The Last Revolution -- Chapter Twenty Three

Vision of a future – The development of man’s creative being

(Translated from Serbian by Vesna Todorović/Petrović)

Direct democracy;
Production for meeting genuine human needs;
A radical reduction in labor time;
The development of man’s creative being;
The development of interpersonal relations;
The establishment of a humanized relation to nature.

Creativity is the basis and the result of the historical development of society. It is the expression of human authenticity. Creativity is the common denominator of man’s general life-creating activism. Creative efforts are the most authentic form of realization of his life-creating energy. Unless it is realized in a humane way, man’s creative power can become a fatal anti-humane and anti-life force. In that context, the expression “evil genius” represents the glorification of creativity as a destructive power, which for a capitalistically degenerated man is the highest challenge to his life and values. By becoming a totalitarian destructive order and by depriving man of the possibility of realizing his creative potentials in everyday life and in a humane way, capitalism produced the most atrocious crimes. Capitalism deprives man’s creative power of its human dimension by giving it a technical character. Capitalism destroys the existing world through the creation of a technical world. Destruction through creation – this is the basis of the dialectics of capitalist progress.

The emergence of Nazi Germany is a historical example of how man, through his creative powers, can be integrated into an order that can turn those powers into a totalitarian criminal practice. One of the most important reasons why the Nazi regime had, up until its downfall, the support of the vast majority of Germans, is that the Nazis managed, through labor and other “constructive” activities, to “mobilize the masses” and thus make them identify with the ruling order. “The Father” of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, in praise of Hitler, pointed out that the greatest success of the Berlin Olympic Games (of 1936) is that the Nazis “managed to mobilize the entire German nation to participate in the preparations for the Berlin Olympic Games”. From there, Coubertin proclaimed Hitler “one of the greatest builders of modern time”. By engaging citizens in the “building” campaign, the Nazis managed to make the Germans perceive Fascist Germany as their own creation [More on his relation to Hitler in “Olympism and Fascism” and the movie “Olympic Flame”]. What the Nazis managed to do with their “building” euphoria, contemporary capitalism has done with its “consumer” euphoria: it has integrated workers into its value and existential sphere and made them accomplices in global destruction.

As for Christianity, according to official Christian dogma, labor is a “curse”, and the worker is, accordingly, a cursed man. On the other hand, according to the Christian “doctrine of creation”, labor, as a creative activity, represents the very origin of the cosmic mystery from which life on the Earth derives. Through creative work, the life-creating potential of the cosmos has turned into man’s life-creative power. Creative work has brought about the emergence of the world, whereas the shaping of matter and its being brought to life through reason has enabled man to become man. “God” was originally humanized as the being that created the world through labor. “God” did not create the world by waving a magic wand or pronouncing magic words, but rather “He labored for six days” so hard that on the seventh day “He had to rest”. “God” is a laboring-creator and, consequently, all creation is a divine activity. It is the umbilical cord that links man to “Тhe Creator”. “The divine within man” is his ability to create the world through his creative activity and in his (“divine”) image. In his endeavors to create a new world, man should take “God” as his model. By becoming a totalitarian order of destruction, capitalism has given faith in “God“ an existential dimension. Those who believe in “God” should insist that all living beings on Earth are “God’s creatures” and should fight to protect them, as such, from capitalist calamity. The idea of “the second coming of Jesus Christ” implies the struggle for survival of living beings. Where will Christ “return” if capitalism destroys life on the planet? Who will be there to greet him? The skeletons of the children scattered by desert storms and the frozen corpses of capitalist monsters?

