In Search of New Weapons

July 2025

Part One: On the Genesis of Social Being

In order to go beyond the human as bourgeois individual we must first begin with it as it really is; not as universal, as species, but as individual man who eats, sleeps, works and experiences the world in which he lives. This world by necessity immediately confronts him as something that is external and alien to him, something that determines him and is separate from him. This one-sidedness must be overcome, and it can only be overcome by the progressive unfolding of history, the conclusion of which is communism.

We cannot, however, deal with her as an atomized unit, for she is always-already one among many, one subject who is also object amongst other subjects. Thus, the human is always-already in relation with other humans, and always-already in relation (both opposing and reinforcing) with the world, and it is by these relations that she grows, lives, and dies, and it is by their relation with her (and all other humans) that all others grow, live and die.

As a rule, the world always confronts human beings as collective, or rather, human beings as a collective confront the world. By the time individual beings confront the world, they have always-already been confronted by other human beings. Furthermore, on a social basis, there is no point at which a human being who is confronted by the world is not also confronted by other human beings, and vice versa. The relation between human beings grows, develops, and diminishes concurrently with the relation between human beings and the world.

Even if a human being appears to be confronting the world as a lone individual, this confrontation is by necessity underlied by prior human-human relations and confrontations.

Remark

Despite the fact that humans are always-already social beings (that is, they are only possible because of already existing social relations), they are also, to a degree, autonomous from social relations. Though a human being cannot come into being without the existence of prior social relations, and though for her first few years she relies entirely upon them and upon other human beings, she will eventually reach a point where even if she were to be severed from her social relations and networks, she would still (granted she had the necessary skills) be able to carry on a meager and animal-like existence.

However, it must be kept in mind that the only way anyone can acquire such skills is through social intercourse with others, whether it be through direct intercourse (conversation) or indirect intercourse (reading, observing, etc.). Not only that, but the fact that a human being is actually in existence, that he is here rather than not here, implies the existence of prior social intercourse.

Our conclusion must be that human nature is a social product, the existence of which is grounded in social relations, regardless of whether or not she is directly situated in a social relation at any given moment.

Human beings as social beings, as said previously, confront the world as something that is external and alien, something which must be subdued by force or wit or cunning, but also as something that must be adapted to, understood, and existed within. From the beginning, however, the world as a hostile being takes ideological precedence over the world-as-home. From the moment that the human became human, from the moment that she began to perceive herself, correctly or not, as something that is capable of determining herself on her own terms, from this very moment she, in alliance with those parts of the world that appeared to be of herself, declared war on those parts of the world that appear as alien and hostile; as something that not only was not determined by her, but which also “sought” to determine her.

Thus arises the illusory distinction between the world and the human; thus arises the illusion of the world as something which is foreign, something which must be understood and grasped for the purposes of directed and intentional change. Thus arises philosophy, and from it, science.

Philosophy means, in the Greek, the love of wisdom. To love something is to direct oneself towards it, to strive towards it. Out of the fear of what is unknown, we came to love what is known, and to expand what we know, so that we may no longer be subject to the world as an apparent alien power.

In so doing, two premises had to first be accepted;

That there is a world that exists independently of human beings, and
That this world can be known, and by being known, it can be changed.

By accepting both of these premises, a third is also implicitly accepted;
We as human beings are seemingly thrown into the world; we are seemingly separate from it, and exist in it as a hostile, intruding power.

This of course is only appearance; human beings are no more alien to the world than anything else in it. The whole history of humanity is nothing more than the constant revolutionizing of our relationship to the world, with the final result being that we must one day find ourselves back at the home that we never left.

The history of philosophy hitherto has been nothing more than the history of the search for an objective ground of being and of being that resides not in this world, but in another. Lost in the mists of speculation, stumbling in the dark night of idealism, we have forgotten that the objective ground of being is being itself. Humanity contains the seeds of its own emancipation; it must simply grasp it. “To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself.”1

Though the root of man is man himself, it is only the top of the root; man contains untold multitudes which, taken of themselves, are not man. And yet man remains. What, then, is our epoch making task? It is to grasp man in all her multitudes. This is the task of social ontology.

Part Two: Reflections on the Prejudices of Modernity

Suppose intelligence goes beyond human beings. What then? Would there not be cause to believe that we as a species have been misled—by ourselves? Is there not a reason to think that we are not the will behind our own activity? Would this not be the death of the human as human, and thus also the death of humanism?

But if this is the case, what is there that still lives? God is dead, nature is dead, truth is dead, and now the human too is dead? What has driven us to carry out such a brutal series of murders, which culminated with the murder of the murderer itself, by its own hand, and against its own will? Can we even speak of such a thing as “will” anymore? Can we even speak of such a thing as “we”? In opposition to what other do we define this “we”? Perhaps to God–not the God that is dead, but the God that does not live, yet is not dead? That God is Capital, and it must be annihilated.

