Would you follow me into this metaphor - where today’s capitalism is becoming a heartless dominatrix who sustains herself by beating the vitality out of our bodies - if only for curiosity’s sake?

Neglecting the traditions of BDSM culture, capitalism as a dominatrix abandoned safe-words, and we’re subject to her black leather whip, backed into a corner with no way out. Despite our cries, our flailing from her lashings of debt and drudgery, of existentially vacuous labor and toil, when backed into a capitalist corner, there is no alternative. No safe-word. We wind up limp, gashed and gored, yet somehow alive, only less so than before, dulled, and we pick ourselves up, and drag our feet into the office under her watchful gaze.

Most alarming of all, we do not show others, who are all also recovering from lashings in their own respective corners, our scars. We keep quiet about these things.

It’s this unspoken of state of affairs that I believe anthropologist David Graeber means when he writes:

“There is something terrible, ridiculous, outrageous going on, but it’s not clear whether you are even allowed to acknowledge it, and it’s usually even less clear who or what can be blamed.”

Drawing comparisons between the sado-masochist tendencies of capitalism and the safe-word policy of BDSM culture may help us acknowledge a few things, consider who or what is to blame, and perhaps even pick ourselves up from the corner. In the 21st century, as so many times before, it is time for a mass rising-up from our bloodied corners.