Globalisation and its discontents — I

Dr Saulat Nagi

The development of productive forces beyond their capitalist organisation suggests the possibility of freedom within the realm of necessity
As the Soviet Union successfully accomplished its hara kiri in the most grotesque of styles, for the first time in this world populated overwhelmingly by the have-nots, the market economy — based on the capitalist mode of production — established its unchallenged hegemony on the ‘wretched of the earth’. With the backing of the middle class, the process of altering the language that was already in vogue was hastened. A new lexicon was created; it was inundated with new jargon, rigmarole and balderdash. A few words that lacked the element of conformity were meticulously deleted. Some that blatantly exposed the irrationality of the new order akin to class, false consciousness and surplus value were declared redundant and hence pushed into oblivion. New terminologies such as rationalisation, meaning social cuts and entitlements, indicating the scuttling of the most inalienable human rights such as health, education and unemployment allowances, and rightsizing, that stood for mass unemployment, were introduced. These euphemistic cadences were meant to conceal or mollify the hideous crimes that were about to be committed against humanity. The treachery and caprice hidden right behind these terminologies became evident no sooner was the veil on them lifted. The reality proved atrociously ugly, especially when dearth, deprivation and depredation extracted a heavy toll from the masses. Poverty, hunger and a mass exodus of the working class from workplaces exposed the myth behind this glittering deceit.

Globalisation too was part of the same linguistic jugglery marred by deception — a word that creates a fixated structure and demands from the individual to behave in a similar fixated and specific manner. The granger it carries conveys simultaneously a sense of intimidation and glorification. The objective is to insinuate subservience and silent conformism to the newly established reality in which the human being is nothing but a stupefied buffoon, a newly born Lilliputian. In this new reality, “Everyone is under the whip of a superior agency. Those who occupy the commanding positions have little more autonomy than their subordinates; they are bound down by the power they wield” (Horkheimer).

Under the banner of internationalism, the idea of globalisation was initially floated by Marx. This claim can be advanced with certainty but contrary to the bourgeois expression it had drastically different connotations than what has been presented by hegemonic powers. In capitalism, the very syntax of the word has been altered. Akin to a merger of two opposites such as ‘mother of evil’ and ‘father of the nuclear bomb’, the word globalisation too carries tacit and tactful ambiguity. The idea related to this world becoming a global village is neither farce nor holds anything unique or utopian. Despite having different colours, creeds and cultures, the people of this world have one thing in common: they are human beings. They share the same feelings, emotions and pathos though with variable intensities. However, vested interests have created artificial boundaries between people. The motive is to check the movement of labour from one official line of demarcation to the other and to foment the hysteria of hatred that could culminate into war for the realisation of capital. Workers of India and Pakistan, the citizens of apparently two hostile nuclear-armed nations, have no reason to keep any grudge against each other. Both are afflicted by the same malady of hunger and poverty. Either one is stymied and stifled by the expropriation and exploitation of its respective native bourgeoisie in collusion with international capitalism. Having a common enemy, their fight can only embrace success if they integrate themselves as a unified bulwark against the highly organised forces of oppression.

But here lies the rub; the interaction of the working class could be inimical for the ruling classes that, according to Engels, are the executive councils of the bourgeoisie. In Marxism, globalisation means the ultimate stage of redemption of humanity, when a new human being will be born who, according to Nietzsche, is not “ashamed of himself”. A human being created by a society of free producers, a society that will abandon the concept of free labour in favour of freedom from labour itself, which in all circumstances remains an alienated objectified process. According to Herbert Marcuse, “Marx rejects the idea that work can ever become play. Alienation would be reduced with the progressive reduction of the working day, but the latter would remain a day of unfreedom, rational but not free. However, the development of productive forces beyond their capitalist organisation suggests the possibility of freedom within the realm of necessity. The quantitative reduction of necessary labour could turn into quality (freedom), not in proportion to the reduction but rather to the transformation of the working day, a transformation in which the stupefying, enervating, pseudo-automatic jobs of capitalist progress would be abolished.” Once this society based on exploitation is dispensed with, the new human being will turn the process of production into a process of creation. Work or labour will cease to be a necessity. It will be carried out since the human being is born to work for the advancement and welfare of mankind. Everybody may not become an Einstein, Gorky, Picasso or Mozart but the phenomenon of becoming great — much like these personalities — will not remain so rare.

