On May 9^th, voters in the Philippines elected Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the disgraced former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, as the successor to current president Rodrigo Duterte. Many in the Philippines were disappointed to see the Marcos family back in power after spending nearly 40 years in the shadows because of the popular uprising that led to the removal of Marcos Sr. from power in 1986. Western media outlets were, as usual, at a loss for words. In order to explain the landslide victory of a direct descendant of a brutal ex-president, the media could only point to one thing: the massive spread of disinformation. But is social media really to blame for a candidate receiving over 16 million more votes than the closest runner up?

Maria Ressa seems to think so. The Filipino journalist, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, appeared on Democracy Now on May 11^th to give her thoughts on the election. The former CNN journalist expressed frustration with the fact that the campaign of Marcos Jr. was able to erase the collective memory of the horrors of his father’s regime through the highly-coordinated dissemination of disinformation on social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.  According to Ressa, social media has become a “behavior modification system” and that what has transpired in the Philippines is a “case study” of its “impact on elections.” In support of this claim, she cites the fact that the Philippines was second only to the United States in the number of compromised accounts associated with the Cambridge Analytica election manipulation scandal. Unfortunately, this is about as far as Ressa goes with her analysis of the situation. Like the rest of her peers at media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times, Ressa can only muster an inadequate explanation that is rife with technological determinism.

The logic of Ressa (and many others) presupposes the existence of a “pure” democracy that existed before the rise of social media, a democracy now at risk of falling apart due to the rapid spread of disinformation and fake news. The only way to “save” democracy, in their view, is for tech companies to step in and do a better job of moderating the content on their platforms. If this were to happen, everything would supposedly go back to normal, and authoritarian presidents would become a thing of the past. But this logic cannot adequately explain the recent success of right-wing, authoritarian candidates. It falls short by misinterpreting the popularity of these candidates as simple “manipulation” and neglecting the increasing repressiveness of democratic politics as a whole.

Ressa completely ignores the immense popularity of the current authoritarian president Rodrigo Duterte, and the overall unpopularity of presidents before him, who were all run-of-the-mill liberals. Recent polling has shown that Duterte has an approval rating of 67.1%, making him the first president in Philippine history to leave office with over a 50% approval rating. Not only is Marcos Jr. running a similar “personality-based” campaign as Duterte did, but he also added Duterte’s daughter Sara to his ticket as Vice President. Despite launching a drug war that has killed thousands, Filipino voters credit Duterte with “reviving the economy and making the Philippines more competitive and investor-friendly.” It should therefore come as no surprise that Filipinos elected someone with a similar persona who, as an added bonus, had direct ties to the current popular administration. But how, liberals ask, could people support a politician with such a strong authoritarian aura?

The same question was asked when Trump won in 2016, and the same answer was given back then: mass manipulation. For the liberal conscious, that is the only possible explanation. These poor, innocent people are simply being manipulated by shady forces with tons of money. If only they had the “right” facts, or access to “real” information, surely they wouldn’t vote for such deplorable characters! Such are the illusions of modern liberal thought. Unaware of the “repressive core” of democracy and the effects of incessant competition on the psyche of the subjects of capitalism, liberal thought is left completely speechless when it comes to explaining the results of recent democratic elections. “Not our democracy!” they cry, as yet another right-wing populist comes into power. But it is precisely their democracy that is at the heart of this development, a conclusion made clear by analyses from thinkers like Robert Kurz and Thomas Meyer.

According to them, in the face of capitalism’s existential crisis, the ability of democratic politics to affect any sort of change on the capitalist mode of production (that it is inseparable from) has been severely diminished. Although politics has never been able to fully control the economy, gone are the days when mass social movements could effectively petition for a larger share of the wealth produced by capitalist society. Now that automation is increasingly undermining the process of capital accumulation, the only thing left for the state to do is manage the crisis by brutally repressing every expression of dissent and systematically eliminating all the millions who have been made superfluous by widespread automation. As a result, there has been a generalized shift to the right among all political parties. While this is often interpreted as an “erosion of democracy,” Kurz and Meyer would argue that this is just democracy showing its true colors, as it did so infamously in the early 20^th century.

