The Dictatorship of Capital Politics and Culture in the 21st Century

A renowned public intellectual analyzes capitalism?s queasy relationship to democracy.

How have the socio-political corollaries of the global triumph of capital affected the way we think and speak? In this wide-ranging reflection, Tariq Ali argues that Western political culture has become shamelessly manipulated as never before, with the corporate media a central pillar of the new world order, eagerly promoting wars at home and abroad. BBC World or CNN? The images are the same. The official language of the new imperium has infected the values of ruling elites and their dependents across the globe. The deaths of Iraqi civilians or Palestinian children are treated with the same disregard as the lynching of Afro-Americans that disfigured the rural landscape of the American South during the early years of the last century.

Ali speculates on the future of the hollowed-out democratic system, whose institutions have now been thoroughly subverted by the latest variant of capital. He challenges the notion that capitalism and democracy are interdependent and argues that the only way a meaningful democratic system can function is by the strict regulation, if not the abolition, of the existing capitalist system. In his inimitable style, Ali is both profound and entertaining.

Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics, including, most recently, Bush in Babylon and The Clash of Fundamentalisms, as well as six novels, and scripts for both stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review and lives in London.