It’s Capitalism… funny
So let me catch you up on something first. When my step son was young and someone would say something to him that blew his mind with how wrong it was he would say “No… funny” and my partner and I have said it ever since whenever we want to playfully let the other person know they are wrong. Thats how I feel whenever I see people still wanting to blame the consequences of capitalism on different things, which while it may be true technically without the capitalism of it all the analysis is incomplete and so will be any solutions. We are out of time for anything other than full throttle revolution.
What ever your issue is (and it is real and desperately in need of change) if you follow it far enough up the ladder you will find the accumulation of capital on the top rung. The evidence for this is at this point so overwhelming that to deny it really brings into focus your personal motivations for doing so. What do I mean by this, well take climate change for instance the only losers still denying it are those who profit from it, AI being a big fat scam and data centers helping to boil the climate, people in opposition to that fact all profit off the big fat scam, animal agriculture… you guessed it, the only people who still push it profit from that push. There are people out there every day fighting against one of these or maybe two, but rarely all three. Why?
Cause capitalism has created the Cult of Individualism where people pick and choose what they think is important to them and decide to fight that thinking it will be easier to get people on board who have also been impacted by said thing. Attempts made to cross the streams of these efforts are met with hostility because the people don’t really want large scale change that fixes our problems, but rather a return to the moment they were forced to realize that problems in the system exist.
The oppressed and marginalized have been screaming this at the tops of their lungs for as long as things like oppression and marginalization have existed. Don’t get me wrong those things both predate capitalism by a fair margin, but capitalism is what gives the people in power, the power to continue those projects and will continue to until we as a people stop them.
I am a Marxist Leninist and have been reading about pre soviet Russia a lot recently, and the most amazing thing about it is how not different the peoples complaints are from current day ones. In fact, its remarkable how their struggles are still our struggles just wrapped in different technologies, and pushed by slightly different snake oil salesmen. I am also reading the book Fanshen (I read like 5 books at any given time) about the peoples revolution in China and the same thing.
Our world and our opinions are all shaped by the liberal bourgeoisie and their C suite spinsters, but its getting harder to control the narratives as the contradictions continue to sharpen, so they have moved up their full court press of news to overwhelm the “average” person into a state of apathy. It works, I’ve seen it in my own life, shit I’ve experienced it from time to time. Thats when I think back to Huey Newton’s idea of Revolutionary Optimism which for me means studying the successful revolutions of the past and how they continue to impact us today.
We have so many successful Revolutionaries to look back on and admire. This doesn’t mean we put them on unnecessary pedestals, for they made quite a few biog and costly mistakes. What it does mean is take their successes and build upon those for our collective futures and Marxism Leninism is known as Scientific Socialism because of its ability to adapt to peoples conditions on the ground. So it will never look the same (which is a trick that liberals use to attack it against those not forged in its fires). So, no matter if its eugenics, racism, sexism, patriarchy, climate change, AI, Animal Ag, or something else I have apologetically forgotten its power comes from Capital and defeating it as the driving force of global economics will not solve every problem, but it will make every problem easier to deal with.
I am a member of a collective called Stop Gen AI, we are an anticapitalist collective that works to help peoples who’s lives have been ruined by the rise of this souped up auto correct that plagues tech and also through data centers our collective environment. We are having an “open house” of sorts on September 12th, please come join us and see if we can help each other build a better world. Please also remember to treat yourself like a data center and drink water and shovel information into your brains as fast as it will allow. Ignorance is a tool of the oppressor. Especially ignorance wrapped in confidence.