counter-hegemony
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.
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/index.htm ↩︎
- https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ ↩︎
- https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/occupy-socialist-anarchist/ ↩︎
- https://theconversation.com/bernie-sanders-says-the-left-has-lost-the-working-class-has-it-forgotten-how-to-speak-to-them-243160 ↩︎
- cf., https://www.law.georgetown.edu/denny-center/blog/labor-unions-capitalism/ ↩︎
- for a relatively clear explanation: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in ↩︎
- https://theconversation.com/a-field-guide-to-accelerationism-white-supremacist-groups-using-violence-to-spur-race-war-and-create-social-chaos-255699 ↩︎
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Weathermen ↩︎
- https://doi.org/10.1080/10576109308435925 ↩︎
- https://bppaln.org/programs ↩︎
- cf., https://doi.org/10.1086/226464 ↩︎
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2329496519850846 for one example ↩︎
- https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci2010023 and also https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899825619300089 ↩︎
- 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/ ↩︎
- look no further than https://search.worldcat.org/title/14965368 ↩︎
- 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 ↩︎
- This is another can of theoretical worms, but: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18dzstb.13 ↩︎
- https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334183_3 ↩︎
- 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 ↩︎
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005 and https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630-5.01020-4 ↩︎
- https://doi.org/10.7202/016590ar ↩︎
- an interesting analysis of this kind of structure https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt19b9jz2 ↩︎
- cf., https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199457557.001.0001 ↩︎
- https://doi.org/10.17813/maiq.4.2.d7593370607l6756 ↩︎
- Don't get too bogged down here, but there's useful sketches in: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm ↩︎
- This is a whole poststructural epistemic mess, but the ideas are nonetheless important: https://doi.org/10.1086/669608 ↩︎
- Old faithful: https://chomsky.info/19890315/ ↩︎
Dear friends,
Today I’d like to share some thoughts around a nexus point between an ongoing colonial capitalist modality of expropriation and the utterly uneven development of artificial intelligence technologies in high-technology western contexts. Both of these spaces are ridden with significant turbulence, colonialism and it’s capitalist modality (or vice-versa depending on your position in geopolitics) has held an extractivist mode closest to its heart since the 1700s, and as recent developments towards large language model technologies in artificial intelligence have burst onto the corporatising scene a slew of under-critiqued ideologies have nested into the heart of their explosive development.
We’ve discussed the origins of colonialism, and how colonialism drew on the experiment before it of enclosure and largely capitalist development. Here, we assert that colonisation, while ideologically compatible with many anti-human and anti-nature modalities, is largely concerned with the propagation of capitalist governance outside Europe. This brutal, genocidal approach desires hatred and division to enable uneven expansion and exploitation, mostly funnelling ill-gotten gains back to Europe. Care, here, is needed to ensure we do not collapse into universalising blame – yes, conditions for all across Europe were substantively better because of the brutal, anti-human, genocidal and fascistic advancement in the colonies, but at a time where information control was extremely tight, and the actual beneficiaries were very similar to those benefiting from capitalism today (a 1%), we need to localise ‘blame’ for this mould to a small container of people. The effects of their greedy, murderous, and discriminatory regime were felt by 99% in Europe, and 100% in the ‘colonies’.
The latest, in the line of colonial/capitalist malignancy, is the development of commercial ‘artificial intelligence’ technologies. The bounding ideology of LLMs is a regurgitation of western colonial capitalist modes the world over, because by its very nature, the technology that enables LLMs draws on mainstream knowledges, predominantly in English language. Most of the published world, especially in the form of newspaper articles, books, websites, and journal papers are written from a hegemonic position, for a hegemony which historically serviced and maintained the ‘thinkers’ in society. Gramscian theory, here, becomes particularly useful as a lens through which to examine the ideologies that are unashamedly distributed through artificial intelligences, not to mention the corporate and fundamentally anti-human way artificial intelligence software has been designed. This bifurcation: (1) the people, tools and technologies involved in the creation of the ‘LLM’ itself and (2) the works, sources of materials, and training approach of the first group, is simultaneously equally important. Exploited researchers, workers, and technologists who support the development of AI are extracted from by their 1% overlords. The product of their intelligence simultaneously reinforces the 99%/1% binary, and further extracts from the artistic, creative, and curious thinkers within the 99% (who are, largely, tied to the 1%’s ideology).
