International Coalition "For Humanism!"

Sergey Semenov

The system crisis of the commercial civilization and the humanist transformation

The speech for the IX conference of the Coalition "For Humanism!"

As most participants of our conference are the same people, and the new participants know most likely my speech of the previous year, I won’t concentrate on general points of the discussed concept - the system crisis of the commercial civilization – and will speak about the most evident ways of its overcoming. Though, I have to start my little speech with the presentation of the nature of that crisis.

The concept of civilization crisis

As we know, our concept of the system crisis of the commercial civilization is based on the following idea: the competition, being the engine of the modern civilization and expressing striving for the profits, generates quite naturally fatal phenomena endangering both the social structure and people. It is easy to see that – it is enough to notice that after filling the market with goods and services intended to satisfy natural human needs it inevitably comes to light that those needs are limited, and it leads consequently to the high intensification of competitive fighting. Eventually it becomes fighting to the death. The mankind has come to that point now: the further existence of the commercial relations leads to the dead end.

Fighting against terrorism and other main lines of system crisis development

At our annual conferences we are constantly talking about the increase of that danger, pointing out the appearance of always new risks. Further in my speech I’ll focus mainly on human part of the problem, on the way how the system crisis influences the human nature. But at the beginning I am paying your attention to the intensification of the so called “war on terror”. Firstly, this phenomenon is quite an indicative fact; secondly, terrorism in intensification can kill many innocent people. It will be exactly so if terrorists make up their minds to use biological, chemical, radiation or any other modern weapon of mass destruction. The possible scenarios of similar development of situation are presented in literature and cinema antiutopias abundantly. We have to understand that the fight against terrorism can’t end within the limits of the existent social-economic formation, that the terrorism is a natural expression of its continuously deepening crisis. What is the nature of that phenomenon?

As far back as in the 19 century K. Marx pointed out that under capitalism the division of the society into the rich and the poor, the intensification of the fight for the lost human rights are presupposed. At that time the main direction of polarization was stratification of social-politic classes, and the fight looked mainly like fight of classes. In the beginning of the 20th century the basic contradiction was displaced into the field of international relations. As a sequence the 20th century became a century of two world wars. The victory of communists in Russia forced the ruling classes of the most developed states to do everything to smooth internal political contradictions. And they succeeded in doing it till now at the expense of social fraudulent charity, an insignificant part of the overprofits they get from selling their ultramodern goods on the markets of the less developed countries. The problem however is that such situation presupposes keeping and even strengthening of such division of the world into the developed and the undeveloped, into the rich and poor countries. Since after the collapse of the Soviet Union the military forces of the developed states exclude for the weak developed ones the possibility to get out of such bondage, some of the charismatic leaders of the seconds see the terror as the only real possibility in fighting for freedom. If it is so, the final aim of terrorists is not to annoy the enemy but to defeat it, the full victory. It is clear that such position presupposes the use of any means including weapons of mass destruction. We can’t exclude such development untill the cause rests, the cause moving somebody strive for killing the enemy on its own territory by hidden war, by terror. The war against terrorism declared by the coalition of developed countries and their satellites keeps the terrorists back from the superficial striking, but it strengthens them as well, because it makes more and more obvious that the rich do not want to give up their status of the world predators in fight with which any means is allowed. We have to spread as wide as possible the idea that the terror is not a means enabling to correct the world order, that the only real prospect in overcoming the system crisis of civilization is the humanistic transformation. I’ll return to that question in closing my speech. And now about the danger which I believe surpasses the danger of terrorism.

The crisis of human nature

At our last year conference I said that the most fatal manifestation of the system crisis of the modern civilization is the crisis of human nature. There are lots of factors which make us face the question of Homo Sapiens’ surviving. These are the increasing denaturation of goods making them potentially dangerous, the pollution of environment by mutagens and as a sequence the crippling of gene pool, genocide as a form of international fighting, the consumer perversion of human nature with the goal of extending the market, the psychobiotic conflict as an expression of the fatal identification with the crisis social structure, and others. In general the number of medical-psychological problems caused by the system crisis of civilization is so great that we could organize much more than one conference on those objects only. Though our conference is not a medical-psychological one, and so I am drawing your attention to one of the most fundamental problems: high mortality caused by the identification with the pole of the absolute social evil is inevitable on the top of the crisis.

