yogthos

Burial at Sea/Hymn to the Immortal Wind by MONO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEvpqR6B8ns

A more accurate headline would've been: Empire demands fealty from its vassals.

very much agree with all taht

I find it helps to develop a mindset of thinking in terms of dynamic systems where you can identify forces acting upon the system and try to understand likely ways the system will evolve as whole. For example, if we're dealing with capitalist relations be it today or a century ago, the forces within the system form an invariant. We have people who own substantial capital and those who do not. Their interests form a contradiction because they are fundamentally opposed to each other. If I'm a business owner then my desire is to minimize my costs an maximize profits, while if I'm a worker selling my labour I want to maximize my salary and benefits. Once we frame the problem in these terms we can try to think about potential resolutions to these contradictions, and that's where historical record becomes informative. If we can identify similar situations in the past, they can inform us on what we can expect going forward.

Given the reactionary position people in tech are increasingly taking with AI, I think we know the answer to that.

The only thing surprising here is that people thought it worked any other way to begin with. Given that it's a reinforcement mechanism then it makes sense that it would be both spatially and temporally discrete.

I expect that there will be a split between the US and Europe in the coming years. The US sees China as its main adversary, and Europe is losing strategic relevance for the US because Russia is not an ideological opponent the way USSR was.

However, if the US simply left Europe then it would end up gravitating towards the east, first economically, then politically. That would be highly undesirable from the US perspective as it could result in a huge Eurasian bloc with from Europe, to Russia, to China. In my view this is what the war in Ukraine is all about. In fact, National Interest published a very revealing article back in 2021, while it focuses on Russia, it's pretty clear how the argument extends to Europe as well https://nationalinterest.org/feature/strategy-avoiding-two-front-war-192137

The US has also been predating on Europe economically since the start of the war. US companies have been enjoying selling energy to Europe at high prices while Biden's inflation reduction act lured companies away from Europe. Today, Trump is building on this strategy with massive tariffs designed to stifle Europe's economy and lure more business to the US. The threat of Russia is also being used to force Europe into massive increase in military spending, most of which will go to American military industry.

All of this is bad news for Europe economically, and that's creating a lot of internal political tension. As people see their standard of living collapse, they're turning to nationalist parties because the neoliberal center has lost its credibility in their eyes. Hence why we see a surge of support for RN in France, AfD becoming a major party in Germany, and so on. I expect we'll see more of what we saw in Romania where elections will be cancelled, candidates arrested, parties banned, and so on. All of that will further delegitimize the current system as people start realizing they're not living in a genuine democracy.

Unfortunately, the left has been systematically dismantled in Europe since the end of WW2. What I mean specifically is the economic left. Socialism in Marxist terms mean worker ownership over the means of production which is directly at odds with the current capitalist state of relations where private ownership is the norm. Most of what constitutes the left in the west, such as social democrats, does not challenge capitalist relations. These parties simply want to curb the worst excess of capitalism such as having the rich pay more taxes, provide more social services, and so on. These are reformist parties that seek some form of sustainable capitalism.

There are a handful of genuine socialist parties in Europe, but they're extremely marginalized and I can't see how they can break into mainstream politics at this time. One of the problems is with messaging. The right has a big advantage here because their narrative is largely compatible with what people already believe. In a sense, the right is also a reformist type of movement where they're not suggesting any revolutionary change. People who become disillusioned with the mainstream have easy time gravitating towards the tropes the right peddle like immigrants being the problem and taking people's jobs away.

On the other hand, accepting socialist narrative requires accepting that the current system is fundamentally broken and there needs to be radical restructuring of society. In my opinion, what socialist left needs to focus on is crafting its messaging in a way that resonates with the public. The narrative has to be at least as appealing as what the right offers for people to even start to listen.

I found this particular book was incredibly eye opening because it clarified a lot of the mechanics of how our system works for me. What I found most shocking was how it's pretty clear exact same types of debates that we're having today regarding reforming the system were happening a century ago. And that goes back to your original question of how relevant this stuff is. If we're still having these same discussions about the same kinds of problems, then we have to inform ourselves on the history of these debates. There is a huge wealth of knowledge and experince that's been built up that's being ignored today.

The problem here is that businesses only think about their own needs, and nobody is actually running the nation as a whole. Businesses being in charge is akin to a bunch of cancers running amok and killing the host.

I really can't recommend reading The State and Revolution enough. It is the most lucid explanation of what's currently happening and why. It's a short read and you're going to be surprised how relevant it feels to the current moment. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

The dynamics in Asia are indeed different, and China acts as a stabilizing force there. The economies there are hedging against the west, and they're increasingly focusing on trade amongst themselves and the developing world.

Not really, because the main alternative to the neoliberal centre seems to be on the right. I'm really not sure what to expect in Europe in the coming years.

I believe the term for this is company towns.