This essay proposes a reflection on the current change of epoch, considered herein as a new worldwide configuration of the capital connection, both in its underpinnings and its trends, and particularly in the foundational relationship between objectified labour and living labour.

For its insightful and comprehensive outlook on the dislocation and extermination of the human, flora and fauna realms of life by the predatory power of capitalism, Jus Semper is republishing this essay by professors Gilly and Roux, well known for their work concerning the grave danger that we humans are inflicting to the sustainability of life on the planet and the almost unimaginable consequences that all life forms will endure if we maintain the current marketocratic ethos. An ethos with no morals, whatsoever, and, thus, no qualms regarding the impact of its, by now, almost ubiquitous sphere of influence on the social, economic and environmental dimensions. Gilly and Roux expose a clearly undemocratic economic system whose only need is the unrelenting consumption of things by we humans, strictly regarded as disposable consumer units, for the sustainability of the reproduction and accumulation of enormous material profit and wealth for a tiny human cluster, namely the 1%, at the expense of the 99% and, more importantly, of a planet with finite resources. Gilly and Roux offer us, from a historical perspective a somewhat deterministic rationale of how capitalism seeks to establish domination-subordination relationships with human societies to fulfil its only goal of maximising the appropriation of the surplus value of work –of the share of income that belongs to wages– through any necessary means: legal or illegal, moral or amoral, gentle or violent. The authors’ hope is that human dignity will no longer tolerate a clearly intolerable and ominous state of our world.