Digging Through The Ruins Of Modernity.. When Blood Writes The History Of Capitalism
In The Autumn Of 1773, The Venerable Scottish Professor Adam Smith Was Pacing The White Limestone Streets Of London, Putting The Final Touches On His Historic Manuscript ‘The Wealth Of Nations,’ Which Saw The Light In 1776 To Become The Unofficial Gospel Of The Global Capitalist System And The Free Market. Smith, Isolated And Immersed Among Books On Corn Prices, Taxes, And Banking Systems, Viewed The World From The Window Of The Aristocratic Elite Who Believed That Trade And Economic Freedom Were The Two Fundamental Levers Of Human Progress, And That Violence Was Merely A Barbaric Incident That Would Dissipate Before The Rule Of Law And Institutions. Yet This Velvety, Cheerful Scene Of The Birth Of Western Modernity Hides In Its Shadows A Profoundly Dark Truth, A Truth That The Prominent American Historian Clifton Cress Decides To Excavate In His Newest And Most Radical Book: The Killing Age: How Violence Made The Modern World.
Cress Offers In This Massive Work A Deconstructive Alternative Reading Of The Origins Of Our Contemporary World, To Reformulate The Common Narrative About The Industrial Revolution And The Rise Of The West. The Author Firmly Rejects That Cold Academic View That Reduces Atrocities And Historical Crimes To Mere ‘Events’ Arranged In Separate Geological And Temporal Layers. Instead, He Invites Us To View History As Accumulated Wreckage And A Fierce Storm That Never Stops Blowing, Where Past And Present Merge In A Terrifying Way. The Central Thesis Of The Book Boils Down To A Shocking Concept For Which The Author Coined A New Conceptual Neologism; He Proposes Replacing The Term ‘Anthropocene’ (The Age Of Humans), Coined By Dutch Chemist Paul Crutzen To Refer To The Geological Epoch That Began To Take Shape With The Emissions Of English Factories In The Late Eighteenth Century, With A More Precise And Realistic Term, Namely ‘Mortecene’ Or ‘The Age Of Death And Killing.’
Cress Argues That Western Modernity And The Industrial Revolution Were Not The Pure Ingenious Product Of The Steam Engine Developed By James Watt, Or Of The Free Market Mechanisms Preached By Adam Smith, But Were Driven By A Huge Explosion Of Organized Violence And Human Predation Unparalleled On The Planet Since The Extinction Of The Dinosaurs Sixty-Six Million Years Ago. This Global Violence, Which Intensified Between 1750 And 1900, Represented An Inevitable Mechanism That Allowed The West To Achieve Its Capitalist Accumulation Through What The Author Calls ‘Accumulation By Extermination.’ The Luxurious Industries Of Manchester And New York Would Not Have Turned Their Gears Were It Not For The Enslavement Of Millions Of Africans, The Dispossession Of Indigenous Peoples In America Of Their Lands, And The Conversion Of Those Environmental And Human Massacres Into Liquid Financial Value Pumped Into The Arteries Of London And American Banks.
From ‘Anthropocene’ To ‘Mortecene’.. The Engineering Of Extermination And Turning Blood Into Capital
If Adam Smith Viewed Markets As An ‘Invisible Hand’ That Organizes The Interest Of Society, Clifton Cress In ‘The Killing Age’ Lifts The Veil Off This Hand To Show It Gripping Weapons And Plunging Daggers Into The Bodies Of Colonized Peoples. Cress Argues That The Transition From Pre-Industrial Societies To The Contemporary World Was Not A Peaceful Development Dictated By Economic Laws, But Was A Comprehensive ‘Engineering Of Extermination’ That Reshaped The Geography And Demography Of The Earth.
Here Emerges The Value Of The Term ‘Mortecene’ Coined By The Author; It Does Not Merely Describe Environmental Pollution Or Climate Change, But Describes A Historical Era In Which The ‘Industry Of Death’ Became The Primary Engine Of The Global Economy. The Rise Of Western Industrial Capitalism Between 1750 And 1900 Required Turning Living Beings And Natural Environments Into Commodities Exchangeable And Financially Recyclable. And This Transformation Could Not Have Been Achieved Without The Use Of Organized Violence In Its Ugliest Forms.
