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No Kings, Same Kingdom: How liberal resistance might reinforce the system

Dear friends,

Recently, we saw the largest protest movement in American history. We also saw this swept away by the capitalist media within a handful of news cycles. But what is practice without theory (well, ... anyway). I think it is worth spending a little time on analysing the underlying ideologies and values of protest movements, particularly when they hold such broad appeal. Through this kind of analysis we might be able to first recognise some fundamental assumptions and a shared epistemology (way of knowing) to elaborate or stretch. I also want to underlabour this writing with Marxist critique, noting that the collapse of Marxian praxis in popular thought is the point of radical departure from engaging the proletariat where they are at. Doing things backwards, let's start with some fundamental challenges of theory in this space first.

From Rosa Luxemburg[1] to V. I. Lenin[2] the beginning of the 1900s saw this rupture between theory and practice repeat. Notably, across the western world the working class were more allied around a union solidarity than our contemporary conditions. In practical terms we can then assume that there is less theory/practice dynamism now than then. If workers were already willing to grapple with issues of ("inferior") class positions then, workers now, for ideological and hegemonic reasons, are often unwilling to engage beyond immediate conditions. Evidencing this theory/practice rupture isn't difficult. Theoretical debates in the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been discussed elsewhere[3], the Sanders 2016 movement attempted to reconnect the divide but ultimately failed to meet its target[4] and armchair socialists have discussed this point of departure at length (I promise I'm not feeling guilty)[5]. And in other American discourse, protest and activist movements such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal program seek navigation of these spaces – treading lightly often to their detriment.

At this moment, we should detour through accelerationism theory, to lay out some groundwork for what's to come (identifying the point of departure). Accelerationism advocates for speeding up and intensifying capitalism's inherent contradictions and technological dynamics, rather than resisting them[6]. But accelerationism is a 'both sides' tactic – though a hegemonic tactic nonetheless. Right-accelerationists embrace intensification as a means to collapse existing (liberal) democratic structures, viewing societal breakdown as necessary for installing hierarchical, ethno-nationalist orders. Manifestos written by right-wing accelerationists – literal murderers – emphasise chaos[7]. Left-accelerationists advocate for using (capitalist) technology and automation to transcend capitalism. Putting it simply: more of this will equal less of this (I'm scratching my head too). They see a post-work society achieved through technological liberation rather than traditional labour organising. Between accelerationists there is also a point of departure between theory and practice: theorists look for systemic transformation through technological and economic forces, practical movements instead devolve into either nihilistic destruction (right) or techno-optimistic reformism (left) that does not address material conditions. Are you feeling all meta'd out yet? I sure am. Basically accelerationists embody "move fast, break shit" believing that this will somehow manifest in the manufacture of concrete political work required for meaningful social change.

Okay, I've jerked you between theory/practice rupture, accelerationist theory practice divide, and we've landed somewhere ideologically adrift. Let's revisit the point of departure in popular movements rather than in a specific theory. Because as we know, there is no grand unifying theory in activist spaces.

We can see a catastrophic theory/practice divide in activist movements littered through history. The Weather Underground, for instance, demonstrated this dynamic. Emerging from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which had 100,000 members by 1969, the Weathermen faction's adoption of "ultraleft" theory advocating immediate armed confrontation with the government and their belief that mass organisations were unnecessary led them to dissolve SDS entirely and retreat into small guerrilla cells (accelerationist!)[8]. Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF) emerged from the 1968 student movement but similarly destroyed its own base when theoretical commitment to urban guerrilla warfare led them to believe they represented the most "exposed European vanguard" of global revolution, thereby isolating them from the broader left as their tactics became more violent (accelerationist!)[9]. Interestingly, the Black Panthers emerging from grassroots community assistance programs held their ideological roots for longer. By delivering systematic mutual aid everything from large scale free breakfast programs for children to health clinics, and community education[10], activists remained connected to community concerns longer than other movements. With time, however, revolutionary strategy versus community organising became a departure point (...).

Notably, longer lived programs of activism tend to have stronger theoretical connection to grassroots needs. This is an inversion. Social movement theory literature discusses sustained movements requiring ongoing dialogue between theoretical understanding and grassroots experience. Here, for instance, resource mobilisation theory discusses that movements survival may be ensured through resource acquisition and management[11] with adaptability to changing contexts critical to longevity[12] – dialogue and equal distribution of wins (not accelerationist!). Community organising approaches which connect with values of democratic decision-making, Indigenous leadership (and relationality), and concrete winnable campaigns consistently demonstrate superior longevity compared to "vanguard" (frequently accelerationist) models[13]. If you want to read more about connectivity between grassroots needs and activist projects boy have I got you covered in the footnotes[14].

If we return, now, with these schematics to our investigation of the No Kings protests, there are a few theoretical landmines we need to tread carefully around. There is a binding ideology at the heart of these protests – a view that U.S. government should not become a dictatorship. We can pontificate about the lack of voter turnout vs the massive scale of the No Kings protests another time. Fundamentally, it has been shown that the vast majority of American people believe that Trump should not have authoritarian powers[^15]. Great. But upon what ideological base? Fundamentally was the No Kings turnout inspired by notions of democratic preservation? Or is the root ideology behind the protests actually a neoliberal or free market capitalist perspective? And where does the working class fit amongst this?

