(If you haven’t already, please read Part I before proceeding).
The first of these mutations is the transformation of classical capitalism into imperialism.
Lenin, having familiarized himself with the results of Hilferding’s research, characterized imperialism brilliantly in his work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. But, having thoroughly described this new stage as a mutation (“decay”, etc.), Lenin did not believe that capitalism would have the will to undertake a series of subsequent mutations. This was because such a series of subsequent mutations would rid capitalism of its basic and inalienable characteristics, its fundamental codes. Lenin thought that capitalism would hold steadfastly to these characteristics/
Even the most brilliant of Marxist social scientists belonging to the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries could not imagine in their wildest nightmares that the ruling class would start controlling history, having come to the conclusion that history must be controlled, and having acquired the capabilities to control it. These capabilities were unimaginable not only for Marx, but also for Lenin, whose major works fall not on the 19th, but on the beginning of the 20th century.
To acquire such capabilities: television, the machine of consumption, post-industriali
I will elaborate.
In his work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels convincingly showed that private property in general, and especially capitalist property, must rely on a powerful state and a strong family. Indeed, classical capitalism did rely on them! It also relied on Christian ethics, predominantly in their strictest Protestant form. Christianity, especially in its Protestant variant, considered even adultery to be a horrible sin. And, various sexual perversions, even more so. Society developed corresponding taboos and methods of their enforcement, including criminal prosecution.
As a result, in Germany, for example, up to the middle of the 19th century, even up to the last quarter of the century, the family was unbelievably strong. Various sexual deviations (homosexual ones, especially) had the character of minor disturbances in normal human family and sexual life. Homosexuals made up a persecuted minority that existed on the social periphery or in the elite underground.
By 1920, they were already “sitting tall in the saddle”. Meanwhile, the family began to crumble.
Who managed to accomplish this in 40 years? Indeed, somebody had to set such a goal, and they had to be able to attain it. To do this, the cornerstones of the existence of normal capitalism had to be destroyed.
I do not wish to, as the Shakespearian hero said, “tear a passion to tatters” about the horrors of perversions; let somebody else do that. I am demonstrating how quickly a mutation managed to occur in something having to do with certain norms based on Christian and Old Testament morality.
One might say that in Germany, the catastrophe of the defeat in World War I, which lead to a moral crisis, among others, heavily aided this transformation. But, in the heavily Protestant United States, the integrity of moral values and what is called the traditional family preserved itself up to the 1950s. But as soon as by the 1970-80s, all of this was nowhere to be found. What had previously been persecuted deviations became defining trends, and not just in Hollywood. This happened over the span of 30 years. 30, not 300! Is this not as example of a rapidly progressing mutation of a certain pivotal institution of classical capitalism that based itself on a religious system, which in many ways served as the backbone of classical capitalism?
You might say that capitalism had shot itself in the foot? No, it didn’t shoot itself in the foot. It mutated, transforming normal capitalism into mutant capitalism.
Could any classical capitalists in the middle of the 20th century imagine in their wildest nightmares the sort of madness of forced foster care that has become a defining Western trend by the beginning of the 21st century? No, nobody could have even conceived this, because this would mean an attack on the very principles, the fundamental codes of the capitalist system, on what seemed to be part of the indispensable nucleus of that system.
What is an effective attack on the nucleus of any system? It’s a mutation.
What is happening in reality is a substitution of all of these codes, and therefore, of the very nucleus of the capitalist system. Of course, it was fascism that was engaged in substituting these codes in the most radical manner. Even though fascism seemed to have been defeated, this code substitution continued, and it continued in the direction that the fascists defined. The most essential part of this code substitution is the active expansion of both apparent and hidden polytheistic paganism along with the destruction of everything that has to do with monotheism (Christian, Jewish, or Islamic). One can talk about both overt and covert types of the polytheistic paganism that is devouring the culture that monotheism created. It does not take much work to prove that even the most vehement atheistic undertakings of the past few decades are examples of precisely this kind of paganism that pretends to be atheism.
By imposing this kind of paganism, the organizers of today’s super-powerful capitalist mutation are, of course, wiping out the nation state, which was the creation of classical capitalism, not of mutant capitalism.
