capitalism
Dear friends,
With the increase in Musky headlines, I cant help but offer a christmas posting on oligopoly capitalism. This, I argue, is the next phase in the torturous helltrip that is our contemporary political economy, particularly if we see that the USA is the blueprint for modern economies all around the globe — particularly in the margins as they control the status quo for trade and economics from their substantial imperial torment. What we are seeing in the USA, to be clear, is an undeniable turn to fascism, which I need to repeat some of here so people understand the full scale and gravity of what Trump and Musk, amongst billionaire cronies are bringing to their people [1] [2]:
- » Gutting abortion access
- » Mass deportations
- » Abusing warrantless surveillance
- » Unleashing force on protestors
- » Severely limiting voting access
- » Censoring critical discussions in classrooms
- » Attacking trans people and regressing fought for rights
- » Changes to government (as already seen) including making the president alone responsible for Judiciary and Military
- » Complete cuts to climate change project funding, and the deregulation of coal and gas
- » Deregulating big tech (as long as they bend the knee), banning access to “woke propaganda” (as defined by Trump, et al.)
- » And many many more horrible details.
Make absolutely no mistake. Trump and Musk, as well as others who have ‘bent the knee’, as the internet has termed it, such as Zuckerberg (Meta/Facebook), Cook (Apple), Sarandos (Netflix), as well as a litany of others literally (soon to be) inducted into his government [3], are all supporters of this plan and each of these points. They are ardent defenders of human suffering. On a list of 1,000 billionaires, big tech CEOs, and other wannabe capitalists you would struggle to identify 1 who genuinely cared and acted towards human liberation. These people, the utterly worthless leeches on society, are the ones running the USA. Now, though, they are in direct control — rather than abstracted through lobbying.
This transformation, unfortunate mostly for the already marginalised US citizens directly impacted by this soon-to-arrive despotism, is not unique to the US. It is not even the beginning of capitalist meddling in government and decision making infrastructure. Lobbying, back-room deals, and boys clubs have been hallmarks of our “democracies” worldwide, with little real power ever handed to the citizens — unless they believe their best interests are served by deregulating billionaires (and there are many stupid enough to believe that). Reinforced through media hegemony, c.f. Murdoch, the status quo has always favoured those with ill-gotten wealth — no, not pirates, something far worse, the capitalist class. The wool pulled over the peoples collective eyes, however, was somewhat lifted by the emergence of analytical thought on the internet. But we can’t have that — it creates a crisis of capitalism. That crisis has led to the fall of democracy, even notionally.
This ‘modern oligarchy’ represents capitalism’s (forever) penultimate triumph in consolidating both economic and political power within an increasingly small circle of elites. As Gramsci theorised, hegemonic control requires both coercion and consent, and today’s oligarchs have mastered this dual approach through their ownership of cultural institutions, media empires, and increasingly, direct political offices. The billionaire class no longer operates through intermediaries but directly shapes policy and public discourse, from Murdoch’s media manipulation to Zuckerburg’s platform control. This concentration of power serves capital’s interests by ensuring that any potential challenge to accumulation can be quickly neutralised, whether through manufactured consent in the media or direct suppression through captured state institutions. The oligarchy’s control extends beyond traditional economic dominance into algorithmically-mediated social control, using ownership of digital platforms to shape discourse and prevent class consciousness from emerging.
Between these forces there is little room for human freedom. The billionaire class do not care about you. The billionaire class want you to die to build their hoards. They want you to suffer while you work. To keep you distracted and fighting your peers. They want all of us to be angry, dumb, and lashing out at each other. The same way the deranged farmer herds cows by the thousands to their cruel deaths, the billionaires have you in their trap — right where they want you. This violence, the same violence used on animals, the same violence used to enclose humans, the same violence used in colonial projects, that violence never goes. Rather, that violence remains a threat. If you don’t “look right”, “act right”, “speak right” — if you don’t comply, you are eradicated, removed and marginalised — and this is naturalised through conceptions of a Just World™.
