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Exit No. 21 Editorial - January 2024
The global, destructive dynamics of the unfolding crisis and the associated political reactions and
counter-reactions are accelerating the transformation of democracy: the frequently invoked
“firewalls” against authoritarianism and right-wing extremism did not and do not exist. The term
“firewall” is just a reference to “not yet.” Organized right-wing extremism, now often anchored
in democratic parliaments, anticipates what bourgeois democrats unconsciously tend to do, and
what they will be capable of in order to attempt to restore “law and order” in the economic and
political state of emergency that the so-called normal state already contains.
The veil of
bourgeois civility falls as soon as the money stops rolling in, or if there is even fear of an
economic decline. It is therefore not surprising that right-wing parties repeatedly achieve
electoral success, such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands or the Partido Libertario with the
“anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei at the helm in Argentina.1
The debate about the causes of flight and how to combat them has fallen silent.2
As has the
shedding of the obligatory crocodile tears. Instead, an open competition has broken out to see
who is best at fending off refugees. Right up to the planning of a “remigration,” the elaboration
of which has seen participation from neo-Nazis and right-wing conservatives. The reactions to
this report were predictably mendacious.3
Wasn’t it Olaf Scholz who demanded in Der Spiegel
that “we must finally deport people on a grand scale”? As a result, “Fortress Europe” leads to the
misery or death of refugees and, of course, does nothing to reduce their numbers. On the
contrary! Due to socially induced climate change, the destruction of natural resources, political
and economic disintegration and dramatic social emergencies, their numbers are increasing
considerably, especially in particularly affected regions such as Sudan. The aim is to treat
refugees even more inhumanely, so that they no longer have any “incentive” to seek refuge in
Europe and therefore also in Germany. Statements that used to be scandalous because they were
only heard from Nazis have now become the norm.
The former health minister and social
Darwinist Jens Spahn,4
for example, wants to use “physical violence” against refugees, or in his
words, the “irregular migration movements.” Spahn has been criticized occasionally. But how
credible is this criticism? Even when people point out once again that Germany is a
constitutional state, this ignores the fact that the current rejection of refugees was initiated and is
being carried out within the framework of this constitutional state. Another prominent example
of bourgeois brutality is the former Federal President Joachim Gauck, who stated: “We have to
discover leeway that is initially (!) unsympathetic to us because it sounds inhumane (!).” It is
“not at all morally reprehensible [...] and politically may even be necessary to pursue a strategy
of limitation that initially (!) [...] seems like a restriction of the rights (!) of the people who want
to come to us.”5
This involuntarily brings to mind the “well-tempered cruelty” against refugees
called for by the fascist Björn Höcke.6
This is exactly where the democrats will end up as soon as
the “first” has passed and the next shift to the right has become the “new normal” of the
bourgeois “center.” And this is true no matter how much one describes the result as
“constitutional” and imagines that there are “firewalls” that could make a substantive distinction
between “right” and “civil center” possible. How should such a distinction be possible at all if
one adopts the positions of the right-wing extremists piece by piece and does not even think of
raising an objection to this contempt for humanity and these real existing atrocities from a
humanistic perspective? Gauck also pleads for the immigration of skilled workers, i.e. people
who can participate in the process of capital valorization, i.e. those who are (still) capable of
being exploited.
What “we” do not want, on the other hand, is immigration into the “social”
state. Typical liberal social Darwinism! This also manifests itself in a racist and nationalist
interpretation of social inequalities: Refugees are blamed for disastrous conditions in the hospital
system and rising costs in the healthcare and welfare state sector. Friedrich Merz complained, in
right-wing populist jargon, that “German citizens” allegedly “can’t get an appointment” due to
refugees’ (supposed) use of dental care (they “have their teeth redone”). Such racist agitation is
probably aimed at nothing other than denying or (further) restricting medical care for refugees in
order to allegedly improve medical care for “German citizens.”
