In the past, concessions would be given to workers to stave off talk of revolution. Think of the new deal, etc.
These days, whether through incompetence or ideological intent (the end result is the same so the distinction doesn’t matter much to me), the ruling class just will not allow any pumping of the brakes, any tiny release valve to stop the pressure building.
I find it a fascinating phenomenon that they are incapable of doing something positive for society, even to save their own skin. It baffles me, especially considering how successful it has been in the past.
In the past, concessions would be given to workers to stave off talk of revolution.
They don’t need to anymore.
There’s no USSR offering support to nascent communist movements. There’s no militant union movement. The socdem parties are coopted. National liberation movements are sufficiently repressed by police.
If the other side isn’t offering concessions, it’s because there’s nothing forcing them to the negotiating table.
Anyone else kinda suspect that it's because on some level the ruling class know (or at least think they know) that things are completely fucked and they're just stripping the copper out of the walls while they can?
I definitely feel this when it comes to climate change specifically
I have an increasingly hard time imagining this timeline going anywhere else than ecofascism. Maybe that will lead to a socialist revolution sometimes in the future but before that happens things are going to get really bad.
Climate change won't end the world. It will just destroy the livelihoods of the disadvantaged and cause instability. Don't look for weird 4d chess conspiracies. The ruling class isn't threatened by labour so they won't do concessions.
If the working class all burn to death and run out of food there's nobody to exploit
Who said they will all burn to death? Climate change isn't a meteor strike. And people have been starving in many places for many years but exploitation continues. End of the world narratives are silly because they make it seem like issues affect everyone equally, but that never happens and that is why nothing ever happens to seriously combat it.
End of the world narratives
the word apocalypse means "unveiling of something hidden". Basically what Brace Beldan was going off about with his Phase II stuff
Even if 99% of the population was wiped out, 76 million people would still exist, the world will keep moving.
What that would look like, we have no idea, but it's not "the end of the world" for a long, long time yet.
Climate change won’t end the world
imagine thinking that the apocalypse hasn't already happened.
It still blows my mind that American police are allowed to use shit to break up a bunch of hippie grandmas protesting the Iraq war, that would be a war crime under the Geneva Convention if they had used it in Iraq
Yeah, I want to say that FDR had union backing that enabled him to pass new deal memes. It would have been like if Bernie had won and we had actually built Ilhan Omar that mech suit.
racial fracturing of union coalitions.
This is the "Leo let's go at the end of the Titanic" for the American labor movement. 😭
And capitalists STILL tried to overthrow him with the business plot.
I think it helps if you consider that the ruling class aren't rational or smart. It seems like they see the world through a sheltered, religious view where science and reality don't matter. I think that they believe that they are in positions of power because they are chosen by God and that nothing they do is wrong because it is the will of God or some other force.
They think the less fortunate are that way for a reason, and that messing with that goes against Gods will.
At least, that is how they justify their own incompetence, ignorance and selfishness to themselves.
It goes against the image of the rapacious capitalist I have in my head to think that they really believe in gods plan, in their heart of hearts. I think deep down their only god is capital. If they are really willing to commit class suicide because of religious beliefs I’d be very surprised lol.
When I say God, I mean it in a very fashy 'divine right of kings' way that is tied up in money and power. You're probably right that it's not truly sincere belief, but rather a coping mechanism to absolve themselves of guilt and responsibility.
They don't want to (and don't think they should have to) give up any power to those they see as lower than themselves. Anything that would save capitalism would mean giving up power that they see as rightfully theirs and theirs alone, and it would also mean giving the poor more tools to fight back. Which in turn, might also mean they might face punishment or even death for crimes against humanity that their power and money previously protected them from.
They are so afraid of this, that to them it's worth risking the destruction of countless lives, the environment and society, as they reason that as long as they have all the money and power, they'll still be in the best position to build back afterwards.
I mean, 99% of people aren't completely sincere in their religious beliefs. I'm not trying to be all r*ddit atheist here, but if people truly, earnestly believed in Christianity (my biggest reference point as someone in the USA) they wouldn't do the things they do.
It's just a coping mechanism for the most part, there's always a level of separation because otherwise they'd have to follow all of the guidelines and rules that everyone has collectively agreed at this point don't really matter.