For the first time in the history of capitalism, workers are confronted with the possibility of running out of work. In a neoliberal global society that has never been more atomized, this confrontation inevitably leads to the sorting of the population into “winners” and losers.” Since there is no insight into this dynamic whatsoever among the public, the “losers” appear not as victims of a blind, irrational system, but as “failures” who only have themselves to blame. Criminals are simply “bad” people, the unemployed simply “lazy.” Such simple explanations lead to a similarly simple solution: eliminate them. That is exactly what Duterte did, and the fact that his popularity didn’t suffer as a result only shows how irredeemable the capitalist subject in crisis is.

Liberal thought is totally incapable of grasping these dynamics. As Robert Kurz showed in his book Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus, liberals prefer to project democracy’s authoritarian tendencies onto some foreign “other,” and insist on the eternal sanctity of democracy as a mode of political organization. In the case of Ressa, the problem lies in the shadowy groups behind the spread of disinformation that “corrupt” democracy from the outside, and not democracy itself. But even access to “perfect” information, which is not even possible, would not ensure the downfall of right-wing movements, because these movements are deeply appealing to broad sectors of the population during times of capitalist crisis. Without understanding this, and realizing that democracy is not something to appeal to, but rather something to critique, adequately explaining the victory of someone like Marcos Jr. remains totally impossible.

Over the last few years Bill McKibben has become a regular guest on Democracy Now. Apparently, the Middlebury College professor and co-founder of 350.org and is their go-to expert for discussions of the climate crisis. So what did he have to say last week about rising gas prices and the war in Ukraine?

As usual, a whole lot of nothing. The interview began with McKibben taking shots at the fossil fuel industry, specifically at the executives of companies like Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil who recently testified in front of Congress, accusing them of being greedy and corrupt. He then went on to discuss the “Windfall Tax Act,” a bill proposed by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse that would put a tax on fossil fuel companies and give around $250 to every American to help ease pain at the pump. What would this accomplish? According to McKibben, besides giving Americans relief (in the form a quite paltry sum) from high gas prices, it would also “take some of that excess money out of the hands of the fossil fuel industry” so that they could no longer “buy Congress.”

McKibben’s central assumption here is that money is corrupting our otherwise unproblematic “democracy.” Setting aside the entirely absurd idea that taxes imposed on fossil fuel companies would come directly out of their lobbying budgets, this assumption is ludicrous still because it does not fully comprehend the relationship between capitalism and democracy. Democracy is, in McKibben’s view, a form of political organization that is capable of controlling capitalism. In reality, democracy is no more than a charade that allows society to believe it has control over dynamics that are already blindly predetermined by capitalism. In other words, far from determining how society is organized, democracy is, at its core, only ever capable of determining how capitalism can most effectively be reproduced at any given time. This means that the money given to politicians by companies is only a matter of secondary importance. Regardless of which politician is getting money and from whom, any policy that gets enacted must conform, or at the very least not severely disrupt, the process of capital accumulation. That is why this tax bill has no hope of getting anywhere on Capitol Hill. Its introduction, as is the case with most progressive legislation, remains an act of pure symbolism.

McKibben’s portion of the interview closes with him referencing a statement made by UN Secretary General António Guterres (whose power rivals that of the general manager at your local McDonalds) a few days earlier in which he called investment in fossil fuels “economically and morally insane,” in order to suggest that at the end of the year people with credit cards from the banks that invest in new fossil fuel developments should cut them up as an act of protest. What a bold suggestion! Any critique of fossil fuel development from the perspective of “sanity” is doomed to fail because it does not recognize the inherent insanity of capitalism. To say that fossil fuels are a bad investment is to completely ignore the imperatives of the capitalist mode of production. “The show must go on,” even more so during times of crisis when opportunities for the valorization of capital are harder and harder to come by, which means there’s no time to stop and think about what the consequences of further fossil fuel development might be. The only thing rivaling the insanity of this way of life is the idea that people cutting up their credit cards will accomplish anything.

