Note from the LeftEast editors: There was once a time when utopias were a significant cultural form of the left. Nowadays, our political imaginaries have run dry. The societies we can conceive of, even the changes we consider possible to our present state pale in comparison to what the socialists of the early 20th C or the social movements of the 1960s were capable of. Even the obvious truism “Another world is possible!” today sounds defiant, provocative. Hearkening back to the older utopian/ anti-utopian traditions of the left, Sergei Odarych’s speculation is a useful exercise for our imaginative muscles.
In case of total eclipse of reason, all sides without any exception will enter in a patriotic fever, under the leadership of sincerely fascist, right-wing, nationalist regimes into the next world war in Eurasia, as it was a hundred years ago.
The difference is the fact that there will not be initially a world war and then a civil war, but everything will happen simultaneously, immediately, and everywhere. The general repetition in the Ukrainian heartland clearly showed it to everyone.
Today, as it was exactly a hundred years ago, the weakest link in the imperialistic mincing machine is the so-called “Russian world”, in which Ukraine is inserted inevitably due to its history, language, culture and economy. And this is not a stamp of Russian propagandists. In the first place it is the First World that traditionally considers Ukraine as post-soviet, half Russian-speaking, not fitting in the conventional “East” country. But the irony is in the fact that the ideological recognition of the historical experience of the USSR by Kremlin is very convenient to all kinds of the right-wing forces on both sides of the conflict. We seem to have a war between conservatives.
In any case, during the direct communication bone to bone in the military operations, during the service to the death machine, the masses will inevitably have to raise a red flag. They will have to give a breath of life to the Soviet cultural heritage, understood in the broadest possible sense, and make it a property and a matter of life of all the humanity, and this time not let any miracles and triumph of idiocy to happen neither on Vistula, nor in Bavaria, Guernica, English Channel or Colorado.
It is not worth whining about how well it was in the USSR. It wasn’t. If it was well, Perestroika would had developed in another direction. We have what we have. The revolutionary significance of perestroika is not inferior to the October revolutionary significance. It is not worth crying for the Lenin statues; it’s better to laugh at the idiots who happily destroy them.
It is also not worth blaming the intellectuals in their hysterical tossing between the neoconservatism and neoliberalism. They were consciously prepared for that with all the means. Interlayer is meant to be an inerlayer, in order to behave as an interlayer.
It’s not worth crying about the lack of a revolutionary organization, because it will inevitably emerge during the fight in the real time mode, and will not be similar to the past organizations. It’s not worth arguing for Marxists, liberals, reformers and anarchists, because the new type organization will remove this purely technical contradiction of the previous centuries. The new modern is knocking on our door politely, but firmly.
The ruling classes will not cut off the means of communication, because after that everything will collapse and they will be buried under its dust. The war will be continued in live streaming and all the classes and all the interlayers will be inevitably inserted into it, and there will not be left any time, resources or safe place for the intellectual banterings on the fighting lubens, as it happens today. The coach political instructors will also go to the front.
The contradictions must be resolved to all humanity, all classes, all races and nations. During the wars and revolutions of the 20th century, the masses cut the throat of the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Bourbons, the Ottomans and Chinese, Japanese, African, Arab, Balkan, Eastern European, Iranian and Indian princelings.
The global social, communicational, administrational, cultural revolution of the future, that is already here, will get the feudal-bourgeois-religious vampires from their holes and draw them to the sunlight. Anyone wanting to live will live and create, the others can go to the undead with their regalia, family trees, connections, respectability, secrete diplomacy, mutual responsibility, resources and conceit.
The most important thing to do, is to make humanity get rid of the burden of the global economy disposal in manual mode, by replacing the unfortunate and corrupted by power bureaucrat with machines, sensors and software. All of the planet’s resources should be inventoried. All chauvinists, aggressors and oppressors should be isolated. All technical and humanitarian knowledge should be available to all and everyone in any place and any time. So down with the copyright!
All society resources should be given for education, for the upbringing of physically and mentally healthy persons, culturally and spiritually developed. For the formation of healthy needs and rational motivations, for the applied humanism, for the complete reconstruction of the global economy, for the destruction of the commodity production.
The whole previous class history of humanity, showed us unprecedented achievements in science and technology. Technological thinking has penetrated into pedagogy, religion, social and humanitarian science, politics and culture, and this is good. We know so many things about us and the world, we produce so much, so that we can allow ourselves to refuse the wars and the competition, the primitive commodity fetishism, the stultifying “work” and the vegetating in boredom at leisure, in order to overcome alienation, to advance to the creativity and cooperation in the sake of the universal joy.
The revolution in communication allows us to have access to the treasury of knowledge in all human and machine languages. It destroys the borders and the cultural limitations. Google translate has already done more than Martin Luther, “Gutenberg galaxy” has lost into the hypertext multimedia “Zuckerberg supergalaxy”, like our native Land in the wonderful fire-bird of galaxies Laniakea… Are you ready for a quantum leap into the arms of the universe?
Wipe your eyes, it’s not a mirage, neither utopian dreams of some sincere madmen and wonderful losers of the past. We are already in the verge of a wondrous oasis, but we still swallow dust and sand, we take lice with ourselves into the blessed oasis, tumbleweeds and dung from the desert of history. Enough. Wake up, speak with real words about the essence and leave the dead bury their dead.
Don’t be afraid. Everything will be alright. Or we will all die, which is not bad, but it is better to live. The most important thing is to not to be afraid. The history is about to end, and a wonderful distant place is waiting for us. In any case.