It is part of our highly esteemed democratic culture that citizens constantly voice criticism, not only in private but also in public, forever envisaging and calling for a better world. But that doesn’t make it happen, the consequence being that there is a considerable standard repertoire of complaints that persists. Which unfortunately doesn’t mean that citizens who complain know how criticism works. They keep making the same mistakes, causing them not merely to muck up the initially theoretical business of criticizing. With their cockeyed way of objecting they develop a kind of will that makes them perfect everyday supporters — of everything they take such a dim view of. And what has flourished no less than such critical carping is the assortment of standards for rejecting criticism — to the point of prohibiting it…
Marx claims that those who actively shape capitalist competition and those who go along with it have a necessarily false consciousness. Not of this or that, or of all kinds of things — it would be hard to find any necessity for that — but of the necessities that quite generally and unshakably govern people’s material existence in this world: earning money and making a living with it. In other words, a distorted perception of the universal constraint that everyone knows, has to reckon with and cope with in practical terms.
What it really comes down to in our society is, at bottom, always clear: each side fixates on its source of income and fights for what it yields using the other side's dependence as leverage. So far, so good — or bad. But what is reversed here? Where is false consciousness at work? Especially necessarily false — what kind of necessity is there?
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It is popular to think that human life itself is an inscrutable contradiction between existence on earth, where no real, freely chosen purpose in life can ever “ultimately” work out and everything is unpredictable and unfair, and a deeper, hidden but quite indestructible meaning — a ‘what for’ of such absolute validity that it brings reason and reality to their knees, but allows people to be perfectly happy.
Accompanied by humanitarianism, judged from a legal point of view, disputed on moral grounds
Israel’s Gaza war — a challenge to the powers and moralists of the imperialist world[1]
Israel is going forward with its war against Hamas' state-founding terrorism in Gaza. So more and more of the population's living conditions and the population itself are being destroyed because with this war Israel is defining and treating this population as a swamp of terror. Gaining momentum alongside this is the wrangling over the question of which of the atrocities of this war are necessary — and which are superfluous and should therefore be blamed on Israel as a violation of good manners in state killing and destruction. The provisional highlight in this context is the accusation of “genocide,” because according to the relevant legal texts, nobody should be doing such a thing at all. The debate about whether Israel's terror-extermination campaign in Gaza is still within the green range of military violence permitted under international law or whether it is already criminal — is obviously so edifying for those involved in it. GᴇɢᴇɴSᴛᴀɴᴅᴘᴜɴᴋᴛ does not take part. Instead, it explains how ends and means also belong together in this war; it explains further the imperialist content of the concerns about legality and admonitions of the supporting states as well as the mistakes and achievements of the public and private moral statements on the ongoing war.
The German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is not the only party in the world that boasts a polemical excess of patriotism.[1] Parties of this kind are successful everywhere, ones that promise to put their country at the top as it deserves, however the comparison goes; to put it “back” where it used to be according to their philosophy of history.
The technological and economic advances that capitalists have been achieving — largely not on their own but rather through their states’ action — are in many ways of the utmost importance to these states, especially and above all others the mighty ones. These advances urgently require their supervision, control, and direction because they are essential for their own competition with each other, whether on the economic, world-market strategic, or military level — in short, essential for their “future.”
NATO is celebrating its 75th anniversary as a war alliance and considers itself to be more necessary and more alive than ever before. Although it is not directly at war, it refers to the war in Ukraine as the “greatest security crisis in generations.” Russia’s violently asserted opposition to NATO’s eastward expansion has given the alliance back the enemy that constitutes its unity and that it had lost with the abdication of its system rival. And for the past two-and-a-half years, its proxy war in Ukraine has proved to be a productive force for the alliance’s power, extended its deployment area to 32 states, and added fuel to the members’ rearmament efforts, the financial level of which now finally largely meets the alliance’s requirements.
There is no summer slump in American political life this year. After all, the president will be elected in the fall. And because the post of the world’s most important ruler is at stake, the leader of the world power par excellence, every twist and turn in the American election campaign enjoys the attention of the whole world. And there has been no shortage of twists and turns so far: the first direct clash between the two candidates turns out to be such a disaster for the Democrats that Trump’s renewed election victory seems to be a safe bet. But just a few weeks later, nothing is certain: after Biden assures that only the Almighty himself can stop him from running again, he suddenly renounces in favor of his — even more unpopular — running mate Kamala Harris; contrary to all expectations, she is met with a wave of enthusiasm in the party and among the electorate. Just a few weeks later, she overtakes Trump in several polls.
A few years ago, capitalism was reinvented in California’s Silicon Valley. China has been following suit and can now show a thing or two about the “artificial intelligence” business. So as not to be left behind by this epochal progress, Berlin’s politicians are vigorously trying to “digitize the economy.” How this is actually advancing capitalist competition is easily overlooked.
In 2023, the American auto union UAW — United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America — astonished domestic and foreign observers with a six week industrial action against America’s proud “Big Three” auto companies — GM, Ford, Stellantis. No wonder. After all, it was demanding a wage increase of more than 40 percent over the next four years as well as the abolition of the “two-tier” pay system which stipulates lower wages — almost 50 percent less per hour — and a lower pension for all workers hired after 2007. In addition, “cost of living allowances” — a type of annual compensation for inflation — are being brought back. The UAW demanded all this to reverse the drastic concessions that had been extorted from it a decade and a half ago when the Obama administration averted the bankruptcy of its employers in the wake of the financial crisis by mobilizing a huge amount of government loans.