[The capitalist] bigwigs assembling at their various summits [i.e. the G8, G20, and Climate Change Conferences that took place between 2004-2008] were probably more aware than we were that the entire system – based on a very old-fashioned alliance of military and financial power typical of the latter days of capitalist empires – was being held together with tape and string. They were less concerned to save the system, than to ensure that there remained no plausible alternative in anyone’s mind so that, when the moment of collapse did come, they would be the only one’s offering solutions. Not that since the great financial collapse of 2008, solutions have been particularly forthcoming. But at least there is no way to deny now that a fundamental problem does exist. The order that existed between 2004 and 2008—even if it has managed to achieve a kind of grudging acquiescence in critical quarters of the world—is never coming back. It simply wasn’t viable.

These essays then are the product of a confused interregnum. It was a time when it was very difficult to find signs of hope. If there is a single theme in this collection of essays, then, it is that they all start out from some aspect of the period that seems particularly bleak, depressing, what appeared to be some failure, stumbling block, countervailing force, foolishness of the global anticapitalist movement, and to try to recuperate something, some hidden aspect we usually don’t notice, some angle from which the same apparently desolate landscape might look entirely different.

Notes

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