mind reader

Dear friends,

We are bound in frames of colonial capitalism with systems of static purpose and design. Unless you live on the periphery, it is highly likely that at least some aspect of your existence fits within the western economic system. And unless you are centralised in a small handful of European nations (with, admittedly, high populations), you are probably contributing to those European nations prosperity, rather than your own. Naturally, with American imperialism this began to shift, and the global flows of resources and moneys are so deeply complex and intently mystified that tracing from primordial origins no longer serves meaningful purpose, but let’s do a little now anyway.

Capitalism emerged through violent processes of transformation beginning in 15th century Europe, where leaders leveraged desires for wealth and power to drive colonial expansion across the globe. This involved a dual process of material and ideological change. Materially, people were removed from their traditional relationships with land through enclosures and forced into wage labour, while skilled craftspeople were transformed into alienated workers separated from their means of production. This process was accompanied by colonial expansion that established global systems of exploitation and resource extraction [1].

The establishment of capitalism also required fundamental social and cultural transformations. This included the subjugation of women and devaluation of reproductive labour, most violently expressed through witch hunts, which helped establish the patriarchal control necessary for capitalist accumulation. Women’s unpaid domestic labour, childcare, and community care work became essential but unvalued parts of the new economic system [2]. Simultaneously, racial hierarchies were established to justify colonial violence and exploitation [3]. Both of these schematics of oppression continue today in ever more violent, sociopathic, and intergenerationally damaging forms.

These origins weren’t natural or inevitable, but rather emerged through deliberate processes of violence, dispossession, and ideological transformation that continue to shape contemporary (capitalist) social relations. New cultural institutions were created to maintain hegemonic control, transforming previous social values into ones centred on profit and accumulation. The Marxian tradition emphasises understanding these violent origins is crucial for recognising capitalism’s fundamental nature as an exploitative system rather than a natural way of organising society. But what are these systems now? And what the heck are dynamics?

The material conditions of capitalism in the 2020s are characterised by extreme wealth concentration, with the top 1% controlling more wealth than all world governments combined. This material dominance is maintained through new forms of exploitation, particularly through “innovations” like digital platforms and algorithmic control of workers entire lives. We’ve talked at length about how companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, and Apple have created digital fiefdoms that extract value from all social and economic activity within their domains [4]. Meanwhile, the traditional working class faces increasing precarity, with stable employment replaced by gig work and casual contracts, while essential public services are stripped away through privatisation and corporatisation.

Ideologically, capitalism maintains its hegemony through increasingly sophisticated means of manufacturing consent [5]. Social media algorithms create personalised propaganda, pushing users toward content that fragments class consciousness while promoting individualistic and reactionary worldviews. Digital platforms function as new cultural institutions that shape public discourse and prevent the emergence of collective resistance. Traditional media, largely controlled by figures like Murdoch, work in concert with these digital systems to naturalise consent to capitalist exploitation and prevent alternative visions from gaining traction.

The reproductive aspects of capitalism have also evolved, with the crisis of social reproduction intensifying. While women’s unpaid labour remains essential to capitalism’s functioning, new pressures from precarious employment and the dismantling of social services have made this reproductive work increasingly difficult to sustain. The system responds by commodifying aspects of social reproduction, from childcare to emotional support, while simultaneously devaluing and degrading these services. Moreover, in places like the United States, basic access to health care is not only stratified to the wealthy elite, but increasingly drawn on racial and gender axes. This has led to a perfect storm of psychological warfare against workers, particularly affecting those at the intersections of gender, race, and class exploitation.

Social institutions ranging from education to healthcare maintain rigid barriers against meeting genuine human needs while showing remarkable dynamism in creating new forms of exploitation. For example, universities remain inflexibly opposed to providing genuine public education or supporting critical thinking, while rapidly evolving new methods to extract value from students and workers through casualisation, metrics-based management, and the commodification of knowledge. Similarly, healthcare systems are increasingly rigid in denying universal access while dynamically developing new ways to generate profit from human suffering. Here, my friends, we start to see the rigidity of systems which may even claim “dynamism”.

