Ljubodrag Simonovi Belgrade, Serbia E-mail:

comrade@sezampro.rs

THE MANIFESTO OF EXISTENTIAL HUMANISM

The most important task for the humanist intelligentsia is to develop in contemporary man a self-consciousness that will provide humankind with the possibility to survive.

The humanist intelligentsia needsto point out the increasingly dramatic consequences of the development of capitalism as a destructive order,as well as the existing objective possibilities for the creation of a new world. At the same time, it needs todevelop a political strategy that will become a starting point for the creation of global forms of politicalstruggle that would impede the destruction of life on the planet and create a new world.The critique of capitalism should observe two methodological postulates. First: the nature of a certain social(historical) phenomenon is determined by the tendencies of its development ± of what it develops into.Second: the nature of a social (historical) phenomenon conditions the nature of its critique. The nature of capitalism, that is, a tendency of its development as a destructive system, conditions both the nature of thecritique of capitalism and the political strategy for the fight against capitalism. This is not to suggest thecreation of a uniform way of thinking, but a way of thinking that endeavors to ask questions of an existentialand essential nature. Such a way of thinking represents a contraposition to the ruling ideology, manifested inthe ³Coca Cola culture´ that tends to marginalize the essential in order to assign a spectacular dimension tothe marginal.A specificity of the contemporary historical moment, that is, a specificity of capitalism as a system of destruction, also conditions the specific view of the past. The ruling ideology sterilizes the libertarian andchange-oriented charge of philosophical thought and reduces it to a lifeless ³history of philosophy´, which becomes a vehicle for the destruction of the libertarian and life-creating power of reason. Critical theory, based upon existential humanism, needs to create the possibility for ³reviving´ the creative and libertarianspirit of our ancestors by engaging it in the fight for survival and for the creation of a new world. In thestruggle for the survival of humankind, the thinking of the past has to realize its own humanistic, i.e.,existential and libertarian, potential. The deepening crisis of existence forces man to focus on basicexistential issues and, in that context, to integrate the libertarian and cultural heritage of humankind and to ridit of any ³tails´ that only weaken the combat and drive the mind astray. ³Fullness of humanity´, in the senseof perceiving man from a historical prospective, is conditioned by increasingly dramatic existentialchallenges. The libertarian past needs to become a source of man's life-creating energy in the struggle for thesurvival of humankind. ³Return´ to the mythological past is justified only for the revitalization of libertarianand life-creating myths. Otherwise, it amounts to driving reason astray, and is, regardless of personalmotives, of an anti-existential nature.

A concrete critique of capitalism cannot be based solely upon essential humanism, but must be based uponexistential humanism as well.

The ideals of the French Revolution -

Liberté

Egalité

Fraternité -

present anecessary, but not a sufficient condition for the future. The struggle for preservation of life on the planet andfor increasing the certainty of the survival of man as a cultural (social) and biological (natural) beingrepresents a

conditio sine qua non

of the struggle for the future.

Instead of the Marx¶s notion of ³alienation´(Entfremdung), the key notion in the critique of capitalism should be destruction.

Marx's revolutionaryhumanism emerges in relation to capitalism as a system of non-freedom, injustice, and non-reason, andadvocates freedom, social justice, and a reasonable world, which means that it appears in the essential sphere.Existential humanism emerges in relation to capitalism as a destructive order that annihilates nature and manas a biological and human being ± and places the struggle for the survival of the living world in theforeground, which means that it appears in the existential sphere. Affirmation of man as a creative andlibertarian being is a response to the world where man is alienated from himself as a creative and libertarian being.

The assertion that man is a life-creating being is a response to the world based upon the destruction of life:

the struggle for freedom becomes the struggle for survival

. The struggle for a reasonable world does notonly represent an essential, but also an existential challenge. At the same time, Hegel's (Marx's) dialectic can be accepted only conditionally as a starting point for the development of a critique of capitalism, for its

(historical) pyramid of freedom is founded upon existential certainty.The ³traditional´ Marxist critique of capitalism, from the point of view of what-is-yet-to-be (Bloch's

noch-nicht-Sein

), is of an abstract nature. The concrete nature of the capitalist positive also conditions the nature of the negative, which is a critical consciousness and a political practice based on it.

