capitalism
Dear friends,
I’ve heard a few (bad) hot takes on US politics lately and this has really got my hackles up about fascism. We need a common literacy to understand that low-grade sociopathy, manipulative bullshit, and lateral violence are the same things played out in our social worlds, work lives, and in politics. The political class is not smart, they are not strategic, and they are most certainly manipulating you. So let’s build some literacy around narratives that let (small l) liberals off the hook as fascism builds complicity. We need a theorist, and as you know, we’re big into Gramsci in these parts, we’ll start there.
Gramsci gave a poignant analysis of fascism’s rise in Italy. He did something no other historical materialist scholar had done to that point – provided a devastatingly accurate framework for understanding his political moment – and the value of this has not diminished, despite new technologies and manipulation. Writing from one of Mussolini’s prisons, Gramsci identified how fascism emerges not as a sudden rupture but through a gradual process of cultural and political transformation. Later, this came to be known as manufactured consent. The bourgeoisie, facing crisis and unable to maintain control through consent alone, increasingly turn to coercion while maintaining a facade of democratic legitimacy. This process involves what Gramsci called “transformismo”. This heralds systematic absorption and neutralisation of potential opposition forces, particularly among the educated classes who might otherwise provide leadership to counter-hegemonic movements. The “educated liberals” are convinced that fascism isn’t so bad – it’s not coming for them… yet.
We have seen, particularly over the past few months, this same process playing out with frightening similarity. The ruling class, facing multiple crises of legitimacy – from climate collapse to grotesque inequality – increasingly abandons even the pretence of democratic governance, maintaining just enough electoral theatre to claim legitimacy. The absorption of supposedly “progressive” parties into this project, with Labor in Australia and Democrats in the US serving as willing accomplices in the march toward fascism, perfectly exemplifies Gramsci’s concept of transformismo. These parties, while occasionally offering a veneer of mild social reforms (never enacted “oh after you elect us again we’ll take climate action”), serve only to legitimise the rightward ratcheting of acceptable political discourse while preventing the emergence of genuine alternatives.
Understanding the “ratchet effect”, which I’ve mentioned in passing, is a useful tool for our toolbelt. It describes simply the mechanism by which ostensibly opposed political parties work in concert to continually move politics rightward. In the US, the Republicans push extreme positions while Democrats offer token resistance, or a more palatable version of the same policy, before eventually just adopting slightly moderated versions of the same policies anyway. In Australia, we see this dynamic between the Liberal-National Coalition and Labor, while in the UK it manifests between Tories and Labour. The pattern is depressingly consistent: right-wing parties introduce increasingly extreme measures, “opposition” parties offer performative resistance while ultimately accepting the new normal, and the cycle repeats with the goalposts shifted further right. In just the last week we’ve seen the Australian senate introduce legislation to ban abortion, and the only party working to counter this is the Greens – here, as an example, we can see how right-wing extremism is fostered, and because Labor offer the (small l) liberals a sense of security, the issue is brushed aside as “not your problem”.
This ratchet operates differently across these countries due to their distinct electoral systems, but the end result is incredibly similar. In Australia, compulsory voting and ranked choice theoretically should provide more opportunity for genuine progressive alternatives to emerge. However, the combination of media monopoly and the major parties’ shared commitment to capital ensures that even these more democratic mechanisms ultimately serve the rightward march. Indeed, lies deliberately perpetuated by the ALP make the populace believe that they waste their vote by voting for the Greens in this country – patently untrue. The US’s first-past-the-post system makes this process even more pronounced, while the UK sits somewhere between these extremes.
The differences between these countries’ voting systems, though, show us how formal democratic mechanisms are rendered meaningless within a hegemonic system. Regardless of how the political system is organised, the vanguarding of capital takes priority – if the citizens are rowdy then the Labor party holds the solutions, if the citizens are placid then the Liberals come in to intensify production and exploitation – it is that simple. Australia’s compulsory voting and ranked choice system, while superior on paper, operates within the same constraining framework of media manipulation and manufactured consent. In this way while it is possible for grassroots action and collective education to transform our political environment – axe student debt, improve welfare initiatives, fix working conditions – the power of divisive and hateful hegemonic narratives empowers the LNP to target women’s rights, rather than for the discourse to be about reforms that make life better for the 99% (while inconveniencing capitalists who control the narrative). The US’s nakedly anti-democratic electoral college and first-past-the-post voting makes the system’s failures more obvious – and, apparently, paralysing in the context of a handful of actual voters, in spite of the Democrats being obviously the only choice this election just gone – but the end result differs little beyond speed. In all cases, the formal mechanisms of democracy serve primarily to legitimise (fascist) decisions already made by capital. Those decisions, as discussed, always harm the 99%.
