Guest essay from Egor Kotkin

There’s no political conversation worth having that is not about history:

1. There’s nothing humans do, nothing in human existence outside of history. We live in history, only to become history.
2. History is made of politics. Politics is a process of history. Today’s history is yesterday’s politics, today’s politics is tomorrow’s history Politics is the processing of history into tomorrow’s history. Hence politics is what human lives made of and how they can be changed.

Yet Western culture, from its inception, tends to promote an adolescent, infantile perspective that puts the currently living people sort of outside of historical process, rather than helping them to find their place within it, because it conflates history with the past, as something that was before, alienating it, separating from and putting in opposition to one’s “now.”

It has an allure of purported objectivity, a sort-of “above the fight,” bird-view perspective. But a closer examination of this attitude reveals the complete opposite of objectivity: putting oneself outside of history, in a position to evaluate and judge historical processes, while taking oneself out of material conditions that created, nurtured, and educated that individual, means putting that individual on equal footing with entire cultures and civilizations, giving the unearned right to judge the entire history of humanity to anyone who’s ignorant and/or delusional enough to accept it.

It promotes an unspoken, implied convention that “now” and “the outcome of history” are one and the same, as if one was born just in time to see all the plot lines of history finished or just about to be wrapped up into the grand narrative of human history—to preside over the issuing of its final score. This is an egocentric view of history that essentially makes history about you, a person living today—which makes this logical fallacy inherently appealing to any individual who has not learned to know better yet.

Attributing the prevalence of this perspective to Western culture specifically is a big claim, but it becomes justified if we look at Western civilization: what we understand by the West today, and how this understanding historically originated and developed, through the lens of capitalism. As soon as we understand the notion of the “West” as a socio-cultural identity adopted by capitalism before the analytical tools to recognize, describe, and analyze capitalism on its own terms (like Marxism) were developed, all the other pieces will finally start to fall into place.

Western civilization is a legacy term for “capitalist civilization” from before the times the term “capitalism” was coined and respective analytical toolkit was developed.

Accordingly, the historical perspective of a “Western man” is a capitalist historical perspective: its societal, civilizational infantile grandiosity is an inevitable byproduct of profit seeking modus operandi being elevated to the way of civilization. It stands out of everything else as much as capitalism stands out of everything else, because the modern notion of the West was formed in conjunction with the formation of capitalism. Western culture is capitalist culture; those can be used interchangeably.

Capitalism and life perspective

Understanding reality solely through one’s internal experience of interacting with it (as if the way things appeared/felt to you were the way things really are) is a normal state for a child, as it is the initial stage of development of consciousness—after emerging from an unconscious existence, before developing self-awareness. Growing up is precisely the process of learning and internalizing that the world does not revolve around you, that you are not the only person in the world and the course of things, that the state in which things first appeared to you does not mean that this state is their status quo, and that the course of things, the course and pace of history does not stop or change because you entered this life.

Growing up, person’s perspective shifts from a childish worldview, centered on the self—that is, when the mental model of reality and the subjective personal experience of perceiving it are one and the same—into a general mental model of reality, independent of the individual, in which a person’s place in reality is determined in connection with other people, and in the perception of time, a future dimension develops in which the illusion of any temporal completeness in the present dissolves.

But capitalism interferes with the process of developing personality by conditioning the individual instead of maturing beyond their infantile egocentrism, to extend the vision of oneself as the main character throughout one’s life. Because capitalism, at its core, is about the pursuit of profit, “profit maxxing.” And from the profit maxxing perspective, one’s reality (including the entire preceding history, i.e., past and present”) becomes a source material for one to find a way to convert it into profits, while future (as the time when you no more) disappears.

Profit-seeking perspective makes it impossible to see oneself as a part of humanity, sewn into it by relationships with other people, as it contradicts the objective of taking profit created by others and turning it into private wealth. Profit necessarily puts the one who’s after it on the opposite side from other humans: other’s wealth is the source, one’s wealth is the outcome. Under the cultural hegemony of capitalism, it becomes the way of life; makes life itself about “profit maxxing”.

