This year’s New Year edition of Der Spiegel features an interesting piece titled, “Was Marx right after all?” Full of astute observations about the state of capitalism, it’s a piece symptomatic of the anxiety of the ruling class.
Oh you’d be surprised, they legit have a martyrdom obsession. During the yellow vests, hundreds of people were maimed, but they still refused to build a unitary structure. They fought harder than they could to accomplish near to nothing
Because of ideology. In the west, decentralisation is a huge dogma. I think France has a particular sweet spot for bourgeois revolutionary idealism because of the emphasis on the 1789 Revolution in its culture/politics.
For the yellow vest in particular, this proto-anarchist approach to organising was THE point of convergence. It was a moral imperative to them and they stuck to it until no one was willing to mobilize.
So my take on the west is that, given that ideology is an integral part of the material conditions, especially in consumerist mass media societies, the standard of living can go down by insane magnitude before the superstructure starts crumbling slowly (especially since bourgeois revolutionary idealism is currently the baseline of the left)
the standard of living can go down by insane magnitude before the superstructure starts crumbling slowly
This I agree with. Plenty of people were gleefully proclaiming that “Europe will soon come back begging for gas” or that the NATO/EU will break over the economic crisis. Nah, it’ll take quite a lot for that.
I’d imagine getting stomped out by the full force of the capitalist repression machine is a bigger concern
Oh you’d be surprised, they legit have a martyrdom obsession. During the yellow vests, hundreds of people were maimed, but they still refused to build a unitary structure. They fought harder than they could to accomplish near to nothing
I am surprised, yeah. Why do they even bother with the protests?
Because of ideology. In the west, decentralisation is a huge dogma. I think France has a particular sweet spot for bourgeois revolutionary idealism because of the emphasis on the 1789 Revolution in its culture/politics.
For the yellow vest in particular, this proto-anarchist approach to organising was THE point of convergence. It was a moral imperative to them and they stuck to it until no one was willing to mobilize.
So my take on the west is that, given that ideology is an integral part of the material conditions, especially in consumerist mass media societies, the standard of living can go down by insane magnitude before the superstructure starts crumbling slowly (especially since bourgeois revolutionary idealism is currently the baseline of the left)
This I agree with. Plenty of people were gleefully proclaiming that “Europe will soon come back begging for gas” or that the NATO/EU will break over the economic crisis. Nah, it’ll take quite a lot for that.