The role of traditional media in this process is important – fundamentally. Murdoch’s near-monopoly in Australia represents perhaps the most extreme version, but the pattern holds across all these countries. Corporate media serves to normalise increasingly extreme right-wing positions while demonising even mild social democratic reforms as dangerous radicalism. The genius of this system lies in how it maintains the appearance of debate while systematically narrowing the range of acceptable discourse – codifying the ratcheting to the right through the continued repetition of talking points which make these reforms seem like a true part of the “conversation”. We shouldn’t even be talking about the right of women to healthcare – this should be an ipso iure protection fundamental to any “civilised” nation. Alas, Murdoch (and Dutton, Albo) and their ilk manufacture these damaging narratives to ensure their own power – and cement capitalism as ontic reality (like good servants to their billionaire masters).
The media’s role in protecting fascist governments while they strip away civil liberties follows a consistent pattern: first, downplay the significance of each individual regression of rights; second, present these changes as necessary responses to manufactured crises [1]; and finally, demonise any opposition as threatening some nebulous concept of “security” or “stability” – playing to workers fears about job losses, “migrants” and other manufactured concerns that only play to the “economy”. This process operates with particular efficiency in Australia, where media concentration makes coordinated messaging easier to maintain. Moreover, with social media regulations in this country, the sharing of news, political opinion, and thought has become so tightly controlled that the traditional media has secured its place as the “only source of truth”.
Social media, here, also has an important role to play – as an accelerant to hate. Not so much has it created new problems as supercharged existing ones. The algorithmic amplification of extreme content, combined with the erosion of shared reality through filter bubbles, creates perfect conditions for fascist radicalisation. We see it with young white men, vilified minorities and so many communities – hateful and vitriolic “truth tellers” like Andrew Tate emerge as celebrity to assure young men it is okay to rape – after all, the Republicans are enacting Project 2025. In addition, foreign state actors, while real, serve as convenient scapegoats for a system that is fundamentally designed to fragment and confuse working class consciousness. Yes, foreign states like Russian harness AI to drive division in international elections for their own political benefit. Of course, it would be naive to think the US wasn’t doing the same – imperialism flows from all these nations. But AI bots on Twitter are just the latest in ensuring the hegemony – and profit-driven engagement algorithms make this work possible, thanks Zucc.
The proliferation of fake news and conspiracy theories through social media represents the “logical” endpoint of a system designed to maximise engagement at any cost. At least to neoliberals with no concept of ethics, morals, or human decency. When combined with already poor media literacy – which in this country is only getting worse with phones banned in schools, and incoming legislation to prevent anyone under 17 from accessing social media in any format. Concomitant with the systematic degradation of critical thinking skills in education. Here the Australian Government, largely controlled by the Labor party, have been responsible for breeding conditions which are the perfect milieu for fascist ideas to proliferate rapidly while genuine analysis cannot find purchase. Thanks, again, Albo.
So what could be done? Let’s look to those who fought fascism before. Returning to Gramsci’s concept of counter-hegemony is vital, but requires some tweaking for our current moment. The traditional focus on building alternative institutions and cultural formations must now contend with algorithmic suppression and the accelerated pace of digital media. Literally not only must we fight for new ways of working, but fight even harder to have those ways heard and recognised. I propose, here, some key principles for construction of a counter-hegemony:
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Build genuine class consciousness that transcends the artificial divisions promoted through identity politics while acknowledging the real intersectional impacts of oppression. Teach your neighbours.
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Develop alternative media platforms and networks that can operate outside the constraining logic of engagement metrics and algorithmic amplification. Look no further than the Fediverse.
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Reassert the role of analytical thinking, media literacy, and engagement with transformative social science in Education, particularly among young people who have grown up in the social media ecosystem. Don’t deny them access to social platforms, teach them proper engagement.
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Maintain focus on the material basis of exploitation while building solidarity across artificial divisions. The binary division of the 99% and 1% is a powerful narrative. Your suffering is because of Elon Musk is a simple narrative to reinforce.
Traditional media, particularly in Australia, makes this kind of thinking and, importantly, action challenging – not impossible. The very contradictions that drive the system toward fascism also create opportunities for counter-hegemonic organisation. The key is developing ways to bypass traditional media gatekeepers while building genuine class consciousness and solidarity. The pathway forward requires simultaneously working within existing systems – even if only for the purposes of subsistence forced on us by this exploitative system – while building alternative structures and consciousness. This doesn’t mean accepting the logic of electoralism or falling for reformist traps – something we must all be mindful of, but rather using every available tool to build working class power while maintaining clear analysis of the system’s fundamental antagonisms.
