Capitalism itself is a failed utopian project. Its most ardent supporters claimed capitalists had brought us to the end of history, the apex of human civilization, where the comforts and conveniences of capitalist production would be enjoyed by all. Instead it has delivered a system that has abandoned all but an elite class to die. Amid a pandemic, in 2020, the wealth of America’s billionaires expanded by nearly a trillion dollars; the only thing that grew for everyone else was misery and desperation. The ideology of “technology,” as it is expressed by the tech industry and its thought leaders, is the necromancy that keeps this zombie capitalist system from staying in its grave.

But there is power in seeing that the world is dominated by grand (failed) utopian projects like capitalism, because it means utopias are possible. We live with the effects of capital’s totalizing schemes for how to organize society. They have become entrenched and normalized, “utopias” to the elite few who benefit from them even as they are dystopian to everyone else. In other words, utopia already exists; it’s just unevenly produced and distributed. Recognizing this opens imaginative space for trying to actualize different utopias that would benefit the disempowered and disenfranchised.

https://reallifemag.com/future-schlock/

"As Bill Clinton described the world to come during his inaugural January 1997 inaugural address—the starting pistol of the era, if there ever was one—“ports and airports, farms and factories will thrive with trade and innovation and ideas, and the world’s greatest democracy will lead a whole world of democracies.” Globalization was a phenomenon sustained by American-based, American-dominated rule-making groups like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. Any nation that wished to be part of the emergent world order had to adopt not just its rules into its legal system, but incorporate the cultural values which undergirded them as well"

"Just as fast food represents a culture unattached to any place in particular, the industry which sells it has stretched the franchise model to evade obligation to any one jurisdiction. As national governments quibble with each other, and borders and cultural identities are hardened, businesses without any national loyalties are integrating as aggressively as ever. Contrary to what apologists like Friedman told us a generation ago, what fast food tells us now is that the American officials who gave rise to globalization have ceded its control to the businesses they always intended it to benefit. The dream of a global polity, wherein even the lowliest person, committed to the values of internationalism, can achieve membership as a “global citizen” is over. The reality of a global market and its corollary, the global consumer, is only becoming more advanced."

currentaffairs.org/2021/01/what-fast-food-tells-us-about-the-world/

#books

"One could therefore argue that Eurocentrism, as an intellectual and ideological framework, was not simply imposed by European actors on other societies. In fact, thinkers in non-European societies — more specifically, nationalist ones — had a great deal to do with the entrenching of Eurocentrism. In other words, Liu’s work shows why we cannot fully understand the making of Eurocentrism without adopting a non-Eurocentric lens. This lens allows us to recognize Eurocentrism as a global project, into which global capitalism drew both European and non-European actors."

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/01/tea-war-book-review-capitalism-china-india/

Hello friends, I was recently laid off from Walmart, and went on unemployment because of that. However, because of the American government’s refusal to act quickly, I have not been paid any unemployment benefits in a month. I’ve been struggling to pay bills and I have been donating plasma twice a week so I can afford to eat.

I’m here now asking if you have any money to spare, if you could help me out by donating anything at the link below. If not, sharing this around is much appreciated. Thank you. - Gray

www.ko-fi.com/graylion

"For Charles Koch and other captains of industry, the calculation behind crushing unions isn’t complicated: Weaker unions mean a weaker opposition to right-wing policies, including the sort of regressive climate and energy measures they’ve helped push around the country through the American Legislative Exchange Council. The right’s general project of minority rule—whether in weakening small-d democratic institutions like unions, gerrymandering congressional districts, or suppressing votes—is incompatible with climate action and democracy itself. Big business has long understood this."

https://newrepublic.com/article/160885/right-to-work-hot-planet

"Vietnam’s success in combatting the virus cannot therefore be attributed to state repression or economic centralization. Its swift-footed response was well within the means of richer liberal-democratic nations, had they summoned the political will.

[...] On 1 January a new Labour Code came into force, allowing the existence of independent Worker Representative Organisations for the first time, unaffiliated to the state-controlled General Confederation of Labour. This could mark a significant change in industrial relations, potentially freeing organized labour from the dominion of the Communist Party. But this victory may yet be counterbalanced by the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, an agreement negotiated in secrecy over the past seven years, which has been widely condemned as an attempt to erode workers’ rights. It is thus an open question whether Vietnam’s decades-old tradition of self-organised labour militancy will persist into 2021, or whether the freedoms enshrined in the Labour Code will come up against greater obstacles."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/vietnams-pandemic

Work sucks on principle, but it often sucks specifically because of bosses. A 2018 poll from Monster (the job search site, not the energy drink) found that 76 percent of Americans leave their jobs because of “toxic” bosses, whom they described as power-hungry, micromanaging, incompetent, or absent. Just 19 percent of people saw their bosses as helpful mentors and advocates. And more than half of people who leave their jobs do so because of their manager, according to research from a leadership consulting firm.

But the shallow anti-boss ethos of a Substack or Uber executive couldn’t be further from actual anti-boss labor formations. Worker cooperatives eradicate the boss structurally, not just superficially: Unlike gig economy giants, which make low-wage workers shoulder the travails of their jobs alone under the guise of freedom, co-ops do away with bosses by building a workplace founded on collective decision-making and mutual accountability. In this arrangement, workers get an equal say in the terms of their labor and the protections they’re afforded. Most co-ops achieve this through an elected board of directors in which at least half the members are employees. Running a company this way can become messy, but co-ops deliver on the promises of a bossless world where other models fail.

https://newrepublic.com/article/161062/age-disappearing-boss

The pandemic slump of 2020 matches that of the 1930s, so it should eventually provide a boost to profitability. But it required a world war to end the Great Depression of the 1930s. And if the Fed goes on ploughing credit into businesses to prop up the ‘zombies’ at the expense of productive investment, then the US economy under Biden will just return to the low growth, low investment, low wage growth economy of the last ten years since the Great Recession.

And if disillusionment in Biden’s policies rises, that could lay the political base for the return of something like Trumpism, which according to the Donald is “just beginning.”

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/01/20/bidens-four-years/