If we can reconcile the No Kings protest movement as a manifestation of contradictory consciousness[15] (within civil society), we can begin to theorise political connectivity, as well as some points of departure (but let's not overload the brain right this second)[16]. Protesters' rejection of autocratic leadership while they maintain allegiance to liberal democratic institutions reveals a misrecognition of power structures in bourgeois hegemony[17]. A selective critique opposing individual "kings" yet paradoxically preserving the "kingdom" of capitalist "democracy". Read: it is the leader who is wrong, not the system which enables the leader. This shows the breadth of hegemonic ideology. The common sense is that "our (U.S.) system is the best system; that exploitation of that superior system is an individual failing, not a systemic one". Critically, we can, here, recognise that capitalist realism has gripped the "average American". The working class has internalised ruling class ideology. The fundamental focus on personality rather than systemic critique actually serves to reinforce rather than challenge structures and power.

As yet unwritten, and not very praxiological of me, I would rather use criticism of Trump to criticise American fascism as a systemic power. Sure Trump is a terrible person, but the system inflicts much greater ripples of intergenerational pain. This system exists to enable people like Trump all the way down. It isn't "Trump" its the entire political/economic system. Any critique (activism), here, which fails to address this is fundamentally doomed to repeat until such times as protest is made illegal – and the U.S. is well on the way to following Australia on this. Yet, this is a point of departure, because by and large the American people believe that their system is egalitarian – even when no one they know is benefiting from it. This is the colonising of minds – an epistemic war – to reinforce the status quo. The debate of American fascism parallels Gramsci's analysis of fascism as capitalism's authoritarian response to organic crisis[18]. There has been widespread recognition that the United States Government exhibits fascistic tendencies through its history of settler colonialism and racial violence[19]. There has been widespread recognition of the U.S. as a neocolonial empire, acting as a regional bully to ensure capitalist survival[20]. There has been more analysis than we could possible cope with in a lifetime, yet none of it appears to organically connect to grassroots struggles. Gramsci identified fascism as a latent possibility within bourgeois democracy. But the recognition of this has been forestalled by the strength and power of rapidly accelerating hegmeonic ideology supported by technological advancement (hello again accelerationism!). We're seeing the ruling class hope for passive revolution[21], where they absorb and neutralise opposition and maintain fundamental power structures [22]. We saw this with the media rapidly phasing the protests out of the news cycle – and we've seen this globally as capitalist hegemony spreads and metastasises.

The tension between spontaneous protest, organised revolutionary action, and reform sits in Gramsci's dialectical understanding of spontaneity and leadership[23]. While some dismiss protests as ineffective performance (particularly liberals), others recognise their potential as sites for political education and organisation. Spontaneous movements contain embryonic elements of conscious leadership that need be developed through democratic collectives to flourish as organic intellectuals. The challenge becomes transforming diffuse discontent into collective will which sits unified (enough) politically to create action guided by revolutionary theory and strategy, and systematic critique needs to sit at the root of this. The challenge as with all activist movements, is challenging the hegemony, the power of the status quo. Challenging the person (i.e., Trump) is an easier, more politically acceptable, move (though increasingly ICE's war of manoeuvre is making this less the case) within mainstream American ruling ideology promulgated amongst civil society. However, as we've discussed at length here on mind reader, the structural colonial, capitalist, anti-worker, anti-ecological, and anti-human ideology and institutional apparatus is much deeper rooted than an unchecked fascist controlling an unprecedented number of soldiers and nuclear warheads. The fact that the questions is not "how does anyone have this level of power" blows my mind every time.

This is a divergent point for me, and for many other socialist thinkers, from organic protesters. The average American (white, able bodied, straight and cisgender, middle class, middle age, male) thinks Trump should be subject to law. The average intersectionally disadvantaged person (this is the quantitative majority) needs the system to be reformed in order to have any quality of life. The problem is acceptable political discourse is constrained so strongly to the needs of the former group that meagre reforms are all that are allowed to be discussed[24]. How do we shift the discourse away from acceptable "centrist" (verging heavily towards fascist) discourse in such a way that even allows all those oppressed to speak for their struggles? Because the traditional intellectual apparatus is based on a capitalist ontological frame which demands control of (epistemological) discourse such that language which challenges oppression is impermissible[25]. And holding, strongly, this way of thinking – if it happened that I were in a position of leadership amidst the No Kings movement – would likely become an area of significant tension with those mostly comfy white dudes.