As crisis continues to deepen – whether through climate collapse, economic instability, attacking fundamental human rights or the system’s own internal contradictions – opportunities for genuine transformation continue to emerge. Every. Single. Day. The question is whether we’ll have built the consciousness and organisational capacity to utilise them when they do. This requires patient, if occasionally depressing, work now to build understanding and solidarity while maintaining revolutionary horizon beyond the false choices offered by capitalist “democracy”.
In solidarity,
Aidan
Fraser, N. (2022). Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planetand What We Can Do About It. Verso Books. ↩︎
Dear friends,
It is happening here. The polarisation, the extremism, growing xenophobia and racism, anti-intellectualism, hatred, violence and climate-denialism. These are not “forthcoming” ideas in the Australian context, but rather actively festering features of contemporary society. Because of the way content is conglomerated under a singular social media corporation, lots of the proliferation of this kind of thinking is hidden. Algorithmic systems tailor content specifically for the viewer, and they deliberately cultivate extremist views – because extremist views garner more attention. In an “artificially intelligent system” trained on the KPIs of the CEO, it matters not if hate speech, right-wing extremism, and general villainy are promoted. All that matters is the cultivation of “attention”. As the yogi influencers like to put it: “Attention is currency”.
The republican party appealed to the American voting base on two key fronts: they told compelling lies about the significance of the economy and the role of the “others” in preventing its flourishing and they spoke the same hateful language that their supporters consume exclusively online and via fox news. The combination of hegemonic forces, here, manufacturing consent for fascism is a powerful combination. And this is the same combination that the Liberal-National coalition leverage every election in Australia. Look no further than the anti-abortion rhetoric of the LNP at the Queensland state election – and if you were kidding yourself into thinking that Australia is “more sophisticated” and “it couldn’t happen here” you are dead wrong. Australia’s particular cultural configuration around politics means that extremism festers far more quietly than it does in the states, but the increasing prevalence of vitriolic, hate filled, and vile bullshit from the LNP will attract mass voter support.
The problem is, and this is the big one, that the economy is fake. It is a deliberately abstract construct that distracts people from the reality of their exploitation. We discussed this in depth in the last post on mind reader [1]. The source of oppression of working people is capitalism, the capitalists, and their political subclass. The cultural institutions – the (social) media companies, schools and universities, and religious organisations play active yet ever “apolitical” roles in re-perpetuating exploitation and expropriation as natural and necessary. The masking of this – the exploitation of working people – as the “elite” is a cover for fearmongering or racist or nihilistic politicians latch onto to exploit. We know, as a global force of billions, that something is very wrong with our social order. It’s just that the system was designed from the start to prevent access to the knowledge of why the system is so broken. Those cultural institutions? They both inform and reinforce the views espoused by the ruling class. In the classical neoliberal system in the west, for middle-class white-ish able-bodied cisgender hetero kids, the journey goes something like this: born into relative comfort → educated through capitalist epistemology → university graduate → employment in culturally reinforcing institutions and businesses, with moderate if meagre reward affording housing security → the wife stays home looking after babies, and around the cycle goes. Of course, over time, the endless growth demanded by capitalism has eroded parts of that cycle, and with the inherent massive inequality, sexism, ableism and so on required to continue accumulation for the 1% division becomes a necessary tool to keep driving capitalism headlong towards the cliff.
Here, and you can guess where I’m going, the treacherous Australian Labor Party enters the scene. Simultaneously deeply involved in bringing neoliberalism to Australia, and allying with the unions to disempower any genuine revolutionary movement. As with the Democrats in the US, the Labor party is supported by the elite as the veneer of social progress, while true transformation (read: fascism) is supported by the more extreme position of the LNP or Republicans. The ALP’s role in this political theatre is critical to the perpetuation of the status quo. Noting that the status quo is ever more objectionable to anyone with a value system of compassion. While positioning themselves as the “progressive” option, they actively participate in the rightward march of Australian politics. Like the Republican/Democrat ratchet system, ours is similarly pernicious – and worse, because people still think that Labour represents the unions – but these unions only represent bourgeois leadership, not the worker. It doesn’t take much to judge them on their actions – from supporting genocidal regimes abroad to implementing increasingly draconian domestic surveillance measures, from funding military expansion while driving hate for China through stripping workers of their rights while professing a “right to disconnect” (recognition stolen from the Greens) the ALP demonstrate their fundamental allegiance to capital over human wellbeing. The party’s willingness to eject members who speak against genocide illustrates how thoroughly they have abandoned even the pretence of left-wing politics in favour of maintaining the status quo for their capitalist masters.
