"The left" loves corporations? What corporations would those be? All leftists I know despise corporations.

"the left". It is a disservice to call that "the left", since it has nothing to do with left-wing policy.

But please explain to a noob like me how exactly those 401ks are enabling that, and what ESG have anything to do with mass surveillance?

Yes it's some weird faux-communism with all of the problems of communism and none of its benefits.

At least communism must pretend to serve the common man.

There's a point where I'd rather live in a system which at least pretends to serve people... Then at least we'd get some half-assed semblance of fairness and the discrepancies would be a subject of conversation...

When you live in a system and adhere to its rules, it's nice to be getting something of approximately equal value in return.