I don’t know if he came up with the thought himself or if he’s repeating someone else but Zizek has said various times that capitalism is in constant crisis, and that’s how it reinvents itself in order to stay functional. I have no doubt that we are in such a crisis and in the midst of its reinvention. And look I know socialists and Marxists get accused of being deterministic but if we look at history, through the decades capitalism is integrating socialism into it. I think at some point it will simply be socialism. We’re just not there yet, I think that won’t happen until human labor has no value.
squid_slime@lemm.ee 3 days ago
A few points: Capitalism hasn’t freely integrated socialist ideas. Each idea has been won through workers’ struggle. Even after the fact, those wins are clawed back by the capitalist class. They will capitulate as a means to defend against revolution—which flows back into your Zizek quote: capitalism’s way of reinventing itself. But capitalism, as a political philosophy, will always maintain a ruling class and an underclass to exploit.
This is why we must continue to struggle, and why we should not see these small capitulations as proof that socialism will evolve naturally from capitalism.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Of course it hasn’t done it freely, I think it’s part of the process. It’s not clear to me that even if somehow everyone tomorrow woke up as a socialist that there would be no dominant class that “exploits” the other. I’m not even fully convinced that that is possible at all, hierarchy forms naturally in our species and even in a post scarcity society those who are smarter and more charismatic would have more influence than those who are not. It would maybe lead to true meritocracy, but I do not know that there will ever be a human society without hierarchy nor am I convinced that’s necessarily desireable.
However I do think that even though in sheer numbers the wealth disparity is enormous and disgusting, when you remove stuff like being able to influence politics and buying planes or ships and other unnecessary and wasteful stuff, the difference between the elite and the lower classes is not that great. By that I mean, that both middle and low income people have access to stuff as cars, phones, entertainment etc at the same basic level as the rich, which was not the case in the past. Of course in other parts of the world things are different , and the reason for that is that we exploit them (one reason I was in favor with Trumps tariffs), but you can still see that worldwide quality of life is trending up. And by this what I mean is that I think there will be no huge revolution that changes the world order. We tend to frame and crave history in terms of huge one of a lifetime events but in reality most things happen gradually and I think we are gradually moving towards the direction of socialism thanks to the struggle and there pressures that you mention which yes, force capitalism to adapt in order to survive.
And thanks for the rec will be sure to check it out once I’m done with my current reading. I’ve heard a lot about Trotsky but have yet to read him.