This is because the state is founded on an idea that is very deeply rooted in society, that there exists a certain sphere of imperative social obligations (abbreviated as ISOs). The state can justify its existence only through the necessity of these ISOs. Undercut these roots, and the state comes crashing down. Well, they are being undercut. People are being led to the idea that these ISOs should be replaced with different kinds of services, in education, health care, culture, and so on.
But, if all kinds of activity are going to be changed from ISOs to services, then it would seem that the next logical step would be to stop collecting taxes into the national budgets, or to distribute these budgets among the citizens in the form of private accounts. Citizens could then be offered to buy certain services through certain markets for these services. If you want the service of protecting of your rights and security, you can consult a private company. You can choose the security company that you need by analyzing the whole range of offers. You can theoretically use private military contractors for national defense (if we want to bring this line of reasoning to the absurd). A bureaucracy isn’t necessary, what joy! You can order whatever you want from whoever you want.
I again want to stress that this is an intentional attempt to bring the principle to its ultimate logical conclusion, thus revealing its absurdity and destructiveness. But, along with this, bringing the principle to its ultimate logical conclusion allows us to reveal something different, not just destructive and absurd, but downright ominous.
It turns out that the state has no intention of leaving anywhere. It wants to mutate, not to leave. It wants to collect money from citizens in such a manner as though the goal was to form a budget necessary for carrying out various ISOs. Then, it wants to transfer the collected funds to certain privileged private structures for them to provide services to its citizens. Furthermore, the state wants to make these services mandatory. And clearly, a mandatory service is utter nonsense. Either you have ISOs, and with them a mandate, or you have services, but then there can be no mandate by definition. But, the state wants to take away everything that has to do with the irrevocable necessity of ISOs, and to leave only what has to do with mandatory nature of ISOs.
Having uncovered this, we understand that the topic here is not the self-elimination of the state, not its exit from the stage, on which various classes have been acting out one and the same mystery of domination over the course of different historical periods. The topic is dismantling the nation-state while concordantly transferring its functions, at first, to certain nontransparent international organizations that provide mandatory services. Then, once these organizations manage to completely put a rein on the citizenry, they themselves will become the global state. Having become this, they will force not only their services onto humanity, but many other things as well. And, this is yet another mutation of capitalism. Having accomplished this, capitalism will reject everything private, everything civic, and everything having to do with social autonomy. And through it all, it will continue to be capitalism.
It is precisely in order to transition to something of the like that we are hearing this gibberish regarding “mandatory services”.
One might recall that communists were criticized for totalitarian attacks on civic life, autonomous from the state, in the name of ascension and humanism, which were forced on the population in the form of a system of ISOs. I can’t understand what these critics mean when they talk about communists destroying civic life. Perhaps, the communist state that existed in reality, the Soviet state, defended the family with excessive zeal. But, it was defending the family, not destroying it. And, it kept its presence inside the family to a minimum.
Having mutated, capitalism now has made a goal of destroying all civic life autonomous from the global state that is being formed. Now this is totalitarianism! There is no room for ascension, no room for humanism. As [the late 19th century satiric novelist] Saltykov-Shchedr
Then where is this mutation, which can be called the final establishment of a dehumanized global society, unfolding with the greatest intensity? Of course, it’s doing so in the West. Nobody can doubt that the main driver of this tendency is the United States, who constantly advance this dehumanization, calling it by different names. This includes so-called “humanitarian missions”.
However, these American and Western initiatives lead many to protest against them. There is Southeast Asia. There is the Islamic world. And, there is Russia, which has now become just about the greatest obstacle in the path of the Americans. All of these, in essence, are capitalist countries. Perhaps a few Islamic peoples are imitating a non-capitalist path of development, founded, among other things, on theocracy, but it essentially is still capitalism. In China and Vietnam, we are dealing with this very same capitalism behind a communist facade. The modern Russian Federation presents itself as a classical capitalist state. This means that the conflict being examined is taking place predominantly within capitalism itself.
Yes, certain parties exist that talk about the necessity of a non-capitalist future for their own peoples and for all of humanity (Essence of Time being one of them), and certain groups align themselves with these parties (whether or not they can be called classes is a topic for a different discussion). In essence, however, there are no longer any communist states. All of the states that didn’t reject communist ideology after the collapse of the Soviet superpower were forced to integrate themselves into capitalism in a certain manner. The fact that they were forced to do this is no fault of theirs. The fault is with the degenerate Soviet elite, who betrayed the USSR and communism.
