anti capitalist musings

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Accelerationism

Trump, Land, Dugin

Trump is not Land’s monarch nor Dugin’s tsar. He is their degraded symptom: the parody of a fascist synthesis of technology and tradition, replayed in the register of meme stock and casino populism.

Bossware

Stop, Go, Smile: The New Discipline of Bossware

From PwC’s colour-coded attendance dashboard to HSBC’s biometric checkpoints and the rise of Algorithmic Affect Management, the new wave of “bossware” represents less an innovation than the latest stage in capital’s long history of making workers legible. What began with the factory bell and the punch clock now extends to our faces, moods, and keystrokes.

Corbynism

The Party of Good Intentions

Zarah Sultana’s interview in Sidecar captures the anger at Labour’s complicity in genocide and austerity, but it risks becoming another broad reformist project, haunted by the ghosts of Corbynism—vulnerable to sect capture, parliamentary illusions, and the same popular-front logic that has historically disarmed the working class.

A satirical cartoon shows a battered wooden puppet painted with the Union Jack dangling limply on strings. The marionette is worn, chipped, and cracked, symbolising a weakened Britain. Behind it loom two large shadowy figures: one in a Nazi uniform, the other resembling Vladimir Putin. Both extend their hands to manipulate the strings, casting an ominous, ghostly control over the puppet.
History

The Faragist Fantasy: Britain Should Have Backed Hitler

Nigel Farage’s TikTok wunderkind wants us to imagine a Britain that never fought Hitler, kept its colonies, and models itself on Bukele’s prison state. This is not contrarianism; it is fascist nostalgia dressed up as common sense.

Donald Trump–like figure dressed in a tuxedo clapping enthusiastically, standing beside a stern Vladimir Putin–like figure holding a chained brown bear. The background is a dark curtain, giving the scene a theatrical, vaudeville atmosphere.
Donald J Trump

The Last Superpowers

Alexander Dugin calls the Trump–Putin summit in Anchorage “splendid,” insisting the US and Russia must find an “understanding as superpowers.” The problem is that this fantasy of bipolar order flatters two declining states while obscuring the real forces shaping the 21st century.

Donald J Trump

Trump’s Civil War Rehearsal

With armed red-state troops patrolling a blue city, Trump is not protecting Washington; he is rehearsing the mechanics of civil war.

A satirical illustration of a grand Gothic-style university building with a large sign out front that reads: “CLOSED TO THE LIKES OF YOU,” highlighting the exclusion of ordinary people from higher education.
Higher Education

Universities Were Never Meant for You

Every August, the right reheats its old contempt for higher education. Their complaint is not about debt or “Mickey Mouse” degrees, it is about closing the gates of knowledge, keeping universities for the dominant class and consigning everyone else to warehouses and call centres.

The Sad Technocrat

Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation is a novel about the end of things: not apocalypse, not collapse, but the quieter, lonelier ruin of meaning in a technocratic capitalism that no longer pretends to offer hope.

Front cover of the book

Alienation in a Hairnet

A short, unsentimental novel about fast-food labour and family life, On the Clock shows how work seeps into everything, even the holidays meant to offer escape.

Owen Copper and Erin Doherty in a still image from the Netflix series Adolescence.

The Boys Are Not Alright

A Minister for Men cannot rebuild the infrastructures of solidarity that were torn apart by decades of neoliberal consensus.

Andrew Tate in an interview on Anything Goes with James English, 2021

Beyond Tate

In the face of Andrew Tate’s return and his seductive brand of toxic capitalism, the left urgently needs to offer more than critique, we need a strategy to win back the young men he preys upon.

"fighting for rights in the gig economy" by davide.alberani is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse.

Reclaiming the Language of Class

Simon Pearson argues that Marxists must revive class-based language and analysis of capitalism’s exploitation to connect today’s diverse struggles against inequality and build mass working class power.

An imagined painting depicting May Day - dancing around the May Pole.

United We Rise

May Day, a day of struggle and sacrifice, a day of hope and defiance, a day for the working class.

Labour’s Struggle to Win Elections: Three Hurdles – Working Class, Immigration, and Populism

In a Guardian article today, Matthew Goodwin, an academic on British politics, identifies three key hurdles that the Labour Party must overcome to regain electoral success: reconnecting with the working class, addressing concerns about immigration, and navigating the rise of populism. Goodwin’s opinions are particularly relevant as his new book, “Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics,” is set to be released on Thursday.