Let's take an example of a pro-socialist education movement (because this draws from my lived experience of organising large scale activism). In identifying, post-mortem, the ruptures of theory and practice which disintegrated the movement I would name hegemony, intersectionality, and economics as fundamental points of break. Chiefly, hegemony makes it difficult for any activist movement to gain sufficient momentum for change. This includes the full weight of the ideological apparatus of the hegemony, the media, education systems, police, government (fines, etc.), and so on. The intersectional rupture becomes twofold: (1) those with a marginalised identity failing to holistically connect with the movement; (2) those connected with the movement not seeing their needs met by the leadership of the movement, or seeing the leadership move away from a position which validated their needs. This micro-fracturing of allegiances, needs, ideas, thought and so on repeats across all persons participating in the movement regardless of their relative stature. Anyone with a friendship group would likely also be familiar with such politics[26].

To be clear, I commend the democratic and largely transformative way these protests were intentioned. The use of peaceful protest, broad appeal, and anything which shows Trump for the fascist capitalist dictator he is has my tick of approval (not that anyone asked). However, the points of departure towards change – desperately needed positive systemic change – make this a difficult space for praxis. It's paradoxical –

Our systems need to change, faster than ever, because they are changing faster than ever.

Convincing people that their view of change, for instance, "Trump must go" is not "radical" enough, without collapse into accelerationism is nearly unimaginable (and thereby rupturing the protest movement for "valid" ideological reasons, rupture nonetheless). The average American discourse in particular is so allergic to anything resembling socialism, that even equity initiatives are often looked upon scornfully. Yet those casting the scorn are often those who would benefit most from reform. This is the nature of hegemonic media, education, and systems control[27]. Breaking the way of thinking, working, might be achieved incrementally but it can't be achieved through departure. "You're being to radical", "you just want to break shit", etc. which are critiques hurled by right-accelerationists seeking technological engulfment of the proletariat for fascist ends. And still acceleration into violence is the last thing I, personally, and many socialists would want, so... Regardless, the critique remains as long as capitalism defines our shared ontology and revokes agency for one's own episteme.

Gosh, we're so many layers deep that even I've lost track! Let me simplify in bullets before we say farewell to one another for the moment:

  • No Kings effectively targeted a fascist leader;
  • The fascist leader is both symbolic and literal embodiment of capitalist fascism, and hegemony (an accelerationist capital-techno-fascism);
  • Critique of the fascist leader is already extremely difficult and receives little airtime due to His hegemony;
  • Broader critique of the system which enables this leader is not on the table with No Kings – both from a left and right wing perspective (because it is close to disintegrating anyway due to the weight of hegemony);
  • Discussion of the limited airtime (coverage) is largely off the table for American discourse;
  • Critique of capitalism is seen as "communist" and flagged as dangerous due to educational hegemony;
  • Points of rupture between idealised ideologies and idealised lived realities create discord and paradox which can destroy movements;
  • Everything else already seeks to destroy anti-capitalist movements; and
  • Well, stalemate.

There's a real need for genuine empathy and education in moving liberals toward more radical leftist ideologies. We're just not sure they're interested unless they're made personally uncomfortable. Still, I remain hopeful that compassion and empathy will win.

Yikes,

Aidan.

  1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm ↩︎
  2. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ ↩︎
  3. https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/occupy-socialist-anarchist/ ↩︎
  4. https://theconversation.com/bernie-sanders-says-the-left-has-lost-the-working-class-has-it-forgotten-how-to-speak-to-them-243160 ↩︎
  5. cf., https://www.law.georgetown.edu/denny-center/blog/labor-unions-capitalism/ ↩︎
  6. for a relatively clear explanation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in ↩︎
  7. https://theconversation.com/a-field-guide-to-accelerationism-white-supremacist-groups-using-violence-to-spur-race-war-and-create-social-chaos-255699 ↩︎
  8. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Weathermen ↩︎
  9. https://doi.org/10.1080/10576109308435925 ↩︎
  10. https://bppaln.org/programs ↩︎
  11. cf., https://doi.org/10.1086/226464 ↩︎
  12. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2329496519850846 for one example ↩︎
  13. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci2010023 and also https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899825619300089 ↩︎
  14. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378013002197 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1096877/full https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10162496/ ↩︎
  15. look no further than https://search.worldcat.org/title/14965368 ↩︎
  16. I could do another whole dispatch looking at collective structures of subalterns (in Gramsci's originary sense) but I'll just drop this here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/089356902101242242 ↩︎
  17. This is another can of theoretical worms, but: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18dzstb.13 ↩︎
  18. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334183_3 ↩︎
  19. An absolute must read: https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240 and a bit more if you're on a spree https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520273436.003.0005 ↩︎
  20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005 and https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630-5.01020-4 ↩︎
  21. https://doi.org/10.7202/016590ar ↩︎
  22. an interesting analysis of this kind of structure https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt19b9jz2 ↩︎
  23. cf., https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199457557.001.0001 ↩︎
  24. https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.4.2.d7593370607l6756 ↩︎
  25. Don't get too bogged down here, but there's useful sketches in: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm ↩︎
  26. This is a whole poststructural epistemic mess, but the ideas are nonetheless important: https://doi.org/10.1086/669608 ↩︎
  27. Old faithful: https://chomsky.info/19890315/ ↩︎
,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
capitalism, theory/practice, counter-hegemony, hegemony, protest, activism, rupture

Theorising the revolution: formulas, lexical gaps, and feminism

Dear friends,

I have been thinking about labour and the nature of exploitation. Not the political party, though they could easily fit under a similar topic sentence. I’m also quite sure you’re thinking “you, thinking about labour? ha!” as though you don’t know precisely what you’re in for reading these dispatches. But I have a configuration of theoretical terrain which I think might be useful to sketch out, and I’m yet to find time to do this in an academic text, so we’re doing it here!