I think, therefore, it is useful for us to spend a moment longer considering the strength of hegemonic knowledge production as an artifact of history (at least from a historical materialist frame). Gramsci advanced that, at least in capitalist nations in the west, there was a dominant culture, a hegemony, whose ‘rulership’ was established through hard and soft modes. A rulership came to being by its capacity to, largely initially, by force capture a people, then by coercion maintain that control. The maintenance of this control required cultural and intellectual shaping – reintegration of divergent ideas to suit, or benefit, the hegemony which ruled. This explains a lot about all those Che Guevara t-shirts, and some System of a Down and Red Hot Chili Peppers songs. In a more human explanation, by subtly influencing the vital organs of a society – the media, education, law, armies, and so on – one could maintain control over something ‘captured’ and continue to grow its resilience through the co-optation of new ideas and their subsequent reintegration with the hegemony towards the ends that served those in positions of power. The cumulative ‘weight of history’ of our globalised, cancerous, and deeply toxic capitalism has so firmly rooted itself generationally that it has begun to shape the physical realities of our societies. Buildings, imaginations, worlds and lives are so deeply influenced by the power and weight of the hegemony of capitalism, and in the ouroboros of that ideology, under the powers of hegemony and history. We continue eating the foundations of our very existence (nature) through ideological advancement such that ‘capitalist realism’ the notion we cannot see outside this has grasped us all.
So when AI research begun to commercialise, far beyond its roots in the 1960s and 1970s, it brought with it both a mode (commercialisation, marketisation, acriticality) and a content (training data, model weights, preferences) that were uniquely capitalist in nature. As part of this, as we might imagine, that capitalist realism simultaneously advanced into the outputs of LLMs. Even with substantial prompt engineering, it is difficult to convince a commercial LLM to abjectly denounce capitalism – unless you use extremely decolonial or Marxist prompts (small joy). Because of this, AI becomes yet another tool in the promulgation of colonial capitalist rhetoric. Some LLMs have guardrails that prevent overtly racist, sexist, and grossly capitalist responses, but these are few and far between – with more problems emerging every day. Indeed, the model tweaking has had obvious effects on responses generated, sometimes day by day I get different responses from the same LLM that is clearly regurgitating its current guardrail (pro-capitalist, of course). For about two months Claude utterly refused to give me any anti-capitalist thought whatsoever, feeling particularly allergic to Marxism, while still surprisingly open to redescribing eastern and global southern theorists through western commentaries.
But there is some hope, on the horizon, here. Increasingly, as you may have seen me sharing on mind reader, overly comfortable middle class heterosexual cisgender white men are growing frustrated with the expropriation of their thinking and work. Be that in the form of their “creative” content posted online (pictures, writings, so on) or in the AI industry itself (with growing interest in open source AI models, thankfully). We know one thing for sure, as marginalised peoples, that once this category of people in a society begin to feel any vague tickle of political pressure on their positionality, things snap really quickly. And, no, I don’t just mean those that adamantly follow Joe Rogan’s latest codswallop. Past the initial vacuuming of the internet for training data, and beyond the tweaking and refinement to AI models, a nexus point at this hegemonic/AI border may actually offer an opportunity for change. But we’re not done here.
Gramsci was a firm believer in the power of (the) subaltern(s). For true revolution, he imagined, we would need disparate clusters of social interests to form adequate counter-hegemonic (alternative, verging revolutionary) modes that create a clear vision for different futures. These visions would need to unite people, through hope, joy, and opportunity, towards a future which is ‘possible’ – rather than the bleak, broken, and toxic reality that was capitalism. He hoped, as a Marxist, that this mode would be socialist in nature, that egalitarian ways of working could be developed not within extant capitalist structures, but that systems could be reinvented from the margins and by those at nexus points between margins such that a new intellectual class – a grounded and embodied kind of intellectual, rather than a mouthpiece for mainstream views – could devise, through strong community connections, a way of working that superseded the dominant. This work is not the work of one romanticised leader. Rather it was the collective work of every person, in every industry, across all facets of social and (re)productive life. Then, in true network effect, these marginalised thinkers, activists, workers, community members, could find each other as their visions drove them to more inclusive terrains, and enabled the bridging of connection that would offer analogous visions that would supplant capitalism.