The supposed dynamism of capitalist systems masks a fundamental rigidity. While markets and technologies evolve rapidly in pursuit of profit, the underlying structures of exploitation remain remarkably static [6]. We see this, particularly, in capitalism’s persistent reliance on unpaid reproductive labour, primarily performed by women, which forms an essential yet systematically devalued foundation of the entire economic system. The “dynamic” face of capitalism, which is actually its ceaseless drive for new markets, technologies, and methods of surplus value extraction, operates in parallel with rigid hierarchies of gender, race, and class. These hierarchies ensure continued access to devalued reproductive labour: the childrearing, housework, and emotional labour necessary to reproduce the workforce itself. This creates a striking paradox where capital can rapidly adapt production methods while steadfastly resisting any meaningful valuation of reproductive work or addressing intersectional worker needs.

This isn’t to say that there are not those working towards their own utopias.

The formation of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) is just one recent example of workers confronting both technological control and reproductive constraints. Workers organised specifically around issues of bathroom breaks, parental leave, and scheduling predictability. All points where profit-driven “efficiency” directly conflicts with human needs and dignity. Their success in becoming the first unionised Amazon warehouse (in the US) demonstrates how collective action can challenge seemingly immutable corporate structures. In Spain, the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation offers a different model of resistance, having developed an extensive network of worker-owned enterprises that explicitly prioritise worker well being “alongside economic viability”. Their integration of childcare facilities and flexible scheduling directly addresses reproductive labour needs traditionally ignored by capitalist firms.

The Zapatista movement in Mexico, has developed autonomous communities that integrate collective care work into their economic organisation [7]. Their caracoles explicitly incorporate women’s leadership and Indigenous understanding of collective well being, challenging both capitalist exploitation and colonial impositions on Indigenous ways of being. In Canada, First Nations-led movements such as Idle No More have confronted extractive capitalism through land defence which asserts sovereignty and relationships to land. These resistive movements frequently centre women’s leadership and cultural knowledge, refusing the capitalist separation of resource extraction from reproductive care for land and community.

We live within, however, a capitalist ontology which very quickly reaches and colonises our minds — from an extremely young age we are thrust into relation with capital. This ontological capture operates at multiple levels. At the individual level, precarity and debt create constant psychological stress that makes long-term, strategic thinking difficult. People trapped in cycles of survival labour often lack the mental bandwidth to imagine alternatives, let alone organise for them. The gig economy’s atomisation of workers further fragments collective consciousness, making it harder to recognise shared conditions of exploitation. Moreover, the colonisation of resistance is ever clear in how anti-capitalist movements are often recuperated into market logic. Thinking back on my post on how self-care transformed from a Black feminist concept into a commodified industry, or how workplace wellness programs individualise systemic issues [8]. Even our modes of resistance often unconsciously replicate capitalist temporalities and metrics of success.

We need frameworks for seeing the plural nature of reality, but we also need to tare down systems which reinforce division, hate and exploitation. Managing this requires dialogue and community. This is something that we’re building ever more of here, and I am so grateful to you for your reading of this post. Keep de-capitalising your mind, folks.

With love,

Aidan

[1] Marx, K. (1990). Capital: A critique of political economy (B. Fowkes, Trans.). Penguin Books in association with New Left Review.

[2] Federici, S. (2014). Caliban and the witch (Second, revised edition). Autonomedia.

[3] Sherwood, J. (2013). Colonisation – It’s bad for your health: The context of Aboriginal health. Contemporary Nurse, 46(1), 28–40. https://doi.org/10.5172/conu.2013.46.1.28

[4] https://mndrdr.org/2025/the-labour-process-atomisation-and-social-media; Varoufakis, Y. (2023). Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism. The Bodley Head.

[5] Chomsky, N. (1994). Manufacturing Consent (E. S. Herman, Ed.). Vintage.

