The claims of the first line of argument are fairly modest, and this modesty is a strength of the book: Wark has some speculations about how we might theorize the “new mode of production” whose existence the thought experiment hypothesizes, but these have more the feel of thinking aloud than of authoritative pronouncements. Wark’s argument proceeds from this point along two interwoven trajectories, the first of which entertains the “thought experiment,” while the second analyzes the “curious” resistance with which it is met. Even critical theory seems very emotionally attached to the notion that capitalism still goes on, and on.” Curiously, the attempt to make this thought experiment meets with strong resistance. We should, as Wark almost begs in the book’s opening pages, “at least entertain the thought experiment that this is no longer capitalism at all. Perhaps it is time to pack up our theoretical cannons and redeploy.

If Wark is right - which she surely is, at least in broad outline if not in every proposition or detail - then the “critics of capitalism” are, and have been for some time, laying siege to a heavenly fortress whose treasury has long since been secreted away, elsewhere. Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? is an intervention into the political-economic discourse of the so-called “critical humanities” which is not so much timely as it is long overdue: those who read it should, in the opinion of this reviewer at least, hurry up and listen to what Wark has to say before they waste any more of their time (which is to say, any more of our time, which is precious and dwindling rapidly) chasing the ghosts of dead ideas. Even the failure of rebellion must, surely, be preferable to the indignity of mouthing endless praises to an enemy who holds us in subjection - so why not throw the dice? To play the part of Mammon at the council of Marxists is a task that only an especially brave or reckless individual could take up, but that is exactly what McKenzie Wark, in her new offering from Verso, has done. “How wearisome / Eternity so spent in worship paid / To whom we hate.” So grumbles Milton’s Mammon at the council of angels, fanning the flames of their incipient revolt. Colin Drumm reviews McKenzie Wark’s latest book, ‘Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse’ (Verso Books, October 2019).

Wark capital is dead