It was a surreal week, bursting with surreal news generated by the surreal idiot who sits in the White House, but maybe the most surreal headline of all was the one I saw Thursday morning telling me that Costco was rationing motor oil. The limit they’ve set is very likely more than your average motorist needs, but still. Rationing! Am I in England in the 1950s? And on top of that, the price has nearly doubled since April, to $58 for a 10-quart pack.
Or maybe it was the news that diesel had topped $6 a gallon. Before the war in Iran, it was about $3.60 a gallon. Some stations, in fact, are out of diesel. That’s right, on the signs that normally list the price per gallon of diesel fuel, it just says “Out.” Diesel powers trucks and delivery vans and tractors and other farm equipment. (Harvest season is around the corner, by the way.) Also freight trains. And buses and ships and barges and tugboats. And bulldozers and backhoes and cranes, and I guess that also means forklifts—you know, the kind seen this week crashing repeatedly into the Kennedy Center. The nation’s, and the world’s, commerce, in other words, runs on diesel gasoline.
For years, we’ve wondered whether American democracy would survive Donald Trump. We still do, of course, and by the way, if you haven’t read Judge Michael Luttig’s terrifying piece on that subject that we posted last week, do so immediately (well, after you finish this). But now, we need to fret that capitalism may not survive Trump, and that between now and January 2029, assuming the GOP doesn’t go Twenty-Fifth Amendment on him, he’ll single-handedly bring not only the American but the global economy to its knees.
America is finally coming to terms with just what an ignoramus Trump is. In his first term, he inherited a steady economy with a record 75 consecutive months of job growth. Until the pandemic hit, he didn’t do anything to screw it up. He inflicted horror after horror on the nation in other realms, but until March 2020, his economy was fine to good.
…
Capitalism is when good thing. When lot of thing. When price low. Price high now! Not lot of thing! Now bad thing! How can be capitalism if bad thing?!
The American Empire really does resemble the Roman one. As long as you can provide a reasonable quality of life for cheap with breads and circuses, the general population is content in complicity. When it finally starts getting difficult to steal from another country, and greed reaches a point where there is no longer enough trickle down, watch out. A plague, a calamity, a political upheaval, is now enough to push it over the edge.
If Trump destroys capitalism in the United States, I will be extremely happy to be out from under the boot of capitalism and extremely annoyed that ultimately the accelerationists were the ones who had it right.
What is it about being a serf that’s so appealing to you?
Big assumption to think that whatever replaces it won’t be worse
Yeah… With the way things are heading I’d bet on capitalism devolving into some form of primitive accumulation before we make any progress towards socialism.
We will end up in feudalism.
If we’re lucky, we will get small patches here and there of self-determined communes, but that’s money on the table for feudal lords, so dunno how long they’ll be allowed to exist for
That is kinda what I’m expecting.
Well there’s a likelihood what comes next will be bad. There’s an absolute certainty that staying the course is horrible. It’s better to take the risk.
Ehh… If things devolve back to some kind of primitive accumulation then things are going to be worse than staying the course. A lot of leftist forget that even marx saw capitalism as an advancement compared to other forms of primitive accumulation like feudalism.
Just a blip caused by the closing of a single strait and the US pausing global aid has already led to the deaths of millions of people across the globe. A slip backwards into something less adequate than the status quo would likely kill hundreds of millions if not billions of impoverished people.
I for one would rather we take our time to properly advance into socialism via proper organization of the working people than gamble that we can rebuild better after we carelessly burn down the current system. Too many people across the globe are living on razor thin margins for us to be so careless in our actions.
Too many people across the globe are living on razor thin margins for us to be so careless…
This, in particular, is where I lose all patience with accelerationists and doomers. It’s always the penguins furthest from the cliff pushing the hardest.
“There are too many peasants living on the edge of starvation for us to overthrow feudalism.”
Again, there is a clear difference between feudalism and capitalism. Feudalism is what the billionaires are gunning for and accelerationists do nothing but play into their hand. If there is a revolution, we have a responsibility to do it in a way that we do not have to restart from ground zero.
