Peović at Poets' Square: Why is there no capitalist manifesto?

The literary program of the XL Theatre City Festival continued last night at Poet's Square with a guest appearance by Katarina Peović, who presented her book of essays "The End of Capitalism?".

The evening's moderator was Dr. Marijan Krivak, professor of philosophy, who explained the concept of capitalism at the very beginning of the evening.

"Market, monopoly, late, multinational, digital, financial, corporate. What? Well, it's about the only subject of the substance of the modern world, capital. In other words, it's about the matrix according to which the entire, not only economic, but also social, political and cultural way of organizing the production of life itself is organized. Fredric Jameson will say in one place: we can imagine everything, cataclysms, fires, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, not to mention wars. We can imagine the end of the subject, the end of man, the end of the world, but we still can't imagine the end of capitalism," he said and asked Peović what the essence of her title and the entire book was, to which she replied that today it is harder to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of the world, even though we practically live at the end of the world.

"Either we will be killed by an ecological cataclysm or by wars and the generations to come, I think they are more or less aware of that. We can all even agree that we are aware that we are heading towards an end. One Croatian philosopher said that the idea that we are heading towards World War III is an optimistic idea, because when we say World War III, maybe a fourth will come, maybe a fifth will come, which means that we will survive that World War III. However, World War III could be the final war. The development of weapons and the scale of atomic warfare are such that we can really assume that this Third could be final, unlike the previous ones," explained Peović, adding that climate change is the next challenge if humanity survives the aforementioned war.

"We are aware of all this here in Budva today, that we will not live in the world we knew, for example, in our childhood. Climatic conditions are changing so that radical climate phenomena are occurring more and more frequently. We must be aware that they will not affect the entire planet equally, but will certainly affect poorer countries more severely and seriously than richer ones. So we, on the periphery of Europe, due to our economic situation and geographical position, can expect a bad future. In addition, for us here, as for the Croatians on the Adriatic coast, tourism is the main economic sector. Tourism will disappear in this region, people will go to the lakes and to more northern regions, but they will not come to the sea because it will be too warm. According to all estimates, the Mediterranean will be strongly influenced by climate change, which will change it to the extent that we will not be able to continue living as we do today, even economically."

Peović emphasized that the book "The End of Capitalism?" is brave because it attempts to imagine a world without capitalism.

"Of course, that world without capitalism cannot come tomorrow nor can it be realized very quickly, but we can foresee some forms of economic models that would gradually reduce the capitalist elements of the economy. First of all, we must look at what is most important to us, and that is the concept of the public good, which you here in Budva understand very well. An example is the privatization of beaches, which is much talked about both here and in Croatia. Before this conversation, I mainly talked to people about the privatization of beaches, the concreting of the coast and the entry of big capital into Budva, which is also very visible in the numerous unfinished buildings that it is hard to believe were built so that each housing unit would actually be sold."

As she pointed out, capital has no interest in developing cities on a human scale.

"Capital's only interest is in profits. To enter quickly, conquer as much space as possible and make a profit. What is happening here in Budva is what happened in Croatia before joining the European Union, during the period of primary capital accumulation. This means that with almost no regulation, capital is wildly entering new areas, which is its necessity. Marx wrote a long time ago that capital must expand into new areas in order to survive. After that initial accumulation of capital, which takes place completely unregulated, when no one knows who the owner is, how one enters into certain businesses and what it brings to the social community, some kind of regulation is introduced. However, even that regulation often serves only as a formal legitimization of procedures that are not of essential importance to capital. Capital fights by all means."

Speaking about the relationship between the left and right political currents on a global level, Peović took the United States as an example and said that capitalists are forced to accumulate their wealth, just as a worker is forced to work to live.

"What is happening today is that the nominal left, that is, the Democratic Party in America, in which there are only two major parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. It is more convincing for workers to vote for Donald Trump than for Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, who represent the nominally left-wing positions of American politics. They represent the elites just as much as Trump represents the elites. There is absolutely no difference. We have turned into a kind of one-party system. We are coming to a crisis of democracy, because there is an illusion that we can choose between several parties, but in fact they are all representatives of the interests of the elite. What happens is that the workers very often vote for the right, because what used to be called the left betrayed them. They can no longer trust the elites who claimed to be for the workers and that they are the left," she said, adding that capitalism survives through constant crises and depoliticization of society. As she pointed out, capitalism does not have a clear program or manifesto, but despite this it functions and shapes the modern world.

"We have the Hacker Manifesto, the Communist Manifesto, but we don't have a capitalist manifesto, because capitalism as a system unfolds somehow spontaneously, through constant change. It has no rules by which it operates, no representatives. Even the biggest capitalists will not say "I am for capitalism". They will often say "I am the biggest leftist, I am also a worker" and so on. What is important to note is that, regardless of the fact that it does not have a program, capitalism still functions, but it functions in a completely irrational way. In capitalism, we produce a lot of what we do not need, luxury goods, yachts, SUVs that are among the biggest polluters in the world. We produce huge amounts of things that we do not need and in quantities that we cannot control, while we do not produce what we really need."

Speaking about relations in the region, Peović emphasized that Croatian and Serbian elites have no problems interacting with each other, while the nations are often burdened by hostilities.

"And the only moment in history when we were a global factor was when we were together, when we realized that cooperation in this region is inevitable, that we are naturally familiar with each other, that we speak the same language, even though we live in different countries, and that it is completely illogical not to cooperate, that we are not actually stronger and bigger. And I am almost certain of one thing, now it is spectacular for the yellow media, in Croatia they would probably report it, I am certain that at some point in history, whenever it is, our countries will cooperate again, whether in some form of redefined Yugoslavia or in the broader context of the European Union. Croatia has Article 142 in its Constitution, which prohibits the reconstruction of Yugoslavia. No country in the world has a ban on community and association with other countries in its Constitution. This is called the primary fear, that is what constitutional experts call it. The primary fear of the Germans is that Nazism will be reconstructed, so they have "never again" in their Constitution. France has "never again a monarchy", we will not have a kingdom anymore. These are those primary fears. But only one country in the world is afraid of unification, and nobody really is."

When asked by the audience how she sees the future of the Croatian left, Peović answered through the example of Graz and the Communist Party of Austria.

"In Austria, or rather in Graz, the Communist Party of Austria won. It's literally called the Communist Party of Austria. They're giving up a huge part of their income there. Elke Kar is the mayor and, as far as I know, she gets about two and a half thousand euros, and her income is nine hundred and something. They give everything else to social transfers, they actually donated millions of euros. That's a good way to show "okay, I'm not in politics for my own benefit". How many representatives would there be in parliament, any parliament, if that rule were dominant?" she asked.

At the end of the evening, Peović, playing the guitar, sang two songs, "Bella ciao" and "Bratstvo i jedinstvo", which rounded off this evening at Poets' Square.