[6] Dynamism under capital is ultimately anti-human, it seeks to evade or obscure the messy and annoying ‘organic’ parts of a human workforce. This, obviously, is deeply problematic for anything resembling humanist values and equality.

[7] https://mndrdr.org/2024/making-meaning-at-the-end-of-time

[8] https://mndrdr.org/2024/on-burnout

Dear friends,

Let’s come to terms with some terms. Sorry, I’m not trying to be cute (that’s just effortless). I think it’s important we, as I constantly raise, share a literacy for engagement with big ideas. Sadly, much of the time those big ideas are also terrible ideas — things that dominate our lives, change our ways of being, and interrupt what we might (at least individually) deem antithetical to our being. Ideas, however, are critical and require serious and robust examination as we continually sit in a world dominated by bad ones, and bad faith actors whose entire existence is designed to peddle those ideas. But we also need a binding approach, something that brings us together with hope and possibility – not just doom and gloom about the state of things (which is, admittedly, pretty shit). A few things have pushed this desire to write this morning, some good, some bad. Let’s jump into them.

I went for a walk with Harriet Taylor Mill this morning, and we saw several propagandist headlines “anti-semitism crisis in Australia will end in murder,” (Australian) [1] “anti-semites deny auschwitz” (NYT) and myriad others. Piper and I went to a cafe, as one does in bourgeois life, and naturally we see more of this propaganda, even propaganda about the paper itself: “Facts” they purport “are embodied in The Advertiser” and, immediately below, “News Corp” who assure us only they can bring you said facts. In a singular, individualist, solitary, only, ‘just one’ reality that mega corporations, like News Corp, we can be assured that their version of reality, their interpretation of truth, and their deliberate denial of empirical factual events – i.e., the genocide being conducted by Zionists, that their own personal canon of events (which serve their personal investments exclusively), is unquestionably “factual”. Only, we know it isn’t.

The postmodern/post-structural amongst us believe that we are “post fact”. Indeed, post “truth”. To an extent, without terms, we might even agree with this ipso facto. But, if we accept ipso facto post truth then what use are terms? What use is refuting misinformation, or being literate in, at the very least, the lingua franca of populist propaganda? There’s no truth so I can decide what I want to be true, and no one else may change my mind, for that is my truth. This verges dangerously close to identity politics. The kind of identity politics that results in people being “cancelled”, because if I reject “your truth” I am, by the very nature of my existence, threatening yours through words. To be clear, I’m not here to challenge your truth, but rather hold space for plural thought. But this is an important epistemic distinction and we need to spend the time to create shared language to understand it, and when we create shared language, we accept a truth. This is not “my truth” but suddenly our truth – yours and mine, together.

Humans are social animals, and we use communication strategies to mediate our worlds. It is important to note we are not the only species to do this, and communication takes myriad forms, verbal communication is one small facet of the way we interact both with each other, and the natural world. As yet, the natural world is not dominated utterly by neoliberalism, ergo we still need communication strategies. So, I’m going to hurry to the point for our shared vocabulary and stop beating around the bush. I am, today, arguing that we need to understand three key things:

• ☞ Epistemology
• ☞ Ontology
• ☞ Pluralism

We, contra my point, do not need to agree on definitions for each of these. But rather, we need to share some notion of relation to each. So, as best I can, let me share my view on these in a hopefully interpretable way. Beginning with epistemology, at its most basic, referring to how we know. Or, more aptly particularly in Indigenist circles, ‘ways of knowing’. Note there, even in our most essentialised form, we move from the dominant view: how we know; to the subversive way: ways of knowing. What’s the movement? Pluralism. This, right here, is why we do not need to fight. But rather create movements with ideas that hold diverse space, but reach shared ends. Okay, let’s keep moving, this is “the whirlwind tour” after all.