Society, that orients itself alongside profit extraction, in that loses the sense of the future, because idea of the changing future necessarily puts profit seeking in context, creates a historic framework in which value of today’s profit seeking becomes relative against the direction of the future change—whether a future gets better or worse. Adding future to the picture destroys the idea of a profit as an absolute value, value in itself, the final and the highest one.

Capitalism must be the end of history, the everlasting now: life itself must cease to change, because the idea that tomorrow might be different from yesterday creates a context for reflecting on the changes that decisions made today under capitalism will impact life tomorrow and the day after. The emerging delta between two states of life on either side of a capitalist decision creates a moral framework within which the profit-oriented mechanics of capitalism cease to be amoral, the rate of profit becomes convertible into a moral price, making the driving force of capitalism measurable, evaluable, and fundamentally limitable—which contradicts its very nature.

Thus, capitalism conditions this antagonistic view of history as something that was before and ended with the beginning of one’s life; capitalism conditions to see the entirety of history as something that was building up to one’s opportunity to make their life about profit maxxing, and reduces the view of the entirety of the history’s consequences, manifested in all differently lived contemporary lives, to the profit maxxing opportunities. Because existence of the future when you are no more to profit-maxx (as well as to consume, to acquire, to collect and to hold on to something, or anything—in other words, all of you-centered life activities) creates something outside of profit maxxing, against which it can be measured and evaluated in moral terms: was it good or bad for what came after? And so do the others, who live some other life, different from yours.

And, conversely, focus on the profit removes the future out of the picture. And by this, capitalism removes it’s “now,” regardless of each generation in a row lives in that “now” from history, because if the present time do not supposed to have “after,” there’s no change in the future—the change have ended by “now.” Since the continuation of the course of history means the continuation of the changes it brings, the time without a potential to change can exist only after the historical time, when history became a history. The capitalist “now” is a time outside of history, a time outside of time. Or rather, it conditions people sufficiently immersed in capitalist fatalism, i.e., those living under the most developed capitalism, to perceive their time, their reality, as post-historical—which deprives them of a sense of historical responsibility for their actions.

In other words, capitalism dissociates human lives from history…

Profit maxxing is in itself a-moral, but maintaining its bliss requires denying that any other life that is not about one’s profit—because profit is always someone’s—matters, because admitting this means admitting that one’s life and one’s profit can be looked at, weighed from the perspective of other lives, which means—in moral terms. In other words, maintaining the bliss of a-morality of profit maxxing and capitalism requires denying that the future (lives) after you and the present beyond you (of other people, that is not about you) matters.

• The latter, incidentally, is key to understanding the connection between the fundamentally antisocial nature of capitalism, how capitalism fosters sociopathy, and is therefore inherently toxic to the very structure of society.

However, the relationship between market logic and social ties in human relations is already an area of ​​empirical study, and therefore less interesting for this essay than its main topic: capitalism’s connection to ahistoricism/apoliticism. This connection itself is not a new discovery either. However, in the process of working on the question of understanding the Third World War, I came to understand the scale of the world-ending consequences of this blind spot in the capitalist modus operandi.

How to Recognize World War III [KKF longread]

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…even though history is never dissociated from human lives.

Political thinking defines the ways of our conscious engagement with our present conditions to shape tomorrow’s social reality. Politics cannot change the present, as present reality resulted from past politics. Present politics, therefore, can only change future reality, be it literally the next day, the next year, the next generation’s reality or the next century.

Changing material conditions generate a potential political energy of change: the bigger the underlying shift in material relations is, on the bigger scale the political change it can facilitate. But it is up to political thought to which extent this potential political energy can be actualized in the actual change in the way a society organized and run. Having political thinking advanced enough allows one to bypass the limits of the current moment, by changing the conditions of the moment first, to build more on the more developed ground later.

