*“History invariably transforms an era that is ending into a travesty of itself.” - René Ménil (October 1941) [1]*
WE FOUND the corpse of Capitalist Realism. Rona-riddled, the initials “ACAB” carved in its forehead. It was discovered in the burnt shell of a Minneapolis police station. On discovery it opened its eyes and stood up and told us to go back to work. We refused. It reached for us, moaning a voracious hunger of unholy sadism, unquenchable violence, an unknowable cosmic horror, stinking of gout and fresh teargas. It lunged. But without its guns, its shields, its armies of cops, it was helpless. *Although it still controlled the housing and food supply. *We grabbed it by its soiled Armani collar, nailed its hands to the wall, and spat in its face. We demanded it tell us everything it knew. How we got here. How we get out. The corpse groaned with petulant starvation. Then, relenting, it told us everything. *The Plague* *“Those who lead the country into the abyss / Call ruling too difficult / For ordinary men.” - Bertolt Brecht [2]* IN MARCH came the plague, Covid-19. By the time you read this, the pandemic and the economic crisis it triggered and exacerbated (but did not cause), will have raged for months. We find ourselves in a new terrain, a new world -- but one fundamentally the product of the world that existed before. Millions of us were trapped in our houses, trailers, and apartments. Hundreds of thousands of unhoused in the US alone were left exposed to the new plaguelands. Millions of us trudged to factories, warehouses, hospitals, and grocery stores to be exposed to the plague. Millions of us lost our jobs in an economic crisis that may rival the Great Depression. With capital determined to maintain, if not accelerate, rates of surplus value extraction -- in contradiction to needed public health policies -- the conflict between use and exchange value was demystified for countless workers. Suddenly exposed, small but significant layers of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie turned fascist, imbuing their death cult with meaning, redirecting anger outward, forcing us back to increasingly precarious, deadly, and dangerous labors. https://www.locustreview.com/editorial/labor-under-an-alien-sky -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#618): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/618 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76312328/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
