Failure to Cope "Under Capitalism"
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Highlights
- It may be the case that many personal infirmities can only be fully repaired in a repaired world, but this does not obviate the need to pull ourselves together as best we can in this broken one. Any serious attempt to topple capitalism would require more discipline, more courage, more endurance, more capability, not
- But in fact there is no one to adjudicate between you and capital, no one to say yes, that really is too much, let’s reassign this project. There is no political program that will release you from the necessity of doing more than you should have to or feel capable of doing, in politics as in every other part of life. If you think seriously about the good life and pursue it, you will probably fail in ways large and small.
- And of course, there are more sinister possibilities than learned helplessness. Since under capitalism no one is really responsible for their actions, since we’d all be making better choices if the referees would just level the playing field, you can’t be blamed if you build weapons for Raytheon or AI for Facebook or write vacuous propaganda for the Washington Post, or climb to the top by betraying others . You’re not cravenly protecting your own interests at the expense of principle, you’re just participating in society somewhat. The totalizing nature of capital’s domination simultaneously excuses us both from revolutionary action and from an attempt at a life with honor within it.
- correct. I think it’s possible that for many, considering the shape of your life and then living it with vigor is so difficult because it cannot be externally validated. Unlike education and work, it offers no socially obvious meritocratic path. The moments where, like sourdough, it proves, are largely invisible — in cooking, in walking, corresponding with a friend, in chatting with a neighbor or registering to give blood.
- And there is no one who can tell you that you did it right. But this is not the condition of life under capitalism, this is life itself. And it is a sad irony that though the fear of life may be produced by class imperatives within capitalism, the impulse to restrict it to a problem of capitalism is itself part of the same fearful rejection of the task of living.
- If you think seriously about the good life and pursue it, you will probably fail in ways large and small. But an imperfect struggle to live well and love a world badly in need of repair is better than staying still because things are terrible, because you might look like a loser in the meritocratic game, because it’s easier.
- This is your life. You do not have time to wait for the revolution to begin living it. You will always be able to find someone to give you permission not to live it. But no one is coming along to live it for you.