Liberalism and capitalism are deadly lies: they estrange and alienate humans; they kill

Liberalism and capitalism are deadly lies: they estrange and alienate humans; they kill

By Azwell Banda

This year, on October the 24th, we shall observe our 60th independence anniversary.

It is meant to be a day of national celebration, a very happy day, a day we should honour all those Zambians who “fought for our independence”. We honour October 24th of every year since 1964 as the day we apparently consummated our defeat of the British and secured our freedom from their White Supremacist, racist, colonial domination of our land and its peoples. On this day, we celebrate all those of our freedom fighters dead or still alive, and all those who paid the ultimate price, for our “freedom from colonial rule”.

Sixty years after 1964, it is now safe and appropriate to ask: did we really, truly defeat the White Supremacist, racist, colonial, capitalist and imperialist British, and therefore secured our genuine “independence” on October 24, 1964, from them? Why did we fight the capitalist, imperialist, racist, colonial British? What, exactly, did we want to achieve, after our “victory” over the British? If we “defeated” the colonial, White Supremacist, racist, capitalist and imperialist British, what exactly did they lose, and what exactly did we win?

Time has come, at the mature age of 60 years as an “independent country”, to ask difficult questions about the content then and now, of our “independence” and the “struggle against colonialism”. All “national constitutions” inaugurate and sustain a particular economic, social, cultural and spiritual order for a people so constituted as a “nation”. Constitutions, among other things, define the sovereign power of a nation state. National constitutions define who is a citizen, how citizenship can be acquired, or lost. They confer rights and duties, on citizens. National constitutions define and set up the institutional framework for governing the nation. Constitutions provide for the defence of the nation. Ultimately of course, national constitutions define and vest the power to levy taxes and administer state resources.

A people that has defeated its colonial, racist, White Supremacist, capitalist, imperialist, oppressors, dispossessors and exploiters such as we supposedly did the British, through its victory, such a people secure its economic, social and political power and rights to fashion for itself its own national constitution. Who, actually, conceived, wrote and hoisted upon us our “independence constitution”? Our “independence constitution” was a “liberal constitution” complete with all the philosophy, contents, power apparatus, extreme individualism and state institutions of a liberal constitutional order. Who determined that the majority of colonised natives in Northern Rhodesia by 1963 were actually fighting for a “liberal constitutional order” as a resolution of their colonial status? Can our surviving “freedom fighters” answer these questions?

At the heart of “liberalism” and its capitalism and imperialism is one of the biggest and most deadly lies humans ever invented: the lie of the supremacy of the “individual”. The invention of this lie gave us “the capitalist” – the egotistic, self-seeking, greedy, avaricious and thoroughly capricious liar! “Freed” from the constraints of kings and human community, this racist, White Supremacist, colonial, capitalist and liberal fiction of “the supremacy of the individual” has been at the heart of the most profound revolutions in human knowledge and ability to produce things. No previous period in human history comes anywhere close to the massive productive capacity liberated by the liberal, racist, White Supremacist, colonial, capitalist and imperialist supper lie of the “supremacy of the individual”.

Today, the world confronts the possibility of a nuclear holocaust which could destroy the earth and everything it has, as some of the productive power this super lie has unearthed and threatens to unleash. We are already suffering the catastrophic consequences and effects of global warming and climate change unleashed by the unrestrained consumption and addiction to hydrocarbons, the liberal, racist, White Supremacist, colonial, capitalist and imperialist supper lie of the “supremacy of the individual” has wrought on Earth.

The world has suffered slavery, colonialism, two world wars and many genocides and a holocaust, now it harbours nuclear weapons which can destroy it, there are wars of profits and how to re-divide the world among the profit mongers everywhere, Israel is committing genocide live in Palestine, we are confronting the moment when a full nuclear Third World War will erupt – all of this is inspired by the now near universal super liberal lie of “the supremacy of the individual”.

By 1964, how on earth could any of our anti-colonial freedom fighters believe and accept that “liberalism” the ideology and practice of slavery, racism, White Supremacism, colonialism, capitalism and imperialism could possibly free us from colonialism and sustain us in our states of “freedom” and “independence”? The greatest lie about our “independence” and “freedom from colonialism” was the hoisting upon us, through our semi educated African elite natives, by the British, of a liberal capitalist constitution and its liberal constitutional order, which guaranteed and protected the British colonial economic and through this, their political interests and power, over us.

