January 14th, 2026 | 04:45
The most terrible lie in all the Abrahamic scriptures alleges the ‘humble shall inherit the earth.’ Thus the needy remain humble, the humble become needy if they weren’t already, and the narcissists take the world by bullying. Perhaps, some may say, the solution seems obvious; abandon these convenient lies of humility and altruism, and assert yourself on this world. When I’ve tried organizing, there was a clear awareness of the open nepotism among many of the smaller companies, as well as abhorrently high rates of wage theft among the larger companies.
Even with this awareness, the average worker did not care. If they cared only about the way it effected them personally, whatever amount of frustration they felt combined with their concern for their fellow workers was not enough to move them beyond their comfort zone. Even if they cared more about the struggles of their fellow workers than whatever they themselves were struggling with, it was still not enough to move them beyond their comfort zone toward organized confrontation with their employers. This was, of their own expression in many cases, not because their struggles were not painful enough, but because they felt alienated/alone and as if they could not rely on their fellow workers if the status quo were lost.
In late stage capitalist organizing, one cannot depend on the paths beat by the trade unions. In fact, trade unions themselves seem to have had their (what was supposed to be) provisional control over human capital established for far too long. This is to say that, in many cases, this provisional management has calcified into political control, making them into capitalists themselves. This makes the trade unions secondary class enemies of the organizers. New paths, then, must be beaten – empirically.
Before continuing on this intention, ‘late stage capitalism’ spoken thus needs to be defined for our use here. Late stage capitalism for us is defined by its general themes in contemporary usage.
In particular:
1) The meteoric growth of digital/electronic assets and their controlling capitalists, allowing for rapid, far-reaching, and previously-impossible consistency in manipulation of the working class by the capitalist class globally. This involves participation by both classes; the capitalist must own and manipulate the electronic assets, while the workers must – in majority – possess personal electronic media access and the cultural habits allowing them to be manipulated so predictably by the capitalists.
2) The wildly unprecedented disparity of wealth globally, requiring sadistic greed and accumulation only possible with the contemporary conditions of state surveillance infrastructure and technology – commercial and military – (and its global disparity likewise), and the precedents of modern imperialism/neocolonialism legitimized only on the basis of being ‘preferable’ or ‘more tolerable than’ or, perhaps, ‘a lesser evil than’ past conditions of imperialism and colonialism. While their change is a purely-nominal one, it demonstrates how a narrative can be manipulated enough to the first world almost entirely ambivalent to the global majority’s suffering.
3) The conditions of surveillance infrastructure, commercial and military tech, and political/legal precedents which themselves make the aforementioned conditions possible.
4) Consumerism overwhelming local cultural traditions in a majority of communities – primarily in the first world, but also in much of the third world – causing it to largely become the dominant ‘culture’ (or synthetic replacement thereof). Materially, this is made possible/encouraged by the majority (95% in 2024) of purchases being made on credit, as well as the conditions of internet shopping, rapid delivery, and easy returns. Added to this, we must also mention the exploitation and slavery in the third world which makes such overconsumption possible as a trans national pastime, and which make it even theoretically affordable even with credit culture to do so.
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