In McKibben’s eyes, what we are seeing now in terms of the climate crisis and rising gas prices is the result of greedy individuals who only care about “padding their profits.” Left out of the discussion is any talk of the capitalist social formation that subjugates humans and nature to turn money into more money by any means necessary, let alone the fundamental crisis of this system which intensifies these dynamics even further. McKibben’s stance is representative of the larger dynamic among leftists to blame everything on individuals and institutions with “bad morals” and leave unquestioned the conditions in which these actors emerge. Everywhere you look, criticism is directed towards “greedy” executives and “shady” bankers, and not the social system in which they (and we) exist. Nothing is said of the irrational mode of production that compels us to sell ourselves to the highest bidder for the purpose of creating abstract wealth or its corresponding political form. All of the focus lies on discussions of personal “interest,” which is a direct result of the theoretical environment created by the Marxism of the early twentieth century, which only knew capitalism as the system in which the working class was robbed of their fair share in an otherwise unproblematic or even natural process (labor).

This line of thought can only ever lead to solutions immanent to capitalism which take for granted its most basic presuppositions. In this state of delusion, the Middlebury Madman and countless others like him can only ever whine about the need for state intervention (which will never come) and call upon others to undertake idiotic symbolic acts (like cutting up your credit card). To transcend capitalism, a goal more urgent than ever given the state of the environment, a critique is needed that calls into question its foundational institutions, such as labor, democracy, markets, etc. Without this we are as good as dead. After all, not many of us have the luxury of working for one of the most expensive private universities in the US.

Last Wednesday, on February 23, Russian forces launched an invasion of Ukraine in the dark of night by bombing military facilities across the country and bringing ground troops across the border on three sides of the country. News of the Russian invasion was met with fierce condemnation from people around the world, even in Russia. The US media had a field day, enjoying ratings they hadn’t seen since the Trump era. Americans are looking on in horror without realizing that what they are looking at is simply a distorted reflection of what their own country did in Iraq just 19 years ago.

In the few times that US media figures have pointed out the connection between these two invasions, their comments have been blatantly orientalist, insinuating that the invasion of Iraq was to be “expected” because it is a place where conflict “has been raging for decades.” The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association were quick to point out how comments like this are indicative of a Western consciousness that “normalizes tragedy” in parts of the world like the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and South America, where the US and Europe have traditionally been the countries bringing this tragedy about.

Now that Russia is the country perpetuating these crimes against humanity, crocodile tears pour down the Botox laden faces of anchors and correspondents who mourn the loss of the “peaceful” world that existed before, in which conflicts of this kind were limited to the periphery. In the new multi-polar world order in which the US is no longer the singular dominant global power, conflicts of this kind will be come commonplace as countries from the semi-periphery, such as Russia and Turkey, attempt to exert their own imperialist agendas in the power vacuum left by the decline of the US.

The cognitive dissonance of the US media is on full display, and we must take this moment to remember that all the death and destruction that accompanies invasions of this sort is completely unjustifiable, no matter who the perpetrator is. Since the media is eager to paint Russia in a negative light, they will have qualms with honestly reporting the unimaginable humanitarian consequences of this devastating war. But we must not forget that the next time the United States decides to invade a country in this manner, these journalists will turn into agents of the same kind of propaganda being put out by Russian state media outlets with regards to Ukraine.

As Robert Kurz first pointed out in Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus [The Black Book of Capitalism], foreign dictatorships opposed to the West are often used as an “ideological dumping ground” onto which the evil core of liberal democracies can be projected. Comparing the media coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the media coverage of the US invasion of Iraq reveals how the same violently destructive behaviors are legitimized and vehemently defended if they are carried out by the West (or states within its sphere of influence), but are strongly condemned when carried out by a foreign “other.” This double standard, while easy to see, remains incomprehensible for the vast majority of Westerners, whose intellectual capacities have been completely subjugated by a delusional liberal ideology after a centuries-long brainwashing campaign that would make even the Catholic church of the Middle Ages jealous of how it has trained millions of people to so fervently believe in utter nonsense.

In August, colleges across the country opened their doors for in-person classes, only to switch to online learning within weeks after spikes in the number of COVID-19 cases. This was entirely predictable, and anyone with half a brain could have anticipated that putting thousands of students who have been cooped up for months in the same city during a pandemic was not going to end well. But it happened, and in the weeks since there has been a huge wave of outrage about the perceived failure of administrators to protect their college communities. But the problem isn’t that the administrators opened the schools back up. The problem is that they had to.

