Rahul Vaidya
The October Revolution in 1917, USSR and its fall in 1991 have all become part of a history which seems far too distant. The world has changed beyond recognition over past couple of decades with financial globalization, technological advance of internet and social networks, fundamentalist terror and rising far-Right forces, especially in the wake of financial crisis that broke out in 2008. The all pervading sense of euphoria around the dictum ‘There is no alternative’ to liberal capitalism after fall of USSR has been replaced by a fear that the only alternative would be ‘end of the world’ in climatic or terrorist catastrophe. And ironically, this dystopian fear sums up the state of our ideological universe. Fredric Jameson hence had once remarked ‘it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism’ which points to a resigned, cynical and almost fatalist acceptance of capitalist mode of production.
"The Streets are our brushes, the Squares our palettes"-Vladimir Mayakovski
The October Revolution in 1917, USSR and its fall in 1991 have all become part of a history which seems far too distant. The world has changed beyond recognition over past couple of decades with financial globalization, technological advance of internet and social networks, fundamentalist terror and rising far-Right forces, especially in the wake of financial crisis that broke out in 2008. The all pervading sense of euphoria around the dictum ‘There is no alternative’ to liberal capitalism after fall of USSR has been replaced by a fear that the only alternative would be ‘end of the world’ in climatic or terrorist catastrophe. And ironically, this dystopian fear sums up the state of our ideological universe. Fredric Jameson hence had once remarked ‘it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism’ which points to a resigned, cynical and almost fatalist acceptance of capitalist mode of production.