One of the tenets of my own personal socialism is that capital will always work in its own interests, and seeing that assumption fail in such a spectacularly illogical direction is breaking my brain in a way I just did not anticipate. I simply don't know how to adjust my priors for this.
Turns out capitalism, like all else, is just vibes
I think I can shed light on this. Capitalists can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s a train marked Climate Disaster. The closer it gets, the more obvious it is that their usual playbook—call it a hoax, and make more money by doing so—is a self limiting strategy 1/
since the economy will implode as the world food supply collapses. They’re doing their very best to prevent disaster—ie, the loss of their personal fortunes—by promoting disease, destroying the safety net, and doing what they can to reduce the size of the population as far as possible. But /2
it’s not going to last forever. In the meantime their best moneymaking strategy is now lie often, lie big, and declare reality null and void. Keeping the populace in the dark will keep them afloat while they build underground bunkers and try to convince their minions that they can still buy things 3
with the money they will pay them to keep the starving hordes from overwhelming their fortresses. So who needs accurate labour stats? It’s fantasy they need now! Convince everyone they need to support low taxes because they’ll all be RICH RICH I TELL YOU RICH
It makes sense if you consider racial hierarchy as a commodity with a dollar value that they’re willingly paying. What you’re watching is the cost of returning to the Mad Men world go through the process of price discovery.
I don't your presumption is wrong. The current experiment simply hasn't run its course. When things go south you'll perhaps revisit the question.
I don't think they're capitalists anymore.
This is really a thing that we have to take more seriously.The richest ones aren’t into selling you anything.They want control over governance & people in thrall so that they can extract at will and in perpetuity. They’re not robber barons. They’re much worse.
I'm honestly surprised people aren't getting this. I also have zero patience with "Trump is so stupid"
💯
Capitalism allows people to wield power in areas that have no expertise, experience, or broad support. It's like saying that you can be a brain surgeon if you have any graduate degree (even an MBA)
It will work in what it "believes" is it's own interests. The response and aftermath of the pandemic scared capital. The only reason Faucci got his TV moment was because capital was scared s**tless there was going to be widespread labor walkouts.
Then Biden's bill the kept employment low enabling strong labor union expansion.
One wild card we haven't seen before is that a large slice of this group is christofascists who believe the end of the current order is coming and even want to hasten that process. It's pure weirdo religion rather than anything "rational."
this makes no sense just looking at the west. ppl are only efficient at working 16 hours a week or something per research, giving houses to the homeless saves money, etc etc from a broader view, working together achieves more than being incredibly selfish. capitalism must be an ideological project
The way I'm squaring the circle is that individuals are deciding that no matter what happens, they personally will be fine and so it's best not to piss off the regime
yeah, maybe, 'capital will always protect its own interests as long as they dont think they, personally, might get a bloody nose by doing so'
They will be made to do atrocious things.
They will do those horrible things willingly.
😢
i think you got confused somehow? capital depends on obscuring exploitation. in this sense the trump white house is serving capital very well by undermining faith in economic data. there's no contradiction there
Capital depends on making money, and unreliable economic data prevents capitalists from making money.
capital somehow managed to take over and dominate the world well before the bureau of labor statistics published their first jobs report. some sectors may rely on that data but the long term goal of the bourgeoisie is maintaining their control
The Bureau of Labor Statistics was founded in 1884. The richest person in the world at the time was William Henry Vanderbilt, with a wealth equivalent to ~$7 billion, which would not place him in the richest 150 Americans today. Modern capital accumulation is built on math.
'math', as you say, is a modern tool to extract surplus value but it isnt the foundation. capital accumulation is and always has been built on exploitation. obscuring that exploitation is good for capital
Sadly, rich babies don't understand how rich they are nor how they got that way. Aristocracies succumb to their own self-congratulatory myths & delusions in a few generations. Once upward mobility is gone, so is the extreme elite's will to even understand the system.
you ever read any Losurdo? he talks about this a lot, and in great detail
I have, although I suppose it's my own shortcoming that I haven't connected the dots between mid- century communist critiques of fascist regimes with today, while I certainly have connected the dots of mid-century capitalist critique of fascism to today.
I think it's clear at this point that capitalist critique of fascism is completely ineffectual. Losurdo's "Liberalism" book does a good job of contextualizing this
I don't think there's a break point here, it's more that we're past "capitalism" as some kind of theoretical marketplace of competition, and into "capitalism" as 3 guys who rule the world and can now move past pretending to care about competition because they control countries themselves
This is a good point. At some level wealth accumulation yields to nation-state accumulation in a post-capitalist world we haven't really accounted for yet.
like we're basically into late 1700s europe where it's all cousins fucking and declaring war on each other out of pique except now we have tiktok
Mercantalism but instead of hoarding gold it's bitcoin
spliced with monarchism and christofascism I genuinely don't think any of this is new history rhymes and tells us it won't change until the next societal self-destruct button is mashed
Imagine being a pike man for Amazon
isn't that just being an influencer
Turns out Rich Asshole Brain Damage is a morbid symptom that appears when a ruling class is privileged enough to spend all day huffing their own farts. See also: the French Ancièn Régime
superpower privilege delirium
The hour for Frank Wilderson thought has come
I think it's because the Capitalists' vision is myopic. They focus on short-term profit and immediate gratification. Greed prevents them from seeing the Big Picture, which ultimately has to include the good of the many. They don't see the interconnection.
