1 THE LAST REVOLUTION Ljubodrag Duci Simonović Published in 2013 in Belgrade (Serbia) by the author Translation from Serbian: Vesna Todorović /Petrović Svetlana Đurić Igor Barjaktarević Translation supervision: Mick Collins Cover/technical design: Ivan Simonović Desk‐top editing: Đorđe Obradović Printed by: “FineGraf” Belgrade, Serbia ISBN………… 2 Dedicated to : children, nightingales, bees, roses, does and goats, ants, pines and firs, rabbits, cabbage and potato, mice and cats, Mick and Max, Martin and Lisen, Christopher and Nestor, Kasai and Nelson, Mara and Rada, sharks and whales, leopards and lions, the Volga and the Mississippi, the Ural and Rocky Mountains, Kilimanjaro, foxes and hens, snakes and frogs, bears, Federico and Nadja, Vesna and Vanja, Ivan and Andrea, Dunja and Dusan, Igor and Dubravka, Aaron and Suzana, my dear dog Gala, pigs and cows, the Sun and Moon, monkeys, wolfs and sheep, the Danube and Amazonas, Jangcekjang, Pacific Ocean, Andes Mountains, Baikal Lake, clouds and rain, snow‐flakes, falcons and eagles, Merdan and Fikret, Daniel and David, Mirko and Paulina, Ergic and Milanko, Christina and Mirjana, wheat and maize, horses and donkeys, cherries and apples, the Arctic and Antarctic, Rhine and Yenisei, Nile and Ganges, Tigris and Euphrates, Mekong, Himalayas and Alps, oaks, violets, sparrows and swallows, elephants and flamingos, butterflies, shadows of our ancestors… and to OUR MOTHER EARTH. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIFE‐CREATING MIND AGAINST DESTRUCTIVE MINDLESSNESS…………………..5 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) THE NATURE OF MARX’S CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM………....................................8 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) MARX’S CONCEPTION OF NATURE……………………………………………………………..14 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION OF SOIL ………………………………………………………..22 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) „HUMANISM‐NATURALISM”………………………………………………………………………28 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) MARX AND CAPITALIST GLOBALISM…………………………………………………………..41 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) THE COSMIC DIMENSION OF MAN……………………………………………………………..44 (Translated from Serbian by Igor Barjaktarević) „ALIENATION” AND DESTRUCTION………………….…………………………………………51 (Translated from Serbian by Svetlana Đurić) DESTRUCTION OF THE BODY……………………………………………………………………..62 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) HOMOSEXUALITY……………………………………………………………………………………..68 (Translated from Serbian by Igor Barjaktarević) CAPITALIST NIHILISM………………………………………………………………………………74 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) PRODUCTIVE FORCES…………………………………………………………………………………79 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) DIALECTICS AND HISTORY………………………………………………………………………..86 (Translated from Serbian by Svetlana Đurić) THE INTEGRATION OF PEOPLE INTO CAPITALISM……………………………………96 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) TECHNIQUE AS MYTH : ZEITGEIST FASCISM…………………………………………….111 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) CONTEMPORARY BOURGEOIS THOUGHT…………………………………………………132 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović and Svetlana Đurić) POLITICS AS A FRAUD……………………………………………………………………………..140 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) 4 CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM…………………………………………..148 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) BOURGEOISIE AND PROLETARIAT……………………………………………………………157 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) OCTOBER REVOLUTION…………………………………………………………………………..165 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) CONTEMPORARY SOCIALIST REVOLUTION……………………………………………..171 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE…………………………………………………………………...180 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) VISION OF A FUTURE………………………………………………………………………………...186 (Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović) NOTES………………………………………………………………………………………………………..225 5 LIFE‐CREATING MIND AGAINST DESTRUCTIVE MINDLESSNESS By becoming a totalitarian destructive order, capitalism called into question the modern way of thinking based on existential apriorism and the corresponding idea of progress. In that context, humanism with its essential character and its critique of capitalism that departs from the essential criteria were also called into question. By increasingly destroying life on Earth, capitalism abolishes that ontological relativism based on existential certainty. What indeed exists is, thus, determined by capitalist annihilation with its totalitarian character. Nothing is no longer just not being or essential nothingness, but a complete and final perishing of humankind. It is necessary to create