Today’s world: The excrement and waste of capitalism

For millennia, humanity has progressed dialectically toward creating better conditions for life. Five to six thousand years ago, beginning with the Neolithic Revolution (humanity’s radical transition from a nomadic lifestyle based on hunting and gathering to a sedentary one), based on agriculture and livestock farming, class-based societies took hold. From then on, agriculture became sedentary, and the process of urbanization began.

Surpluses began to accumulate, generating wealth on one hand and inequality on the other. Social classes emerged, along with administrators who managed the trappings of government, religious “professionals” who explained and interpreted the unknown phenomena of nature in their own way, and soldiers who “resolved” the differences and confrontations generated by the accumulation process through armed conflict.

The appropriation of surplus goods and the means of production by some members of society began. The State emerged as an instrument that ensured, through force, that the owners maintained control over society, the workers, and production. Thus, the first laws were enacted to regulate authority, and armies were officially established as the primary tool for enforcing the owners’ interests. Social classes and exploitation also arose. Slave society was the first expression of this societal development. It became institutionalized when some societies chose to exploit prisoners of war as captive labor instead of executing them.

During the era of slavery, no industry existed, capital was scarce, and production techniques were rudimentary. Only land and labor were considered instruments of productive effort. However, since the workforce was subjected to slavery, it was not the property of those who labored and therefore received no compensation. Slavery was perpetuated solely by the slave owners, who, for their own self-interest, fostered and encouraged the reproduction of slaves.

From the 5th century BC in Greece, and later in Rome, slavery became widespread, but from the 3rd century AD onwards it began its decline as both cultures waned following the rise of urban centers over rural areas. This created the conditions for the emergence of feudal society, which represented a major step forward in human history.

However, this was achieved without overcoming a fundamental incompatibility: the antagonistic class contradictions, which were not resolved but merely transformed. The need for expansion, and therefore for war—previously used to obtain slaves—was now used to conquer territories where free peasants came to play the same role as slaves. While this was a significant step forward because people had gained their “freedom,” they were simultaneously used to form armies, thus ensuring the system’s stability.

But from the third century onward, the vastness and geographical extent of the conquered territories and subjugated peoples led to crisis and anarchy. Governments and leaders lacked the economic resources to sustain the enormous armies deployed across vast geographical areas. It was within this context that Christianity spread throughout the West. Thus, the weaknesses of the system began to surface. The cities, which had been the centers of power, revealed vulnerabilities; freedom from slavery was no longer enough. Individuals aspired to something more.

The end of slave society was a gradual historical process driven by economic and moral changes, as well as political pressures. The beginning of this new period, which would be called feudalism, can be placed in the 5th century, after the crisis of the Roman Empire, although it reached its peak in the West later, between the 9th and 15th centuries. Its origins lay in the insecurity generated after the fall of the Roman and Carolingian empires.

During the 9th and 10th centuries, Europe experienced a period of chaos in which monarchies, unable to protect their territories, were forced to cede part of their power, handing over political and military control of some areas to local nobles. This gave rise to a pact of vassalage, which manifested as subordination to the king in exchange for the granting of lands (fiefs), producing a transformation of society that was divided into new classes:The owners of power (warrior nobility and clergy) and those who did not have it (peasants and serfs forced to work the land).

In this way, the fiefdom became the center of an economy based primarily on agriculture and livestock. The peasants, who were mostly serfs bound to the land, though no longer slaves, depended on the feudal lord for protection and the right to cultivate the land. In this context, in Europe, theCatholic Church legitimized the social order as divine will and possessed vast tracts of land, using fear as an instrument of domination and control in alliance with monarchies and armies.

This system, which functioned “successfully” until the 14th and 15th centuries, began to dig its own grave after the resurgence of cities, the growth of trade, and the emergence of trade routes that allowed for the development of a new class no longer dependent on land: the bourgeoisie. The Black Death (which broke out in 1348) caused a major demographic crisis that decimated the population, created a labor shortage, and gave peasants greater bargaining power to demand better conditions, weakening the system of serfdom. Kings regained their authority over the nobles and subdued the feudal lords with the financial support of the bourgeoisie, consolidating the modern states that were emerging precisely during that period.

This process gave rise to capitalist society, which originated in the transition from feudal Europe (15th and 16th centuries) to modernity. It emerged thanks to the expansion of trade, the rise of the bourgeoisie as a new social class, and the Industrial Revolution, which transformed agricultural labor into wage labor and factory work.

With voyages of exploration and colonialism, international trade grew enormously. Banks and financial institutions began to form, facilitating capital accumulation and developing a mercantile capitalism that reached its peak between the 15th and 17th centuries. This also gave rise to the proletariat, a new class of exploited people that emerged after a process of land privatization (especially in England) that produced theexpulsion of peasants from rural areas, forced them to migrate en masse to cities, becoming wage laborers to survive. The Industrial Revolution, which began in England during the 18th century, was characterized by the widespread application of machinery to production, consolidating capitalism as the dominant system. Wealth no longer came solely from land, but from ownership of the means of production (factories and machines). Some intellectualsAdam Smith and David Ricardo laid the ideological foundations by advocating for the free market and non-intervention of the State in the economy.

As a new system, capitalist society began to construct its own principles, based on the free market, private property, and economic performance. Its core values fostered autonomy, rewards for individual effort, and economic growth. From an economic perspective, these principles generated a scale of values transformed into universal truths that, from then on, began to guide the functioning of the model. Some of these remain in effect, such as freedom of enterprise and the freedom to make individual decisions without interference; the recognition and legal protection of private property—that is, of goods, the means of production, and capital; and the creation of a competitive environment.In order to promote innovation, efficiency, and quality improvement to stand out in the market and maximize profits for the owner of capital and the means of production, the premise that work and productive investment should be rewarded with the accumulation of wealth and capital is presented as an expression of triumph and happiness in life, prioritizing personal success, entrepreneurship, and individual responsibility over collective well-being.

