by\u00a0Ana Bazac<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong>Introduction in the \u201cMarx\u201d paradigm<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMarx\u201d \u2013 like the Kantian Idea with regulatory function[1]<\/a> \u2013 means here also Engels, as well as Lenin; and all the Marxist thinkers who, even developing rather fragments\/aspects of the Marxist paradigm, have showed its integral <\/em>constitution. \u201cMarx\u201d is not any leftist conception, neither called by the opposed minds as being \u201cleft\u201d and nor self-defined as \u201cleft\u201d. \u201cMarx\u201d is not here a simple radical political position, a modern (so more radical) version of the old Saturnalia overthrowing the always ordered establishment, but a complex architecture of theories relating man and his human and natural milieu.<\/p>\n \u201cMarx\u201d is thus, not the man Marx, the man Engels etc., but the metaphor for the unity<\/em> of constructivism<\/em> and materialism<\/em>\/social existentialism<\/em> that constitutes, from a philosophical standpoint, a paradigmatic shift in\/of the representations of thinkers, and ordinary people, about the world, man and society. This unity gives the new paradigm supporting its own logical results:<\/p>\n The well-known name of Marx\u2019s paradigm is dialectical materialism<\/em>: here \u2018dialectical\u2019 means both historicity<\/em> and work with contradictions<\/em> taken in their mutual exclusion but also in their temporary coexistence that seems to fool only the petty-bourgeois singers of the everlasting capitalism; because the contradictions are not contraries \u2013 aspect known already from Aristotle \u2013 they will be solved ultimately only in a radical transformation that annuls the contradictory elements, though keeping for a while the perfume of at least one of them. Dialectics but also materialism mean concrete<\/em>\/ concreteness <\/em>as unity <\/em>of real objective relationships and manifestations of phenomena, thus not created only in reflection, but not being the immediate sensuous appearance but an objective category expressing \u201ca universal form of development of nature, society, and thinking\u201d[3]<\/a>: it is opposed to the abstract reduction, i.e. to the subjective view about things, irrespective of the existence of \u2018pure\u2019, \u2018simple\u2019 aspects as if they were objective abstractions.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Constructivism and ideology<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Briefly, constructivism<\/em> \u2013 imposed in philosophy by Kant and taken over by all the German philosophy of the 19th<\/sup> century \u2013 means that man\u2019s ideas are not simple copies of the real world, but only related to the world whose perceptions arrive through the sense organs to the human mind that process them; therefore, the ideas are not legitimated solely by the external world and their truth depends in high extent on the individual\u2019s understanding and choice of ideas related to each other and processed in order to arriving to the aimed idea in a certain moment; the responsibility<\/em> of choosing, processing, truth and ideas belongs to the humans: so, in the knowledge process they are active<\/em>, and not passive.<\/p>\n All the above labels \u2013 materialism, constructivism etc. \u2013 are put on concrete<\/em> theories, these theories forming the paradigm<\/em> (as a model of unity of peculiarities and contradictions related to dominant concepts). For example \u2013 and because it is a complicated label and that, because of its apparent general\/abstract character, it imposes fear and rejections \u2013 the Marxist materialism has generated huge misunderstandings. To some ones, it seemed that materialism and constructivism would mutually oppose. Or, they would not at all: in Marx, the ideas are not passive copies of the world but, processed in the human mind, depend not only on the external world they reflect, but also on the world of ideas tangling in mente<\/em> and constituting the elements constructing the new ideas and at the same time their criteria. Yes, but since in the last instance the ideas reflect the real life, they reflect the concrete positions of humans, their concrete experience in the real life<\/em>.<\/p>\n The theory of ideology<\/em> \u2013 a term taken over from Destutt de Tracy who considered it the theory of ideas as part of \u201czoology\u201d (biology) that in those times only guessed \u201cthe intellectual faculties of the human animal\u201d[4]<\/a> \u2013 so, the theory is a specific Marxist one, emphasising both materialism and constructivism. We obviously remember that there were two moments in the constituting of this theory: in the first, ideology was the \u2018false consciousness\u2019, in the second, it simply described the precise external origin of the ideas people have about themselves and the surrounding society. The \u2018false consciousness\u2019 meant that people may making false ideas about themselves, their interests, social positions, experience (thus being possible that they take over ideas