutions, because capitalism, as a totalitarian order, has drawn the entire
“public sphere” into its own interest-orbit and thus instrumentalized the process
of political decision-making. Politics has turned into one of the technical areas of
capitalism and, as such, into business – just like all the other areas of social life.
Capitalism has turned the political sphere into a political market where each
party strives to optimally sell its own political program (political commodities)
and to convert its social influence into cash, starting from the interest of
bureaucratized and corrupt party oligarchies. Political parties have become the
private property of their “leaders”, as is the case with many trade unions and
other organizations that provide a merely formal opportunity for the
mobilization of citizens for the protection of their human and civil rights. An
immediate effect of the corruption of (nominally) “leftist” parties is the
establishing of an increasingly large anti-capitalist movement that does not
consent to a dominant role for parties belonging to the political establishment.
The original leftist thought, the one that insists on freedom and social justice, is
mostly present among the most deprived working layers and the young – those
who are vitally interested in the realization of the original leftist ideas.
Therefore, every effort is being made by the ruling regime to eliminate the
oppressed from the public sphere and depoliticize them, and to transform their
children – in stadiums, in pop star concerts, in disco clubs, by means of the
Hollywood entertainment industry – into zombies, drug addicts, delinquents,
fascists... Capitalism endeavors to destroy man as a social being and, in that
context, all authentic forms of political (social) organizing of citizens, and to
transform man into an atomized laboring-consuming idiot who will base his
behavior upon a “logic” of destructive irrationalism. The class struggle was
further weakened by the fact that in capitalism, as a consequence of the fight of
workers and the economic development of capitalism, certain demands put
forward by the traditional left have been met – those, for example, relating to the
working and living conditions of workers and their social rights. Most
importantly, the worker is integrated into capitalism through the consumer way
of living, and the vision of a possible future has been dazzled by TV programs.
The confusion over what “the left” is creates a bourgeoisie, which strives to
annihilate the labor movement by embracing the ideas of the left and
transforming them into demagogical slogans, thus trying to present itself as a
“combatant for workers' rights” and consequently weaken the actual left. A
 35

typical example of leftist demagogy is Hitler's political campaign during the

Weimar Republic period. The same political logic is being applied by the
contemporary bourgeoisie. The leftist demagogy should “bridge” the growing
gap between the bourgeoisie and the labor layers, and should also create
confusion in which any notions about the future would disappear.

Though leftist thought is more and more present at Western

universities, it is ghettoized and transformed into a vehicle for annihilation of the
political struggle of the oppressed. It turns basic existential and essential matters
into “philosophical” and “theoretical” issues and thus deprives them of a concrete
social and historical substance. The struggle for survival and freedom is being
replaced by “theoretical debates” and endless “dialogues” that disfigure critical
consciousness and hinder change-oriented practice. Political combat against
capitalism is degenerating into “science projects” and “philosophical
conferences”, - where everyone within his own field of expertise deals with the
consequences generated by capitalism while not touching its origins. Intellect is
being removed from concrete social reality and ghettoized in faculties, institutes,
workshops and congresses. Concrete existential and essential issues become
subjects of theoretical debates, and, as such, by means of specific linguistic
expressions, a privilege of “intellectuals”. Philosophical thought becomes a
formalistic thought, a distinctive technique of thought of a positivist and,
therefore, anti-libertarian and anti-existential nature. The “intellectual sphere“
becomes an institutional form of the citizens' deprivation of critical reason and of
their right to brainpower – and, as such, the basic form of their spiritual and,
consequently, every other kind of enslavement.

The crisis of today’s world is at the same time the crisis of the proletariat
as a revolutionary agent. In its “consumer phase”, capitalism, through the
development of a “consumer standard”, has managed to reduce workers to the
instruments for resolving the crisis of over-production, and, thus, to its
collaborators in the destruction of the world. Starting from the present position
of the working class, the ideologues of capitalism seek to “redefine” the nature of
the working class in contemporary capitalism by depriving it of its libertarian
class self-consciousness. The conformist behavior of a large part of the working
class in the developed capitalist societies is not the consequence of the
“disappearance of the working class”, but rather the consequence of the
integration of workers into capitalism as a working-consuming “mass”, and of the
bourgeoisie's systematic subversion and suppression of working class
organization, class self-consciousness and class struggle. The conforming
behavior of workers is, in fact, the consequence of the class domination by the
 36

bourgeoisie, and not a process that proceeds by itself, with a fatalistic character.
That we are not dealing here with the final integration of workers into the
capitalist order, but with a temporary situation, can be seen from the fact that
capitalists seek to keep the workers under the ideological “bell jar” of capitalism,
and, at the same time, seek to do away with socialist (communist) thought which
calls for struggle against capitalism and offers a possibility for creating a humane
world. The capitalist propaganda machinery strives to hide the most important
thing: capitalists' fear of workers as a potentially revolutionary agent was, and
still is, the most important feature of capitalist political practice.

