The critique of capitalism is by no means a phenomenon limited to the left. Lukacs identified a “romantic” critique of capitalism inspired by European intellectuals skeptical or disenchanted with the bourgeoisie. They called for a return to Christian values or to Greek premodernity. However, what Lukacs misses is that the conservatives never addressed capitalism as such. Their criticism was supposed to be more fundamental, more spiritual than economic. Romanticism can be antimetaphysical, antimodern, antiliberal, but very rarely anticapitalist. The very term was supposed to be superficial, without any value in the spiritual history of the West. Romantic philosophy evolved into a critique of technology and reclaimed the powers of life. Life should be spontaneous, creative, originary; while technology was supposed to be a form of domination, control and prevision. The error was double: First, life was reduced to a pure abstract power, alien to form, determination and complexity. Second, technology was seen as the absolute disposition of being to calculation (Heidegger), the absolute control of subjectivity (Foucault) or the codification of life (Deleuze).
While the first mistake led to serious misunderstandings with science, the second led to serious misunderstandings with politics. They world was seen as pure arbitrariness, contingency and facticity. “Possibility” was considered the only trascendens. All rule, form, and order were considered a form of prison, a fall from the paradise of indetermination, a capture in determination. The truth is that the effective world, called an “ontic” sphere, was deprived of its own forces. Only life and being could be creative, not individuals and beings. A hate for the current and present world progressively turned the back of thought to actuality in search of some strange “event”. The second mistake was due to poor observation. Nowhere did technology achieve control without disastrous side effects. Oil-powered machines led to pollution. Massive machine-driven agriculture led to soil exhaustion. Nuclear power led to catastrophes like Chernobyl and Fukushima. How can we talk of control and domination over nature when “side-effects” surpass every achievement?