Autor / Author: Vasilis Grollios
In the wake of the 2008 international financial crisis, in a much more intense way than before, the inherent characteristics of the capitalist mode of production are clearly visible. As Karl Marx aptly stated, the more polarized are class inequalities, the easier it is for the pure form of capitalism to become apparent. While bourgeois-liberal thinking persists in attempting to address the international economic crisis and political instability via bank recapitalization, structural readjustment programs, "stabilization" through the enthroning of unelected technocrats, and so on, it is doomed to failure because bourgeois/liberal theory is "identity thinking," since it does not question the phenomenon of fetishism that lies hidden in the core of capitalist logic. As such, identity thinking identifies and exhausts the content of the various forms that dominate us (such as the state, the bourgeois parliamentary system, value as money that needs to multiply itself) in their current form. Thus, these forms appear as fetishes, as unavoidable natural phenomena that have always existed. Bourgeois thinking also accepts the values that underpin the existence of these fetishes. Thus, it is considered perfectly natural to be competitive with each other (people with each other, businesses with each other, state budgets with each other) in order to enlarge our bank accounts as much as possible. Thus, for the capitalist mode of production, the meaning of life is competition, accumulation of wealth, and, as a consequence, hard work.