The idea of globalisation propounded and realised by capitalism is altogether different. It is synonymous with the brutalisation of the free market economy. When launched in the early 1990s, its commandments rallied around controlled democracy, free trade, minimised role of the state, an uninhibited transfer of wealth from one corner of the world to the other, labour market flexibility, which meant pushing wages down and workers out, unbridled access to all potential markets, hegemony of the IMF and World Bank. “The most important reforms involved lifting constraints on labour mobility and wage flexibility as well as breaking the ties between social services and labour contracts” (Noam Chomsky). This was a euphuism for absolute privatisation including once tabooed industries of health, education and even the army, airports and security. To avoid any threat to the realisation of capital, institutions such as the Pentagon and NATO became the overseers of this hegemonic arrangement. As Noam Chomsky states, “Cynical slogans such as ‘trust the people’ or ‘minimise the state’ did not call for increasing popular control. They shifted decisions from government to other hands, but not the people.”

Once the ‘evil empire’ of the USSR swiftly succumbed, capitalism, in its euphoria, succumbed to the fallacy of resolving all contradictions inherent in its system automatically through market forces. The future appeared to be one having smooth sailing but the Marxist negation of the negation turned out to be reality yet again. Capitalism itself is its own nemesis. Why would it need any other foe? The demise of its erstwhile enemy turned out to be a decisive blow to its own survival. Many seething internal contradictions that in the presence of the Soviet Union lay hidden, came to the fore. The huge military-industrial complex built to counter the enemy on a permanent basis suddenly found its utility outlived. The very idea of shutting down the huge private enterprise producing the means of destruction was impossible for an economy based on war. The control of this ‘destructive’ mafia was so effective that the whole ruling hierarchy, while owning its existence to its mercy, was held hostage to the barrel of its gun. Except for the creation of another immediate enemy, the constant piling up of armaments was becoming a liability both for the capitalists who were constantly producing it and the state that was obliged to purchase it.


Globalisation and its discontents — II
As the value of labour declines, the monetary condition of the working class deteriorates too. Survival on a bare minimum becomes the only option.

A new financial crisis was brewing under Clinton’s administration. For a short-lived solution, money was invested in the housing sector. A bubble was created. The markets ran amok. Prices went berserk. In the Bush era, the boom busted. In reality, however, the economy was already devoid of real money. As an objective reality, anything once passed on to the private sector becomes simply a tool for making a quick buck. The veracity of this truth here, too, remained beyond doubt. The creator of ‘value’ — the worker — had long been disassociated from the process of production. The capitalist, as he always considers himself the most sagacious of all, was eager to make money without entering into the cumbersome process of production. Hence, money was transferred to the financial markets. But it was not real money since it was never produced by the worker.

Marx succinctly points out: “The process of production appears merely as an unavoidable intermediate link, as a necessary evil for the sake of money making. All nations with a capitalist mode of production are therefore seized periodically by a feverish attempt to make money without the intervention of the process of production” (Capital). Time and again it has been proved that money created without investing human labour and bypassing the process of production has no real existence. Such a flow of artificial capital to the financial sector was a clear indication that the real economy had either stagnated or was lunging towards a perfect crash. The availability of cheap capital (low interest rates) with relative ease resulted in an overnight boom in the real estate sector across the globe, including markets otherwise deemed to be ‘high risk’, e.g. Pakistan, thereby giving a false image of booming economic activity. However, such illusory business only lasts till the so-called ‘confidence’ created by the banking sector in real estate continues to persist, which in turn owes its existence to the mutual trust between various banks, as long as they are prepared to buy the losses and debts of each other. Their mutual trust entirely depends upon the activity carried out in the process of production — the real economy. With the disappearance of this activity, the artificial economy flounders. Massive downsizing freezes the buying power of the consumers. The artificially inflated prices force buyers to withdraw their money from the market. This pushes the panic button that proves lethal for an already fragile economy.

Here, the relevancy of Marx once again expresses itself. According to him, it is not the dearth of commodities but lack of people’s buying power, which is the salient feature of the capitalist mode of production. The inherent anarchy rooted in the system comes to the fore.