Since savings and rationalization
of the healthcare system are perpetually “on the agenda,” Merz is cultivating a pogrom
atmosphere with such racist statements (no matter how he and his ilk try to talk themselves out
of it through self-deprecation): Such racist agitation will amount to nothing other than practiced
social Darwinism and pogroms if the crisis continues to worsen and is “dealt with” – just
remember the early 1990s (Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Solingen, Hoyerswerda, etc.)! The path that
the normalized brutalized bourgeoisie are following or will follow is not that of social critique,
much less critique of political economy, but that of conspiracy ideologies. For example, claiming
that “foreigners” or “Jews” are to blame for socially produced crises. In other words, it is the
path of racism and anti-Semitism. Shortly before Christmas, a rumor circulated that there was an
increase in theft in supermarkets, especially near refugee shelters...
Gauck continued: “For me, it is important that politicians talk to us about what is possible, about
what is necessary, and then they can also name a dilemma, that we talk about it in the middle of
society and not just on the right fringe. And by doing this, the confidence grows that there are
people up there who are planning something that will change the complex situation for the better
[...].” What is possible and what is necessary! What is “possible” is determined by the limits of
capital, within which freedom and equality are to be realized. What is “necessary” results from
the submission to political and economic “constraints” and the endeavor to continue the
untenable and anachronistic, i.e. a bourgeois normality and a functioning capitalist reality, by
hook or by crook, while ignoring or externalizing via projection all contradictions. Within the
framework of this “logic,” it should then become necessary to take measures that not only
“sound inhumane,” but are inhumane. In the end, it is barbed wire and firing orders that are
claimed to be necessary and are already being practiced at the EU’s external borders.
What
kind
of representative of a bourgeois lumpen intelligentsia do you have to be
to believe that such a
forced right-wing policy, which is being called for here and which is
not to be left to the rightwing extremists, will “change the complex
situation for the better”?7
A change for the better for
whom? For the bourgeois philistine who no longer wants to be confronted
with the world “out
there” or be “bothered” by it and wants to isolate himself in his
narrow-minded and ignorant
world? So that everything will be as “good” again as it supposedly was
“in the past”? But
climate change proves that, as much as you shove your head up your ass,
the repressed and
denied reality will catch up with you sooner or later...8
If refugees do not drown in the Mediterranean or die in the desert, then the bourgeois “realist” is
anxious to get rid of as many as possible as soon as possible, including those who have learned
the language (and possibly have a better command of it than some of the home-grown idiots) and
work regularly, e.g. as care workers, who are therefore well “integrated” by democratic
standards. More and more people are being deported to countries that are being redefined as
“safe,” such as Afghanistan. Or Iraq, another “safe country of origin,” to which Yazidis are to be
deported, i.e. to the country where a genocide was committed against the Yazidis by IS
terrorists!9
The forced talk of “safe countries of origin” is nothing other than an “instrument of
disenfranchisement” of refugees, as Clara Bünger, the spokesperson for refugee policy of the
Left Party, puts it. The situation of queer refugees in particular can be seen as a “mirror of the
shift to the right.”10 A shift to the right is still a euphemism: it is more and more a case of
bourgeois normality, the so-called “center,” becoming more and more right-wing: the “true face”
of the seemingly cultivated and civilized bourgeois society is revealed with the unmistakable
brutalization and the disinhibiting “decultivation of the bourgeoisie” (Andreas Speit), both of
which have been constituted in this same society and have been denied and downplayed for
many years.
Human rights, which people
like to invoke again and again (especially when they accuse others
of human rights violations), only get in the way when it comes to having
to do what is
supposedly necessary. The best thing would be to abolish the right of
asylum completely! After
all, these are “rules from the 20th century [...] that do not fit the
challenges of the 21st century,”
as the “Social” Democrat Sigmar Gabriel put it in an interview.11 In
Western-imperial newspeak, this is called “taking responsibility.”
