The Ladder!

Greed and power as the final enterprise.

Allow me to tell you a story, about an invisible superpower that has possessed consciousness, body and power of all modern human beings. A superpower not specific to any nation, nor is it concerned with life, liberty or happiness. A type of presence and power, that is also unavailable to religion, spirituality and popular culture. Literally behind every popular banner, be it technological, military, economic, political or cultural, as a godly enterprise.

The entire world is a “market” and each one of us on a vertical path of achievement, capital gains and triumph. One that appears like a ladder, akin to a DNA sequence, that every human must climb through their lives. As a matter of so called evolution, the great myths of modernity, and less we disobey and climb off such a ladder, there will be “a war of all, against all”. Is the great Leviathan’s warning!

Progress is the modern divine, and hence self-consciousness expresses itself via enlightenment or science or modern techniques or even Capitalism, Marxism, Socialism etc. All such forces or call them “currents” can guide us, towards the “all-swallowing beast (Leviathan) with a language suitable to its last days. The Worldeater — swallower of worlds and destroyer of the Biosphere” (Fredy Perlman, Against Leviathan). And it is prescient to remember, that men like Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Marx and Engels, Victor Adler, Lewis Henry Morgan and a range of white visionaries from the 17th, 18th and 19th century, did great work to advertise, legitimize and to glorify the power of the same “World-Eater”. The historic process of such “World Eating” can stretch over billions of pages, can be found within thousands of books dedicated to emancipation, communism and capitalism. Even more so, in the transition towards an even greater civilization, an endless ladder of a preordained “higher stage”.

To that “language suitable” we should not identify religion with salvation, or greed with devotion, but our unconditional loyalty to “enterprise”. Because ownership, exploitation or even destruction of one kind or another is at the basis of “progress” consequently “greed becomes enterprise” and all our ancient, natural and even super-natural deals are either superfluous or done with!

As a species, human beings learned everything important, initially, from the animals and Nature in a “manner of”. The Beavers revealed how to make dams and waterways. Bees revealed collective organization. Birds revealed migratory routes over land and later over sea. Wolves and the big cats revealed “pack hunter strategies”. Spiders revealed intricate design, nets and “entrapment”. Animal bones and teeth revealed strength and durability. Plants revealed medicines. The examples are innumerable and insightful. The entire “Web Of Life” was a source of inspiration, revelation and the “stage of survival” for hundreds of thousands of years. Is why ancient people, identified themselves not just as humans but also kin or “cousins of animals”. For eons human beings copied the “ways of animals” and such mimicry was (and still is) evolutionary, yet absolutely contrary to European enlightenment, that framed a “dominating pyramid” to define its “social contract theory.^”

To call the pre-historic human beings “primitive” is just bogus. Their visions, nightmares, atonement, rituals, life and death was not based on some “evolutionary ladder” nor the demonic view of Nature framed by Thomas Hobbes. That “Web Of Life” (inspired by the Greek ‘oikos’ - household) has been steadily erased, re-conditioned, educated, influenced, guided or worse entirely imprisoned by new destructive theories and rules — ones that encourage us to believe that modern humans can “manipulate the fundamental laws of reality and Nature itself, by a strong, ethical, undivided government.” (Leviathan, The Matter, Form and Power Of A Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical. 1651 CE). Centuries later the “ethical and undivided” have become the technological and totalitarian, across the world, albeit retaining Hobbes logic and its white, male, morality. No less disturbing is Karl Marx’s take on “Human Nature” that he assumed that all “morality recognizes only its own universal and rational religion”. Marx’s “Moral God” was the benign state and its sovereignty, in place of Hobbes Leviathan. Most erroneous the above deduction and worldview, when we get to know about Stalin’s tyranny in the USSR, from 1925 (when elected) to 1953 (death). Alas, even Marx and Engels were of the opinion, that the savage, ungovernable non-Europeans had to first go through European style emancipation, in order to reach that “higher state” of political autonomy and economic sovereignty.