Next we have ontology, which is decidedly more complex, but it is about the nature of being. In academic terms, it is a branch of philosophy concerned with reality. We might ask, to grasp ontology’s scope, do physical things exist? Then, do concepts exist? If yes, are these categorically the same? What is the, and is there a, relationship between properties and the things that ‘have them’? We might say an orange is orange, but who decided that? And in a thought experiment where there were two separate planets, with two separate children born to each, would they both grow to explain oranges as orange? Beyond linguistics, these are questions of fundamental being. Things about the nature of reality. You’ve heard me talk about ‘capitalist ontology’: within capitalist realism [2], alternatives to capitalist social relations are treated as practically impossible or unreal. This creates an ontological boundary — certain possibilities are treated as being outside the realm of what can “really” exist.

And finally we have plurality. This one has been particularly affective in my life. Seeing people trapped in capitalist social relations, in particular, and showing divergence as a good, creative, productive, fun and silly thing, rather than “breaking the rules” (which, often, it does not). Pluralists, intersecting across the epistemology/ontology space, might advance that multiple forms of value exist. Rather than reducing all value to ‘market value’ or ‘economic metrics’, pluralists recognise diverse, incommensurable forms of value i.e., cultural, spiritual, ecological, relational, etc. These different value forms aren’t variations of economic value, but fundamentally different kinds of worth that can’t be reduced to a single metric. We also acknowledge coexisting realities. We see that different ways of being can coexist without needing to be unified into a single system, and that this plurality and divergence offers creativity and possibility at the boundaries. For instance, Indigenous ways of investigation and truth telling may coexist with western ‘scientific’ modes, each valid and in dialogue about phenomena we all share.

However, and I need to be very clear here, pluralism isn’t infinite tolerance or relativism. Let’s take an example, understanding that pluralism is fundamentally about enabling human flourishing and dignity in multiple forms, where, for instance, ideologies like nazism are explicitly aimed at destroying plurality and human dignity. This isn’t a contradiction in pluralistic thinking, but rather core to its coherence. Pluralism rejects totalising ideologies – nazism, neoliberalism, and capitalist realism because they seek to eliminate plurality itself. This makes them incompatible with a pluralistic framework not as a matter of opinion but as a matter of logical consistency. But pluralism is also not about co-opting. A pluralist stands firm in their understanding of onto-epistemic relations, seeking to advance human liberation as a collective form, understanding the intersectional violence that hegemonic systems have born. This means we hold ourselves fast — knowing who we are, and what we recognise, not going with the flow.

Pluralism offers powerful ways to break through the paralysis of capitalist realism and create genuine hope, primarily by highlighting actually existing alternatives that already function alongside capitalism [3]. These include Indigenous economic systems, successful cooperative enterprises, commons-based resource management, and mutual aid networks — demonstrating this isn’t utopian thinking but recognition of existing plurality often rendered invisible by capitalist realism’s narrative [4]. Pluralism accomplishes this through temporal complexity, recognising different temporalities can coexist and change doesn’t require totality or immediacy, necessarily. We might re-frame agency by showing people can begin creating and living alternatives in the present without waiting for system collapse or perfect consensus — and this doesn’t require bourgeois status, just attitudinal change. Through practical experimentation, pluralism encourages small-scale experiments in alternative ways of living, learning from different existing systems, and creating spaces where different values can guide action [5]. Perhaps most importantly, pluralism challenges the naturalisation of current systems by demonstrating that current arrangements are historically specific rather than natural laws, that different societies have solved problems in different ways, and that social systems are human creations that can be recreated. This makes change tangible and immediate rather than purely theoretical or impossibly distant.

It’s about optimism, yeah? But to get there we need to be clear on our terms, we need to be clear on ourselves, and we need to engage in reflection and transformative praxis. From a Marxist or even socialist perspective, ontology (the study of what exists and how things relate) and epistemology (how we know what we know) intersect critically with pluralism in understanding our current conditions (as products of history) and the myriad possibilities for change. Ontologically, our approach recognises that multiple forms of social and economic relations exist simultaneously, not just as historical stages as classical Marxism might suggest, but as concurrent realities. Some are better, some are worse, and some cannot be compared because context is everything. This means acknowledging that while capitalism is dominant, it is not and will never be total; other forms of relation and production persist and emerge even within capitalist frameworks (and even when they are squashed or subsumed, they exist, they existed, and they can return). Epistemologically, our perspective values multiple ways of knowing while maintaining critical analysis of power relations, understanding that knowledge is always situated within material conditions but isn’t reducible to them. Our pluralism, here, doesn’t mean “relativism” or uncritical acceptance of all positions, but rather recognition that transformation can emerge through multiple paths and forms.