representing other, opposed social positions, interests and experience). As a result, in the second moment, it was already clear that all the ideas about society\/relating the individual to society are ideological<\/em>, i.e. are made from a precise viewpoint of the individual\u2019s concrete social position within society<\/em>; the ideas may arise from its own social position, or not, but at any rate they reflect social positions, interests and experience. To consider the ideas about man\u2019s world as neutral is thus absurd but at the same time an \u201cideology\u201d (false consciousness), reflecting the will to impose those ideas as the absolute truth. On the contrary, by developing the theory of ideology, Marx has advanced not only the idea of the concrete social origins of people\u2019s beliefs, but also that in the scientific research, the origins and positions of the researchers must be clearly assumed<\/em>.<\/p>\n An individual has many roles and points of views arisen from these ones, but the most important \u2013 may it be conscious or not \u2013 is the class<\/em> appurtenance, the class role within society. The class appurtenance is the frame of all other social roles. The theory of ideology is thus no longer a neutral \u201ctheory of ideas\u201d, but a committed one, emphasising the significance of class <\/em>appurtenances and class differences<\/em>, opposition<\/em> and struggles<\/em> in the historical process of social knowledge, beliefs and attitudes structuring: including towards the class appurtenance and struggles.<\/p>\n Materialism and the human being<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n So, materialism means that the real life of people and their needs to surviving and living a fulfilled life are, in the last instance<\/em>, at the basis of ideas and institutions[5]<\/a>: which have their relative autonomy \u2013 as every system has towards other related systems \u2013 but which must correspond in a way or another to those needs. Consequently, the most basic needs, the economic ones, emphasise the economic<\/em> materialism as the fundamental level of the materialist explication of society, while the core of economic materialism is the system of production forces and relations<\/em> focusing thus on production and not only on distribution. (For this reason, only the \u201csocialist\u201d distributive policies are not socialist in fact, and they do not last, just because of the contradiction between this \u201csocialist\u201d distribution and the logic of maintained private property relations).<\/p>\n But materialism means also the understanding of the humans\u2019 unique dual<\/em> character: as individuals<\/em> but at the same time<\/em> as members of the human species<\/em> (man being, from the beginning, a social\/cultural being[6]<\/a>, and not an individual struggling for its persistence, as in the bourgeois Robinsonades and social contract theories[7]<\/a>) and, concretely, as members of different and many \u2013 and simultaneously many \u2013 social groups: materialism means to understanding the humans\u2019 (multiple) social positions<\/em> and actions according to these (real or imagined) positions, and that\u00a0 the most important groups are the social classes<\/em>; to see their role in the struggling for life and the shaping of social forms according to the social positions of different classes means to see that people\u2019s ideas reflect, when all is told, the class struggles<\/em> related to concrete material positions of these classes. The different delusions ignoring the class appurtenance and eschewing it in the name of gender, race, profession, religion, place differences are the result of the incapacity to see the intertwining of all of these features<\/em> and the dependence of (types of) rights on all<\/em> the appurtenances and not only on a feature or another.<\/p>\n Dialectic and critique: market economy and property relations<\/strong><\/p>\n As it already has appeared, the Marxist materialism is not a lonely and unique explanation\/it does not reduce the humans to their quest for material satisfaction, but it is intermingled with the constructivism that emphasises the determinant importance of ideas<\/em> for humans and society: never severed, but the sine qua non<\/em> mediation between them and the social institutions and relations. The material conditions and the ideas mutually influence themselves and the struggle of people for human conditions and perspicacious ideas:\u00a0 the \u201ctwo-way relationship between ideas and material conditions\u201d warns us to avoid the unilateral determinism made by both the dogmatic idealists and materialists[8]<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since the above-mentioned unity shows the historical character of everything \u2013 and especially of the existence and understanding of man and society \u2013 it also reveals the dialectical<\/em> formation and understanding of things. The concepts are historical, their meanings are historically and socially determined[9]<\/a>, but they reflect not only the preferred sides viewed by the thinkers \u2013 either in their all encompassing unique identity or in their separation from the adverse sides or in their contradictions or unity \u2013 but also the contradictory aspects of their existence and history[10]<\/a>.