Emmanuel Kant defined enlightenment as a critique of ourselves in this current moment of

history, viewing the present as an ongoing experiment for escaping immaturity and moving
towards material, energetic and ethical self-reliance and self-estimation. In describing both
cultural configurations and individual attitudes in his work 'What is enlightenment', he
diagrams a project involving something which is both closer than the self and which goes
beyond it: "a process in which men participate collectively and as an act of courage to be
accomplished personally"i.

Karl Marx, born fourteen years after Kant's death, can be described as bothii a follower and
a deviant of the post-Kantian enlightenment project, given that in his attempt to “grasp the
intrinsic connection between private property, greed, the separation of labor, capital and
landed property; the connection of exchange and competition, of value and the devaluation
of man, of monopoly and competition, etc. – the connection between this whole
estrangement and the money system.”iii he questioned certain structures and tendencies of
the objectification, categorization, de-communalization and vampirization of life for profit
and pampering in modern civil society, while he simultaneously effectuated a critique of
the 'beyond' in which Kant continued to hold faith – though he far from discarded the
metaphysician's knapsackiv.

Karl Marx is an Enlightenment figure in so much as he highlighted humanity's increasing

alienationv [Entfremdung] and estrangement from its species activity and essence
[Gattungswesen], the tools it uses, other human beings and the world in which it finds itself
precariously thrown. This declaration of growing reactivity, self-devaluation and self-
captivity within the organization of human activity continues the project of testing what we
can do, think and sayvi, and even what humanity is and where it is going, since this
proclaimed degeneration and deviation is a process at work within our very political
socialization and modes of constructing, thinking and inhabiting.

Additionally, Marx focused on the materiality of social relations and the embodiment of
thought, as well as the possibility of a re-evaluation of cultural structures and values from a
critical viewpoint, in a way which hoped to bring about self-affirmation and self-
satisfaction within a large sector of civil society: the autonomous, individuo-collective de-
domestication the proletariat, in spite ofvii the lumpens and bourgeoisie, though they too are
certainly alienated. In this sense of self-critique for self-overcoming, we can confidently
state that Marx continued with the Kantian experiment of the Enlightenment: bringing
about "a modification of the preexisting relation linking will, authority, and the use of
reason" and questioning the limits of reason and organization through meditated deed and
actions together, given one's position and orientation in the social weave, with the goal of
daring to be wise and daring to value oneself and one's thought.

As an late Enlightenment author, Marx effectuated an instauration of discursivity in the

field of economics in favor of the commons for the common man, and aided in the creation
of a toolbox of concepts useful in the critical mode of history "a history which judges and
condemns (...) for the sake of life" and which is embodied in an self-inquisitive ethos of
fecundity and overflowing: “It is life-engendering life”viii. The Marxist critical perspective
of materiality seems to involve a 'critical ontology of ourselves' and our trajectories, which
pushes the duality of knowledge and theory to its limits and denies supernatural absolutesix,
and is embodied in a praxis (theory from action and for future action, Fals Borda) which
aims at a coming to understand our true micro-political nature as individuals and
populations. In this sense, while carrying out a Kantian problematization of what each
person can think, say and do, as we have stated, Marx follows the hegelian critique of the
Christian 'kingdom of heaven', shifting the critical focus to hunger and needs: “(…) life
activity, productive life itself, appears to man in the first place merely as a means of
satisfying a need”.

Akin to Kant, and despite his post-Hegelian anti-transcendencex, Marx believed in final
states of motion, in non-perspectival Categorical Imperatives and Beyonds, The Second
Coming or The Revolution, and despite both their efforts, it seems clear that both have
become both 'books to think for us'xi and 'messiah' who reveal eternal, self-fulfilling truths
to an increasingly docile, hasty herd: one connecting thread is that both the Christian and
the Marxist are declare a phantom, and not a augur, to be their ‘true nature’. That being
said, Kant’s and Marx’s focus on the corporality of existence, on the possibilities and
abilities of the body, brought to light the metabolic aspects of all theory and writing in
philosophy and geo-politics, as well as the metabolic exchanges taking place between man
and milieux which underlie our modes of production; man lives only on these products of
nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc.

Perhaps both have also sewn doubt and played a part in undermining the self-assurance of
the occidental philosophical project, but like Kant, Marx "denied knowledge in order to
make room for faith"xii, believing in closed unities such as man and naturexiii, and turning a
blind eye to the despotic "Asiatic formations"xiv to come. In addition, it must be mentioned
that they participated in realizing the Enlightenment project of epistemocide and onto-
genocide of indigenous, localized and (alter)native thought and living, helping to strengthen
the madness of universal concepts, ready-made ideas and non-criticizable critiques: “the
answer to the riddle of human history is communism.”

