Jelenetek a kapitalizmus ideológiai válságából
Capitalism and ideology

Summary/Abstract: The study analyses the evidences and also the contradictions of the ideological crisis of capitalism. As Aristotle already pointed out in his Nikomachean Ethics human beings acquire moral virtues through repetition and routine, and during this process the activities which were uncomfortable first become pleasant or at least less uncomfortable. Jung also points out in his analysis of the Book of Job that it is not by mere chance that the ethical messages of the Ten Commandments are indoctrinated so intensely, for they do not come from us spontaneously like a spirit, but they need to be repeated incessantly so that we should more or less comply with them. Capitalism also has serious moral problems. Can everyday morality be harmonized with the astonishing immorality present at higher levels of the social structure? This moral crisis is related not only to selfishness and to the struggle for positions, but it goes back to the inner contradictions of Enlightenment as well as to the disintegration of its ideology. The parts fallen apart began to attack and divide each other further and made each other unauthentic. Their desire to disassemble everything that our society is based on seemed stronger than the creative side, and they turned against their own ideology and disassembled everything as long as nothing else remained but self-interest and consumption, which are shallow grounds for maintaining a civilization and its culture. Capitalism intensifies this process by putting self-interest before moral obligation and by incessantly changing older technologies to new ones with endless innovative dynamism. It destroys the bonds that grew in human communities during centuries and it leaves nothing but naked self-interest as the basis of social cohesion. After all, the development of capitalism undermines itself by creating standards that are irreconcilable with the ones needed for the operation of markets and societies. There are irreconcilable contradictions and conflicts hanging over capitalism and our heads as well.

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