Our unwillingness to envision how to transform our reality might simply reflect capitalism’s influence echoing within us. It’s time to find worth beyond merely acquiring a new iPhone or pair of jeans.
We stand on the edge of multiple man-made disasters that humanity may barely survive. There is a way forward, but recognizing it—and understanding its destination—will require a challenging leap of imagination, particularly for many in the West. This journey demands shedding many identities we have long held dear and confronting the uncomfortable truth that some of our most prized values are, in fact, damaging.
This is no small challenge.
I recall a question posed back in 2014 by Sunny Hundal, once a leading figure of centrist liberalism, to those questioning the status quo. On his widely read Liberal Conspiracy blog, he asked:
If you want to replace the current system of capitalism with something else, who is going to make your jeans, iPhones and run Twitter?
Interestingly, Hundal subsequently closed down his blog and became a spokesperson for the corporate energy industry.
Yet, this question itself reveals how dated liberal arguments from just over a decade ago sound today—almost as if glimpsing into the Victorian era.
Twitter, now rebranded as X, is no longer managed by “Jack,” a genial figure, but by Elon Musk, a one-time trillionaire who aims to colonize space through his private rocket ventures. Meanwhile, Musk advocates for expelling Muslims and their “liberal” supporters from the West to prevent a civil war he seems eager to provoke.
Likewise, liberals’ enthusiasm for mobile devices has diminished since 2014, when the iPhone symbolized humankind’s technological triumph. Today, many want young people shielded from screens that often starkly reveal how politicians—both liberal and conservative—have colluded in genocide and are determined to wreck the planet.
As for jeans, liberals probably still find it difficult to picture a comfortable existence without their beloved 501s.
Western liberals struggle to accept that jeans or iPhones could be produced outside capitalist frameworks, or to entertain that owning multiple pairs of jeans and replacing your iPhone biennially might not be the planet’s wisest resource use.
Crumbs from the table
The reality is that liberal democracy is not an intrinsic or permanent characteristic of the “West.” Its existence is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
For roughly a century, the West’s democratic systems have been limited—granting voting rights, but within tightly controlled parameters: voters usually choose between two capitalist parties with varying degrees of extremity, following years of exposure to narratives crafted by capitalism’s principal beneficiaries—the billionaire elite controlling mass media.
Furthermore, this version of “democracy” has functioned primarily at home. Colonial exploitation—through subjugation and resource extraction in the Global South—has persisted unabated.
During the initial “post-colonial” period, compliant local dictatorships served Western interests. Over the last 25 years, those tactics degraded further into open threats, invasions, and plunder against states unwilling to comply swiftly with Western demands.
As resource scarcity intensifies, those in power have opted to abandon even the war rules they established after World War II, reverting to a law-of-the-jungle approach.
Western “democracy” did not arise from cultural tradition but from timely conditions when monarchs gave way to merchants and entrepreneurs, who proved even more adept at plunder.
A growing middle class, subsisting on leftovers, was indoctrinated into liberal ideals rationalizing vast wealth disparities as a function of meritocracy.
The inherent tensions in liberalism culminated in a fleeting 20th-century experiment: granting the working class and women symbolic votes to elect loyal ruling-class proxies, in exchange for embracing consumerism.
However, as decline sets in, these contradictions become increasingly unmanageable. With dwindling surpluses, the liberal values that “democratic elites” rhetorically championed have faded.
Craving power
The ruling elite recognizes the shifting tide. Earth’s resources are shrinking. Capitalism’s relentless demand for consumption accelerates environmental destruction, climate chaos, and species extinction jeopardizing a livable planet.
Yet, like addicts, the billionaire class cannot relinquish the very system fueling their wealth and influence. They justify their hold by warning that if they relent, others—led by China—will seize control. Their solace lies in believing their wealth provides a temporary shield from impending collapse.
For the rest of us, hope lies in believing that our numerical majority can prevail.
History cautions otherwise. Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with harsh oppression—supported by the West—until toppled when political winds shifted. So too with Muammar Gaddafi and countless other autocrats.
Acknowledging oppression is not synonymous with liberation; true freedom demands leadership, organization, collective determination, and a vision for a better future.
Consequently, billionaires make it as challenging as possible for leaders to arise, for alternative futures to be imagined, and for people to mobilize. Figures like Jeremy Corbyn face vilification, while student activism, Extinction Rebellion, or Palestine Actions are criminalized.
From the Guardian and BBC to the Mail, Telegraph, New York Times, and Fox News, media outlets inundate minds with propaganda glorifying jeans and iPhones, persuading us to continue idolizing capitalism even as its foundations crumble.
Victims of abuse
Two decades ago, eco-philosopher Derrick Jensen vividly described how people come to identify with their oppressors, likening it to victims of ongoing domestic abuse.
If your experience is that food comes from the grocery store and your water comes from a tap, you will defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on it.
If on the other hand, your experience is that the water comes from a stream … and that your food comes from a land base, you will defend to the death that stream and that land base because your life depends on it.
We’ve got messed up and mixed up in this system, where our lives actually depend on the system that is exploiting us.
We might add that this very system is now actively killing us.
Billionaires face a growing threat: North America and Europe are literally and figuratively burning, and we—the many—are beginning to wake up. We witness genocide and wildfires on the very iPhones once designed to keep us hooked.
Could it be that survival depends on reconnecting with streams, trees, and soil rather than factories, superstores, and Elon Musk?
Like Saddam Hussein, billionaires wield coercive power. They maintain influence through media distracting us with “entertainment” that fosters allegiance to factories and superstores (even if Musk’s appeal wanes).
When that fails, they rely on police and military force.
Technology—encompassing weaponry, surveillance, and AI—is increasingly harnessed for elite advantage. The “killer robot dogs” from dystopian films are not fiction but reality. Hollywood’s futuristic tales are grim forecasts rather than mere fantasy.
Time of monsters
If the creed of reckless individualism is revealed as both empty and self-destructive, where might the disenchanted fans of iPhone and Twitter/X turn?
Most likely, toward the opposite: collective ideologies.
If selfishness leads only to devastation, then cooperation and solidarity will gain appeal. Salvation lies not in gadgets or jeans but in reviving commons—shared resources and the public good.
Italian intellectual Antonio Gramsci famously described our current moment in 1930: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek further characterized these “morbid symptoms” as a “time of monsters.” Today’s monsters are neither mythic beasts nor historical dictators but figures like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos—icons of a dying form of Western capitalism, who possess unparalleled access to shape our minds and those of future generations.
The gravest risk is that, as climate chaos worsens, Gramsci’s envisioned new world never comes to life. It may be stillborn, with crucial evidence arriving too late to spur meaningful change.
Yet, if a portion of humanity survives coming decades, the society we build will bear little resemblance to the one that once revered jeans and iPhones.
It will draw on long-standing traditions prioritizing community over individualism, collaboration over competition, and mutual support over private ownership—the very ideals capitalism seeks to destroy.
Nation-states—the cradle of capitalism—will need dismantling. Organized religions competing over divine supremacy must give way to ancient spiritualities rooted in coexistence with nature rather than domination.
If these prospects seem far-fetched, consider this: your resistance may simply be capitalism’s voice within you. Perhaps the problem is your inability to imagine anything beyond merely acquiring another iPhone or pair of jeans.
Original article: www.jonathan-cook.net
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