this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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The flaw in capitalism and the flaw that makes it unmanageable is how over time capitalism will find ways to extract more for less.
This will always fall to the workers. The recent recession had tax payers bail out the banks as well as pay bonuses. all because banks got very greedy.
Its not a flaw, its working as planned. But yeah, our "market solutions", basically any problem created by capitalism just gets exploited for profit. Even when the economy crashes its actually a good thing for the very rich, as it " disciplines" labor, moves people down and out of the middle class which lowers wages systematically, takes out a few competitors, etc.,
If you look at it, every crisis always results in transfer of wealth up. Covid was the biggest up to date.
That's a main feature dude!
There are other things unmanageable.
Like a nuclear superpower with vast fertile southern lands fit for growing grapes, sea access with fishing fleet, and all such, which had a significant part of population under threat of scurvy. Because capitalism makes logistics work, it's the reason European colonial empires could exist.
Or the same nuclear superpower, which boasted widespread literacy and all that, except that conveniently ignored Central Asian areas mostly busy with growing, collecting and processing cotton. Damn right, my dear. These were, ahem, not very developed even in 1991.
Or the same nuclear superpower, which had a powerful standardization apparatus, but when you look at its tank models or anything else, the components which could be interchangeable were just slightly incompatible. They were designed by people with the same kind of education and understanding and context, for the same purpose, but, first, every defense plant or research institute or something wanted to have their standard and they did get it, second, due to secrecy and vertical administrative structure there were little communication between them.
Or a system of logistics, that turned into shit the moment that superpower decided to leave the chat, leaving populations of whole countries foraging for wood to not freeze at winter.
Capitalism works differently, because it (any human actually, you included) tries to get more with less. Non-market instruments are supposed to constrain it to doing that only honestly.
I would never advocate for a super power, I want a classless society, this means no political class either.
"Political Class" isn't really a thing, though, unless you're replacing Class with Category, in which case "plumber" and "janitor" would be distinct classes. Administration and management are forms of labor, and are necessary in large-scale complex production, even Anarchists concede this.
I wish this was true. But as seen in history a class does developed around the political leader. This is why the country cried with the death of Stalin, he was a god to the workers. This isn't how the vanguard should look in the push towards a classless society.
In what manner is it not?
Edit to respond to your edit: I think you are confusing power with classes, and hierarchy with classes. A class is defined by its social relation to the Means of Production, a CEO can technically be proletarian if they are merely employed by the board and have no ownership. There is hierarchy, and unequal power, but the relation to Capital is fundamentally different as the M-C-M' circuit does not directly funnel into their pockets like it would with Capitalists.
Sorry I edited my response
I edited mine as well, I'll copy and paste it here for coherence:
I think you are confusing power with classes, and hierarchy with classes. A class is defined by its social relation to the Means of Production, a CEO can technically be proletarian if they are merely employed by the board and have no ownership. There is hierarchy, and unequal power, but the relation to Capital is fundamentally different as the M-C-M' circuit does not directly funnel into their pockets like it would with Capitalists.
I guess my previous response about not supporting superpowers still holds but yes was a bit silly to say class.
Gotcha! I admit, I was being nitpicky, but it's a very important nuance when understanding how Socialism is built and how Class Antagonisms are reconciled. Beaurocratization is absolutely something to be avoided where possible, but administrative positions and managerial positions will always be present unless humanity can build a fully automated system it can fully trust, and that is technology for the far-future anyways if it ever does come into existence.
We need a system to measure ego before allowing so much power which isn't possible. The more I think about the vanguard and the dissolution of that apparatus the less plausible I find it. Then again I'm a trot and the forever revolution kind of takes care of that.. I hope.
The Vanguard will always exist until Communism, even if you don't formalize it. The Vanguard is simply the most politically advanced of the revolutionary class, in nearly all cases now the Proletariat. The Vanguard isn't supposed to "dissolve" so much as "wither away," ie as class antagonisms are worked out the "general" and "backwards" sections of the mass population increase in political awareness through the process of building Communism. The formalized Vanguard dies out of itself along with the class struggle much the same way as the State, not by intention but by erasing its foundations, as it must do so if we adopt a Marxian view of economics.
To not formalize the Vanguard in a party structure results in serious danger of informal and thus unaccountable structures becoming entrenched with informal power. A great essay on the subject is The Tyranny of Structurelessness, I highly recommend it. The necessity, therefore, is to formalize the Vanguard and set it up along the principles of Democratic Centralism and adherence to the Mass Line.
I won't comment on Trotskyism or Permanent Revolution here, as I don't think this discussion needs derailing, but I wanted to acknowledge it as I didn't want you to think I ignored it.
Well, we'll see a lot of things tried.
If you've heard of the "new Medieval" concept, we are approaching it.
I like Star Wars as a really prophetic piece of culture (before Disney of course).
So - there was the original trilogy, with the set of symbols that is normal for us today, but wasn't when the first movie came out. In some sense it warned of what would happen for more than a decade after it.
And there was the prequel trilogy, which it seems to be a fashion of calling stupid and bad, and Attack of the Clones is often called the worst movie of the prequels. Well, in implementation it may be not too good, but just like the original trilogy's second movie is the deepest, the prequel trilogy's second movie is the deepest. AotC too was prophetic, and in that prophecy we live right now.
Now there's that issue with chronology, where the order of events is different, but it can be anything. It's symbolic art, not a chart. In real life events can happen in any order.
So - Lucas wanted to make three more movies (discarding Disney crap), after RotJ chronologically. I don't know what these would be, but logically AotC's philosophy is between ESB's and something which would look like that "new Medieval" I've remembered. BTW, it's not a nice thing. Just inevitable in opinions of some people.
LOL, a post out of nothing.
Lol I see what you're getting at, but I'd argue that those (incredibly fun!) movies seem "prophetic" only by the same quality that makes them relatable and profound:
They're inspired by history. Just one example being how the prequel trilogy bears heavy resemblance to the governmental structure of ancient Rome, before, like Rome, collapsing from the inside from in-fighting and profiteering in an attempt to control the whole Galaxy, before becoming basically like various monarchies throughout history, that almost succeed in ruling the world (galaxy) by monolithic force.
It's why Firefly was such a success, when it flipped and futurized the American civil / revolutionary wars concept. It gives us something familiar enough to attach to, with twists that make it unique.
Edit: I welcome historians to correct any errors in my rather generalized understanding of history. I tried to get the point across while resisting research rabbit holes. ;)