I used to be given back-copies of Adbusters, the counter-culture magazine, which I think is Canadian based. Many of the articles drifted off into a new-age feel but there was, nevertheless, a distinct undercurrent of anti-capitalist sentiment. Even some of the more way-out articles had a link, however tenuous, to the real world. The general themes were about the alienating affect of capitalist advertising and commercial culture. Some of the graphics were truly challenging. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the read. Sometimes it’s useful to read stuff out of the box, or at least out of your own comfort zone.

Sadly the back copies dried up and I more or less forgot all about the thing. Then, suddenly, without warning, the latest copy for 2012 was stuffed into my hand and what an eye-opener it proved to be. It was as if the magazine had undergone an overnight revolutionary transformation. The counter-culture, change your mind to change the world stuff was still there, but so too was a whole selection of explicitly anti-capitalist articles, which were more than just casually interesting. And the purpose of the magazine seemed now not just to pontificate about what we are all already against corporate greed, individual avarice, mindless celebrity culture and all of the rest of it. No, here is a collection of articles that seeks to go beyond opposition to the cultural status quo. What is emerging is not only a critique of capitalism but a discussion, a vision, an attempt to define what might lie beyond.

And this vision thing is important. Without a vision of a post-capitalist society, however blurred that vision may be, we can’t convincingly polemicise against the machine let alone convince others to do so The traditional Left magazines, many of which I’ve read and written for, invariably fail in the vision thing. Plenty of stuff about how beastly the capitalist state is, but precious little on what a post-capitalist world might look like other than the usual platitudes about a non alienated, co-operative and united humanity. Adbusters is now offering a vital contribution.

It doesn’t really matter which of the Adbuster ideas on offer you subscribe to, if any. The point is the articles are varied and provocative and all with the best of intent. Yes, the ideas sometimes, perhaps invariably, become detached from material reality. For example, in the latest blockbuster issue, no mention is made of Marx’s central thesis that both class and the State emerged from the condition of material scarcity and that a more rational, humane and communistic society can only emerge in conditions of material abundance an abundance catalysed ironically from that most despotic of all classes the global bourgeoisie. Sometimes the dialectic gets lost in the writers natural urge and enthusiasm for something better, something less alienating. But generally speaking the political dialectic is in full flow. Many of the articles are contradictory but that is good. There is a polemic at work. Furthermore it is an open polemic. That is essential. But in spite of the contradictions there is a clear unity of purpose to debate what a post capitalist society might look like. To even pose that question is an act of revolution.

For me, the centre-piece of this scintillating edition is the article offered up by Jessica Whyte who, in an optimistic article entitled, Long night of the left is drawing to a close, focuses on a series of conferences featuring Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou and a collection of other progressive orientated thinkers. The overriding theme of the conferences can be summed up as follows; that the word communism can and must now acquire a positive value once more. Much discussion revolved around communisms apparent failure, and how today’s generation of egalitarian-minded people should respond to that failure.

Zizek conjures up a useful metaphor from a Lenin pamphlet (On Ascending a High Mountain) written just after the implementation of the forced retreat from state ownership to the New Economic Policy of free market capitalism. Lenin writes, Those communists are doomed who believe that it is possible to proceed without retreats and alterations of the course, and then draws the parallel with a climber forced to descend to the valley after a failed attempt. Fail again, fail better says Samuel Beckett. I like that. It is necessary, Zizek says, to return to the valley, to rethink all assumptions, to begin again from the very beginning. Perhaps Zizek overplays the point. We never have to start completely at the beginning, we can always learn from our past, incomplete or failed attempts. But Zizek’s demand that we rethink old assumptions is to be wholeheartedly welcomed. Of course some comrades in the old left parties will despise you for it.

A key document referred to by Whyte from the conferences comes from French philosopher Alain Badiou who recently produced a document, The Communist Hypothesis, of which I intend to review shortly. In this document Badiou apparently argues that at the heart of the current crisis is that capitalism, is less and less capable of corrupting its local clientele and buying off the ferocious regimes of the Mubaraks and Musharrafs who are responsible for keeping watch on the flocks of the poor. That is a statement that is becoming more self-evident by the day.

On the failure of communism in the 20th century Whyte sums up Badiou’s thinking as follows:

When we say that the socialist experiments failed and Badiou does not dispute this proposition do we mean that the communist hypothesis and the horizon of emancipation to which it gestured should be abandoned? Or do we mean that they failed because they took a wrong path, because they failed to respond to the initial problem in the right way?

Valid questions certainly but should we not add one more; Did the twentieth century revolutions eventual fail because they were too isolated and too economically and culturally backward for any form of communism to permanently take root? Yes, the subjective elements cannot be swept away but those stubborn, objective material conditions are surely, in the final instance, decisive.