Contemporary man cannot attain an appropriate historical self-consciousness starting from an absolutized and idealized anthropological model of man as a universal creative being of freedom, but starting from the existential challenges that capitalism, as a destructive system, imposes on man.

Man's becoming a human being (whathe, in his essence, is ± a totalizing libertarian, creative and life-creating being) and the world's becoming ahuman world are conditioned by capitalism's becoming capitalism (that is, its turning into what it, in itsessence, is ± a totalitarian destructive order). A concrete future cannot be grounded in what man desires to do based on his own true human needs, but in what man must do for humankind to survive. The essential levelof the future is directly conditioned by existential challenges. The development of capitalism has causedfurther impossibility for the future as a product of the man's free (visionary) creative practice (Bloch's³openness³), but is conditioned by consequences generated by capitalism as a destructive order. Objective possibilities for the creation of a new world, and the possibility for the realization of man as a universal freecreative being, are conditioned by the developmental capacities of capitalism as a destructive order. This isthe basis for a concrete dialectic of the future. Decimated nature, mutilated man, the accumulated destructive powers of capitalism that could momentarily destroy humankind ± this also represents an objective situationthat inevitably conditions the probability of the future and its planning.

Man does not assign to himself tasksthat he can complete, as Marx asserts, but it is capitalism that imposes a crucial task on man: to preserve lifeon the planet and to save humankind from destruction.

Being a match to the historical task imposed on man by capitalism means facing up to capitalism as an order that destroys life.For Marxist theoreticians, an empty stomach is man's key existential driving force. Typical is Bloch's position that ³in the foundation of planning should lie hunger, poverty and scarcity´. Capitalism fills thestomachs of its subjects while destroying nature and degenerating man as a natural and human being, turninghim into a waste disposal whose role is to destroy as much as possible of the increasingly poisonoussurrogates of ³consumer´ civilization. As for the inborn aggressiveness of man as a living being, capitalismtransforms man's vital aggressiveness into destructive power. The potentially change-oriented energy of people, deriving from their increasing dissatisfaction, becomes, by means of capitalism¶s vital andideological sphere, a

spiritus movens

of capitalism. Need for life is being transformed into need for destruction. Criticizing Hegel, Bloch rightfully points out the fact that in history not all negations arenecessarily a move forward. However, he fails to realize that the capitalist negation leads towards thedestruction of the world. Not a word on capitalism as a destructive order, nor, in that context, aboutconsciousness of the possible destruction of life as an essential content of revolutionary consciousness.

Anticipation of the future, as a concrete anticipation of a concrete future, must anticipate the development of capitalism, that is, the consequences generated by capitalism as a destructive order that unavoidablycondition the freedom of man, and, along with it, the possibility of a future and its concrete nature.

There are two historical bases of human interconnecting: spontaneous, that is, man's need for other men(man's erotic nature, symbolically ³love³), and repressive, primarily related to providing immediate existence(labor and all it conditions, symbolically ³duty³). In previous historical periods, complying with therepressive basis of human interconnecting was to the detriment of human interconnecting. By becoming

homo faber,

man restrained and was losing his own authentic human characteristics (erotic nature), whichculminated in the capitalist society that became a ³technical civilization´ within which not only thedehumanization but also the denaturalization of man has taken place. As a totalitarian and global order of destruction, capitalism has imposed the issues of necessity and freedom in a new and far more dramaticmanner. Man's most important existential duty is no longer labor

per se

, but to struggle for the preservationof life (and the labor related to it). Struggle for survival has imposed itself as a contemporary ³realm of necessity´, and on this foundation, man as a totalizing, life-creating being will develop. Contemporarycapitalism has ³unified´ the existential with the essential sphere: the fight for freedom becomes an existentialnecessity, and the struggle for survival a basic libertarian challenge. Spheres of labor, art, and play are nolonger starting points of libertarian practice. Instead, the starting point is man as a totalizing being that perceives his entire life on the existential-essential level, that is, in the context of the fight against capitalism,which has transformed natural laws, social institutions and man into a vehicle for the destruction of life. In

