There is no escape from the totalitarian movement of eternal progress on its own. Capitalism and the financial system behind it thrive on this pseudo-progress by constantly throwing new goods onto the so-called market—goods that no one has asked for, but which are forced upon people by a powerful propaganda machine called marketing.
The so-called progress
The ideology of “always more” leads nowhere—but certainly into the abyss.
The modern age has given rise to an ideology of eternal progress. However, on closer inspection, this progress is not progress at all, but merely floods people with goods. At the same time, it complicates the lives of individuals and leads to an impoverishment of life. The complex system that emerges from this ideology of progress is also extremely fragile and will eventually collapse under its own weight.
by Felix Feistel
[This article posted on 5/23/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/der-sogenannte-fortschritt.]
Modernity, with its emphasis on reason and rationality, has produced many scientific discoveries and technical developments. The entire capitalist production structure would be inconceivable without the corresponding insights and rationality. If the Enlightenment had not taken place, we would probably not have all these machines and devices, no engines and computers, no automobiles and airplanes, and modern medicine would be inconceivable.
These achievements have given rise to a veritable euphoria of progress, which could even be called an ideology. For all these developments and discoveries are hailed as great progress. They seem to prove that humanity is constantly advancing. In modern capitalism, progress has become synonymous with the constant invention of new devices and machines and thus ever new goods. Progress increases the flood of goods produced by the machine world of capitalism and thus the possibility of capitalization, i.e., the increase of profits. Every new device, every development, is seen as progress on an unstoppable path.
Progress has become the fundamental maxim of modern life. No political movement, no party, and no theory can do without the promise of further “progress.” This sounds good, as this terminology promises some kind of improvement in people’s lives. We are moving forward, as the term proclaims, on the path to a glorious future. But what path are we actually on? And what is the goal? On closer inspection, the buzzword “progress” simply means an ever-increasing flood of goods. For several years now, digitalization has been added to the mix, also linked to goods in the form of digital devices.
This so-called progress has long since been reduced to capitalist profit maximization, which is reaching dizzying heights through the continuous creation of new devices and goods.
However, it is not really apparent that this is leading to an improvement in life. Even if all the promises of progress are fulfilled, people’s lives are only filled with new demands, new goods, and new challenges.
So-called progress has neither helped to eliminate hard work for people nor has it achieved an increase in well-being. On the contrary, constant progress is destroying individual relationships, for example through digitalization; at work, the pressure to perform is increasing, while at the same time the complexity of interrelationships is growing.
Individual lifestyles are also becoming increasingly complicated, whether through digital services that are increasingly unavailable in analog form or through the growing number of devices that seem to make life more convenient but come with increasing economic costs—because all these devices first have to be purchased and then often insured. The increasing flood of goods requires growing capacities, which in turn necessitates larger living spaces, which in turn are associated with increased financial requirements.
In addition, access to all services is becoming more complicated. Thousands of codes and PIN numbers have to be remembered, accounts linked, and services integrated. Smartphones are overflowing with apps that are becoming mandatory in more and more areas, so a new smartphone with more storage space is needed—while the developers of the end devices are simultaneously outsourcing storage space to the cloud. The numerous updates to all digital devices consume enormous amounts of data and, as a result, do not actually improve the performance of the devices—quite the contrary. But if access to the digital world fails, then access to all services, from bank accounts to train tickets, is also lost.
The flood of goods also consumes endless resources and leaves behind gigantic mountains of waste. At the same time, people are not becoming happier, but rather their despair, depression, and anxiety are increasing.
All these goods are unable to satisfy the growing sense of meaninglessness; in fact, they even contribute to its growth.
Nevertheless, economists, whether capitalist, socialist, or communist, always talk about the need for growth and progress. “Forward ever, backward never,” as the SED once proclaimed, seeing itself on the path to progress.
But where does this progress lead? The promise of progress is the proclamation of constant movement without a goal and is therefore, according to Hannah Arendt, inherently totalitarian. What remains is the promise of a blissful state sometime in the future—an unfulfillable ideology. Progress is said to be a law of nature that humans merely have to help bring about, without taking into account that it is humans who create all these things and that real progress does not take place at all, indeed cannot take place at all, if it is reduced to blunt materialism. Of course, humans need things to live and work. But do they need an endless stream of goods that washes them away like a tsunami and integrates them into the world of goods as components to which they become subservient, instead of treating goods as part of the human world? Haven’t we long since gone too far with this idea of eternal progress?
Complexity
This pseudo-progress has also led to the world becoming increasingly complex, which is ultimately just a euphemism for the growing degree of interdependence. The flow of goods spans the entire world, fed by multiple sources bubbling up everywhere. Even a relatively small traffic jam, a major accident, or other disruption repeatedly brings production to the brink of collapse. For example, the Houthis in Yemen have successfully blocked the Red Sea, resulting in huge detours for transport ships. A major war in the Middle East carries the risk of a catastrophic increase in oil prices, which could plunge the world into chaos.