According to the “social”-democratic Minister of
War Boris Pistorius, Germany must now also become “ready for war”! (The
fact that German
militarism is being sought as the “new normal” is also shown by the fact
that the federal
government wants to introduce a so-called Veterans’ Day).12
So
when it comes down to it sooner
or later, there will certainly be enough henchmen who will gladly and
courageously accept the
challenge and then – as bloodhounds – implement the so-called necessary,
even if it means using
the military. After all, the secret of “freedom” is courage, as we can
learn from Ulf Poschardt
(when he rejoiced over Milei’s election victory) – and this amounts to
nothing more than the
courage to brutalize others and enact social Darwinism. Right-wing
demagogues like Javier
Milei, for whom there is “no room for gradualism, no room for
indecision, no room for half
measures” (Berliner Zeitung, 11/20/2023), are happy to comply. Milei’s
plans (abolition of all
social programs, abolition of many ministries, liberalization of the
organ trade (!) etc.) would
result in nothing other than a brutal austerity policy, ultimately a war
against the poor, the
homeless, the economically disadvantaged and the “superfluous.”
Since the anti-Semitic massacre in Israel on October 713 in which over
1200 Jews14 were
massacred (i.e. raped,15 beheaded, burned, shot) and at least 240
kidnapped, and the subsequent
numerous anti-Semitic “pro-Palestine demonstrations,” at which the
demonstrators sided with
the Hamas terrorists, even celebrating this massacre (and handing out
sweets in Berlin) and
glorifying it as “legitimate resistance,” as a “struggle for
liberation,” there is (once again) talk of
imported anti-Semitism in Germany. The aim now is to deport people all
the more consistently in
order to deal with this problem. A “deportation offensive” (Alice
Weidel) is being called for.
Anti-Semitism should therefore be combated with a greater rejection of
refugees, i.e. with
racism! Even expatriation is being considered! For example, the Bavarian
right-wing populist
Markus Söder called for the withdrawal of German passports in the case
of dual citizenship
(Augsburger Allgemeine, 6.11.2023). Right-wing populists like to be
outraged by anti-Semitism
as long as it is perpetrated by “foreigners” or Muslims (the situation
is similar with antifeminism, misogynistic hate crimes, etc.).
Domestic anti-Semites, on the other hand, are
protected and can even do well in elections.16 AfD politicians also show solidarity with Israel.
But their “solidarity” with Israel is implausible, if only because of their simultaneous
trivialization of the Iranian regime.17 Here, solidarity with Israel is apparently being practiced for
purely (electoral) tactical reasons. In fact, this is about nothing other than racist incitement
against Muslims and the justification of repressive measures against refugees!
If people flee or emigrate from countries in the Middle East, from countries where anti-Semitism
is the raison d’être of the state and share such ideologies,18 one can indeed speak of an import of
anti-Semitism. And this anti-Semitism must also be radically criticized and combated with no ifs
ands or buts! Under no circumstances should it be excused or trivialized by implying that it is
supposedly “their culture” or allegedly a consequence of racism and colonialism.
What
is
happening here, however, is an externalization of anti-Semitism. It
ignores the fact that antiSemitism has never disappeared from Germany,
but has always been part of Germany,19 so antiSemitism in Germany can in
no way be an “imported foreigner problem” (many of these people
were born in Germany and/or grew up here and are therefore not
“foreigners” at all and Islamism
was and is also represented and propagated by “bio-Germans”). At least
it can be said that
Muslim or Islamist anti-Semitism is being taken more notice of by the
“public discourse” instead
of being played down, excused, more or less ignored or even denied, and
that the state is finally
(why not 10 years ago?!) reacting against such organizations and
associations with bans (Hamas
and Samidoun were banned on 11/02). It should not be forgotten that the
acknowledgement and
critique of Islamic and Islamist anti-Semitism (as well as Islamism in
general) by its academic
trivializers or deniers and their agitational screamers is usually
described as “Islamophobia” or as
a “distraction” from Western imperialism or similar.
20 The fact that such positions are held by
alleged anti-racists points to the serious theoretical deficits of
contemporary “anti-racism” and
“post-colonialism” (at least large parts of it).21 Things don’t really
look any better in “gender
theory.”22 Unfortunately, some of these academic sects are still
unteachable and prove to be
useful idiots of Hamas with their anti-Zionist ideology.23 Especially at
the so-called elite
universities in the U.S. (the high tuition fees are particularly
elitist), there is a fervent antiSemitism related to Israel.24 It is a
disgrace that those who (want to) stand up for freedom and
justice and against discrimination cannot show any interest in the
victims of anti-Semitic terror.
