Email from a reader:
Here we go again, with doom-and-gloom stuff like (quoting your friend Michael Löwy):
Finally, never at any time prior to today, have all spheres of human life - social relations, culture, art, politics, sexuality, health, education, sport, entertainment - been so completely subjected to capital and so profoundly plunged into the "... icy water of egotistical calculation".
Let me add a strongly dissenting note, as a computer software engineer. Contrary to what Löwy says, there are large swathes of human life which are now subject to another mode of production, namely open source development methods. This mode of production is distinct from capitalism (since its producers are generally not paid in money) and distinct from most existing forms of socialism (since participation is entirely voluntary and there may be no central co-ordinating authority). Enabled by and supporting the rise of the Internet and the WWW, this model has been applied successfully in many industries, and has included the development of complex software and advanced pharmaceuticals, and the production of economic forecasts, forecasts of medical epidemics, news, scientific research, and all manner of artistic outputs. Indeed, most every time we read a blog - such as yours! - we are freely consuming intellectual content which has been produced by open-source methods.
If this is not a 'persuasive model of an alternative future', then I don't know what is!
(Thanks: PMc.)