In this crisis, intensive mechanisation plays an additional role. A job performed by many workers is taken over by a few, which results in massive unemployment. Hence, the buying power of the masses, especially the workers, evaporates into thin air. Due to rapid and intensified mechanisation, the ‘constant capital’ invested in machinery and raw materials swells up. This leads to massive downsizing, hence a large-scale unemployment of workers, which decreases expenses by saving the variable capital/wages. This augments the total profit of the capitalist. But, as the value of labour declines, the monetary condition of the working class deteriorates too. Survival on a bare minimum becomes the only option. For the capitalists, this is quite an ominous situation too since it invariably jeopardises the realisation of capital. In this case, the loss of profit — another inherent flaw of capitalism, which occurs due to the lack of buying power of the masses — becomes the most grievous threat to the valorisation of capital. To attain this objective, Rosa Luxemburg states: “The capitalist with consent or coercion penetrates in all the pre-capitalist areas within and outside the state where he is based. Globalisation becomes essential for his survival.” This becomes a defining stage when the artificial, in fact the deceitful, line of demarcation between globalisation and imperialism vanishes. Incidentally, imperialism appears to be the creation of a group of states. In fact, it is much more than this. Rosa defines it as “a product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole that is recognised only in all its relations, and from which no nation can stand aloof.” Only from this point of view can one understand the process of globalisation and its implications for the world.

The machine, which is supposed to relieve the human being from alienated labour, appears to have become a tool of repression. Marcuse states: “Is it still necessary to state that not technology, not technique, not the machine are the engines of repression, but the presence, in them, of the masters who determine their number, their life span, their power, their place in life and the need for them? Is it still necessary to repeat that science and technology are the great vehicles of liberation, and that it is only their use and restriction in the repressive society, which makes them into vehicles of domination?” Who produces these machines that replace human beings? Indeed, the workers of the world. Hence, this paradoxical situation becomes a dialectical phenomenon. The working class, through its toil, “produces both the accumulation of capital and the means by which it makes itself superfluous and it does this to the extent that it is always increasing”. It turns itself into an army of unemployed workers. “The industrial reserve army belongs to capital just as surely as if it had bred it at its own cost. It creates a mass of human material always ready for exploitation in the interest of capital’s valorisation requirements” (Marx).
Once faced by loss of profit, the capitalist tends to withhold capital.

Overproduction refuses to be realised. Money flows from the productive process into the financial markets where, under different names such as derivatives, it can play havoc with the economy. A parallel unproductive economy such as subprime mortgage and credit, based on speculation and deregulation, emerges, which has feet of clay. ‘The economy of paper’ deprived of value and/or gold begins to rule the roost. The prices of commodities take a leap in an overnight boom. In a situation akin to this, any sudden demand for real money as against vouchers, or weakening of even a single financial institution — since all are involved and interdependent on each other — can lead to an explosion. The bubble goes bust, which utterly dismisses the boasting claim of self-regulation of the market. The biggest advocate of the free market, Alan Greenspan, who remained chairman of the Federal Reserve of the US for nine years, finally “acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken”. The New York Times wrote, “A humbled Mr Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.” In the subprime housing crisis, the dwindling cadaver of the US economy embraced its catastrophic end. Since 2007, the recession has remained immune to every stimulus package given to the capitalists from the state exchequer owned by the common taxpayer. Nothing has injected life into the macerated body of this economy. “The cat,” according to Joseph Stiglitz, “refuses to climb down the tree and no one knows how to bring it down.”

Globalisation and its discontents — III
The concept of capitalist globalisation has unfathomable depth. It has made almost every country dependent on the other.

The capitalist is fully aware of this anarchy prevalent in the system. To avoid this scenario, Keynes advocated the interference of the state, which was supposed to provide more capital to avoid the liquidity crunch. The military industrial complex, by creating religious fundamentalism and fomenting it in times of need, found another remedy. Al Qaeda had already been revived. The once blue-eyed jihadi fundamentalists of the US, who, during the Cold War era proved instrumental in exhausting the Soviets, had launched the insurgency against their mentors. The friends had turned into foes. This time they were honed to serve a single purpose: the realisation of capital. After the withdrawal of the Soviets there was no dearth of devastated people who were left in the lurch. ‘Guns versus butter’, the old Nazi strategy, came to the rescue of capitalism that, by now, had shed its benignly veil off. “For us or against us” became the name of the game. From Iraq to Afghanistan and then back to Iraq, later Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Mali and the reprobate Palestine, all were turned to ashes in such a way that no Sphinx was left behind to rise from it.