This review is not the place to fully debate this most critical of issues, though debate it we must. The point here is to loudly applaud the Adbusters team for daring to air these matters at all to their youthful and enquiring audience, many of whom have spent weeks and months on the front line of the Occupy Movement. What better place and time to wrestle with these imponderables. The much ridiculed new-age, counter culture movement ends up, paradoxically, in the vanguard of open and scientific polemic! This should be acknowledged.

Another thought provoking article is served up by David Graeber who in a boldly entitled piece, The World Revolution of 2011 presents a thesis that the world revolution started way back in 1848, gaining momentum in 1871, 1917, 1968 and now in 2011/12. Admittedly each of these decisive years had their own specific origins and outcomes, but in the overall narrative of the oppressed and oppressor it is surely a legitimate exercise to link all momentous dates into one world-wide drama. It certainly helps maintain a sense of optimism that we are all part of a global historical play, class against class, oppressor against oppressed, the one percent against the ninety-nine.

Graeber cites three reasons for optimism in the current scenes in this unfolding drama.

The 2011 revolution has actually spread to the imperialist centre itself. The power elite can no longer count on another war to get them out of the mess they are already exhausted from their existing military exertions.(Don’t count on it). The spread of feminist and anarchist sensibilities has opened up the possibility of genuine cultural transformation.

All three no doubt have an element of truth about them, though in the end events may prove Graeber to be engaged in an exercise of false optimism ungrounded in the real political balance of forces. For example, for every one young person engaged in the Occupy Movement (heroes all) there are a hundred thousand youngsters clicking on to the Lady Gaga websites. What does this say of Graeber’s cultural revolution in the imperialist heartlands?

A third article that caught my attention came from a Simon Critchley, who dares to ask, What is normal? The title is somewhat misleading. This is not a treatise on human psychology but very much one on the ruled and the rulers. Critchley starts with a stark reminder of the real world that we live in:

We do not live in democracies. We inhabit plutocracies: government by the rich. The corporate elites have overwhelming economic power with no political accountability. In past decades, with the complicity and connivance of the political class, the Western world has become a kind of college of corporations linked together by money and serving only the interests of their business interests and shareholders.

Now that is as good and succinct a description of our current reality as you will find in any avowedly Marxist journal. Then comes the more controversial part. Critchley is certain that what is unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East is not merely a demand for Western style democratic political institutions and culture but a genuine uprising for socialism. Critchley expresses no doubt on this:

What is so inspiring about the various social movements that we all so glibly call the Arab Spring, is their courageous determination to reclaim autonomy and political self-determination. The demands of the protesters in Tahir Square and elsewhere are actually very classical: they refuse to live in authoritarian dictatorships propped up to serve the interests of Western capital, corporations and corrupt local elites. They want to reclaim ownership of the means of production, for example through the nationalisation of major state industries. They demand collective ownership of the places where one lives, works, thinks and plays. Let’s be clear: it is not just democracy that is being demanded all across the Arab world; it is socialism.

Critchley demands that we be clear on this matter but the reality is that very little is clear. Many conflicting demands, many conflicting programmes and many people torn between contradictory positions. Of course, all revolutions are full of chaos but in the end, one particular set of demands emerge to define the moment. Such a point I suspect has not yet arrived. But Critchley is surely right about one thing, the four-decade ideological consensus that has simply allowed the creation of grotesque inequality has broken down, and anything and everywhere is suddenly possible. The emergence and evolution of journals like Adbusters is testament to that new reality.

There are yet still more articles in this latest edition of Adbusters worthy of positive comment. Michael Hardt and Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri in their essay, Under No Illusions revert back to more classical Marxist categories of wage labour, private property, capital and private accumulation, all of which still have the power to explain and to elucidate. There is a particular passage concerning the parasitic nature of capital that resonates with great force. Here our authors are at the top of their game:

Capital’s ability to generate profit is declining since it is losing its entrepreneurial capacity and its power to administer social discipline and cooperation. Instead capital increasingly accumulates wealth primarily via forms of rent, mostly organised through financial instruments, through which it captures value that is produced socially and relatively independent of its power. But every instance of private accumulation reduces the power and productivity of the common. Private property is thus becoming ever more not only a parasite but also an obstacle to social production and social welfare.

As that old German professor predicted, industrial capital would give way to finance capital which in turn would become ever more parasitic as the tendency for the rate of profit to decline could no longer be offset by new imperialist conquest. So here we have it. A timely return to Marxist economics to coincide with a global upsurge in protest at the ravages of monopoly capitalism. And Adbusters has not been found wanting in providing a forum for such discussion. As if to underline their new seriousness, Adbusters provide a three point history of Capitalism, which under the headings of Gain, Property and Usery, provides the perfect little introduction to the excellent articles that follow. Three cheers for the Adbusters!