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Literally taking away the bread and circuses
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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse
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one of the only good things about the stage of capitalism that we're in right now is that the capitalists are complete fucking idiots with no instincts for the preservation of their class. the competence has been fully bred out of them Habsburg-style at this point
Death to America
Conversely, they've realized the general population is even more servile and neutered then they expected and they are doing this to constantly reinforce there's nothing we can do and they'll make things as shitty as they want and nobody's gonna do anything about it. They're trying to soft sell us on being back in a feudal society and they're about 60% of the way there.
Working in exchange for housing with no pay is gonna be a thing again in our lifetimes.
"Now watch this drive" but about the inherent contradictions of capitalism.
Honestly if they take us back to feudal relationships it makes it easier to do revolution because it completely decomplicates who the oppressors are to the average person. It makes the enemy easy to see. One of the biggest factors of capitalism that helps them prevent revs is how the enemy is less identifiable.
I don't think this is actually true, feudal relations were very stable and persisted for millennia in some places. It feels that way because the propaganda machine isn't justifying feudal social relations currently. Company housing for example is slowly becoming more popular, even in the west.
The corvee labour system makes it extremely obvious you're working for someone else and more than you need to than the wage system where you work some number of hours get some number of money in wages and go home. The amount you work to pay your own wage isn't obvious. Having to work for a feudal lord or having to give up things to them directly via taxation makes them easily hated and peasant uprisings happened all the time because of it, what they didn't have was a conscious rejection of feudalism as a system but they knew who to blame (other than Jews obviously). Under capitalism people often complain about taxation and burgled theft because they make it plain who's taking what from whom.
Peasant uprisings were much less common than labor unrest today, though granted that isn't exactly the same.
Additionally, exploitation in peasant economies was not always as transparent as you indicate. Often, it was at least slightly hidden. For example, a peasant might be required to give sacks of grain to the lord who owns the mill, and instead of being allowed to keep some for seeds, they must buy the seeds from the lord, inequalities here can hold the exploitation. Further, debt was a constant of feudal relations and gives a veneer of legitimacy to exploitation, just as it does today. Further, surplus value extraction can be seen as acceptable to the peasant if they believe it is justified. The lord can claim that his cut is in exchange for protection, insurance, and other services. This applies to taxation today.
Good points.
well that is some wishful thinking.
I think it's arguably that they are beginning to see the end of the window of profitability and so they are gutting things on the way out. Obviously there are true failsons fucking things up like Elon, but a lot of it I think is actually them acting reasonably from the standpoint of quarterly gains and perhaps even medium-term profit-maximizing, because how intrusive Netflix ads are during a nuclear war doesn't really make a difference (meaning short-term gain is the only thing to optimize).
Suffering from success