Wednesday, 26/11/97.
HUMAN BEING XXV
(Identifying Labour II)
Hello Khalid,
Setting the Parameters & Paradigms
Probably you have recovered from our philosophic Winzip, from the previous intellectual zipping of your brain, and now our trialogical Archiver will unzip all the headaches. You might have thought: Why all these complicated mental whirlpools? Can Labour not be comprehended in the usual uncomplicated style? Can we not become "concrete", by giving "concrete examples" that anybody or everybody can understand?
If, ..., and then, ....
Alas! The above "reasoning", which we hear at every street corner, has nothing to do with thinking. It sets ideological "paradigms", like "everything is relative", "everything is possible", "what will be, will be", but no logical, intellectual or rational parameters.
If, over the last decades of his life, someone has not learnt to think, although permanently, within the labour process, he was "concretizing" his adult life, i.e., if he was only acting en vogue, in accordance with the reigning ideology or religion, if he was only engaged in "cool" thoughtless action, then, of course, any form of thought must immediately provide him with a heavy cold, with flu and headaches, then, concrete rattling noises in bars, restaurants and discotheques promise heavenly relief. However, if even this does not help, well, then, prozac or ritalin must come to the rescue; and if they even give up the ghost, certainly, then, our "guinea-pig" necessarily must resort to "Annie, get your gun!", and then, everything around him he massacres to pieces, including his own "concrete self". And then, at last, the natural and social scientists of "Big Brother" can celebrate: The Mind Control Experiment Was a Total, a Profitable Success!!
Similarly, in the concrete maelstrom of thoughtlessness, anybody else who has lost his mental faculties, who is concretized as a "human being", who has lost his human existence, logically, he will continue vegetating the rest of his life, will fade away into oblivion, into heavenly bliss, will eventually enjoy the fruits of labour, will "rest in peace". Fortunately, for us, thinking does not exist as capitalist or post-industrial or globalized toil and labour, not even as manual, intellectual or spiritual labour. Thinking exists as Intellect a n d Reason, as Einai-In a n d For-Itself, as a Degree of Emancipation, and not of Labour, which is just a specific infinitesimal non-related "level" within Emancipation itself. With this we are setting our thinking parameters straight, crooked, spiral, multi-facetical, in mosaic form, in combined and unequal motion, beyond just spatial-temporal delimitations.
When thinking and thought are converted, are perverted into merchandise, into Intellectual Labour, into Private Property guaranteed by Rights, then, they lose their very existence, and they become concrete, they become essential goods to be bought and sold on the global and globalized labour market. Who desires to be only concrete, de facto, yearns to be bought, to be sold, to become property, to acquire democratic "human rights". The capitalist paradigm is as simple as this.
Again: Our Beloved "Human Being": "We Are All A Bit Crazy!"
If the so much hailed distinguishing mark of a "human being" is precisely the fact that he thinks, then, my dear Khalid, you can imagine, in and across the Labour Process, how many "human beings" have survived in the "historic", ferocious "Battle Of Waterloo" against Mother Nature. It seems that the absolute majority were left no democratic "alternative" but to perish; and perish means that, across all the "dark ages", progressively, they have been losing their mind, their mental faculties. The "Age of Reason" accelerated this process of mental decomposition. Later, even Newsweek International, on its title page, had to confirm this rotting away of the global and globalized mind: "Are We All A Bit Crazy?"
We are explaining this to underline that thinking is not a Christmas gift of the Ministry of Education, of the Fairy Mother, Miss IMF International, or of the Orwellian "Ministry of Love", and even less so, that it is a democratic mercy, an inalienable "human right", which we are receiving. After birth, with every drop of Mother’s Milk, or even worse, of Nestle or Parmalat, we swallow this strychnine, which generates the Labour "panacea", the "concrete" megalomania. Within this "concrete" context, we have to "see" the definition of Labour, have to identify the Labour Process.
To state that Labour is in itself Alienation, that it is the essential process of the Patria; at this conclusion, we really cannot arrive by concretizing sky-scraper concrete blocks, also not by means of a social chat in a "beer garden", but as a rational result of decades of continuous action a n d thought, thought a n d action, verified and nurtured by the very same labour process in the Patria, which progressively loses its ideological appearance forms, and nakedly shows its exploitative, oppressive, discriminating and ahistoric essence.
The Few Thinking Neurons Left, In Action
Anybody who has a few active and cognitively pregnant neurons left, must be as blind as a Pavlov-Zombie, not to see the flowing evidential truth about the labour process. Let us ask some answering, answerable questions again. What created the ecological disaster, the destruction of the ozone layer, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Slave Trade, the Great Depression, the so-called World Wars, the World Bank, the IMF, the world market, etc.? Is it not Labour? What on this godforlorn planet is not a product of Labour? Will it not be Labour which will create the final Holocaust? No hate or wrath of any individual or class can bring about these apocalyptic horrors.
Labour is the decisive factor to create the Patria, Hell on Earth! Heaven on Earth, for whom? For what? And where do Capital, Profits and Power come from? Not from Labour? We cannot imagine that Mother Nature, against whom Man has to struggle to survive, to struggle to labour, would have brought about all these disasters during the last three millennia! Homo Kenyapithecus, Homo Neanderthal, Homo Rhodesiensis, all have already followed the Fate of Cecil John Rhodes. We do not know if they had lost the battle of survival against or in Nature, but at least, it took them many millions of years to perish. How many millions Homo Sapiens will survive, with or without the Labour Process? Nearly two million years? When was Labour born? Not so long ago? How many decades of labour can life on this planet still tolerate?
And why should homo sapiens sapiens, as a species, survive in the first place, when every individual Man scarcely reaches the age of 100 years? What is so divine about the species in general? About its survival, about its struggle for survival, against Nature? Where is the argument of "survival" of the fittest (Darwin)? Social Darwinism? Fascism? Nazism? Herrenvolkism? What has the "survival" of the species homo sapiens sapiens got to do with me, with a single "human being"? Is "survival" not formal logical? Is it not defence of the status quo? Is it not Affirmation of the existing system, of the reigning social order, of the Patria, of Labour, of Alienation? Is it not "Rest In Peace", Certain Death?
Surely, the above are very interesting questions; they should, at least, be asked, by someone. All of them have definite answers; most answers we gave in the previous lectures.
Well, now we have a foggy idea of what exactly Labour is, what the labour process in the Patria is. Now we know what to look for, what to identify within our philosophy, logics and method. We will continue this sojourn of investigation of the wilderness of the Patria in our next lecture.
This is all for here a n d now,
Love,
FRANZ.