<\/p>\n Marx has taken over the critical<\/em> spirit of the Enlightenment and inherently went further. Habitually, the modern critical spirit reflected the old historical separation between the physical and the intellectual labour, corresponding to the separation and opposition between the rulers and the ruled, i.e. to the class domination. The intellectuals made their job in the service of the first because of their specific type of labour. Consequently, when occurred, the intellectuals criticised for the most part the ideas<\/em> of other intellectuals, as a criticism that would have shown the real face of things, not of ideas. But obviously, this criticism threw light only on ideas. Marx made not only this criticism as a de-construction of different ideologies<\/em> (a novelty, because the old criticism never understood and was interested about the social determination of the ideas), but also the direct critique of real social relations: based on proofs<\/em>, arguments<\/em>, measurements<\/em>, evidence of contradictory tendencies<\/em> and their causes <\/em>and relations of force<\/em>, evaluation of the consequences<\/em> of the social relations and remaking of their causes, briefly, the falsification<\/em> (as Popper called it later) of every theory and of every moment\/element in the construction of this theory. This type of critique invites to continue it: revealing that all the ideas are constructed and represent specific interests related first of all to the social positions of people, that the ideas of intellectuals are not absolute\/The Absolute which the ignorant masses ought to unquestionably assume, that a criticism from the perspective of a unique truth is not critique at all, as well as it is not critique in the absence of a rational dialogue all the way, Marx opened up the non-conformist ways of critiquing even the well-established ideas and actions belonging even to this alternative\/critical thinking[11]<\/a>.<\/p>\n The above-mentioned elements of the Marxist critical theory allow the equivalence of this critical<\/em> characteristic with the scientific<\/em> one. Why this? Because: only a scientific approach consists of both the questioning of the premises and concepts<\/em> \u2013 which are never considered as axioms or even as postulates \u2013 in every moment of the research, and the evidence of tendencies<\/em> allowing the possibility of (tendency based) anticipation<\/em>. A scientific knowledge means both a feedback<\/em> type relation between the elements of the theory \u2013 let say, between causes and results \u2013 and a feedforward<\/em> type relation between the theory\/its conclusions and the future intervals when the theory acts. But as the feedback relation is treated in a scientific manner \u2013 and first of all, it is openly assumed as a way of thinking \u2013 as the feedforward relation must be treated scientifically: assumed and considered as a necessary way of proving the theory. The fact that the official economics did not anticipate the 2008 crisis is not only the result of the necessary optimism this mainstream economics must spread (thus transforming itself into an \u201cideology\u201d), but also because its premises did\/do not permit a realist anticipation. The official economics considered that the raise of consume on credit would last forever and would fuel the \u201cgrowth\u201d and profit forever.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Therefore, Marx\u2019s paradigm has required the questioning even of sacrosanct concepts: for example, the market economy. Marx has demonstrated that the capitalist market economy<\/em> is not tantamount to the general exchange of products based on supply and demand; the capitalist market economy is that of only solvable<\/em> demand and profitable<\/em> supply, and not firstly of use values<\/em> but of exchange value<\/em>. This last concept reflects the (living) labour-time as the common denominator allowing the exchange and the transposition into money, the universal merchandise, emphasising that the goods have value-form only when they are sold\/put into circulation. The capitalist exchange value involves wage-earner workers paid only \u2013 let us take the ideal model \u2013 for their necessary subsistence in a certain society (thus we do not even account the salaries and work conditions well under this necessary subsistence[12]<\/a>), but not for their surplus labour<\/em>. This surplus labour is taken over by the capitalists and their main purpose is to raise the surplus labour in order to make more profit in the process of circulation. And the more the technological means (dead labour) are higher, the lesser the necessary labour for the subsistence of workers is. But the total labour time \u2013 namely, of the surplus labour \u2013 is big and lengthens.