A myriad of factors has led to universities becoming dependent on student tuitions for their financial well-being, the chief of them being the drastic decrease in the amount of government funding they receive. As government revenues have fallen due to the crisis in production brought about by the “microelectronic revolution” (Robert Kurz), education spending has become the favorite target of politicians concerned with “balancing the budget.” Now, roughly half a century later, universities are almost entirely reliant on tuition payments to finance their operations.

Much attention has been paid to the mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic by university administrators. A lot of it is justifiable. After all, these administrators made the conscious decision to endanger their university communities by inviting students back to campus for in-person classes. However, this critique is incomplete. If we are serious about understanding why administrators across the country have decided to open the doors for in-person classes, then we must analyze the external factors that made this decision the only viable option. If we do not, we will remain in the eternal struggle for control over the management of the crisis (Roswitha Scholz), and will never address its underlying causes.

On July 15 Goldman Sachs reported $2.42 billion in profits during the second quarter of 2020, much higher than what was predicted by analysts. Amid a huge recession and a global pandemic, one of the world’s premier investment banks is doing just fine. How is this possible?

In response to the economic recession that began at the beginning of the year (remember the big crash happened in February, before most of the world had locked down because of the coronavirus), the Federal Reserve cut already low interest rates and flooded the market with cash, increasing its balance sheet to more than $7 trillion by buying corporate bonds, municipal securities, as well as billions of dollars each month in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. In other words, there are now trillions of dollars in cash in the economy looking for new investment.

Inevitably, this cash has ended up in the stock market, which is why a firm like Goldman Sachs is doing so well. Not only are investors putting more money into the market, driving up stock prices, investors are taking advantage of the near-zero interest rates to speculate wildly, leading to astronomical returns in the short-term.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell seemingly has no intention of raising interest rates any time soon, which means the current bubble in the stock market (and housing market) could continue to grow until 2022 or later. At the same time, the United States faces record unemployment that could extend well into 2021.

All of this is intended to “buy time” for the actual economy to recover from the dramatic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. It of course has the added effect of making Donald Trump look like some sort of economic Dr. Frankenstein, doing anything possible to bring life to a body that has been long dead. The only difference is that he himself will not have to deal with the horrific consequences of his actions.

The truth of the matter is that the economy is not coming back, at least in any substantive fashion. As Robert Kurz said in a 2010 interview, “there are no new mechanisms for resolving the crisis at the currently attained level of productivity.” With abstract labor becoming more and more superfluous, it is unclear whether we will ever be able to reach the employment levels we saw prior to the beginning of 2020.

If we do, it won’t be due to any new real accumulation, but will rather be the result of yet another financial bubble. The problem will be pushed further and further into the future until eventually everything collapses, leaving millions without the means to reproduce their daily lives. This is already the situation for hundreds of millions of people around the world. It’s only a matter of time before the monstrous problems externalized by the developed western countries come knocking at their doors “just wanting to talk.”

On June 23, a Missouri appeals court upheld and order for Johnson & Johnson to pay over $2 billion in damages to women who have developed ovarian cancer as a result of using their talcum-based baby powder, which contained asbestos. A huge settlement like this is certainly a victory for the women affected, thousands of whom still have pending cases against the pharmaceutical giant. However, we must realize that cases like this are not merely instances of bad corporate behavior, but demonstrations of the destructive nature of the capitalist valorization process.

The notion that companies “put profit over people” has become increasingly popular in the United States as a result of the rise of Bernie Sanders and his left-wing populism. While this is true in a superficial sense, it is ultimately an incomplete critique that will do very little to address the devastating impact of capitalism on human life. This statement is based on a widely-held assumption that corporations have agency and are free to do what they want. In the view of many, cases like the Johnson & Johnson case are examples of greedy executives who are just morally bankrupt and predisposed to engage in shady behavior to boost the profitability of the company.

However, the issue here is not personal behavior but an irrational social formation based on the endless self-expansion of value. The reality is that companies have no agency. Capitalism has one objective: to create surplus value through valorization. A firm that does not do this effectively will not survive. The social and environmental consequences of this process are ignored, as shown in the Johnson & Johnson specifically and in the overall degradation of human health and the environment more generally.