The inevitability of the high mortality caused by the identification with the pole of social evil on the top of the crisis

Man is made so that it is always difficult to admit that he/she is not right. Becoming aware of the defectiveness of one’s own convictions is hardly possible if they justify keeping the prosperity. That is the reason why the leaders of developed countries and their inhabitants can be further comforted quite a long time by an idea that their prosperity is a product of their better life style than that of the less developed countries. It’s true to a little extent, but a greater part of truth is that their prosperity is based mostly on the oppression of the less developed. As a matter of fact, in the modern civilization the bunch of developed countries is the pole of social evil which is quickly becoming absolute. With the crisis worsening, this fact will become more and more evident. On realization of this fact, a man faces a dilemma: either to keep living in psychological fidelity to his\her successful state and to keep his\her prosperity, or to become a dissident, apostate. Being dissident is always fraught with the lost of social well-being, and that is why for the most people it is unacceptable. So, in such situation a person has to identify himself/herself with an evident absolute evil being fully aware of it, which is extremely pathogenic. The point is that the position of the human Enemy involves psychobiotic splitting and autoaggression: the Enemy of the human race is undoubtedly an enemy to one’s self, to one’s human nature, so development of an autoagression-caused disease is inevitable. As many such diseases are practically incurable, the mentioned prospect is very dramatic. It gets worse due to the fact that the latent awareness, better to say feeling of belonging to the pole of Evil comes to young people who perish then first of all, being not capable to overcome the psychological addiction to their parents. The stories of many drug addicts coming out of the ruling circles are the stories of that kind.

In connection with the mentioned psychobiotic splitting which is already now one of the basic causes for the mass perish of our contemporaries I have to point out one more possible mechanism. There are empirical grounds to suppose that there are genes of self-destruction in human genome. Now it is the convention to think that the death is not a programmed event but the person dies just because of exhausting potentialities for further existing. But often one can not ascertain the real cause of death. Sometimes it comes as a result of intentional or unpremeditated suicide, sometimes without any visible physical reasons. Close look at the lives of people who died in such way makes me again and again come to the idea that in many cases the death expresses the impossibility of further living of the given individual. At that two psychological radicals are often evident: individualism and misanthropy. So if such is the case, if individualism and misanthropy can trigger the program of individual’s self-destruction, then the mass death on the top of the system crisis of the commercial civilization is inevitable. With the competitive struggle becoming more and more furious, we necessarily come to the situation when the expression “Homo homini lupus est” is a basic formula of relations. And if such relations are overburdened with the awareness of belonging to the pole of absolute social evil, the launching of the self-destruction program is inevitable.

I won’t describe the other directions of the crisis of human nature; they are firstly much more evident, secondly less essential. And the general picture is clear even without it: the humanist transformation of the civilization is needed. Unfortunately it seems to be possible only after the majority of people responsible for social structure understand that the present world order can’t be kept further. We can’t move that moment of truth nearer to us, but we have to make everything possible to make our contemporaries to see things clearly, that is our main task. I’ll return to the question of our tasks in the end of my speech, and now some words about the components without which the humanist transformation is not possible at all.

The components of the process of humanist transformation

The first component is a political organization of humanists – a party capable to take the leading role. It is clear that it is an ideological organization first of all. At the same time the party should consist of competent people who could fulfill the needed social-economical transformation with skill. The problem is that there are negligibly few persons propagating humanistic ideals among the social functionaries of the modern formation. At our conference we do not have them at all. As a matter of fact we face a big task of restoration and building of the Humanist Party.

The second obligatory component of the humanistic transformation is collectivization of the means of production. That is why we should analyze very carefully the positive experience of planned economy which we do have in our country. To solve that task one should engage young humanistically oriented specialists competent in economy. That is a complicated task of course, since today economically competent people are those who strive after possibility of self-realization in the present social structure and do not see the forthcoming transformation.

The third necessary component of the humanist transformation is the creation of such money-free system of social regulation where the interests of full-fledged free self-realization of every person would be the subject of social care. It is clear that it is possible only on the basis of the modern hi-tech communicational systems. Also, the very abolition of money, as a primitive but universal means of public production regulation, is possible only on computer basis. Consequently, one of the main tasks in building our Coalition should be the engaging the respective specialists in its rows.

Our tasks