Capitalism, in its technological expansion, does not halt in face of any limit: not biological, not ethical, not economic, not social. The magnitude of development has been so great that it has radically affected our emotional certainties, and today society confronts its final frontier: its border—its no-man’s-land—which Recycler called “the psychological frontier.”
The capitalist system had adopted the New Man slogan from Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Mao Tse-tung. Genetic research, experiments in molecular biology and cognitive science, the possibility of cloning and artificial insemination, all are advancing on a trajectory to cross that new frontier. Scientists were the “engineers of the soul” that Stalin had spoken of: the new man, the ideal citizen, is the addict, devoid of convictions or principles, who only aspires to obtain his dose of the merchandise he craves. Technological society satisfies its subjects: it entertains them and drowns them in an ocean of fast, multiform information.
There were no options for opposing the capitalist corporation. The manifesto was not posing an alternative but calling attention to a world with no way out. “Capital,” it concluded, “has managed—like God—to impose a belief in its omnipotence and eternality; we are able to accept the end of the world, but no one seems able to conceive of the end of capitalism. We’ve ended up confusing the capitalist system with the solar system. We, like Prometheus, are prepared to accept the challenge and attack the sun.”
With that Greek metaphor, the manifesto, of which I’ve given scarcely a brief summary, came to an end. Its author wasn’t the first to have spoken in that way. Nina, who’d studied Tolstoy’s influence on Wittgenstein, recalled the position of the author of Tractatus: “It isn’t absurd, that is, to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity,” he wrote. “My type of thinking is not wanted in the present age. I have to swim so strongly against the tide. Perhaps in a hundred years people will really want what I am writing.”
“I think the ‘that is’ is marvelous,” said Nina.
Although it criticized technology, as had so many philosophers and thinkers (among them Lewis Mumford, whom it referenced), its proposed solution turned not to the utopia of a better world, following the socialist model, but rather to the anarchist tradition of the “good life.” Like Tolstoy, like the Russian Narodniki, according to Nina, the manifesto proposed a return to the small, pre-capitalist rural commune, with collective ownership of the land, where everyone lives on manual labor. This alternative was based upon the experiences of stateless societies—like the nomadic tribes of the American West and the Paraguayan Chaco—and upon primitive social formations and means of production that preceded the industrial revolution. There was something in it akin to the experiences of Thoreau, the Beat Generation, and Californian hippies, but taken to the extreme, to war. Its outlook was North American, but it lacked hope and aspired only to individual achievement: the need to live one’s own life according to the model of society that one aspired to.
With a certain resignation, it proposed the defense of nature and natural lifestyles, but it didn’t take the praxis of green societies too seriously, à la Walt Disney. As Marx rightly put it, it’s difficult to escape from Robinsonism, and yet, after the catastrophe of socialism and the struggles against colonialism, the illusion of the lone man rebuilding an ideal society on a desert island seemed like the only way out possible. The manifesto practiced the “critique of critical critique” and did not appear ready to imagine a social alternative. It was Tolstoyan in that respect. But the difference was its use of direct action. It justified the will to rebel in the spirit of Thoreau’s right to civil disobedience (which it indeed cited). But the leap toward evil, the decision to kill (or the right to kill?), was tied to the personal will to make oneself heard. At its extreme, terror guaranteed access to the public word.
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As could have been expected, the manifesto had an enormous impact. It was immediately released by an independent publisher in California and had been distributed widely online in a matter of hours. The discussion became widespread, and all around the country there were statements and shows of support for the content of a declaration that seemed to express what many were thinking. At basketball stadiums during the NBA playoffs, activist groups distributed copies of the manifesto among the fans and players. One photo that circulated widely showed Larry Bird reading the essay against capitalist technology on the Celtics reserve bench.
When I arrived at the seminar, the students were discussing the events; there were differing opinions, but they were generally in agreement with the manifesto’s theories (except for John III, who considered them unconvincing), although no one defended the violent methods and all criticized terrorism, except for John III, who showed skepticism regarding moral judgments in the political arena. With a weary air, he asked leading questions. (“How many people once branded as terrorists went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize?” he asked rhetorically, listing the names himself after a theatrical pause: “Mandela, Begin, Arafat…”)
“Do not kill,” John III concluded, “is the slogan of those who have the power; it’s the victims who must obey that mandate, for the powerful don’t believe in generalizations.”
Mike responded that killing people at random, even for rational reasons, did not make the crimes rational.
“Sure,” said John III, “but the killings don’t seem to be random.”
Regardless, according to Rachel, choosing who is killed didn’t justify the act of killing, even if the crimes did form a coherent series.
“We need to know who the author is first,” Yho Lyn said. She maintained that a message isn’t the same if we don’t know who’s sent it.
Was the person who wrote the manifesto the same