• The illusion of the eternity of modern “normality” makes people apolitical, paralyzing the will to resist—embarrassing oneself by worrying about future too much becomes the most frightening thing possible, when the future itself need not be worried about.
• In turn, the dulled response to political incentives in developed capitalism conditions the selection of the most irresponsible politicians, in which, in the absence of an active opposition, those who go the furthest win.

In the face of any realities that seem too incomplete, too unresolved, to conform to the sense of finality of the capitalist form of life—whether poverty, famine, war, climate change, child labor, slavery, genocide, etc.—capitalist fatalism promotes denial of their significance, reducing them to some holdovers of the past, that are bound to pass any moment now, and thus do not require to do (or know) anything about them or just do more capitalism.

In other words, capitalism preconditions living with the sense that is the “end of history” or at least it about any moment now, and though as soon as capitalism had developed enough, the history took a turn that made claiming that it’s basically over extremely hard, with World War I starting in 1914, with the subsequent life being anything but settled all over the West and other affected regions of the world, for at least until 1945, or even being split worldwide in the Cold War for over 40 more years next—as long as capitalism was continuing to go on, this expectation prevailed as well, and as soon as it began to look like it’s over, the rejection of reality of any, but capitalist, living broke out prematurely in Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 article “The End of History?” (and lost the question mark immediately after the USSR dissolution in 1992 book).

Political thinking that capitalism promotes is known as capitalist realism (“it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”), but in effect it’s more of a capitalist fatalism.

Capitalism and political agency

The only way to live with a sense of life’s flow—in touch with the passage of time—that capitalism allows is through the process of profit maximization and capital accumulation. For others who lack the capital to connect with the flow of time, instead of experiencing life’s flow, they experience a state of running in place in a timeless stagnation.

The lives of people without capital are lived in a permanent background deficit of something essential to start living: insufficient income, lack of housing, untreated health problems, the inability to obtain a desired education, to take up an interesting hobby—the life of a person without capital is spent trying to meet the minimum requirements for starting life under capitalism. In other words, a person’s time under capitalism passes in a state of pre-life, a constant struggle to start living—when the mortgage will be paid off, when the salary will increase sufficiently, when health problems will be cured, when the opportunity will appear to enroll in a course for the profession of dreams, etc.

Having faced conditions of one’s own personal realities that do not match the glorious promise of profit-seeking living, it induces the inward directed denial, denial that their life, their experiences as they are, matter, until they conform to the expectations of what it means to live their best life under capitalism. People are trained to dismiss the value of their own lives, reducing it to a sense of living a pre-life, expectation of actual life waiting ahead, as it passes by.

Politically, it disempowers people who are struggling to just start living, from participating in the struggle to change life—in politics. Otherwise, anyone who’s not a capital haver, engaging in any political project, that does not assumes the finality of capitalism, and dedicated to only reproducing capitalist conditions further, thus a loser who instead of dealing with the reality of their loserdom by grinding harder and “cleaning the room,” so to speak, engages in political escapism. Because people who do not feel living their full lives cannot claim their full political voice either—and both are kept out of full reach for the majority by the capitalist conditions.

The sense of inadequacy of the reality of their lives to the instilled idea of ​​what their life should be gives rise to the inadequacy of political positions to their material interests—a phenomenon known as “temporarily embarrassed billionaires,” that is not uniquely American, but rather specifically capitalist, and much more tragic, if looked closely upon, than ironic phrasing lets away.

People’s feeling that their lives do not fully matter for themselves even, until they fully bloom into glory of capitalist living, reduces their political agency, because it’s hard to insist that one’s interests matter as much as interests of capital havers, if one doesn’t see their life fully started yet even before they acquire capital of their own. The doctrine of life, being full only when it’s a life of a successful profit seeking, inevitably creates the sensation of any other life being inadequate, incomplete, and matter less, than a life of a capital owner, which discourages political agency of “temporarily embarrassed billionaires,” while reinforces belief of capital owners that only their lives fully matter, that became recently familiar to the masses with Jeffrey Epstein life and case revelations, but again, have less to do with his persona, or a country of origin, or a country he was working for, and more with the values that capitalist system promotes and reinforces.

