Contrary to what the religious monotheism and all of its cultural and political emanations wish to impose on the peoples, History has neither “reasoning” nor “direction”. We could attempt to portray history as a globe that rolls around, pushed only by the forces that are timelessly composed, evolve and decomposed within itself and nowhere else. Every attempt to linearly design History is either naive or fraudulent and at any rate, invalid and misleading.

The dominant stereotypes of our era make the “advanced” at the very least humanity, not to take into account the above mentioned truth and to be constantly involved in linear (“progressive” or “provisional”) misinterpretations of History, with its produced thought being no more than a step march or a tail chase. The same dominant stereotypes have exalted the medium to a level superior to substance, that is to say, that economy is considered superior to mankind and Nature, of which the former constitutes just a small organic part.

Linearity requires the focus of our interest solely on what is “ahead” either in the form of an ephemeral present or as a direct or more distant future, while simultaneously calls us to scorn and disregard as useless, everything that has supposedly “passed” and thus can be characterized as “past”. Christianity thought that it would finally extricate itself from the prior to its appearance humanity by characterizing as an “evangelical preparation” the cultural achievements that it could appropriate and by condemning as “idolatry” the ones it couldn’t. Marxism followed the same path with Christianity and thought that it could also extricate itself from the prior to its appearance humanity by characterizing as “utopian or urban socialism” the political conquests that it could appropriate and by condemning the economic systems it couldn’t appropriate as “already antiquated” or soon to be “antiquated” (“slave society”, feudalist system and capitalist system). The above mentioned assessment that Marxism utilized is also adopted and used by its supposed rival, Capitalism, which simply excluded its “perfect self” from the Marxist triad of the supposedly “antiquated” economic systems.

Condemned to contradiction, the followers of linearity, nevertheless, see that the route of History does not follow a linear path but instead, it forms now a curve and makes a “comeback” while they themselves stand motionless and look straight ahead, towards the imaginary stages of humanity that up until the present, they insisted on considering not only as “coming” but “certain to come” as well. History turns its back not only to the fantasticality of the “end of time”, but also to both the fantasticalities of the “classless” and the “high tech capitalistic” societies.

Nowadays, we observe the transition from Capitalism to its successive system of the second form of Feudalism whose difference from the first is that neither the wealth is the land and the buildings nor is the feudal lord visible and known. In the old, first form of Feudalism, the consequences of absolute insecurity that the decline of the Roman Empire brought about (just a century after its most lawful phase, the Antonine era) along with the cultural primitivism that Christianity imposed, led for more than a millennium the “weak and poor” to seek protection from the land owning monarchs and the Church that distributed land to their chosen ones (the nobility) who, in turn, manipulated and exploited the peasants, the serfs and the regular slaves.

In the second phase of Feudalism, the Modern Feudalism as it might be called, the bases of the wealth are neither the land and the buildings nor the capital of the anterior Capitalism. These “steady” ingredients of wealth are rendered henceforth burdensome in Modern Feudalism. In this current form of Feudalism, the basis of wealth is the profitability derived from the rapid movement of
capital so as to become de-materialized and take the form of a “flow”, so as to achieve the status of complete invisibility. Here, the masters of wealth, the new “despots”, are at majority anonymous or at least unknown to most of the people, as they hide behind the vague term “markets” which constitute the new immaterial castles of the modern feudal lords. Also, the territory of the modern fiefs is not specified and has no certain location. It is diffused everywhere, even in the most remote havens of refuge. The fluid fief of the market “despots” is incorporated and carried by EVERY person, matter, situation and convention that can directly be influenced by the wills and the target settings of the “despots.”

If we attempted to define these new immaterial towers of the modern feudal lords, the so-called “markets”, we would conclude that they are nothing more than a mechanism which under the pretext of evaluating and pricing the “investment dangers”, multiplies the given ordinal, plastic, electronic or in any other form, money while simultaneously attacks the sovereign National State that was born almost at the same time with Capitalism and lived in step with it until the dawn of the 21st century. The main attack is materialized through the imposition of the arbitrary dogma stating that the survival of nations no longer depends on their military or political power but instead, on their ability to continuously fund their debts as if they were companies, despite the fact that nations are destined to obligatorily exist even in the event of their bankruptcy.

