Author
: Raoul Vaneigem
Title
: Abolish Predation, Become Human Again
Subtitle
: A call for the global creation of collectivities that struggle for a free and authentic human life
Date
: 2024, January
Notes
: Raoul Vaneigem, «ABOLIR LA PRÉDATION, REDEVENIR HUMAIN: Appel à la création mondiale de collectivités en lutte pour une vie humaine libre et authentique». Dated January 2024. Publication by Fayard as a multi-language pamphlet (French, Italian, German and English) forthcoming. Translated by NOT BORED! 28 January 2024. All footnotes by the translator. PDF:
.
Source
: Retrieved on August 4, 2026 from
We have made Mankind the shame of humanity.
From the most ancient times to the present day, no society has attained the degree of ignominy and abjection reached by an agro-mercantile civilization that, for two thousand years, has passed for Civilization
par excellence
.
It is undeniable that, as trans-hominids, we have inherited an instinct for predation and an instinct for mutual assistance. They constitute our share of residual animalism. But while the awareness of an interweaved solidarity has favored our progressive humanization, predatory aggressiveness has developed in us a tendency for self-destruction. Is this so difficult to understand?
The appearance of an economy that sacrifices life for work, for Power, for Profit, has marked a break with the egalitarianism and the symbiotic evolution of pre-agrarian civilizations. Agriculture and livestock breeding have privileged the predatory instinct, at the expense of a life drive that has never renounced the reestablishment of its usurped sovereignty.
Appropriation, competition and rivalry have pleased themselves by exalting the “civilized wild animal,” whose spiritual sublimation serves to legitimatize their enterprises. In its emblematic form, the lion thus lets one believe that it is
natural
to hunt and oppress the beasts. What is in fact required is
the denaturation of the human being
. In vain does one seek among the most pitiless carnivores the cruelty that is as deliberate or the ferociousness that is as inventive, as those demonstrated by Justice, Religion, Ideology, Empire, State and Bureaucracy.
We must see the fixed grin of the arms dealers at the moment when their billable products are tearing apart women, children, men, animals, forests and [whole] landscapes. “Make do with what you have,”
[1]
right?
Profit has the cynicism of a done deal [
fait accompli
]. It hides nothing from us about those
heartless restaurants
in which the
fashionable ladies and gentlemen
stuff themselves while their luxury shoes drip blood and excrement.
Why get involved when pre-formatted public opinion takes the side of one or another belligerent, as if it were a soccer match between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine? The bets are on and the cheers of the spectators cover the screams of the massacred crowds.
Simply cursing a foul civilization does not prevent it from perpetuating itself when we let the laws of financial rapacity orchestrate our denaturation, form the patterns of our apathy, and punctuate our frustrations by triggering explosions of a blind and murderous hatred. Add insult to injury? What would be the point? Doing so would only reinforce a personal sense of guilt that is relieved by making the others feel guilty. The predatory reflex would once again find its niche there.