These two main effects of capitalist fatalism: the denial of the historical insolvency of problems, and the suppression of individuals’ political agency, is precisely why where capitalism grows to be the strongest, most developed and capable to encompass human reality the most, situation inevitably becomes the most ripe for history making comeback with vengeance.

The “final score of history” fallacy

One of the most toxic side effects of the capitalism-enduced false sense of “end of history” is how it creates an illusion (or delusion) that people’s historical reality, the way it is—is the final score of history. Which should be recognized as its own logical fallacy: the final score of history fallacy. For examples, how Islamophobes, looking at the highs and lows of the 15-20 century long history of Islam and Christianity, will declare that the current era in which Islam appears to be more fundamentalist and backwards then Christianity, and that is actually indicative of an absolute truth about world religions.

And whenever left without introspection and supervision, the “final score of history” fallacy. encourages bigotry and chauvinism of all sort, which then gets exacerbated by the fact that expectation of imminent end of history that comes with capitalist realism perfectly in line with the christian tendency towards apocalypticism, sense of the the looming doom—and together they start to reinforce each other.

Adolescence as the stage of civilization

Historical process encompasses entirety of human reality: it conditions our social reality, it sets up our relations with natural reality, and it defines human thinking (including imagination) i.e. philosophical (spiritual, artistic) reality we create.

1. Within human collective, from interaction with underlying biological and physical realities, emerges human thinking,
2. that is then being developed further into natural philosophy (the biggest part of which is science), that creates our social reality (artificial nature). Our social reality emerges in interaction of human thinking with human nature.
3. Understanding of social reality in interaction historical conditions of the current social change it, and developed as social (historical) thunking further.

This why the adolescent political thinking in interaction with material conditions creates adolescent social reality, institutionalized infantilism, of which “consumer society” is the highest form.

Capitalism has this quality of a young adult:

• it has developed enough to be able to feed itself and everyone with whom they live together,
• but not mature enough to give to society with all his strength, as society gave to him so that he could have such strength.

At the dawn of civilization, when the productive forces of sedentary humanity had grown sufficiently to allow for a population growth thousands of times greater than that of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, but not sufficiently to guarantee their survival, the willingness of some people to exploit others became a historical advantage for the progress of civilization: by accumulating the productive surplus of their society, the ruling classes thereby created a reserve sufficient to maintain the continuity of civilization during times of famine, war, and other cataclysms.

The concentration of material resources in a certain part of society allowed for a sufficient number of people to have free time and materially secure the freedom to choose how to spend it, so that some people could devote themselves to philosophy, reading, and the sciences, accumulating the experience of others and contributing their own. This was not the aim of the exploiting classes, but nevertheless, thousands of years of plunder, enslavement, extortion, coercion and colonialism ensured the continuity of organized society long enough for the accumulated collective knowledge to increase the productive forces of society enough to eliminate the threat of famine and to produce enough material goods so that for the first time it became possible to provide the material means for having leisure time, with a choice of what to do with it, for the entire population, and not just a part of it.

The historical role of the freedom of some to exploit the labor of all for their own enrichment, which is fundamental to the mechanics of the world civilization that has historically developed by now, has turned from enabling the social minority of permanent material surplus it created to maintain a permanent pocket of knowledge, in which the progress of civilization has been incubated, into a barrier to further progress, allowing only a minority of people to realize their potential as a contribution to progress.

Outdated economic relations have become an obstacle to the development of human productive forces, preventing the realization of humanity’s productive potential in a new stage of civilization. The class character of today’s civilization, having served as the external mold that allowed the muscles of its modern productive forces to develop, has become a cast, holding back and crippling the further healthy development of civilization. Locked in old relationships, the productive forces of modern humanity are becoming a threat to its existence—like a weapon in the hands of an immature adolescent.