\u00a0 The capitalist market economy is thus based on exploitation<\/em>, because of the separation<\/em> of the labour force from the means of production. This separation is specific only to capitalism, because the former systems were based essentially on the direct, total or partial, ownership of the labour force by the master of the means of production.<\/p>\n Consequently, the capitalist private property is based not on relations of using and selling the use values<\/em> produced by the subjugated labour force, but on relations of production of goods as exchange values<\/em> by a socially and politically free labour force, in order to obtain profit as a basis to new investments for profit. Not only in contradistinction to the entire old mainstream philosophy that considered the private ownership as a natural, eternal and necessary fact and feature of the human being, but also to those who sighed over the introduction of the \u201cidea\u201d of private property trough the humans (J.-J. Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’in\u00e9galit\u00e9 parmi<\/em> les <\/em>hommes<\/em>, 1754) (who formed, however, only as individuals the civil society of the social contract\u201d), Marx\u2019s paradigm allowed the demonstration of the causes of the historical constitution and forms of private property and thus, the exclusion of the \u201cguilt\u201d of concrete persons from this demonstration. For example, for this reason the model of capitalist ownership was not the inherited property from original robberies, and neither the self-employed entrepreneur hard-working in order to erect his firm, but a new, un-inherited company based on \u2013 the work of the ownership being irrelevant \u2013 the exploitation of labour force. The capitalist ownership is the result of accumulation of the fruits of the exploited workforce: that has nothing to sell in order to sustain its life than its own labour power and that receives a much lesser salary than one which would allow this workforce to not selling itself again and again. The concrete position of the individuals within the capitalist economy is thus determined by the logic of the whole<\/em> economic system. This logic of the whole explains and is explained by the relations of exploitation<\/em>, competition<\/em> and international exploitation and competition<\/em>. If the individual wants to survive in this whole, he must either let him to be exploited or to impose exploitation: irrespective of his regret and compassion. <\/em><\/p>\n Yes, both Robert Owen, who has organised in his factory the first kinder gardens for the children of the female workers, and Engels who has worked as an official in his father\u2019s factory in Manchester and later in his co-owned factory, knew very well that neither the more human treatment of workers \u2013 as extremely important as it was, until the possible transformation of these units into \u201csocialist\u201d islands serving as models \u2013 was more than local philanthropic means to alleviate the condition of the labour force; but that <\/em>without transforming the whole system\u2019s structural relations, the logic of \u00a0capitalism is to dominate the world and its labour force<\/em>. This is the reason of the communist slogan: Proletarians of all countries, unite! \u00a0And certainly, if the anti-system ideas of the individuals are stronger than their will to find a place of survival in the system, they exit from that system, at least at the level of their consciousness: but the system as such does not transform only with the effort of some individuals or no matter how many local experiences, <\/em>if the system\u2019s structural relations are not changed<\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n Because of the resistance of the labour force and also because of the harsher competition for markets, the capitalist owners have developed the process of distancing the production of use values from the \u201cproduction\u201d of exchange values: by the mass production for markets at hand and by the neglecting of use values in favour of valorisation in the financial engineering. Concerning the first aspect, we see the difference between the quality of mass products (for example, of food) and the quality of luxury production; concerning the second, we witness the difference between the profits of financial engineering and the indebtedness of most of population.<\/p>\n The Marxist paradigm: emancipation and the elements of the proletarian class<\/strong><\/p>\n Marx was the son of his epoch and his inspiring books \u2013 from the ones of the ancient Greeks, to the German idealist philosophy, the English classical economics and the French political theory and especially socialism \u2013 were the premises he analysed, took over and surpassed. All the patterns he observed in the social architecture of economic and political relations were, at the same time, considered in their historical<\/em> feature and, thus, evolution<\/em> and change<\/em>. For example, he did not occupy much with the servants because though these ones formed an old and manifold category, not they were, but the industrial labour class was the counterweight of capitalists and their providers of surplus value generating the profit. But he spoke about proletariat<\/em> \u2013 that was not tantamount to the industrial working class, but represented \u2013 the class<\/em> characterisation of the persons having as only source of living, their labour power. The core of proletarian class was, certainly the industrial working class, but as the capital itself was to manifest in the new forms, already observed by Marx, of joint-stock companies, as the proletariat was to transform: not only as a \u201ccollective worker\u201d, but also as the present \u00a0service proletariat<\/em> in all its educated and high-skilled as well as precarious forms[13]<\/a>.