You may have heard of essentialising, and the sin of oversimplification. Well let’s do our absolute best to oversimplify the basic equation of the basis of the “economy”. This is a fun one, because who you ask will depend on what part, here, is considered the economy, but enough disclaimers...

Productive labour

Labour Power + Means of Production = Total Value Created
Wages < Total Value Created
Where the difference (Total Value Created - Wages) = Surplus Value extracted by the capitalist

Great, so in one fell swoop I’ve alienated economists, sociologists, Marxists, and more. But we’re not through the looking glass just yet, folks. I want to add a level to this that helps us understand epistemology. Regardless, I think we can agree that we are missing a big chunk of the labour that powers our contemporary “economy”. This work is almost exclusively done by women-identifying folk, and therefore has been oft excluded from academic texts...

Reproductive labour

Unpaid Domestic Labour + Community Care Work + Intergenerational Reproduction + Emotional Labour + Education/Skills Transfer = Regeneration of Labour Power

You might see, here, that we can’t get anywhere without this labour. Therefore, it is at least equally essential to the functioning of society, because without it, we literally die out as a species. So when we piece this together, the new “productive labour” model might look like:

(Re)productive labour

(Reproductive labour) → Labour Power + Means of Production = Total Value Created

These are, with derivations for socio-cultural understandings and configurations of labour, the basic building blocks of any human society, in a sense. For the western world, of course, we might hope for a system without the capitalists tacking on the surplus value extraction and despotically controlling society to face a global heat death. But these systems do not maintain themselves, the require a social cohesion which the capitalists like to claim can only be maintained by them for evil ends. However, the actual tools and systems of social and cultural connection are deeply universal. Let’s add another layer atop our (re)productive labour base (yeah, the base - Marxists, looking at you - is deeply dependent on women’s’ labour). What we’re missing, now, is the superstructure, which comes in parts (because it has, in the capitalist world, supplanted culture)...

Environmental extraction

Resource Depletion + Ecological Degradation + Climate Disruption = Material Base for Production

Why is this superstructural, even though it relates to the material base? Because we do not need to destroy our planet in order to live. No, I won’t elaborate.

Imperialism

Territorial Dispossession + Resource Appropriation + Labour Arbitrage + Debt Bondage = Global Accumulation

Again, superstructural, because no one needs to steal others land in order to live. But we’re not quite done...

Intersectionality

Gender Hierarchy + Racial Subordination + Ability-based Exclusion + Sexual/Gender Conformity = Differential Exploitation

Here we are verging into more traditionally superstructural considerations. Anything depicted as “social” can be rendered, at least by insensitive Marxists, into superstructure. But the overlook that occurs here is that intersectional violence is fundamentally required for the division of labour, the maintenance of capitalist hegemony, and the continued justification of imperialism. So these all interlock. Next, we have a layer of enforcement, to ensure that people follow these conditions.

State violence

Police Power + Carceral Systems + Border Regimes + Surveillance Apparatus = Coercive Enforcement

Let’s take these parts together and weave in some of Gramsci’s thinking on how this fits together to capture the modus operandi of a society. Importantly, for Gramsci, this was a changeable thing — we are not locked into one way of operating. We can change how we work, think and create, we just have to want to.

Hegemony

Superstructural Totality =
(Hegemonic Apparatus[Cultural Institutions • Media Control • Educational Systems]
×
Environmental Extraction[Resource Depletion • Ecological Crisis • Climate Disruption]
×
Colonial Power[Territorial Theft • Resource Appropriation • Global Labour Arbitrage]
×
Intersectional Oppression[Gender Hierarchy • Racial Subordination • Ability-Based Exclusion]
×
State Violence[Police Power • Carceral Systems • Border Regimes])
→ Manufactured Consent + Systemic Reproduction + Material Exploitation

Our × is multiplicative, so if you happen to fall into a space where these things pertain to you more than others, you are more likely exploited from, and feel the weight of hegemonic enforcement much more viscerally, and often violently.

Marx and Engels provided the foundational analysis of labour under capitalism, demonstrating how the commodification of human work power serves as the basis for capital accumulation. Their examination revealed how capitalism transforms concrete human activity into abstract labour time, enabling exploitation through the extraction of surplus value. This analysis showed that workers become alienated not only from the products of their labour, but from their very creative and productive capacities as human beings. The they expose how capitalism reorganises the entirety of social relations around this fundamental exploitation, creating a system where human creative potential becomes subordinated to the endless drive for profit accumulation. It’s a gross person’s world out there, we’re just (forced to be) living in it.

