"The only thing 'free' about so-called free time is that it doesn't cost the boss anything. Free time is mostly devoted to getting ready for work, going to work, returning from work, and recovering from work. Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor, as a factor of production, not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace, but assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair. Coal and steel don't do that. Lathes and typewriters don't do that."

[...] being "ethical" is an additional selling point to increase their price. In the free market, selling price is not determined by the material costs of producing the item, but by the highest price consumers will pay. Value is not an inherent characteristic--even petroleum is only valuable inside of a certain social framework. The social construction of "sustainable" and "natural" as desirable characteristics serves to create a new immaterial value that can sell items at higher prices even during an economic downturn--utilizing consumers' good intentions to perpetuate the system that gave rise to the problems in the first place. So long as capitalism remains the law of the land, any actual benefit to chickens or Brazilian coffee harvesters can only last as long as it is profitable.

What is capital, really? Once you strip away the superstitions that make it seem like a force of nature, it's essentially a social construct that enables some people to amass power. Without the notion of private property, which is only "real" insofar as everyone abides by it, material resources couldn't function as capital. In this regard, property rights serve the same purpose that the notion of divine right of kings used to: both form the foundation of systems assigning sovereignty. Some people believe passionately in property rights even as those rights are used to strip them of any influence in society. It could be said that these people are under the spell of property.

When the "machines" were first introduced, the supervisor told us that whoever had the best efficiency rating each week would get a paid day off. It's hard to convey how profoundly this threatened our culture of solidarity. In the vines, everyone moved at more or less the same pace. The faster workers slowed down to help the slower ones with their rows, and everyone emerged almost simultaneously, their creates full of tomatoes. With the threat of being sent back to Mexico hanging in the air, the last thing anyone wanted was to draw attention to himself by standing out as faster or slower than the rest.

The bankers who set out to cash in by ripping off homebuyers were simply obeying the imperatives of financial capitalism--those who didn't were replaced by less scrupulous competitors. The same goes for the homebuyers who took out loans beyond their means and the insurers whose guarantees only made things worse. All of them were acting rationally within the capitalist framework. The problem was that the framework itself is senseless.

[...] illegal capitalists are no different from their legal counterparts. If General Motors had no legal system through which to enforce patent rights, they would surely take matters into their own hands, or be supplanted by a company that would. The legal apparatus of the state is like a vast, monopolized version of the same structures used by the mafia. The black market isn't necessarily any more violent than the rest of the economy: what are drive-by shootings next to the prison-industrial complex? The same violence that shocks us in criminals is invisible in society at large because it is ubiquitous and constant.

[...] When the International Monetary Fund forces austerity measures on a country, it's not like there's less food, housing, or education to go around than before--the problem is that the current economic system can't distribute access to these according to human need. The same goes for famines that plague one nation while another pays farmers subsidies not to grow crops: the means exist to eradicate famine once and for all, but they will never be used for this so long as resources flow according to the laws of profit.

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and allures us, it is the desire to fall against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

[...] The reforms sought by the Sierra Club would not fundamentally change how our society relates to the environment any more than the reforms called for by the Human Society would alter the position of animals relative to human beings. Reforms such as these are chiefly aimed at easing the consciences of middle-class liberals for whom being socially responsible is a consumer option like any other.

[...] Everyone would have his own property, his own investments--everyone would be a capitalist. We took out loans to get degrees for jobs that didn't exist, took on mortgages we couldn't afford, racked up credit card bills pretending that we, too, were middle class.

Now it's clear there's no room for us at the top. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme that has run out of ways to expand. People are rioting in Greece, striking in Quebec, overthrowing governments in North Africa. Revolt is ricocheting back and forth across the world as the effects of the recession sink in. This wave of uprisings will reach the US last of all, but it's on its way. The ruling order will seem unshakable until the day before it collapses.