The USSR was a real superpower existing outside of capitalism. This means it was authentically communist. What sort of defects it had is a separate topic. If it were not for these very substantial defects, the USSR would not have disintegrated, and the Soviet social order would not have collapsed.
All of this, however, does not change the fact that a very powerful state existed in the past, which showed the world a non-capitalist way of life that was not based on private property, and this way of life was completely independent when it came to social development, social reproduction, and many other aspects.
After this collapse, which was caused by the Soviet degenerate elite’s desire for the riches of capitalism, the world became capitalist to a most substantial degree. In this global context, if someone is resisting the expansion of the global state, then this someone, being a capitalist, can only do so by resisting that terminal mutation of capitalism which I have described.
Thus, force #1 in the modern world is the capitalist mutant, or mutacapitalism, which is attempting to create a global totalitarian state, in which the apparent or hidden paganistic approach to the problem of power and control will be combined with a degree of dehumanization unthinkable for any historical pagan polytheism. If an elite actor exists who is consciously advancing this mutation, then the project which this actor is advancing is Postmodernity, which we have repeatedly discussed before.
Let us suppose, however, that someone believes that such an actor does not exist. According to them, any talk of such an actor is a piece of conspiracy theorist paranoia. What does this change in the heart of the question? In the heart of the question, it changes nothing. Regardless of whether someone is consciously advancing this mutation, or if it is occurring spontaneously for the most part, it still exists.
Therefore, I propose to those who are convinced that actors who advance certain projects do exist, to think in terms of these projects. One must then speak not only of mutacapitalism, but also about the project of Postmodernity, which will become reality after the victory of this mutacapitalism. To those who find this overwhelming, let us talk only about mutacapitalism. However, even the most earnest Marxist and rejector of approaches centered around actors and projects cannot ignore the fact that this mutation is taking hold. That capitalism is splitting in two. The approach that was fair for the beginning of the 20th century could base itself on the conflict between capitalism and the remnants of feudalism and on the necessity of communists and capitalists joining forces to combat these feudal remnants. Today, the topic must be the conflict between mutacapitalism and capitalism. The topic must be the necessity of an alliance between communists and classical capitalists against the mutacapitalists. Such an alliance today would be very much analogous to the alliance between national democratic forces and communist forces in the days of the struggle against the feudal reaction.
Think about it: this is already quite obvious. It is already being applied in practice. But to this day, an approach that was borrowed from a different time continues to put a brake on the creation of a new strategy. This is because the question arises regarding the necessity of combating capitalism and about the strangeness of an alliance between communists and some sort of capitalists. It is not with “some sort of capitalists”; it is with people who spontaneously or consciously became classicists and who are the principal enemies of the mutacapitalists and their principal victims. This is so in essence, isn’t it? Then are we going to continue abiding by the dogma according to which capitalism is monolithic, and we must oppose it? There is no unity! There is a colossal, far-reaching mutation, which concludes the previous series of mutations of capitalism, and which poses the threat of total dehumanization, the end of history, and the end of humanity. Using the language of those who share our “actor-project” approach, the topic at hand is the conflict between the proponents of Postmodernity and the proponents of Modernity. Whose side should the proponents of Supramodernity be on? [Supramodernity is an alternative direction for the virtuous development of human civilization, which places emphasis on a comprehensive breakthrough in the creative potential of every human being and on the establishment of a humanity of creativity and solidarity. Supramodernity is a concept coined by Sergey Kurginyan that directly opposes dehumanization brought by Postmodernity and Counter-Modernity]
Neo-Eurasianists of the fascist persuasion are convinced that they should be on the side of Postmodernity, and that Modernity is the main evil. But, of the projects we are examining, these fascist ideologues belong to the fourth: the project of Counter-Modernit
We thus have defined the axis of the global process…
(To be continued…)
Source (for copy): https://eu.eot.su/?p=9619
This is the translation of the second part of the first article (published in “Essence of Time” newspaper issue 117 on March 5, 2015) by Sergey Kurginyan on the new ongoing mutation of capitalism. Capitalism is destroying nation states in favor of a global state; it is destroying the family as an institution, and it is reformatting itself into something entirely anti-humanistic. In doing so, the new mutated capitalism, with its twin brothers, neofascism and radical Islamism, inevitably clashes with classic capitalism. Whose side should Communists be on in this battle? You will find the answer in this series of articles.
