Stalingrad Memorial
[To
commemorate this 70th anniversary of the great Anti-Fascist victory by the
Soviet people at Stalingrad, we are posting another essay by my dear friend and
strong comrade Duci Simonovic—aptly enough, on Revolutionary violence.
Violence
and needless destruction have always been the daily bread and mother's milk of
Fascism, the ideological rationale for a feudal-nostalgic Waste Capitalism.
Unlike the great cataclysms of the last century, today's imperialist wars
are not waged to gain territory or to seize and dominate the wealth of nations,
but merely to continue the artificial life-support of a long-moribund
political-economic system, no longer capable of sustaining itself by meeting
human need through a vigorous, free exchange of value circulating throughout the
society, and now relegated to pointless and hopeless destruction of all the
riches of our planet as well as the inevitable annihilation of the whole of Humanity.
Seventy
years ago today, 2 February 1943, the good guys won a great battle and saved
Human History from its negation. Yet, sad to say, though Evil may not be
invincible—and though the Human Spirit's longing for Liberty, Justice and Peace
is undiminished, as can be seen in the democratic revival of the 2012 US
elections—Fascism is a hope-to-die, double-mag-my-AR,
tape-the-C4-to-my-nut-sack, point-me-toward-the-nearest-kindergarten, and
I'll-see-all-y'all-at-Chili's-for-Happy-Hour—kind a dope-fiend-terrorist.
The
Nazis had the sexy, Hugo Boss technology, the Stuka and the Panzar, but the Soviets had the dour Power
of the People. Used to be the Power of the People would always trump the
Man's technology. But that was then; now the Man's hustle has gotten a
lot tighter. Even though there can
be no ultimate winners in the Super Bowl of Life, the divine tout still can't
help himself and just has to rig the match—so’s, at least, he won’t get played.
Wetfe.
I'll take the 9ers and give the 4 1/2.—mc]
*************
Comrades Max & Duci (Belgrad 2009)
Ljubodrag
Simonovic
E-mail:comrade@orion.rs
REVOLUTIONARY
VIOLENCE
The notion of violence has a historical nature. In modern times, it is
determined according to the basic human and civil rights, proclaimed in the
French Revolution, which form the basis of modern humanism. Concretely, the nature of the ruling
order conditions the nature of the prevailing violence. In liberal capitalism, the prevailing violence was
based on the principle bellum omnium contra omnes. In
monopolistic capitalism, the prevailing violence is based on the principle
“Destroy the competition!”. It is not characterized by a struggle between
citizens, who are reduced to atomized private subjects, but by a struggle
between gigantic corporations. The prevailing contemporary violence results
from capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order.
From
the historical point of view, violence has an emancipatory dimension. Departing from the American and French
Revolutions, Marx came to the conclusion that “violence is the midwife of
history”. From the onset of capitalism, bourgeois theorists insisted on the
right to combat the prevailing violence, including the armed struggle. Locke
and Kant share the view that free citizens not only have the right to oppose
the violence threatening their freedoms, but that the opposition to violence is
their most important civic duty. For Njegos, “to place a foot upon tyranny's
neck, this is the most sacred of man's duties”. Following in the footsteps of
this emancipatory legacy, Lenin put forward a theory of ”unjust” (conquering)
and “just” (liberating) wars. According to Marx, violence in a proletarian
revolution is not the aim, but the means for doing away with capitalist
tyranny. With the development of political institutions, revolutionary violence
has become one of the available means for abolishing capitalism. Engels'
insistence on a ”dictatorship of the proletariat” is meaningless, because,
after a (true) socialist revolution, classes will no longer exist, and there
will only be free people whose livelihoods will derive from their own work.
In
the contemporary world, the violence directed towards the capitalist order and
contemporary imperialism is referred to as “terrorism”. Following
the class and the colonial principles, the ideologues of capitalism do not make
a distinction between the struggle for freedom and terrorism; more precisely,
they equate the workers' struggle against capitalism and the struggle of
oppressed peoples against imperialism with “terrorism”. In conquered countries,
colonial masters refer to those who fight against the colonial yoke as “bandits”,
“murderers”, “thugs”… The notion of “terrorism” comprises all traditional
qualities of fighters against the class order and colonialism. At the same time, it also involves the
spontaneous opposition of enraged young people to the capitalist order, which
has deprived them of their future.
