Inventory (journal) - this text traverses the cosmological scale and the anxieties of everyday survival under latest capitalism. This is the counsel of spent, asking how far we must be pushed as a species, as a planet, and how much more must be tolerated in the interests of ‘survival’ before we awake and understand that there is no natural evolution under capitalism?

Inventory, The Counsel of Spent, Book Works, 2018.


Use this book as a field guide, lovingly prepared with words and images that do not satisfy but irritate – un vandalisme vernaculaire contre la servitude volontaire – a cavalier text that traverses the cosmological scale and the anxieties of everyday survival under latest capitalism; or, a series of fragmentary yet interconnected rants that repeat the basic banalities that everyone thinks and feels, that are quietly acknowledged in private, but that rarely manifest themselves as collectively organised opposition and concrete action.
Lying beneath these writings is an insistent attack upon the soft underbelly of middle-class duplicity that willingly supports capitalist mediocrity in order to maintain privileges, thereby aiding endless repetitions of growth and collapse.
Capitalism continues to disempower us, with its corrosive mantra that it provides the best of all possible worlds and that we must stay silent and accept its violent side-effects as unfortunate necessity: we are told to tolerate its hereditary and dynastic aspects; to keep our faith in the humane reformist role of the state; to trust in the electoral process and to turn a blind eye to unrepresentative lobbyists and private interests.
We are told that technological change alone will bring the deleterious effects of profit and loss to heel. And so it appears, that unless we are driven to the brink of extinction, there will be no collective counter-attack of lasting value. This is the counsel of spent, asking how far we must be pushed as a species, as a planet, and how much more must be tolerated in the interests of ‘survival’ before we awake and understand that there is no natural evolution under capitalism?
Another end of the world is possible.
Formed in 1995, Inventory was a loosely associated group of writers, artists and theorists, currently guided by the efforts of two artists/heretics, Adam Scrivener and Paul Claydon, who advance a practical and theoretical notion of what they call fierce sociology’.
The Counsel of Spent by Inventory is published by Book Works as part of Common Objectives, guest edited by Nina Power, in an edition of 1,000 copies; 238pp, full colour, with a soft cover, 170mm x 114mm. Designed by Modern Activity.


Drawing upon the divagating adventures of the fondly missed Inventory journal (1995-2005), Inventory have authored a new book in a series commissioned by Nina Power for Book Works. We have taken the opportunity to preview this cavalier text that traverses the cosmological scale and the anxieties of everyday survival under latest capitalism. This is the counsel of spent, asking how far we must be pushed as a species, as a planet, and how much more must be tolerated in the interests of ‘survival’ before we awake and understand that there is no natural evolution under capitalism?
http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/extracts-counsel-spent


...I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a recession. Encouraged to take on enormous personal debt, people are struggling, unemployed, clinging on to part-time, flexi-hour, zero-contract drudgery, or voluntarily accepting wage cuts to avoid losing their jobs. All the while we are told to ‘keep calm and carry on’ to the food bank. […]
Before you decide to make a stand, you have to let go of the delusion that you have a stake in the current order of things. Identifying yourself as part of the 99% is not a sufficient social and political allegiance. If you hang on to the idea that, one day, you will be allowed to dine at the top table, or that order will be restored once the student debt campaign has been won, then that will be the day when you have compromised yourself and made a miserable deal with power...