The disintegration of “consumer society” involves the destruction of the

very foundations of capitalism and thus of the entire ideological and propaganda
spheres, which can survive only on these foundations. Without the consumer
way of living, the ideology of “consumer society” cannot survive either… The
worsening economic crisis jeopardizes life based on the “consumer standard”
and thus the most important mechanism for integration of workers into
capitalism. The disintegration of “consumer society” will awaken millions of
people from their consumer dream, and they will then start thinking about the
future and begin fighting for survival. The deepening existential crisis created by
capitalism and the abolition of elementary human and civil rights will inevitably
lead to radicalization, which means to the militarization of the struggle against
capitalism. Capitalism forces humanity to use all available means that could stop
the destruction of the living world, including those not in the line with the
humanist ideals of a new society – which is the ultimate goal of the struggle.

The collapse of “consumer society” leads to mass unemployment and

the reduced purchasing power of the working class. There is an urgent need to
stabilize capitalism at a lower level of production/consumption; however, with
further scientific and technological advances the “white collars” will be
predominant. Working “masses” from traditional production branches are no
longer the means for accelerating the reproduction of capital, but an economic
burden and an increasing political threat for the ruling order. Instead of
integrating workers into capitalism by means of a consumer way of life, the
strategic goal of the ruling class is the destruction of “supernumerary” citizens.
With the deepening capitalist economic crisis, the workers are more and more
becoming the mortal foe of capitalism and the ruling order will use all available
means (criminalization of society, drugs, alcohol, AIDS, contaminated food,
deprivation of medications and health services, etc.) to eliminate the “surplus”
and ensure survival. For capitalists, workers are a necessary evil. Elimination of
the “surplus” is an economic, ecological and political question for the ruling
 37

order. It is the basis of modern fascism, the contours of which are becoming more
and more visible in the USA. It is the realization of the concept of the “golden
billion”, which with the collapse of “consumer society”, will affect not only
nations at the “outskirts of capitalism”, but a significant segment of the working
class in the most developed capitalist states. The increasingly jeopardized
existence of humanity creates conditions for extreme radicalization of the social-
Darwinist concept of “only the strongest survive”, with science and technology
becoming the exclusive means for ensuring the dominant position of capitalists
and the creation of such artificial living conditions as will protect them from
menacing climate changes. It is in this context that we should interpret the
endeavors of shadow rulers from the West to use science and technology in the
creation of a “new man”, who will be able, with his artificially created “genetic
properties” and available military technique, to exterminate the “redundant” and
establish a global domination. “Terminators”, “Rambos,” “Predators” and similar
Hollywood freaks, glorifying the destructive power of capitalistically misused
technology, in the best possible way show the psychological profile of modern
capitalist zealots. Power over people and nature becomes the power of
destruction.

“Consumer society” represents the last offensive of capitalism and

announces its complete and definitive disintegration. It prolongs the life of
capitalism by annihilating man as a cultural and biological being, as well as by
annihilating nature. This is what determines a specificity of the contemporary
left: the victory of the left has become the necessary condition for the survival of
humanity. In spite of the harsh anti-communist propaganda, where the ideal of
communism is reduced to the practice of Stalinism and this to the “gulags”,
communism appears as the only real alternative to capitalism and the only
possible future of humanity – in both the essential and existential sense. The
general crisis of capitalism, which grew to dramatic proportions in the autumn of
2008, made Karl Marx the most widely read author in the West. With regard to
socialist revolutions, their true historical meaning is that they created a
revolutionary heritage as the basis for a revolutionary self-consciousness
without which there can be no fight for a humane world. It is not victories but
defeats that are the best lessons in the fight for the future. The war against
capitalism can be won only from the experiences gained in the lost battles for a
humane society.

