DO NOT RUN ANY MORE

FOR THE COLLAPSE!

THE UNTHINKABLE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE ARE GOING TO MEET!

A man became disturbed in seeing his shadow and bad humored in noticing his footsteps. One day he decided to get rid of both. He stood up and started running trying to fly away from both.

But his shadow continued to follow him, and every time he puts his feet on the ground, his footsteps would show up. He thought his mistake was due to the fact that his was not running as quick as he should. Then, he started running as quick as possible, without stop.

A Wiseman heard the story of this man and decided to help him. Thinking about it, he found out a way to end the man’s suffering. However, when the Wiseman arrived to visit the man, he was told that the man had already died, while running.

The Wiseman thought what seemed to be unthinkable and he found the answer to the man’s problem. It would be enough to find a place with shadows to make his own shadow disappear, and staying put, his footsteps would not take shape anymore.

Shadows and footprints are, right now, threatening humanity and the planet. They announce that the human beings are facing a crisis with no precedents in the whole history of humanity. In the middle of the third industrial revolution, capitalism, through microelectronics turns, for the first time, labor obsolete. By turning labor obsolete, it also turns obsolete, the capitalist society in itself and with all their foundations.

Let’s analyze: the goal of modern production is to transform money into more and more money. And this process has been made possible because, in capitalism, money is the incarnation of labor. The development of capitalism created factories with more than thirty thousand workers. And they were created because, in capitalism, the foundation of the system is the valorization of money that appears as a kind of wealth constituted by the expenditure of direct human labor, measured by labor- time. The heart of the capitalist system resides on the valorization of value, the valorization of money. All the obstacles that had been raised against this objective - including the revolutionary ones - were broken, defeated by the capitalist dynamics, by the expansion and the imposition of capitalism.

Nowadays, production is depending less on labor-time, and the quantity of labor depends, more and more, on sophisticated engines employed in production and created by science and technology. As we all know, capital was not able to eliminate totally living labor from the commodity production process. In short, it is from this labor that labor surplus is extracted and profit is extracted. However, productivity has to be increased to face competition, and thus, labor time has to be reduced.

Facing an immense accumulation of dead labor, living labor is reduced to a mere maintenance of the technical-scientific machinery. The growing increase in labor productivity led to a situation such that, the new added value per unit of product is so insignificant and despicable that valorization through value criteria became unsustainable. In such a case, nor labor, neither labor-time are any longer the main conditions of production. Labor starts to be no more the main source of wealth and labor-time its measure. Humanity faces the elimination of the chicken of the golden eggs of capital, i.e., labor.

The exchange between living labor and objectified labor presents itself as the ultimate actual development of the labor relationship, of the production based on value. We are facing a revolution in the meaning of wealth, time and labor. The historical barrier of capitalism is showing itself. The attempt to overcome this impasse by financial speculation, in other words, by money producing money, sharpens extremely the current crisis and displays the size and consequences of the world collapse.

Hyper-sophisticated computers, new media and communication technology, speculative financial bubbles managing more than 400 trillions of dollars in the stocks and equities markets cannot hide this reality, any longer. The solid society of money runs every more to disappear into the air. The solid society of money runs more and more to undo itself into the air.

Moreover, labor, by it own roots, is also male, white and occidental. Hereto, it is linked the devaluation of women. All the moments of social reproduction other than labor, were imposed onto them. Furthermore, the devaluation of non-white people is also linked to the code of labor discipline. They are all considered as unsubmissive to modern reason. On the other hand, the internal crises of the system are constantly ascribed to an alien, external subjective power, as it happened to the Jews in the history of Europe.

For this reason, from the time of the philosophy of the lights, male chauvinism, sexism, racism and anti-Semitism were transmitted jointly with the positivation of labor which was in the basis and constituted the substance of the process of valorization of value, of money. If this essential relationship were overpast, society is also overcome, and the fundamental categories of capitalism, as well and its overcoming becomes an imposition together with the overcoming of male-chauvinism, sexism, racism and anti-Semitism.

Hereby, there is no space to turn back to Enlightenment, to the myths of the bourgeois revolution, to the Proletarian State, to an idealized pre-modernity, to agrarian romanticism, etc. Furthermore, whatever social movements, be it guerrillas, revolutionary, politicians, managers of the crises, labor-unionists, agrarian labor-unionists, culturalists, artists, students movements, environmentalist, female, movements of NGO’s, anti-globalization, etc. – that are part of the process of ascension and imposition of the modern commodity-producing system, and of its real metaphysics and that, however, have not transcended the capitalistic ontology – all of them have expired. And had become old because they were only able to think about the criticisms of the system and bring them to practice, in the categories of the capitalist matrix.