Given enough time countries like China will be able to take over the logistical support America once monopolized. However, America is currently still too important to the global energy and food supply to implode without causing an immense amount of collateral damage to the global south.
The problem with that is they will not give you that time. The entire reason they are commmiting rapid-fire atrocities is because they know they are running out of time.
The whole point of revolution is that “they” are not in control. If they have the ability to control the workers ability to have a revolution, they wouldn’t allow anything to happen in the first place.
Accelerationist do not have it right. Those are some of the most toxic, racist, misogynistic people.
If capitalism falls because of Trump, then yes the accelerationists had it right. Load bearing “if”.
Side note but where did you see accelerationists be any of those things? I’ve never had to actually deal with any of them, I just know of the principle it in theory
Ouch. As much as I hate to expose anyone, I’ll answer the question. It’s not pleasant. There are very many sources you can check to go down a disturbing rabbit hole. The accelerationist neo-reactionary movement is where “dark MAGA” comes from (think Musk’s black MAGA hat). It’s influence has the US gov by the balls at this point. They want to tear it down and form a technostate, managed like a business with a CEO king.
The most prominent modern accelerationist philosopher is Curtis Yarvin, respected by both Peter Theil and JD Vance. Mark Andreeson is another fan. You might have a “well, that’s enough Internet for today” moment after reading this.
Also, Yarvin coined the red pill theory which created a toxic misogynistic culture, although the underlying ideologies might be suitable for some. It might still be on Reddit.
Read about the Dark Enlightenment here. Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin are the two guys who are most recognized for the more modern ideas associated with it.
Also, sorry if this ruined your day.
Rationing makes sense or you’ll have opportunists bulk buying/hoarding and then reselling to those that find empty shelves. We had the same with TP rationing during COVID when idiots would overbuy and leave shelves bare
I’ve never been to the Kennedy Center. That duffus is going to demolish it and you guys know it.
Democracy is horrible.
looks at rotten orange
“oranges are disgusting”
To paraphrase one of my old poli-sci professors:
You can have capitalism without democracy, but you can’t have democracy without capitalism.
By this they mean any form of capitalism - be it the hyper-individualistic style in America, the Scandinavian style that is a lot more more accommodating to the welfare state, or various other strains of it.
To quote one of my comp-sci profs, “women can’t code, they should stay at home and bear children”.
My point is that you don’t need to be smart or empathetic to become a professor, all you need to do is put in the work, accumulate “tenure” and get published once in a while.
Your poli-sci professor was a fucking idiot.
In a democracy, people will vote for an economic system that benefits the majority, and in capitalism the rich will exert influence over the government to subvert the popular will and stop that from happening. So it seems more like you can’t have capitalism and democracy.
Maybe you weren’t paying attention in class? I mean, we could say that capital accumulation and power consolidation, inherent in capitalism, corrupts Democratic systems in government, as we’ve seen. But really capitalist systems are, practically, by definition undemocratic. We don’t have voting power inside our workplaces. We don’t get a say in how things are run, who gets hired or fired, what to do with excess profits, who to do business with, where to do business. Nothing really. We’re beholden to the owners of capital and the rules they set. What’s democratic about that?
Sorry about your education.
Lemmy hates that stuff.
I’m not. It was a good education. Just because an interpretation does match with your biases doesn’t mean it’s bad.
No, but it leading to vast social and economic inequality does.
Capitalism isnt whats propping those up, they are whats keeping capitalism in check. It just happens to be failing spectacularly in places like the US.
… And everywhere else. Europe is not the grandstanding bastion of social safety it’s made out to be. It’s just lagging behind the US. But we’re starting to get there.
Media consolidation in the hands of hyperconservative billionaires, demonization of the left…
And the existing social safety nets are getting slashed all around; we’re inching closer and closer to the US model of having everything privatized, from pensions to healthcare.
The US’ failure isn’t unique, its societal decay is just a few steps ahead of other capitalist economies
Suffering from success, as it were.
Democratic socialism is impossible?