Western “liberalism”, no matter how cleverly concealed this is, is the acknowledgment, acceptance and practice of the lie of the “natural” social and economic inequality among human beings, also attested to by racism, White Supremacism, colonialism, capitalism and imperialism. Today, the Western way, the White European way, and its super lie of the “supremacy of the individual” is assumed to be the “natural order of things”. Thus, Benjamín Netanyahu of Israel, while denying that he is committing genocide in Palestine, says he is “defending Western civilisation”, by his savage, brutal war against Palestinians: he is aided and armed of course, by the capitalist powers and political leaders of the US and its Western allies.

“Liberalism” and its offshoot “capitalism”, are the estrangement, the separation, the alienation, of the individual from that which the human mind and human labour produce, and the eventual worshiping by human beings of that which they create and produce. Capitalism compels all of us to worship products, and ultimately, to worship money: and yet humans create products, and exchange them for money, which they create too. When we are separated, isolated from that which we create and are made to imbue it with mythical powers we turn things we create into gods, into our idols, into external powers which confront us and dominate us. This is what “liberal capitalism” is all about. Racism, slavery, White Supremacism and colonialism are the means by which “liberalism” guarantees its global domination, division of labour and distribution of benefits in order to sustain its unequal social and economic world system.

It is not only slaves, colonial natives and wage workers who are separated, estranged, alienated from the products of their labour: these produce goods or services, but these are owned and controlled by the capitalist class, leading to a sense of detachment from the fruits of their labour; by these very means so are the capitalists also simultaneously separated, estranged, alienated from their fellow humans and thus they require the services of the false and evil sub-ideologies of slavery, racism, colonialism and White Supremacism, to justify their suppression, domination, dispossession exploitation of other human beings, and wars.

Profits determine what is produced, and how it is produced, and not the human needs of the so-called “individual” who is “supreme”, according to liberalism. Thus, neither the direct individual involved in production nor the capitalist have any control over what is actually produced, and how it is produced: both are dominated by the need to make profits and stay ahead of their competition. With the rise of giant monopolies and national domination of industries, the “individual” sinks deeper into obscurity and yet the super liberal lie of the “supremacy of the individual” is sustained!

The exchange of commodities in the market for profits and the pathological addiction to accumulate both profits and wealth separates human beings from each other, as colonialism did between the coloniser and the colonised, thus requiring the justifications offered by racism and White Supremacism. This ruthless competition for profits and wealth and its inherent tendency for monopoly inevitably leads to periodic crises which require wars to reset the relationships and build momentum for more accumulation of profits and wealth. War is inevitable to liberalism and its capitalism. It is such that in fact “imperialism” is when “liberal free competition capitalism” degenerates into a few monopolies which dominate and divide and continuously re-divide the world sources of materials, markets and finance. At this point, the “individual” is long dead and buried!

Our colonial experience was the loss of our free and independent existence on our lands, our being divided into isolated individuals and tribes, estranged, alienated from our traditions, customs, languages, cultures, religions and connections to our natural environment. In short, colonialism was dehumanising and a totalitarian experience. Our struggles against colonialism and for freedom and independence therefore were not struggles for the promotion of the liberal lie of the “supremacy of the individual” and its capitalism, such as were imbedded in our so called “independence constitution”. To the contrary, it was not to deepen our submersion into the colonial “liberal realm” but to emerge out of it, that we fought.

After 60 years of our “independence”, it is clear we were fed a lie, a big fat deadly liberal lie. Our “independence” in 1964 legitimised the dominant ideology of liberalism and naturalised the social relations of capitalism, thus obscuring the underlying extreme colonial social, economic and political inequalities, while protecting our continued colonial exploitation and sustaining our alienation. Thus, correctly understand, it is not surprising that the liberal ideological hegemony and its capitalism confirmed by our “independence” have 60 years afterwards, produced their perfect zombie adherents in the UPND and its government, complete with their dystopic lies. And we are at our most hungry, unemployed, poor and grotesquely unequal!

Liberalism and capitalism are deadly lies: they separate, estrange, alienate individuals from their labour, products, fellow human beings, nature, and even themselves, all the while reproducing and perpetuating social inequality, hunger, unemployment, poverty, environmental destruction, exploitation and promoting violence and wars. It is time for our second independence struggle.

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