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Cognitive Capitalism - Public Seminar

There are broadly three ways of thinking historically about capitalism. One draws on Marx’s value theory and pretty much treats...Read More

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. After 1989, capitalism has successfully presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system - a situation that the bank crisis of 2008, far from ending, actually compounded. The book analyses the development and principal features of this capitalist realism as a lived ideological framework. Using examples from politics, film (Children Of Men, Jason Bourne, Supernanny), fiction (Le Guin and Kafka), work and education, it argues that capitalist realism colors all areas of contemporary experience, is anything but realistic and asks how capitalism and its inconsistencies can be challenged. It is a sharp analysis of the post-ideological malaise that suggests that the economics and politics of free market neo-liberalism are givens rather than constructions. New Edition includes:Forward by Zoe Fisher, Mark’s wife, talking about Mark as a personIntroduction by Alex Niven, his friend and colleague, talking about the political significance of the book thirteen years after it was writtenAfterword by Tariq Goddard, the original editor and publisher, describing the writing and editing of the book, its original reception, and Mark’s own view of it"A quick and entertaining read." Socialist Standard "A provocative and necessary read...for anyone wanting to talk seriously about the politics of education today. " Times Higher Educational Supplement

The marketplace of rationalizations

Recent work in economics has rediscovered the importance of belief-based utility for understanding human behaviour. Belief ‘choice’ is subject to an important constraint, however: people can only bring themselves to believe things for which they can find rationalizations. When preferences for similar beliefs are widespread, this constraint generates rationalization markets, social structures in which agents compete to produce rationalizations in exchange for money and social rewards. I explore the nature of such markets, I draw on political media to illustrate their characteristics and behaviour, and I highlight their implications for understanding motivated cognition and misinformation.

Denizen

What is out there, now, that represents a market-based economy beyond capitalism? Post Growth Institute Founder Donnie Maclurcan shares his views on what's working around the world today and his theory of change towards the next economy.

Hype, financial narratives, and self-fulfilling prophecies in surveillance capitalism

The rise of platforms has transformed our understanding of contemporary capitalism, with the critical literature describing how these firms leverage unprecedented digital powers to extract monopoly rents – perhaps even heralding a new form of Feudalism. This paper draws on the literature on financial narratives to examine the role that such stories play within the form of capitalism that they describe, and what this suggests for the role of “hype” in contemporary capitalism. The same stories that for critical scholars appear as menacing threats of “technofeudalism” or “surveillance capitalism” for investors appear as optimistic stories of promising future returns. By driving financial investments, narratives afford platforms very real social and political powers, enabling them to function as a form of self-fulfilling prophecies. The paper argues for a cultural inflection to the political economy of Big Tech – viewing capitalism as neither mechanistic nor rational, but as an expression of a complex interplay between narrative, technology, and economic power. This suggests the need for a critical hype studies, geared at deconstructing the narratives undergirding the technological waves of capitalist pursuits, and examining the broader role of hype in coordinating and directing flows of capital within contemporary financialized capitalism.

Systems: How the Ultra-Wealthy Think About Money - Anil Dash

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Implicit Feudalism — Rushkoff Archive

Too many of us think it doesn’t matter when a platform like X/Twitter has a single, all-powerful owner. Most of our online worlds are simply run by what we hope are benevolent dictators. After all, we figure, if we don’t like what they’re doing or allowing, we can just leave, right? But in most cases we’re just jumping from one rich dude’s idea for how the world should be to another rich dude’s idea for how the world should be.

How Liminalism Became the Defining Aesthetic of Our Time

This crowd-curated digital movement is one of the most pertinent and explicit reactions to our particular slice of dystopian late capitalism.

Cannibal Capitalism

Shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023 Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life-guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. In this tightly argued and urgent volume, leading Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser charts the voracious appetite of capital, tracking it from crisis point to crisis point, from ecological devastation to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluing of care work. These crisis points all come to a head in Covid-19, which Fraser argues can help us envision the resistance we need to end the feeding frenzy. What we need, she argues, is a wide-ranging socialist movement that can recognize the rapaciousness of capital - and starve it to death.

Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism

Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism

Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism

Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism

AI Populism: Capitalism's New Avatar — Stigmergic

Brian Merchant argues that "AI populism" is not a new political force but 21st-century populism responding to unrestrained capitalism. The term, coined by Jasmine Sun and amplified by David Wallace-We

Re-enchanting the world : feminism and the politics of the commons

xviii, 227 pages ; 23 cm; "Silvia Federici is one of the most important contemporary theorists of capitalism and feminist movements. In this collection of her work spanning over twenty years, she provides a detailed history and critique of the politics of the commons from a feminist perspective. In her clear and combative voice, Federici provides readers with an analysis of some of the key issues and debates in contemporary thinking on this subject. Drawing on rich historical research, she maps the connections between the previous forms of enclosure that occurred with the birth of capitalism and the destruction of the commons and the "new enclosures" at the heart of the present phase of global capitalist accumulation. Considering the commons from a feminist perspective, this collection centers on women and reproductive work as crucial to both our economic survival and the construction of a world free from the hierarchies and divisions capital has planted in the body of the world proletariat. Federici is clear that the commons should not be understood as happy islands in a sea of exploitative relations but rather autonomous spaces from which to challenge the existing capitalist organization of life and labor"--; Foreward by Peter Linebaugh; Includes bibliographical references (pages198-216) and index; On primitive accumulation, globalization, and reproduction -- Introduction to the new enclosures -- The debt crisis, Africa, and the new enclosures -- China: breaking the iron rice bowl -- From commoning to debt: financialization, microcredit, and the changing architecture of capital accumulation -- Beneath the United States, the Commons -- Commons against and beyond Capitalism -- The University: a knowledge common? -- Feminism and the politics of the commons in an era of primitive accumulation -- Women's struggles for land in Africa and the reconstruction of the commons -- Women's struggles for land and the common good in Latin America -- Marxism, feminism, and the commons -- From crisis to commons: reproductive work, affective labor and technology, and the transformation of everyday life -- Re-enchanting the world: technology, the body, and the construction of the commons