China’s 2008 Olympics presaged a capitalism fusing state control with piratical capital

Evidence

The arrival of the Olympics in China is not just a ratification of the Chinese regime, it’s also another moment in the end of history. 2008 is a symbolic threshold, much like 1989. Anti-modernist protests against China obscure the fact that the Olympics, like the People’s Republic of China, is now inherently meshed with global capital. 2008 will celebrate this integration, which may well presage a new mode of capitalism, in which authoritarian state control co-exists with PKD-like piratical capital. Victorian vampirism reformatted for cyberspace. The spectre of ultrapostmodernism, in which everything can be mass-replicated, but nothing new will ever be invented. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2418

Categorization

• FICTION: The phrase ‘Victorian vampirism reformatted for cyberspace’ and the vision of a PKD-style co-existence of authoritarian control with lawless capital is ripe worldbuilding material.
• XREF: Echoes ch120’s claim that ‘War-torn states serve capital as plunder zones free of state duties’ and the newer corporate-authoritarian hybrid state. — connects to: State intervention made capitalist exploitation political and thereby threatened capitalism itself — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 173; State intervention to save capitalism exposed its supposedly natural order as political — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 169

Broader Connections

• State intervention to save capitalism exposed its supposedly natural order as political #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 169
• State intervention made capitalist exploitation political and thereby threatened capitalism itself #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 173