The Just World theory, which posits that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get, serves as a powerful tool of hegemonic control by naturalising systemic violence and inequality as inevitable outcomes of individual choices rather than structural conditions. This ideology, deeply embedded in what Gramsci termed “common sense” (as opposed to critical “good sense”), allows privileged groups to rationalise their position while blaming the oppressed for their own suffering. Through this lens, poverty becomes a moral failing rather than a necessary feature of capitalist accumulation, racism becomes a matter of individual prejudice rather than systemic oppression, and billionaires’ wealth appears as earned reward rather than stolen labour value. The Just World fallacy works hand-in-hand with capitalist meritocracy myths to transform questions of structural power into matters of personal responsibility, effectively masking how privilege operates through intersecting systems of class, race, gender, and ability. By positioning success and failure as purely individual outcomes, this ideology helps maintain hegemonic control by preventing the development of class consciousness and solidarity among oppressed groups. We see this operating powerfully in contemporary discourse around everything from housing access to climate change, where systemic violence is reframed as natural consequence rather than deliberate policy choice. This framing is particularly insidious because it doesn't just justify privilege to the privileged — it often convinces the oppressed themselves to internalise responsibility for their own exploitation, transforming potential revolutionary energy into self-blame and preventing recognition of shared class interests. Remember when you were told growing up that “good things happen to good people”, yeah that was a load of shit to justify colonial capitalism’s deep violence. Violence ardently vanguarded by Musk, Trump, Cook, and countless others — and they don’t even pretend its not violent any more.
The “mask-off” nature of contemporary billionaires, particularly their direct assumption of state power, signals capitalism’s growing comfort with openly authoritarian governance. Where previous generations of capitalists maintained a facade of democratic legitimacy through professional political proxies, figures like Trump exemplify a new breed of oligarch-politician who openly flaunts their “wealth” while claiming to represent “the people”. This turn isn’t an aberration, it is another step in capital’s need for ever-greater control as contradictions intensify. The billionaire class increasingly drops any pretence of serving the public good, instead nakedly wielding power to protect their accumulation while the planet burns. Their assumption of direct political control shows both a faux confidence in their hegemonic position and fear of growing systemic instability. Insurrections which must be quelled to ensure they die “king of the hill”.
Today’s billionaire class has perfected the art of manufacturing division while posing as populist champions. Through sophisticated deployment of identity politics stripped of class analysis, they redirect legitimate working class grievances into tribal conflicts that prevent solidarity from emerging. Figures like Musk exemplify this strategy – playing the role of free speech warrior and anti-establishment rebel while actively working to fragment worker consciousness and prevent organised resistance. Their performative, often “bumbling”, personas mask sophisticated manipulation of media narratives and platform algorithms to keep workers fighting each other rather than recognising their shared class interests. This manufactured conflict serves capital by preventing the development of genuine class consciousness while providing cover for accelerating exploitation.
The cultivation of toxic masculinity, at this juncture, serves as another tool of capitalist hegemony, redirecting legitimate male alienation and economic precarity into reactionary politics rather than class consciousness. As traditional paths to masculine identity through stable employment and economic security become increasingly unavailable under late capitalism, oligarchs and their cultural apparatus actively channel male anger toward marginalised groups rather than systemic critique. Figures like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and various “manosphere” influencers — promoted heavily by Zuckerberg’s platform algorithms due to “engagement” — offer superficially appealing narratives that transform structural critiques of capitalism into individualised grievances against feminism, “wokeness”, and other manufactured enemies. And quite literally fomenting violence, from the streets where rape and murder of women continues to be a significant problem, to the internet where misogynistic comments and cyberbullying also claim lives. This process serves capital’s interests perfectly – rather than recognising their shared exploitation with other workers, angry men are encouraged to view feminist, LGBTQI+, and racial justice movements as threats to their “status” (not that they ever had any), effectively fracturing potential class solidarity. The billionaire class actively cultivates these reactionary masculine movements, understanding that redirecting male rage toward cultural grievances prevents it from developing into genuine anti-capitalist consciousness. Due to the deliberate echo-chambers run by Zucc which practically speaking are the only social media platforms on the web a self-reinforcing cycle emerges where any ‘legitimate’ male suffering under capitalism is rapidly transformed into support for precisely the system causing that suffering, with toxic masculinity serving as the perfect vehicle for maintaining hegemonic control while preventing class consciousness from emerging. Anger, its a hell of a drug.