Lately, while changing the name of the enemy, which has lost its razor edge, a new organisation with the name of Islamic state (IS), having the same chemistry, has been launched as an excuse to continue the war on terror that, in its essence, has always been a war of terror led by capitalism to maintain its hegemony. Its globalisation has insidiously permeated its perniciousness from Syria and Iraq to Pakistan. This US-Saudi nexus has insinuated to a war-torn region that, courtesy imperialism, is already afflicted with the malady of religious fascism. Four decades later, on the same day when havoc was played with the lives of the people of Bengal, the massacre came to haunt the innocent children of Peshawar. The Taliban, the Pakistani version of IS, has not come from a void, as Athena cropped out from the scalp of Zeus. This Frankenstein’s monster is the product of the social conditions created by imperialism with the connivance of the native establishment. The pile of bodies of youngsters butchered in cold blood is the extension of globalization, which kills humanity with democratic disregard since the act serves the politics of domination. Marcuse rightly reminds us that, “The world of the concentration camps was not an exceptionally monstrous society. What we saw there was the image, and in a sense the quintessence, of the infernal society into which we are plunged every day.”

Prior to this, on the pretext of “missile defence”, space has already been colonised by the US. According to Chomsky, “The goal was quite frankly stated: to ensure ‘global dominance’, ‘hegemony’. Official documents stress prominently that the goal is to protect US interests and investments, and control the ‘have-nots’. It is recognised that these new initiatives in which the US is far in the lead pose a serious threat to survival. And it is also understood they could be prevented by international treaties. But, as I have already mentioned, hegemony is a higher value than survival, a moral calculus that has prevailed among the powerful throughout history. The relevant point here is that the expected success of ‘globalisation’ in the doctrinal sense is a primary reason given for the programmes of using space for offensive weapons of instant mass destruction.” In addition, vicious agreements such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were imposed, which led to the devastation of the Mexican economy. There was an immediate decline in wages. Foreign investment sharply grew while total investment declined. The economy became hostage to multinationals. Manufacturing output nosedived, consumption power dropped by 40 percent and people living under poverty doubled in number. Agriculture suffered the most since local farmers were unable to compete with subsidised US agribusiness. To avoid the influx of poverty ridden Mexicans, the artificial border between Mexico and the US was militarised by Clinton. It is living proof that capitalist globalisation can be maintained under the shadow of means of destruction alone.

The concept of capitalist globalisation has unfathomable depth. It has made almost every country dependent on the other. The slowing down of an economy in one country invariably influences the economies of many other countries. Many Chinese companies own assets worth billions of dollars in the US. Hence, in the latter’s economy, the former has a heavy stake. If the US, which is indebted to the tune of $ 14.5 trillion, goes under, it will automatically take the Chinese along with it. Hence, despite confrontation with the US for the possession of South China Sea oil, neither of them finds itself in a position to confront the other militarily. The same noose is tied around the neck of Australia that, on the one hand, is hosting one of the biggest US spying centres in Alice Spring but, on the other hand, remains heavily dependent on China for the continuous restoration and growth of its economy; the latter is the single biggest buyer of its coal and mineral products.

In Europe, economic chaos is so severe that countries are tumbling one after the other. In merely two decades, the concept of a European Union has turned out to be a nightmare, where stronger nations (especially Germany) are refusing to bail out the weaker ones. Iceland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are already on their knees. Countries situated around the Mediterranean and Iberian Peninsula are strewn in thick soup. In Italy and Spain, unemployment among youngsters has risen to nearly 50 percent. Greece is not far behind. In France, the welfare system is in tatters. The multibillionaires are sitting snug while the masses are facing the brunt of disaster. The Occupy movement, initiated in 2008 to 2009 from nowhere else but Tel Aviv, has for once at least shaken global capitalism. The international media refuses to cover this abrupt consciousness of the masses but people have found their alternative in the form of social media.

Prisoners of conscience such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have changed the dynamics of journalism. By exposing the nefarious designs of imperialism and by introducing a new culture of enlightenment, they have set a new precedence in the history of humankind. These are the people about whom Max Horkheimer stated: “The real individuals of our time are the martyrs who have gone through infernos of suffering and degradation in their resistance to conquest and oppression, not the inflated personalities of popular culture, the conventional dignitaries. These unsung heroes consciously exposed their existence as individuals to the terroristic annihilation that others undergo unconsciously through the social process. The task of philosophy is to translate what they have done into language that will be heard, even though their finite voices have been silenced by tyranny.”

Globalisation and its discontents — IV
Wealth is created by the working class. But in this struggle of capital versus labour, the latter is made to appear redundant.