Teflon can found in the blood of 99.7% of Americans, surely alongside a host of other toxic chemicals. Every day, we are exposed to hundreds of tested and untested chemicals, which wreak untold havoc on our bodies’ systems. All of this, so that at the end of the day, the mass of value is larger than the day before.

While it is important not to dismiss the blatantly corrupt and sociopathic behavior of many corporate executives, who do indeed make choices that sacrifice human life for the pursuit of growing profits, it is important to realize that these choices are simply the result of the abstract forms of domination that characterize capitalist modernity. Everyone must work to survive, and for corporate executives this means increasing profitability at all costs. While nobody will shed a tear for the disgustingly rich capitalists who must destroy human life to maintain their position and the position of their firm, holding them personally responsible does little more than satisfy the vulgar desire of many on the left to see these people exterminated. As if that would change anything.

Again, I am not trying to argue that corporate executives who knowingly sell tainted products or pollute the environment should not be prosecuted. I am simply trying to say that unless this is supplemented by a deeper critique of capitalism and its structural imperatives, nothing will change.

A critique of capitalist society never fails to trigger the gag reflexes of those on the left, who inevitably vomit the word “democracy” in response. From liberal vote-shaming, to Bernie Sanders’ “democratic socialism,” to Marxist economist (?) Richard Wolff calling for the “democratization of the workplace,” more democracy seems to be the only solution the left can conjure up to fight capitalism. But what has COVID-19 taught us about democracy and its limits?

Across the country, state officials are disregarding the advice of public health experts and reopening their economies despite drastic increases in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. While Republicans like Greg Abbott in Texas and Rick DeSantis in Florida are receiving most of the attention, Democratic governors in many other states seem equally committed to endangering millions of people. The question is, why?

The most convincing answer to this question can be found in Robert Kurz’s 1993 essay Die Demokratie frisst ihre Kinder (Democracy Eats Its Children). In it, Kurz describes democracy as “the most modern type of dictatorship of a compulsive social form over the development of human needs and relationships.” According to Kurz, “the unconditional submission of human expressions of life to the logic and constraints of the market is the essential characteristic of all modern democracies.”

This certainly sheds new light on the debate about how best to balance public health and the health of the economy as states reopen. Specifically, it shows that there is no such debate at all (at least outside the studios of NPR). To capitalism, the words “public health” appear as ancient cave hieroglyphics, totally indecipherable and completely meaningless. The economy reigns supreme as the only subject whose life matters.

The compulsion to reopen the economy as quickly as possible without regard to the impact to human life goes far beyond the greed or corruption of political elites who are in the pockets of the rich. It is present in every person living under capitalism, since their well-being is tied to their ability to sell their labor power in order to buy the things they need to survive. Making society more democratic would do nothing to change this, which is why Kurz points out that “democracy is not the opposite of capitalism, but the way in which the capitalistically organized ‘people’ ‘control themselves’ according to capitalist criteria.”

To be sure, I am not suggesting that we stand by idly while power is consolidated in the hands of the rich so that more human life can be sacrificed on the altar of valorization (Robert Kurz). I am simply criticizing the tendency among leftists to conceptualize democracy as a form of governance that could potentially control capitalism. The left would do well to realize that democracy as we know it has been constituted by capitalism, for capitalism, and that we cannot reflexively turn to it for liberation. The only thing that would be “liberated” in a perfectly democratic society would be our ability to freely act out the script that has been embedded in our heads.

In the future, after “racial equality” has been declared, people of all races will be free to sell their labor power to the highest bidder, without fear of being harassed or discriminated against. The police will only arrest the “bad guys,” and only murder those who are seriously “disturbed.” Such are the grotesque dreams of the liberal imagination.

But racial equality is nothing more than a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, because “race” as a concept describes the structured, hierarchical organization of human beings based on their physical characteristics.  Race is not just a lens through which people view themselves and others that can be modified to eliminate discrimination. It is also a mode of abstract domination that structures the world we live in so that some lives “matter” more than others, structuring inequality in a way that is impossible to overcome on its own terms.

To give one example of many, the global economy presupposes a certain kind of destitution for the people of the global south, whose sole purpose, from the perspective of capitalism, is to maintain the conditions under which their resources can be extracted and transported north. Thus, their liberation entails not only a change in legislation or thought that formally recognizes them as “equal,” but a change in the structure of the global economy so that their lives are not systematically devalued.

