by
Max Haiven
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[...] Extractive industries are, by definition, temporary. When the resource being exploited runs out, or when it proves no longer profitable to continue the exploitation, the man camp is shuttered and the local community is left with a radically transformed economic and social landscape: a wasteland or sacrifice which has ceased to be of use to the circuits of global capitalism.
[...] the elevation of capitalists [...] to the most prestigious positions in the arts or government solidifies the illusion that they represent the cream of humanity. [...] anything good or whole or real about us is dependent on them and their intentional or unintentional largesse. [...] For all their individual creativity the system that enriched and empowered this tiny minority was actually the enemy of progress because it delimited the freedom and potential of the vast majority of workers. [...]
last sentence - what marxism demonstrates
At the very core of the investor ethos at the core of financialization is a dead zone because it is predicated on a kind of obscuration of its own ontological truth: the investor-self imagines that its wealth, success, and autonomy comes [...] from individual competition, self-maximization, perseverance, and intelligence. In fact, their (longed-for) wealth and security is merely the unfairly distributed (and unfairly wrought) wealth of the society of which they are a part, but whose implications and responsibilities they loathe. In other words, the investor, whether real or imagined, is a taker who resentfully thinks themselves a giver.
[...] From the false freedom of the "gig economy to the sabotaged charity of subprime and microfinance loans, capitalism's contemporary logic is to, in a profoundly destructive way, make each and every human into not only a source of exploitable labor power but a small-time agent of capitalist accumulation. That most of us will fail is irrelevant: we will be told our failure is our own fault, or sold a fantasy that our failure is the result of Others who cheated in the game (migrants, minorities, "special interests").
[...] revenge fantasy may ironically be the only way to maintain one's humanity in a situation of relentless dehumanization. To dream of revenge is, in part, to hold fast to the knowledge that what you love has value in a world where it is made worthless. [...]