Thomas Hobbes created the globalized figure of the Leviathan (beast) for an “imperial purpose” and not with the intent to build an everlasting peaceful dominion of human beings on the planet. The only people left in this world, who believe in the Leviathan are the imperial, top of the pyramid and for them “everything about humanity can be explained materialistically”. This “everything” in the hands of mainstream science and the given political economy have become “the new divinity of the entire managerial class is all about efficiency, one that is present within the administration of every nation” (Jacques Ellul, Technological society).

How daft or plain vicious, in hindsight when we read Hobbes worldview that “Life is but a motion of limbs. For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer?” Who is the Artificer? Is it God? No. Is it a Superpower? Not really. Is it the State? Who cares anymore! Is it the latest science? If you prefer.

The great “Artificer” lives and expropriates everything in the name of “progress and enterprise”. Modernity is an enclosure, regardless if you live inside a superpower like America or China or Germany, or some rising nation like South Africa or India, or destroyed and ruined nations like Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Haiti, Bangladesh, etc.

The big ideas based about life, liberty and happiness, acquired unprecedented eloquence through the ages. Through philosophy, religion, art, music, theater, poetry etc. Rendered absolutely useless though, in the modern age, by a million spectacles and illusions of the technological order. Guy Debord sums up the above loss, as something “universal” in the 20th century, as the “the instrument of unification” (Society Of Spectacle). As a part of society it can specifically keep the entire population “busy and occupied within highly alienated or even hostile environments otherwise.”

The success of Thomas Hobbes demonic worldview has actualized itself almost everywhere. The “enterprise” to destroy and dehumanize is perfectly in sync with “state of free nature as pure anarchy and terror.” (Leviathan). From this line of imperial philosophy, science and anthropology came about the horrendous logic of “Man versus Nature” followed by “Order versus Chaos” and “State versus Anarchy” and “Civilized versus Barbarian” — a range of well-developed theories, policies, propaganda and wide consensus that succeed in the “industrial scale dehumanization” as well as de-naturalization of everything that currently lives. The evolution, but leading to utterly false binaries. Deeply racist myths framed by the likes of Lewis Henry Morgan, who believed that the “Indigenous are childlike or at best have achieved a degree of adolescence … for their emancipation as the truly civilized was not possible as long as they were based within wild nature” (1858, Observations On The Iroquoians).

But enough about such “free Nature” and its mass devaluation in the name of progress. Which nation or society would like to be called “primitive” when a vast majority of human beings are convinced, that they can participate and rise to “command vast economic potential and influence; and to present a universal ideology.” (Paul Dukes, Evolution Of Superpowers In The Modern Era)

Our world ladder emerges from the dawn of civilization — concurrent to the making of earlier civilizations and their collapse and consequent reformation. Ancient and medieval history reveals the eternal quest for “higher stage” civilization again and again. India’s caste system and class pyramid is one such ancient ladder of a “superior order”. One that can also be understood as the “world’s oldest surviving apartheid” (Why I am not a Hindu, Kancha Ilaiah). The Hindu Caste System also deals with a “state of nature” the dialectics of which were defined long ago, within the Varnas (circa 1600 BCE) An “origin myth” is a type of myth that explains the beginnings of a natural or social aspect of the world it is situated within.

Once placed upon a select group of people, something called the “Sukta” gives an expression “to immanence of radical unity in diversity” or in other words a divine law to impose hierarchy, labor, exclusion and exploitation. At the foundation of this world-praxis, is “Vaishnava” thought, that frames the philosophy and theology of “Bhagavata”. And how do all such ancient divinities, rules and involved subjugation and slavery play out in the 21st century in India? A nation that is also “the largest democracy in the world”? Exclusion or prohibition, makes the above social hierarchy — that controls marriage, procreation, even diet and living rules (prohibition of inter-dining, inter-worship, physical segregation and civil barriers). The “superior Brahman” (born of the Brahma, creator of the universe) have long touted the virtues of “caste pollution and purity” and the imposition of religious disabilities. The savage, illiterate, dirty and stupid have all been lumpened together as the “lower castes” or even “Shudras” and “Adivasis”. The era of western colonization and so called emancipation of Indians, followed by the struggle for independence (1940s) did little to change the status and figure of the “Untouchable’ and even later legal term “Untouchability” in India.

