How Capitalism Did End

This work is an excerpt from How Capitalism Did End by Ben Miller.

Synopsis of How Capitalism Did End:

While the planet perishes from the nihilism of greed, pollution, and violence targeting vulnerable populations, an anonymous citizen—in an act of urgent archivism—transcribes portions of the Internet by hand to create a hard-copy that cannot be erased when the Cloud goes down. Recorded here are craven products and absurd services designed both to distract people from the disaster’s gravity and to squeeze final fat profits out of faltering societies. But is the antic catalog less anthropological artifact than intimate evidence of how barrages of marketing polyphony distend (or mutilate) emotions and sensory perceptions in epic fashion? Among antecedents to this montage form of ethical exploration are Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain, Cane by Jean Toomer, The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, Wacky Packages stickers (circa 1970s) and the unstoppable blues of Abbey Lincoln, dissolver of notes to make melodies sing of harrowing things.

Ben Miller is the author of the recently released Pandemonium Logs: Sioux Falls, South Dakota 2020-2022 (Raritan Skiff Books, an imprint of Rutgers University Press) and River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll Amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa (Lookout Books). His writing has been anthologized in Best American Essays and Best American Experimental Writing, and his awards include fellowships from the NEA and the Radcliffe Institute.