It is not
“terrorism” when capitalists, guided by greed, cause accidents in nuclear power
plants, with lethal consequences to the living world; when they start thousands
of fires in the Brazilian jungles every single day; when they contaminate the
soil and water with poisonous heavy metals dropped from aircraft; when they
empty thousands of nuclear waste containers into the oceans every single day
and contaminate the seas and the coastlands with oil, killing millions of
animals; when they burn entire towns with phosphorus bombs and contaminate
rivers and the earth with projectiles tipped with depleted uranium; when,
thanks to economic fascism, they force people to produce and consume
contaminated food and genetically modified crops; when they fire millions of
people from work and force women to undergo sterilization in order to get a
job; when the most developed capitalist countries, through economic measures
and political and military pressures, destroy the economies of less developed
countries, causing suffering and death to tens of millions of children; when
people are pushed into debt-slavery and deprived of their basic human and civil
rights; when American capitalists provoke wars and create a war hysteria in
order to ensure the survival of the American military industry; when the CIA forms
terrorist groups to incite civil wars and destroy existing states ... However,
it is “terrorism” when a group of dissatisfied young people from the Parisian
suburbs, who live on the margins of society, smash the windows of limousines or
of the shops in posh areas, or throw stones at armored police vehicles and
heavily armed police forces, who protect the ruling order, which creates social
poverty and destroys life on Earth.
Capitalism
is opposed to the emancipatory legacy of bourgeois society and produces forms
of political struggle with a destructive character. Contemporary “terrorism” is
a capitalistically degenerated struggle against capitalism, namely, a
destructive violence that uses the capitalist means and methods and thus
further intensifies the process of destruction. It is a manifestation of the
ruling spirit of destructive
capitalist irrationalism. It does not seek to create a new world, but to
destroy the existing one. That is the basic difference between a revolutionary
struggle and terrorist acts. Terrorism is not marked by a visionary
consciousness, but by fanaticism, as a result of the increasingly ruthless
destruction of entire nations by the most powerful capitalist corporations.
The ever-deeper existential crisis in the world creates conditions for
the development of religious fanaticism, with a fatalistic and destructive
character. For fanatics, who glorify an illusory world “in the heavens”, this
world is but a springboard for their departure into “eternity”. By killing the
“infidels”, they acquire their tickets for “The Pearly Gates”. Terrorism, under
the veil of religious fanaticism, is based on anti-existential nihilism.
However, only a naive person can believe that the eradication of religion would
bring the eradication of violence. Over 99% of young “terrorists” have not read
a single religious book, a fact Michel Onfray, in his “Atheist Manifesto”, claims
is the source of their violent behavior.
At the same time, the main “spiritual sustenance” for almost all
“terrorists” in the West is the products of the capitalist entertainment
industry: Hollywood films, “video
games” and sports, where violence acquires a spectacular dimension. Onfray
“overlooks” the most important point: young people's violence results from
their positions in society and the nature of the ruling order. It is the
consequence of reducing young people, particularly those living in ghettos, to
“hooliganism”. Onfray's intention is clear: by shifting the responsibility to
religion, he relieves the ruling capitalist order of any responsibility for the
increasing violence in society. At
the same time, he does not see the difference between the violent character and
the violent consciousness. He also does not make any distinction between the
violence of the young, who just mimic the model behavior, and the violence used
to express dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. The
destructive behavior of the young is a capitalistically degenerated expression
of their justified dissatisfaction with their life and the world in which they
live. Just as do existing religions, Onfray conceals the true nature of
monopolistic capitalism and resorts to an “anthropological argument”, which
holds man at the social-Darwinist level that characterizes liberal capitalism.
