The “in and against the state” view that is promoted by the Socialist Register has considerable support on the socialist left. Given the extraordinary period in the evolution of global capitalism which we are living through, this perspective needs to be carefully considered. The latest volume of the Socialist Register is an excellent basis for moving that process forward.

When capital is in crisis, there are always two options—to give in or to move in. If masses are armed with a clear conception of the socialist alternative, they can turn a crisis in capitalism into the crisis of capitalism. Of course, it is possible that the current struggles against the capitalist offensive ultimately may lead to defeat. It is possible but we must take that chance.

November 28 marks the 200th birthday of Russian philosopher, naturalist, and economist Nikolai Danilevsky. Relatively unknown in the West, Danilevsky is extraordinarily influential in modern Russia, and understanding his ideas is essential to grasping the essence of the current political conflict between Russia and the West.

Joe Burns’ new book, Class Struggle Unionism, reads like pamphlet, with a clear call to transform the union movement. The model for change is one that has deep roots in the radical socialist and anarchist traditions of working class movements from early in the 20th century that has continuously raised it head over the past 120 years.

We are working in a social context over which we have limited control right now. The class war from above has produced circumstances that are much more hospitable to atomized activism and much less conducive to shared struggle. We can’t simply will ourselves out of these circumstances. But we can accurately name our activities, acknowledging both their strengths and limitations.

In contrast to the simplistic notion that capital unilaterally imposes consumption upon us, German scholars Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen, authors of The Imperial Mode of Living, emphasize a dialectical analysis in which capitalist domination “draws on the wishes and desires of the populace … becomes a part of individual identity, shapes it, and thereby becomes all the more effective.”

Cyberpunk 2077 may have squandered an opportunity to provoke thought, but cyberpunk never had the power to save us. A slick, shiny new computer game is no replacement for supporting your community, organizing in your workplaces and challenging the powers of capital wherever they rear their heads. Power stays with us as long as we have the strength, will and vision to use it.

In a recent piece for The Breach, writer and organizer Emma Jackson calls for an “expansive left populism” to defeat the far-right. While she identifies many of the fronts on which the left must fight, it remains unclear how populism as such should serve as a working program for broad left demands, given its susceptibility to the politics of reaction.

Capitalism and the Death Drive is a set of essays and interviews published between 2012 and 2020 by South Korean-born Swiss-German philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han. The stress in these pieces is on such ideas as the “digital panopticon” of the internet, the surveillance state and our voluntary cooperation with it, the idea of the foreign, capitalism as death drive, and so on. Each is pervaded by a general hopelessness.

The readiness to include the left in any crackdown on political extremism and the tendency to focus on the left more fixedly than on the far-right, is not simply a question of reactionary police attitudes or a readiness to blur lines on the part of the conservative right. There are very real reasons why even a liberal capitalist politician like Justin Trudeau would see left wing “extremism” as an existential danger to everything he cherishes.