Croatian Silence and Global Communism

‘Red Saturday’ of the one hundred and first was the best thing that happened in the Croatian media space in the last few years. Musically, journalistically, analytically, politically. With the fierce music of revolutionary punk, the show conveyed the ideas of long-gone leaders and Karl Marx. By evoking old, but never (extinct) ideas, they made it clear what is expected of Croats: thinking, acting. Unfortunately, only a few recognized this. Those who still care. Those who have not given up. Those who are not too lazy to engage with reality.

For years, the media space has been used for brainwashing and social dullness. Readers, listeners, and viewers have indifferently accepted such a game. They have become zombie-like consumers of trivial content that dulls all critical senses. Dazed by the colors of yellowing and the noise of reality, consumers have thus given the authorities a guarantee that there will be no unrest. That there will be no questions. That there will be no evidence that the idea of how this country and our lives should really look still lives in our heads. Punk rockers over 30 years ago (when life in Britain was also stratified and decadent) conveyed the idea of a society that necessarily needs change through music. Why can’t we do it any other way? Why is the only thing we know how to do well – to be silent? 

Recently, a young economist reminded me that the middle class – the one that drives – no longer exists. There is only the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. And complete dependence on foreign countries. The goods we buy for basic living needs are not produced here but imported. The market is dominated by importers/intermediaries who have not created even a fraction of the utility value of the goods they sell here. They impose an outrageous profit margin. Foreign (financial) capital finances foreign goods, importation, and personal consumption. And the basic living condition – a roof over your head: ‘You leave the profit to the owner for whom you work, the gross wage is generously taxed, what remains you spend on imported goods (again paying taxes to finance the existence of another parasite – the public sector).

You reallocate the minor added value of domestic labor into the pockets of importers (parasites) and foreign capital. The rest of your living needs you patch up with foreign financial capital that also takes away your added value derived from your work. This general scenario can be mitigated by the fact that part of the population still has some capital reserves (savings, shares in funds, real estate, and so on). But do not forget that the cycle repeats itself month after month’ – concludes that economist.

Somehow I reckon we all know this. Not just us who write. I know you know it too, you who read. Consciously or subconsciously. That is why Croatian silence is incomprehensible to me. We are silent privately, we are silent socially, we are silent politically. We wait to implode while keeping the unspoken within us. And this is precisely at a time of a new wave of questioning existing economic ‘arrangements’. The new wave is also a new opportunity. Only if there is no silence. The crisis has enabled what until recently was declared mad – the critique of prevailing neoliberalism (with the mantra: deregulate, privatize, cut). Moreover, criticism is becoming increasingly desirable. The critic of globalization and co-author of ‘Empire’ Michael Hardt claims that the rule of capital and the life principle ‘greed is good’ is completely open to questioning (from left to right), and some form of socialist or Keynesian state regulation and management seems inevitable.

Nine pages of his speech at the international conference of the third Subversive Film Festival are dedicated to communism. I understand what associations this evokes. But he does not speak of the communism we remember in these parts. Because communism from the books and heads of theorists has never existed here. There was only a distorted socialism. ‘Sublimated’ Hardt states this: ‘Capitalist production increasingly relies on the common, and autonomy is the essence of communism. The unification of these claims shows that the conditions and weapons of the communist project are more accessible today than ever. It is now our task to organize it.’

I understand what Croats think about romantic Western ideas of communism. Nevertheless, increasingly frequent discussions about the (in)meaning of the rule of capital show that the time of capitalism is on a precise scale. Croatia is, measured by any indicator, just a statistical error in the global world. We are so small. However, this does not mean that we cannot take some things into our own hands. It does not mean that we must leave everything to the waves of greedy globalization. The sad Croatian silence confirms to me how right the Stranglers were. Indeed, ‘no more heroes any more.’