1

By Ljubodrag Simonovi, Belgrade, Serbia

E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorovi
English translation supervisor, Mick Collins
E-mail: cirqueminime@club-internet.fr

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 the political strategy for the fight
against capitalism. This is not to suggest the creation of a uniform way of
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thinking, but a way of thinking that endeavors to ask questions of an existential

and essential nature. Such a way of thinking represents a contraposition to the
ruling ideology, manifested in the Coca Cola culture that tends to marginalize
the essential in order to assign a spectacular dimension to the marginal.
A concrete critique of capitalism cannot be based solely upon
essential humanism; it must also be based upon existential humanism. The
ideals of the French Revolution - Libert, Egalit, Fraternit - present a
necessary, but not a sufficient condition for the future. The struggle to preserve
life on the planet and increase the certainty of mans survival as a cultural
(social) and biological (natural) being represents a conditio sine qua non of the
struggle for the future. Instead of the Marxs notion of alienation
(Entfremdung), the key notion in the critique of capitalism should be
destruction. Marx's revolutionary humanism opposes capitalism as a system of
non-freedom, injustice, and non-reason, and advocates freedom, social justice,
and a reasonable world, which means that it appears in the essential sphere.
Existential humanism emerges in relation to capitalism as a destructive order
that annihilates nature and man as a biological and human being and places
the struggle for the survival of the living world in the foreground, which means
that it appears in the existential sphere. The affirmation of man as a creative
and libertarian being is a response to the world where man is alienated from
himself as a creative and libertarian being. The assertion that man is a life-
creating being is a response to the world based upon the destruction of life: the
struggle for freedom becomes the struggle for survival. The struggle for a
reasonable world does not only represent an essential, but also an existential
challenge. At the same time, Hegel's (Marx's) dialectic can be accepted only
conditionally as the starting point for the development of a critique of
capitalism, for its (historical) pyramid of freedom is founded upon existential
certainty.
The traditional Marxist critique of capitalism, from the point of
view of what-is-yet-to-be (Bloch's noch-nicht-Sein), is of an abstract nature. The
concrete nature of the capitalist positive also conditions the nature of the
negative, which is a critical consciousness and a political practice based on it.
Contemporary man cannot attain an appropriate historical self-consciousness
starting from an absolutized and idealized anthropological model of man as a
universal creative being of freedom, but 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 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 mans
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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
mans innate aggressiveness as a living being, capitalism transforms man's
vital aggressiveness into a destructive power. Peoples potentially change-
oriented energy, deriving from their increasing dissatisfaction, becomes, by
means of capitalisms 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 order that inevitably
condition mans 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.
 4

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
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
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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 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.
 6

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, 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 todays 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.
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Capitalism 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 organisms biological rhythm, increased
existential uncertainty that constantly keeps man under stress this all results
in increasingly serious corporal and mental damage. The recuperation of mans
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 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
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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 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 countrys 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
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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 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
 10

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 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.
 11

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.
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
 12

generations are, for the first time in history, worse educated than their parents.
At the same time, increasingly aggressive and inhuman commercial 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, 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-
 13

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 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.
 14

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 todays
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 worlds 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 Minervas 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 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
 15

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 humankinds 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 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
 16

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 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
 17

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, 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. When it comes to the relation
 18

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 arts 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 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
 19

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 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
 20

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 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 martyrs saintly halo, the woman has acquired a working-hedonistic aura;
instead of a one-sided exploitation of women, capitalism has established a
 21

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 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.
 22

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 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
technlogy. 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
 23

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 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 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
 24

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 mans 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 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
 25

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.
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...
 26

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.
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 mans 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
 27

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 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
 28

capitalists and politicians, greater social differences, general criminalization of

society, religious fanaticism, the flourishing of fascism all this creates
presuppositions that the 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.
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
societys 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
 29

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 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
 30

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 todays 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
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
 31

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
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
 32

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 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
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(life-creating) powers are being realized and the true human 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 Marxs 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 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
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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 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
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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 humanitys 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.

The amount of evil inflicted on people by capitalism is

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