The systemic breakdown that our socioeconomic system is creating has the potential to do more than worsen the suffering of the people. Capitalism has survived so long because it’s been able to exploit the crises it creates, to profit off of wars, depressions, pandemics, and environmental catastrophes. Yet in certain instances, these crises have instead produced victories for the working class. World War I made the Russian revolution possible, World War II made the Chinese revolution possible, the living standards crisis that the IMF engineered across the Global South made the formation of many anti-imperialist governments possible. When the capitalists disrupt society, they do so with the risk that the outcome will be not greater profits but an end to their rule.
more like nightvale’s motto if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget.
Not sure I understand you. Please elaborate?
Nightvale is a fictional town where elderich horrors attack the town on the daily that it becomes kind of banal. The cops are useless at best or at worst suppressors of truth. the story is told mostly from the perspective of a really petty and biased public radio host as diagetic radio programming. It is a podcast called welcome to Nightvale.
The USA is losing its former glory but it seems like ill manners to bring it up in public. Everyone seems to be repeating the same thing that their favorite news channel or podcast broadcasted and insist that remembering such a thing is a sign of intelligence, not just merely parroting what they were instructed to say. You can look around and see where the structuralal issues are affecting everyone’s lives but they don’t want to think about it. Telling the truth ruins the vibes. Don’t think about it just buy that new thing or indulge in something that makes the world worse for your own entertainment. Become a pick up artist to make women’s lives worse. Enjoy the ride of terrible drugs that addict and destroy you because why should you really be living? Enjoy the most unhealthy food available to humanity. Play video games that function the same as casino games. Laugh at people get angry and point this out. You can also feel great pointing it out but we all know that you have no agency over the corporations or the government.
Thank you. Although it is an interesting example, because that’s partially what I meant. The lives of proletariat might get worse on the average, but the system itself appears to be pretty well entrenched. What really threatens the rule of the bourgeoisie? In the example of Nightvale, citizens get attacked, but police apparently don’t mind. They’re stable, they have the resources. Same in real life. A train derails and unleashes a toxic cloud? The villas in Miami are still standing. A school shooting ends with dozens dead? But the children of wall Street executives are fine and continue on their merry way. And despite all those internal issues, the establishment still has plenty of power left, certainly enough to cause trouble for others in order to engorge itself. See Nord Stream, tanks in Ukraine, etc.