Aaron Bastani

Communism is luxurious – or it isn’t communism.

Meanwhile 69 per cent of the world’s freshwater withdrawals are committed to agriculture, most of which is in meat production, with the average cow consuming 11,000 gallons of water a year.

‘What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.’

Fukuyama’s contention was that, while clocks would still tick and years continue to roll by, no new ideas would emerge, at least none capable of challenging the status quo.

liberal capitalism went from a contingent project to a reality principle. Welcome to the world of capitalist realism – where the map is the territory and nothing really matters.

Capitalist realism is best summed up with a single sentence: ‘It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.’

capitalist realism has no offer of a better future – especially so over the course of the last decade – its default logic is one of anti-utopianism. Flat wages, falling home ownership and a warming planet might be bad, granted, but at least we have iPhones.

depression expected to be the leading cause of the global burden of disease by 2030.

As the state gives way to the market this is accompanied by a nebulous sense of loss, as a crisis of representation empties democratic institutions of authority and citizens come to view them as little more than conduits for the interests of corrupt elites.

This condition presents arguably the most pressing crisis of all: an absence of collective imagination.