This framework helps us understand that while capitalism shapes reality it never completely determines it. The task becomes recognition of and nurturing (existing) alternatives while developing new ones, understanding that resistance and creation of alternatives happens through multiple valid forms. From traditional Marxist class struggle to Indigenous resistance to cooperative economics to new forms of commons, new and better forms emerge constantly. But it is on us all to help these forms find their way to reality. Our approach maintains socialist critique of exploitation and domination while avoiding the pitfalls of economic reductionism or historical determinism (and certainly collapse of structure into agency, or agency into structure). Our approach offers that transformation may come, not through waiting for a single revolutionary moment, but through nurturing multiple forms of resistance and alternative ways of being, all while maintaining critical analysis of power relations and systemic constraints – and being angry when plurality is denied.

Understanding terms and being reflexive in transformative praxis connects deeply to how we understand and create change. When we grasp concepts like ontology, epistemology, and pluralism, we gain tools to recognise and resist how capitalist realism narrows our imagination and actions. Being reflexive helps us notice when we’re unconsciously reproducing capitalist frames like reducing everything to economic terms or seeing all solutions as individual rather than collective. Activist practice through a pluralist lens opens up multiple forms of resistance and creation, from teaching that opens possibilities rather than closing them [6], to creating spaces for collective care that resist market logic [7], to maintaining traditional practices that embody different relationships to land or community [8]. The power of this approach is that it doesn’t require everyone to engage in the same way or wait for total system change. Instead, it recognises that transformation happens through multiple, interconnected actions at different scales, where small changes in how we think and relate (or react) can create openings for larger systemic changes. This isn’t about individual lifestyle choices, though they most definitely help, but rather about creating and maintaining spaces where different values and relations can exist and grow. And stasis, conservatism, and aggression like other cancerous positions, are denied the light for growth in such a system because they are fundamentally antithetical to our humanist and ecologically engaged position (more on this soon).

That’s where my heads at today, anyhow. Have a cracker weekend friends,

Aidan.

[1] seriously, don’t bother, I literally had to unblock a wide range of known adware and malware sites even to access their home page: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/sir-frank-lowy-enough-is-enough-plea-to-politicians-to-speak-up-against-antisemitism/news-story/5e0caff33f6ecef80aa2189de2d70b0b

[2] c.f. Fisher’s Capitalist Realism

[3] https://cup.columbia.edu/book/pluriverse/9788193732984

[4] https://www.dukeupress.edu/pluralism (ignore the eggs on the cover, weird choice, it’s not about eggs – in case you were confused like me)

[5] Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias is a phenomenal piece on this, as are the edited collections of real exemplars of this work in praxis.

[6] On my reading list https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html

[7] Revolutionaries, feminists, and pluralists: https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-revolution-will-not-be-funded

[8] c.f. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1664-we-do-this-til-we-free-us

Dear friends,

As I grow increasingly concerned about the level of influence Zucc has with his near monopoly on social media, I concomitantly grow concerned about the atomisation of workers and mystification of the labour process. Today, I’d like to spend a bit of time talking about social bonds, and the “cohesion” of society. In particular, I think we need to spend some time truly attending to how the common sense has shifted to a worship of individual billionaires, giving way to a rise of front-seat oligarchs directly in control of abstracting worker connection to production, and to direct control of the machinery of government [1]. Naturally, I’m also concerned with how this will play out in Australia given the commencement of Albanese’s campaigning, but let’s take it one step at a time [2].

