[No. 22] Feature Article

A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse

David Graeber

What is a revolution? We used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays, we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator... [more]

[No. 22] Feature Article

The Meme Hustler

Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

Evgeny Morozov

While the brightest minds of Silicon Valley are "disrupting” whatever industry is too crippled to fend off their advances, something odd is happening to our language. Old, trusted words no longer mean what they used to mean; often, they don’t mean anything at all. Our language, much like everything these days, has been hacked. Fuzzy, contentious, and complex ideas have been stripped of their subversive connotations and replaced by cleaner, shinier, and emptier alternatives; long-running debates about politics... [more]

[No. 22] Feature Article

Fifty Shades of Late Capitalism

Heather Havrilesky

While we are still recovering from the trauma that finance capital has inflicted on our public world, a late-capitalist fairy tale manages the pain in the more private and intimate reaches of the sexual daydream. In one version of the story, a wide-eyed mermaid cleverly disguises her essential self in order to win the heart of a prince (The Little Mermaid). In another, a hooker with a heart of gold navigates her way to a happy ending by offering some happy endings of her own (Pretty Woman)... [more]

Current Issue

No. 22 Modem and Taboo

In our spring revelry, Thomas Frank takes us on a tour of the businessman’s republic, while David Graeber leads us into the hearts and minds of the revolutionary opposition. Chris Bray tracks down General David Petraeus and his wandering PhD. Evgeny Morozov takes apart the influential “crazy talk” of Silicon Valley publisher Tim O’Reilly. And Anne Elizabeth Moore explores the hidden assumptions behind Nicholas Kristof’s bid to rescue the women of the world, who have nothing to lose but their market potential.

Baffler 22 contains our usual dazzling array of poetry, fiction, and satiric illustration. All this, plus Heather Havrilesky on Fifty Shades of Grey, Hussein Ibish on the Marquis de Sade, Christian Lorentzen on the British pop-star-cum-pedophiliac Jimmy Savile, and Jorian Polis Schutz surveys the state of Yoga in America. Subscribe now, and learn why Slavoj Žižek thinks hard-core pornography is the most censored of all film genres. Go ahead, look into the camera. You know you want to.