This is nothing new. Thinkers and activists have long understood the fact that race is a construction of capitalist modernity, and that race is embedded in many of its institutions. And yet, the left clings to the concept of racial equality, as if it is somehow possible to achieve egalitarian relations between racialized people.

This is demonstrated by recent demands to “police the police,” which are so basic that even the cops can get behind them. In the eyes of some protesters, police aren’t problematic, so long as they are trained and surveilled properly so that their violence is distributed evenly among all sectors of the population. It’s as if white supremacy were just some sort of misunderstanding that can be cleared up with a two-week training program.

Instead of seeking to abolish race, these reformist positions only affirm it as a valid and positive concept that simply needs to be adjusted. Hence why they are so popular among white people, who would like nothing more than to be able to live in the exact same world while they cheer from the sidelines as non-whites try to achieve the same social and economic status as them.

What is needed is a negative critique of race, one that seeks to abolish race in all of its manifestations. This means addressing not only interpersonal race relations, but also the more structured forms of racial hierarchy that constitute the global socioeconomic order. It is not just the cops in our neighborhoods that should be questioned, but the minerals in our phones.

With this theoretical orientation, the concept of “racial equality” appears as completely meaningless. No level of diversity within corporations or the government can negate the fact that these institutions depend on a global economy that systematically writes off the lives of certain racialized peoples. That there are non-white heads of state in the global south means very little for the resources of these regions, which are practically stolen for use in the north. Notions of “racial equality” are wholly inadequate for explaining this phenomenon and many others, meaning that a new critique is necessary if we are to address these issues.

To be clear, I am not trying to advocate for some sort of “color-blind” theory that neglects race. Rather, I am advocating for a theory that attempts to negate race. Race is not something to be ignored, or affirmed, but overcome. When people are racialized, their life becomes something that can be negotiated. Overcoming this means not striking a better deal, but tearing up the contract and refusing to bargain over human life.

With almost all of the states in the country reopening at least partially this past week, there has been much debate in the media about how best to restart the economy while minimizing the risks to public health. Unfortunately, for all this talk, nobody has seriously questioned the legitimacy of the autonomous economy that makes such a ridiculous opposition possible.

On one hand, you have the liberals, who, in their typical tone of intellectual superiority, claim to be taking the pandemic seriously, and want to keep the country locked down until almighty science can wave its magical wand and make the virus disappear. On the other hand are the “reckless” conservatives, who demand that governments lift certain restrictions immediately so that people are once again “free” to sacrifice themselves on the altar of valorization (Robert Kurz). While the flavors are slightly different, the Kool-Aid they drink is ultimately the same.

Liberals assume that government spending can sustain people who are out of work for months, ignoring the fact that money cannot be continuously pulled out of thin air without serious consequences. Imagining what would happen if the US Dollar were to enter an inflation crisis is extremely scary, but every dollar printed to stimulate the economy brings the numbers in our bank accounts closer and closer to irrelevance. In addition, liberals don’t seem to realize that capitalism requires infinite growth, and that disturbing this growth by keeping people out of work for months on end will inevitably lead to an economic crisis much worse than the one we are seeing now.

Conservatives, however, are acutely aware of these dangers. As apologists for capitalism, they consider these risks to be far greater than the risks posed by opening the country back up in the midst of a deadly global pandemic. Conservative thought is, in this case, quite clearly exposed as the ideological reflection of the structural imperatives of capitalist production. The capitalist economy is unable to account for public safety, for it knows only one logic: the ceaseless expansion of value. Similarly, conservatives minimize the threat posed by the virus, and insist that all will be well if we just go back to work. Of course to them, this is true, because in an era when more and more people are becoming “superfluous” as laborers, nothing would be better for capitalism than a purging of hundreds of thousands of people. After all, what are the sick and elderly in capitalism besides collectors of entitlement checks?

So here we are, trapped yet again in a theoretical debate that leaves capitalism unquestioned. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it abundantly clear that the existence we derive from the capitalist economy is simply a byproduct of the valorization process that reigns supreme. Once capitalism is unable to turn money into more money, the whole system grinds to a halt and we are left without food, water, housing, healthcare, and whatever else we need to survive.

