Yeeuch, it’s a horrible mash-up. Sometimes it feels like we’re living in the last days of Babylon, with the strange becoming increasingly common and Deleuzian concepts storming up the charts; at other times it’s like the 1970s never really went away (I’m half expecting another Winter of Discontent run alongside a Crass revival). But of course it’s none of those. It’s just the way things are…

So how does this neoliberalism thing work then? Not at moments of excess, but in those endless days of deficit. I’m employed in a very small company. This has its advantages: no-one really minds if you stroll in late or a little hungover; it’s OK to leave early to pick up the kids; there’s no dress code; and micro-management is so poor that I can sit and type this and they all think I’m working. In fact several times, very straight clients have come into the office and been given the spiel about how we’re a small concern but one with a certain affinity blah blah blah – and their response has been “Oh, so it’s a workers’ co-op then?”. “Umm, no…”

Because of course there’s still a boss and there are still workers. There are still sides. But it’s really hard to see them, especially when everything here is so personal. It’s one of the downsides of not working a in a huge corporation. Here any form of opposition is hard to articulate, let alone sustain. When I point out that a pay rise below the rate of inflation amounts to a pay cut, everyone else looks at me like I’m mad. When our Christmas bonus was slashed in half, everyone else said “Thanks” while I had to bite my tongue. And if I start to complain about the huge dividends that my boss is drawing (while refusing me a pay rise), it just means I’m trying to take food out of his mouth…

None of this is particularly new. The sickening paternalism is a throwback to 19th century attitudes (on both sides). We don’t quite doff our caps but we eagerly lap up the latest news on his holiday abroad/new Porsche/house renovation etc etc. And the mantra that ‘There Is No Alternative’ has always been a big part of capitalism’s own mythology. But there is something new, I think. In the past, anti-capitalist movements seemed able to create their own frames of reference, carving out space (and time), so they could present themselves as an ‘alternative’. That’s a luxury in short supply these days. The decoding drive is so powerful that anything Other is gobbled up as soon as it appears.

In the face of this, any antagonism looks like madness, a suicidal gesture. It just doesn’t make sense. This is a vicious circle: as long as it looks crazy, it will stay marginal. And while it remains marginal, it stays at an individual level. That sort of resentment can end up being really unhealthy. It can be corrosive, just as likely to end up in someone going postal as in moments of excess (that’s crazy-bad, not crazy-good, obviously).

But (and this is a big ‘but’) we still wake up on the wrong side of capitalism. Every day we haul ourselves off to work. Every day we get fucked over. And every now and then you get little reminders that class resentment is alive and kicking. OK a few hundred people flaming, however hilariously, is a poor substitute for thousands doing it for real. But there’s something heart-warming about the sheer bloody-mindedness of this. Narrow-minded? You bet! Sectarian? Yes please! One-sided? Too fucking right!