The state is pouring billions into propping up the collapsing financial sector, but who is going to take care of the rest of us? Between Hollywood’s embattled superbats and the gruesome charisma contests of political party leaders, we can be sure of one thing – we don’t need another hero! Mute surveys some popular myths of political-economic salvation (and damnation), and looks for signs of collective agency in the global Gotham.

Liverpool – Culture of Capital
Leo Singer & Clara Paillard crash Liverpool’s regeneration party

Descrambling the Food Crisis
George Caffentzis puts the class politics of hunger back on the table

From Subprime to Slump?
Jon Amsden argues that the capitalist doom doctors have got things the wrong way round

Mr Smith Goes to Beijing
Daniel Berchenko on Giovanni Arrighi’s retrogressive vision of China as the future of capitalism

Mexican Wave
Mihalis Mentinis on a new cycle of armed anti-capitalist struggle in Mexico

Any Other But Our Selves
J.J. Charlesworth on Other-worship in the art gallery and the denigration of human agency

Orientalism Inverted: the Rise of ‘Hindu Nation’
Neil Gray on Indianness as German ideology, from colonial mystique to neoliberal pogroms

One World, One Lie
Paula Cerni finds a thoroughly modern lack of democracy in Tibet

Quarterly, critical and cheap, Mute is a concrete jumble of all that’s still grunting in the inter-finessing hyper-barrios of culture, politics and technology 2.0. As capitalism yawns towards apocalypse we match it issue by issue with a sustained critique of everything existing, from eco prole-bashing and shanty chic to academic aut-onanist marxistry

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Contents of this cluster

1. Editorial
2. Mr Smith Goes to Beijing
3. Descrambling the 'Food Crisis'
4. Mexican Wave
5. Liverpool – Culture of Capital
6. From Subprime to Slump?
7. Any Other But Our Selves
8. Orientalism Inverted: The Rise of 'Hindu Nation'
9. One World, One Lie: Tibet, the Olympics and Democracy