Today, authentic creativity is defined against the growing probability of global destruction. Hence, its essence is life-creation. To create is the purpose of genuine human practice, and the creation of a humane world while increasing the certainty of its survival is its immediate and highest outcome. It is in this context that creative work should be perceived. It supersedes the classical division of labor and the fragmentized man reduced to a “specialized working force”. Instead of being reduced to the instrumentalized intellect, to a technological means for the production of “innovations” and capital accumulation, the creative mind should become the basis for creative work toward social integration. It involves not only the production of creative goods, but also of the visionary: the creation of humanum becomes the creation of novum and vice versa. Creative work involves realizing the human in a human way and providing livelihood through the cultivation of nature in a way that does not spoil it and that humanizes man’s natural being. A need for work becomes a need for the development of creative energies and interpersonal relations. It overcomes a stunted man, and it promotes the integration of humanity around a creative mind. Ultimately, labor becomes not just a way of providing existence, but also a way of enriching interpersonal relations, and it implies man’s return to his human essence. Creative work is the immediate form of the reproduction of society as a community of emancipated individuals with a creative and totalizing sociability. The results of creative work are immeasurable. They cannot be private property, but are the “property” of humankind. Creative work is by its nature limitless both in terms of the development of man’s creative powers and in terms of its influence through time and space. It does not involve only the creation of useful goods or of man as a universal creative being, but is also the creation of a human world.

With the introduction of automation, conditions have been established for eliminating repressive and degenerating labor, and for introducing creative work that offers opportunities for the development of man’s playing being and, thus, creating possibilities for the refinement of his natural being. On the basis of creative work, which can only come out of libertarian struggle and cannot be a mere consequence of the development of technical processes, a division of labor between intellectual and physical, as well as between “private” and “public” domains, that is to say, between the institutionalized political powers alienated from man – can eventually be abolished. When the rule of creative work is applied, the most important source of the split perception of the world as a “world of dread” (labor, suffering, misfortune) and a “world of joy” (imaginary “play”) disappears. Work becomes not only “life’s prime want” (Marx), but also the human’s prime want, while play ceases to be a compensatory activity and becomes the supreme form of man’s spontaneous creative self-realization and the supreme form of interpersonal intimacy. Only when work stops being an activity where man is alienated from himself as a creative and libertarian being; when the dichotomy between homo faber and homo ludens is resolved within a creative man; when creative work becomes the affirmation of human freedom – only then can man’s playing being be liberated from all forms of compulsions and only then does true play become possible. It is a matter of the “atonement” of the playing being, playing and play – in a free, spontaneous and creative endeavor, that is, of play as a realization of the playing disposition through a creative effort – through the comprehensive self-creation of man (human community). With creative work, man transforms not only his own existence, but at the same time he regenerates himself as a creative and social being. Creative collectivism represents the basis of playing collectivism.

Humanness is the genuine basis for the development of man’s creative being. Children should be encouraged with love, from their earliest years, to develop their creative being. Creativity is the basis of true sociability. An upbringing suffused with creativity is an upbringing for a creative society. Without humanness, creativity becomes a technical capability and, as such, a potential source of atrocious crimes. It is no accident that the most important creative power of capitalism is not poets, but the technological intelligentsia. It is about specialty-idiots deprived of a historical self-consciousness and a humanist vision of the future. The true result of creativity is not the creation of objects, but the development of humanness, which involves the development of the creator’s individuality and the begetting of a society as a brotherly community of free people. The principle of the aura has become the principle of the beacon: the emanation of humanness appears as a light indicating the true nature of the existing world – it awakens humanness and illuminates the road to the future.

Man cannot revitalize his genuine human needs from an abstract anthropological model of man as a universal creative being of freedom and the visionary consciousness derived from it. As a concrete human being, he can realize his genuine human needs only in relation to the lethal consequences of capitalist “progress”. More precisely, man can develop his genuine human needs and faculties only when he confronts the immediate existential threat posed by capitalism and when he restores that natural being crippled by capitalism. Man cannot become an authentic creator as long as he faces the (ever more certain) possibility of global annihilation. Only when he frees himself from the deadly capitalist embrace and heals the consequences of capitalist destruction will man be able to realize his universal creative being and transform life into a work of art.

The Last Revolution (Part 22) << Previous • Part 23 • Next >> 5#6 The development of interpersonal relations

The Last Revolution (Part 23) – The development of man’s creative being

Ljubodrag Simonovic: The Last Revolution

The Last Revolution -- Chapter Twenty Three

Vision of a future – The development of man’s creative being