Adam Smith used the word 'education' EIGHTY Times in Wealth of Nations. He wrote "read, write and ACCOUNT" FIVE times. How many of our problems are the result of not having made accounting/finance mandatory in our schools since 1950? Capitalists cannot be trusted to explain Capitalism.
My sense is that most of the power players here no longer care about capitalism. The goal is fully capturing the state so they can just print money for whatever they want and manipulate the economy — i.e., neofeudalism. I’m not sure it will work out but they seem to think so bsky.app/profile/coli...
The Trump base is full of tons of millionaire capitalists rooting for it but I don’t think they realize how much the billionaires don’t give a shit about them or their businesses. They will be scammed and drained too as the billionaires strip mine this country in their quest for ever greater wealth.
I don’t think this is an inherent contradiction. Capital always works in the interests of capital, but that doesn’t mean the interests of capital are coherent, in fact they can be self defeating.
You see this a lot with sports ownership. A winning team makes more money than a losing team, but often times ownership is happy to wallow in mediocrity until they need to shake down tax payers for a new stadium.
There is nothing more modern capitalism than a failson out of his depth with no lived experience making all the money calls. If they knew what the value of what they are burning down, they wouldn’t; but they don’t, so they press on.
Like the founders assumed each branch of government would wield its own power independent of the others. I can’t wrap my mind around what would motivate the most privileged people in the world to destroy everything that provided the opportunities they enjoyed.
I guess no one is immune to “grass is greener” syndrome
I think it's more like "gorilla with a machete." Everyone is like, "well, this seems bad, but I'm gonna let someone else try to take it away from him."
Yup. “Too risky, not my job.”
They're pulling the ladder up after them. They got theirs, so they think of it as eliminating competition for their position.
In a fully financialized economy, capital doesn’t need to valorize through real production. It’s not clear that Mr. Market needs the Americans and their “work” — he’s got the government and the central bank.
Scams and speculative bubbles are also a significant and consistent element of capitalism. Turns out that enlightened self-interest isn't necessarily all that enlightened.
This is, in many ways, a grander example of what happens when an industry gets privatised. The service doesn't improve because of the invisible hand of the free market - instead, people are asked to pay more for less. Information is just another resource to hide and hoard.
To put it another way, there's a reason that one of the first things you learn about in economics is 'market failure', the various ways in which and reasons that a free market can fail to efficiently distribute resources.
capitalists in Germany at one point decided they were willing to go along with a lot of nutty bizarre ideological stuff with the Nazis because they felt like however it turned out and whatever evil shit happened they would still be rich by the end of it and at least there wouldn’t be socialism
I think they’re convinced that with our hard power, we can make the markets do whatever we want. That’s why they’re not concerned with accurate data, they don’t see us as being subject to the market forces, they see us as setting those forces.
It’s an American-centric, cold war-era view where because we believe our military, and military spending is so great, we look at other countries and think “what are they going to do? Tell us to go fuck ourselves?” And with each tariff fight, the answer increasingly is “yes.” The only thing propping
up American hegemony right now, Is European fear of Putin. If he were smarter he would have stayed where he was and let the empire implode on It’s own. After the fall of the USSR, the world didn’t have an enemy and didn’t need protection. There’s a reason other countries aren’t rushing to outbuild
us on Aircraft Carriers, or outspend us on defense. The only reason people went along with our plans is because they wanted to be like us, because our economy was so great, and they saw us as a source of innovation. Once that promise disappears, nobody is betting on this horse, or buying our bonds.
This presupposes a world where Trump won't bomb Italy for refusing to buy US Treasuries.
Ughh - It all looks so desperate though. Surely a move like that while controversial, would elicit more snickering and laughter behind the scenes than fear. I was watching him threaten India the other day, and recalling how only 2 years ago we were talking about friend shoring our Chinese
production over there. We’re totally cooked.
Hubris.
American Exceptionalism strikes again
So high on their own supply that they’re approaching the LD50
Funny thing about that is Bismarck understood that if you wanted to undercut socialism, you take edge off capitalism w retirement and social supports. That lesson was quickly forgotten in Germany after Bismarck died, and the coup attempt by the Communists post-WW1
In 1930s Germany, fascism was a new thing, so I understand why German capitalists thought that the Party would protect their interests (rather than knife them as soon as it became expedient). But capitalists in 2025 have no such excuse! They can even see what’s happened under Orban and Putin!
My guess is that’s because they used capitalism as a means to access power, but once that power was fully obtained, the priority became preserving that power rather than the capitalism.
Understand the marxist framework, and how capitalism inherent contradictions lead to decrease in overall rate of profit and crises. Capital wants to increase rate of profit, not create a transparent prosperous economy. "Fascism is a reaction to capitalism crisis in the stage of imperialism"
I used to think that political power was downstream of corporate power, and now I see that when push comes to shove, political power comes out on top. Which, in a way, is comforting! It suggests that progressives, if we take political power, could have leverage over corporate power.
I simply cannot believe the Jaime Dimons of the finance world haven't put him down yet
They’re betting on crypto and AI. Why do they care what the jobs numbers are?
Jamie Dimon did put what can only be read as a twenty-page pitch to be installed as president by the military at the front of the JP Morgan Chase letter to shareholders earlier this year, so they are clearly spreading their bets www.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/...