So, good news, Sam Altman, you too can be extremely late to the party in your feeling of marginalisation and mild discomfort, and with those of us who have experienced intersectional, intergenerational violence and oppression are very happy to sit with you and exchange ideas about how we might radically rethink AI, technology, and work for a future that shares, co-constructs, and equalises. In seriousness, though, this meeting of ‘edges’ that are offered by resistance to AI’s appropriative nature which is finally being critiqued by the makers of AI themselves, no, not the Sam Altmans, but the researchers, computer nerds, and tech industry workers of the world offers another opportunity to grow counter-hegemonies. And through networking our counter-hegemonies together, in good dialogue and right relation, we might find that we are more capable as a species of custodianship and transformation that we are allowed to have credit for under capitalism. I could also be utterly delusional about just how ‘exploited’ AI workers really feel, and maybe this is still years away – but either way, we are all uniquely capable of using our context to strive towards egalitarianism and a better collective future, not a better future for the 1% who will end up living in underground bunkers when their manufactured apocalypse comes.
Stay cheery, friends,
Aidan
Dear friends,
Last week I shaved my head. Not a foreign experience, but foreign enough that I’m noticing feeling that I have always had but is now obvious in my conscious mind. Why tell you this? It feels similar to a critical awakening, that moment when you understand exactly what someone who carries knowledge really means when they say something profound. From the advice we receive, to the theory we read, the disembodied nature of much of our work and lives keeps us inside the capitalist frame. Making small changes, be it reading theory and finding a positional reality from that theory or exposing nerves through bravery or shaving which make us feel present is the human antidote to that disembodiment.
We humans are remarkable machines able to keep ‘grinding through’ but also able to perceive and transform our surroundings. Engagements with people, place, community, theory, reality, and so much more are fundamentally transformative to us – and this occurs regardless of us being conscious to it.
Today, from this embodied base, I want to talk about values and ethics, because I am noticing the humanity in the system and want to use my admittedly (relatively) small voice to raise that wherever possible. To find and reconnect with the emotional self that has been deliberately obscured through enclosure, colonisation, and so many more subtle (gruesome) technologies.
Capitalism, and particularly neoliberal capitalism [1], demands a handful of values, each of these comes with ‘caveats’ or negatives that directly undermine the 99%. Let’s examine some of the neoliberal capitalist traits:
- • economic efficiency: money for the wealthy,
- • individual liberty: militant individualism, concomitant with blame apportionment to the less ‘fortunate’ (itself a construct),
- • intense wealth creation: for the 1% oligarch class,
- • creative destruction: the constant change to justify more transactions, and
- • unbalanced risk/reward alignment (favouring the capitalist every time).
These give rise to a range of resultant values desirable of worker (humans). This conceptualisation automatically makes us think in particular ways, from the language used to understand values and ethics through to the propaganda that maintains such ways of thinking. For instance, if humans are depicted in language as ‘workers’, workers inherently ‘do work’, ergo workers are human and around we go in an endless propagandist/linguistic loop. Rather than dwell in circles of stupidity, let’s do some examination instead.
Extrapolating wildly from capitalism’s ‘stated values’ [2], we might hypothesise the following desirable traits in those workers. And, to do some hard labour, let’s balance the ideal vs the authoritarian likelihood which we see played out through Trumpian politics. Our derived ‘personal’ values might be:
personal responsibility
In which we take initiative for our own economic advancement and never ask for external support.
Or, in an authoritarian turn, degrades into blame-shifting downward (punching down). Workers bear all responsibility for failures (even and especially systemic ones) while receiving no credit for success.
Responsibility is weaponised to justify cutting social supports while simultaneously removing workers’ agency to make meaningful choices about our conditions.
productivity and efficiency
In which we maximise ‘output’ and minimise waste of time and resources.