The atomisation of workers in contemporary times is extreme. Capitalism benefits when solidarity is eroded, and it has played the long game to get here — gradually loosening social bonds outside production since the 1980s as tightening hegemony ensures compliance [3]. Where once workers might have gathered in union halls, community centres, and especially pubs to discuss our shared conditions and build solidarity, today’s “flexible” work arrangements and digital mediation of social life have effectively isolated us from genuine collective experience.

The 2020s have ushered unprecedented shifts in how work, ownership, and accumulation function under capitalism. Remote work, platform-mediated gig labour, and algorithmic management have created new forms of alienation and control that Marx may only have had nightmares about [4]. Ownership itself has become increasingly abstract, with workers now renting rather than owning everything from housing to software licenses to the tools of their trade, while capitalists accumulate wealth through increasingly financialised means nearly devoid of ‘traditional’ production. The capitalist class has evolved from factory owners to tech oligarchs and financial speculators who control not just the means of production but the very infrastructure of daily life. The rise of management consultancies has added another parasitic layer to this exploitation, with firms like McKinsey, BCG, and Deloitte extracting massive profits by telling companies how to squeeze more value from workers while simultaneously deskilling the professional class through the outsourcing of strategic thinking. Oh, and let’s not forget, literally changing legislation to be more favourable to outsourcing to consultancies [5]. These consultancies serve as high priests of capitalism, legitimising mass layoffs and worker surveillance while building dependency on their own services. Hot.

The ever shifting landscape of contemporary capitalist life hasn’t, however, changed the fundamental relations of exploitation. It has only intensified them. We’ve talked about how this has fed configurations of what Varoufakis calls technofeudalism, where digital platforms function as fiefs extracting rent from all social activity [6]. The resulting workforce is more precarious and atomised than ever, scrambling to piece together livelihoods through multiple ‘side hustles’ while the capitalist class accumulates wealth at historically unprecedented rates.

The fragmentation, atomisation, and espoused individualism is not an accident, though little is under capitalism. These are tools which serve capital’s need to prevent class consciousness from emerging through shared experience. Something that the internet briefly offered, at least for western nations. As Marx noted in the Grundrisse, capital must constantly revolutionise not only the means of production, but also the social relations that surround them. What we’re witnessing now is the culmination of this process, where even our non-work time has been colonised by capital’s logic of individualisation and competition. Work by Fuchs [7] has shown how platform capitalism has accelerated this atomisation, creating new forms of alienation where workers feel “more connected” yet are in reality more isolated than ever before. Look no further than Meta’s AI profiles, you’ll never know if content on any of Zucc’s platforms is from an actual human again.

Social media platforms, far from bridging isolation, intensify it through use of sensationalised timelines, manipulation of content, and broadly just ‘attention seeking’. The feeds we scroll through distracting us from our material conditions, something humans are very good at overlooking after years of conditioning, and now social media — from a very young age, despite Labor’s attempts to ban young people — actively training us to view ourselves as personal brands competing for attention in a marketplace of identity. This militant individualism, amplified by engagement-driven algorithms, transforms legitimate class grievances into personal challenges to be overcome through self-optimisation rather than collective struggle. We’ve cited Zuboff heavily on this in the past, where she argues that surveillance capitalism isn’t just interested in our attention, but actually epistemic reshaping such that our conception of social relations fits in a digital consumer / individualistic / market-driven framework to enable exploitation on all fronts at all times [8].

The social division of labour here has evolved — and not in a good way. Today’s workers are not simply alienated from the products of our labour but through layers of hegemonic coercion, we are taught to look away from any kind of understanding of production, let alone social production. The totality of these systems, functioning together — hegemony and specific capitalist enforcement — has created conditions for the working class that obscures any solidarity. Digital platforms spewing toxic pro-capital narratives, intensified automation of systems, deskilling of workers, deprofessionalising technicians and so on all serves as the latest in obstructions to understanding the real relations between workers, between workers and production, and production and capital accumulation, making it ever more difficult to recognise our shared conditions of exploitation. When an office worker orders lunch delivery through an app, the social relations between them and the delivery worker are mystified through digital mediation. Naturally, this mystification serves capital by preventing workers from recognising our common interests across these artificially created divisions.

