This energy has since dissipated, variously co-opted and defeated by capital. The neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, under which we still live, of trickle-down economics, deregulated markets, weakened labour unions, meagre social welfare provision and the general transfer of power from public accountability to private tyrannies, have been quite successful in amputating any hope of the possibility of collective action to change the world³. The championing of entrepreneurial self-reliance and individualism, has replaced the radical, collective spirit that characterised the countercultural movements. We have returned to what Aiwha Ong has called a ‘primitive form of individualism’⁴ and it is through…