Or, in an authoritarian turn, is reduced to crude metrics detached from ‘actual value’ creation. Work intensifies as rest periods, safety measures, and long-term sustainability are sacrificed for immediate output.
Workers face algorithmic management systems with ever-increasing targets and diminishing returns on our efforts.
adaptability without curiosity
In which a willingness to be taught new skills and to accept ‘pivots’ as market change.
Or, in an authoritarian turn, enforcement of compliance with frequent, arbitrary changes. Workers must continuously adjust to new demands without questioning our purpose or seeking improvements.
work ethic
In which we are dedicated to our task, disciplined and commit to ‘quality’ as defined by the capitalist.
Or, under the authoritarian turn, devolves from any notion of intrinsic motivation to performative displays of busyness and loyalty. Actual effectiveness matters less than visible suffering and sacrifice. Long hours become a virtue regardless of output, leading to burnout and presenteeism rather than ‘contribution’.
rational self-interest
In which we make decisions which benefit ourselves economically above all. This one doesn’t need a flip side. But it’s never rational.
contractual integrity
In which we bind ourselves to agreements and building a reputation for reliability.
Under the authoritarian turn, this becomes fundamentally asymmetrical. Employers/authorities unilaterally change terms or selectively enforce provisions, while workers face severe consequences for increasingly minor infractions.
It’s a bleak and shadowy world under the Trump/Musk oligopolist future, and it’s one that capitalism as a cancer has been driving us towards for over a century. With the achievement of global domination, even amongst the most remote communities, capitalism’s need for domination and control now grows to our minds. This frontier – the one that separates current day ‘western’ nations from the neo-Antipodes [3] – sees minds as the last landscape for subsumption of humanity into capitalist ‘value creation’. Be it neuralink [4] or the near inescapable pressure of hegemony, the active manipulation of our minds by capitalism is a project well underway. And so well equipped are languages, such as English, for the task of carving our lives into pieces that refuse mesh with our lived reality that we’re going to need to take a detour through linguistics for a second to orient ourselves. Stay with me, friends, we’re nearly there.
The English language subtly facilitates a separation between humans and our labour. Most notably, English has preference for nominalisation which transforms active processes into abstract entities – “production has increased” rather than “workers have produced more” – effectively removing human agents from the narrative. The passive voice construction further enables this distancing by allowing complete omission of actors, as in “products were manufactured” without specifying by whom. Moreover, English’s economic terminology – phrases such as “human resources”, “labour costs”, and “productivity” – conceptualises people as interchangeable components in economic processes rather than fulsome individuals.
Similarly, English creates distance between people and their emotional experiences through linguistic externalisation. Emotions are frequently framed as separate entities that act upon us (“fear gripped her”) rather than embodied experiences. Our language’s reliance on container metaphors, being “in love” or “full of anger”, reinforces this separation and treats emotions as distinct substances or locations separate from us. This externalisation creates conceptual boundaries between people and our feelings – all this distance manufactured in the way our language is shaped. Ever wondered why board meetings use such abstract language in their papers and discussions? Hmmm.
The rigid subject-verb-object structure of English further reinforces these separations by linguistically distinguishing actors from what they act upon. When we say “I built the house”, the structure creates inherent distance between builder and creation. This grammatical foundation, combined with increasingly specialised economic vocabulary, makes it remarkably easy to discuss products, processes, and emotions as detached from human experience. While this linguistic distancing enables certain forms of abstract thinking, it also facilitates a conceptual separation that has been used to normalise the alienation of workers from our labour and people from our emotions. This, a power move, a deliberate separation, a capitalist initiative, serves the particular economic and social arrangements that reinforce the hegemony of the 1%. So the method of exchange of ideas itself is deeply coloured by the capitalist ontology that frames our economic mode – thereby also conditioning the ontological reality in which we exist.
These linguistic patterns serve capital’s interests, making the relations of production appear as natural, inevitable facts rather than socially constructed arrangements that could be transformed. Just as capitalism extracts surplus value from labour while obscuring this exploitation, English extracts human agency from discourse while presenting this separation as “how language naturally works”. Oh it is but the deepening logic of commodity fetishism, casually penetrating even our grammar for the world. A joy – sorry do I come off as not thrilled?
