Two Sides of a Medal

Two Sides of a Medal

How a person thinks and acts always stems from the contradiction between rationality and emotion.
There is a constant power struggle between emotion and rationality, which is situationally decided with the help of material conditions.

The examination and life under capitalism and its most aggressive form, fascism, place this power struggle under special conditions.
On one hand, capitalism’s mechanisms themselves—i.e., private ownership of key industries, monopoly capital, structural exploitation—are part of it, as well as what is directly observable, i.e., poverty, hunger caused by exploitation in the Global South, unimaginable inequality (both vertical and horizontal), and an incredibly irrational system.

If someone does the work, why are they not fairly compensated? If someone produces, why do they not own the means of production? Why do capitalist countries wage wars against states that want to leave this system?

However, capitalism has succeeded over its 200-year existence in establishing the assumed naturalness of its functioning and existence, so that the daily observed irrationality of this system suddenly appears rational.

If you pass by a homeless person, are confronted with pain, and feel that strange feeling of shame in your stomach, then you are briefly human again.
Then emotion briefly sees through the lie of the self-evidence of this injustice, briefly emotion reigns; until the denied rationality is again overtaken by advertising and alienation.

On the Sudden Nazi

The most reactionary part of this system is fascism.
Fundamentally, fascism does not differ from other forms of capitalism; it is more aggressive, chauvinistic, and monopolistic, as Dimitrov says, but structurally it is the same.
Fascism arises when the intensified contradictions of the material conditions of this injustice, such misery, frustration, and tension, have provoked the working masses to seek an escape from this system.
And since this system has managed—through 200 years of oppression, propaganda, and anti-communism—to vilify the only truly rational alternative, socialism, so that it appears irrational in the prevailing consciousness, the workers seek a way out of and within the system.

When the pretended rationality begins to crumble, emotions must come to the fore: frustration over the suffering one faces and experiences needs reasons, scapegoats—Jews, asylum seekers, Hartz IV recipients—i.e., parts of one’s own class, because the view upwards to the owning classes and their government has been cursed as socialist with lies and misunderstandings. This is because socialism only “works” in theory, which is why every socialist country in history had to be fought by the West.

In this way, the system offers a crack; reactionaries and progressives, status quo and alternative.
An alternative that is not really an alternative.
No structural, systemic difference—because although this system presents itself in different ways, the material conditions, i.e., the irrational foundation of this system, remain.
And with this foundation, the cause of all symptoms.

Take the “migration crisis” as an example; why do people come to us? Why do they seek a better life?
The arrogance of this system has ingrained in the citizens of this country that the corrupt rulers of their respective countries are responsible for their flight, that people simply flee, wars just happen.
Syria, Iraq, Ukraine; these capitalist wars, and Western influence in them, are the cause of migration.   
At the same time, local governments lack the funds to accommodate the people who are forced by this system to seek a better life in another country—specifically, nine billion are missing this year—that’s nothing!
This state, this system, which casually shovels out 100 billion for rearmament, talks about “we must finally deport on a large scale”—or “re-migration”, depending on whom you ask.
In my opinion: hypocrisy.

While the established parties in this country have, over the last decades, caused these contradictions to escalate to the extreme, people wonder where this fascist tendency suddenly comes from.
When Rosa spoke of “Socialism or Barbarism,” she meant exactly that: If Germany spends hundreds of billions on arms buildup, has been dismantling the social safety net for decades, and class contradictions continue to intensify, all while this system is presented as unavoidable, then no one should be surprised if fascists sit in parliament.