There is no reason to ascribe weird religious beliefs to the ruling class. Different members have vastly different weird beliefs and they don't matter. In fact I can assure you that if the few people I have met are any indication, they don't think about any of these things, they just think "fuck you I got mine, stop bothering me, poors", or they justify it to themselves by telling themselves that this is all for the best because otherwise the poors will fuck themselves over. No need for them to overthink it, after all capitalist realism and treating all this stuff as normal is the norm even for working class people, except working class people have reasons to challenge these ideas, and they have reasons to have them reinforced. There is no table they sit down on to deliberate what they're gonna do with the world, but there is a seemingly chaotic net of demands that converge to some specific thing. The state and its branches comes to figure out how to satisfy all of them, although there are still some secondary contradictions within the capitalist class which give rise to different factions.
The reason there aren't many concessions coming is because no one seriously feels like the current order is threatened enough right now, and definitely not more than can be controlled by repression. Americans can't even organise a strike. So what's the threat? Why should Biden care? Because people may roast them on Twitter? They can take some roasting.
Over here many laws have been scrapped because of large protests and strikes. Then there is other laws that cause many protests and strikes but can not be scrapped because they are forced by "higher ups" in the EU and require an immense amount of pressure to budge. But still you can see some results, you can frequently see the state fumbling in response to large events like that. Is it because they are "smart" here? No, in fact they are considerably less smart, and the state is very weak compared to the US. So the state being considerably weaker with weaker institutions combined with the fact that compared to the US labour unions and the left hold much more power, plus the fact that the country was pushed close to instability right after the crisis started which scared it out of them, mean they can't ignore everything. Where they have enough power that has never been challenged they don't have to do that.
Maybe not religious exactly, but some of them use an 'everything in its place' hierarchal way of thinking that is common in older religious institutions to justify their positions of power. Sort of like monarchists but replace 'son of the King' with 'son of a billionaire'.
The point is that we don't really know what exactly they personally think but it doesn't matter.
sheltered, religious view where science and reality don’t matter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
nothing they do is wrong because it is the will of God or some other force
the invisible tentacle of the free market Cthulhu demon
People are coming up with weird reasons but really it's simply because they don't consider it remotely a serious threat. No one is even in a union, they're not worried. There is also no USSR to threaten them. So why bother? If labour becomes threatening to stability concessions will happen. Right now no.
the only thing the state can do is punishment and the threat thereof
I’d love to see some analysis of why it’s become this way though. All the same avenues are available to the wealthiest country on earth as there were in the past when crises occurred and capitalism was threatened.
The only explanation that makes sense is complete incompetence from top to bottom, and in that case, how did incompetence at the highest levels become so commonplace that it is threatening the entire system? They seem pretty competent at repression and punishment, as you say.
because after decades of lingering illness the state is actually dead. The United States of America does not exist. The heart has stopped, neurons no longer fire in the brain. Only the state violence immune-response cells still blunder around in the cooling corpse, still trying to suppress a working class that no longer exists
Now thats a dark movie. Bill Murray dead and decaying, raccoons eating his body. Osmosis Jones and the few remaining cells dont realize the body is dead at first, but slowly realize the case and then must come to terms with and find meaning as their world around them literally rots.
I think the first time I’d heard this was from Trashfuture, particularly around the start of season 3 / Line Go Stop at the start of the western recognition of the pandemic in March 2020.
It definitely feels true, although I’m curious where the history of this idea comes from
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There is more juice to squeeze. We are nowhere near the point of unsustainability
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There is no political movement strong enough to force concessions
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The USA isnt unique in this regard. It's all really a matter of how much suffering people can take. Governmetns in poor countries have made their people suffer much worse without facing any real repercussions.
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I don't know, and I find the answers people give here unsatisfactory. Let's see a few of the things that come to my mind:
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They don't care - if the ruling class doesn't care about the poors and is a lot more worried about their own wealth. Probably a factor. But you would have to be a complete psychopath and even then you would know that this is bad governance.