They also seem to share the concept of an ‘intelligible free will’ which unfolds secondarily
to a monstrous ens perfectum, called God or Communism. Under these doctrines, learning
to live is to conform to the inevitable Truth and “blind power of the factual”xv of our theo-
historical education, which views human values as universal things-in-themselves, human
history as universal history, and history as progressive, linear moralizationxvi. One's 'true
nature', in such a system of thought, is to carry out the pre-determined theo-political project
despite what one's own alphabetxvii, will, experience, 'educators' and reason may interpret of
the events.

This destructive will to truth and faith in a final state of reason-revolution or reason-god-
head found in Marxist and Kantian world transformation, as well as the non-mutable binary
modes of thought within their work, and the violent results of their theories, should be
considered as postmodern problematization and eventualization projects, which could be
summed up as indocile reflexivityxviii, politics of virtualityxix, ironic heroization of the
presentxx, micro-politics, critical ontology of the present, pluriversal politics and apolitics.
All is flux now: all is processual, emerging and uncanny, and our previous ideals have been
wastes of energy; in vain thus far. We must make our lives an untimely work of art of
spontaneous, non-resentful action, in order to change the temperament of the stones as the
structure transitions, without the hope of an otherworldly savior nor the nostalgia of past
ages and personas.

In Summa, humanity declares itself deprived of the right to think for itself due to the very
structure of its socialization and production, which reifies and syphons off species activity
-life for the sake of life- and “becomes a power on its own confronting him”xxi; and due to
humanity’s own laziness, its tendency to search for authority figures, and lack of self-
affirmation and self-representation within the closest and farthest spheres - at home, where
capital seductively circulates, and in the underlying extractive and productive forces of the
even the most remote regions.

Man must hone his ability to be able to sum up events, to eventualize, in order to avoid the
“careless and placid temper”xxii of a forgetting animal, in order to not forget at the right
moments and act critically, even destructively, against “a privilege, a caste, a dynasty”xxiii,
but it appears that we are trending towards docility mixed with micro-fascismxxiv, and we
remain well enmeshed in the dynastic forces of politico-industrial families. One cannot just
work for oneself in order to think for oneself, as the entrepreneur shows, and equality of
wagesxxv only brings about more non-fulfilling work and accumulation of the means of
production; one must produce meaning for oneself in the here-now, in a self-sufficient,
simple, non-resentful way which dreams of 'a world where many worlds fit'xxvi.

If nature is man's bodyxxvii, nomadic communalism, bio-centrism, microbarrial

governing and training, and urban cultivation seem like possible praxes 'after Marx'.
As last women and men, we must continue to live with both skepticism and innocence
towards current political doctrines and categories of existence, carrying out a molecular,
multi-centeredxxviii and apolitical co-ethics at the local level in artistic 'deed and action',
working towards artful self-care and self-sufficient non-hunger through community gardens
and centers, local festivals, seed exchanges, creative manifestations, popular education,
street art and popular assemblies. The riddle of human history is not solved with
Christianity nor communism, let alone the riddle of history in any broader sense; the riddle
is our umsphixt condition between the flux of our inter-relational metabolic and respiratory
processes and the flash of our creative instances.
i
Foucault Enlightenment
ii
Ambiguous question like all modern ones
iii
Marx Alientation

iv
Nietzsche HATH

v
In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active functions, his life activity
vi
Kant what can you do think say
vii
Qute nietzche Goethe in spite of
viii
Marx life engendering life
ix
Marx no absolutes,
x
Post hegelian anti-transcendence
xi
Quote Kant books to think for us
xii
Denied knowledge for faith, kant
xiii
Notes Marx unities
xiv
Asiatic formation marx deleuze guat
xv
F.N IM blind power
xvi
Morality is a sign of immatury WTP
xvii
Alphabet nietzche
xviii
Foucault indocile reflex
xix
Guattari politics of virtuality
xx
Ironic heroization of the present
xxi
Marxs becoming its own power
xxii
Shopenhauer Studies in Pessismsm
xxiii
F.N. UM
xxiv
Deleuze and Guattari – macro and micro quote
xxv
Marx equality of wages
xxvi
Escobar many worlds fit
xxvii
Marx alientation nature is man’s body
xxviii
Multicentrism Guattari