However, in parallel but not tantamount with Capitalism, the National State is the one that for two centuries in a row finds itself on the other side of the social “capitalistic” contract and guarantees the rights of people that have been acquired through hard social-political struggles. The National State guarantees the rights of people that require a future and continuous demand such as their pension, their health insurance and so forth. If the National State disappears, nothing will exist on the other side of the contract and thus the contract will be declared as invalid and non-existing. The invisible and anonymous feudal lords of the “markets” are neither obliged nor have the good intentions to “lose” money so as to preserve the rights of people that existed in the “past” state of Capitalism, by providing pensions and healthcare for huge crowds that have nothing to do with the new mechanism of profitability which is not based on the capitalist production (or the consecutive consumption of what is produced). In all the “advanced” world, the humongous urban class (with all of its stratifications) will be neutralized through an accelerating povertization process, by being condemned henceforth to linger out its life near the poverty level in each country and, in some cases, below or far below of it.

The National State will be forced to vanish, since this is internationally orchestrated by the “market despots” through the bankruptcy of ALL National States. Judging by the rhetoric against Greece that was surfaced during 2011, all National States will be obliged to give up their sovereignty, one after the other. The ritual death of a National State occurred in Libya with the pretext of imposing obligatory “democracy and freedom”, although no one seemed to fully comprehend what exactly happened there. Besides, there is another thorny issue to be addressed: how could the western multileveled support of Islamists, who are a priori anti-democrats but are treated as “democracy and freedom fighters”, be explained? Does this happen because the westerners suffer from a monstrous amount of naivety or is it because the new feudal lords wish to place on their side every kind of theocracy that in the past helped the old feudal lords rule the crowds?

Having become the successor of the defeated Capitalism and the even more defeated Marxism, the Modern Feudalism of the “markets” displaces the human values into even greater depths and compels the crowds to perpetually think, most of the times in personal agony, in numbers, rates and financial comparisons. The politicians deliver public matters to ruthless and dehumanized technocrats, the societies are succeeded by sums of people willing to socially cannibalize even on their own people, and interest on the human values is withdrawn from all levels, allowing the most unconscionable form of economism to march by. The hunting against humanity is successfully aided by all sorts of theocrats who are rather encouraged and promoted by the “despots” of the “markets” to help them keep the world under their custody, since the theocrats possess the experience of being able to suffocate and rapidly suppress every form of indignation.

The invisible and anonymous feudal lords of the “markets” also use the means of infiltration in the conscience of the crowds (all sorts of mass media) so as to convince everyone that the anomaly they represent is supposedly inevitable while, at the same time, their political servants do everything possible to confirm the claim of the feudal lords, thus making the under management masses, freeze even more.

We began this essay with the clarification that contrary to what the religious monotheism and its cultural and political derivatives wish to impose on us, History has neither “reasoning” nor “direction”, so there are no inevitable or un-fightable matters. In other words, we owe it to ourselves to begin now, and at this very moment, to prepare ourselves for a battle against the monstrous world that they are trying to impose on us. After having determined with the biggest possible clarity, the identity and the nature of the enemy, we should wage a real social war against all those deniers of mankind.

Humanity has, during many decades, fought enough battles against windmills wasting precious resources and blood in favor of the “a” or “b” “noble” version of brutal economism. This time we will fight for humanity having as our base humanity itself. We will fight to bring back the human community that has cohesion, sovereign rights and self-sufficiency, to regain our humane disposition and de-economize our lives. We will fight for our self-esteem and the honor of Nature and the eternal values, we will fight for the self-convention and equivalence among people and the right to define our existence ourselves. We will fight to preserve our dignity and freedom. We will fight for humanism having humanism as the base of our struggle. On no other direction and with no other consideration in mind, will we march.

Vlassis G. Rassias Athens, November 2011

www.rassias.gr