a way of thinking that will enable proper understanding of the ruling tendency of global development and, on the basis of the humanist legacy, establish a broad social movement that will work to prevent the destruction of life. From a historical point of view, the mind acquired self‐consciousness from man's struggle for freedom. Considering the fact that capitalism dramatically threatens the survival of the living world, the contemporary mind can acquire self‐consciousness from the struggle of humankind for survival. The criticism of capitalism based on essential relativism should be replaced by a criticism that departs from the existential challenges capitalism poses for humankind. Instead of a dominating destructive mindlessness, which leads to total annihilation, a life‐ creating mind should be affirmed, a mind that can create a humane world. The life‐creating quality as a universal and totalizing principle should become the starting point in the struggle against capitalism. It acquires a concrete historical meaning relative to capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order from the life‐creating potential of nature and man. The life‐creating quality means bringing to life the life‐creating potential of the matter, living nature, man, history, human society... The most important result of the practice of life‐creating must be a society that is a community of free and creative people and nature as a cultivated life‐creating whole. Capitalism does not animate but rather destroys the life‐creating potential of matter, living nature, history... It instrumentalizes and degenerates man's life‐creating powers: they are used to create a „technical world“, where there is no place for either nature or man. The human life‐creating quality involves freedom, which means overcoming sheer naturalness through an active and changing relation to nature and through the creation of a new world. The specific life‐creating potentials of man, as the highest form in the evolution of nature, represent a bond between nature and man and are the bases for the evolution of man as a specific natural being. It is about turning man from a sheer natural being into a 6 libertarian being. Through a cultivated life‐creating practice, man turns from a generic being into an emancipated life‐creating being, which does not only reproduce its life‐creating capacity, but creates his own world. In that sense, we should differentiate between the life‐ creating quality as the creation of sheer life and the life‐creating quality as the creation of a humane world. In other words, a difference should be made between naturalistic and historical life‐creating principles: the essence of the naturalistic life‐creating principle is determinism; the essence of the historical life‐creating principle is freedom. The life‐creating nature of man, as a natural and human being, can be realized only in nature as a life‐generating whole. Man's active relation to nature gives a possibility to overcome sheer naturalness, if that means the preservation and development of nature's life‐creating powers. The life‐creating principle is the umbilical cord connecting man and nature and turning them into a life‐creating whole. Living nature is not mere matter, but, through the life‐creating process of evolution, a formed and thus specific matter, which as such forms the basis of the human world as a specific universe. It is organized as a life‐ creating organic whole that creates higher living forms, which means that it is characterized by a life‐creating activism. Man is the highest life‐creating form in the evolution of living matter through which nature became a self‐conscious, life‐creating whole. Man's libertarian and creative practice is the power which gives matter a historical dimension, which means that through it a meaningless mechanical movement becomes a meaningful historical movement. Man's universal and creative being, which has limitless self‐reproductive potential, represents the basis of the human life‐creating principle. Each creative act opens in man a new creative space, and so on, ad infinitum. Man's becoming a self‐conscious historical being, which means a being of the future, is the most important result of the realization of nature's life‐creating potentials, and the ability to create its future is the most authentic expression of the life‐creating force of human society. Not only does capitalism, as a totalitarian destructive order, destroy history, it also destroys the evolution of living beings, which above all means the evolution of human beings as the highest form of life on the Earth. It is a capitalistically conditioned mutation of man, which amounts to a his degeneration as a natural, creative and social being. Capitalism destroys man's naturally‐and historically‐conditioned