As capitalism’s contradictions become increasingly difficult to manage through consent alone, we see its mask of democratic legitimacy falling away to reveal naked authoritarianism. Anger, denial, hate, fear and rage are harnessed here to keep the violence lateral, rather than systemic. Angry men as enforcers of Trump’s empty bullshit, weak men as the defenders of Musk’s exploitative, murderous and despotic plans, and so on. The system’s fundamental incompatibility with genuine democracy becomes impossible to conceal as climate collapse and inequality reach crisis levels — ‘crisis’ so deep that they can’t contain CEOs being murdered. Rather than risk genuine popular control that might interfere with accumulation, capital increasingly embraces fascist solutions to maintain power. This shift isn’t happening in traditionally authoritarian states but in the heart of “liberal democracies”, where capital abandons democratic pretences in favour of direct domination.
These developments are deeply interconnected: the oligarchy’s consolidation of power enables the billionaire class’s despotic turn, while their manipulation of popular consciousness provides cover for capitalism’s shift toward naked authoritarianism. The system’s inherent drive toward fascism emerges from its need to maintain accumulation in the face of mounting crises, with the billionaire class serving as both architects and beneficiaries of this transformation. Their success in redirecting popular anger away from systemic critique and toward manufactured enemies enables capital's increasingly open embrace of anti-democratic governance.
This is precisely why we need to continue fighting for democracy. From our workplaces, to our government decision-making. Because once we loose the pretence of democracy, we loose our rights. When dumb, angry men are dictators of our society, we will truly have arrived at the hell on earth the billionaires use their bible to warn us about (“scary socialists”) — only hell is their plan — hell for us, heaven for them.
Happy fucking christmas, “consume it all”,
Aidan.
Dear friends,
I have been thinking about the how the corporate class, the bootlickers, the “upper middle class” and others utterly slavish to the capitalist simultaneously dehumanise themselves and others. A phenomenal piece of mental trickery: contortion, gaslighting and betrayal. Those who fancy themselves stable and wealthy (an ever treacherous position to claim), and often profess it so by engaging in “high culture” activities (themselves equal parts immoral and despicable) which range incredibly broadly from horse racing, to stock market investing, or apparently lately cryptocurrency market gambling. This, to me, is a fundamentally interesting group of “people”. Let’s think on it.
In the imperial core — conceptually a useful imaginary space for us to consider in theorisation about “wealth” and culture — there are opportunities for multi-generational “middle classes” to establish themselves. However, there are no “middle classes” only capitalists and workers. So a false segregation has emerged similar to other divisions around identity. Except, differently to identity politics, the middle class often intentionally serves the capitalist class in their promotion of capital’s ideals. Indeed, we’ve seen recently post the CEO-killing (which Rupert Murdoch is very very unhappy about — lol) the clamouring of the middle class to attempt to protect and vanguard capital and its mistakes. And, almost as though it were natural, shift blame for the problems in society onto a perceived “lower class” (working class, but probably blue-collar and underemployed people).
So, within imperial core countries (majority white, western, largely european, and the “white” diaspora) there is a growing fat middle class that asserts to be different from those “lowly workers”. Beside the obvious snobbery, as mentioned, this is a false division. There is perhaps 1:10,000,000 chance that a member of the so called middle class could ever accumulate enough wealth that they be considered a capitalist. Particularly as the capitalist class currently hold so much wealth that they control more moneys than all the worlds governments combined. And often with a great deal more liquidity. The top 1% hold an absolutely unconscionable and utterly unrecognisable volume of capital such that their entire social organisation, purpose for being, and very existence is different to the 99%.
We might actually, to better understand this, consider that even if we combined all the wealth of people living on Kaurna Country (Adelaide, Australia) that this wealth would be less than Jeff Bezos pays himself in an hour. A. Single. Hour. Combine the wealth of Australia for ten financial years of extreme productivity and you might come close to the wealth of the empire that is Amazon, but it would be very close. Millionaires cosplaying that their wealth makes them a capitalist are a huge part of the problem of reinforcing this exploitative system. Even though they are still subject to a great many of the terrible conditions that the rest of us experience every day. Importantly, anyone whose accumulation overs $1m is highly unlikely to hold solidarity with the rest of the working class, but millionaires are no longer wealthy, and they experience class struggle (albeit at a deeply atrophied rate to the rest of us). But I promised some cultural exploration, we know we are being exploited and that these people have a very active role in it, so let’s get exploring what this does, culturally, to this group of people.