We are in a situation that has caused and will continue to cause massive casualties, no matter what we do. The only potential silver lining would be the development of a movement that could potentially prevent this from ever happening again. “How should we open up the economy?” isn’t the question. The question is: “How should we overcome it?”

Calls to open up the country so that people can get back to work are eerily reminiscent of the 1973 Norrmalmstorg robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, after which the hostages famously refused to testify in court against their captors, giving birth to the term “Stockholm Syndrome.” The movement to reopen the country in the midst of a global pandemic is indicative of the Stockholm Syndrome like attitude that the modern commodity subject has towards work in general, in which work is glorified, or at least viewed positively, despite the obvious negative effects it has on people and their environment. I call this condition “Chicago Syndrome.”[1]

Implying that work holds our lives hostage is not just a metaphor, it is an accurate description of a real process. Not only are we compelled to spend 40 hours or more working each week, but the character of work is such that a certain amount of time each week must be spent recovering from work. Not to mention the time we spend getting to and from work, or the work-like time we spend on the internet generating data for companies like Google and Facebook, who make their money selling our data to advertisers. Extending the comparison even further, wages seem to be nothing more than the ransom we are paid for our time and effort at work.

But besides the structural compulsion to spend so much of our time working, what else warrants this comparison of working to being held hostage at gunpoint? What made the Norrmalsmstorg robbery so remarkable was the fact that the hostages developed sympathetic feelings for their captors, who, to the outside observer, represented an obvious threat to their wellbeing. So how does work threaten our wellbeing?

This question has been discussed at length by various authors, most notably Karl Marx, but also Moishe Postone and Robert Kurz. I will not go into this in detail, but a few observations should suffice to prove my point.

First of all, work has been, and continues to be, a pretty dangerous activity in itself, especially in industrial settings where people are working in close proximity to high powered machines. Stories of workers being killed or dismembered in factories come from a not so distant past, and the situation has improved only slightly, despite some countries developing work safety standards. A simple google search would tell you that workplace deaths are still very common today.

Then there’s the fact that work’s repetitive character dulls our minds and bodies, effectively turning us into machines that perform the same task over and over again. While a university professor might scoff at this notion and insist that “every day brings new challenges,” I would simply argue that not only does their type of work (work that can be somewhat varied) represent a small percentage of all the work done globally, but that even their job is subject to becoming monotonous and repetitive, although this may not be as clear as it is in the case of a factory worker who sews the same thread on the same type of shirt for eight hours a day.

The last negative impact that I will briefly mention here is the environmental one, which might be the most serious threat to our well-being of them all. We face a situation in which it is impossible to adequately address the problems of environmental degradation and climate change without seriously disrupting the global economy by decreasing resource usage. This is related to the structural imperative for infinite growth inherent to capitalism. Without this constant growth, capitalism would break down, and the people that rely on it to survive would be up shit creek without a paddle, to say the very least. Every time we go in to work, we are contributing to the destruction of our environment. Nevertheless, we must to do this in order to sustain ourselves in capitalism. This extends to global society as a whole.

This brings me to my final point, which is an attempt to explain the fundamental reason why work is viewed so positively despite its obvious negative consequences. It seems to me that this stems from the ideological construction of work as something that is transhistorical or natural. While it is true that humans have always had to expend energy in order to sustain themselves, work as a concept is an abstraction specific to capitalist modernity (see Robert Kurz, The Substance of Capital). Nevertheless, the prevailing notion is that work is something that has always existed.

As a result, people equate work with the activities that humans have always done in order to sustain themselves. From this perspective, work is just something that “has to be done,” no matter what the consequences are on an individual or planetary level. That is why today you see hundreds of thousands of people in the US willing to put their lives, and others lives, in danger in order to go back to work. They have a serious case of Chicago Syndrome, and the only cure is creating a way of sustaining human life that doesn’t involve work.

[1] This name is somewhat arbitrary. I chose it because Chicago was a center for manufacturing crucial to the development of capitalism in America. It also plays on the infamous “Chicago School” of economists who provided the ideological basis for the kind of market fundamentalism that proudly presupposes the sort of attitude I am attempting to describe.