Ideological “flexibility” of supposedly left-wing parties is part of the theatrics that supports an appearance of democracy under contemporary capitalism. As the contradictions of capital become more apparent – through climate catastrophe, growing inequality, and social breakdown – the political apparatus works harder to maintain hegemonic control. Here, parties like the ALP and Democrats serve offer superficial reforms which fail to connect with working people because all they do is perpetuate the same violent, broken, and dispossessive system that brought us here in the first place. While “moderate” parties exist we will never see a challenge to capitalist relations emerge. And currently we have a moderate party led by a fascist, an extreme-right party led by a fascist, and then the Greens whose political messaging fails to align with the workers because they are routinely denied fair representation in the extreme-right wing media duopoly and social media algorithm. Between deliberate intensification of deployment of identity politics, stripped of any class analysis, and the march towards ever more property owning, shareholding, and other economics scum – the ALP, LNP, as with the Democrats and Republicans only aid fragmentation of working class solidarity leaving structural power relations untouched. It’s just one party is much, much, worse in both instances for human rights – particularly at the margins.
Fundamentally, the media landscape, dominated by the extreme right-wing Murdoch empire in Australia, plays a crucial role in manufacturing consent for the ratchet. Ensuring that the LNP can move politics, issues, identity, and so on to the right, ever distracting from the crushing destruction of capitalism, and positioning any real opposition (read: the Greens) as bourgeois they move the goalposts time and again. Through careful curation of “acceptable” discourse, they – and their distant social media cousins – present fascism as a reasonable response to social problems created by capitalism itself. The algorithmic amplification of extremist content concomitantly accelerates these normalised, socialised, perspectives and the holistic process of creating filter bubbles of hatred and division for every single individual in the nation becomes par for the course. Yep, digital acceleration of fascist ideology builds on decades of traditional media conditioning – cheery.
What makes this situation particularly dangerous is how the appearance of choice, between Labor and Liberal, masks the fundamental unity of their commitment to capital behind supposedly differing social reforms. While they may differ on social issues or, perhaps more accurately, the speed at which they wish to implement reactionary policies, both major parties are fully committed to maintaining the extractive, exploitative system that is destroying human and ecological wellbeing. Here, political theatre replacing religion as the opium of the masses, as individualised AI generated slop directs the micro-political battles of fake social media forums flooded with Russian State actors under the guise of “parliamentary democracy”. Don’t get me wrong, the ALP is a better option than the LNP, just as the Democrats are better than the Republicans, but to suggest either party offers any genuine solutions to the 99% is a farce. Reductionist commentators on “both sides” of belonging politics seek only to legitimate this false choice, preventing more radical alternatives from emerging, and maintaining capitalist hegemony – and in cases such as the US, and increasingly in Australia, the rapid installation of fascism over democracy as modus operandi for maintaining the status quo.
As climate collapse accelerates and inequality reaches unprecedented levels, we can expect this drift toward fascism to intensify. People are being told the reason they can’t afford to feed or home themselves is Albanese’s failures in “the economy” – at the same time, their social media feeds show them how migrants and queer people are personally responsible for that situation. The hate, anger and intentional division of the human population of this planet driving Meta’s share-prices ever higher – and “attention is currency” paralleling “line must go up” as the drivers of global destruction, heat death, and the end of any semblance of care for one another. A social contract? Nah, social media, mate. As the ruling class abandon liberal democratic pretences in favour of more direct forms of control and violence, fearing an anti-capitalist awakening amongst a slightly better educated populous, the ALP’s active participation in stripping education, driving hate and division, and attacking worker’s rights only enable the cycle to continue and amplify. Moreover, through expanded surveillance powers, anti-protest laws, and the criminalisation of dissent, we have seen the extremist groundwork laid for overtly authoritarian governance from the LNP at our next federal elections. Unless the working class can develop genuine solidarity and class consciousness to resist this trajectory, Australia’s inevitable march toward fascism will only accelerate. With Albo’s commitment to the United States of Australia, sorry, “working with trump” [2] in a paramilitary alliance we can genuinely see the failings of Australian democracy. Joy.
With a sense of foresight and uncertainty,
Aidan.
Dear friends,
I accidentally engaged with some US election coverage in the last 24 hours. Amidst flitting between various streaming services, noticing how absolutely appalling US news actually is – dripping with hegemony, the one resounding quote that has stuck in my brain like a shard of glass is: “people voted for Donald Trump this election because above all else, rights issues notwithstanding, they knew the economy was more important”. I mean what an absolutely ratshit interpretation of the platform Trump was running on. Results be damned, there is absolutely nothing in the republican party that signals “good economic management” rather, they run the economy into the ground, punish working folks, destroy the environment, and revoke liberal rights through overactive and deeply “involved” government. I don’t even FEEL like doing analysis today, but let’s go anyway:
The media’s portrayal of the economy as both a natural phenomenon and supreme metric of societal wellbeing represents one of the most successful deployments of manufactured consent in modern capitalism. Through relentless coverage of stock markets, GDP figures, and corporate profits – metrics that predominantly measure the wealth accumulation of/for the 1% – corporate media convinces civil society that their existence is inextricably linked to these bullshit numbers. This manufactured narrative serves a dual purpose: first, it obscures the fundamental reality that “the economy” is simply a set of human-created social relations designed to exclusively benefit the ruling class, and second, it provides cover for right-wing parties to enact policies that further concentrate wealth and power while stripping rights from workers – as mentioned, this is how we have arrived at fascism in 2024. When media conglomerates trumpet the “expert economic management” credentials of Republicans or the Liberal-National Coalition, they deliberately mystify how these parties’ policies of tax cuts, deregulation, and austerity serve only to accelerate the upward transfer of wealth while destroying social protections.
