To put it bluntly: now that it is clear that the “structural forces” are unlikely to produce something to our liking, all that remains is the prospect of imagining real alternatives. David Graeber
This remark by D. Graeber sums up the issue very well: there is nothing good to expect for the future of the capitalist system but rather a more or less rapid collapse of all the planet’s ecosystems accompanied by an endless debasement of our human reality.
However, a large number of people, although most likely well-intentioned, want to continue to believe that the political program of this or that party or a set of reforms carried out by who knows who, could change the course of things, while remaining, for the most part, in the dynamics of these “structural forces” whose nature they ignore or want to ignore. This will not happen and nothing will really change as long as the “market” is able to impose its logic and determine the internal mechanisms of the social structure.
Getting out of capitalism cannot be done with various little arrangements, whether those proposed by the parties or those consisting in believing that it would be enough to create one’s own little alternative world and that this would constitute an outside. This requires a complete reversal of all the categories on which this ideology is based: the pyramidal system of hierarchies, that is to say a power exercised from the top down and in all areas – work and the debased forms into which this religion has transformed it – its stunted conception of “value” reduced to the accumulation of capital, to money and at the expense of everything that really matters in life. In short, to completely extract oneself from Political Economy.
Beyond the reformist illusions, which have nevertheless repeatedly demonstrated their fictitious nature, we can sense that another problem also arises. It is fear, a fear with multiple faces, often justified by the materiality to which a large section of the population remains subject. But what can we say about the generalized fear, that of having to give up certain elements of comfort that everyone knows are the source of many major nuisances but which have, imperceptibly, become habits. There is then a kind of unspeakable moment when giving up one’s habits and various conveniences becomes more difficult to envisage than giving up a future for humanity. Shocking, isn’t it? But of course, we refuse to consider things from this angle that is too guilt-inducing, we avoid thinking about it and then we return to the reasonable proposals of this or that party that wants to make us believe that we could essentially keep our habits while putting an end to a few injustices that are too glaring, too visible. And the range is wide. The main obstacle to real alternatives then lies within ourselves, within the limits of what we are willing to hear and recognize.
In this context, it therefore does not seem useless to look at our habits, at their origin, at what they imply and reveal about what we are in separation and what we really want to find. Because to change this world, we cannot ignore the place that its very particular order occupies in ourselves and which has taken its ease there by banishing the “doing together”.