The Book Traces This Mechanism Through Three Main Axes That Formed The Pillars Of The ‘Age Of Killing’:
Demographic Massacres And Uprooting: Cress Observes How The Growth Of Cotton And Sugarcane Plantations In The ‘New World’—Which Represented The Nourishing Arteries For European Factories—Was Conditioned By ‘Accumulation By Extermination.’ Entire Peoples (The Indigenous) Were Replaced Through Ethnic Cleansing, And Millions Of Humans Were Imported As Serfs And Slaves From Africa In The Largest Human Trafficking Operation Known To History.
Environmental Extermination (Ecocide) As A Condition For Modernity: The Author Clarifies That Violence Was Not Practiced Against Humans Alone, But Against Nature As Well. In Order To Convert Vast Spaces Into Agricultural Lands Serving Global Markets, Entire Ecosystems, Rainforests, And Virgin Forests Were Destroyed, Leading To A Mass Extinction Of Living Species No Less Cruel Than What The Planet Witnessed In Ancient Geological Eras.
Monetizing Blood And Converting It Into Liquid Value: Cress Excels In Revealing The Banking Mechanisms That Linked The Blood Of Victims To The Prosperity Of Financial Centers In London And New York. Violence Was Not Random Savagery, But ‘Rationalized’ And Codified Violence; Bonds And Shares Traded On Western Stock Exchanges Derived Their Value And Stability From The Volume Of Production Based On Forced Labor, The Forcible Seizure Of Lands, And The Destruction Of Local Communities.
What Cress Proves In This Section Of His Thesis Is That ‘Modernity’ And ‘Barbarism’ Are Not Opposites As Classical Liberal Philosophy Promoted, But Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin. The Legal And Institutional System That The Aristocratic And Bourgeois Elite Boasted About In Western Capitals Was Directly Feeding On Boundless Brutality Practiced Overseas.
Enlightenment Philosophers In The Colonial Trench.. Rationalizing Brutality And Manufacturing Dependency
The ‘Age Of Killing’ Would Not Have Achieved This Sweeping Success And Continuity For Centuries Were It Not For The Existence Of An Integrated Conceptual And Philosophical Apparatus That Justifies Crime And Grants It Moral And Legal Cover. In This Part Of The Book, Clifton Cress Moves From Dissecting The Economic And Banking Structure Of The ‘Mortecene’ To Deconstructing The Superstructure And Intellectual Framework That Legitimized This Violence. Here The Author Directs His Biting Criticism At The Giants Of Modern European Philosophy, Showing How Enlightenment Thought—Intentionally Or Unintentionally—Became Complicit In Formulating A Human Hierarchy That Permits The Extermination And Dispossession Of The Other.
Cress Sees That Philosophers Of The Social Contract And The Enlightenment, From John Locke To Hegel, Established Truncated Definitions Of ‘Human,’ ‘Rationality,’ And ‘Property’; Such That These Concepts Were Linked Exclusively To The Western European Pattern. Land That Was Not Cultivated According To Capitalist Mechanisms Nor Enclosed By Private Property Was Considered In Western Legal Thought ‘Terra Nullius’ (Empty Land), Thus Giving The Green Light For Colonization To Uproot Indigenous Peoples On The Grounds That They Were ‘Outside History’ Or ‘Below The Full Rank Of Humanity.’
This Intellectual And Geopolitical Dimension Of The Age Of Killing Manifests In Two Colonial Mechanisms That Entrenched Western Hegemony:
Legal And Institutional Violence: Cress Reveals That Extermination Was Not Merely Random Military Campaigns, But Was Codified Through Unjust Treaties, Commercial Laws, And Colonial Courts Specifically Designed To Transfer Wealth And Strip Peoples Of Their Sovereignty Under The Name Of ‘Spreading Civilization.’
Manufacturing Dependency And Structural Demolition: The Emerging International System Did Not Limit Itself To Plundering Resources, But Deliberately Destroyed The Autonomous Economic And Social Structures Of Colonized Societies In Asia, Africa, And Latin America, And Transformed Them Into Mere Dependent And Consuming Peripheries Serving The Capitalist Center, Creating A Developmental And Structural Gap From Whose Consequences The World Still Suffers Today.
