Kind of. American Proletarians have a unique position of enjoying the benefits of a super-exploited class of domestic immigrants paid lower wages via threat of deportation, and Imperialistic hegemony, but are also enslaved by vast amounts of debt. This is very different from standard Capitalism, but not quite feudalism. It depresses the revolutionary potential of the American Proletariat for as long as Imperialism is the status quo.

I believe the theory goes something along the lines of feudalism being centered about renting (ie land) and with manafacture that shifted to a product-based economy. With time, renting has regained dominance and is reaching a whole new level now that most capital is tied up in the cloud (AWS, azure etc.)

The question then is, why do people choose the way they do, both when buying and when running a company? To me it seems, they don’t because of some external pressure (like monarchy requires).

The ideas that people have are shaped by their Material Conditions, and people generally act in their best interests. People will buy what is available in the market, and Capitalists work to accumulate more and more money in an M-C-M’ circuit.

The point can be summed up as a question: Why don’t people run (more) non-capitalist services and productions, and why don’t they prefer them when looking to satisfy their demand?

These are 2 questions.

1. People generally don’t run Socialist services as frequently because in the framework of Capitalism, it is excessively difficult to gain the Capital necessary to start one, and furthermore the people with access to Capital continue to act in their own interests and accumulate more profit off of ownership.

2. People do not care where their commodities come from, largely, as they work for their income and thus their access is limited by the money they have.

These non-capitalist things exist, it’s certainly possible. But as far as I know, they are all very niche. Like a communal kitchen, some solidary agriculture or housing project. Heck, entire villages of this kind exist.

This is known as Mutual Aid, which is a big cornerstone of Anarchism. The issue is that Anarchism generally relies on individuals making the right decisions due to their horizontal structures and has issues with scaling horizontally. These structures tend to have great success locally, such as Food Not Bombs feeding people, but without strong organization scaling becomes difficult and action becomes unfocused.

So the alternative is there, but it requires actual commitment and work. I don’t see how capitalism could be abolished in an armed uprising (in contrast to monarchy). But it can be replaced by alternative projects. Partially. Why are they so small and few?

Why don’t you think Capitalism could be abolished via revolution? It’s been done before.

Secondly, it is not simply capable of being replaced entirely via parallel systems because that depends on individuals outcompeting the immense resources of the Bourgeoisie. It’s certainly possible at a local level, but at a state level takes enourmous power and unity.

♫ monopoly duopoly oligopoly cartel ♫

♪ anti-trust, pork barrel, propaganda lobbying ♪

♫ economies of scale, information asymmetry, regulatory capture and personal responsibility ♫

♪ unions, pinkertons, labor theory of value and the CIA ♪

♫ rent seeking, georgism, tax incentive, scarcity ♫

♪ free trade, minimum wage, petrodollar and the MIC ♪

♫ we didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world’s been turning ♫

_{provided as is, no warranty in regard to serving any particular rhyme or meter, express or implied, consult a licensed physician before attempting to sing along}

This is my personal opinion without any real evidence than my experience and knowledge of what I read somewhere:

1. People are stupid and lazy mostly. The education is going down for most industrial countries. Changing habits is stressful and avoided if possible.

2. Manipulation works. Media and advertisements successfully change people behaviour without them noticing. If you put enough money into a campaign people think they are responsible for your co2 emissions.

3. As long as you don’t drive people too fast and too deep into an existential crisis they will tolerate a lot!

4. The system is rigged. People who are honest and social are pushed down. While greedy and lying people are being pushed on top.

Hot take (not entirely serious):

Now that Presidents can’t be prosecuted for official acts that are crimes, Biden should enact Project 2025 EARLY give himself unitary executive power, and refuse to leave office.

This would either destroy the country, save the country, or force SCOTUS to reconsider their ruling.

Of course he could just deem the imbalance on SCOTUS a threat to national security, and write an official law saying that all major parties must be equally repressented by the judges on there (a one out, one in law).

That would also work, and run less risk of tearing the country apart.

From this day forward, every day that Biden doesn’t have the Republican judges killed is a betrayal of democracy.

The King-Maker ruling will be a blight if it is not fixed fast!

This isn’t good historical analysis. The feudal class society, with its aristocracy, church and peasants, was highly rigid in terms of class mobility. Peasants stayed peasants and aristocrats stayed aristocrats. The current dominant class, the capitalist owners, exert their power not by god-given rights over the population, but by legal control of the means of production. The current exploited class, the workers, aren’t tied to a lord anymore and pay tributes in kind on exchange for land and protection, but instead are “free” to work where they want for a payment in cash, and unable for the most part to have ownership of the means of production they themselves work.

Kings have disappeared, classes in society haven’t

Already has more than a hundred people would ever need, yet takes every opportunity to oppress the have-nots in order to make their ego number go up?

I’d make a punch line about billionaires, but it’s way, way more than just them.

If anything, I’m more concerned with folks like Jamie Dimon and Satya Nadella and Andy Jassy. People who have trillions of dollars of capital at their command exert immense influence over my quality of life. Arguably much more so than any king or high priest or even any American president.

We talk about Divine Right of Kings like its a thing that came and went, but consider how a guy like Elon Musk has accrued phenomenal amounts of wealth and authority. Consider how people see him. And how he sees himself. Its chilling to consider how much power some of these people wield and how blind we all are to their intentions.

Oh, it is worse than that. There are accelerationist Christians that are certain he is the antichrist. They believe bringing him to power will bring about the end of days, the rapture(that will save them), and the 1000 years of peace promised after revelations. Religion is vile.

And there are people who thought their kings were divine.

What point are you trying to make? That it would have been better if the divine right of kings ended sooner? I’m sure Ursula K. Le Guin would agree.

Or are you trying to say we shouldn’t be complacent in working to end capitalism? Because I’m sure Ursula K. Le Guin would agree as well.

The point of even saying this is to rally people who might feel there’s no point in trying, because the current system seems unstoppable.

Millions of deaths compared to what alternative? The difficulty with attributing causes in history is that we have no ability to conduct controlled experiments.

The comic’s author should have add the proper quote.

Her father was an Anthropologist, where as she seems to be more of a Sociologist.

Now everyone can understand why Twitter is being dismantled

#Metoo ruffled some feathers

You’ve described liberal democracy. The combination of individual freedom plus democracy is supposed to provide a framework for curating precisely the kind of political agency you describe.

That’s why there’s been an entire century of revision to that model to incorporate more democratic forward values

How is a representative election every 4 years in a system where mass media are owned by the capitalist class more democratic than the ideas of Marx? The Soviet Union started out as the name implies, as a union of republics in which soviets, or worker councils, had the decision power. The fact that international interference and civil war (such as 14 countries invading the USSR militarily and many more sponsoring the tsarist loyalists or the anti-revolutionary Mensheviks) didn’t allow for a high degree of work democracy without extreme risk to the stability or the country, has more to do with the material and historical conditions of the USSR than it has to do with the ideas of Marx and Lenin.

In what manner has Marx been wrong? Where in the history of Marxism has democracy not been core to the central ideas of it, especially when compared to Capitalism?

Part of the problem is that, while Marx writes well regarding the economic flaws of capitalism, he isn’t as good at writing about the politics of change.

When induced by the body politic, we see that some of the economic surplus can be reallocated to the workers provided there is political pressure. It can come in the form of state backed rights, progressive taxation, and even direct welfare payments.

It probably isn’t the perfect system Marx envisioned, but enlightened liberalism is able to make subtle shifts over time in a way that absolute monarchies can’t.

If old man Charles starts talking shit about divine right they’ll put him in a home and replace him with another inbred fuck in like a month