The “Dalit community” is a product of the caste ladder, also subject to indentured labor exploitation, which manifests in the existing economy of the “emerging nation”. In our world of data about everything, albeit is still impossible to tell exactly how many maids, servants, cooks, cleaners, drivers, nannies, peons, garbage collectors, gutter cleaners, local scavengers, that serve the “higher class”. Roughly half the population, that has been effectively excluded from ongoing “progress” and “higher state” of Hindu evolution. No amount of liberalism, democracy, widespread education, reform and social pressure has caused a true emancipation of millions, of women and men at the lower rung of the same Hindu ladder. The genesis and consolidation of such a ladder or pyramid also extends itself into other religions and minority groups nested inside India, such as Islam, Christianity, Sikhism etc. A high caste Hindu, converting to Christianity based on whatever theological needs, still enjoys way better prospects within the new enclosure than a “Dalit” who also happens to be a fellow Christian.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, perhaps the most important Dalit figure challenged the racial theories framed by the ruling elite, including Gandhi, Nehru, Malvia and Savarkar. To highlight, Ambedkar denounced the bourgeois struggle for independence against the British as “partial” — still pending, the true emancipation of all Indians, as a “common racial stock”. For this very reason, the Hindu Caste system was never abolished, never mentioned in the constitution, nor was it addressed by the new lawmakers, corresponding class of bourgeois elite, or say the “new rulers and visionaries of independent India” (Everybody Loves a Good Drought, Prof P. Sainath).

As the Leviathan reached its terminal stage in America and Europe, it actually rose to even greater success in China — most obviously during the last 30 years. Is what makes the Chinese Party Congress claim that “the Chinese modernization offers humanity a new choice for achieving modernization” (Think China, 2022). This double dose of “modernization” aside for the moment, for a vast majority of Chinese the deal remains clear. That collective labor, following clockwork efficiency and better technology can achieve an “higher state” civilization — envisioned earlier by Mao Tse Tung or compromised by Den Xiaoping and now orchestrated by Xi Ping. But, China and its vast industrial complex is also based on “forced labor, much like every other industrialized nation. There can be no exceptions to that universal matter (and victory) of efficiency and “World-Eating Progress” (Fredy Perlman). The new power relations in China (post 2000) are also a field of continuous social conflict and rising wealth gap.

The “Chinese enterprise” includes violations of shop-floor labor, poor working standards”, “corporal punishment and physical assaults”. Whats worse, the Chinese Leviathan has entirely flattened the ““violations of the right to work”” as well as smashed “the right to organize and undertake collective action” (Anita Chan, China’s Workers under Assault). Does it not sound so familiar? When we read about an Amazon Warehouse worker or a mother of four children in Bangladesh making sportswear for Nike, Adidas and Puma? So is the “China model” worthy of emulation by other nations? Why yes, especially if one is in favor of economic slavery, destruction of the biosphere in the name of progress, endless urbanization, total surveillance and still wishes to achieve a “higher state”. Who is jealous of China? Only a bunch of morons, mostly based in the West.

But, kudos to such efficiency and rapid wealth generated by “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. A type of “hockey-stick rise” that was symbolic of America, at the beginning of the 20th century. Karl Marx’s “lumpen proletariat” can also be understood as inmates of a global industrial complex — workers at the service of the “World-Eater”. The one who has the final say, about when to rise, when and how to work, to relax, procreate, enjoy and to sleep. The dark reality of such progress in the Chinese context is understood in a recent interview of an Uighur youth: “Everyone’s job is clear – to fulfill the demanding annual and monthly quotas and strict discipline is their only condition for continued survival, to live and possibly see their distant relatives”. Most pathetic then, as emancipation, as to how the regime has actually achieved anything sustainable, with the so called “four modernisations” - in industry, agriculture, technology, and defense.

