An urgency of weeding out this land of the ‘pure’ of the impurities that civilisation has cultivated has taken precedence over all other issues. Pakistan, struck by chaos, is embracing a dark, primitive era, which its hierarchy (including the clergy and the middle class) consider a glorious one. Regression into the past is akin to nosediving into an abyss from where any hope of coming out alive is remote. Freud’s thantos — death wish — repressed by civilisation, refers to a suppressed human desire. His eros and aggression demand liberation from modern civilisation based on a reality principle: that capitalist society, despite having abundance of use-values, imposes scarcity on humankind. However, if giving up modern civilisation only plunges us into barbarism (where the legitimacy of terrorism is recognised as a norm) the repressive element is negated and an outright suppression or oppression, a tyranny of a minority, a culture of stylised barbarity takes over. The horror of death overtakes the charm and pleasure of life. Sensuousness is subordinated to coercive sublimation. The distorted tribal norms of the dark ages, with all their doom and gloom, are embraced with passions sans reason. Can history be held hostage to morbid asceticism? Is it possible to travel back in time to freeze life there forever? Fascism, may it be of a political or religious ilk, symbolises this culture of barbarity, one that tries to freeze time to delay the inevitability of the system’s eclipse. It develops into a cross-class movement having a powerful set of forces, both cultural and social, at its command. No doubt, the devastated middle class forms its vertebral column but a part of the disgruntled element of the proletariat too gets attracted to its alluring slogans. In Germany, the National Socialists sneaked into power due to the disgusting performance of the communists who, at the decisive moment, proved to be utterly inept. Hence the dejected, disoriented and rudderless/distraught working class, finding no respite from economic catastrophe, sought refuge in the Nazi Party. History for the first time revealed the importance of the subjective element, which previously was considered literally ‘subjective’ or subservient to objective conditions. Almost a dress rehearsal of this drama was staged in Gujarat where, in broad daylight, Muslims were murdered in cold blood by a manic crowd of the Hindu lumpen proletariat. It was a premeditated organised massacre of the most vulnerable strata of society by an equally dispossessed motley mob. On both occasions, the subterranean objective was to grab public resources by the big bourgeoisie. In either case, the phoenix of capitalism emerged from the ashes of the dispossessed. According to Herbert Marcuse, “Only in art can bourgeois society tolerate its own ideals”, because “what occurs in art occurs with no obligation”. For him, affirmative art conforms to the ‘established reality’, the system based on exploitation and expropriation. This characterises art as ‘alienation’, but beside this another possible dimension, its antithesis, can simultaneously coexist. Together they manifest as art-against-alienation. This is an embodiment of resistance, which defies the prevalent social order. How about the ‘art’ of killing innocent people in cold blood? Does it conform to the established reality, a manifestation of alienation or a resistance against alienation while remaining alienated from the actual reality, a distorted form of class struggle, which neither possesses any clue of this conflict nor has the potential of discerning the real enemy? In the present state of flux, both forms are intertwined in a complex manner. The dominant form is insanity. Religion, an ‘infantile neurosis’, as stated by Freud, is encouraged for bloodletting by the twin enemy of the masses, the ruling class and international capital — a strange paradox since it was capitalism that during its expanded reproduction sanctified human life, but once recession commenced, its dynamics akin to the past have altogether changed. For its hegemony it has swiftly embraced its opposite. In its latest volte-face, both human life and rights have become abstractions. The glamorous verbosities pertaining to freedom and peace are meant to be consumed in symposiums where the audience includes nodding dunces and passionless puppets. Verbiage-honed deception has become an art. In practice, the killing spree through sophisticated technology has become a charter for hegemony. Marcuse succinctly states, “We submit to the peaceful production of the means of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being educated for a defence, which deforms the defenders and that which they defend.” In times of recession the meaning of art in bourgeois society has drastically changed. In killing in the name of preserving alluring concepts such as democracy or in primitive societies akin to Pakistan for guarding the esteem of the icons of yesteryear, the art of annihilation through precision is promoted. With monotonous regularity, the people are made familiar with the art of guiltless killing. Hence ‘art’, while masquerading/mystifying the designs and the misery propounded by the established order, becomes its handmaiden. When this heinous and distorted form of art does not create a revolt in reaction, it not only reflects the absolute indifference of the majority but the extent of the insanity clogging the mind of society. It not only underscores the extent of repression unleashed by the ruling class but the efficacy of its control over the consciousness of the masses. The sole purpose of slaughter is to depoliticise the people by inculcating terror in them. For Adorno, ‘the apolitical is always political’. During overt coercion to guard their interests, people seek temporary refuge in established conditions. But does one become conditioned to this bloodletting permanently? The answer relies heavily upon the consciousness of one’s servitude. The economic conditions and the relations of production determine the extent of this servitude. The people afflicted by the maladies of basic necessities cannot think beyond their individual sufferings. For them, any art, especially the art of killing, does not carry any horror or revulsion. It is the Saudi sword that decapitates the human being, a Taliban-style explosion or the annihilation of humanity through the drone technology of the US. Nothing seems to carry meaning. Art does not remain worth a brothel, where at least they are likely to receive “regulated exposure to beauty”. Either the toil of life numbs their taste buds or else the choices, which are multiple, albeit invariably the same destroy their aesthetic sense. The only art that remains is the art of survival, which is incapable of denouncing the gun culture and bloodletting. The consciousness of oppression fades. The servitude to totalitarian authority is accepted as a law of nature. Everyone tries to imitate authority and hence the human turns into a beast. In this situation can a writer or an artist make any difference? Under such absolute domination and culture of barbarism, does Sartre’s “action by disclosure” still carry any meaning? In a society of complete domination, one is programmed and is required to act as a robot. Conforming to hegemony remains the only way open to survival. Those unsung heroes akin to Rashid Rehman, who, according to Horkheimer, “consciously expose their existence as individuals to the terroristic annihilation that others undergo unconsciously through the social process”, have to pay with their lives. Under such totalitarian control, the ‘Archimedean’ view of art that views things with a different perspective, having an opposing point of view is lost. Fear reins supreme, which provides conditions par excellence for the ruling class to maintain its hegemony. For any radical change, a nonconformist language needs to be invented, but as Marcuse argues, “In a cultural vacuum such a new language and culture cannot be invented anew, but will necessarily depend on the subverting use of traditional material.” Hence, under totalitarianism, the artist and writer have to rely on this kind of subversion to defy the “dominant consciousness, the ordinary experience”. This subversion will have its consequences, a price tag to be paid in blood. The propertied class has all the coercive tools — capital, religion and tradition — at its disposal. It is not shy of letting them loose. Nothing is more fatal than expecting mercy from one’s class enemies. Under these hostile conditions, every progressive writer must produce art that, by virtue of its aesthetic form, protests against these dominant social relations. The ruling classes are not unaware of such forms of art/literature nor is the phenomenon of spontaneous uprisings of people lost on them. However, objective conditions are now heading towards their logical conclusion. Through their coercion, the expropriators themselves are adding fuel to the class fire. Once the people will start believing in themselves, the re-emergence of an era of Jacobean terror will not remain far off. Marx rightly pointed out: “The weapon of criticism cannot replace the criticism of weapons. A material force has to be overthrown by a material force.” Enough is enough. It is time to overthrow the material force of ‘infantile-neurosis’ with the age-old slogan of the working class, which urges it to unite and overthrow the rotten system. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains! The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and h