<\/p>\n Therefore, Marx\u2019s paradigm consists in the theory of emancipation<\/em> of the proletarians: it is the core of this historical intellectual creation. The explanation of exploitation and the other structural relations of capitalism emphasises that the real emancipation is only as a class<\/em>, and not as an individual \u2013 because only the individual redemption means to remaining within the system but only on another position, and anyhow the general alienating conditions influencing even the rescued individual \u2013: the real emancipation is the transformation of the system <\/em>where the individual lives. The transformation is systemic, thus a revolution<\/em>. This is the main cause of the hate towards Marx\u2019s paradigm, showed by all types of laudatores tempori acti<\/em>. Fighting only discrimination does not change the system but, only for Marxists, sends to the questioning of the structural relations: because discrimination underlines the logic of the system.<\/p>\n The system and its laws<\/strong><\/p>\n The most important element of Marx\u2019s paradigm labelled as above is the model of system <\/em>\u2013 concretely, of the social system \u2013 where the parts have their relative autonomy but exist only because of their integration in the whole. The social system explains the existence of social individuals within society, and also the interdependence between humans and nature[14]<\/a>. These aspects related to systems \u2013 the interdependences, inclusions of elements which are, all of them and each of them, \u201cworlds\u201d\/\u201da world\u201d existing, however, only in the frame<\/em> of the system as a system of systems \u2013 for example, for us in present the emphasis of atoms, electrons with their jumps and differentials of energy, the living molecules, their complex interconnectedness and communication because of quantum coherence, the double logic of dependence of life on the fundamental physical forces and on the unity of organism, being thus absurd both to reduce life to physics and chemistry and to ignore them because of the specific complexity of organisms[15]<\/strong><\/a>: we do not even wonder, because this type of approach is familiar to us. Therefore, we re-discover today the ideas of the systemic integration but certainly, we demonstrate them in more and more complex systems, we arrive to them from new partial discoveries which we integrate.<\/p>\n Just the system and its structures of relations and classes allow the possibility to see its tendencies, and thus its \u201claws\u201d. Certainly, these laws are not like those in the exact sciences \u2013 they are not \u201cmechanical\u201d \u2013 because the social system is formed by conscious individuals following their dual (and obviously, this means multiple) interests and social ideas: but the social laws describe tendencies<\/em> emphasised just through the understanding of the main structural relations and the dialectic of the multiple kinds of structuring and the dual one.<\/p>\n The system of polar classes and stratification of classes<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n And certainly, in Marx the model <\/em>for all the systems is the most complicated<\/em>\/recent<\/em>, because only it reveals the historicity and meanings of the simpler ones. Marx\u2019s system is not <\/em>based on the two elements model: the capitalist class structure is not that of bourgeois and industrial workers, but that of stratified class of the private owners<\/em> and stratified proletarian class<\/em>. The class stratification<\/em> allows the understanding of double class appurtenance of people working as intellectual services providers for the main private owners who control the economy of society<\/em>: as both<\/em> subordinated to these main private owners and, at least some of them, belonging to the class of private ownership materially, while in their ideology even more intellectuals who are not private owners are singing the interests of these ones; actually, the stratified character of intellectual and physical services providers coexists with their social polarisation as members of the upper class or members of proletariat.