Social media’s role in managing workers’ understanding of our own labour power cannot be overstated. Platforms ­— and increasingly “platform” as Zucc takes over and outstrips the remaining ‘others’ through legislative lobbying — are now simply instruments of hegemonic control, manufacturing consent for capitalist relations through a constant stream of content that naturalises exploitation, promotes individualistic solutions to collective problems, and SELLS PRODUCTS! When we spend our free time scrolling through “hustle culture” content or “financial literacy” advice — god help you if you spend any time on LinkedIn [9] — we are being conditioned to view our exploitation as a personal challenge, nothing that would need a collective response.

The recent trend of CEO capitulation to increasingly extreme right-wing positions, particularly visible in figures like Musk, Cook and Zuckerberg, just proves how alive and well anti-worker sentiment is amongst the capitalist class. Yet does this despotism phase users? Are you still on Facebook? Do you still buy Apple products? Then you are supporting fascism — and yes, there’s no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, but we now see these figures directly in bed with neonazis, and that should give us more than pause. These figures no longer feel the need to maintain a pretence of caring about workers, instead openly embracing authoritarian politics that promise to cement their control. Importantly, the shift isn’t about individual CEOs, rather it is indicative of the whole capitalist class becoming more bold in their authoritarian turn. To put it clearly: we are seeing capital’s recognition that maintaining hegemony through consent is becoming increasingly difficult as contradictions intensify. The mask-off moment we’re witnessing, where billionaires openly support fascist politics, shows how capital will readily abandon democratic pretences when its accumulation is threatened — or when individual capitalists (and their boot licking managerial class) are threatened [10].

What strikes me about the latest reactionary moment, here, is how social media platforms themselves have become key instruments for advancing this anti-worker agenda. “Mainstream” platforms (read: FB, Insta, Snap, etc.) are safe harbours for pro-capitalist content, while anything counter-hegemonic is quickly demonetised, downplayed or blocked. When Musk purchases Twitter or Zuckerberg shapes Facebook’s algorithms to promote right-wing content, they’re not expressing personal political preferences, in fact I’d be surprised if they had them, they are simply deploying their control over digital infrastructure to actively suppress class consciousness and promote reactionary politics. Can’t fight them if we’re fighting each other. And this is the fundamental issue of platform monopoly ownership. Can we just go back to everyone having blogs? (I’m giving it a shot!)

Again, we’re just on the latest page in the long line of class warfare tactics. Nothing here is new, and nothing here is revolutionary. The capitalists and perhaps more importantly their petit bourgeois boot licker enforcement class are out to ensure only the ultra-wealthy have any kind of quality of life, based on our work. The means of digital communication themselves are increasingly weapons in capital’s arsenal against worker solidarity — and only through decentralising (i.e., not using FB, Insta, Snap, TikTok, YouTube, etc.) and returning to diverse platforms and perspectives can we hope to combat these tools of hegemonic enforcement.

Go write a blog!

In solidarity,
Aidan

[1] c.f. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/04/elon-musk-uk-germany-canada-far-right/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/06/anthony-albanese-switches-to-election-footing-with-blitz-of-three-campaign-battlegrounds

[3] also, interestingly, c.f. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003687022002174

[4] https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/98056652/Labour_process_theory_and_GANDINI_Accepted25June2018_GREEN_AAM.pdf

[5] For lucid analysis see https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-big-con/

[6] https://www.penguin.com.au/books/technofeudalism-9781529926095

[7] https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003222149 (and several other books, dude’s prolific)

[8] https://shoshanazuboff.com/book/about/

[9] https://sh.itjust.works/c/linkedinlunatics

[10] https://archive.is/2025.01.05-014335/https://medium.com/@kimpistilli/before-luigi-mangione-there-was-fred-hampton-f55a2728de13