The cunning of unreason

 

Taking the red pill...

Marxists often call capitalism "irrational". But this wasn´t really the position of Marx and Engels. Or, to be more precise, they believed that capitalism was part of a deeper rationality working itself out in history. This (surprise) comes from Hegel: the "cunning of reason". 

This deeper, teleological rationality pushes the bourgeoisie to destroy pre-capitalist modes of production, create the modern industrial proletariat and hence create the objective preconditions for both a working class revolution and socialism. 

Look around you, comrades. Has any of this come to pass? What do you see? Yes, the capitalist system is crumbling...due to the climate crisis, the energy crisis, environmental destruction, lower IQ levels and the demographic shift of *de*population. And the bourgeoisie (whatever that even means today) is trying to solve the problem with policies which are clearly irrational and suicidal. 

None of this should come as a surprise. After all, Hegel´s cunning of reason is simply another term for...divine providence. Which doesn´t exist. Marxism has finally been exposed as a secular religion, a kind of weird Christian heresy. And while keeping the notion of God´s providence, it did away with another key Christian doctrine: that of original sin. 

I´m not a Christian, but "original sin" is certainly compatible with what we can actually observe: that every civilization declines and collapses, due to deep-seated irrational impulses. It´s the cunning of *unreason*.