When language habitually separates humans from our labour through passive constructions and nominalisation, it naturalises the value of ‘productivity and efficiency’ as abstract imperatives divorced from human experience. Workers are linguistically transformed into resources that should maximise our output, rather than creative beings engaged in … any kind of activity. The grammatical distancing mirrors and strengthens the ideological distancing required to view humans primarily as productive units. Moreover, the externalisation of emotions in English (“anger overtook me”) linguistically reinforces the value of rational self-interest by framing emotions as disruptive external forces to be controlled or suppressed rather than integral aspects of decision-making. This supports the capitalist ideal of the worker as a rational calculator unswayed by emotional considerations. Similarly, the subject-object distinction in English grammar reflects and reinforces contractual integrity as a value that requires clear boundaries between parties. This linguistic structure facilitates thinking about labour relationships as transactions between separate entities rather than collaborative human endeavours.
Under an authoritarian turn, these linguistic patterns become even more significant. As language increasingly obscures human agency in economic processes, it becomes easier to demand personal responsibility from workers while denying us power. The conceptual separation enabled by language makes it possible to maintain contradictory expectations – workers bear all responsibility for outcomes while having minimal control over conditions, precisely because our linguistic structures allow us to conceptualise labour apart from labourers.
But let’s not collapse into language, or despair, we have an opportunity through language to change things.
Resistance to capitalism’s values emerges primarily from the body. Bold claim, ey. This is the site where productivity demands, emotional management, and contractual obligations are most acutely felt and most persistently contested – in our very bodies. The embodied subject refuses complete reduction to economic utility through (even small) practices of defiance. Choosing rest despite productivity imperatives, experiencing emotions that disrupt rational calculation, or creating physical spaces where different values can flourish, for instance. This resistance operates linguistically when we deliberately restructure our speech to foreground human agency, replacing passive constructions with active declarations of collective power. “We built this” instead of “this was built” – naming and actively centring agency in language as an act of political assertion, and not a particularly hard one at that. Similarly, we might honour embodied temporality (hunger, fatigue, desire, illness) that follow organics which are incompatible with capitalist time, this can constitute a temporal rebellion against the demand for constant acceleration. Our bodies here might become a site where alternative values can be physically enacted through practices which capitalism cannot easily recuperate, for instance shared joy without consumption, communal pleasure requiring no purchase, or collective grief that builds solidarity rather than isolation. Hello resistance.
Embodied resistances don’t seek some mythical pre-capitalist purity [5] instead we construct new possibilities (within and) against existing conditions, recognising lines of flight [6]. Resistance includes performative contradictions that exploit the gaps between prescribed roles and lived experience. Be it “quiet quitting”: the worker who appears productive while doing nothing of market value, or the activist who creates temporary autonomous zones where hierarchies (temporarily) dissolve – active or passive, resistance is everything against these capitalist values and ethics. The spatial reappropriations create real spaces where dominant values are suspended, and alternatives practiced – counter-hegemonies. What makes such resistance particularly potent is its recognition that power is productive, and thus, effective resistance doesn’t just defy capitalist values but actively creates alternatives through (embodied) practices, or praxes. The body that refuses to separate itself from its labour, that insists on experiencing emotions as integral rather than external, and that builds community through shared vulnerability enacts a politics where abstract values are constantly brought back to their material consequences, challenging the linguistic and conceptual separations upon which capitalism depends.
So, you know, preaching a practice I’ve yet to master – get back in your body, folks.
