The Covid-19 and the after day.

Due to the covid-19 pandemic, there has been a discussion in various philosophical, social and political environments, including in the popular WhatsApp networks that we have with our friends and colleagues about the world not going to be the same hereinafter.

It is too early to venture a clear perspective of how humanity would emerge from this situation.

One of those authors who have brought this discussion to the table, Slavoj Zizek synthesizes a crossroads for the future of humanity: "The dilemma is Barbarism or a renewed communism."

Capitalism is barbarism.

At this stage of events, the first awareness is that if we continue doing the same as until now Barbarism is inevitably the fate of our species.

Several decades ago, in which there was a notorious possibility of a nuclear war between the military powers of the time, the USSR and NATO, the great Argentine revolutionary leader Nahuel Moreno, predicted the following: the dilemma is "Socialism or Barbarism". Although the nuclear holocaust was the main danger, at that time it he had already pointed out in superficial way something very profound, which decades later would become one of the pillars of the fight against the destruction of the earth: the fight to conserve the environment.

Today the USSR does not exist and NATO practically sails with a great crisis among its members, especially between the US and Europe and a practically unanchored Turkey. Yes, there is still the possibility of a nuclear conflagration due to the existence of these weapons but not with the intensity, for the moment, as we lived in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

Today, without reaching the smallest dimensions of the atom, a microorganism is leaving the world on the brink of social, economic, and humanitarian collapse.

The conspiracy theories can only enter the logic of self-destruction, that is, the logic of one who uses his weapon to save himself or destroy his enemy, which inevitably turns against him. No rational being, even capitalist, would have thought of this idea. Of course, there are signs of a lot of irrationality among the 1% that holds wealth that 99% does not have. There are people who can push the button and blow us all up in the air. That is easier to see but nobody would shoot something that falls on him. It is a systemic issue. It is the capitalist system that is self-destructive. As much as there are "reasonable" people driving and administering it, the logic that drives it is the "Titanic" logic, it will inevitably crash into the iceberg.

In these days of global quarantine, the “Cosmos” program brings to mind something Carl Sagan said: “Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves… (…) The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined one from another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star. ”

Conserve, inhibit, destroy and better.

Thinking about this reflection we can see in history how many times human beings left behind their old institutions and even to themselves. There is nothing in the social, economic, political and even biological evolution that that element of the dialectic that is the synthesis of conserving, inhibiting (or destroying) and bettering has not been fulfilled. When that revolution took place in the productive forces that was agriculture, we have changed institutions on the evolutionary path and even changed ourselves. The gods were changing, the roles and the communist distribution gave way to other gods and roles. The previous gods and especially the role of women changed to preserve the new situation. The gods were preserved but the old ones were destroyed, mythology changed and the human being surpassed himself by exploiting other human beings. This cycle of conserving, destroying or inhibiting and overcoming continued, the gods became one, women continued to be oppressed but with new institutions and mandates. The means of production advanced, money became a new God but religions are preserved and at the same time science emerged to question everything but with institutions that created the new capitalist system that put science at the service of its development.

The great empires fell like the stars when they deplete all their hydrogen nucleus. The nascent national states assimilated the cities-states, in the same synthesis of conserving, destroying or inhibiting and overcoming. Cities like cells in multicellular organisms continued to exist but were overtaken by states, just as multicellular organisms outnumbered unicellular ones.

We come to our time when the structure (the relations of production between the classes) and the superstructure of capitalist society (its institutions) became a great obstacle to the development of the productive forces and human evolution. That is to say, the productive forces become their opposite, destructive forces and evolution became involution.

This is what we see clearly in recent decades, without the clairvoyance that the old Marxist thinkers, very few by the way, or scientists of stature like Albert Einstein already foretold. The first two world wars, let's say in passing, were able to awaken that idea, but without them subsequent destruction, of the last decades, was more crouching, treacherous and as disastrous as those.

Marx's old idea that socialist society was to develop by making revolution in states whose productive forces were the most developed was disproved by the Russian revolution made in a backward and poor country that nevertheless demonstrated the ability to excel and compete in a short period with the capitalism and the imperialist powers. But in the long term this was impossible, in his womb he had a development problem that atrophied him like that baby born prematurely and without all developed organs. Only an extension of the revolution in the main countries of Europe could have given her it the care to continue evolving. The Stalinist theory of socialism in a single country was the theory of the cell superior to the multicellular organism. It would never have surpassed a world capitalist economy whose main engines were the imperialist countries. Even when after the second world war, a third of the world population transformed their capitalist states into non-capitalist states, they were unable to federate to put their productive forces at the service of extending the defeat of the capitalist countries, each one thought of preserve their Its own state, source of the privileges of its bureaucratic castes outside the needs of the working class. This was so because their political leadership came from the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry with the idea of building their own state. Progressive? It may be, getting rid of the boot of imperialism is progressive, but without an international vision, only to keep his own business, sooner or later he succumbs to a system that continues to be superior despite its destructive capacity: the imperialist capitalist system.