The industrial revolution’s transformation of work processes made this abstraction of labour increasingly concrete in workers’ daily experiences. And we’ve only seen intensification and abstraction away from any awareness of our own exploitation since. Marx and Engels’ analysis provided the theoretical tools to understand how technological changes served not to liberate workers, but to increase capital’s control over the labour process itself — ever cementing the hegemony of capitalism (systemically). This set the stage for later theorists to examine how scientific management and automation would further fragment and degrade workers’ autonomous creative capacities.

Building on this foundation, Braverman’s labour process theory explored how scientific management techniques systematically deskilled and degraded work under monopoly capitalism. His analysis showed how management’s drive to control the labour process led to the separation of conception from execution, transforming skilled craftspeople into interchangeable machine operators. This scientific management served to increase surplus value extraction while simultaneously undermining workers’ ability to resist through the destruction of their craft knowledge and autonomy. Braverman revealed how automation and computerisation accelerated these tendencies, creating increasingly alienated forms of work. Even if some of his claims were dubious and romanticised the kind of work that might be of value in a society (the theory helps, but is far from perfect, as with any theory).

These processes of deskilling and control continue to evolve with new technologies, though often in less obvious forms. Specifically, new thought technologies in management and corporate settings which “creep” rather than being advertised broadly as revolutionary changes to workforce management. Braverman’s insights help us understand how contemporary management techniques — from algorithmic control to agile methodologies — represent new iterations of capital’s eternal drive to subordinate living labour to dead labour, worker to machine. The degradation of work remains central to capital accumulation, especially as it takes on new digital forms (call it “enshittification” all you like, it’s just capitalism). And let me take a moment of digression here to explain living and dead labour (can’t just drop you in the deep end like that, you know).

The fundamental tension between living and dead labour lies at the heart of capitalism’s necessity to transform human creative capacity into mechanised, controllable processes. Thought technologies, like Fordism (factory, production line), advanced this in particular ways. Living labour represents the vibrant, autonomous potential of human creative and productive powers — our ability to imagine, adapt, and shape the world around us. Dead labour, embodied in machines and algorithms, represents the crystallisation of past human knowledge and effort into forms that can be owned and controlled by capital (anyone else noticed the AI bubble bursting and fading into the background, while AI continues to replace human jobs?). The eternal necessity to subordinate the former to the latter reveals capitalism’s inherently anti-human character. Capitalism is a literal cancer — and it has already claimed many of us. Okay, back to the main show.

Gramsci’s crucial contribution was to examine how capitalism maintains its dominance not just through economic exploitation, but through cultural hegemony achieved through, in part, the manufacturing of consent. His analysis showed how civil society institutions work to naturalise capitalist social relations and prevent the development of revolutionary consciousness. These are the tools that give us “common sense” a social construct that makes us say stupid shit like: “what do you want to do when you grow up?”. Gramsci demonstrated that successful resistance requires not only economic struggle, but the development of counter-hegemonic movements capable of challenging capital’s cultural power. Quite literally, capitalism, the cancer we’ve just talked about, has subsumed culture — its elites, the ruling class, have only accumulation, nothing else that resembles culture in any form we might recognise.

By examining the role of intellectuals and cultural institutions in maintaining capitalist hegemony, Gramsci provided tools for understanding how exploitation is normalised and resistance contained. His insights into how ruling class ideas become “common sense” (literally vs “good sense” or perhaps “better sense” which requires training and comradery to perform deep analysis) remain essential for analysing contemporary ideological control, particularly as digital platforms create new mechanisms for manufacturing consent. This laid groundwork for understanding how gender, race and other forms of oppression intersect with class exploitation. But it also shows us how the superstuctural elements are reciprocally connected to the base in a way that cannot be subordinated to the base. i.e., the biggest bone of contention between Gramscian theory and Marxist theory is which part needs to change first, and how it comes to be changed. Marxism has a kind of stasis — not on all fronts of course, where Gramscianism is a deliberately activist and mobile configuration of theory that gives us ‘outcome’ rather than process. But this isn’t the final piece necessary for our full conception.

Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) builds on these foundations while centring the often invisible labour required to reproduce the working class itself. SRT scholars like Silvia Federici showed how unwaged domestic labour — performed primarily by women — is essential to capitalism’s functioning while being systematically devalued. This analysis reveals how gender oppression is not incidental but fundamental to capitalist accumulation, as the system relies on the unpaid work of social reproduction while refusing to acknowledge its value.

This connects to Gramsci’s insights about hegemony, as the devaluation of reproductive labour requires extensive ideological work to appear natural rather than constructed. SRT shows how capitalism’s apparent separation of productive and reproductive spheres serves to obscure their essential connection, while creating additional axes of exploitation and oppression. This theoretical development helps explain how various forms of oppression intersect with and reinforce class exploitation while pointing toward the need for truly intersectional resistance movements. Let me make this slightly more explicit, though, as we aren’t going to get far without strong theoretical connection between SRT and Gramsci (which, as far as I know, has not been done widely elsewhere).