Onfray: “The primitive still exists in the post-modern, the animal still
endures in man, the beast still lives in homo sapiens ...” (30)
It does not occur to Onfray to show that rather than opposing the
violence, the state and the legal system, as well as other institutions of
capitalist society, are regulatory mechanisms of capitalism as a violent
(destructive) order. A typical example is the rules of fair play in sport.
The “violence in sport” involves behavior that crosses the established limits
of a “sporting fight”. It is not
considered violence if a boxer, “in a proper manner”, kills his “opponent” by
hitting him in the head, but it is considered violence if he kicks his bottom.
In the first case, he will be declared “champion”; in the second case, he will
be disqualified. Violence is not the behavior that threatens man's freedom and
life, but it does threaten the ruling order. Sport is the best promoter of
destructive violence and, as such, is a call to violence. “Top sportsmen”, who
use the worst forms of destructive violence, have become the “idols” of the
young. Sport destroys
interpersonal relations based on solidarity, as well as visionary
consciousness, drawing the young into the world of capitalist values. It is no accident that sport is the
dearest child of capitalism.
The “war on
terrorism” is just an ideological mask used by American imperialism and
resembles the Nazi “struggle against Judeo-bolshevism”, which was used as a cover
for annihilating the Jews and the Slavs and conquering a “living space” (Lebensraum) for
German capital. It is an excuse for establishing a “new world order” based on
American imperialism. Those who terrorize the world, under the pretext of a
“war on terrorism”, seek to do away with anyone who can stop their endeavors to
turn the world into a concentration camp. The “fight against terrorism” is,
actually, the fight by the West to acquire a monopoly on violence, which means
that terror would become the exclusive means by which the West will rule the
world. The “protection against terrorism” that they offer is a sort of mafia
racket: those who do not accept the steel embrace of the “world police” shall
be subjected to horrendous terror. “Global terrorism” is becoming the “main
threat to humankind” – this slogan is repeated over and over again by the
proponents of American policies all over the world, who try to ingratiate
themselves to their masters. The relation towards terrorism reveals the true
ambitions and reach of American politics: the “fight against terrorism” does
not have anything to do with forming a new block or with any ideology, it has a
global and anti-existential character.
At the same time, capitalists in the most developed Western countries
use controlled media to spread existential panic so that citizens will
unquestioningly accept their “protection against the terrorist threat”, which
means being deprived of their basic civil and human rights. This is a
totalitarian “integration of society” dominated by the most reactionary
political forces. Tens of millions of cameras, wiretaps, micro-chips implanted
in citizens, similarly to dog chipping and cattle branding, unwarranted
intrusions, kidnapping, torture, “silent” liquidations, total control over the
media, deployment of special military units in cities, erection of
concentration camps.... The “fight against terrorism” is, actually, the form in
which capitalists carry out an open dictatorship.
Ecocide is the most detrimental form of capitalist terror. This
type of violence has an
annihilating character. “Consumer society” is the highest stage in the
development of capitalism as an ecocidal order. In the “consumer” stage of
development, destructive potential of capitalism has reached the metastasis and
capitalism has turned into a totalitarian destructive order. Each segment of
social life and each segment of nature are subjected to the destructive process
of capitalist reproduction. Actually, life itself, conditioned by capitalism,
has become terror over people. When life itself became a terror, then any
attempt to define terror at the normative level and to regulate it legally
becomes meaningless.
The
view of Oskar Negt that “time for
going to the barricades has passed” only contributes to the depoliticization of
the oppressed working people at a time when capitalism has entered the last
stage of its combat with life on the planet, and when, consequently, the fight
against capitalism has become an existential imperative. In Negt, instead of a
critique of capitalism and the forms of political struggle against capitalism
being conditioned by the trends in its development, capitalism is conditioned
by an “enlightening” (pacifistic) political option. In that context, the
discussion ignores all questions about the true (destructive) nature of
capitalism, addressing only those questions that do not devalue the given
political option. Concretely, workers and their children should be “taught
democracy”. Ultimately, the primary concern of Negt's concept is not to
question the economic and political stability of Germany, which means that
workers should not start an open class struggle. In practicality, his option serves to preserve the
capitalist order with its “bearable” exploitation of workers and the “welfare
state” that enables the unemployed to keep from starving and maintains “social
peace”. Workers' political
struggle has been abolished, while their “class struggle” is reduced to the
struggle of trade unions, whose aim is to sell their labor at the highest
price. It is a typical
social-democratic option, which at the time of the Weimar Republic enabled
Hitler to come to power, whereas today it enables capitalists to destroy nature
and threatens the biological survival of European nations and the emancipatory
potential of civil society.
