What is very interesting is that based off of existing historical and archaeological records, the Romans did have the capacity and academic know-how to harness steam power and theoretically create steam-powered mechanisms, which could have eventually translated into coal. So even that point is generally unsound. They could have, but they didn't, with these contraptions remaining as academic theory or novelties such as water clocks.
The general materialist theory around this is that this is mostly because of the elite reliance on the slave economy, the slave economy's gutting of the political will of the bourgeoisie, and the lack of translation between purely academic knowledge and trades knowledge. Basically, the empire was too physically large to sustain any kind of coherent industrial movement, and what movement may have occured would have been fought tooth and nail by an elite class who's primary mode of production was the monopoly of slave labor.
Theorists like Marx see capitalism particularly as a revolutionary moment that is, on the whole, a positive development for humanity and labor, just that at some point these large systems will have to deal with its own contradictions, in particular the immiseration of the very workers that are the primary producers of value. That said, he did not recognize it as system without violence or the requirements of empire, simply that it created a class that could potentially, because of it's access to and knowledge of industrial practices, succeed in a social revolution, unlike the slaves and peasants before them. And to some degree he was correct, and to other degrees he was incorrect. In general, Marx's socio-economic theories hold empirically stronger than his socio- political theories, but I am generally not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It is more theorists like Proudhon who see capitalism as a pure net negative, an immiseration and proletarianization of the skilled working tradesman without any real compensation or hope of social revolution. For him, fighting against the capitalist machine itself as it was developing was the primary battle, not letting it take hold and then advocating for a social revolution in an inevitable moment of crisis. And again, he has been proven correct to some degree and incorrect to another and his socio- economic theories, especially those that dovetail with Marx, have proven empirically stronger than his socio- political theories.
That being said, we don't really live in the exact same capitalist model that Proudhon or Marx were describing. We are actually living in a socio- political and socio- economic order that adheres more closely to what Lenin predicted, where the old-school rentier landlords and financial barons are the ones that dictate the terms of industrial development, after reasserting control over the market, not the internal industrial capitalists themselves, with the majority of profits being 'super-profits' created by imperial dominance, funneled to an imperial core. It's a strange set-up more reminiscent of feudalism, where finance capital flows freely, but people are tied to the land, a reactionary form of capitalism even by Adam Smith's standards.
Anyways, tldr, that's fucking stupid, ahistorical, and reductionist.
I mean, he wasn't happy about it. He more or less saw the Russian revolution as the last stop off the train before it ran itself towards oblivion (he was kind of a mix of Marx and Proudhon in that way), because he thought that if Tsarist Russia had it's traditional boot off of Germany, the German proletariat would become the real vanguard of the revolution, which could then take on the real enemy (the British). And then when that didn't happen (failed) in 1918 and then again in 1923 (right before he died) he generally became much more pessimistic about seeing a way off the tracks, and it is this line of thinking that was most influential to Stalin, because while he believed Lenin's theories and observations, because of the success of their revolution he also believed that with organization and sacrifice, they could still get off the tracks. And so they did, for a time, but they didn't quite forsee the U.S. becoming what it became (even though Marx in his later letters to Engels did predict that if anywhere was the last place to experience a profit decline crisis it would be the U.S. because of how large and relatively uninhabited it is).
Not what I said.
What is very interesting is that based off of existing historical and archaeological records, the Romans did have the capacity and academic know-how to harness steam power and theoretically create steam-powered mechanisms, which could have eventually translated into coal. So even that point is generally unsound. They could have, but they didn't, with these contraptions remaining as academic theory or novelties such as water clocks.
The general materialist theory around this is that this is mostly because of the elite reliance on the slave economy, the slave economy's gutting of the political will of the bourgeoisie, and the lack of translation between purely academic knowledge and trades knowledge. Basically, the empire was too physically large to sustain any kind of coherent industrial movement, and what movement may have occured would have been fought tooth and nail by an elite class who's primary mode of production was the monopoly of slave labor.
Theorists like Marx see capitalism particularly as a revolutionary moment that is, on the whole, a positive development for humanity and labor, just that at some point these large systems will have to deal with its own contradictions, in particular the immiseration of the very workers that are the primary producers of value. That said, he did not recognize it as system without violence or the requirements of empire, simply that it created a class that could potentially, because of it's access to and knowledge of industrial practices, succeed in a social revolution, unlike the slaves and peasants before them. And to some degree he was correct, and to other degrees he was incorrect. In general, Marx's socio-economic theories hold empirically stronger than his socio- political theories, but I am generally not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It is more theorists like Proudhon who see capitalism as a pure net negative, an immiseration and proletarianization of the skilled working tradesman without any real compensation or hope of social revolution. For him, fighting against the capitalist machine itself as it was developing was the primary battle, not letting it take hold and then advocating for a social revolution in an inevitable moment of crisis. And again, he has been proven correct to some degree and incorrect to another and his socio- economic theories, especially those that dovetail with Marx, have proven empirically stronger than his socio- political theories.
That being said, we don't really live in the exact same capitalist model that Proudhon or Marx were describing. We are actually living in a socio- political and socio- economic order that adheres more closely to what Lenin predicted, where the old-school rentier landlords and financial barons are the ones that dictate the terms of industrial development, after reasserting control over the market, not the internal industrial capitalists themselves, with the majority of profits being 'super-profits' created by imperial dominance, funneled to an imperial core. It's a strange set-up more reminiscent of feudalism, where finance capital flows freely, but people are tied to the land, a reactionary form of capitalism even by Adam Smith's standards.
Anyways, tldr, that's fucking stupid, ahistorical, and reductionist.
I mean, he wasn't happy about it. He more or less saw the Russian revolution as the last stop off the train before it ran itself towards oblivion (he was kind of a mix of Marx and Proudhon in that way), because he thought that if Tsarist Russia had it's traditional boot off of Germany, the German proletariat would become the real vanguard of the revolution, which could then take on the real enemy (the British). And then when that didn't happen (failed) in 1918 and then again in 1923 (right before he died) he generally became much more pessimistic about seeing a way off the tracks, and it is this line of thinking that was most influential to Stalin, because while he believed Lenin's theories and observations, because of the success of their revolution he also believed that with organization and sacrifice, they could still get off the tracks. And so they did, for a time, but they didn't quite forsee the U.S. becoming what it became (even though Marx in his later letters to Engels did predict that if anywhere was the last place to experience a profit decline crisis it would be the U.S. because of how large and relatively uninhabited it is).
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