Particularly abhorrent at these so-called pro-Palestinian demonstrations
are groups such as
“Queers for Palestine.” Their anti-Semitism seems to be so pronounced
that they have become
too mentally blinded to realize that they would be mercilessly
persecuted and executed under
Hamas’ reign of terror. Anyone demonstrating for peace in Gaza should
first and foremost
demand the unconditional surrender of Hamas and all other terrorist
gangs operating there!
Which you will find in vain at the demonstrations that supposedly show
solidarity with the
Palestinians. Such a demand does not exclude criticism of Israeli
right-wing populists and
extremists and their policies as well as racist settlers, as is often
implied!25
Others also talk about left-wing
and right-wing extremist anti-Semitism, but imply that antiSemitism is
more likely to be found on the so-called fringes of society (the German
pseudoscientific “extremism theory” sends its regards26) and is not a
problem for society as a whole,
and certainly not one of the well-heeled bourgeois “middle class.” On
the contrary: Monika
Schwarz-Friesel and Jehuda Reinharz evaluated thousands of anti-Semitic
emails/letters/postcards/faxes sent to the Central Council of Jews and
the Israeli Embassy in
Germany in their book Inside the Anti-Semitic Mind (Boston 2013) and
found that most of them
came from people from the “center of society” (65%). Only around 4%
could be classified as farright and 3% as far-left. “It was scientists,
lawyers, doctors, bank employees, pastors and
students who communicated statements from which the age-old Judeophobic
resentment spoke,
unbroken by the experience of Auschwitz, articulated despite education
and reflection on
language, messages of intolerance and blindness” (ibid., V). And
further: “The letters
categorized as social or political center are the least likely to be
written anonymously. The center
is the least inclined or least likely to consider it necessary to keep
personal details secret. These
writers therefore consider their opinion to be publicly
expressible/representable [...]. This finding
corresponds with the frequent thematization of one’s own identity and
the phenomenon of
individual resistance to anti-Semitism; these people do not see
themselves or their opinions as
anti-Semitic or problematic, they see their point of view as necessary
and justified and vouch for
it with their name” (ibid., 23). Apparently, these people also think
that they need not fear
persecution and punishment, which is unfortunately a very accurate
assessment, considering how
often anti-Semitic incidents are not taken seriously by the police and
judiciary, so that many
Jews do not report them in the first place or at some point give up in
resignation that they can
expect anything from the “legal state” (similar experiences are also
made by those affected by
racism). Even if it is possible to identify the perpetrators, it is
often not apparent that the justice
system is seriously interested in punishing them appropriately. The
arson attack on the
synagogue in Wuppertal in 2014, for example, allegedly had no
recognizable anti-Semitic
background and the perpetrators got off with suspended sentences (!) in
all seriousness. The
judge himself showed understanding for this type of “criticism of
Israel” (cf. Steinke 2020,
83ff.). The completely normal anti-Semitism of completely normal people!
The judgment that
anti-Semitism among migrants (in these debates, this always refers to
Muslims) or among
Germans with a “migration background” is an expression of “failed
integration” therefore
appears to be completely nonsensical. Isn’t it rather the other way
around, at least in part? Just
think of the coronavirus demonstrations “open to the right” and the
rampant conspiracy mania or
the anti-Semitic “vigils for peace” in 2014.27
Marx’s categorical imperative “to overthrow all relations in which man
is a debased, enslaved,
abandoned, despicable essence”28 (emphasis added) should be the central
minimum consensus of
the left, if “left” is to have any meaning at all! And by whom are the
Palestinians more oppressed
than by the anti-Semitic terrorist sect Hamas?29
It
is a great degree of impudence and
abomination to describe the slaughter of Jews as “hope for Palestine”
(Junge Welt of
10/09/2023). The same author reports that the anti-Semitic pogrom (which
was planned for a
long time and systematic) of October 7th (which of course he does not
describe as such) on the
side of Hamas also involved allegedly “left-wing” organizations, namely
the PFLP (Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and the DFLP (Democratic Front
for the Liberation of
Palestine). Dieter Reinisch cannot help but be somewhat pleased when he
states: “The military
activity of the DFLP, which has not carried out any armed actions within
the Israeli territories of
1948 in recent decades, is remarkable” (Junge Welt, 7.11.2023). So this
is remarkable when a
supposedly Marxist organization takes part in an anti-Semitic massacre!