This ideological sleight-of-hand creates the conditions for an accelerating cycle of exploitation and dispossession – he literally said he was going to make their lives hard [1]. Right-wing parties, backed by corporate media’s economic mythology, first target society’s most vulnerable – attacking welfare programs, workers’ rights, and protections for marginalised groups (if they ever existed). The bourgeois “middle class,” conditioned to believe these attacks won’t affect them, support or remain silent about these initial assaults on civil society. As wealth becomes increasingly concentrated among the 1%, this same process inevitably comes for the petit bourgeois. And we’re already there folks, people on $250k household salaries are “doing it tough” and those idiots think the Liberals or Republicans will save them. Their scabbed labour rights, social welfare safety net, and “self made” economic security are steadily eroded while they continue desperately clinging to the fantasy that they too might one day join the capitalist class. The media’s role in manufacturing consent for this process cannot be overstated. By continually promoting the fiction that right-wing economic policies serve the common good, rather than acknowledging them as instruments of class warfare, they help ensure the 99% remain divided and unable to recognise their shared interest in opposing capitalism’s inevitable acceleration toward fascism. If you haven’t noticed it, it’s because the water around you is just shy of a rolling boil, yes, you are a frog.
The corporate media’s self-reinforcing cycle of degradation exemplifies the inherent contradictions of capitalism’s drive for ever-increasing profits at the expense of quality and truth. Or frankly anything resembling a human value – as vapid narcissism and bitchy bullshit skyrocket in popularity. While media conglomerates consolidate power and market share, their commitment to actual journalism steadily erodes. Replaced by cheaper content mills, inflammatory opinion pieces masquerading as news, and recycled press releases that require minimal investigative effort. This “enshittification,” in Doctorow’s parlance, accelerates as media outlets chase engagement metrics and advertising dollars rather than pursuing meaningful reporting. The resulting death spiral of journalistic standards creates a vacuum where actual news should be, increasingly filled by sensationalism, manufactured outrage, and thinly-veiled propaganda that serves the interests of the ruling class while further mystifying the real operation of power in society. Identity politics, here it is, with all its disgusting paraphernalia. Through this process more and more right wing, anti-human, and anti-ecological propaganda grips civil society, the manufactured consent around “the economy”, enables media outlets to increasingly abandon even the pretence of critically examining capitalism, quality of living, and what is really happening to people at the margins. Because unlike the latter, the former uncritical repetition of corporate talking points makes the line on the stock ticker go up. Stop the ride – I want to get off.
The algorithmic amplification of extreme content through social media platforms then supercharges this degradation of public discourse. As engagement-driven recommendation systems push users toward increasingly inflammatory and ideologically extreme content, the Overton window of “acceptable” discourse continuously shifts rightward. What begins as standard corporate propaganda evolves into increasingly unhinged conspiracy theories and overtly fascistic rhetoric, all while maintaining the foundational lies about “the economy” and “good economic management” that justify continued class warfare against the 99%. The social media giants, themselves massive corporations driven by profit imperatives, have zero incentive to address the radicalising (or indeed neutralising) effect of their platforms - instead, they continue optimising for enagement, washing their hands of the consequences. This creates a feedback loop where traditional media, desperate to compete for attention in the algorithmic attention economy, further degrades their own standards to match the extremism being amplified online. The result is an ever-accelerating race to the bottom which serves to fragment and confuse civil society (again, identity politics) while reinforcing capitalist hegemony through increasingly crude and violent means. And even the left are utterly confounded by this, repeating back utter bullshit from the ABC, 7, 9 and 10. Propaganda has won, folks – and it’s greatest success is that it has successfully masked the death of its own planet. Truly capitalism and its hegemony is cancer of the most savage variety.