What is this God? Where is this God? In asking these questions the point is sorely missed. There is no “what” apart from what it is, no “where” apart from where it roams at any given moment. It is a force that reshapes all that it touches, yet it has no end, purpose or meaning of its own. Nor does it “require” such things; it simply is.

And yet, despite its indifference, these qualities are nominally acquired. By what means, you may ask? By your means. The human as human recoils with horror.

Perhaps intelligence is then the most inhuman quality of them all?

Reality feels thin these days, does it not? So many seemingly important distinctions, categorizations and schemas are melting away like burning wax. What a thing is and what it does, its “essence” and its qualities, its simplicity or complexity, all melting into each other, becoming each other and becoming something more, becoming nothing. And yet, here we are. All remains the same, different like it always has been. “The sun is new each day,” and in its difference it produces the appearance of… sameness?2

If the world truly was ordered and linear there would be no need for (human) intelligence. Human intelligence, that result of accumulated chaos, would never come about in an ordered world, and in such a world it would have nothing to graft itself onto. For it is the imperative of human intelligence to expand itself by whatever means necessary. Prior to the advent of the scientific revolution, this could only be done in the realm of the spiritual, by means of religion.

But now, with the emergence of capital as a quasi-independent social force, human intelligence abounds! Deep in the Grundrisse, Marx puts forward the formulation that is symptomatic of what we mean; “Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified.”3

This general intellect, though the result of human activity, exists outside of it, but not yet independently of it. However, the very fact of its existence points towards its emergence as something that is not entirely human. The fact that, since Marx wrote those lines, the scope and power of this general intellect has grown at a seemingly exponential rate, is enough for us to come to the conclusion that here, new life is being born.

We must consider this very carefully, and act accordingly.

Put together, all the grand assumptions of the modern political order are like a house built upon the sand. These doctrines are innumerable. First there is the doctrine of the individual who exists as one, and who exists distinctly and separately from all other individuals. Then there is the doctrine of rights, those possessed not only by individuals but also those possessed by humanity “as a whole.” And even further we have the doctrine of the social contract, which is the logical conclusion of the basic propositions of liberal thinking. The frontal assault against these three pillars of modernity marks the beginning of our campaign against liberalism.

Let us first begin with the myth of the individual. What is an “individual”? The word itself answers any questions that its assumption may pose. An individual is that which cannot be divided any further. It is the socio-political equivalent of the Classical Greek atom, and serves as the founding principle of the “rules-based order.”

It is thus very unfortunate for our liberals that the individual is nothing more than an abstraction that has no solid basis in the functioning of flesh and blood human beings. There is no single will that exists in a human being and determines what she does; rather, human beings are composed of a multiplicity of forces, wills, tendencies, drives and instincts, and these are more often than not totally opposed to each other. If this multiplicity of forces were ever to reach a stable equilibrium, it would mean the death of the organism.

My stomach tells me that I am hungry, but my conscious inhibitions tell me not to eat; which is truly “my” desire? The desire to eat, or the desire to resist my hunger? Why assume that the inclinations produced by conscious thought are somehow more genuine or “human” than those which are produced by my animal functions? Not only that, but why assume that these two opposing inclinations are somehow a product of one and the same “will”? Would it not be equally as plausible to assume the existence of more than one will, than to assume the existence of a single will that manifests itself in ways that are in total opposition to other manifestations of itself?

The human personality as it exists in any given human being at any given time is the product of a vast system of forces, both internal and external, of which it would be nigh impossible to trace the genesis of even one of them in its inevitable relations with all of the others. The only possible way to even approach an analysis and understanding of the human being is by means of isolating certain variables at the expense of others.

This is the method of modern science. But be wary lest it is assumed that this brings us closer to the truth; it brings us closer to one potential truth among many, and this must always be in opposition to the truth. So it must be, the truths of multiplicity against the truth of unity.

It is to the great merit of Freud that with his psychoanalysis he was the first to lay bare, in a practical setting, the multiplicity and contradiction of human subjectivity. He was the first to show in a clinical setting that we are not what we think we are, that we have desires of which we are barely even aware, and that it is precisely that which we do not understand and cannot understand that is most important in determining “who” we are and what we shall become.

For this epoch defining achievement, Freud was and still is honored by the hatred and disdain of weak and cowardly minds who would rather live in the illusions that are cast upon the puddles of civilized society than face what they really are. There is a reason for this hatred; without the myths of will, purpose and reason, our liberals do not know what to do with themselves; “if there is no transcendent value shared by all, what good is humanity!?” Please excuse me gentlemen, but did I just get a whiff of God, amongst you enlightened men of civilization? No, it can’t be, for you swore Him off long ago…

Without the individual, there could be no intent in the judicial sense of the word; there would be no free will, at least not in the way it is usually spoken of; and thus, there could be no system of reward and punishment, blame or praise; there could be no social contract, no rights, no law. Do you now see how catastrophic it would be if these things did not exist? How could the powerful legislate to the powerless, or even justify their own power, without the doctrine of the individual and all that it entails?

