Daily Times

For the media it is merchandise, a source of fame, earning and leading from the front. This is the depiction of the extent of alienation in a sick society, afflicted with the plague of capitalism that perpetrates violence of all shades on human beings. It is where the inanimate market, not living human beings react and respond, becomes bullish or bearish, where assets turn toxic while humanity becomes merchandise. By highlighting the corpses of its victims, which is the most despicable way of enhancing its wealth, it tends to masquerade the reality behind the façade of ‘good’ and bad’ humans. The rotten system is clinically excised from memory. This is how society triumphs upon the contradictions the system contains. The system’s own logic organises the death and destruction of millions of people.

While mentioning Marx and Engels in these grisly circumstances, one may sound callous but their reasoning is not without rationality. Marx says: “The demand for men necessarily regulates the production of men, like any other merchandise. If the supply is greater than the demand a portion of the workers falls into beggary or dies of hunger.” Engels is more scathing in his criticism. He states: “There is only overpopulation where there is an excess of productive forces in general, and (we have seen) private property has made man a merchandise whose production and destruction depends on demand, and that competition has slaughtered, and every day slaughters in this way millions of people.” Capitalism is doing exactly the same thing it did to the Jews during the Second World War. “It did not kill them immediately. To begin with, it removed them from the circulation; it gathered them together, concentrated them and it made them work while under-nourishing them, i.e. in super exploiting them to death” (Bordiga).

Alongside globalisation, ‘exporting democracy’ too has become a catchphrase, a cliché. As monopoly capitalism is extending its pernicious roots within and outside its boarders, democracy is coming directly into conflict with the very institutions built for it. With increasing social cuts as the natives of these democracies are being deprived from basic human needs, the desire to export is becoming even more ridiculous. In recent times, exploitation and domination have become direct, barbaric and naked. They are no more ‘compensated’ by the words wrapped in plethora of kind and generous euphemism. The totalitarian character of the state and the imperialism have become terroristic. There is no disguise. “Hypocrisy has turned cynical; it does not even expect to be believed” (Horkheimer). “With us to select and hunt the enemy or against us” are no more choices available to weaker states. These are the conscious decisions an ally has to make under coercion, threat and fear, fear of annihilation. “With us” means to buy the means of destruction produced by ‘civilised’ nations of the world, regardless of whether the economies of weaker nations have the luxury to afford them or not. This also mean ‘rationalisation of the economic structure, opening the internal market for international capital and keeping the impetuosity of challenging the hegemony of imperialist states in check. Otherwise the examples of Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria and Iraq are there to be repeated. In this regard, Hemmingway precisely states: “The world breaks every one…those that will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” One only needs to replace ‘world’ with ‘capitalism/imperialism’ and the rest will do the job.

Herbert Marcuse has rightly pointed out: “Several influences have conspired to bring about the social impotence of critical thought. The foremost among them is the growth of the industrial apparatus and of its all-embracing control over all spheres of life. The technological rationality inculcated in those who attend to this apparatus has transformed numerous modes of external compulsion and authority into modes of self-discipline and self-control.” This social impotence of thought can only be overpowered through a process of revolution but then revolution demands a new sensitivity that has to be developed in the framework of the existing capitalist society, so is the case with the consciousness about servitude. How this sensitivity can develop while living in the clutches of external compulsions is a contradiction that every working class movement has to carry along with other similar contradictions. It is better to carry them as ‘comprehended contradictions’, needed to be resolved in the course of a struggle that will lead the movement to the revolutionary stage.

No revolution is perfect but in the course of a revolution alone the working class learns its perfection. Socialism and barbarism are yet again the stark choices humanity have. The former still remains the only option for mankind to resolve its contradictions and to emancipate itself. How it will proceed will depend entirely upon its consciousness, which again has to be achieved in capitalism. Capitalism is not the ultimate aim of humanity nor is it an end in itself. It is certainly a means to an end, which culminates in Marxism, the ultimate realisation of humanity. This reality under the magic spell and beaming productivity of capitalism seems utopian. But before its realisation every reality appears as utopia. Fiction is first modified into form and then into a reality. This is how realisation becomes a possibility. Though “realisation is neither the criterion nor the content of Marxist truth, but the historical impossibility of its realisation is irreconcilable with it” (Marcuse).

(Concluded)

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