The naturalisation of reproductive labour as “women’s work” represents a deeply successful hegemonic achievement. Operating at the intersection of base and superstructure to ensure the continued reproduction of labour power, but mystifying its essential role in capitalist accumulation — i.e., not valuing it, rewarding it, or incentivising it like other work (government initiatives to stimulate population growth do not count here). Gramscian theorists (at least this one you’re reading) would identify this as a deployment of common sense, the biological fact of childbearing has been ideologically expanded to justify the gendered assignment of all manner of social reproductive labour - from childcare to emotional support to community maintenance. All unpaid. All significantly undervalued. This common sense operates through multiple cultural institutions (superstructure) to make the exploitation of reproductive labour appear as natural law rather than a constructed social relation essential to capital’s functioning (base). This hegemonic operation transforms historical contingency into apparent necessity. The fact that women can bear children becomes twisted into an ideological justification for their performing all manner of unpaid labour necessary for capitalism’s reproduction ... and men’s comfort. This naturalisation serves capital in multiple ways: it ensures the reproduction of labour power while keeping these costs external to wage calculations, it creates gendered hierarchies that fragment working class solidarity, and it obscures how reproductive labour forms an essential part of capitalist production rather than existing in a separate “private” sphere. The hegemonic success, here, is so complete that even radical political movements often struggle to recognise reproductive labour as labour, demonstrating how thoroughly this particular configuration of common sense has been embedded in our collective consciousness. It also shows the genius of feminists in recognising and fighting this “common sense”.

Across these theoretical terrains we see an arc of increasingly sophisticated understanding of how capitalism operates through multiple, interconnected, systems of exploitation and control. We are also able, in a relatively unique way, to connect these theories and understandings to grapple with capitalist ontology (or capitalist realism). Each builds on previous insights while expanding the analysis to new domains, helping us understand both the totality of capitalist domination and potential paths for resistance. The contemporary challenge is to synthesise these perspectives into forms of praxis capable of addressing capitalism’s evolving mechanisms of control while building genuine alternatives. The work of identifying these alternatives is the most difficult, but also achievable if we can share a framework for understanding our exploitation.

I have rambled for long enough, but I hope to better connect these theoretical territories as I continue working in this space. This work, too, would not be possible without Piper who is co-creating these ways of working and seeing the world with me.

In solidarity,

Aidan

,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
capitalism, gramsci, srt, feminism, transformation, activism, marxism, sociology, social construction, economy

Optimism as antidote to despair

Dear friends,

I have been thinking about optimism and despair. Actually, I’ve been reading on optimism over despair [1] and thinking about an analytical pattern that might help us mobilise this kind of thought in the way we discuss contemporaneous issues on mind reader. So, yes, this post is a meta post about being meta, what else have you come to expect from me? I’m going to talk in abstract about both the reason for optimism, and for despair, and how we might mobilise these against the way they are mobilised by the capitalist class. Because what’s better than human emotion, passion, feeling and process against something so fundamentally inhuman, nonhuman, non-human as capitalism. Let’s get into it...

Chomsky uses a pattern of explanatory critique that comprises his own unique theoretical positioning. I suspect, to label him as a “Marxist theorist” is to do him disservice given the expansive cannon of his texts over the decades. But, and gee can you tell I’m a fan, there is a tangible pattern to a great deal of his writing that offers not just critique, explication, and contextualisation of thinking, theorising, politics and more, but also a movement. This movement, I think, is what is often missing from other contemporary Marxist theory. In my own work, I reflect, that following Gramscian notions of praxis — rather than, say, theorisation for theorisations sake — I have been able to portray a sense of change or at least the desire for change. This, I have been told, demonstrates immeasurable optimism in the face of challenges. Cool. I’m in this meta and ... I guess I like it?

Chomsky, particularly in his recent books combining letters and correspondence on contemporary politics, shows a pattern of writing and thinking. It looks something like this:

  1. Offer a clear-eyed analysis of serious problems. This includes contemporary and sometimes even reactionary (in the Marxist sense) political moments, anything from the climate crisis to nuclear threats and recently robust explanation of democratic decay.

  2. Contextualise through examination of historical parallels where collective action achieved meaningful change despite seemingly insurmountable odds. This, in particular, is useful for understanding modes “out of” our current crises (or reactions, and so on).

  3. Offer identification of current opportunities and levers for change. Weaving the topic of concern, into a historical mesh that explains both how a given phenomena may be understood through an anti-capitalist lens, while offering possibility and momentum. But more specifically, directing people to protestation that holds precedent.

  4. Finally, subtle emphasis on how despair serves power by making resistance seem futile. This is where, I think, we all need a reminder. When we allow in-fighting, degradation of comradery, and separation from our causes (qua collapse into arbitrary battles instead of fighting the ruling class) we are giving into the despair which sees individualism rise, narcissistic solutions to big problems, and failures of solidarity from all parties involved.