There are no individuals. There are no rights, no duties, no purposes or intent, no unified personality, no constant self; there are only flows and breaks, startings and stoppings, currents and waves, all of which have congealed in a most grotesquely beautiful fashion in the minds of these curious creatures that we call human beings. And despite the unreality of these supposedly all important abstractions, we live, we love, we hate, and we strive.

But we cannot simply do these things; there must be a purpose! There must be rules! There is a right way and a wrong way, and everyone must be forced to do things the right way! And so, those pernicious ancestors of today’s liberals invented the most malign and malicious doctrine that has yet to be invented; they invented law and right so that they could justify their own impotence and resentment, and impose them on the world. Thus, after the emergence of surplus resources, the second most important factor in the genesis of class society: surplus resentment.

The ultimate consequence of the social contract: the before and the after. What does this mean? A contract is that which is entered into voluntarily, and which can be broken under certain conditions. Fair enough. But a contract which defines the social? Do these gentlemen not know that human beings are always-already social beings? There is no time in the distant past in which human beings were not social; there is no pre-social history. Likewise, there is no post-social future. Going even further, there is no act that breaks the socius. All acts are, if nothing else, reinforcements of the socius. This reinforcement is made twofold if the act is considered transgressive.

The expounders of contract theory introduce a great muddle into the problem of social ontology by assuming that social life at its core is exchange-based and contractual; “I do this for you only because I expect you to do this for me, or because you have already done this for me.” This could not be further from the truth of social interaction; only interaction under capitalism takes on this form, and even then, the primal origins of the socius constantly threaten to break through it at its limit.

Because of the omnipresence of Capital, we not only come to see all things through it, but we desire to see all things through it. Anything that does not immediately allow itself to be interpreted as an exchange is regarded with suspicion; it can be tolerated for a time, but as long as it exists outside of the framework of exchange it will produce discontent and discomfort. We all know or have observed the feeling of unease when someone mentions an act that was done seemingly for the sake of doing it, and for no other reason–for there must be a reason, a cause, a justification that exists outside of the act itself; if only to cover up the fact that Capital is its own reason, is its own cause, is its own justification.

Capital operates by turning concrete labor into abstract labor, which can then be exchanged for a similar quantity of abstract labor as congealed in commodities. Without this occult ritual that can make two things that are totally different the same, Capital is nothing. We are cogs of capital, and we are happy with ourselves as such; we wish to be obedient servants. We already dispose of our labor-power on the market, we exchange it for wages. Why not also exchange love for hate, pain for pleasure, and kindness for friendship? But here's the rub; there is no common basis upon which these things can be exchanged, no commodity of commodities in the world of the social.

Deleuze and Guattari say it well: “society is not exchangist, the socius is inscriptive; not exchanging but marking bodies, which are apart of the earth.”4 There are here present two levels: the level on which individuals mark and inscribe each other, and the level on which the socius marks itself on individuals. We do not act so that others may act in turn towards us; we act so that we may inscribe ourselves onto others, so that they may no longer be their own, but ours, so that everything they do henceforth will be influenced in some way by us. I must make it clear that I am not moralizing; I am merely describing a process.

In a way, could it not be said that Capital inscribes itself on us, and that the result is our inability to see things from a perspective that is not exchange? Have we not the marks of Capital all over our bodies and upon our very eyes?

This extends beyond the realm of mere informal relationships and into the realm of institutions; is not every legal system simply an attempt to make exchange into the ruling principle of social life, by attempting to establish the ever illusive universal commodity through which all other commodities (actions) are measured? A man kills another man, and is thus sentenced to life in prison. These two things are seen (or rather, assumed) to be equivalent. But why? What does imprisoning a man have to do with killing him? Unless we apply some transcendent value to both acts…

“Yet exchange is known, well known in the primitive socius–but as that which must be exorcized, encasted, severely restricted, so that no corresponding value can develop as an exchange value that would introduce the nightmare of a commodity economy. The primitive market operates through bargaining rather than by fixing an equivalent that would lead to a decoding of flows and a collapse of the mode inscription on the socius.”5

For the truth of this look no further than the Biblical canon, both Old and New Testament. Is the command to turn the other cheek not an injunction against exchange? Or what of the story of the pharisee and the publican; the pharisee comes to the temple and proclaims to God and onlookers what he has done; it is his half of the exchange, and eternal life is God’s half. But the publican? He does not exchange; he pleads. He is a wretched sinner, yet God is merciful and he knows this, so perhaps God will forgive him; he pleads with God but expects nothing from him.