The old “Curse Of Labor” (Ecclesiastes 2:22) has transformed into an unquestionable devotion to efficiency, the nationalist daydreams of achieving a “higher state”. This sort of Socialism, is particularly attractive for those educated and based in the West, however disenchanted with its fading prospects, now bowing down to or cheering for the new “Chinese Leviathan”. YouTube is replete with “Non-Chinese Fanboys Of China”. Part of the cheer-leading squad, of China-style-progress, are Marxist intellectuals like Radhika Desai, Vijay Prasad and Gabriel Rockhill to name just a few. Yet many more well meaning folks who represent a type of negation, that is symbolic of the bourgeois class and its unquestionable devotion — to civilization, the continuity of modernity and industrialization.

American author, Fredy Perlman’s book Against His-tory, Against Leviathan! inspires and provokes us, by the position it takes as a new ‘primitivist’ or Neo-anarchist. Perlman’s idea of freedom is not individual but within “the state of nature that nests all the communities of freedoms”. According to the author, the “enemy is not just capital and technology but eventually our unquestionable devotion to progress” and hence the confrontation with the “World-Eater” and Hobbes Leviathan. The author makes a compelling argument, about popular history, especially written during the modern era should be taken as “His-story” — the white man’s version, the “inquisition and understanding” of the entire Biosphere.

Fredy Perlman’s evocative text feels part of the legacy, of earlier figures like Rousseau, Jacques Ellul, Arnold Toynbee and Guy Debord to name a few. To put it simply, “Civilization is under attack”. The attack on Hobbes and the Leviathan is superfluous. Globally speaking, a new critical current has emerged (2001-2020) united or not, but held together by an antagonism towards all tendencies that seem to include “progress” and the eternal quest for a “higher state”. Perlman warns us by saying “the struggle is by no means over; it goes on as long as the beast is animated by living beings.”

“His-story, against Leviathan!” is synonymous with the spirit, or what we call “Life”. That force, ungovernable and unforseen as ever, is the Biosphere’s self-defense — against the “monster” or modernity, rending her “asunder”. The conclusion of “His-story” is the moment, leading to its end in the coming future.

Borrowing Arnold Toynbee’s term “Mother Earth” as the very first protagonist. Many call her Nature. What Christians earlier identified as “Wilderness”. The Biosphere which is alive and as Toynbee summarized the matter, that “she’s life itself”. While some call her Gaia, others prefer “Pachamama” plus countless other names, manifestations, visions and deities that have conveyed similar ideas, through the ages. The “life force” which even science concludes as to what “conceives and births everything that grows”. What “she” is not, is civilization and the endless quest for progress. Nor did she offer any ladder, or way up, for thousands of generations (of the past).

“She is the dry land, the water and the earth enveloping our planet. She’s the sole habitat of living beings. Toynbee describes her as a thin, delicate skin, no higher than planes can fly and no lower than mines can be dug” (Perlman, His-story, against Leviathan!). Even the non-living precious such as coal and oil are part of her substance, made of the very matter that once lived. Toynbee calls her an “excrescence” a life giving halo on the planet’s surface, and he speculates that “there may be no other Biospheres”.

There is a global desire or clearly felt rupture, to transcend current civilization. Abandon the vertical impositions, the ladder of progress. To me, it appears as the coming end of a class based society. One that is defined by universal techniques of efficiency and responsible for mass destruction of the very host planet. Yet, I do not wish to peddle a “rosy view and nostalgia of pre-history” that itself is a “creation” of His-story. Hobbes Leviathan and a small section of “Mankind” is actually waging multiple wars, ecocide and genocide against the weakest and most vulnerable citizens of Toynbee’s “Mother Earth”. No one, regardless of their power or emancipatory deals is actually “free” inside such a global “Gulag”.

Even the common dictionary misleads. It begins by saying that “free” means citizen. But then what is “free” that is not determined by anything beyond its own nature or being? Worse determined by the choice of the actor. What we may desire or not, whatever ladder we are climbing, whatever techno-vertical horizon, may we remind ourselves — For whose progress is it anyway, that this civilization carries on? While enslaving and or consuming everything that lives? What is our common devotion (or fear) to such a “vertical myth of progress” based on?

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