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 @ Resistance Press Bookroom 
427 Bloor St West, Toronto and on zoom

The revolutionary socialist Antonio Gramsci wrote in the 1920-30s from inside a fascist jail about late capitalism and how to challenge it. He described late capitalism as a twilight time when “morbid symptoms appear.” This didn’t mean that capitalism would collapse on its own, but that it was showing the signs of worsening crises.

Recently, the quote has been widely picked up and slightly misquoted as: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” The misquote seems to fit our current times well. In the early 20th century capitalism was still a very new economic and political system, held up as the ultimate achievement of human potential. But it faced almost immediate uprisings against its fundamental inequities. 

Gramsci’s observation that the system had already well outlived its promise and was showing signs of a death-struggle has struck a nerve today. The rulers of capitalism have always been monstrous, but the impacts of the system have become increasingly deathly, not only for the worlds’ poor and oppressed, but for our species and the planet. However, the key part of the Gramsci misquote is: “the new world struggles to be born.” What new world is possible and what kind of struggle makes it possible? Who are the slayers of capitalist monsters, and who can be the final gravediggers of capitalism?

The morbid capitalist system has produced a way out, because it relies on the collective labour of the vast majority to continue. But activating that power relies on how the vast majority comes to understand how to overthrow capitalism ourselves, in our own name.

Suggested readings

Do Gramsci’s ideas make good sense? - by Jude Mckechnie

How workers can become revolutionary - By Camilla Royle

Tackling our rulers’ ideas makes good sense 

Do we need revolutionary leadership? - By Judy Cox

No Gods. No Masters. And no leaders? - by Tomáš Tengely-Evans,