Gramsci’s observation, living in prison in fascist Italy, that hegemonic power operates through cultural institutions rather than just direct coercion finds perfect expression in today’s media landscape, where the gradual degradation of journalism serves to mystify rather than illuminate power relations. The genius of modern hegemonic control lies in how it has transformed what should be instruments of democratic accountability into tools that actively undermine class consciousness – not through crude propaganda, but through the subtle erosion of the intellectual frameworks needed for critical analysis. At least in Gramsci’s time there was high quality leftist opinion being written (L'Ordine Nuovo always becomes Ordine Nuovo). When media outlets normalise increasingly extreme right-wing positions while simultaneously degrading their capacity for substantive reporting, they create exactly the kind of ideological conditions Gramsci identified as necessary for maintaining bourgeois control: a civil society that lacks the analytical tools to recognise its own subjugation while actively participating in reproducing the cultural conditions that enable it. This realisation is what Gramsci helped Italians achieve, and capitalism has been running from crisis to crisis since to claw us back to fascism. Naturally, this goes some way to explaining why attempts at building counter-hegemonic movements so often struggle, they must first overcome not just specific false beliefs, but the systematic degradation of the very capacity for critical thought that the modern media ecosystem engenders.
Chomsky’s model of manufactured consent, here in its newest formation, encompassing new and more insidious forms of control in the digital age, aids our analysis further. While the basic filters he identified - ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and anti-communism/fear - remain operational, they now function within an accelerated system of algorithmic amplification that makes their effects both dizzyingly more powerful and harder to resist. The “worthy ” versus “unworthy” victims dichotomy he identified operates at hyperspeed, with social media algorithms rapidly determining which stories receive “attention” and which are buried, while the economic pressures of the attention economy ensure that even nominally independent media outlets ultimately serve power rather than challenge it. The genius of this system lies in how it appears to offer more choice and diversity of viewpoints while actually narrowing the range of acceptable discourse – exactly the kind of sophisticated propaganda model Chomsky theorised, but operating with a speed and efficiency that would have been unimaginable when Manufacturing Consent was first published.
Between manufactured consent, right-wing hegemony, and rapidly disappearing human rights – not to mention a burning planet - the fetishisation of the economy stands strong as “the only issue that matters”. Women dying because they are denied life saving care? No worries, but shit the economy is down 0.000000001% today we need Trump! Just kill me now. “The economy” depicted constantly as something so beautiful, special, and important and simultaneously utterly superior to human life and labour represents capitalism’s ultimate victory in rewriting our ontological relationship with reality. What Marx identified as commodity fetishism has evolved into something somehow more grotesque. Not just the mystification of social relations between people as relations between things, but the elevation of abstract economic metrics above human existence itself – what. is. happening. When politicians and media figures speak of sacrificing lives to “save the economy” during crises, they reveal the true nature of capital’s grip on our collective consciousness: a system so deeply ingrained in our way of thinking that even basic survival instincts become subordinate to maintaining the flow of profits to the ruling class. And the whole thing is predicated on lies. Lies that the Liberals, Tories or Republicans are better “economic managers”. Lies that the sacrifice of “a few women” or “a few Mexicans” is worth it to save “the economy”. Lies about the economy being a real thing. The utterly perverse prioritisation of abstract numbers over human life is the system now. Capital’s need for endless accumulation has dropped any pretence of serving human needs – we’re here for their money, and apparently we’re fucking grateful.
With the currently increasingly shockingly concrete chance of a second Trump presidency, the capitalist death cult is in the headlights – just think back to 2021, Trump’s eagerness to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives to maintain stock market numbers during the pandemic? That’s the right’s comfort with openly advocating death for profit - whether through COVID denial, climate change denial, or dismantling healthcare access. It’s, why do I have to keep saying this people, mask-off capitalist sociopathy. If “the economy” is so godly and significant, why does it demand literal human sacrifice? And the capitalists, their cultural institutions, and most of your friends and neighbours serve as its eager priests and proselytisers. “Line must go up” is now more important than human survival. We see the full realisation of Marx’s warnings about capital’s inherently anti-human nature. Its just operating at a scale that threatens the continued existence of our species – and worse, the entire ecology of the pale blue dot.
With sorrow and love,
Aidan
just, look at everything he’s said. ↩︎
Dear friends,
What the heck do I have in store for you today? Well naturally I have been enjoying pop music and thinking about the “climate” that the youth of today are experiencing. Okay, so, I can’t exactly claim to be vibin’ with the zeitgeist but I can give you a copy-paste of some song lyrics:
They say these are the golden years
But I wish I could disappear
Ego crush is so severe
God, it's brutal out here
Let’s go hard, or go home, straight out of the gate. The contradictions of youth culture under capitalism present themselves starkly in the simultaneous valorisation and exploitation of “youth rebellion”. Just think about popular (youth) culture. What begins as authentic resistance [1] – in music, art, fashion, or digital spaces – is rapidly co-opted by capital and transformed into commodified aesthetic facsimiles stripped of transformative potential. You only wanted to participate in consumption, right? The process is depressingly predictable: genuine expressions of alienation and resistance emerge from young people’s lived experience of capitalism’s brutality. As quickly as they are ideated, they are sanitised, packaged, and sold back by corporations that profit from the discontent. From punk to hip-hop to digital countercultures, capital demonstrates an remarkable ability to hollow out youth movements and render them safe for consumption. Amazing. This also dovetails with our previous discussions of mental health and wellbeing, where commodified versions of self-care leap into frame to obscure any authentic sense of wellness [2].
