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Socialism in an Era
of
Social
Psychosis
In the Communist Manifesto, written over a century ago, Karl Marx
predicted the inexorable globalisation of capitalism. In the opening
lines of Das Kapital, Marx speaks of capitalism presenting itself
primarily as an accumulation of commodities – and of the defining
feature of capitalist market economy being that human labour – and with
it the human being itself – is itself transformed into a commodity to be
bought, sold and used.
Marx’s analysis of the inherent contradictions of capitalism have become
more evident today than at the time he wrote. We all see today that the
interests of global capital and its ‘bottom line’ are irreconcilable
with the need to protect the earth from climate change, to reduce the
gulf between rich and poor countries and strata of society, to eradicate
the roots of crime and terrorism, to overcome the epidemics of ‘stress’,
‘mental illness’, ‘anti-social’ behaviour, to prevent cultural
degeneracy and ‘dumbing down’, to halt the decline in verbal and
emotional literacy, and with it, the growing incapacity of human beings
to experience deep spiritual intimacy with others.
The result is an era of ‘globalisation’ which Teresa Brennan has
correctly characterised as one of social psychosis. This social
psychosis is the direct result of the total commodification,
consumerisation and marketisation of all aspects of human life, together
with the total devaluation of all deep human values, their
transformation into subjugation to ‘shareholder values’, and their
transformation into brand values attached to things – consumer
commodities.
The
subject as producer sells himself and his energy to the system (and the
given) without care and concern for the products, which somehow have
their own life, prostrating himself as a slave to their production,
while the worker as consumer buys and takes the products from the system
(and the given), telling the system to “go screw itself”. Alienation as
self-alienation takes the form of setting one aspect of consciousness
against the other, giving rise to a dynamics of alternately using and
being used, exploiting and being exploited, … objectifying and being
objectified.
Michael Kosok
Where life is reduced to using and being used,
no wonder that social psychosis manifests itself in every conceivable
variety of ‘abuse’ – whether through violence and war, individual and
state terrorism, torture and physical abuse, religious and sexual abuse,
drug and the abuse of psychiatry and medicine to suppress all the
individual symptoms of a sick society. All this is backed up by a
constant abuse of education, marketing and the media to turn
human beings into culturally ignorant wage slaves on the one hand, and
autistic consumers or ‘users’ on the other.
In the era of social psychosis that has resulted from the
globalisation of capitalism, it is no longer possible to achieve
revolutionary social change or revolution through political means
alone. For politics itself has become marketised – resulting in a
situation in which political ideologies and parties of all colours are
themselves marketed and sold as commodities. As a result:
One either functions within the
system, accepting it, or one functions outside the system, rejecting and
attacking it, but the system itself remains un-transformed.
Ibid.
As a result, revolutionary socialism, in the era of social psychosis,
can no longer take the form of political activism, for in this
situation:
….any one-sided
action is always a passive reaction to a given.
Conformity means simple acceptance of
the given while rebellion means simple rejection of the given; both are
therefore reactive mechanisms to the given.
Indeed the highest form of normalcy functions by simultaneously
permitting both acceptance and rejection, conformity and rebellion,
playing off one against the other without transcending either.
Ibid.
What is required is a ‘socialism with soul’ – a socialism that rescues
human subjectivity from the essence of ‘abuse’ – the alienation
of alternately or simultaneously using and being used, exploiting and
being exploited, objectifying and being objectified, violating and being
violated, terrorising and being terrorised, persecuting and being
persecuted, attacking and being attacked, judging and being judged.
The revolutionary must always attempt to overcome one’s continual
tendency to simply react passively and one-sidedly in the static and
contradictory modalities of mere acceptance versus rejection, or the
mechanical game of either conformity or destruction, of judging either
true or false. A revolutionary transcends judgement as an end in itself
and is concerned with transformation, conversion, salvation and
resurrection in the deepest sense.
The only truly revolutionary means to the overcoming
of social psychosis is the deepening and expansion of what Mike Kosok,
like Martin Buber, termed ‘inter-subjectivity’ – a deepened recognition
of and relation to the other as a subject or soul and not as an object
or thing. Paradoxically, this deepening of inter-subjectivity – of
the immediate relations between one human being and another - can only
serve as a means to a revolutionary ‘end’ as long as it is not itself
reduced to a mere means to any end but instead valued as an end
in itself – as the very essence of ‘revolution’ in the age of social
psychosis.
Peter Wilberg
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