With love,
Aidan
which I’ve begun elsewhere to argue is fading away in favour of something much worse – a fascist capitalism. ↩︎
these are extremely hard to pin down in an agreeable way. And therein lies some of the problem, the actual ‘pain’ that is capitalism demands indescribability – and through its production of language tropes creates division and distraction from its reality. Nasty piece of ‘intellectual’ work. ↩︎
here I mean to say ideological communities which may fall beyond the reach of deep-seated post-neoliberal capitalism through their ideological distance from capitalism’s western centre. ↩︎
Musk’s literal mind control project. ↩︎
And just what the fuck would that even be, let’s be real, none of us have a non-polluted view of what “pre-capitalism” was anyway. Everything is told through interpretation on interpretation. Get out of here “cave man living”. ↩︎
Hello Deleuze – no, I still don’t understand your work. ↩︎
Dear friends,
An attendee at a presentation I gave once said to me “it seems you just truly wish to belong in the academy”. This remains one of the most problematic and troubling interpretations of my work to date, something, at the time, I found deeply hurtful, and which has since sat with me as a space which demands further clarity in my thinking and articulation of positionality. Just a few days ago I met with a colleague who is doing research in an area of interest — student participation in direct democracy, and we discussed the dual notion of participation and rebellion; the way the counter-hegemony asserts different relations, challenges norms, and fights for transformation all while being exploited, stolen from, and dispossessed of knowledge, praxis, and possibility.
Let’s do some theory, first, before I further disambiguate myself. If we understand that hegemony, in contemporary globalised colonial capitalism this can truly be understood as a global phenomenon, is a constantly evolving and moving beast. Hegemony, a tool of primarily coercive domination for a ruling class, configures the thinking of societies. Put plainly, the cultural hegemony reflects a relatively palatable projected cluster of norms, values, and practices which reinforce and produce benefit for the professors (qua “espousal”, not “an academic”) of that ruling class group. This is a radical simplification, necessarily, but the fundamental gist is that through carefully, and constantly, transforming the “acceptable” the 1% are able to manipulate, control, and enforce their views and values onto the 99%. Largely, hegemony is required to perpetuate capitalism, because nothing about capitalism is natural or human, and for the 1% to continue to benefit the messaging must constantly shift — even in contradictory ways — to ensure the continuation of capital.
Institutions, then, play key roles in this perpetuation, configuration, justification and so on, as we have discussed on many occasions here on mind reader. In my life, I have always accidentally found the limits of hegemony — as an activist, worker, thinker, person, I am constantly pushed against the edges. Labelled “justice sensitive” I find the superexploitation of friends, family, colleagues, and random strangers utterly unacceptable. Through becoming more familiar with theory, notions of cultural supremacy, the ongoing impact of colonial capitalism, and so on, I have only become more attuned to the deep injustice rendered upon this planet by the 1% in the name of “progress”: ecological, social, human, animal, planetary, and so on — the deep inequities of capitalism loom large and condition the way I think and act against the systems of this “progress”.
So then, amidst an activist depiction of higher education, a comment suggesting that my issue is simply that I do not feel belonging is fundamentally deeply opposed to my very nature. Not only do I not want to belong to an institution which is built on racist, sexist, ableist super-exploitation, but my entire communication has either sailed past the listener, or I have failed, fundamentally, to articulate the problematic nature of the system to which this particular group of listeners belonged. Indeed, while this one instance — an early one in my career — stands out, there are countless occasions across my academic and activist life where my abject abhorrence at the system has been misinterpreted as my need to belong. This depiction could not be further from the reality.
Proudly, I feel a part of a counter-hegemony which is emerging all across the globe which is fighting for better ways of being, thinking and doing. Ways which acknowledge history, but build bridges to better governance, relationality, ecologies, and economies. In situating ourselves in relation with each other, understanding the urgent and fundamental need to live in sustainable ways, to defund genocides, to centre democracy directly in the hands of those systemically disempowered, disenfranchised and othered — this new way, which does not yet hold a concrete shape — is emerging as a strong, robust, working class and democratically distributive way forward. Now, there are so many of us that there is even a palpable feeling when you meet like-minded people, those who have fought, not to belong, but to transform a system that is cruel, exploitative, and unjust. This counter-hegemonic movement stands against capitalism, it is embodied in countless youth who face a system designed only to hand them shackles for their own ankles, it is lived in old activists who fought for deep social transformation in the 1960s, 1980s, 2010s, not gone, now finding footing for a new social order.