In 1916, Lenin defined imperialism as the “highest stage of capitalism,” characterized by the replacement of free competition with monopolies. The Russian leader established that this process would mark the transition of the capitalist system to its stage of greatest concentration, domination, and decline. Its fundamental features are: the concentration of production and capital and the creation of monopolies that decisively control production and the market; the fusion of banking capital with industrial capital to give rise to finance capital, in which a small group dominates the entire economy and dictates the rules of the system; the export of surplus capital to other countries (generally colonies or dependencies) to obtain higher rates of profit, unlike in the past when goods were exported; and the creation of international associations of monopolists that form cartels and global syndicates that divide up markets and commercial control of the globe. Finally, a new territorial division of the world takes place in which the main capitalist powers divide the planet into zones of influence, colonies and semi-colonies, generating constant geopolitical disputes and armed conflicts for hegemony.

This is what we are experiencing now. We are in the midst of the imperialist phase of capitalism, only now we are going through a very critical stage. Trump openly no longer governs (as world leaders have done for the last 250 years) to make capitalism competitive and successful. He doesn’t care. What he is doing is openly wielding power and governing for the 1% who make up the monopolies so that they can increase their profits and reap greater gains.

But paradoxically, and just as Lenin foresaw, this also entails its own decline. In his overwhelming imprint, Trump is destroying the foundations of capitalist society, sweeping away institutions, laws, principles, and values that sustained the model for two and a half centuries.

Trump is leaving his mark by generating negative side effects, exacerbating inequality and prioritizing profit over human well-being. Seen in this light, it is evident that the world is experiencing a crisis of capitalism unlike any seen before in history. This process manifests as a structural collapse stemming from the inherent contradictions of the accumulation model, where the relentless pursuit of profit clashes with social welfare. This instability is reflected in recurring cycles of recession, extreme inequality, job insecurity, and environmental degradation. Although the capitalist system has experienced crises in the past, these were cyclical, allowing it to make adjustments for its own renewal. Today, however, we are seeing signs of a structural crisis, similar to those foreshadowed during the decline of slavery and feudalism.

This situation manifests itself in practice as a widening gap between capital and labor, as profits become concentrated in the hands of corporate elites while purchasing power stagnates, leading to highly polarized societies. Likewise, the need for continuous growth and the commodification of natural resources have resulted in levels of environmental degradation and climate change that threaten sustainability.

As mentioned earlier, capitalism suffers recurring crises and destructive collapses in its daily operations. In response, now more than ever, those in power are taking measures to save financial systems and shift the costs onto the working class. Thus, essential areas such as health, education, water, and public space are subjected to market logic, prioritizing profitability over the guarantee of rights.

On the international stage, this whole situation has led to geopolitical instability in whichInternational competition for markets, resources, and hegemony has created trade tensions, tariff barriers, and armed conflicts that seek to reorganize the system to save it, without considering that this may lead to aberrations such as genocide, imposed wars, and the inability to confront plagues and pandemics that affect all of humanity equally and that point to the system’s decay. To assume that the world will function through bombings and death is a denial of the very nature of humanity.

Facing a new crisis of gigantic proportions, capital is once again resorting to fascism, just as it did a century ago, to try to expand and save itself from the predicament it is facing. The establishment of a Nazi regime in the United States has been the culmination of this entire process of deterioration in civic life on the political, economic, and social levels, and above all in the moral and ethical spheres , with the difference that in the past humanity united to confront Nazism, and today it coexists with it—with very few exceptions—without major setbacks, allowing its actions with impunity in the extermination camps and in international organizations.

This is what allows us to explain the rise of figures like Trump, Milei, Kast, Fujimori, De la Espriella, and others who represent the last gasp of a society that will inevitably disappear because pedophilia, racism, the murder of children, genocide, and lies as the main instrument of political “reason” cannot be the driving forces behind the development of human society.

In its dialectical evolution, the world inexorably moves toward a better future. These figures do not represent the bright future for humanity that everyone aspires to. On the contrary, they are an expression of the excrement and waste that capitalism leaves behind in the world after its long process of digesting society.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, we struggle to see this because we are the primary target of capital’s systemic fury, a fury that is now being forced to abandon other parts of the world in the face of the inexorable advance of peoples opening themselves to a new world. Thus, the economic, scientific, and technological power of China, the military strength of Russia, the armed force of Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Africa’s yearning and will to achieve its second independence by challenging, rejecting, and defeating colonial empires, and, in general, the resistance of peoples to continued domination, leave capital with only force, violence, war, threats, and blackmail as instruments to enforce its policies.

To assume that this will last forever is nothing more than a pipe dream. Great empires have dominated the world: Byzantium lasted 1058 years and its decline 400; Rome, 503 years and its decline 200; the British Empire 400 years and its end 97; the Ottoman Empire 623 years and disappeared in 239; the Spanish Empire 406 years and its decline 300. Who remembers them? This one we live under today has barely 128 years of domination and is already showing its flaws to the point that they had to resort to a pedophile, a child murderer, a liar, a pimp of prostitution, and a coward to try to hold on.

Does anyone really believe that people like this human monstrosity are going to make the world a better place? No, to reach that glorious future, people will fight and win. Humanity is witnessing the birth of a new world, and like all births, this one will also be painful. In the end, like life being born, the glorious future that will emerge will make the struggle worthwhile, and those who fight will receive their reward: the satisfaction of having been protagonists in the birth of a better society for humanity.