ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how E. Bloch identifies the social pathology of his era. Bourgeois economy is one of the ideologies that 'justify existing social conditions by denying their economic roots and disguising exploitation'. The fetish-forms that constitute the darkness and nihilism of bourgeois life are exploded, opened only if their content is attributed to our alienated labour—that is, to labour conducted according to the terms of socially necessary labour time. If the necessity of bourgeois nihilism, which is a 'total mechanism', is deciphered along with the 'so-called naturally ordained order', then '"history" must be founded anew in the physics of a open totum. The chapter shows that all the concepts used by Bloch, such as dreams, hope, utopia, critique and dialectical materialism, originate from the theory of topsy-turviness as it is presented in Capital, a theory that regards the world in capitalism as inherently irrational.
