Masters

From the breweries of Colorado and the faculties of Harvard to the Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm, Marco D’Eramo guides us through the places where a new war has been thought out, planned and financed. The flow of funding from large corporations and wealthy individuals to institutions and political lobby groups has been rewarded by one of the largest ideological captures in modern times. It’s a real war, though it has been fought silently, without us realizing it. Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, said it best: ‘There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning’.

The victory is such that nowadays words like ‘capitalists’, ‘exploitation’ and ‘oppression’ have almost become taboos that we’re ashamed to utter. In place of the traditional aversion to the state, an unprecedented form of economic liberalism has revolutionized the dynamics of domination. Today it remains ‘easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’. The revolt from above has affected all fields – not only the economy, but also justice and education. It has twisted our ideas of society, family and ourselves. It has taken advantage of every crisis, whether natural disasters, terrorist attacks, recessions or pandemics. It has used every weapon, from the information revolution to the technology of debt. It has changed the nature of power, from discipline to control. It has learnt from the workers’ struggle, using Gramsci and Lenin against them.

Maybe the time has come for us to do the same and to learn from our opponents.