Order the spring issue here

capitalism

The Chinese dream: "Our time has come."

Kevin Rudd: The Avoidable War. The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China

USA / CHINA: Is the current US-China systemic divide unbridgeable? According to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: "Our relationship with China will be competitive when it has to, cooperative when it can, and hostile when it has to." On the other hand, China is now led by a man who, according to book author Kevin Rudd, has considerable intellectual resources – under his leadership, China has grown into a superpower.

A political manifesto

Yavor Tarinski: Concepts for Democratic and Ecological Society,

DIRECT DEMOCRACY: We need a new social system with commons and decline. And it is possible to achieve it. We have enough experience and knowledge from previous times. It's just a matter of getting started, writes Yavor Tarinski in a recent debate book.

An incantation against neo-fascism

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen: Late Capitalism Fascism

CAPITALISM: The fight is not now about the right not to be exploited, but the right to be allowed to participate? There is much that is valuable in Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen's short book about the possible return of fascism in today's world – but it is weak in terms of empirical documentation.

The iron grip of power on the population

Søren Mau: SILENT FORCE – a Marxist study of the economic power of capitalism

CAPITALISM: The economic sphere, just like the political sphere, is a set of social relations within the domination system – something the author Søren Mau addresses.

The Internet is designed to reinforce social contradictions

Mike Watson: The Memeing of Mark Fisher. How the Frankfurt School Foresaw Capitalist Realism and What To Do About It

SOCIAL MEDIA: Mike Watson compares internet lefties to selfie makers creating awareness around themselves.

The capitalist world of images

Kevin Coleman, Daniel James: Capitalism and the Camera: Essays on Photography and Extraction

PHOTO: Is it possible that anti-capitalist expressions are reduced to insignificant gestures and rather become symbols of the immediate consumption of social media?

The authoritarian state capitalism

Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg: The silent conquest. How China is undermining Western democracies and reorganizing the world

CHINAIt is known that China under Xi Jinping has developed in an autocratic direction. The authors show how the effect has spread in the rest of the world.

Up from the trenches

Nina FitzPatrick: Tesla's Curse

Radiation: Do the researchers in the novel find the ultimate proof that parts of modern technology are destroying human neurological biology?

To look at the present as the past of the future

ACCELERATION: We have interviewed the thinker Armen Avanessian about "accelerationism" and the possibility of a new political thinking.

What is accelerationism?

Armenian Avanessian: Acceleration (anthology, excerpt)

BOOK EXCERPT: No serious policy in our time can remain defensive if it is to win. The reader is encouraged to see the possibilities for a liberated and solidary future in the extension of the capitalist-driven development.

A world that is subtle, beautiful, ugly and strange

Chris Kraus: Where art belongs

ART: Does the artist today work constantly burdened by networking, communication and visibility, without producing anything truly created? Chris Kraus gives his take on what an artistic work should be.

A liberal left?

Accelerationism: Several thinkers believe it is possible for what they call a rather complacent left to carve out a better and freer future through capitalism and technology.

Coronary vaccines: science and myths

CHRONICLE: Science has made rapid progress in producing a vaccine against Covid-19. But can vaccine programs be based on active consent and autonomous choice by citizens? And does scientific rationality now go hand in hand with creative forms of irrationality?

Why there is so much dissatisfaction in the West, and what we can do about it

Paul Collier: The future of capitalism. A manifesto of social capitalism

: Professor Paul Collier is a heavyweight. He is often mentioned in the same category as the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs and was once highlighted as one of the heroes of the then Minister for Development Aid Erik Solheim.

David Graeber (1961–2020)

Obituary:: David Graeber died recently. MODERN TIMES chooses for once to bring an obituary – here over the anarchist who wanted to change our usual notions of what is possible and impossible, right and wrong, normal and strange.

«The disciplinary community was born out of the great plague epidemics»

Achilles the Dead: brutalism

CONTROL: Today, millions of racialized bodies have been made redundant in relation to the metabolism of capital and are being written into a digitally mediated nexus of exclusion, control and destruction technologies. MODERN TIMES here goes into the topic via author Achille Mbembe in three articles.