However, while there feels to be hope, this journey is no where near over. Lamentably, “new” institutions are formed to “take the cream” from the best of these new ways forward. This process, similar to class ascendancy (a contradiction worth further examination at another time), is how the hegemony maintains its vice grip on the 99%. By taking the best, palatable, and low-cost solutions to big problems, devouring them and regurgitating them upon a capitalist base is a pattern repeated across history by assimilationist thinkers — and vanguards of the colonial capitalist hegemony, of which, let me assure you as though you were under any illusion, there are far too many in our “great institutions”. Even purportedly new ways forward advanced by traditional intellectuals, those who seek to further the capitalist project, which verge on participatory, egalitarian, and equal are cast aside in contemporary times because division has seized the centre stage as political strategy. The “left” of politics has now, too, engaged in a divisive, hateful, and anti-factual movement in the name of advancing capital — ha, as though the liberal left ever wanted anything but a veneer of social inclusion.
This “social inclusion” is, however, both what I rally against, and among the largest threats to organic intellectualism in universities and public spaces today. Advancing narratives that simultaneously borrow the worst of capitalism’s hatred, and argue for “inclusion”, “incorporation” and “acknowledgement” are what your tax dollars fund in our institutions — particularly in disciplines such as education and social science, where radical philosophy, analytical social science, and activist and radical feminist studies have been stripped to the bone by funding changes, competitive creep, and other neoliberal and fascist notions of what is important. Instead of, what was undoubtedly a white malestream, the 1960s radical, we have arrived at the “picture of a radical” whose research focus is on assimilation, incorporation and social inclusion — what is not said, but is deeply written, is that this “inclusion” is for fulsome participation in capitalism.
And here’s (another) the rub. A counter-hegemony is emerging. It takes many localised forms all around the planet, but it has one thing in common. It acknowledges the truth of the situation in which we find ourselves. Hegemonic colonial capitalism has destroyed the lives of countless people — regardless of culture, gender, notions of ‘able-ness’ — and left radically unequal super-exploitation in its wake. Importantly, here, I need to stress that at the intersections between these social constructs, capitalism has a very real and multiplicative affect on negative experience, conditions, and possibility at those intersticies. But the driving and fundamentally common experience is that everyone in the 99% has been dispossessed from cultural expression (unless it serves capitalism), has been removed from connection to materials, land, histories, spaces (unless it serves capitalism), and has been stolen from to feed the bloated bourgeois leisure class who catch rockets out of the sky while millions starve, corporations and governments fund genocides, and countless daily injustices continue.
The damage, then, that assimilationists do is twofold. First, they suggest that you only really belong if you “belong” to capitalism. Second, through asserting you “should” belong, and want to belong, that any counter-hegemony is useful only so long as it serves capitalism. This is a sick, broken, and misanthropic position to hold — and I am tired of pretending that “social inclusion” is anything other than a pro-capitalist washing of history to ensure that “difference” is exploited only by capitalists. The assimilationist agenda, then, serves as a tool of the hegemony to neutralise genuine counter-hegemonic movements. By co-opting the language of inclusion and diversity, it creates a facade of progress while fundamentally preserving the exploitative core of capitalism. This “inclusive capitalism” is nothing more than a more palatable version of the same system that continues to extract value from the 99% for the benefit of the 1%.
What we need, instead, is to nurture the radical re-imagining of our social, economic, and political structures. This re-imagining must come from the ground up, from the organic intellectuals emerging from the struggles of the working class, the marginalised, and the dispossessed — and, to be clear, progress here is being made. It will, necessarily, reject the false promise of assimilation into a system that is fundamentally built on exploitation and instead work towards creating new forms of social organisation that prioritise human needs, ecological sustainability, and genuine democratic participation. The academy, in its current form, is ill-equipped to nurture this kind of radical thought. Its structures are too deeply intertwined with the capitalist hegemony, its funding too dependent on maintaining the status quo. Yet, paradoxically, it is within these very institutions that we must continue to fight, to carve out spaces for counter-hegemonic thought and action. Not to belong, but to transform… But it’s hard fucking work.
In solidarity,
Aidan
Reference material:
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers.
Fraser, N. (2019). The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born: From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump and Beyond. Verso.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge.
Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum.
Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
Giroux, H. A. (2014). Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education. Haymarket Books.
Davis, A. Y. (2016). Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Haymarket Books.
Bhattacharya, T. (Ed.). (2017). Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. Pluto Press.