A nihilist civilisation
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From the beginning of Capital, when Marx analyses the fetishism of the commodity as the basis of the capitalist system of production, to Baudelaire’s “tout devient marchandise”, a form of critical thought is constructed which finds its most radical expression in Nietzsche’s statement that “God is dead,” defining not only the modern condition but also its destiny. We are part of this history and observers of its consequences. We belong to a time that has suffered the processes of secularisation of its myths and its symbolic systems, to situate itself in the realm of appearances and new cultural standards. The process of globalisation has universalised forms of existence and their legitimacy is resolved in a pragmatism imposed by facts on the basis of a functional empiricism. In one of his last writings, Max Weber demanded that one think of capitalism as a form of civilisation rather than as a system of production.
