Imagining Life After Capitalism
It's hard not to get dragged down to the petty miniscule politics of the day to day. Look up! Look out!
"... I have discussed two permutations of utopia, both of which gesture toward some sort of absence of capitalism. The first permutation is a post-capitalist utopia in the form of progressive political desires, while the second is a pre-capitalist utopia in the form of romanticism, classicism, or minimalism. Nevertheless, there is certainly a third option: the present as utopia. As life before capitalism poses just as much of a threat to capital, capitalism tends to foreclose the past as well as the future. It forecloses on both as possible options for utopian practice. (...)
The powers-that-be have developed a new awareness and are adopting flexible, network structures at very core levels. They are adopting flexible network structures not as an apology or concession, not as a sacrifice, but as essential techniques for the very processes of sovereignty, control, and organization. In other words, distributed networks have ceased being a threat to control and have become the model for control. What was once the problem is now the solution. Today, this is one of the core challenges for imagining a life after capitalism: one can no longer rely on networks as a site for imaginative desire."
The micky image is courtesy of Macarenses 'Pig Brother Comes To Glasgow' from his excellent site here.
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