Guilt.
Just bucketloads of guilt. Deeply internalised, highly processed, and almost intangible. But there is palpable guilt, fear and a sense of anxiety that runs so deep amongst class traitors that they will be: recognised as imposers and thrown to the lower class “wolves”, seen for what they are as enabling deep and unhinged violence against the working class, or ousted as incompatible with those they admire — the capitalists — because their godheads reject them. Interestingly, to me, the last of these is not unlikely. Actual capitalists, the strategists behind the human and planetary torment that is our existence, are psychopaths in the clinical sense. They have no recognition of the value of humans, have very little connection with humanity, and feel, experience and engage with the world in a way utterly different to the rest of us. Compassion is not in the dictionary. And the middle classes see this is as the ultimate “sacrifice” to the altar of capital and seek to emulate the violent despotism of their masters upon anyone around them, including their so-called friends.
Grim assessment? Yes, but there’s no other way of thinking of this. Class ascendancy is a sociopolitical process that is tied to inequitable and deeply unethical behaviour. We can characterise two major features of ascendancy that enable the process of stripping the humanity from the ascendant: first, an economic accumulation which, at minimum, undermines and exploits the skilled labour of coal-face workers; second, a social process of utterly re conceptualising humanity as a workforce to be enslaved. This has deep implications for socialisation, culture, and participation in “high society” not least of which is Gatsbyesque political circus and backstabbing.
The capitalist class exists in what we might term a “parallel society”, one which operates with fundamentally different temporal, spatial, and social coordinates than the world inhabited by workers. Their leisure practices aren’t merely more expensive versions of working-class recreation, but rather constitute an entirely distinct mode of being-in-the-world that systematically reproduces their class position. Consider how their relationship to time itself differs fundamentally from wage labourers — they experience neither the tyranny of the clock nor the anxious relationship to future security that characterises working class existence. Their leisure isn’t carved out from work time but rather represents their primary mode of existence, with “work” (in the form of capital management) seamlessly integrated into social activities.
This manifests in spaces of exclusive socialisation — private clubs, invitation-only events, closed “philanthropic” circles — where the real work of class reproduction occurs through what C. Wright Mills termed the power elite network. Here, marriages are arranged (let’s not even get into how deeply sexist and misogynistic these people are), business deals are conceived, and perhaps most importantly, the psychological and cultural foundations of ruling class consciousness are maintained through constant reinforcement of shared values and perspectives. Their children are socialised from birth, at a distance, into this parallel world through private schools, exclusive summer camps, and carefully curated social circles that ensure they never meaningfully encounter or understand the lived reality of the working class. This creates what we might term an epistemic bubble that renders the violence of capitalism natural to its beneficiaries such that it “always was”, allowing them to conceptualise their position as natural and deserved rather than the product of systemic exploitation. The result is a form of class consciousness that is simultaneously highly developed in terms of protecting class interests and profoundly unconscious of its own conditions of possibility and exploitation.
The interplay between ruling class consciousness and middle-class aspiration creates a self-reinforcing system of social reproduction that extends far beyond mere economic relations into the very fabric of cultural and psychological existence. There is a deeply broken nature to this relation, not only naturalising violence, extraction, inequity, inhumanity, and exploitation, but making those suffering most feel worst about their own suffering. Understanding this through hegemony gives some hope. The system perpetuates itself not primarily through direct coercion but through the active participation of its subjects in their own domination — particularly the middle classes who, despite their material position as workers, function as the most zealous defenders of capitalist social relations, perhaps more than the capitalists themselves. Their desperate performance of ruling class values, combined with their anxious policing of class boundaries, serves to maintain an epistemological fortress of capital (it hurt me not to write solitude), where the violence of exploitation is rendered simultaneously invisible and natural.
