this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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There's a vast gulf between 'playing nice' and 'use force to overthrow the elite'. There were great strides made in the heyday of labor organization in the 1880s-1930s. There can be great strides made again. The elite are not some organized cabal of rulers plotting against us - they are selfish people who got where they are by being exceptionally selfish. They don't want to preserve capitalism - they want to preserve themselves. They can be pressured. They can be bargained with. Most of them are rational - that's their weakness. They'll accept deals that are good for them, or that they perceive as such, even if it weakens the system as a whole. For God's sake, we have the best educated generation to ever exist on the face of this planet - planning and bargaining are what we've been toiling our miserable white-collar lives around. All we lack is solidarity.
It's not as satisfying as heads rolling down the streets of Paris - but it's never just the elite who die in such scenarios. We should be ready for such an occasion as civil war - but it should also be a last resort.
All those strides came with the aforementioned violent crackdowns and the gains were short lived. Leaving the power structure in place and merely trying to bargain with it for a few more scraps left capitalists with the power they needed to erode those gains. And again, to the extent any progress was made, it was within the imperial core. All those other people around the world who were being exploited by international capital didn’t enjoy any of the benefits of the bargaining that went on here.
You have to ignore a lot of the reality of history to believe in the story of peaceful incremental progress.
Man, if you don't think we've made significant progress since the 1880s, I don't know what to tell you.
Oh no, you're one of those.
One of what? Someone who gives a shit about anyone besides people in one country?
No, the kind of idiot who says "Both sides" in the Ukrainian War are bad because the Imperial Core is Exploiting the Helpless Foreign Countries. It's reverse White Man's Burden, and ethnocentric as fuck.
So are we just supposed to be ok with all the people who died in wars or coups because the US wanted to make sure no country could successfully do communism or even just decide not to give away all their resources for cheap?
Don't know where I said that, but go off, I guess.
I think it's pretty clear that the rich are not rational actors and neither can they be trusted.
Rationality does not imply wisdom, nor intelligence, nor far-sightedness. But most of the elite are more Rupert Murdoch than Elon Musk - they are rational rather than irrational.
All it implies is that rich folk, generally, will do what most people will do in situations involving one's livelihood and assets - assess it according to their biases, determine their possible profit or loss and its likelihood, and choose the course of action that seems most suited to their risk tolerance.