Morning Comrades.
2 years ago I wrote a piece considering the Capitalist Endgame that left me just as befuddled as most of you. Applying logic to the nature of capitalism is a never ending loophole of insanity and two years down the line from the initial question: “What is their Endgame?” the very same gravitational downward spiral into fascism, death and potential extinction appears accelerated. There could be a large number of topics to write about to start off this week, Israel’s expansionist and genocidal war is progressing at breakneck speed, only equaled with the Western’ Ruling Classes support thereof, whilst and logically so, the median cultural reality here in the core of the Capitalist Empire is feeling increasingly threatening to anyone with half a brain.
Again, none of this, especially historically speaking comes at a surprise, what does come at a surprise is on the one hand the seemingly historical inevitability, which is wrong, and that the question of their endgame remains, well, unsolveable, by logic and actual morality at this point, but surrendering to their nihilistic greed and psycho-pop-speak explanations don’t even scratch the surface towards a solution based, humanistic, strategy.
What’s “their” endgame here?
With “their” I specifically mean the people that run the show on this planet. Irrespective of all our work and actions it is undeniable that there are a number of people on this planet that through their wealth and power hold a huge sway on our lives, whether that is palatable or not. Politicians that enforce power, industry captains, media owners, the 1% essentially.
I entered the “workforce” back in 1996 at the same time that I started University. As wild as it seems now, back then, it was generally accepted, even within the more radical leftwing scenes around the west, that we were generally on an upward trajectory in terms of security, peace, wealth and so on. Generally speaking at the very least. Even I, with zero parental support and no money truly believed that I, if I had wanted to, could be on a general upward mobile trajectory. I can’t figure out if that assumption on my part back then was actually true-ish, or if the neoliberal propaganda worked well enough for me to believe. I certainly didn’t believe in any of the american-dream bullshit, having witnessed multiple generations of white-trash-working class army people in my family work their ass off to not starve and mostly fail, but part of me believed that I would be better off in any case.
The opposite is true and I believe my generation is finally waking up to that reality. I can’t speak for younger people, despite many of them being in my life but one thing I do know is that their fatalistic nihilism far exceeds my own. I remain hopeful when logically I shouldn’t be - I guess, when all you have is hope you tend to cling to it, but I am drifting off-topic here.
Factually, and briefly, there no longer is any promise of ( a better ) tomorrow. I know, something everyone outside of the “west” has had to deal with since we have been looting and destroying their cultures and futures to secure our said “promise” - but the realisation, especially for white people, is new(ish) here. The fact is though, there isn’t a history of continued, upward mobility in the “west”, except for the rich, and only briefly did “we” in the west have a a short period of say 2 or so generations post WW2 that got a brief taste of what a more people-orientated economic model could look like. Sure, that is my and probably your socialisation and hence my nagging question and it is important to view all this in that context. Saying that, why not ask for more, seems like a normal reaction to having had a little taste, right? Granted, I don’t want a return to the social welfare system we had in England and even here in Germany in the 50-70s, but some of the ideas were solid.
What I am getting at is for the past 20 odd years or so, it appears that the people in charge are doing their absolute utmost to not only make existence fucking unbearable but also, quite frankly actually want to burn down this damn planet!
Wages stagnated, productivity increased manifold, inflation and cost of living has increased to a point where most working people I know decide between food and heating, privacy has been utterly eradicated, the balance between the ability for self-determination and total control is HUGELY out of whack, the west over the police act without impunity in matters that remind me more of this countries’ Brown-Shirts than anything else, the thought of a pension is a sour joke and non existent - the list goes on. You all know what I mean.
Fact is, all of this is done by people and didn’t “just” happen. This current existence and authoritarian trajectory into feudalistic peasantry is absolutely engineered, planned and acted on. The question “why though?” is something I cannot answer, not even close.
Yes, of course, the rich want to get richer. It’s a disease of the mind that has plagued men and people since the dawn of the time. However, and as much as I want to stick to any and all Marxist principles of dialectical materialism to explain this, you know what, greed alone doesn’t quite satisfy here. I have asked a number of extremely intelligent professors of psychology at my University about this and they all have come back with unsatisfactory answers also, mostly stating that the super-rich are mentally ill and truly believe that they can and will survive whatever planetary end-times are fast approaching, be it climate change, nuclear war or a working class revolution, because up till this point, problems do not exist for the ultra rich. When you can buy and manipulate entire governments, and all of ours are utterly bought for, what’s a little global warming, right?
This is where it gets unsatisfactory for me: Assuming that the rich and powerful are, at the very least as aware and read as we are, they should ( and probably ) do know that the people that they depend on for a) production and more importantly b) consumption are at absolute breaking point. I know I am on most good days but I know it can and honestly will get a lot worse BUT, I wonder if this is all a generation-spanning test to see how far they can push is into servitude or do they simply not care and can’t see the storm coming?
I can’t figure this out, especially considering how utterly simple it would be to placate vast majorities on this planet. Imagine this: everyone on this damn planet gets guaranteed housing, access to safe water and food, free healthcare and education. I mean everyone. The money, as fake as it all is in the end, currently exists as an idea at the very least to make this happen. Today. Imagine further, all these ultra rich aliens would furthermore agree that war is a thing of the past and you know, we go about our business and they go about theirs - I know, we would need a different approach to extract and share wealth BUT even that the big man wrote about - I mean, we could technically keep the ultra rich as little experiments, they get to do the whatever dumb shit they do and we make a reality TV show out of it. However, imagine how mellow as fuck the working world would be if these basic HUMAN RIGHTS were dealt out. The Ultra-Rich would still be ultra-rich, truly. From their perspective that should make sense, a placated working force stays quiet, consumes and goes about their business.
The trajectory we are currently on points in the total different direction. Never in my time have I known so many pissed off people that are, even without my help, radicalising in droves and that potential for conflict makes no real sense, especially from the capitalists POV - yeah, sure, Shock Doctrine this and Shock Doctrine that, absolutely correct but that concept only works when you can guarantee relative stable periods of no-shock here in the west and as far as I am concerned, we’ve gone from one shit show to the next since 2001.
Maybe I am missing something and if I am, drop me a line and either way, I am super curious as to what you think about this.
Food for thought for the rest of the week.
Yours, without compromise,
V.
The system has its own logic at this point, but I do think our actions and interventions count and do matter. History is not a given; we can help make it.