This pattern, expanded loosely here, intriguingly follows form with some of the mind reader posts shared, but not all. And I think, when we stray from this trajectory, we do each other a disservice. My last post, admittedly not my best, showed a way to respond to reactionary politics — engagement with discourse, personalisation of opinion, sharing of commentary, and so on. But it didn’t follow the trajectory of this pattern. Something I’m looking to do a better job of moving forward — without binding myself to a formula that puts everyone to sleep. If we re-frame the pattern explored above as a movement:

Despair -> (Analysis -> Ideation ->) Optimism

We can see collectivised analysis — work in the ballpark of this project (said humbly) — as advancing hope. I don’t know about you, but I find engaging with news, mainstream journalism, incredibly difficult. Particularly on days where I feel down about things. And partly this is my own filter, bringing such disdain for the cancer that is our onto-economic system, tarnishing news celebrating billionaires’ newfound oligopoly. And partly it’s the nature of hegemonic media offering no relief from the ontic primacy of capitalism. It’s one of those “once you see it” moments — once you know how to identify how anti-human capitalism is, you see the values, attitudes and approach everywhere. It’s gross. Not to mention racist, sexist, classist, ableist, and so much more — and liberal notions of “inclusion” do not quell the rage for the bullshit that is this way of life... But the answer isn’t (only) rage, just as it cannot be despair. Rather it’s salient, theoretical analysis, closed by calls for action that are actualised, contextualised, or meaningful. Instead, I want to offer hope or at least optimistic naivete.

Some days, of course, you just feel done. And that’s okay too, we all need a bitch, cry, or meditation every now and then, but I hope we can collectively, readers, writers, thinkers, activists, change makers and those unable to “unsee” capitalism’s exploitation find the collective space to move towards an optimistic future. Because otherwise we’re advancing values that both support capitalism’s exploitation, and we’re feeding our own death and destruction.

That’s not optimism, though. Let me take my own medicine so that we may be hopeful about the future.

We are in a time where forces of evil — literal fascists — vie for power in a system designed for the destruction of 99% of humans, and 100% of the environment for the benefit of less than 1%. The optimism, though, is in the numbers. Time and again, workers of all varieties have come together to transform this system for the better. To resist the attacks, undermining, and lateral violence of a system that knows no bounds. Even when we have shit day after shit day, the environment suffers catastrophic losses, human rights take a backslide, or our own personal circumstances seem helpless we still collectively hold a spirit of recovery, change, revitalisation, and energy. We have a fundamentally human value of hope. A human value of optimism.

We have the power to change our trajectory. And this is demonstrable in analyses by countless thinkers. Shown in the wins of activists, unionists, and independent radicals the world over. And time and again we (humans) have shown that we can come together. And we can change the world. We do this in myriad ways. Not just activism. Not just theory. Not just governance. Not just solidarity. Not one mode — because there is no such thing as one size fits all. We all change the world in small ways, and through our collective thought, care, and values we can reassert something fundamentally different that moves us to optimistic spaces.

Here’s feeling. We must continue to assert that change is possible. We collectivise optimism. We need to find ways to unite. Because it is every. single. one. of. us. in the 99% against the Musks, Trumps, Zuccs, Cooks, and so on. Let’s do better, be better, and rise above attacking each other. “The workers united will never be defeated”. Not as an excuse to ignore the intersectional needs of our friends, neighbours, and comrades — actually, quite the opposite. Learn about intersectional causes. Find allyship. Move forward in respectful and reciprocal ways. And above all, stay hopeful, optimistic, and moving towards a brighter future, because at the moment that’s really all we’ve got — anything is better than this deeply troubling and very real global return to fascism.

With love, optimism, and respect,

Aidan

  1. Chomsky, N., & Polychroniou, C. (2017). Optimism over despair: On capitalism, empire and social change. Penguin Books. ↩︎

,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
optimism, futurism, positivity, change, transformation, activism, chomsky, gramsci

Identity politics and the crisis of working class solidarity

Dear friends,

We live in a time of intensifying identity-based conflict, where every social and political issue becomes refracted through the lens of personal identity and group affiliation. Look no further than headlines shared here on mind reader every day. The deployment of identity politics – both by the ostensible “left” and the increasingly mask-off right – has become a primary mechanism through which hegemonic power maintains its grip on civil society while forestalling any genuine movement toward working class solidarity (let alone anti-capitalist movements). I think it is worth us spending additional time examining this phenomenon and its implications for building an intersectional movement capable of challenging capitalism’s death grip on our collective future. Because our future is collective, identities be damned.

Identity politics, in its current manifestation, represents both a genuine expression of marginalised groups’ experiences and grievances under capitalism and a tool cynically wielded by power to fragment class consciousness. What began as important movements highlighting specific forms of oppression – from feminist critiques of patriarchy to queer resistance against heteronormativity to racial justice struggles against white supremacy – has been co-opted and transformed by hegemonic forces into battles over representation and recognition that leave fundamental power relations untouched. Capitalism marches on, and indeed, intensifies, subsumes and co-opts in the wake of these divisive rhetorics. The right deploys reactionary identity politics centred on nationalism, whiteness, and “traditional values” (read: rape, plunder, pillage) to redirect working class anger toward marginalised groups, while liberal identity politics often reduces systemic critique to demands for more diverse faces in positions of power. Both varieties serve to obscure the material basis of oppression in capitalist relations. Don’t @ me.

