Not In Kansas Anymore.

 

To suggest that there has been an overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic may be the understatement of the century. The spark that began as a rational fear of disease has been fanned into flames of widespread panic which have raged through state and civil institutions. The spectacle of the US election aside (or perhaps a case in point), it is fair to say that democracy no longer exists. The rule of law has been suspended. A ‘state of emergency’ persists throughout much of the world and will likely remain indefinitely. All of this has been normalised under cover of a declared medical emergency, and like some modern Milgram experiment, the masses have fallen into line. Anyone who dares to even question the new normal - the constant hand sanitizing; the ubiquitous temperature taking; the social distancing; the contact tracing - is now perceived as a threat to society.

If there’s an elephant in the room it’s probably the fact that there seems to be no pandemic to speak of. Regardless of the overblown case reporting there is no significant spike in the overall number of deaths compared to a normal flu season. Covid 19 manifests as a mild flu in the majority of people who get sick from it, while presenting no symptoms at all in most people, it scarcely impacts children, and according to a growing number of physicians it can be successfully treated with inexpensive and readily available medications such as vitamins D, C and zinc. So what on earth is going on? Why are plexiglass screens popping up in front of every teller and checkout? Why the mask mandates and tracing apps? Why have schools and businesses been forced to close? Why has the global economy been brought to a standstill? Why are people being locked in their homes? Why are the elderly being left to die alone?

This whole thing needs to be unpacked, but where to even begin? What is a reasonable point of entry into this horror story? What are the foundational facts needed to present a fair and balanced assessment? What assumptions, if any, do we need to start with?

Perhaps we could just dive right into the Great Reset, a proposal put forward by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to rebuild the global economy 'sustainably' following the COVID-19 pandemic, which you can read all about here. 

But how do we begin to talk about resetting the global economy without at least a perfunctory introduction to the work of Karl Marx, surely one of if not the most important political economist of the modern era? You should have learned about him in school.

Dare we frame this story without at least a minimal understanding of the cult of technocracy, the ideology forged in the embers of the Great Depression which sought to remake the world in a more resilient fashion, leaving out the corruptible human element from decision making processes? This may seem of esoteric interest only, but when novels like 1984 and Brave New World begin to read more like instruction manuals than fiction, one has to wonder.

Can we even hope to grasp the full extent of our current situation without understanding the fragile nature of the Post WWII economy and how the petrodollar system came to effectively replace the gold standard? Probably something more of interest to budding political economists, but again, important fundamentals.

Is it essential to know who John D Rockefeller was; to know about his history of philanthropy and ties to the pharmaceutical industry, or that the very ground on which the United Nations stands was donated by him and his family? (Half a century later the building of the World Trade Centre would be financed by his grandsons Nelson and David, but surely I digress…) Or how David Rockefeller, aided and abetted by his protégé Maurice Strong, brought the climate agenda front and centre in the 1970s in order to wrest control of the world's natural resources from sovereign governments and indigenous peoples into the hands of corporate-owned non-government organisations? Or should all of this be filed away under 'conspiracy theory'?

Would it be useful to understand the perverse creed of transhumanism, where its agenda intersects with all of the above, and what radical cultural shift has led to puberty blockers now being commonly prescribed to mentally disordered children? Or why the words biological reality can no longer be spoken in polite company?

All of these are potential chapters of a book which I simply don’t have the time or energy to write. So for our present purposes can we just agree that when you live under a system that rewards wealth and power and prioritises private profit over human need, and distribute that out across 7 billion people, you end up with the worst aberrations the human species can produce at the apex of power? We are ruled over by psychopaths. If that is too much for you to take in, I suggest you leave off here and go back to your favourite television news channel and await further programming. Hint: it doesn't matter which channel. When six mega corporations own all of the news outlets, IT'S ALL FAKE NEWS.

Nothing is as it seems. The world as we knew it was never as it seemed anyway. But now there has been a fundamental change. 

To put this into historical context, to speak of the modern era is to speak of a distinct historical period with its own distinctive economic and social characteristics. Chief among these is a system of property relations controlled by markets, which exist within agreed institutional frameworks backed by political authority. “Private property is the golden calf of capitalism and unregulated capitalism is the bible of the ruling class.” writes Bernd Hamm. A succinct observation, but I feel the metaphor needs to be extended somewhat, for it seems to me that the golden calf, once worshipped, is now being sacrificed.

Marx’s theoretical framework is fundamental to understanding our current situation. Marx was absolutely correct when he said that the crises of capitalist production are due to under-consumption, ie, production outstripping demand. In a nutshell, continuing to produce more and more while paying workers less and less results in workers not being able to afford to buy the goods they produce. Marx describes this as an internal contradiction; A contradiction embedded in the very DNA of the capitalist system.

Let's not fool ourselves that the ruling class haven't studied history as well, and don't know what fate awaits them if capitalism is allowed to follow its ordained path. Which is why I suggest they have chosen to bring the revolution to the toiling masses, before we bring it to them.

The current global recession may have been inevitable, but the (mis)management of the pandemic has been a wrecking ball. The dire situation in which we now find ourselves presents a "narrow window of opportunity", according to Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the WEF, in which to "reflect, reimagine, and reset our world". It all sounds quite noble and grand, until you realise this cosplaying sociopath is actually calling for the complete annihilation of national economies - economies which have still not recovered from the 2008 global capitalist crisis. The BoE is calling this the biggest recession since 1706. That's not just a 300 year credit bubble, but the entire capitalist enterprise. The entire modern era. Capitalism, liberalism, democracy, all gone in one fell swoop. And it's never coming back - they have made certain of it.

