Capitalism: The Age of Unmasked Gods and Naked Kings (Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization, Volume II) (Kairos)

For years Abdullah Öcalan has unraveled the sources ofhierarchical relations, power, and the formation of nation-states thathas led to capitalism's emergence and global domination. Capitalism: The Age of Unmasked Gods and Naked Kings is the second volume of his definitive five-volume work The Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization.He makes the convincing argument that capitalism is not a product of thelast four hundred years but a continuation of classical civilization.

Unlike Marx, Öcalan sides with Braudel by giving less importance tothe mode of production than to the accumulation of surplus value andpower, thus centering his criticisms on the capitalist nation-state asthe most powerful monopoly of economic, military, and ideological power.He argues that the fundamental strength of capitalist hegemony,however, is the competition in voluntary servitude that a market economyhas given rise to--not a single worker would reject higherwages--resulting in an unprecedented ability to convince people tosurrender their individual power and autonomy. Öcalan further contendsthat the capitalist phase of city-class-state-based civilization is notthe last phase of human intelligence; rather, the traditional moralsupon which it is based are being exhausted and the intelligence offreedom is rising in all its richness. That is why he prefers tointerpret capitalist modernity as the era of hope--but only insofar as weare able to develop a sustainable defense against it.