This process of class reproduction operates through a tripartite of alienation: first, the fundamental alienation from labour that Marx identified; second, the alienation from class consciousness that results from the middle class’s false identification with capital; and third, the profound alienation from human solidarity that characterises the ruling class’s parallel society. Each level of this alienation reinforces the others, creating a totalising system where the very possibility of alternative social relations becomes utterly unthinkable. Hello, capitalist realism. The ruling class’s complete detachment from working class reality, maintained through their distinct temporal and spatial existence, isn’t a symptom of wealth inequality but rather a fundamentally necessary condition for the continuation of capitalist exploitation. One that the middle class desperately tries to emulate even as it ensures their own continued subordination.
The path forward requires more than recognition of these mechanisms - it demands a fundamental rupture in the reproduction of class relations at both material and ideological levels. See, I’m doing the hope thing from the last post. This rupture must begin with the recognition that the middle class’s position as capital’s loyal foot soldiers is fundamentally untenable, both materially and psychologically. Their guilt, their anxiety, their desperate performance of ruling class values — these are not individual psychological phenomena but rather structural features of a system that requires their active participation in their own exploitation. Only through the development of what Gramsci termed organic intellectual leadership, combined with practical solidarity across the working class (broadly defined), can we begin to imagine and construct alternative forms of social organisation that don’t require the systematic dehumanisation. The challenge, then, is not only to critique these mechanisms but to actively construct new forms of consciousness and solidarity that can break the cycle of class reproduction and create possibilities for genuine human emancipation.
The answer is quite literally compassion.
In solidarity,
Aidan.
Dear friends,
Overnight in the US a person killed a private health care company’s CEO [1]. The suspicion, of course, is that this company denied the person’s (or their family/friends) health care claim. I commented on mind reader that this could well be the start of rolling out the guillotines to end billionaires. Let’s see how good our odds are looking of an anti-capitalist revolution through our theoretical lenses, before we start partying on dead CEO’s graves. Hang about though because there is some cause for a party right out the gate: healthcare companies in the US have been allowing claims at a much higher rate today, they’ve removed information about their boards and directors, and are obscuring details about their CEOs. Okay, so one of those is a good thing. But it is interesting how scared the capitalist class is today. This is a deeply theoretically interesting time – if morally challenging.
While, of course, one cannot advocate for violence, there are some interesting nuances to consider in both the reaction to these events, and the fallout of showing “it’s possible” to bring an end to violence, suffering, and death – if only for a moment. To be extremely clear, I mean that quite literally the removal of a CEO brings a net positive in the world. Today, hundreds if not thousands of US citizens fortunate enough to have health cover are more likely to have their claims accepted. The direct causal effect of a CEO being murdered over the perception that their company denied too many claims and therefore became a target has led to mass positives. This tells us a lot about the nature of capitalism.
Normally, our “economy” – discussed ad nauseam, this is a fallacy to mask human suffering – channels all production towards capitalists (investors, shareholders, directors, CEOs, billionaires, and so on). But what if companies were operated for humanity instead? We see a brief glimpse of this as direct action forces the hand of corporate scumbags. Of course, sadly, this wont last. If the US people rally enough that they kill a CEO a week, perhaps for a short time corporations will turn to serving the people – a move that they can easily afford, and is the morally correct thing to do, but inconveniences the Musk types. More likely, though, is that Trump’s oligopoly succeeds [2].
There are a few implications, here, for Gramscian theorisation, and amongst these are: the role of the police as class-treacherous enforcers of capital (reacting only when CEOs are killed, not when thousands are denied owed healthcare claims), the media’s complicity in ethically sanitising billionaires and other oligarchs, and the role of politics and hegemonic enforcement in ensuring a status quo that oppresses 99% of people. As always, the reaction of various institutions reveal much about how hegemony operates. The media’s immediate rush to condemn individual action while normalising the systemic violence of denied healthcare claims demonstrates the manufacturing of consent that Chomsky identified. Corporate media portrays the daily deaths from denied claims as unfortunate but natural “market outcomes”, while framing any resistance as illegitimate violence. This selective morality serves capital’s interests by making the violence of the system appear invisible while spotlighting any challenge to it.
But particularly interesting, to me, is the role of “enforcement”.