What we are seeing today is a shift away from production based economies, which you can read all about in the WEF’s own literature. What is proposed by the resetters under the rubric of 'building back better' is not capitalism; it is a different system of social and economic organisation altogether. A 'sharing economy' in the new parlance - a system of energy inputs and outputs perfectly balanced thanks to the modern marvels of the blockchain and the Internet of Things/Internet of Bodies. The defining features of capitalism - competitive markets, a price system, private property and the recognition of property rights, voluntary exchange and wage labor - are conspicuously absent from this new economy, along with any hope of upward mobility. In real language this is TECHNOCRACY.

This is a paradigm shift.

Marx was right when he predicted that capitalism would end because of its own internal contradictions. He was naive to think it would necessarily end due to the revolutionary struggle of the working class. The ruling class have other options, and the system they intend to foist on us next will be more efficient, more resilient, and more brutal than anything John D Rockefeller could have conceived of in his wildest fantasies.

I was asked by a comrade recently why I labour the point that we are no longer living under capitalism. To this I can only answer, how are we supposed to mount an effective counter attack when we aren't aware that the terrain has changed? Whistling in the dark and pissing into the wind at the same time takes no special talent. We need to address our changing material conditions and update our theoretical framework, or we risk becoming irrelevant. What we are seeing is not just business as usual. Not just the latest power grab; the latest upward redistribution of wealth to the 1%. Nor is it ‘just’ fascism, ie capitalism in crisis mode. What we are seeing, or rather failing to see, is so much more than this. In order to fully understand, we need to look past the theatrics and examine the mechanics.

The virus is theatre. Just like climate change was theatre. 'Climate change' is a deliberately meaningless buzzword invented to serve elite interests. Blaming all of our problems on an invisible gas which makes up 0.04% of the atmosphere does nothing to address any of the serious environmental issues we face. Rather the proposed link between atmospheric warming and 'greenhouse' gases acts as a diversion from issues which the elites have no intention of addressing. Deforestation is something we desperately need to take action on. Clearing millions of acres to make way for solar farms clearly misses the point. Dumping billions of tonnes of plastic and chemical waste into the oceans each year poses a serious danger to marine ecosystems and ultimately the entire food chain, but this pales next to current plans by multinational conglomerates to begin strip-mining the ocean floor. The destruction of aquifers through horizontal drilling puts our precious water supply under continual threat and is allowed to go ahead because natural gas is considered a clean fuel? Blow me. Modern industrial farming practices, GMO foods and fertilizers have a devastating impact on biodiversity, but are integral to supply chain management under ‘green capitalism’. I could go on and on. 

But while the climate change industry has been a boon for certain elite interests, it failed the ultimate test - the total transformation of society. Despite all the expert scientists prophesying certain extinction within decades, the looming threat of a climate apocalypse was still not enough to justify the changes  we've seen in recent months. They needed something more tangible. They needed to be able to show the dead bodies piling up. At least on TV. Enter covid-19 - Something we could all be REALLY scared of.

And just like that, governments acted in perfect synchronicity, on the advice of 'expert panels' and 'top scientists', to put the brakes on national economies; economies with no more levers left to pull. 25% of small businesses have now closed, most never to reopen, while retail and tech giants have swept up their market share posting record profits. In the last eight months Jeff Bezos has added $70 billion to his personal wealth, while Elon Musk has pocketed a cool $110 billion. Small change compared to what  Bill Gates stands to make from a vaccine which will likely be required by everyone, every year, for life. 

This a corporate coup d'etat. We are never going back to 'normal'.

"Build back better", they keep repeating. As if they have any intention of rebuilding the pillars of liberal democracy which they just took the axe to. Privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of peaceful assembly etc. Nope. If you comply with the new rules they might issue you a "freedom passport" to take your dog for a walk. So long as your shots are up to date and your social credit is good you might even get to keep your pension or your disability payment. But probably not your house.

A few are talking about it. There are vague murmurings from the conservative and libertarian camps warning us about this diabolical plot by the elites to install world socialism. Because, well because anything they don't like is socialism, right? Because they have never studied history or political science, in fact most of them sound like they have never read a book. They just repeat what they hear from their favourite right wing pundits. Remember those six corporations?

No, the Great Reset is not about socialism. Would that that were the case. The oligarchs want to create a permanent rentier class. They and their kind will own ALL while the rest of us own nothing. This is fundamentally different from socialism which seeks the elimination of private property and restoration of the commons. In the new economy, everything will be rented. No one needs to sleep all the time. Why own a bed when you can rent or share one? Why own a car or a bicycle when you can pool a ride in a self driving taxi cab? You get the idea.  

Some are calling it stakeholder capitalism, but this too is inaccurate. A more accurate term would be techno-feudalism. Fiat currency has outlived its usefulness. Capital markets are being replaced by impact markets which will trade in human misery while biometric sensors track our every move. Did you ever wonder why they call it the world wide web? If it's not obvious by now why they are in such a rush to roll out 5G, just read/watch any dystopian sci-fi made in the last fifty years.

This is the world the elites are creating for us right now. The old one is gone, and is not coming back. One way or another we are going forward. 

But where to?