Is the ever-deepening existential crisis of humanity opening a possibility

for overcoming the traditional class division? Can the bourgeois class become the
ally of the proletariat in the fight for preserving life on this planet? Can the
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increasingly threatened existence of humanity bring about the creation of a

political platform based on reason that will unite people regardless of their
positions relative to the means of production? The owners of the means of
production and the bourgeois class, who base their (privileged) existence on
private property and identify their survival with the survival of capitalism, do not
react from reason but from their class interests, and do not focus on the survival
of mankind but on increasing their material wealth and consumer standard. They
are capitalist zealots, who are, as the crisis of capitalism deepens, prepared to
use all the means that, in their opinion, can stop the demise of capitalism,
including those which might destroy life on the planet. They persistently believe
that capitalism has no alternative and thus question the most important point in
Marx's theory: the notion that capitalism is but one of the historical forms in the
development of humanity and that its true value is that it shelters under its
“wing” the possibilities of stepping out into a new society that will be the
realization of the highest humanist strivings formulated by the guiding principles
of the French Revolution.

There are two historical bases for human interconnecting: spontaneous,

that is, man's need for other men (man's erotic nature, symbolically “love“), and
repressive, primarily related to providing immediate existence (labor and all it
conditions, symbolically “duty“). In previous historical periods, complying with
the repressive basis of human interconnecting was to the detriment of human
interconnecting. By becoming homo faber, man restrained and was losing his
own authentic human characteristics (erotic nature), which culminated in the
capitalist society that became a “technical civilization” within which not only the
dehumanization but also the denaturalization of man has taken place. As a
totalitarian and global order of destruction, capitalism has imposed the issues of
necessity and freedom in a new and far more dramatic manner. Man's most
important existential duty is no longer labor per se, but to struggle for the
preservation of life (and the labor related to it). Struggle for survival has imposed
itself as a contemporary “realm of necessity”, and on this foundation, man as a
totalizing, life-creating being will develop. Contemporary capitalism has “unified”
the existential with the essential spheres: the fight for freedom becomes an
existential necessity, and the struggle for survival a basic libertarian challenge.
Spheres of labor, art, and play are no longer starting points of libertarian
practice. Instead, the starting point is man as a totalizing being that perceives his
entire life on the existential-essential level, that is, in the context of the fight
against capitalism, which has transformed natural laws, social institutions and
man into a vehicle for the destruction of life. In that context, labor, through which
man's creative (life-creating) powers are being realized and the true human
 39

world created, becomes an essential activity. As the present day production of

commodities (goods) concomitantly represents the destruction of life, in that
very same way, in the future society, production of commodities will mean
production of healthy living conditions and the creation of a healthy man. In the
future, the basic task of humanity will be to re-establish environmental balance
and, thus, create living conditions in which man can survive. Development of
productive forces, the very labor processes, spare time activities - practically all
life - will be subordinated to it. In such conditions, competition that has been
reduced to struggle for victory through the achievement of a better result
(record), as in sports, will remain merely a part of the pre-history of humankind.

What should constitute the new quality of interconnection between

people on the basis of struggle for the preservation of life on the planet is the
very same thing that should provide incentives for the development of human
foundations for human interconnections, which means that it should be
conditioned by one man's need for the other. The fact is that capitalism
transformed all social institutions, and the entirety of life, into a vehicle for the
growth of profit, that is, for the destruction of life. In order to survive, man has no
one to address for assistance but another man: sociability is an existential
imperative. In the dialectic sense, man as a fulfilled social being becomes a
totalizing life-creating being – in relation to capitalism as a totalizing order of
destruction. In that context, one of Marx’s basic theses from the “Manifesto of the
Communist Party”, claiming that “the freedom of each is a basic condition for the
freedom of all”, could be rephrased. Starting from the fact that humankind is
jeopardized when the life of each man is jeopardized, one can arrive at the thesis
that the survival of each represents the basic condition for the survival of all.

In the struggle for the preservation of life on Earth by the creation of a

new world, humankind will be so united that it will supersede all forms of
mediation that have kept man apart from other men and turned him into a “tool”
of “superhuman” forces for the achievement of anti-human goals. Instead of
moral principles, upon which a repressive normative consciousness is being
developed and used for the preservation of the ruling order, man's essential and
existential necessity for another man will become the basis for interpersonal
connecting. The anti-globalization movement has a historical and existential
meaning solely if it represents an integral part of the international anti-capitalist
movement. It does not rely upon one social subject of changes alone, as was the
case with the industrial proletariat of Marx, but upon a widespread social
movement that comprises all the deprived and all those conscious of the fact that
capitalism leads humankind into destruction. Movements for the emancipation
 40

of women, hundreds of millions of solitary people whose lives were ruined by

capitalism – they are all potential members of the movement that will fight
against capitalism. At the same time, the decline of the “welfare state” will re-
trigger class conflict in the developed capitalist countries. Immediate
participation in the political articulation of the contemporary proletariat and
other layers and groups ruined by capitalism – this represents one of the most
important tasks of the movement. The international anti-capitalist movement
needs to unite all those political forces and political movements of the world that
oppose contemporary imperialism, which is not only of a genocidal but also of an
ecocidal nature. At the same time, it needs to have a critical stance towards
developmental programs in any part of the world that are based on the
destruction of nature and are aimed at developing a consumer mentality.