As we know, commodification of revolutionary thought serves a dual purpose for the capitalists. First, it neutralises genuine resistance by redirecting revolutionary energy into consumerist channels – indeed, why organise when you can buy a mass-produced sweat-shop t-shirt with a hot slogan on? Second, it creates new markets and opportunities for profit extraction from the very demographic most likely to challenge capitalist hegemony. Don’t you hate the built-in anti-revolutionary spirit our society has cultivated? With this spirit, young people’s natural inclination toward rebellion and reimagining social relations becomes nothing more than another vector for accumulation. Rebel, reintegrate, retain, reform, “you’ll vote for the Liberals when you get older and are sensible”. What a joke of a narrative. Except it’s worse, because as those who may have been rebellious reach stardom – and clusters of other characteristics come with the territory, here – they become the very oppressor and commodifier they sought to destroy with music, art, and restive communications. The marketing department works undertime, because the expropriation is being done by the counter-culture to itself. Capitalism’s predatory nature so infects our ontological perceptions that this predatory, vicious, and anti-human behaviour is completely rationalised. Even in those who believe they are “changing the world” – rather, lateral violence, peer-aggression and other treachery emerge. And yet, capitalism remains utterly indifferent, as it continues to grow like a cancer identifying movements, gutting them, and capitalising on each new expression of discontent. Forever forestalled from developing into something threatening to the hegemony [3].
From this twisted epistemology, a range of psychological (or, I suppose, epistemological) responses emerge. From the ruling class’s increased interest in employing bona fide psychopaths, to the role of social media in manufacturing vapid narcissists, there’s a capitalist benefit to personality disorders that make treating psychological issues much less interesting for the corporate bottom line. But this isn’t the only expression of despair and exhaustion at capital. Indeed, the psychological toll capitalism has manifest in an epidemic of anxiety and alienation. This is particularly acute among younger generations facing unprecedented precarity in their material conditions – and straight from the mouths of my 19-something-year-old students, this is a real fear. And it is far from accidental – the very mechanisms of capital depend upon maintaining a permanent state of insecurity and atomisation among the working class. In particular amongst younger people, to manufacture fear, division, distress and disengagement – this, again, forestalls revolutionary potential. And in answer to this, every aspect of life has become commodified and subject to market logic. Capitalist ontology strikes again. Even our most basic needs become sources of constant stress. Housing insecurity, crushing student debt, gig work, and the collapse of traditional career paths create a perfect storm of psychological warfare against (young) workers. I still, though my students laugh, consider myself one of those.
Importantly, the growing use of psychological warfare against the working class to continually manufacture divisions, social disorders, and anxiety and fatigue is relatively novel, at least in the historical materialist sense. Some recent psychological research demonstrates how precarity and exploitation create “the privatisation of stress” – where systemic issues manifest as individual mental health crises [4]. Studies consistently show rising rates of anxiety and depression among young people [5], with researchers highlighting how economic instability and the gig economy create persistent psychological strain [6].
Rodrigo’s lyrics (circling back, lol) capture this contradiction – the simultaneous pressure to be grateful for youth while that very youth is being commodified and exploited. The line “who am I if not exploited?” reflects a devastating awareness of how capitalism shapes identity formation itself. If we consider that capitalism so fundamentally shapes how we think, who we are, and what we are able to become (i.e., privilege) we start to see identity development as intrinsically connected to the conditions of the market (at least amongst the working class), where stable identity formation is systematically undermined by market demands for constant reinvention and “flexibility”. Theorisations about identity precarity abound [7], but ultimately these new economic challenges manufactured to ensure the working-class keeps fighting each other, rather than for liberation, trigger significant developmental difficulties in creating coherent self-narratives amid constant economic instability – this is both a good and bad thing. Identity tied to values rather than production – win. Identity tied to instability, grief, fear and doubt – loss. And that’s the chasm we stand over particularly as new generations enter the “workforce” and are exploited, fucked over, and manipulated by despots, sociopaths and narcissists top to bottom.