Capitalism as a destructive totalitarian order and, consequently, as
destructive of the emancipatory legacy of bourgeois society and man as a humane
and biological being, must be the starting point in a critique of capitalism
and the political struggle against capitalism. Criticism of capitalism cannot
start from a political analysis of possible social developments. Such an approach is unacceptable not
only for reasons of truth, but, above all, for existential reasons.
Notwithstanding a possible action at a particular political moment, a critique
of capitalism must start from the nature of capitalism. The “storming of the barricades” is not
a product of the “voluntarism of a radical political consciousness” (Negt); it
is rather the result of the increasingly dramatic capitalist destruction of
life, and is a legitimate form of political struggle against capitalism. Without
the willingness of the working class to stand at the barricades, all other political
options are nothing but a political clamor, which cannot produce any essential
changes. The militarization of the working class and the young
that results from the struggle for survival and is based on the humanist
visionary consciousness is of utmost existential significance. Instead of a
pacifistic upbringing, the young people should develop the will to fight
against capitalism and to create a humane world. Considering the fact that the economic crisis of
capitalism is affecting an increasing number of people, leading to the
biological demise of peoples living in the most advanced capitalist states, the
“postponement” of a radical political option can result in a “political
climate” that can give rise to a new fascism. At the same time, without political organization and the
political engagement of workers on a daily basis, storming the barricades
cannot have a true revolutionary, which means a visionary character, but just a
rebellious and destructive one. A
revolutionary fight is not only a fight against the ruling order, but also a
fight for a humane world.
The notion of revolutionary violence should be
determined by the principle that concrete humanity can be reached relative to
concrete inhumanity. In other words, the nature of capitalism as a
totalitarian destructive order conditions the nature of the struggle against
capitalism. If we ignore that, advocating “humanism” becomes an empty
“humanistic” rhetoric. In the contemporary world, the concept of violence
exceeds the framework of morality and politics and appears in the existential
sphere. The humanistic ideals of modern society, which were affirmed in the
French Revolution, can no longer be the starting point in the fight against
capitalism. Also, a contemporary criticism of capitalist violence
cannot be limited to class and human relations, but must consider the survival
of humankind. Capitalist
inhumanity has an anti-existential character. Hence, contemporary humanism
cannot only have a libertarian, but, above all, must have an existential
nature. As a destructive totalitarian order, capitalism has given a new quality
to the development of society: the possibility of man's concrete freedom no
longer appears in relation to slavery, but in relation to the ever more
realistic possibility of global annihilation. The fight for man's freedom has
become the fight for the survival of humankind.
Capitalism brought humankind to the edge of the abyss and thus abolished
the space for political games intended to buy time for capitalism. The
increasingly ruthless destruction of life compels man to make his best efforts
to prevent global destruction. That man is the victim of capitalism can also be
seen from the fact that capitalism forces him to use, in his struggle for survival,
the means which are alien to his humanity, as well as to the vision of a humane
society. The increasingly dramatic
destruction of the world means that revolutionary violence is becoming less and
less an ethical issue and more and more an existential issue of primary
importance.
On the
last historical battlefield there remain only two mortal combatants: capitalism
and humankind. Capitalism has long been waging an all-out war of annihilation
against humanity. It is about time to start a total war against capitalism,
which involves the use of all forms of struggle that can contribute to its
final destruction.
Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović
English translation supervisor, Mick Collins
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