However, people continue running away and do not stop to think that this way of life has become old, that their already drawn roads do not any longer open new perspectives e that nowadays, we are facing the limits of the system. However, to open up new horizons, in our times, we have to have a new theory of the capitalist crisis, to be able to think and to answer the challenge of the world crisis to the third industrial revolution in the twenty-first century. A crisis that constitutes itself as the historical collapse of the capitalist system and of all of its corresponding social relationships. A crisis that comes up as an environmental crisis, as a crisis of the society of labor, as a crisis of politics and of the National State, as well as, a crisis of the relationships among sexes.

To think this challenge is to think about the overcoming of this era. But, not only the overcoming of the existing history up to now. At last, it is not only the Cold War that has ended. We are also at the end of the world history of modernization. Not only this specifically modern history, but the world history of fetishist relationships in general. Fetishism follows us since the beginning of humanity. As a result, our history is a history of fetishist relationships. And this applies not only to contemporary history. It is true that rather different social relationships had existed up to now in the history of societies, no matter how different they were, one conclusion imposes itself: all of them were governed by fetishist devices. Therefore, never existed auto-conscious societies that could freely decide about the employment of their possibilities. The modern commodity producing system only represents the ultimate social form of the blind dynamics of fetishism.

Hence, the capitalist world, from now on, has to be dimensioned as a passing phase in the history of humanity. Things such as, consanguinity, totemism, land property and value have to be considered as longer stages of the process through which the human being divorced itself from nature, becoming a relatively conscious being , at first with respect to the “first nature”, but not yet, conscious with respect to the “second nature”, which means its own social connection created by itself.

However, to think about the nature of fetishism and its crisis today give us the possibility of measuring an unlosable historical opportunity of building, right away, the auto-conscious society of human emancipation. It is necessary to think the unthinkable!

The foundation of the commodity-producing system – capitalist or socialist – has reached its limit. The shadows and footsteps of this system are visible. But the logic that explains its limit is not. It is required to think about the essence, and not of the appearance of capitalism. During a long time this thought remained unthinkable, hidden and unknown. In the present context, as a result of the nature of the crisis, it comes to the surface, demands its development and imposes the practical overcoming of the system. If in the past the radical critique of labor, of value-dissociation and of the subject was a non-accomplished possibility, now, it has become an indispensable and non-posponable necessity to the survival. It is necessary to do the impossible!

Understanding this logic and overcoming it, has been considered, up to now, as unthinkable and impossible. In dimensioning this, it was possible to predict that the system would step into a final crisis. Nowadays, the commodity-producing system has lost its dynamics; it sways, walks towards collapse, originates many more mutilated human beings, internationalizes barbarity and murders nature. All of this, conducted us to today’s destructive impasse that everyday produces small souls with their getaways e its intolerance relationships, terrorism, xenophobia, religious fanaticism, hatred, inter-ethnical conflicts, deforestation, global warming, violence, theoretical fragmentation and degradation, socioeconomic migrations, civil wars, boredom, depression, passivity, impotence, insecurity, isolation, stinginess, fear, stress, unhappiness, sadness, suicide, superficiality, psychic discomfort, madness, etc.

Herewith, this precarization of one’s life advances towards the unsustainable, for the state of mind that rules humanity has turned into a commercial frenzy. Governments and markets decided to invest in fear, because violence has become unsustainable and people try to reduce their worries through the pleasure of daily commodity consumption and their passions. But, the liberation from fetishism does not necessarily follow from the crisis of modernity and post-modernity; rather, emancipation is given to human action. The overcoming of the crisis depends on us.

Finally, a proposal to answer to that challenge with no precedents! The unthinkable and the impossible are going to meet in Fortaleza, Brasil and Paris, France! Finally, the situationist critique to fetishism in 1968 and the efforts of those who have been developing the radical anti-fetishist critique nowadays, will meet to commemorate the 40 years of the Parisian May. You, too, are able to think the unthinkable and to make the impossible to stop the destruction of humanity and nature! Therefore, we can to overcome the paralysis the critical thought and to build a new movement of transformation of the society as whole, based on the radical critique of value, of dissociation and of the subject, and that be able leave the immanency and to overcome the commodity-producing system! A transcendent transnational movement that envisage the forbiden room, that open wide its door, that trespass its interior and reveal their secrets. Do not make as the man of the fable! Do not enter in collapse with the system! The limit of the system is not the limit of the human being! Another will only be possible if we overcome the capitalist ontology! Build the most conscious and beautiful struggle of all times! Declare your love to humanity and to the planet! To think, stop! To make, go beyond!

Fetishists of the whole World, Unite!

Traduction by Agamenon Almeida