The role of class traitors becomes particularly visible in these moments. Police mobilise (verging on massive) resources to protect corporate leadership while showing little interest in investigating deaths from denied claims. Middle managers in healthcare companies enforce policies they know harm people, having internalised capital’s logic that profits matter more than lives. The system’s gatekeepers – from HR departments to media commentators – work to maintain a status quo that ultimately harms them too, demonstrating how thoroughly hegemonic control shapes consciousness. Isn’t it weird? Don’t you find how amoral and unethical society is just extremely weird?
We teach kids to care for each other, to show respect, compassion, and to work collaboratively. We talk about centring values we describe as human: “kindness,” “care,” “love,” “affection” and so on, as natural, desirable, and important characteristics… At least of young people. As we age, this completely reverses. Cutthroat middle managers are celebrated – gaslighting and lying to employees, CEOs are lauded for their profiteering, and in Trump’s America, billionaires – the ones most responsible for the catastrophic environmental destruction which is sure to kill us all within a handful of years, are installed as dictators of government departments. The values held by Vice Chancellors, CEOs, directors, managers, and many many more belligerent, meaningless, and ultimately inhuman creatures are the direct opposite of “kindness”, “respect”, or “decency”. And yet, our system is geared for their protection – and is enabled in such a way that to even notice the cruelty and inhumanity of the system to which all 8 billion of us have consented requires a violent act? Ughhhh.
I think particularly revealing here is how quickly companies changed their behaviour when faced with direct consequences. This exposes the lie that denied claims are unfortunate necessities rather than choices made to maximise profit. The instant shift toward approving more claims proves these companies could always afford to provide care – they simply chose not to while the costs of their violence remained externalised onto the working class. At every possible moment, these corporate giants seek only to extract the maximum profit from us, all of us, yes you – dear reader, even your “wannabe millionaire friends” – we are all screwed over by billionaires and corporate giants. We created these machines of toxic destruction, and we empower their lackeys – the sycophantic narcissists that populate management in our institutions, corporations, and governments. Like a cancer they have grown and subsumed everything good, wholesome, healthy, and positive about the world – to the extent that our planet is dying.
The ruling class’s reaction also illuminates how democracy under capitalism is conditional. When electoral politics and permitted forms of protest fail to protect human life, and people feel driven to direct action, we see how quickly the system drops its democratic pretence [3]. The same voices who justify the violence of poverty, houselessness, and denied healthcare suddenly become deeply concerned with “law and order” when the 1% face consequences.
This moment forces us to grapple with uncomfortable questions about how change happens in a system designed to prevent it. While we cannot advocate violence, we must acknowledge how the system’s inherent violence – from denied healthcare to ecological collapse – creates conditions where people feel they have no other recourse. The fact that a single action produced more concrete positive change than decades of permitted resistance reveals the bankruptcy of working only within the system’s approved channels. And that is perhaps the most terrible part of all – in order to defeat this violent, disgusting system, the response that works seems to be more violence?
And yet, perhaps most importantly, this reveals the fiction of market inevitability. When faced with sufficient pressure, companies can choose to prioritise human wellbeing over maximum profit extraction. So, what, how do we build movements powerful enough to force this choice consistently, rather than temporarily? The answer as always lies in rebuilding class consciousness and solidarity while developing tactics that impose real costs on capital’s violence, without resorting to our own. Or at least that is my hope, because violence (physical and otherwise) does not bring good things – ever, not in the long run, it is incompatible with compassion, respect and decency.
The path forward requires understanding these dynamics while working to create alternatives to both individual actions of desperation and the system that produces them. This means building dual power – developing democratic institutions to meet human needs while delegitimising the structures that prioritise profit over life.
I feel like today I needed the “or something” more than the last post. This is a complex space to navigate, and it’s hard sometimes not to jump for joy when cracks in capital’s facade appear – even if they are brought by murder. I’m hopeful this is the start of some revolutionary activity that centres humanity, but I’m also fearful that we’re just seeing a further exponent on the curve towards extreme anti-human violence and that this isn’t really anti-capitalist at all, but rather a convenient scapegoat for further global authoritarianism…
In solidarity,
Aidan