[p2p-research] meth as the drug of neoliberal meltdown (must read)

[Michel Bauwens]

see
http://unemployednegativity.blogspot.com/2010/06/methlab-of-democracy-more-on.html

also in the same article:

 Neoliberalism as the Anti-Commons

"As neoliberalism converts every political or social problem into market
terms, it converts them to individual problems with market solutions.
Examples in the United States are legion: bottled water as a response to
contamination of the water table; private schools, charter schools, and
voucher systems as a response to the collapse of quality public education;
anti-theft devices, private security guards, and gated communities (and
nations) as a response to the production of a throwaway class and
intensifying economic inequality; boutique medicine as a response to
crumbling health care provision; “V-chips” as a response to the explosion of
violent and pornographic material on every type of household screen;
ergonomic tools and technologies as a response to the work conditions of
information capitalism; and, of course, finely differentiated and titrated
pharmaceutical antidepressants as a response to lives of meaninglessness or
despair amidst wealth and freedom. This conversion of socially,
economically, and politically produced problems into consumer items
depoliticizes what has been historically produced, and it especially
depoliticizes capitalism itself. Moreover, as neoliberal political
rationality devolves both political problems and solutions from public to
private, it further dissipates political or public life: the project of
navigating the social becomes entirely one of discerning, affording, and
procuring a personal solution to every socially produced problem. This is
depoliticization on an unprecedented level: the economy is tailored to it,
citizenship is organized by it, the media are dominated by it, and the
political rationality of neoliberalism frames and endorses it.”

- Wendy Brown [4]<http://unemployednegativity.blogspot.com/2010/06/methlab-of-democracy-more-on.html>


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