The emotional power of identity as a mobilising force is incredibly significant in our current political context. The assumptions, roles, and realities of communities are important and they colour how we see the world. Our sense of self, our experiences of marginalisation or privilege, and our community affiliations shape our social epistemology – which is equally shaped by a capitalist ontology. The right understands this viscerally – their appeals to white grievance, xenophobia, and moral panic over gender and sexuality tap into deep wells of fear and anger among their base. The “mainstream media” amplifies these cultural conflicts, with Australia’s Murdoch-dominated landscape taking particular glee in stoking hatred toward LGBTQI+ folks through endless inflammatory coverage. One need only look at how trans people have been demonised and scapegoated, basic human dignity turned into fodder for manufactured outrage designed to drive engagement and distract from capital’s continued pillaging of our planet. Oh, and to sell Murdoch’s rags.

The Australian media’s complicity in amplifying identity-based division represents a textbook example of manufactured consent in action. By framing every issue through a culture war lens – whether it’s gender-neutral bathrooms, Indigenous Voice, or immigration – the corporate media ensures that genuine class analysis and critique of capitalism remains off the table. To them, that’s all this is – a way of keeping “the proles in their jobs, asking no questions, and hating each other” – you can’t make this shit up. The endless cycle of inflammatory coverage creates a feedback loop where legitimate grievances get twisted into weapons for attacking other marginalised groups rather than challenging the very system that creates the marginalisation in the first place. Headlines about “woke ideology” and “gender ideology” serve as convenient distractions while – in our case, both major political parties continue implementing anti-worker policies – and revelling in the hate they have manufactured to grab more power at the next election.

This devolution into identity-based warfare has devastating consequences for building working class solidarity. Not to mention on the mental and physical health of “minorities” and marginalised peoples across the gamut of the political spectrum (even when they vote for the leopards which eat their own faces). When workers are convinced that their real enemies are immigrants, trans people, or “cultural Marxists” (guilty) rather than the capitalist class stealing the surplus value of their labour, the prospects for unified resistance plummet. And that’s what we’ve seen deployed time and again over the last thirty years, particularly as the Labor party undermines any affective worker movement through it’s monopoly over (bourgeoise) “unions”. The right’s concomitant deployment of reactionary identity politics serves to actively prevent the development of class consciousness, while liberal identity politics often reduces intersectional analysis to performative representation that leaves capitalism’s core operations intact. Both varieties in their pernicious creep into identity battles only strengthen rather than challenge hegemonic power – thereby simply reinforcing the damaging power imbalances that created the issues in the first place.

The cost of this fragmentation falls hardest on those facing multiple, intersecting forms of marginalisation. When movements for social transformation devolve into competing claims of oppression rather than building genuine solidarity, it is invariably the most vulnerable who suffer – Indigenous workers, disabled folks, queer and trans people of colour, and so on. Their specific experiences of exploitation and exclusion demand an intersectional analysis that holds both the particularity of identity-based oppression and the universality of class struggle. We cannot build effective resistance by either ignoring difference or reducing everything to identity – we need an educative praxis that fosters deep understanding across lines of difference while maintaining focus on our shared enemy –capitalism. And this doesn’t mean “reasoning with the right” who are hellbent on running the globe into climate-based destruction just for shits and giggles (masochistic and religious nut jobs alike).

Where might we go from here? The path forward requires developing forms of solidarity that can honour both our differences and our fundamental commonality as members of the working class facing extinction under capitalism’s death drive. This means creating spaces for genuine dialogue and political education that help people understand how their specific experiences of marginalisation connect to systems of oppression. Only the 1% has “got it made” in this system, and just because someone has a veneer of privilege, does not make them an exploiter – though idly leveraging that privilege for personal benefit is deeply problematic. The panacea isn’t more identity-based battling, or divisive rubbish, but rather building movements that centre the leadership of the most impacted while fostering collective understanding of how capitalism relies on and reproduces multiple, intersecting hierarchies. And, in case I haven’t been clear enough, most importantly, it means maintaining laser focus on the real enemy – not each other, but the capitalist class and their political enablers pushing us toward fascism and ecological collapse.

The tools for this work already exist in our theoretical traditions – from intersectional feminism to social reproduction theory to Gramsci’s insights about building counter-hegemony. What we need now is the collective will to deploy them in service of genuine solidarity rather than allowing our identities to be weaponised for capital’s benefit. The ruling class wants us fighting each other over pronouns, level of personal exploitation and disadvantage, and “others that look like you made this system” all while the capitalists steal the future from us, our planet and our children. If you choose the path of lateral violence over identity battles you choose capitalism, the system that oppresses you. An alternate path, one of radical education, deep solidarity, and unified resistance against the death cult of colonial capitalism is a panacea for resistance that allows our strengths to shine – not dividing us on our (perceived) identities, labels applied by others to keep us busy.

In closing, friends, none of us are free until all of us are free. The revolution must be intersectional or it will be bullshit. Platitudes, or action? I think action.

In solidarity,

Aidan

,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
identity politics, capitalism, division, hate, activism, education