During this phase of exploitation, some significant regions such as South America and Russia have managed to achieve their freedom from the hegemony of the US. By refusing to trade in dollars, these integrated economies are beyond the dominance of imperialism. China too is fishing to get out of this sphere. A newly formed BRIC bank provides one example of resistance to US hegemony. To this recipe of disaster imposed by globalisation the biggest challenge is offered by Bolivia and Venezuela. According to a report by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, “Bolivia has grown much faster over the last eight years than in any period over the past three and a half decades. The benefits of such growth have been felt by the Bolivian people: under Morales, poverty has declined by 25 percent and extreme poverty has declined by 43 percent, social spending has increased by more than 45 percent, the real minimum wage has increased by 87.7percent and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean has praised Bolivia for being ‘one of the few countries that has reduced inequality’”. According to The New York Times, “Morales has transformed Bolivia from an ‘economic basket case’ into a country that receives praise from such unlikely contenders as the World Bank and the IMF — an irony considering the country’s success is the result of the socialist administration casting off the recommendations of the IMF in the first place.”

How much socialism a democratic change is capable of embracing remains a matter of debate yet, in this process, it has become evident that the claim of the US as a single super power is now a mere cliché. Its biggest proof can be seen in case of the India-Iran relationship. Despite despotic sanctions against Iran, India and many other countries continue to flout this blackmail and are regularly buying Iranian oil. After a rebuff in Georgia, the US has miserably failed to maintain its hegemony over Ukraine. Crimea has already been taken over by the Russians while its eastern parts and southern parts (Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic) have declared their unilateral independence from the mainland. Capitalist globalisation has maimed the concept of a nation state; although former Yugoslavia has been dissected into nearly six artificially independent lame duck states, the nature of its crime was different. In Europe, it was the only country that refused to yield to the neoliberal economy or globalisation. It flouted the decision of the almighty capital, which, during that period, was an almost impossible task and hence was punished.

To sustain its hegemony, the US army is maintaining its presence in more than 100 countries. This has added further pressure upon the masses living in the US. Billions of dollars have been amassed from the food stamps programme this year alone. Due to massive social cuts, the number of homeless people is mounting daily. It is interesting to note that in a few states feeding the hungry/homeless is considered a crime punishable with lengthy imprisonment. This is happening in a country that, in regard to human rights, claims to be the freest in the world. “In the 18th century, philosophy’s laughter at big words sounded a rousing and courageous note that had an emancipating force. Such words were the symbols of actual tyranny; scoffing at them involved the risk of torture and death. In the 20th century, the object of laughter is not the conforming multitude but rather the eccentric who still ventures to think autonomously,” (Horkheimer) and hence less callously and more humanly.

For this globalisation, democracy too is an abstraction. In Egypt, if General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removes an elected president, democracy remains unharmed. So is the case in Italy. In order to impose the agenda of the IMF, if Mario Monti, an unelected technocrat, is promoted as the prime minister, democracy remains unblemished. However, if, in Palestine, Hamas gets elected the whole democratic process becomes flimsy and abhorrent. But then Hamas too is alleged to be the brainchild of the US and Israel. If not, none of these states can deny the responsibility of creating certain conditions congenial for the blossoming of this organisation. The motive was to split the Palestinians into two halves: one led by a resistance-oriented religious group and the other more emaciated, malleable and secular through the equally corrupt Palestinian Authority.

In a post globalised US, the state of democracy had gotten even worse: “A Harvard University project that monitors political attitude found that the feeling of powerlessness has reached an alarming high, with more than half saying that people like them have little or no influence on what the government does, a sharp rise through the neoliberal period” (The Essential Chomsky). Noam Chomsky adds to it by stating: “what remains of democracy is to be construed as the right to choose among commodities. Business leaders have long explained the need to impose on population a ‘philosophy of futility’ and ‘lack of purpose in life’ to concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption. Deluged by this propaganda in infancy people may then accept their meaningless subordinate lives and forget ridiculous ideas about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate to the wizards and, in the political realm, to the self-described ‘intelligent minorities’ who serve and administer power”. Hence, “the majority principle”, which was a new god did not remain sacred “in the sense in which great heralds of great revolutions conceived it, namely as a power of resistance to existing injustice but a power of resistance to anything that does not conform...the moral is plain: the apotheosis of ego and the principle of self-preservation as such culminates in the utter insecurity of the individual, in his complete negation,” (Horkheimer).

