i have a oretty general idea of what dialetics is about, but im kinda curious if theres room for like regression in it. would probably require some kind of huge disaster like earth losing its magnetic field or some doomsday scenario, but im still curious, is there like a few social constructs or institutions that if we lost it tomorrow, we'd be kicked back to the stone age in terms of economic development?
Is coal harder to mine than it was three hundred years ago though?
Yep, only stuff that's left in the ground in any real quantity is coal in the deepest veins, lowest concentrations, or worst grades.
Charcoal can be made as a semi-renewable replacement, but is obviously limited. It will probably end up being used anyways as woodgas can be extracted during firing if done right.
In physical terms, the dialectical historical process is not a reversible reaction. It literally increases entropy by expending resources.
Unless everyone forgets all technological development or has a gentlemen's agreement to go full anprim, it would be impossible for pre-industrial methods of production to supersede capitalism. No rational actors would voluntarily regress to an inferior mode of production, and any disaster that destroyed enough information & capital to revert industrialization would almost certainly wipe out humanity as well.
Yeah this is what marx meant by the common destruction of the contending classes. Like if we the proles fail to defeat the boug it would lead to societal collapse. However it probably wouldn't be an exact reversion to an older system, it would be a different system all together and miserable. And to be honest it seems like any truly big problem like massive climate change could do this due to capitalisms inability to solve problems and emergencies with effectiveness needed.
I could see that argument being made. The current system of global exploitation is fragile in its own way, and because of it's internal contradictions has to face those someway, someday. But that synthesis doesn't have to be a 'positive' outcome.
If there was a sufficiently large disaster, or just due to the inevitable march of climate change, the logistics and energy needed to power inter-continental resource extraction & manufacturing wouldn't be able to keep up. Im a pessimist; It's going to be a bloody fucking mess, because leviathan is going to thrash itself to death trying to suck down negative EROEI like a star's core going supernova.
The problem for any post-collapse situation is we've hoovered up the low-to-middle hanging fruit up. Coal, gas, oil, ores, arable land, potable water, biomass, almost everything. There's the ruins of society & landfills to recycle, but if there's a slide, primary extraction is gone. Hard to re-build when your most concentrated energy source is woodgas & ethanol from already depleted, post-oil farmland.
Edit: I guess i went a bit off-topic, sorry. I'm not sure that a regression to a pre-industrial level is likely, at least for most of the globe. The steam engine & magnets are staying probably staying around, simple enough that if the idea remains alive the machines will too. I could see capitalism 'regressing' or reforming itself to resemble early guild capitalism. The collapse wont be total, and it won't hit everywhere all at once. Pockets of industry will remain, if not at mass-production assembly-line levels. Capital can still maintain artificial scarcity, even in times of greatly fucked nature, if they are able to control the output of what industry remains.
Edit 2: Read the Sand Book. I really like it as a decent scrying into the future, but to be honest I have my own problems with it and would love to hear someone else's review of it. Might make a post about it later.
Related question: is my work in local, sustainable agriculture not indeed the praxis I hope that it is?
Somebody has to do it, and the groundwork & experience from it being done will definitely be useful. Keep doing cool stuff comrade.
Meh, the generators are there to not kill the reactor, you could drop bucket of boric acid into the active zone and reactor would just die. *edit I mean after roughly a week-month of cooling, depending on the design, before that the generators are needed. Then slow decomposition of cement will be the only issue, which will take hundreds of years.
It is hard to imagine the chain of events that would lead to a society like this unless a nuclear holocaust happens as well as probably several other things, but idk maybe
I genuinely believe that in the event of such a scenario that there would be these societies. It's not really based on anything other than observations over the years.
I think a lot of people would find solace in media and such and you'd genuinely get a bunch of people larping as Mad Max villains, royalty, Romans, the Brotherhood of Steel etc. Society is gone, why would you not LARP? What else is there?
I don't think it would happen naturally but I think media has placed an idea of what an apocalypse looks like and would "artificially" try to recreate that. Not sure how successful these groups would be either. Depends on how LARP they are overall.
Watching people react to COVID by being like "haha what if it mutated into zombie virus" makes me believe this more. A lot of people can't imagine a pandemic that doesn't look like a zombie movie.