that context, labor, through which man's creative (life-creating) powers are being realized and the true humanworld created, becomes an essential activity. As the present day production of commodities (goods)concomitantly represents the destruction of life, in that very same way, in the future society, production of commodities will mean production of healthy living conditions and the creation of a healthy man. In thefuture, the basic task of humanity will be to re-establish environmental balance and, thus, create livingconditions in which man can survive. Development of productive forces, the very labor processes, spare timeactivities, practically all life - will be subordinated to it. In such conditions, competition that has beenreduced to struggle for victory through the achievement of a better result (record), as in sports, will remainmerely a part of the pre-history of humankind.What should constitute the new quality of interconnection between people on the basis of struggle for the preservation of life on the planet is the very same thing that should provide incentives for the development of human foundations for human interconnections, which means that it should be conditioned by one man'sneed for the other. The fact is that capitalism transformed all social institutions, and the entirety of life, into avehicle for the growth of profit, that is, for the destruction of life.

In order to survive, man has no one toaddress for assistance but another man: sociability is an existential imperative.

In the dialectic sense, man asa fulfilled social being becomes a totalizing life-creating being ± in relation to capitalism as a totalizing order of destruction. In that context, one of the basic Marx¶s theses from ³

The Communist Manifesto³

, claimingthat ³the freedom of each is a basic condition for the freedom of all´, could be rephrased.

Starting from the fact that humankind is jeopardized when the life of each man is jeopardized, one can arrive at the thesis that

the survival

of each represents the basic condition for

the survival of all.

Capitalist totalitarianism is the most perilous form of totalitarianism ever created.It is based upon the totalcommercialization of nature and of society. Each part of the planet, each segment of social and individual lifehas become an integral part of the destructive capitalist growth mechanism. Life itself becomes a totalizing power that shapes the character of men, their consciousness, interpersonal relationships, their relation tonature... Other historical forms of totalitarianism are either manifested as related to the idea of the past, or acertain transcendental idea, or an idea of the future ± all of which open possibilities for critique.Contemporary capitalist totalitarianism is based upon destructive nihilism: it annihilates both the idea of transcendence and the idea of a future (past) and thus it also annuls the very possibility of establishing acritical distance from the existing world. At the beginning of its development, capitalism generated avisionary consciousness that not only opened space for the development of capitalism, but also for overcoming it (More, Campanella, Hobbes, Bacon, Owen, Fourier...). By becoming a totalitarian destructiveorder, capitalism exterminates visionary consciousness and creates a totalitarian positivist consciousness ± towhich corresponds the concept of the ³end of history´ and ³the last man´ (Fukuyama). Capitalism abolisheshistory, transforming historical time into mechanical occurrence, that is, into a positive nothingness.Simultaneously, capitalist periodicity is not only of an anti-historical, but also of an anti-existential nature.Capitalism destroys the very possibility of a future: it appears in the form of a capitalistically degenerated

u-topos

Capitalist development of productive forces does not enhance the certainty of human survival, as Marxargues,

but questions it more and more dramatically.

Therefore, instead of engendering optimism, capitalist³progress´ generates fear of the future. The most perilous characteristic of capitalism is related to the factthat, from the results of life-destruction, it creates a source of profit and, thus, a basis for its own further development, where man's creative powers become a vehicle for the development of the destructive powersof capitalism and for acceleration of the destruction process. Capitalism has become a self-reproducingmechanism of destruction, which, to the living world, represents what a malignant tumor represents to anorganism: it extends its own lifetime by devouring all that provides humankind with a chance for survival.This does not refer only to the systematic, but to the ultimate destruction of life on the planet.Contemporary man does not only face the ideological, military and police terror of the governing order, asused to occur in the past, but also the accumulated destructive powers of capitalism. The spirit of destructive barbarism dominates capitalism, conditioning both the activities of the ruling class and its defense strategy.Usage of atomic, hydrogen and neutron bombs, lethal viruses, starvation of populations, pollution anddevastation of water supplies, etc., (that will exterminate hundreds of millions of people and irreversiblycontaminate the natural environment) represents - for the capitalistically degenerated international plutocratic³elite´ - a ³justified measure´, if in that manner the existence of capitalism can be prolonged. In order to