Daily Times

For all the wrong and tragic reasons, France is in the limelight yet again. In Paris, an impulsive fit of paranoia, an outrageous act of violence, consumed more than 100 innocent lives in just a few chilling moments. Bullets were fired, blood spilled, death roared and the bodies fell. Regardless of colour, caste, creed and even ideology, madness, certainly not without a method, prevailed. Well fed hate, a kind of eternal atrophy that destroys everything but itself, won the day.

In a world based on profit, all relations and emotions are subjected to a single motive, the motive of profit, which is divine gospel. This incident can be no exception. It is only a matter of time before some Snowden will reveal the profit figure and the name of the beneficiary to all and sundry. With every calamity, the market reacts immediately, dividends rise, sometimes after a fall, but the trend invariably goes upwards. On the contrary, whenever or with whatever motive these gruesome attacks are carried out, the bosom of one of the gallant proletariat, a fighter of the future, is pierced, one who finds himself caught unaware between the terrorists and the bourgeois state.

“The war,” according to Howard Zinn, “is a class phenomenon. It is the poor who go to war, who get wounded and die in war. War gives the government a reason for existence.” Loss of life never remains a physical phenomenon; it transcends spiritual and psychological boundaries, leaving a wound on the soul, which, contrary to Hegel, does not heal without a scar. Mayhem of this magnitude widens the gulf in an already cleaved unity of the value producing class, the real owner of this globe that, on one pretext or another, is held back in perpetual penury and pauperisation. To enhance the servitude of the workers and to influence the social impotence of critical thought, which is already rife, each calamity turns out to be an opportunity for the ruling class. It provides an extremely fertile land to sow the seeds of suspicion in the hearts of the people while helping to divert the attention of the workers from class to race, religion and other rigmarole. The sanctity of nation, values and blood ties, which otherwise are mere empty vessels, are filled with abstract historical notions through ‘false consciousness’. Hate helps capital to squeeze the labour of the worker with the latter’s consent. Alienation is converted into a wilful, conscious servitude. By squeezing out this enhanced surplus, capital builds its bulwarks; through their blood it paints its cities red. To raise its stature it stands over their cadavers only to gloat about its racial, intellectual and class superiority.

While the stench of gunpowder was still lurking, the poodle press and the ‘socialist’ (listless about socialism) president of the republic of France swiftly fixed responsibility. His verdict charged Islamic State (IS) as guilty, a rag tag group of terrorists that allegedly he and his other allies helped finance. Certainly “a comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic un-freedom” along with crafty guileful indoctrination prevails in developed societies. The godfather of imperialism did not lag behind. Without mincing words, the leader of the ‘free’ world — where the gun rules and the blacks succumb — Obama condemned both terrorism and the massacre in no uncertain terms.

A cancer, regardless of whether it afflicts an individual or a society, is a serious cause of concern; if its name is terrorism it must be condemned as well. But does mere condemnation heal an ailing society? Certainly not; even Obama will have no cause to reject this contemplation. Every cause has its effect, nothing falls from the blue; both philosophy and science have a unanimous belief in this reality. People are born as innocent human beings and not as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ guys. It is society, circumstances, objective conditions and their class that determine the fate of a human. Obama will have no qualms in accepting the first premise of this sentence though the second half may not be palatable since it bears a ‘stench’ of Marxism. Long ago, doctors established an authenticated link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer but the tobacco corporations came up with their dazzling ads of a charismatic man infused with vitality, accompanied by the seductive smile of a charming girl, who after every adventure demanded cigarettes. The tempting fragrance of a cigarette barely mattered since manipulation of thought worked. This made scientific evidence advanced by doctors sound baseless and unfounded. The denial did not change the reality; instead it increased mortality while sustaining the rate of profitability.

In Paris on that fateful day more than half a dozen youthful humans (at least they looked like humans) in a grisly and hideous act turned more than 100 fellows of their own species into cadavers. Later, apart from one or two, the rest blew themselves up into ashes leaving families to mourn, humanity to grieve, analysts to ponder and opportunists to fix blame. From Islam to race, every possible reason of hate was kept on the dice loaded with one dimensional thought where every issue could be freely deliberated except ‘class’. Allude to this taboo and get accused of committing calumny against national integrity. One wonders why class is so antagonistic to the concept of a nation and if so why blame Hitler for declaring Aryans a superior nation, which according to him was immune to the ‘class’ phenomenon? Is it not true that the bourgeoisie of whatever hue believes in the same values that Hitler is blamed for?

Who were the murderers? Why did they commit this gory crime? These are very pertinent questions that need concrete answers, yet they will never get it because “truth is to be desired not for its own sake but in so far as it works best, as it leads us to something that is alien or at least different from truth itself” (Horkheimer). For some, these killers were asocial. If one accept this frivolous hypothesis, the diagnosis becomes convenient. By neglecting the essence, the superficial analysis of the phenomenon makes it easy to lay the blame on the individual’s perverted psyche. It is convenient to separate the individual’s personal discontent from the malaise and aggression sickening society. Once general affliction is limited to the individual’s anxiety, the case can be easily handled. Society becomes too perfect to be blamed. Yet again the question who perverts this psyche remains unanswered. Does it have to do with Freudian aggression that needs catharsis? Yes and no. It is affirmative since in the presence of the cause, persistent repression, aggression cannot be denied. It is negative since Freudian aggression needs a sublimated Eros to satisfy the desire that prepares the human to re-embrace the performance principle.

To get back to work, yet again to alienated labour. Here, in this case, there was no coming back. Anxiety had transcended all limits of sanity, hence an insane act was committed with absolute responsibility. These boys were not asocial; they were alienated by a brute society that Laing states “creates half crazed creatures” that could not adjust to a mad world of war and destruction.

(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