Daily Times

“People are unaware how unfree they are, even where they feel most at liberty, because the rule of such un-freedom has been abstracted from them.” — Adorno.

In the history of humankind, the Nuremberg trail was considered a watershed. Once the spectre of Nazi Germany was interred, a breeze of optimism reawakened a sanguine expectation of interring the age of lies, malicious propaganda and of an unjust war to an eternal rest. Generally, the lesson of not giving into the neurosis of holocaust in the future apparently prevailed. In Yalta, when the strange mélange comprising Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin cosily took their seats, it looked as if the time to materialise the famous slogans of French revolution had finally arrived. The era of liberty, equality and fraternity with the icing of permanent peace seemed to dovetail into reality. But akin to every castle of sand, the euphoria ended in a blistering mirage. The wishes based on noble desires devoid of material basis remained unsung. Potsdam proved a last straw on its haunches. The blazing torch of unity ignited in the bosom of humanity extinguished far too quickly as the world divided into two belligerent camps. An ‘evil empire’ where, despite paying a painful cost, humanity was inching towards freedom and a ‘free world’ that offered “a comfortable, smooth, democratic un-freedom” based on wage slavery.

The ‘evil state’, which Churchill described as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” unfolded itself according to its own objective conditions. Due to its historical shortcomings and unabated subversive activities of the ‘free world’ before evaporating into thin air, it metamorphosed into a totalitarian state having the potential and content of converting itself into a real socialist state where freedom from want was still a real possibility. Conversely, the panacea of democracy and a welfare society offered by the ‘free world’ sooner rather than later turned out to be mere “pillows of illusions” that kept the human being “waking from one dream to another”. Once the ‘evil empire’ under the weight of its own contradictions crumbled, the overproduction and falling rate of profit — the two inherent contradictions/quiddities of capitalism — forced capitalists to withdraw their capital from circulation. This anemia consequently brought the whole system crashing down, which scattered like a house of cards. The dream of a democratic welfare state, itself an aberration, eventually terminated into the nightmare of a farewell state.

The objective logic behind every welfare state remained (and still remains) the containment of change through the moral and material corruption of its people. Without transforming itself into a warfare state its existence remains debatable. Here lies its antithesis, which upon its very foundation readily comes into play. On the very day of its birth its epitaph is written. Instead of peace, “the peaceful production of means of destruction” brings the nemesis of its own society.

In the longer run, a society based on the welfare system, managed by a capitalist hierarchy, becomes increasingly antagonistic towards the interests of its own people. The ever-improving technology turns the labour force into a redundant army of unemployed workers, which is unable to sustain its buying power. For capitalism this contradiction can prove lethal, which swiftly wakens its gravediggers. Not global peace but maintenance of the one within the hegemonic state’s own boundaries becomes impossible since conditions turn dialectically opposite to the given situation. The system finds no more strength for developing productive forces. Hence, despite all the noble intentions of its ‘civilised’ citizens, peace becomes illusive.

In the post war era, due to expanded reproduction of capital, the excessive quantity of pre-arranged goods, higher wages and indoctrination kept the economy of the ‘free world’ afloat. The exploitation and the domination of the system were not suffered by the people as yet. Hence, for long the majority was content to reproduce the same debilitating system. With the expansion of imperialist designs the reality gradually revealed itself to the masses as it began to hurt them. Freedom turned into its opposite. Democracy became a hoax and economic stability a fantasy. The possibility of overcoming the realm of necessity proved a figment of the hopeful’s imagination. The lesson of taking a leap towards the realm of freedom fell victim to a newly ignited war between the oppressor and the oppressed within and outside the hegemonic state(s).

Any possibility of freedom turning into reality required the precondition of human liberation from dominant interests. But the hidden classes, in control of the means of production, used “the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of man”. As market-led globalisation took over, akin to under-developing countries, the developed ‘free world’ could not escape from its whips and scorns. Objectified human existence now suddenly found itself exhausting alienable labour, which was contrary to human freedom. Even the democratic structure, which has an inherent tendency of tilting the balance towards the propertied class, appeared farcial. Human beings everywhere found themselves in chains.

Barrington Moore sensed the gravity of this situation, hence succinctly stated that “to democratise the villages without altering the property relations is absurd”. And “if democracy means self-government of free people, with justice for all, then the realisation of democracy would presuppose abolition of the existing pseudo-democracy” (Marcuse). This goal cannot be achieved without overthrowing the existing system based on exploitation and indoctrination.

”Every sinner has a future”; so did Goebbels, who not only survived but under the watchful eyes of capitalism became indispensable for its maintenance and hence thrived and multiplied. Goebbels was an individual who worked diligently to achieve certain interests for the privileged class. The latter in the form of western media has produced his several incarnates. Since then the dominant interests, instead of outright coercion, used propaganda, a scientific tool to subjugate the masses through their consent. Everything, beginning from art to religion, philosophy to science and aesthetics to information, is harmoniously blended artfully with commercials, hence reducing all ideals to a commodity form. The commodity fetishism is not only instrumental in creating handsome profits but simultaneously helps impede the possibility of radical change.

For the human being suffering the mayhem of dire circumstances, nostalgia and revisiting the past remain the only places of refuge. However, while the commodity structure malignantly invades the living memory of humankind, it does not even spare the past. The process of amnesia pushes the memories of the past into oblivion, reducing them to fiction, a fast eclipsing dream, wishful thinking or perhaps a euphoric state of mind. This madness certainly is not without a method; it carries a hardcore motive. In a capitalist society, with every passing moment, humanity is being deprived of its previously hard-earned freedom. Hence, every individual past carries his most adorable memories, the memories worth cherishing. He retraces his lost paradise right there in his past.

The recalling of one’s past demands no anxiety, since being temporal it has already vanished in the black hole of the memory. Yet its recall not only helps in bringing the buoyed, breezy, brilliant moments back but also tends to conquer the unconquerable, the time, the eternal enemy of humankind, a symbol of death. The yearning for these moments is in fact yearning for the ‘pleasure principle’ that was once considered an integral right of the human being. What was the counteracting force, which deprived the human being from his eternal right? Was it not the‘performance principle’, the alienated labour that served the interests of very few privileged ones? And is it not by recalling the past that the human is changing not only the past but the present too? A deed that eluded the divinity of either variety, one dominating the earth and the other the cosmos or both!

(To be continued)

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com