Added to this is the digitalization of everything, as already mentioned. This forces people to use a complex system that could lead to major disruptions even in the event of a minor malfunction, such as being locked out of their bank accounts or disruptions to production or logistics.
This was demonstrated by a disruption to Microsoft’s cloud service last summer, which caused chaos for air traffic around the world. Trains and other companies were also affected. If the disruption is just a little bit bigger, it can have a cascading effect on the entire world. And the digital sphere is becoming increasingly vulnerable due to its growing complexity. With the digitization of everything, the risk of cyberattacks and data theft is also increasing, which can then cause enormous damage to individuals or entire societies.
While society itself is becoming increasingly complex, individuals are experiencing a growing monotony in their lives. Complexity has led to ever greater specialization in the professional sphere, to the point where individuals repeatedly perform a single monotonous task, such as pressing the same button on a machine, filling out and processing the same form, or driving the same route, whether by bus or truck.
Progress has reduced people to a single function as tiny cogs in a monstrous machine that only revolves around itself. As a result, people have long since forgotten many of the skills they once possessed—partly because machines are taking over more and more of these tasks, without, however, freeing people from work entirely, as was once promised. The result is that humans would be doomed to an inability to live outside the digitized and automated sphere.
In personal life, too, the horizon of experience is narrowing. Although today’s world offers all kinds of distractions from one’s own meaninglessness, people’s use of them is nevertheless reduced to the same offerings over and over again. This diminishes our imagination of what lies beyond our tiny circle of experience. It is now common to observe that when people meet, they always talk about the same few topics. These may be the latest Netflix series, the last vacation, which is always the same experience in a different setting, or work, about which there is little to report because it is always the same.
At the same time, individual relationships are becoming impoverished in the digital desert, where everyone is in contact with everyone else but cannot form relationships. This leads to a decline in the ability to regulate oneself psychologically in interaction with others, as well as the ability to form relationships in the first place.
Those who revolve only around themselves, whether in digital spheres or at work, do not learn to get along with others, to engage in exchange and compromise. This may also explain the charged atmosphere within society, which could explode at any moment.
Modern society will sooner or later perish from its own complexity — and inevitably so. The question is which people will remain. Only a few will be able to survive independently of the digital and automated sphere of so-called progress. And even then, many of them will not be able to form relationships. Instead, everyone is prepared to compete for scarce resources rather than collectively daring to make a new start.
The question is what can be done to resolve this dilemma. There is no escape from the totalitarian movement of eternal progress on its own. Capitalism and the financial system behind it thrive on this pseudo-progress by constantly throwing new goods onto the so-called market—goods that no one has asked for, but which are forced upon people by a powerful propaganda machine called marketing. Socialist ideologies do not offer a solution here either, as they rely on the same ideology of progress as capitalism, with a similar idea of a utopia that can never be achieved, only on the basis of state-controlled production. The representatives of these ideologies emerge from the same traumatic structures that dictate consumption and progress as a survival strategy, and are therefore unable to develop any other ideas.
And progress cannot end on its own. Every development, every device, and every solution that eliminates a problem—often only a perceived one—brings with it a whole series of new problems. Environmental pollution is just one of them, which then has to be remedied with new, supposedly more efficient technologies, which in turn are associated with new problems.
Instead of hoping for saviors and leaders, it would be necessary to abandon the ideology of progress. The constant development of devices and goods has brought no added value to humanity. On the contrary, the more modern the goods, the shorter their shelf life, and the more digitized they are, the more prone to error they are.
So instead of chasing every new trend and every new product, it would make sense to step out of this machinery and reject so-called progress. Instead of shifting our lives to the digital sphere and pursuing highly specialized work, we could focus on analog relationships and engage in a variety of activities: we could learn to work with our hands and with nature, and thus be in touch with reality. This also strengthens resilience in the event of the failure of the system of increasing complexity.
Because when the ideology of progress destroys itself—and it will sooner or later—the flow of goods will dry up. For many people, dependence on this flow of goods will then also mean ruin. As humans, we would have to develop a whole new relationship to life and reality.
For thousands of years, the system of domination has led to ongoing trauma, making escape into commodities and a belief in progress seem like an obvious survival strategy. However, this trauma must be addressed and integrated. At the same time, it would be necessary to develop structures that produce everything necessary for survival locally and enable opportunities for participation for all.
This is no easy task, and it will not happen overnight. There may be many setbacks and obstacles along the way. But it is the only viable way to escape total domination, ecological collapse, and atomization.