The capitalist system is a world system and as such can only be overcome by another world system.

Zizek raises something logical at its crossroads. That communist system failed, that is why it speaks of a "reinvented" communist system. It is no coincidence that Zisek from the heart of Europe has this vision. Nothing has been seen as a failure of that communism as in Europe. Others call that experience "Real Socialism". And indeed it failed. To repeat it again would be quite an involution.

But this does not mean that Marx has failed, no, since he left us a guide to work, which was overcome, but at the same time preserved, which is synthesized in an open totality and full of relationships, concretely by the combination of many methods of logic.

The new social structure resulting from this crisis will emerge from the combination of unevenly developed elements. These elements are many in the world capitalist system: nation states, technological advances, the financial system, energy resources, food production, scientific development (especially health), social classes, the oppressed sectors, their consciences, their addresses, and other elements that are part of the system such as the arms, drugs, trafficking, etc. business.

This system will not end by itself, if it continues like this, it will lead us to Barbarism, just as Moreno and Sizek pre-announced now. The action of the human being is only capable of ending and beginning a new era of humanity.

I do not know if we are going to be able to explain what the resulting new structure would be with the elements we have now, surely what comes out will perfectly explain our own current social reality.

Anyway we can enunciate some things that have to happen to avoid the barbarism:

1) Of course, human action has to end this order of things, with this system and establish a new one. Here we have the train problem (how far can it go? to what station?) That comes from two unevenly developed and connected factors, the maturity of the struggle of the mass movement, the working class and the oppressed and their revolutionary political leadership that has a crisis very large that still lacks those humans capable of leading it, that is the crisis of revolutionary leadership that is the crisis of humanity and is not yet resolved and we hope that humanity will reverse it. It is not impossible even to do it in a short time but on this the new society that arises depends and is one of its fundamental unevenly developed ingredients.

2) Capitalist nation states must be assimilated, destroyed and overcome. A new solidarity and internationalist world society should not be based on national borders and their states that are at the service of an exploitation that only serves imperialism, financial capital and divides humanity. They must only be mere administrations and give way to a globalization of resources and to a complete, local and global democracy, where producers, services and users or consumers, establish the lines of the needs of humanity and nature ending with the logic of capitalist profit for which today everything is at your service and its destructive power. A world-wide state should emerge where scientists and humanity all break free from the limitations of capitalism and positivism and expand the horizons of humanity.

3) The means of production must be at the service of social, ecological, health, educational, cultural, communicative development, etc. ending their private property. These means will be social, collective property. The communities through their workers will be those that administer it democratically based on local development and global needs and absolute respect for the environment, nature and its biodiversity.

4) The new social structure must also completely end all kinds of oppression. The liberation of women and their struggle is one of the elements that has led to the most development in recent years and will be one of the elements that will combine in the new society. This fight includes the other oppressed as they are because of their sexual orientation and the originarian peoples. We will not have changed society if there is no effective equality between men and women.

5) This society based on education, science and research will surely put aside the old superstitions and beliefs but at the same time it will respect these beliefs in the area of people's privacy. The new society will be one of free human beings and no particular beliefs can be sustained. In fact, if nation states are outmatched that would be a fact unless a world religion is upheld, which would be retrograde.

These are a some few things, but without which this current system of things cannot be overcome and will inevitably lead to barbarism. Will it be Sizek's renewed communism? I think that it would be the step to a more just, egalitarian society, with priorities that take into account the human being and nature. Many call to this global system in the world SOCIALISM. Anyway, put the name you want, the important thing is to do it.

From now on it will be a hard fight. In many cases we will be achieving some conquests state by state. For example, achieving the separation of the church from the state or the issue of gender equality or the nationalization of foreign trade or banking to begin to take power away from the fundamental elements that make up the capitalist system. Perhaps health and education with that fight will remain exclusively in the hands of the state, as the current situation show it very well.

Perhaps we will get to achieve this in some national states, if so, they should federate to eliminate the component states (assimilation, destruction and overcoming). Perhaps this involves a fierce dialectical struggle between needs and freedoms, but the pandemic is getting us used to it. The pandemic is also forcing us to see the world as a whole leaving aside our typical nationalist navel. In short, the pandemic prepares us for another highter fight.

Perhaps if we controlled through a state everything fundamental to the capitalist system because that state is a world superpower. I mean, assimilating-destroying-overcoming the system by the same control of one of its main states is not a hypothesis that should be discarded. Today it would be to have the control of the USA or China for example. It is the most difficult but in the end it would be the easiest for later. Moreno joked about it saying that in a colonial or dependent country the revolution would be done only by picking up the phone.

The only thing that will continue to develop as before is that "those from above cannot and those from below do not want". Because nothing else will be the same after the pandemic. Nothing.

Fabio Marucci

(Militant and intellectual marxista argentino)