<\/p>\n As in Marx the social system is not based on two elements, as the last reason to be<\/em> cannot be reduced to either the end of society as a whole to persist or to the end of the individual to survive: this reason to be is the result of the dialectics of the transitory human individual and the lasting society. Certainly society is more powerful than the individual \u2013 and its \u201cinertia\u201d to last reflects the capacity of open, in thermodynamic equilibrium systems to \u201cheal\u201d themselves, to make substitutions and changes within them, only in this way to last \u2013. But at the same time, the social edifice depends on the active <\/em>position of individuals, arisen from their will to live \u2013 as the old philosophy has showed \u2013 but transposed into conscious <\/em>purposes superior<\/em> and even far from the strict individual will to live: the social system depends on values<\/em> which move the praxis. Briefly speaking, they may move things in order to preserve the existing social establishment, but also in order to change it. The social consciousness is ideological<\/em>, and thus Kant\u2019s categorical imperative<\/em> and Schopenhauer\u2019s compassion<\/em> reflect both the power and limits of values which are exterior to the practical treatment of every individual as unique and unrepeatable: in order to consider this uniqueness, we must move into the material realm of existence, because without the material transformation of society \u2013 i.e. without the transformation of the structural relations of production \u2013 the above splendid values remain only a wishful thinking, while the dominant values of selfish reduction of the human individual to the private owner just pursuing his own purposes arrive to anesthetise many non-private owners, including many intellectuals.<\/p>\n Consciousness and the inner logic of capitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n The well-known Marxist paradigmatic formula \u2013 \u201cit is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence but their social existence that determines their consciousness\u201d[16]<\/a> \u2013 does not minimise and reduce the ideas to passive copies, but sends to the systemic approach, where the existence of the human individuals is only in\/through society, where society as the environment of the individual explains the differentia specifica<\/em> of this one, sociality, and where this environment determines his activity and ideas which, obviously, construct it.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Marx\u2019s paradigm was so opposed to the existing ones because it did not only express indignation and compassion, and, explaining the causes<\/em> of the miserable situations generating compassion, passed beyond<\/em> the showing of malign ideas which would determine miserable behaviours and thus those miserable situations. The real ultimate causes are the structural social relations, the economic productive ones<\/em>. These relations are the private ownership<\/em> seeking to maximise the private profit \u2013 thus fragmenting society, the social ends and wealth into opposed properties, just contradictory to the more and more integrated character of the productive forces of science, technology and labour force \u2013, exploitation<\/em>, competition<\/em> of both capitals (resulting their concentration and centralisation) and labour forces for jobs, and centre-periphery<\/em>\/imperialist<\/em> relations. Indeed, the Marxist paradigm was a novelty also because, opposite to all the thinkers who have considered only their country or traditional area of civilisation \u2013 as being the most important\/only model of society, the criterion of all the other ones \u2013, it asserted and demonstrated that capitalism is the first global <\/em>system and the above-mentioned structural relations take place within and are determined by the logic of the global system,<\/em> of the whole. Consequently, the process of trans-national capitalism<\/em>, visible mostly from the 70s of the last century, is the result of both the logic of capitalist structural relations <\/em>\u2013 see the de-regulation<\/em> of the post-war welfare state in order to bring the wages and costs of capitals in the Western countries to the same level as in the peripheries, delocalisation<\/em> of Western production to peripheries in order to reduce the cost of capitals in the ardent global competition, trans-national concentration and centralisation of capitals<\/em> and creation of a trans-national labour force<\/em>, and, because of the huge competition and the reduction of the profit rate, financialisation<\/em>, i.e. the obtaining of the bulk of profits not in production but in the financial industry and speculation \u2013 and the logic of the global character of capitalism.<\/em> (All these features concretise in the amplification of unequal exchange<\/em> where, for example, the fooled East European countries were determined, with the aid of the internal corrupt political class, to becoming \u201cexport-based\u201d economies and at the same time no longer having agriculture for food security).