There are many methods and interests that the bourgeoisie have developed to "anesthetize" the mobilizing, revolutionary power of the people.
Insane millions are spent and this work constitutes one of the most ruthless fronts of class warfare deployed by capitalism. We will not tire of repeating it.
It sustains "the ideology of the ruling class" which has plenty of reasons to lie to us, disorientate us, intoxicate us, drug us, give us complexes and humiliate us in a thousand ways.
They say this is done for our "good;" that we are like little animals needing the hand of the master to lead us along the path of "good," that is, the path that increases the wealth of the bourgeoisie.
In the order of their highest priorities, defenders of private property and hegemonic class values, the bourgeoisie develops tools and recruits mercenaries who are experts in drilling into our heads day and night, non-stop, the entire array of anti-values that have devastated economies, ecosystems, cultures and entire generations of human beings victimized with all forms of surplus value. Including "ideological surplus value," as defined by Ludovico Silva. Reality is not as they paint it.
We will not tire of repeating this. However acute and thorough the diagnosis of this monopolistic appropriation of weapons of ideological warfare; however we detail the regions and territories controlled by the multinational information and entertainment merchants; however much we fill the landscape with the complete scheme of private property in matters of "communication"... it will be of no use if we do not complete this picture with a plan outlining the tasks which will allow us to detoxify ourselves from this alienating magma, to awaken from the bourgeois ideological anesthesia which has addicted us, their class enemy. Defeating us with the everyday.
And we are well aware that the factories of ideological anesthetics, meticulously financed by the bourgeoisie, include universities, government institutions, churches, sects, political parties, advertising agencies and "think tank" bunkers... intellectuals, journalists, artists and celebrities of all kinds.
Fauna and flora that constitute a mob perpetuating organized crime against humanity which has hammered human beings since capitalism became what it is.
All that has been said, knowing all this, is of no use, despite all the mournful pleas that come to mind, if we do not develop a program of unity and struggle that includes effective action to denounce and offer alternatives that will systematically and definitively put an end to capitalism and its ideological warfare against peoples. Let us insist.
For example, comprehensive estimates indicate that, in the year 2013, in the u.s. alone, real military expenditures reached 839 billion dollars.
And, "according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, world military spending in 2012 was $1,740,000,000,000. [1]
We will not forget the question, never idle, about who is responsible for violence in the world and what interests it serves as a method of domination and - "believe it or not" - entertainment for children, adolescents and adults. At all times.
For example. In Latin America, not content with being paradigms of the worst ideological and cultural aberrations inculcated in peoples, the peddlers of unbridled anesthesia, camouflaged as media monopolies, are serve as the battering rams of coup plotters, following the U.S. imperial model that seeks to lay the groundwork for invasions with putschist operations.
These media monopolies have become "Luperca" [2] and now welcome into their bosom the "political" Frankensteins engendered by capitalism (and its neo-liberal policies) via Caesarean section at the request of the oligarchies.
To counteract "anesthetic thought" - the obligatory offensive weapon of capitalism - the antidote is organization and mobilization at the grassroots level, developing class consciousness in the economic and ideological battles waged daily throughout the world.
The antidote is a democratic and dynamic system of critical information and organizational interpretation.
The antidote includes a worldwide network of fighters against the dominant ideology, trained to resist the anesthetic effluvium emitted by the apparatus of ideological domination that has become entrenched in "customs" and "traditions" of the peoples.
This includes defeating individualism, sectarianism and bureaucratism. Defeating idealism and all its illusions. Defeating triumphalism and legalism. Defeating all escapist fads.
To neutralize the "anesthetic” ideology of capitalism, needed is the development of dialectic self-criticism - indissolubly tied to action plans - that can correct shortcomings in the short, medium and long term.
The battle against capitalist "anesthetic thinking" urgently needs a program of unity and action that is not limited to "good intentions" or lists of numbers and names. We need more than just "observatories," we need laboratories that are capable of transforming and not just contemplating.
We have analyzed our diagnoses and our faults, ad nauseum. We have thought about them and we will continue to think about them, as long as it is necessary, on the condition that this process does not contribute to further anaesthetizing ourselves, on our own, making it easier for the bourgeoisie to demobilize us.
We will continue to mull over the subject - crucial and very complex - but we will do so dialectically and not in vicious circles that lead nowhere, leaving us mesmerized by our own speeches, paralyzed by drunkenness. Another kind of "anesthesia" that only struggle can resist. Don't put me to sleep.
Notes
1. http://demilitarize.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/El-gasto-militar.pdf
2. Name of the mythical wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus when they were abandoned by Mars.