‘Rationalized Brutality’ Over Time Turned Into A Cold Technocratic Tool; Killing And Environmental Destruction Were No Longer Viewed As Moral Sins, But As ‘Necessary Collateral Damage’ In Humanity’s March Toward Modernization. This Distorted Philosophical Vision Is What Allowed Managers Of Colonial Companies And London Banks To Sleep Peacefully, While Shipping Lines Transported Millions Of Souls And Plundered Wealth Across The Oceans.
Semiotics And Resistance.. Death Extended In Memory And The Predicament Of The Nation-State
There Is An Important Dimension That Clifton Cress Delves Into In The Later Chapters Of His Book, Which Has Not Yet Received Its Due Exposure, Concerning The Symbolic And Linguistic Structure That Entrenched The ‘Mortecene’ In Global Consciousness, And The Predicament Of The Modern Nation-State Born Deformed From The Womb Of This Violence. Cress Argues That Extermination Was Not Complete Without A Parallel Semiotic And Cultural Destruction; Colonialism Did Not Content Itself With Materially Looting Homelands, But Deliberately Erased Their Historical Names, Renamed Geography In The Victor’s Language, And Turned The Languages And Inherited Cultures Of Indigenous Peoples Into Mere Primitive ‘Folklore’ Dating Back To Prehistory. This Symbolic Erasure Created A State Of Existential Alienation Among Colonized Peoples, Making The Trauma Of Violence Extended And Transgenerational, So That The Collective Memory Of Those Societies Still Bleeds Today, Unable To Formulate Its Independent Identity Away From The Narrative Of Victim And Colonizer.
In This Deconstructive Context, The Author Puts His Finger On A Highly Complex Geopolitical Dilemma, Represented In The Emergence Of The Modern Nation-State In Post-Colonial Fabrications. Cress Sees That National Liberation Movements, Despite Their Heroism And Sacrifices, Fell Into A Historical Trap When They Adopted The Same State Structure Invented By The Colonizing West; The Modern State In Africa, Asia, And Latin America Inherited The Artificial Borders Drawn With The Colonizer’s Ruler In Closed London And Paris Rooms To Serve The Interests Of The ‘Age Of Killing.’ As A Result, These Nascent States Found Themselves Forced To Practice Organized Violence Against Their Minorities And Local Peoples To Consolidate The Pillars Of ‘National Sovereignty,’ Making Them, Unwittingly, A Functional Tool For Reproducing The Same Structure Of Capitalist Exclusion And Marginalization They Had Risen To Resist In The First Place.
Cress Opens A Slightly Ajar Door To Hope Through What He Calls ‘Resistance To Forgetting And Reclaiming Sovereignty Over The Land,’ Considering That Breaking Free From The Grip Of Bloody Modernity Does Not Pass Through Isolation, But Through Creating Cross-Border Alliances Among Marginalized Peoples, Redefining The Relationship With Nature Outside The Logic Of Capitalist Consumption, And Reclaiming The Right To Write History From The Perspective Of Victims Not Executioners. It Is A Radical Call To Rethink The Contemporary International System, Not By Repairing Its Dilapidated Institutions, But By Creating A New Human Space That Transcends The Catastrophic Legacy Of The ‘Mortecene’ And Its Structural Contradictions.
Ethics Of Mechanization And The Universal Guilt Complex.. Humanity Facing The Killing Machine
There Is A Deep Philosophical And Psychological Aspect That Clifton Cress Places Under The Microscope Of Criticism In The Final Chapters Of His Book, Concerning How Human ‘Work Ethics’ Were Distorted To Become A Psychological Cover Protecting Those Running The ‘Mortecene’ System From Feelings Of Guilt. Cress Argues That Industrial Modernity Succeeded In Creating A Sharp Separation Between ‘The Act’ And ‘Its Moral Consequence’ Through The Mechanism Of Division Of Labor And Comprehensive Mechanization. The Engineer Who Designs Production Lines Or Develops Resource Extraction Technologies, And The Bureaucrat Who Manages The Accounts Of Colonial Companies From Behind His Desk In Western Capitals, Do Not See The Blood Of Victims Nor Witness The Destruction Of Local Environments Directly. This Cold Detachment Turned Violence From An Existential Sin Into Merely A ‘Technical Task’ Measured By Numbers And Results, Allowing Modern Societies To Swallow The Brutality Of The Capitalist System Without A Sense Of Moral Responsibility.