Historically perceived, man was becoming a man primarily through

confronting existential challenges. The nature of those challenges conditioned
the way they were solved and, thus, had an immediate impact on development of
man. The existential challenge capitalism imposes on man is the largest and the
most dramatic one he has ever faced. Never in history has man confronted a task
related to the preservation of life on the planet and to preventing the annihilation
of humankind. It is a challenge that supersedes the classical humanist
anthropologic definition of man as a universal creative being of freedom. A
specificity of capitalism as an order of destruction conditions both the specific
nature of the man that defends it, and the specific nature of the man that
attempts to oppose it. Capitalism generates a destructive man that becomes a
vehicle for the development of capitalism, that is, for the destruction of life.
Concurrently, capitalism generates the increasingly militant anti-capitalist man
who identifies the meaning of life in destroying capitalism and preserving life on
Earth, through the creation of a new world. An increasingly intensive destruction
of life results in a more and more ruthless conflict between these two types of
men, which actually represent the contemporary class division of the world: a
class of destructive capitalist fanatics and a class of reasonable and
uncompromising combatants for the survival of humankind.

The turning of capitalism into a totalitarian destructive order conditions

man's turning into a totalizing life-creating being – for whom the emancipatory
(libertarian, cultural) heritage of humankind represents the basis for critical self-
consciousness and creative (life-creating) will-power. In the struggle for the
preservation of life and the creation of the new world, man will become a true
man. He is not a mythological man who will, like a present-day Phoenix, ascend
from the ashes of capitalism, with his wings unharmed. He is a concrete man who
 41

will experience the consequences of the destruction of nature with his entire
being, for he represents its organic part. Therefore, creation of the new world
requires man's (self)purification and (self)development – man is becoming a
humanized natural (life-creating) being. Instead of cosmic energy (Nietzsche),
which is merely a metaphorical presentation of monopolist capitalism's vital
power, within man the life-creating forces of humankind will start to run. “The
will to power” will turn into a desire for freedom and survival.

By becoming a totalitarian order of destruction, capitalism increasingly

focuses people's attention on the basic existential, and in that context, the basic
essential issues. Capitalism has removed all ideological veils and demystified the
truth. Man no longer needs science or philosophy to be able to understand that
capitalism destroys life on the planet. Essential relativism is replaced by
existential obviousness. It is an unquestionable starting point that inevitably
conditions the development of the critical mind and man's behavior. The
increasingly dramatic climate changes, polluted air, water and food, biological
destruction of peoples, loneliness that has become epidemic – all this directly
affects man as a biological and human being. This is what modern tragedy rests
on: man experiences the world's annihilation as his own annihilation.

The biological clock of humanity is ticking away. The ever more intensive
process of destructive capitalist reproduction dramatically shortens the time
period in which humanity can stop the destruction of life on this planet. Time
began to run backwards – from the zero ecological milestone which, if
overstepped, is humanity’s doom. Man can only fight for survival. He must
believe that humanity can survive, which means that capitalism can be abolished
and a new world created. Man cannot and must not be pessimistic. He must not
allow everyday life and the ruling propaganda machinery to bring him to such a
psychical state that he gives up on everything and surrenders to nothingness –
heading towards death. Faith in the future has become not only the basic
essential, but also the basic existential imperative. That is why loneliness is the
worst illness brought about by capitalism. A lonely man, lost in a destructive
capitalist nothingness, experiences the destruction of life and humanity as the
final liberation from all the torments and obligations of being human, which
means being responsible for the survival of the world. The most horrible fate that
can befall a man is to lose his human warmth, meaning his need for another
human being. Only a man who has not lost this basic human quality, his need for
other human beings, can strive for a humane world. When a man loses human
warmth, he becomes a living dead.
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The amount of evil inflicted on people by capitalism is outrageous... The

amount of humanity’s suffering is outrageous... And a new, humane world is at
hand. All that is needed is to organize and fight.

Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović (Petrović)

English translation supervisor, Mick Collins
E-mail: cirqueminime@club-internet.fr