(Untitled)

[interpolitia]

I was up in London the other day, for a completely unrelated business (checking out the Photographers Gallery's new site off Oxford Street), but I found myself gravitating towards the City protest. London is a strange place on a day like that - there's the slightly uncomfortable sense that something important/big is happening, given off not so much

Comments

[anonymous]

You mention a problem with cultural decentralisation - that it's possible to become an island by associating onesself explicitly with a particular genre. But isn't that where the internet comes in? Isn't that the point of globalisation? I'm not sure I'd want to promote any sense of "communal experience." The notion sounds so collectivist as to be sordid. The point of globalisation - fuck - the point of capitalism - is that a wealth of diversity and a freedom to choose will allow individuals to pursue their own happiness as they see fit within the system.

The greatest irony, then, is that these socialists and anarchists who seem to believe that they fight for something more universal and more humane exist in niches, divided by differing worldviews and lack of communal experience which a (decreasingly) capitalist economy allows them. Their ability to destroy the system has been neutered by their freedom. They are not oppressed; they are not forced together. Could there be more definitive proof that Marx was wrong? Despite what protesters may tell you, there has been no dichotomisation between bankers and workers. This was no protest. It was a passing gaggle of confused altruists.