At the same time, however, a regression was in the offing—transient, like all regressions, yet formidable. A new spiral in its development would make it possible once more for capitalism to apply totalitarian shackles to the will to live to which the occupations movement of May 1968 had committed itself by championing the birth of a new society and the collapse of the commodity system.
How is it that the life forces aroused in 1968 have for almost fifty years now been underground, continuing the struggle wherever the weight of despair has not succeeded in turning them against themselves and changing them into death reflexes, the drive for suicidal annihilation? The answer is that consumerist capitalism has given way to a financial capitalism that ceases to invest in business, renounces its own dynamism and derives most of its profits from stock market fluctuations.
The cyclone of financial speculation has completely razed all past values, human and inhuman alike. No belief, no idea, no behavior has resisted the monetary tide. Everything is invalidated by becoming exchangeable with anything else to the benefit of a single absolute value, namely money. A mad money that revolves around itself and devastates the planet in its frantic quest for short-term profit
The absurd dictatorship of financial trading has ushered in a mercantilism of “the last days”—an apocalyptic system whose madcap race to nothingness terrifies us and plunges our bodies and consciousness into darkness.
A sinister voice seems to boom forth in the manner of the cunning biblical prophets, firming up its hold over masses panic-stricken by the supposedly imminent end of the world. “Enjoy yourselves,” the voice proclaims, “because tomorrow will be worse!” The message is fatalism, spreading a fear and resignation from which all the remnants of demagogic state power hasten to extract material and spiritual profit. Meanwhile, information distilled by media in the pay of multinational mafias works methodically to brainwash the hordes and get them crawling and writhing in a state of resigned resentment.