In This Context, The Author Traces The Emergence Of What He Calls The ‘Belated Universal Guilt Complex’ That Began To Appear In Western Cultural Space With Growing Awareness Of Catastrophic Environmental And Climate Crises. Cress Sees That Attempts By Contemporary International Systems To Propose Solutions Under Names Like ‘Green Capitalism’ Or ‘Sustainable Development’ Are In Truth Nothing But Attempts To Cleanse The Western Conscience Without Touching The Essence Of Hegemony Or Relinquishing The Privileges Of Financial Accumulation Inherited From The ‘Age Of Killing.’ They Are Cosmetic Operations Aimed At Managing The Crisis Not Solving It, Because They Refuse To Acknowledge That Current Technological And Industrial Prosperity Still Feeds On The Depletion Of The Developing World’s Peripheries And The Forcible Control Of Its Resources And Geography.
This Deconstructive Dimension Ends With A Warning Against The Consequences Of Surrendering To Autonomous Technical Mechanisms; Cress Sees That The Greatest Danger Today Lies In Delegating Life-And-Death Decisions To Intelligent And Autonomous Systems, Whether In Wars Or In Managing The Global Economy. This Development Represents The Peak Aspired To By The ‘Mortecene’ System, Where Moral Accountability Is Completely Lifted From Humans, And The Engineering Of Extermination Becomes Merely Silent Algorithmic Operations Running In An Isolated Digital Space, Thus Imposing On Humanity A Fateful Challenge To Regain Control Over The Machine And Restore Consideration For The Authentic Ethical Concept Of Life.
Extensions Of The ‘Mortecene’.. Technical Violence And Shadow Wars In The Twenty-First Century
The ‘Age Of Killing’ Did Not End With The Departure Of Traditional Colonial Armies And The Signing Of Independence Treaties In The Mid-Twentieth Century, But The Most Alarming Thesis In Clifton Cress’s Book Boils Down To The Fact That The Structure Of Organized Violence And Death Has Been ‘Updated’ And Recycled To Take Forms That Are Simultaneously Softer And More Lethal. The Contemporary International System Has Moved From The Stage Of Direct Physical Extermination By Gunpowder And Cannons, To The Stage Of Technical And Cyber Hegemony And Economic Shadow Wars; Cress Analyzes How Our Contemporary World Reproduces The Mechanisms Of The ‘Mortecene’ Through New Technological And Geopolitical Manifestations.
In This Context, The Author Clarifies That Tools Of Control No Longer Need The Walls Of Colonial Prisons Or Direct Military Presence, But Have Transformed Into Complex Algorithms, Hyper-Intelligent Surveillance Networks, And Digital Infrastructures And Data Centers That Impose Total Cognitive And Economic Hegemony Over Societies And Individuals, Gradually Depriving Peoples Of Their Technological And Informational Sovereignty. This Technical Violence Extends To Include Contemporary Geopolitical Conflicts; The Book Argues That Major Powers Still Practice Strategies Of Accumulation By Extermination And Destruction But Through Intermediary Parties And Proxy Wars, Making Regional Attrition Conflicts And Forcible Control Over Vital Waterways, Gas Pipelines, And Undersea Internet Cables A Direct Extension Of The Same Conflict That Began In The Eighteenth Century To Secure Capitalist Supply Lines.
Nor Does The Matter Stop At The Limits Of The Military And Digital Machine, But Goes Beyond To The Neoliberal Economic Space That Practices A Kind Of Silent Extermination; Cress Sees That The Weapon Of Economic Sanctions, Market Blockades, And Imposing Unjust Structural Adjustment Conditions On Developing Countries Represents A Form Of Codified Violence That Kills Slowly And Silently By Destroying The Social And Health Safety Nets Of Millions, And Converting The Capabilities Of States Into Cash Liquidity Serving Global Financial Centers.