<\/p>\n For this reason, the present non-Marxist thinkers, declaring themselves either social-democrats or liberals, and waving the illusion of a possible return of the post-war national welfare state capitalism\/neo-Keynesianism, show only a voluntarist ignorance of the inner logic of capitalism. They are, obviously, the on duty ideologists of capitalism, but what is important is that, using the ceaseless ideological bombardment, they are the instruments of the loss of time<\/em> by both the present individuals who have only one life and thus waste it, and the present society. From a Marxist standpoint, the theoretical alternatives of developing the public sector (education, healthcare, transport and renewable energy) and \u201cnon-growth\u201d economy are viable only if these alternatives are considered as steps toward<\/em> but also together with an anti-capitalist transformation<\/em>; to militate for universal access in the sector of \u201cservices of general economic interest\u201d means to ignore that this universal access would rise the autonomy of the labour force towards capital; yes, during the welfare state this access was possible, but only for helping the national capitals to not raise the wages till they being non-competitive: i.e. the social expenditures of the state have compensated the wages and helped their purchasing power, indirectly the increase of profits; but nowadays, the trans-national capital has at its disposal the consumers from all over the world, and the rise of autonomy of the wage earners would be a dangerous precedent; therefore, not globalization as such \u2013 the global integrative process of productive forces and institutions \u2013 is culpable for the present global proletarianisation of broad masses, but the capitalist<\/em> character of globalisation.<\/p>\n The present illusions related to the possibility of a better, \u201cwin-win\u201d globalised capitalism \u2013 through massive infrastructural investments all over the world, a gradual but non-stop transition toward ecological projects, and the imposing of more global decision-centres, while at the level of states through the support of national capitals and the re-localisation of industrial and agricultural production \u2013 but inexorably keeping the present huge military expenditures (arms selling and, thus, the fuelling of conflicts and wars, and thus of the untimely death of so many humans and of the ecological crisis)<\/em>, show not only the theoretical incapacity to understand the zany logic of the above contradictions<\/p>\n but also a cruel attitude towards the world that has no infinite resources to counter the ecological crises etc. and<\/em> towards every human being who lives only one life. These illusions are but means to postpone the solving of so many crises. On the contrary, those who do not share these illusions advance the idea of never doing away with the Marxist paradigm, even promoting its gradual realisation[18]<\/a> (because they think that the erasing of the gradual transition toward socialism would be more harmful than the sudden one). (But a gradual transition is also the result of the concrete circumstances of the falling of the USSR and its consequences, including in the consciousness of people[19]<\/a>). However, the only problem is that it\u2019s not sure that the gradual transition would annihilate the above contradictions in fact\/hic et nunc<\/em>, or that the gradual transition would be rapid enough in order to annihilate those contradictions. Rather, the processes occurring now in the world show that those contradictions only skyrocket and that the geopolitical (geo-economical) reasons transcend the interest to solve those contradictions: and the losers are the milliards of human beings, many of them transformed into lumpens fighting, as \u201ccannon fodders\u201d, just the proletarians.<\/p>\n Moreover, the present development of productive forces<\/em> and integrated management<\/em> \u2013 by means of IT (see the centralized software systems) \u2013 once more shows the viability of Marx\u2019s paradigm explaining both the development of capitalism<\/em> and its bases for its own destruction<\/em> through the contradiction<\/em> between the impetuous creation of science, technology and permanent renewal of the treatment of the object of labour, of the process of labour and of the labour force, and on the other hand, the private ownership.<\/p>\n But in Marx\u2019s paradigm the dominant legitimating values of a system are the values of the dominant class<\/em>: consequently, the cultural hegemony of capitalism<\/em> \u2013 as it was insistently underscored by Gramsci \u2013 manifests also in China, the country putting Marx officially in the forefront of its ideology: the \u201cnihilistic\u201d schooling advancing the individualist pursuit of well-being as the only value of man and far more important than all the other focusing on the common good is opposed only by the communist values promoted by the Party; \u201cthe commitment of the government to Marxism has not been allowed to shape the academic curriculum\u201d, but the socialisation of people \u201cin Marxist thought and values\u201d[20]<\/a> may eventually counter the reduction of the human consciousness to a simple means for material endeavours.<\/p>\n Consciousness and emancipation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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