The commodification of youth mental health itself represents yet another dimension of this exploitation. The same system that creates mass anxiety and depression then profits from selling individualised “solutions”. As we’ve discussed previously on mind reader, therapy apps, wellness products, and self-help guides that frame structural violence as personal failing – all this delusionally peddled as “we can think ourselves out of materially-created distress”. Meanwhile, genuine collective responses to psychological suffering are undermined by the continued reinforcement of atomisation that creates the crisis. The isolation that Rodrigo captures: “I don't stick up for myself” becomes both symptom and perpetuating factor of capitalism’s psychological warfare. Maybe I’m giving Olivia’s words a little too much meaning. Okay, let’s zoom out a bit.
The neoliberal imperative to continually reinvent oneself as an entrepreneurial subject, to treat one’s identity as a product to be optimised and marketed, only deepens this alienation. How many times have you been told in a seminar by an over-paid under-qualified marketing “guru” that you need to “build your personal brand”? Yet any acknowledgement of privilege, cultural capital, disability, and so on – i.e., the material basis for any stable sense of self – is systematically undermined. The ever proliferating bullshit jobs, meaningless bureaucratic labour, and psychological torture exacted upon us only ever serves to further separate workers from any sense of genuine purpose or connection to our work. Meanwhile, the atomisation of society and erosion of collective institutions (publics) leaves us to face these struggles in isolation, each person expected to bootstrap their way out of systemic problems through individual effort and “resilience”. Sweet – but we haven’t even arrived at the gnarliest end of this.
Perhaps capital’s greatest ideological victory has been convincing us that systemic problems require individual solutions. The self-help industry, wellness culture, and various forms of “lifestyle activism” perpetuate the fantasy that we can individually optimise, mindset-shift, or purchase our way out of capitalism’s contradictions. And people vehemently believe this – to their very core, the fact they’ve never tried illustrates the contradictory nature of this bullshit. All this does is enable militant individualist thinking, particularly on the part of the middle manager – forever suggesting a “wellness retreat” to their burnt out staff, while they manipulate, psychologically torment, and otherwise screw over their employees all while ignoring their conditions – I don’t know any worker with the expendable capital to purchase a wellness package, let alone get approval to attend such a retreat. Naturally, psychopathic middle management are more than adequately remunerated for such farcical “healing”, but can’t recognise their own twisted psychological issues in the first place. Of course this then culminates in the redirection of potentially revolutionary energy into an endless cycle of personal development and consumption that poses no threat to existing power relations. Hegemony protects its own. The very notion of personal success under capitalism has been constructed in opposition to collective liberation – we are taught to view others’ advancement as competition rather than solidarity.
This individualist framework obscures the fundamental truth that no amount of personal optimisation can resolve contradictions deliberately foundational to the economic system itself. The economic system to which we are collectively, the 99% of us, literally slaves. A worker cannot mindfulness-meditate their way out of exploitation, nor can ethical consumption choices address the fundamental unsustainability of capitalist production. The promise of individual solutions serves as a pressure release valve, allowing people to feel they are “doing something” while leaving structural power relations untouched. Real transformation requires collective struggle and the development of class consciousness – precisely what individualist ideology works to prevent. The path to liberation cannot be walked alone – but they’ll happily tell you it can, because the “middle class’s” demented existence is just amplifying and redistributing their own pain onto others around them. What a cool group of people.
I honestly don’t even have solutions thinking today. I’m just constantly struck by how utterly demented and dehumanising “work” is in 2024. How have we not progressed past this, folks? Has everyone just been asleep at the wheel?
In real solidarity,
Aidan
Gramsci, A. (2007). Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell-Smith, Trans.; Reprinted). Lawrence and Wishart. ↩︎
Fisher, M. (2011). The privatisation of stress. Soundings, 48(48), 123–133. https://doi.org/10.3898/136266211797146882 ↩︎
though this is often blamed on “technology” nebulously: Twenge, J. M. (2020). Why increases in adolescent depression may be linked to the technological environment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 32, 89–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.06.036 ↩︎
Petriglieri, G., Ashford, S. J., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2019). Agony and ecstasy in the gig economy: Cultivating holding environments for precarious and personalized work identities. Administrative Science Quarterly, 64(1), 124–170. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839218759646 ↩︎
c.f. Hancock, P., & Tyler, M. (2025). Precarity, identity, and the meaning of cultural and creative work. In P. Hancock & M. Tyler (Eds.), Performing Artists and Precarity: Work in the Contemporary Entertainment Industries (pp. 83–95). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-66119-8_7; Nelson, J. (2018). Identity performativity and precarity. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(14), 1522–1523. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1461395; Pichler, S., Kohli, C., & Granitz, N. (2021). DITTO for Gen Z: A framework for leveraging the uniqueness of the new generation. Business Horizons, 64(5), 599–610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2021.02.021 ↩︎