[...] Capitalism so saturates everyday life, particularly in the global North, that even many who actively oppose its power reproduce its hegemony in many of the acts necessary for merely being in the world. It determines the ways and means through which we live, and consequently, we live it into being. [...]

Of course the will to change will be a key component of the tools for change, but there are also structural, historical, and contingent forces at work that militate against a naive plan to "build a dream" that does not emerge from and build upon the world in which we live. We cannot start with an idealized Utopia at the end of history and work backward to figure out how we get there. History is filled with evidence of the failures of utopianism, whether it takes the macro-form of the Bolshevik revolution, or the micro-form of escapist "international communities." Mark and Engels' critique of utopian socialists, those who believe history can be readily broken or dismissed, still stands. We must begin from where we are.