The first link is the book on complexity collapse and the second is a nice college lecture on the same thing tho focused on EROI (energy return on investment). They’re good primers on complexity curves and civilizational collapse. One could argue that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time (tm) is an economic maxim describing complexity curves, tho I wouldn’t say that’s traditional Marxist orthodoxy.
I’ve heard the argument made that our current society has passed the point where the proletariat are able to act upon it as the subject-object class as the complexity has increased to the point that the skills necessary to reproduce it are no longer held within a single class (even the workers). The argument here being that society has been so systematized it no longer needs - or can take - human input. Which is to say we’re past the tipping point on our complexity curve and collapse is imminent. Now that sounds great if you’re only thinking of the Great Satan :amerikkka: but the capitalist system of production is now global and inhabits every nation (yes even China), so I don’t see how this collapse could be contained within a specific sphere of influence/region/polity/ whatever. The hope I have internally is that this collapse means the end of the nation-state as we understand it today and the formation of new societal structures in its wake that can more effectively manage a homeostasis between humanity and its environment (crossing fingers for eco-Maoism here instead of anything else)
Tainter, Joseph. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies
Smith, Sid. 2019. How to Enjoy the End of the World
The first link is the book on complexity collapse and the second is a nice college lecture on the same thing tho focused on EROI (energy return on investment). They’re good primers on complexity curves and civilizational collapse. One could argue that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time (tm) is an economic maxim describing complexity curves, tho I wouldn’t say that’s traditional Marxist orthodoxy.
I’ve heard the argument made that our current society has passed the point where the proletariat are able to act upon it as the subject-object class as the complexity has increased to the point that the skills necessary to reproduce it are no longer held within a single class (even the workers). The argument here being that society has been so systematized it no longer needs - or can take - human input. Which is to say we’re past the tipping point on our complexity curve and collapse is imminent. Now that sounds great if you’re only thinking of the Great Satan :amerikkka: but the capitalist system of production is now global and inhabits every nation (yes even China), so I don’t see how this collapse could be contained within a specific sphere of influence/region/polity/ whatever. The hope I have internally is that this collapse means the end of the nation-state as we understand it today and the formation of new societal structures in its wake that can more effectively manage a homeostasis between humanity and its environment (crossing fingers for eco-Maoism here instead of anything else)