These completely
anachronistic and abominable “anti-imperialist” fossils are no more
leftist or Marxist than
Lawrenti Beria was a great humanist! Nevertheless, according to
Reinisch, “the Marxist left in
Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon has obviously not lost faith in a
socialist future” (ibid.). What
is this socialist future supposed to consist of? If you look at the
“biography” of these anti-leftist
terror sects, their “main field of activity” is terrorism against
Israel. Here, a redemptive antiSemitism plays a central role when the
destruction of Israel is seen as a prerequisite for
“socialism,” because “only through the armed victory of the resistance
against the occupation
could lay the foundation for the further struggle for a socialist
Palestine” (ibid.), says Reinisch
quoting a DFLP supporter.30 Through anti-Semitic terror into the
socialist future! Yes, “shame
and disgrace on him who sows enmity against the Jews, hatred against
other nations” (Lenin)!31
Shame and disgrace on you pseudo-leftists who can “understand” the
slaughter of Jews and say
nothing about the anti-Semitic character of the terrorist sect Hamas and
its allies! What would
you think of someone who claims in all seriousness that attacks on
refugee homes or the murder
of people with “immigration records” is “legitimate resistance” by the
German people? Anyone
in their right mind would – without a doubt – call such a person a
racist asshole and many an
anti-fascist would probably feel little pity if this person got punched
in the mouth. However,
when Jews are slaughtered by terrorists, some “leftists” have completely
different standards! Red
Aid, for example, shows that there is another way.32
The trivialization and ignorance of anti-Semitism by so-called “leftists” and others is by no
means the only subject area that a left that deserves this name is obliged to brand mercilessly
without ifs ands or buts! Others include the “preference” for local traditions and the identity &
authenticity linked to them:33 esotericism and the “village idyll” as well as a generalized
rejection of technology and development or, conversely, blanket affirmations of the same, as can
be found particularly in the misanthropic and social Darwinist ideology of transhumanism, or
among the technology evangelists and development Stalinists. Likewise, an uncritical position
with regard to the global “shifts in hegemony,” in particular a generalizing attitude
(negative/positive) towards China: both a critique of Eurocentrism, of “China bashing,” of a
selective and distorted or ignorant view of China,34 of the instrumentalization of human rights for
economic and geopolitical interests (i.e. the famous “measuring with double standards” and
“criticizing others for what one does oneself” etc.), a critique of paranoia & propaganda (“the
yellow peril”) and of anti-Chinese/anti-Asian racism
35 are completely justified and absolutely
necessary. It is just as problematic when the People’s Republic of China, i.e. authoritarian state
capitalism, is seriously seen as a “non-capitalist/socialist” alternative to the neoliberal crisis
management regimes of the West.36
Wolfram Elsner, for example – as informative as his books
may be on the one hand – does not mention the repressive aspects of “Chinese-style socialism”
(Xi Jinping) or they are played down (supposedly everything is more or less Western
propaganda). Elsner and other left-wing China journalists (Michael Brie, Uwe Behrens and
others) sometimes come across as mouthpieces for the CCP when they rave about modern China.
Ralf Ruckus, for example, shows that there is another way in his book Die Linke in China
(Berlin 2023). The fact that China’s hegemonic aspirations can very well be classified as
imperialist (although the concept of imperialism is debatable)37 is ignored by the left-wing China
fan club, even if one has to give the People’s Republic of China credit for not having liquidated
an unpopular government or invaded anywhere (so far anyway) – in contrast to Western-style
imperialism. China is therefore neither the “Shire” nor is it “Mordor.”38
It has now been 20 years since the first issue of exit!
