“They are the working class ‘sublated’ – improved upon and replaced. They may be as clueless as to strategy as the workers of the early nineteenth century were, but they are no longer in thrall to the system. They are enormously dissatisfied with it. They are a group whose diverse interests converge on the need to make postcapitalism happen, to force the info-tech revolution to create a new kind of economy, where as much as possible is produced free, for collaborative common use, reversing the tide of inequality. Neoliberalism can offer them only a world of stagnant growth and state-level bankruptcy: austerity until death, but with an upgraded version of the iPhone every few years. And the freedom they cherish is perennially hemmed in by the neoliberal state – from the NSA’s mass surveillance techniques to those of the Chinese internet police. Above their heads, politics in many countries has become infested by a kleptocratic mafia, whose strategy is to deliver growth at the price of suppressing freedom and expanding inequality.”

— Paul Mason (journalist), book PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future

PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future (2015)

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Paul Mason (journalist)11

British journalist 1960

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“The workers and peasants must, as quickly as possible, seize everything that was created by them over many centuries and use it for their own interests.”

Maria Nikiforova (1885–1919) Revolutionary, anarchist

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“The principal contradiction within capitalism from the outset was that between the capitalists and the workers. To keep their system going, the capitalists had constantly to step up the rate of exploitation of their workers. At the same time, European workers were gaining increasing mastery over the means of production in the factories and mines, and they were learning to work collectively in big enterprises and within their own trade union structures. If the bourgeoisie continued to deprive them of the major part of the fruits of their own labor and to oppress them socially and politically, then those two classes were set on a collision path. Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, Marx had predicted class collision would come in the form of revolution in which workers would emerge victorious. The capitalists were terribly afraid of that possibility, knowing full well that they themselves had seized power from the feudal landlord class by means of revolution.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 314.

“Today there is a new class hostile to business in general, and especially to large corporations. As a group, you find them mainly in the very large and growing public sector and in the media. They share a disinterest in personal wealth, a dislike for the free-market economy, and a conviction that society may best be improved through greater governmental participation in the country's economic life. They are the media. They are the educational system. Their dislike for the free-market economy originates in their inability to exercise much influence over it so as to produce change. In its place they would prefer a system in which there is a very large political component. This is because the new class has a great deal of influence in politics. Thus, through politics, they can exercise a direct and immediate influence on the shape of our society and the direction of national affairs.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

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“The capitalist era is passing... not quickly, but inevitably. A new economic paradigm—the Collaborative Commons—is rising in its wake that will transform our way of life. We are already witnessing the emergence of a hybrid economy, part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons. The two economic systems often work in tandem and sometimes compete. They are finding synergies along each other’s perimeters, where they can add value to one another, while benefiting themselves. At other times, they are deeply adversarial, each attempting to absorb or replace the other.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

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“It is impossible to have workers' control within a capitalist society. Capitalism, by its very nature, produces contradictions which cannot be resolved until and unless we change the system of society…The unions could only have class collaboration and compromise with the mixed economy, and those who advanced the theory of workers' control in present-day society were putting forward an intellectual, Utopian dream, idealistic, unworkable and unattainable.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

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“Corporation executives, particularly the more prominent ones, and wealthy individuals generally decry the fact that the "New Deal" has fostered a feeling of class-consciousness among workers and low-income groups. Class-consciousness, however, is not new in this country, and it is most pronounced among those groups who decry it while not recognizing the phenomenon themselves. Common social backgrounds, common business interests, and common fears, prejudices, and loyalties create among those who possess wealth and economic power a strong and clear-cut feeling of membership in an economic and social class.”

Robert Aaron Gordon (1908–1978) American economist

Source: Business Leadership in the Large Corporation (1945), p. 252, footnote 12

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Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

About the rise of the knowledge worker
1990s and later, "The Age of Social Transformation." 1994

“The physical lot of surviving workers had notably improved, with unemployment insurance, social security, and the new health services, while their children's school education was assured by the government-operated schools: in addition, they had, for intellectual or emotional stimulus and diversion, the radio and the television. But the work itself was no longer as various, as interesting, or as sustaining to the personality…”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Technical Liberation
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

“Even the word “socialism” itself was originally applied to the free communist communities which were so common in America in the nineteenth century.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

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“Our country is not flourishing. The enormous creative and spiritual potential of our nations is not being used sensibly. Entire branches of industry are producing goods that are of no interest to anyone, while we are lacking the things we need. A state which calls itself a workers' state humiliates and exploits workers. Our obsolete economy is wasting the little energy we have available.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

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Paul Mason (journalist)11

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