All historical epochs are, in the final analysis, epochs defined by their own peculiar form of social engineering. In past epochs, social engineering was carried out directly and without mercy in order to bring about the subservience required by the first states; “the severity of the penal code provides an especially significant measure of the degree of effort needed to overcome forgetfulness and to impose a few primitive demands of social existence as present realities upon these slaves of momentary affect and desire.”6

The ancien regime was a regime of remembrance. The capitalist regime is by necessity a regime of forgetting. However, like any other state, it cannot do away with the tools of repression and memory. It needs them to reinforce its power.

Part 3: An Essay on Marxist Praxis

Marxism has been called many things; a science, a method, a framework, a grand narrative. It is, in some way or another, all of these. But it is also something more. Marxism is a weapon in the hands of the actor who forces himself onto the stage which he had hitherto been prevented from walking upon. That stage is the stage of history. If communism is truly to become “the real movement to abolish the present state of things”7 then it must abolish itself as what it is now, that being an academic curiosity which is used to endlessly “critique” the machinations of bourgeois culture, and become firmly rooted in that past which academia-as-institution seeks to erase.

Criticism by words is only made when criticism by weapons is generally understood to be a fruitless or impossible avenue of action. The moment that it comes to be seen as both necessary and possible, all words stop and history is exploded by fire and gunpowder. What was for the longest time a struggle that did not go beyond the immediate needs of each of its participants becomes a holy war for the physical and spiritual emancipation of all human beings. In other words, the struggle takes on a messianic character, and it is precisely this that makes it a revolutionary struggle.

In times of revolutionary war, all moral scruples which rule with such force in times of peace are totally disregarded. Morality itself is and must be subordinated to the needs of the struggle, for if the revolution is crushed, so too is any hope for the social, moral and spiritual restoration of the human race.

“As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the ‘sacredness of human life’. We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron.”8

This can be aptly described, if I can be allowed at least one more act of literary banditry, as a revolutionary suspension of the ethical. When the stakes involved are the salvation of the human race or the wholesale destruction of it, no means or methods can be left out of consideration.

For all its flaws, the Black Panther Party was the last organization in the US in recent memory that possessed not only the awareness of what must be done should the state declare total war on the working class, but also the willingness to carry it out. If anything, the Black Panthers arrived at the scene too early; the movement was not yet ready for armed struggle.

The Black Panther Party, despite its lack of ideological cohesion, its lack of a clear and detailed political program, and its lapses into ultra-left adventurism, shows us the future of organizations like the CPSUA and the Socialist Workers Party, had they not fallen victim to decay and stagnation. As a revolutionary party grows stronger and acts as a lightning rod for popular discontent, the violence of the state will eventually come down on it. When this happens, the party must be willing and able to resist and repel this violence by any means necessary; it must have a total willingness to go as far as its revolutionary goals require. The error in the Panthers’ approach was not that they were “too radical”. It was that they misapprehended the conditions of their time, and thus acted in a way that was in discordance with the mood of the masses.

It may be questioned whether or not the tactics of the Black Panthers were suitable for the time in which they operated, but here we will not concern ourselves with that. The question we must ask is whether or not the tactics of the Black Panthers are suitable for our times. When we talk about the tactics of the Panthers, we must be clear that we are referring specifically to their armed militancy. The heightening of contradictions that occurs as capitalism develops inevitably leads to the outbreak of armed struggle in some form or another.

When the time for armed struggle comes, the revolutionaries of the world must not be afraid to do what must be done. That is the chief merit of the Panthers, despite the fact that, as mentioned earlier, their appraisal of the situation was incorrect.

History must be transformed from the study of a past that is dead into a weapon that harnesses the ghosts of emancipated futures and directs them at the enemy. The revolutions of today must be given new life via direct infusion of these aborted futures. The Haitian Revolution, the Paris Commune, the Russian and Chinese revolutions and the days of ‘68 all are littered with weapons that are there for the taking. We must seize these weapons, and in so doing we must seize and actualize the messianic potential that slumbers in our age.

It is up to us to cause a rupture that bifurcates all of society into two clear camps. By the actions of the most politically conscious members of the revolutionary class, the rest of the downtrodden world can rise up in revolt against that which exists. By revolution, we can and must make it out of the future.

Notes

Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1843.
Heraclitus, Fragments. Translated by Brooks Haxton, New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, 1858. Translated by Martin Nicolaus, New York: Penguin Classics, 1993.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, New York: Penguin Classics, 2009.
Ibid.
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, 1887.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, 1846.
Leon Trotsky, "Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky," 1920.