In The Dialectics of Nature (1883) Engels insists on dialectics as “the science of interconnections” (in contrast to metaphysics which is concerned with essence). He names three laws of dialectics that can be abstracted from the history of nature and human society: “The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa; The law of the interpenetration of opposites; The law of the negation of the negation.” This amazing unfinished and little-known manuscript proposes communism not as an order but as a series of processes. At the heart of it is the vitality of the social forces. Together with Marx, Engels discredit the notion of human essence and instead claimed: “In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations” (These on Feuerbach VI, 1845). This non-essential interconnectedness is called love and it is manifested politically by communism.
Our late fascism, reacting not to any egalitarian revolution but to the liberal foreclosure of emancipatory politics (communism in particular), can still be defined, by the concept of Ernst Bloch, as the simultaneity of non-synchronicity. Processes of capitalist exploitation generate a time-lag in the temporal development of the social sphere, that create an uneven asynchronous orchestration of the social – homeless people may live as hunter-gatherer, while Peter Thiel lives in a future world of artificial private islands. This postapocalyptic reality points to a realisation that the catastrophe has already happened. For the COVID vaccines being a continuation of the pandemic by different means, is but one example of finance’s foreclosure of the social by extractive simulation. Therefore, a best-case-scenario for a future commons would entails not a rationalized administration of society’s productive powers, but instead a surplus of life. Bataille describes in The Accursed Share (1967) solar energy as the source of life’s exuberant development: “The origin and essence of our wealth are given in the radiation of the sun, which dispenses energy - wealth - without any return. The sun gives without ever receiving.” This generous expenditure provides a clear scenario for a communism that exceeds beyond the dictum “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (Marx’s formulation in Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875). Here we are speaking of a communism that follows Lacan’s definition of love: “Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.”
In The Dialectics of Nature (1883) Engels insists on dialectics as “the science of interconnections” (in contrast to metaphysics which is concerned with essence). He names three laws of dialectics that can be abstracted from the history of nature and human society: “The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa; The law of the interpenetration of opposites; The law of the negation of the negation.” This amazing unfinished and little-known manuscript proposes communism not as an order but as a series of processes. At the heart of it is the vitality of the social forces. Together with Marx, Engels discredit the notion of human essence and instead claimed: “In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations” (These on Feuerbach VI, 1845). This non-essential interconnectedness is called love and it is manifested politically by communism.
Our late fascism, reacting not to any egalitarian revolution but to the liberal foreclosure of emancipatory politics (communism in particular), can still be defined, by the concept of Ernst Bloch, as the simultaneity of non-synchronicity. Processes of capitalist exploitation generate a time-lag in the temporal development of the social sphere, that create an uneven asynchronous orchestration of the social – homeless people may live as hunter-gatherer, while Peter Thiel lives in a future world of artificial private islands. This postapocalyptic reality points to a realisation that the catastrophe has already happened. For the COVID vaccines being a continuation of the pandemic by different means, is but one example of finance’s foreclosure of the social by extractive simulation. Therefore, a best-case-scenario for a future commons would entails not a rationalized administration of society’s productive powers, but instead a surplus of life. Bataille describes in The Accursed Share (1967) solar energy as the source of life’s exuberant development: “The origin and essence of our wealth are given in the radiation of the sun, which dispenses energy - wealth - without any return. The sun gives without ever receiving.” This generous expenditure provides a clear scenario for a communism that exceeds beyond the dictum “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (Marx’s formulation in Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875). Here we are speaking of a communism that follows Lacan’s definition of love: “Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.”