The
necessity and importance of a radical
critique of capitalism remains unmistakable; a critique of capitalism
that is not satisfied with
having already grasped what is decisive with the concepts of “class” or
“inequality” (especially
in terms of income). On the contrary! In view of the fact that
significant sections of the left are
becoming increasingly populist and backward-looking and are at best
regressing to a workingclass “normal” and at worst showing solidarity
with murderers of Jews as part of the anti-Semitic
swamp, a fundamental critique of capitalism that is not just
“specialized” on certain topics, i.e. a
critique of labor, critique of anti-Semitism & racism, critique of
bourgeois democracy &
bourgeois freedom, of androcentrism etc., but rather a critique of the
value-dissociation form as a
whole, a critique of the capitalist fetish constitution and its manifold
interrelations and forms, is
more necessary than ever. As usual at this point, we ask for donations
so that exit! can continue
to contribute to the critique of all this shit in the future. Taking out
a subscription also contributes
to support.
The text “Crisis of Hegemony” by Tomasz Konicz attempts – with a focus on the world financial
system – to describe the new crisis phase into which the late capitalist world system is entering
after the exhaustion of the neoliberal forms of crisis postponement. The first section examines
the changes in the U.S. financial sphere, including the far-reaching implications for crisis policy
in the Western centers of the world system, while the second section focuses on developments in
the People’s Republic of China and the periphery and semi-periphery of the world system.
With the onset of inflationary dynamics in the core of the world system, their central banks felt
compelled to end their expansive monetary policy, which was the basis of the long liquidity
bubble in which the financial sphere had found itself since the bubble relocation in the wake of
the bursting of the transatlantic real estate bubble in 2007-2008. However, the restrictive
monetary policy that successfully reduced inflation also destabilized the financial superstructure
that had been inflated in the neoliberal era, as was evident in the banking crisis in March 2023.
The crisis policy in the centers is thus in a manifest impasse, which was delayed by the deficit
cycles of the neoliberal era:
Restrictive monetary policy leads to economic stagnation and
destabilization of the financial sector, while expansionary monetary policy fuels inflation. As a
result, stagflation is likely to establish itself as a permanent state in the coming crisis phase – as a
result of monetary policy vacillation.
The People’s Republic of China is understood as part of the capitalist world system, which is
exposed to the same crisis processes in its crisis competition as the “West.” Both the internal and
external economic and financial crises that Chinese state capitalism was able to delay for years
through intervention and dirigisme are addressed: the debt and real estate crisis in China, which
has taken on far greater dimensions than the real estate bubble that burst in the U.S. and the EU
in 2007, as well as the debt crisis in the periphery and semi-periphery of the world system, which
broke out due to the failure of the Chinese hegemonic project of the “New Silk Road.” Beijing’s
large-scale project to establish a Chinese hegemonic system through a credit and development
program failed due to the global crisis of capital choking on its own productivity.
Building on these explanations, the article argues that the establishment of a new hegemonic
system under Chinese leadership, which would replace the declining U.S., is no longer possible
due to the lack of mechanisms for protracting the crisis in the manifest crisis phase that is now
unfolding. Instead, there is a threat of authoritarian state collapse, geopolitical instability,
particularly in the periphery, and the breakthrough of fascist aspirations – understood as an
authoritarian, ultimately terrorist form of capitalist crisis rule – in a world system that is
transitioning into deglobalization.
The article “Male Propensity to Violence and Amok Against the Backdrop of An Escalating
Capitalist Crisis Dynamic” by Leni Wissen is based on a lecture she gave at the Koblenz Social
Forum in the spring of 2023. The aim is to look at (global) phenomena of increasing
brutalization and violence. The aim is to show how a dynamic arises precisely in social crisis
contexts that makes people increasingly dependent on global crisis processes and drives them to
defend their own autonomy and freedom all the more fiercely in the face of pressure to adapt.
The (male) subject, who believes himself to be free and autonomous but is actually becoming
increasingly powerless, feels all the more compelled to prove his own freedom and independence
– even using violence if necessary. It is no coincidence that men are more often “perpetrators”
and women more often “victims” of violence.