The most significant idea behind this whole sham is the uninterrupted flow of capital from developing states to developed ones. The corrupt rulers of the developing world especially linked to the bourgeoisie have maintained huge amounts of stolen money in foreign banks. Wealth is created by the working class. But in this struggle of capital versus labour, the latter is made to appear redundant. The product, the fetish, is allowed to move in the wink of an eye from one end of the globe to the other but the real producer is left to wallow in the slums of the world. The fall of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh is one such example. Innumerable workers were maimed, more than 1,000 were killed when a moth-eaten, debilitated structure — wherein due to the extraction of surplus value many generations of workers might have turned into cadavers — collapsed under its own weight. The vulture representing the native capitalist was arrested but bailed out while two Australian based multinationals having a heavy stake in it went unscathed. More than a year and a half has passed since then but these companies are yet to sign the crucial safety accord for the workers. “Social power,” says Horkheimer, “is today more than ever mediated by power over things. The more intense an individual’s concern with power over things the more will things dominate him, the more will he lack any genuine individual traits and more will his mind be transformed into an automation of formalised reason.” As Marx put it, “the capitalist is embodied capital” — no human emotions can be expected of him.

Globalisation and its discontents — V
A consumer ends up consuming himself in buying and selling in the market. Everything turns into a commodity.

Consumerism is yet another significant feature of globalisation. In industrial progress the uneven development of capitalism has left many underdeveloped countries lagging far behind the developed ones. Hence, their national bourgeoisie is either extremely weak or exists in collaboration with the junker class. In either case, its historical role has prematurely come to an end. Instead, it has been overtaken by international capital, which has plied the market with various commodities. These commodities, while satisfying human needs, perpetuate his servitude. The flag flaunted by capitalism claims for everyone an unrestricted freedom of choice. Herbert Marcuse succinctly points out that “the range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.” He goes further by asking some very pertinent questions: “Do exploitation and domination cease to be what they are and what they do to man if they are no longer suffered, if they are ‘compensated’ by previously unknown comforts? Does labour cease to be debilitating if mental energy increasingly replaces physical energy in producing the goods and services, which sustain a system that makes a hell of large areas of the globe?”

Capitalism attaches the person libidinally with commodity. A consumer ends up consuming himself in buying and selling in the market. Everything turns into a commodity. Every other point of view gets eclipsed. Horkheimer provides a fitting account of the total abrogation of every other concept based on human values. He says: “The story of the boy who looked up at the sky and asked, ‘Daddy what is the moon supposed to advertise?’ is an allegory of what has happened to the relation between man and nature in the era of formalised reason. When a man is asked to admire a thing, to respect a feeling or attitude, to love a person for his own sake, he suspects sentimentality and suspects someone is pulling his leg or trying to sell him something.” Survival is based on a single criterion: adjusting oneself to the norms of market by “giving up his hope of ultimate self-realisation” {Horkheimer}. Herbert precisely states that, “if the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself in the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilisation. The technological processes of mechanisation and standardisation might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity. [If this happens] The very structure of human existence would be altered.”

At this juncture, Herbert inquires: “Is such a change in the ‘nature’ of man conceivable?” His reply is in the affirmative. He says: “I believe so because technical progress has reached a stage in which reality no longer need be defined by the debilitating competition for social survival and advancement. The more these technical capacities outgrow the framework of exploitation within which they continue to be confined and abused, the more they propel the drives and aspirations of men to a point at which the necessities of life cease to demand the aggressive performances of ‘earning a living,’ and the ‘non-necessary’ becomes a vital need.” Once this system based on objectified alienated labour is toppled, the concept of the emergence of a new society — about which even Marx and Engels refrained to comment in detail — has been explicitly described by Marcuse. He says: “The growth of the productive forces suggests possibilities of human liberty very different from, and beyond, those envisaged at the earlier stage. Moreover, these real possibilities suggest that the gap, which separates a free society from the existing societies would be wider and deeper precisely to the degree to which the repressive power and productivity of the latter shape man and his environment in their image and interest.” This was the society that Marx always dreamed about. This will be the precursor of the globalization, which would turn humanity into a single, large heart capable of palpating with a uniform rhythm. Only and only then “the human existence (will) is no longer objectified, and no longer exhausts itself in alien and alienable things. Thus the way will be opened for the mutual recognition of human beings as free individuals” (Marcuse).