Not everything that has no beginning or end is infinite. For example, a circle, which is a confined space-time. It is precisely in a circle that contemporary societies live due to the globalization of capitalism and the revolution in information and communication technologies. Thinking in a circle implies the impossibility of thinking of a future other than what is allowed by the circle—the authorized possible. The possible future is a variation of what already exists or fits into the circle. As the variations are infinite, the impossible future can only be thought of as not yet possible within the limits of the circle. Artificial intelligence is today the most exhilarating impossibility in the circular world. Its conquest is always near and always incomplete.

The colonial circle and the capitalist circle

The impossibility of thinking and acting outside the circle becomes an existential social problem when living with dignity within the circle becomes impossible for large sections of the population. In the modern Eurocentric era, the first circle was colonialism. Given the superiority of the colonizer, the colonized peoples were the first to experience a double impossibility: the impossibility of living with dignity under colonial rule and the impossibility of thinking about their liberation. Contrary to what many people think, this circle and this double impossibility continue today, even after the political independence of the European colonies.

Those who experience this reality most intensely are what we now call the Global South. Given the intimate relationship between colonialism and capitalism, the colonial circle became more violent and confined from the end of the 19th century onwards, when capitalism experienced its boom, first in Europe and then in North America. It was then that the capitalist circle, the confined space-time of the reproduction of capitalism, began to form in the colonizing societies. And here too, the impossibility of thinking outside the circle was accompanied by the existential difficulty of living with dignity within the circle for large sections of the population: the working classes, workers, peasants, immigrants, and racialized or sexualized social groups.

The modern Eurocentric era is thus made up of two overlapping circles, the colonial circle and the capitalist circle, and both converge to make a dignified life impossible for large sections of the population, while at the same time making it impossible to think or act outside the circular world. This double circularity has evolved over the years; it has undergone many upheavals; there have been moments when it seemed to be undone, only to be reconstituted in the following moments. What characterizes our time is that the two circles are simultaneously wider and more confined. Wider because they cover more areas of social life and are more confined because it has never been so impossible for large sections of the population to live with dignity within them or to imagine life beyond them. In very broad terms, the story is as follows.

Breaking the circles: the revolution and the war

Only by deconfining the time and space of the circle is it possible to think of other, more dignified possible worlds and other, more humane types of interpersonal relationships beyond the circle. Deconfining means breaking away and running the risk of liberation or failure. In the past, this deconfinement took place in two ways: revolution and war. Two very different paths are almost always articulated, but not always in the same direction: revolution to end war; war to make revolution possible; and war to end the revolution. The liberation of the colonial circle began in the 17th century with the flight of slaves, the quilombos in Brazil, and continued almost until the end of the 20th century with the wars of liberation for the political independence of the European colonies (the Portuguese colonies were the last, 1974-76). And we mustn't forget the cases that are still pending, especially the struggle of the Saharawi people and the Palestinian people.

In the case of the colonial circle, it was often the war that made the revolution possible and, with it, made possible what was previously impossible because it was outside the circle of authorized thought and action. Just think of the war of independence in the USA, Algeria, and Vietnam, and the wars of liberation in the Portuguese colonies. In the history of Haiti or Cuba, the war was aimed at ending the revolution, and the overlap between the two has continued to this day. Where there was neither war nor revolution, as in the case of Brazil, the break in the colonial circle was much more limited, which is still evident today.

In the case of the political independence of the Spanish colonies in Latin America at the beginning of the 19th century, there was war, but it was led not by the original peoples but by the descendants of the colonizers (as in the USA), and so the break in the colonial circle was also very limited. In general, liberation from the colonial circle was very partial, as political independence was not accompanied by economic independence because the capitalist circle prevented this. The classes that dominated the capitalist circle always kept in mind that they could not survive without the colonial circle. Until today.

In the case of the colonizing societies, what is now known as the Global North, the construction of the capitalist circle was much more contradictory because the integration of the world of non-capitalist relations into the capitalist circle was met with the organized resistance of large masses of the population. But the dialectic between revolution and war was present. We need only think of the Russian Revolution, which arose in the context of the First World War and, in part, to put an end to it, and the Chinese Revolution, which took place in the context of the Second World War.

During the first half of the 20th century, the capitalist circle, even though it dominated globally, did not close. The fact is that the impossibility of living with dignity in capitalist society for the entire exploited and oppressed population was partly neutralized by a realistic possibility of thinking and acting outside the capitalist circle. This possibility had been created by the Russian Revolution, i.e., the possibility of a socialist/communist society.

The strength of this possibility is one of the most remarkable facts of the 20th century, all the more so because it survived the crimes of Stalin and even the alternative that social democracy seemed to offer after 1945. With the May '68 uprising, this possibility lost much of its enchanting power and collapsed with the end of the Soviet Union (1989-1991). The capitalist circle finally closed; thinking and acting outside it became virtually impossible. The crisis of the left stems from this impossibility.

What is to be done?

In a remarkable text from 1917, Lenin writes about revolution and war and suggests that either the revolution stops the war or the war will be inevitable and will make the revolution possible, albeit after much destruction. The thing is, it's not 1917. We are in 2025 and facing two impossibilities.

On the one hand, the impossibility of living in dignity in the capitalist circle is increasingly evident, an impossibility that is getting worse every day with the extreme concentration of wealth, the ecological collapse and the consequent calamity of environmental refugees, the growth of the extreme right that aims to consolidate both the capitalist circle and the colonial circle (the issue of immigration and xenophobia, the plundering of natural resources in the global South, and now also in Ukraine) and the complementarity between the two and, finally, the very threat of war outside of any dialectic with the revolution: an inter-imperial, counter-revolutionary war, without there being any danger of an imminent revolution.

The word revolution has either disappeared from the political map (just like socialism and communism) or has been appropriated by the extreme right. On the other hand, it is equally clear that it is impossible to think or act beyond these two circles. For two main reasons. On the one hand, any attempt to combat this impossibility is promptly neutralized, silenced, and discredited. On the other hand, the colonial-capitalist circle has become so ingrained in our way of life, no matter how undignified, and in our subjectivity, no matter how degraded, that to think or act outside the circle is to think outside of us, against us. Beyond the circle is only thinkable as extraterrestrial. Hence the return of cosmology and religion.

This double impossibility is corroding social relations, creating egomaniac subjectivities that practice cynicism, opportunism, hatred, and betrayal as forms of personal survival in a war that began long before it was declared. A new cannibalism is emerging as a condition for survival in the double circle of capitalism and colonialism. This condition turns fear into a way of life and hope into madness. Will it be possible to live in society for long without nurturing realistic possibilities beyond these two impossibilities? The answer is no.

In terms of 2025, not 1917, either there will be a radical change in our ways of thinking and living that will prevent war, or there will be a war, more destructive than the previous ones, in which case the possible survivors will be able to benefit from the possibilities that now seem blocked to us. I don't believe that Eurocentric thinking, which both created the two great circles that suffocate us today and criticized them, leaving us disarmed when they failed, has enough vitality to create new possibilities with less fear and more hope. There are many other systems of knowledge, thought, ways of life, and sensibility available in the world. They live underground, on the margins, in the interstices of capitalist and colonial circles, waiting for their time. Their time will be our time. Before a devastating war or after? That is the question.