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Ideology - blinded by the ideology of capitalism and free market they may believe that it is not the government's job to fix things and that it all should fix itself. Idk, some of them definitely. Maybe they also genuinely believe that implementing broader policy is going to be bad down the road. Maybe the maths do not add up and they don't want to admit that the economical theory is wrong. Maybe it shows something catastrophic.
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Bureaucracy - never underestimate the power of bureaucracy, and all these tiny procedures, documents and games, that because they have bought into it don't want to bypass. Seems like a factor, but incomplete. What do they risk? Getting sued?
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Isolation - maybe the ruling class has just lost touch with what is happening on the ground, abd surrounded by grifters and consultants, they think they are doin their best... Combined with the above seems like it is a big component.
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Grim pragmatism and opportunism : more dead people, less weight on the already struggling social security. Crises offer opportunities.
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Incompetence - maybe theyre out of their depths and have no idea what to do, cause their job was never supposed to pass actual legislature, just maintain things as they are.
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Complexity - maybe things are that difficult and complex, and bureaucracy plays a role here. Maybe they are doing their best, and it's all difficult and takes time.
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Elite division - too many disparate interests and the fight for power have completely taken over, so everything ends up in a gridlock, and simply decisions cannot be made, because there is always someone with enough power to cause problems that causes problems...
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Fear: maybe the situation is so grim, tha they know it doesn't matter what they do, it all comes down collapsing, so they're just trying to make it last the longest
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Gerontocracy - a lot of very old people in important positions, we know some are losing it, maybe some are ran by their staffers in truth. Again a lot of potential for chaos, inability to reach decisions and overall gridlock.
Probably a combination of all these. The one thing sure is the one thing we observe: the elites act as if they are fractured, disconnected from the plight of the people, and unable to pass anything effective. The only things that pass are the ones that be edit Wallstreet, and this is because Wallstreet has the most pressure there. Maybe it is worth looking at what kind of letter to shareholders and the like people on Wallstreet are sharing. Or what they're lobbying for. And look at the Business plot and the people behind it, and their motivations. These people ultimately did win.
Finally it all does remind me in a lot of ways of the last years of the USSR and it's sattelites. Same incompetencies, inability to act, hubris, bureaucracy, corruption..
the elites act as if they are fractured, disconnected from the plight of the people
I know some other fractured things
:gui-better:
How about: the falling rate of profit does not allow the same level of concessions that were granted before. After all the neoliberal reforms were conceived in the middle of a global profitability crisis and managed to stop the fall for a few decades
And / or: deindustrialization has turned the vast majority of the ruling class into financial as opposed to industrial capitalists. Financial capitalists are not harmed by falls in consumption, in fact they are completely uninterested in the material product of the United States and their profit is composed of whatever they can leech off the local and international industrialists.
This needs expansion but it's an idea.
Part of the problem is I think we are still attached to the anachronism of nation states. Most of the economy is multinational now and the people who run and benefit from it are materially separated from the American people. So to some degree or another they have less of an interest in seeing the American peoples needs met.
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sometimes when I think about this problem I ask myself if they actually know something really, really dooming that they aren't telling the general public. something like an asteroid in 2078, some reason that they just do not care about maintaining the system any more
lol what if that isreali dude was tellin the truth and theres aliens on mars and the us government is working with them to literally to bleed the planet dry before they move on to space
If Aliens exist and they are the capitalist class equivalent, I’d be so black pilled.
I think about that too, but the more likely explanation is that this is the end result of any capitalist country with no left-pulling opposition, combined with psychopathic levels of individualist propaganda. Especially with the ideological threat of the Soviet Union out of the way, and Unions at home quashed, there is absolutely no reason in the minds of the wealthy to maintain a society or a state. Only the media seems interested in even maintaining the façade of a state. Fuck, even the elected officials can barely pretend to give a fuck anymore.
Concepts like "civilization" and "society" and "public" do not exist in these people's minds. It's not their problem, it's not their concern, and because they run everything everywhere, well...
For them, if we’re going off the cliff of climate change anyway, why pump the brakes if that’ll mean less profit along the way
I think it comes down to basic petty politics. Manchin and Sinema don't want $15 but also don't want to be seen voting against it and Biden doesn't care enough about it to delay the stimulus bill that he thinks is more popular and more important.