In Germany, despite the increase in racist, sexist and anti-Semitic violence, the growing
propensity for violence is more evident in increasingly aggressive rhetoric (e.g. among lateral
thinkers and conspiracy ideologues). In contrast, violence in poorer and even more crisis-ridden
parts of the world is taking on ever more manifest forms and has been part of people’s everyday
lives for some time. There are repeated reports of femicides, particularly from Brazil, Mexico,
India and South Africa. But the excesses of violence within gang conflicts in Central America
and the brutal actions of Hamas, which reached a temporary climax in the anti-Semitic massacre
on October 7, are also evidence of growing manifest violence. However, differences must be
noted: Gang crime, for example, is primarily characterized by fights over illegal markets, while
in femicides violence by men more or less breaks through without any immediate purpose, or
women are murdered out of offended honor. Eliminatory anti-Semitism, as seen in the most
recent escalations, is yet another matter. And yet these phenomena are linked to the overall
dynamics of the crisis and a male-dominated processing of the crisis, in which violence and the
willingness to use violence as a whole is a factor that should not be underestimated.
Alienation and reification were not an issue in the postmodern era. According to Ulrich Beck,
individualization, which was sponsored by the welfare state and later financed by credit, was
widely discussed and appreciated. This has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Chlada
et al. summarize: “One [...] point of reference of the more recent alienation discourse is the
individual experiences of suffering that determine the everyday lives of many people, caused by
poverty, unemployment, precarious living conditions, insecure life plans, emotional insecurity,
increasing work stress and intensification and by the ever-increasing pressure of competition”
(Chlada et al.: Entfremdung Identität Utopie, 5f.). In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, but
especially in the context of the climate crisis, the corona crisis, the war in Ukraine and, most
recently, the resurgence of conflict in the Middle East, many (left-wing) people are (again)
feeling powerless, unable to act and resigned. Society is experienced as a fixed and ready-made
apparatus from which one is “alienated” and which one can hardly influence. In this situation,
some on the left turn to conspiracy theories and lateral thinking. After an era of
deconstructivism, people are looking for stability. Against this backdrop, Roswitha Scholz
critically analyzes the recent alienation theories of Rahel Jaeggi and Hartmut Rosa from the
perspective of the value-dissociation theory in her text “Alienation Today.”
Plagued by crisis, “democracy needs religion.” This therapeutic proposal is based on Hartmut
Rosa’s resonance theory, which he sees as a “sociology of world relations” and a further
development of critical theory. He interprets social crises as resonance crises. They are fueled by
the fact that modern societies stabilize themselves structurally through the compulsion to grow.
This brings with it “muted” rather than “sonorous” relations with the world, i.e. alienating and
reifying rather than resonating, in a call and response relationship. The conversion from mute to
resonant world relations should enable social transformation processes. This applies above all to
democracy, as it embodies the primacy of politics over the other spheres of society. And
“democracy needs religion” because it is a resource for the experience of resonance and thus for
social processes of transformation. Rosa thus agrees with the call for religion that is becoming
louder around the crisis.
Herbert Böttcher’s text makes it clear that Rosa’s concept of resonance – not least in its
reference to Heidegger – is ontologically grounded and draws on timeless experiences of
resonance as well as anthropological constants. This amounts to an “affirmative revolution”
(Rosa). It cannot and will not negate the capitalist form of society, because it fears that this
would produce hopelessness. For his “positive thinking,” Rosa needs an affirmative religion and
its resonance resources, which in turn are gained through the abstraction of contexts of
domination. Socially critical theological approaches are thus ignored because they are obviously
too “negative” and therefore incapable of connection. However, they prove to be connectable for
a socio-critical and religiously critical view of Rosa’s attempt to “develop a critical theory into
an affirmative one.”
The reissue of Robert Kurz’s text “Tabula Rasa: How far should, must or may the critique of
enlightenment go?” (first published in 2003, in: Krisis No. 27) is motivated by the question of
the relationship between the so-called “artifacts of history,” i.e. productive forces, technologies,
but also art and philosophy, etc., and the capitalist fetish constitution. Kurz argues, above all with
regard to the “productive forces,” that these can neither be universally positivized nor negated in
the abstract. Neither the workers’ movement Marxist fetishism of productive forces nor its
opposite: form and content do not coincide here. The situation is different with the bourgeois
subject form as a form of action and consciousness of the bourgeois subject and its philosophical
apologias – those of Immanuel Kant, for example. According to Kurz, nothing can be preserved
or justified here. In this text, Kurz criticizes the position and attitude of theoretically avoiding the
critique of bourgeois enlightenment or defusing it and thus withdrawing it (even if this is due to
misunderstandings or previously unresolved aporias) before it has really been addressed.
