If it were possible...

In his article “Globalization and Political Strategy,” Fredric Jameson argued 

“in the financial realm, the aura of doom that seems to hang over globalization’s putative irreversibility confronts us with our own inability to imagine any alternative, or to conceive how ‘delinking’ from the world economy could possibly be a feasible political and economic project in the first place” (56).

Money has two functions. First, it is circulating credit. Simply put, this function replaces barter. This usefulness and resultant ubiquitousness of money gave money a new form, i.e. capital credit. This capital credit is for investment, inevitably leading to concentration of capital. This fact indicates unless our society returns to barter economy, we can't get rid of money. I only briefly touch upon this subject, but it's not what I want. Barter economy is so inconvenient.

Unless returning barter economy, capitalism will live forever. As a proletariat, what is left is to survive this late capitalist society?  Jameson argued that we do this through "a collective life" (ibid 68). But why, as Jameson mentioned, is this utopian? Well, cut to the chase. This is because some (ex) white-collar workers, proletarianized as they already have been, internalize bourgeois ideology, i.e. individualism and thus competition. There are two problems in their idea. First, ruling class is not bourgeois but capitalists. Unlike bourgeoisie, capitalists don't believe individualism. More precisely, they don't care where they are individualism or collectives. What matters is which is profitable. Since individualism lenders itself to market logic, they happen to support bourgeois ideology. If white-collar workers want to identify with ruling class, they should internalize capitalist logic, which is to live a happy life without working. Second, there is no authentic competition, but simulation thereof. An example of bailout makes a clear case. The current society doesn't operate under the logic of competition. It is only among uncritical proletariats that the logic of competition is alive.

Why are we fighting each other? Live cooperatively, will ya.

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Works Cited

Jameson, Fredric. “Globalization and Political Strategy.” <i>New Left Review</i>, vol. 4, 2000, pp. 49–68.