The capitalist denial of the future, i.e., the denial of change, thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: a change in the political order of modern civilization is a necessity, necessitated by the fundamentally increased productive forces of civilization under capitalism. Capitalism denies civilization a historical future, the material basis for which capitalism has provided.

But the denial of the course of history does not abolish the course of history. It merely deprives us of the ability to direct it. Change cannot be stopped. All that capitalist fatalism stops today is the possibility of change for the better.

This is why humanity, despite the continued progress of its productive forces, which has reached incredible heights, is simultaneously becoming collectively, organizationally, and politically dull, while an increasingly technologically advanced civilization is becoming increasingly dysfunctional.

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In other words, the discrepancy between the current level of economic productivity and the outdated principles of political organization is not simply an “imperfect situation”: continuing this dissonance will inevitably make it impossible to maintain the current level of progress. In other words, if civilization fails to make political progress, it will face technological setbacks. And the fact that the luxury of not taking this step no longer exists demonstrates that technological setbacks have already begun. The peak of technological civilization—the rise of aviation and space—was achieved by two states: the USSR and the USA. Currently, both are experiencing obvious setbacks: first, in the USSR, aircraft manufacturing and advanced space exploration simultaneously became a lost skill in 1991, along with the USSR. But now the degradation of aircraft manufacturing and space exploration is undeniable and has become noticeable in the USA as well.

It’s not an aberration, and inability to move political clock of civilization forward, will inevitably turn the technological clock for entire humanity back:

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The development of political thinking beyond capitalism is thus not simply an opportunity provided by capitalism, but a necessity for preserving and consolidating what capitalism has achieved as a material foundation for building humanity’s future.

How must humanity’s ideology change?

Having reached a level in the development of humanity’s productive forces where they allow material surplus not for a portion but for the entire population, civilization fundamentally changes its mode of existence: it can no longer exist in a reactive mode, driven by the needs of survival. The unconscious drive for survival was sufficient to guide civilization’s progress, preventing it from straying from its path of progress, as long as survival for a significant portion of humanity remained a matter of luck. Material surplus, by eliminating the problem of survival, humanity was deprived of the inexorable compulsion it provided to follow the course of progress in its activities, without the need to consider its path or the freedom to choose to abandon it, guaranteed by the constant and inexorable presence of death behind any “otherwise” deviating from it. The sum of the vectors formed by the animal impulse to flee in the opposite direction from death formed a general line of progress, from which humanity could not deviate until very recently.

Ironically, it was precisely this sense of material security that made it possible for humanity to lose its bearings and travel too far down the path to disaster before the threat signals became unbearable. This isn’t a figure of speech, but an objective material reality: the modern world has created a class of billionaires and provided them with such a degree of distance from the reality of the threats that they, like oil barons, trade the habitability of the earth for their super-profits and, like tech oligarchs, prefer to build doomsday bunkers rather than deviate from the course of their actions, in the very consequences of which they recognize the likelihood of the need for doomsday bunkers.

This absolutely new, radically different, first-in-history-of-civilization-time threat not from scarcity, but by abundance, requires a reorganization of civilization on principles directly opposed to the guiding forces of human history before: a goal-oriented civilization. A civilization capable of taking control of the surplus created by its achieved productive power. To do this, civilization must free itself from the control of surplus—that directs capitalism, which directs civilization.

The development of political thinking beyond capitalism is thus a necessity for humanity, enabling it to utilize existing material conditions to build a society capable of realizing its goals.

There is no room left for faith in the magic of the “invisible hand of the market”—lack of control, a renunciation of control—and that is the problem. Competition no longer has a constructive side; now competition is only self-destructive; the future can only be built through cooperation: collective, conscious prioritization, collective planning, and purposeful action.

Humanity now has the power to build its own future, should it only to dare itself to have a vision of it.