The background was the critique of bourgeois enlightenment initiated by the Krisis at the time
and the resulting debate. The “cause” was above all 9/11 and the anti-German apologetics of
“western values” and “world order wars” (these were the “special military operations”
“Operation Enduring Freedom” in 2001 and the “U.S. military operation” in 2003).39
Criticism of Eurocentrism, “western values” and “bourgeois democracy” (whose inherent logic
can be observed at the external borders of Europe and the U.S.) remains necessary, not least
against the backdrop of current geopolitical and protectionist conflicts in which the so-called
“free West,” which always considers itself “anti-totalitarian” sees itself in absolute opposition to
authoritarian regimes of all kinds, such as Russia and China (although the “free West” itself is
becoming increasingly authoritarian and right-wing).
40 Here it remains necessary to insist on the
commonalities of all capitalist regimes (no matter what else they call themselves) – without
ignoring differences in the critique – i.e. to refer to the forms and (non-)logic of capitalist modes
of production and their underlying subject form, as well as to the critique of all delusional
constructions of an external “realm of evil” (no matter from which side), which “destabilizes” or
even “infiltrates” “our” otherwise supposedly “harmonious” society.
In the text “Tabula Rasa of Modern Technology?” Thomas Meyer critiques the book Die
Energieschranke des Kapitals – Technikkritik als Kapitalismuskritik by Sandrine Aumercier.
This is preceded by some aspects of the fetishistic valorizing movement M-C-M’, which form
the “background field” of the following considerations, so to speak. Meyer’s central point of
criticism is Aumercier’s equation of the form and content of modern technology since
industrialization. Her conclusion is, so to speak, a tabula rasa of modern technology. The labor
movement’s Marxist fetishism of productive power is merely inverted here instead of being
overcome. Furthermore, Meyer criticizes Aumercier for confining humanity to local modes of
production as a result of rejecting modern technology per se. Since such a restriction is not
feasible for large parts of humanity, such a position ultimately has murderous and social
Darwinist consequences, according to Meyer.
The article “Ignorance is Indivisible” by Thomas Ebermann (first published in: Konkret No.
4/2022) is reprinted with a short foreword by Roswitha Scholz. This article summarizes some
important aspects of the debate about the coronavirus era.
In her article “A Meta-Theory of Conspiracy Theories?” Roswitha Scholz comments on an
article by Sandrine Aumercier that on the editorial of exit! No. 20. The main point of criticism is
the insufficient acknowledgement of the content of the conflict during the Corona period within
exit! and the points of criticism formulated against Andreas Urban & F. Alexander von Uhnrast
and Anselm Jappe.
This issue of exit! concludes with a review essay by Thomas Meyer “Crisis, Riots and What
Next?” on the book Riot, Strike, Riot: The New Era of Uprisings by Joshua Clover.
Finally, I would like to mention a few publications: Robert Kurz has published in French:
L’Honneur perdu du travail - Le socialisme des producteurs comme impossibilité logique41 and
also: La Montée aux cieux de l’argent - Limites structurelles à la valorization du capital,
capitalisme de casino et crise financière globale42 and by Justin Monday: La double nature du
racisme - La “race” comme mythe de la société capitaliste en crise.
43 In Spanish, an anthology
of Moishe Postone’s work: La teoría crítica de Moishe Postone, published by Prometeo Libros
(Buenos Aires/Argentina), which also contains an essay by Roswitha Scholz: El valor y los
“otros” - Correcciones desde la crítica de ladisociación del valor a la Teoría de Moishe
Postone. Furthermore, a partial translation of The Gender of Capitalism by Roswitha Scholz in
Greek: To phulo tou Kapitalismou (to be found on athens.indymedia.org).
Johanna Berger has left the editorial team.
Thomas Meyer for the exit! editorial team in January 2024.
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