This is part 2 of a 3-part presentation that has been converted into a post. Links to the other three parts will be included here when they are ready.
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THREE VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE
Let me be 100% clear: These are not conspiracies. A conspiracy is a group of people secretly planning to do something. This is not secret — it is out in the open, and these are not plans — rather, these are just distinct worldviews that groups of people have and the vision that those worldviews have for the future. Worldviews have natural conclusions, but they are not conspiracies. They change the world because people share the worldview and assume the same kind of future is both inevitable and good. And obviously I’m generalizing to try to make sense of things, and reality is a lot more complicated.
Here are your 4 choices. I’m only going to talk about 3 of them.
- Neo-feudalism — traditional fascism, God Emperor Trump
- Neoliberal Futurism — fascism, but as designed by accountants; corporate feudalism; Musk, Bezos, Gates
- International Socialism — the ideal of Karl Marx
- The Non-changists — Conservatives like the DNC or the pre-Tea-Party GOP have no position. They are just trying to keep things from changing which is not possible or even desirable. I’ll be skipping this one, but here is a quote that sums it up:
Nothing will fundamentally change.
Joe Biden, speaking to donors at a June 14, 2020 fundraiser
NEO-FEUDALISM
We all know this is bad, but let’s talk about it anyway. This is what the Trump Republican party believes in. It is the ideals of the Confederate south and American colonialism, on a global scale. Features:
- Fascist Anti-Revolution – This is basically just taking all the social progress of the last couple hundred years and reversing it — so that’s what happened under Trump.
- Christian Dominionism – the right-wing evangelical plan to elevate their interpretation of the Bible above the authority of the secular state. It’s a whole lot of dominion and just a little bit of Christianity.
- “God Emperor Trump” – A figurehead is required for neo-feudalism. God Emperor Trump is a play on a character from the Dune novels by Frank Herbert — he’s a guy that’s so all-in on fascism that he makes himself into a giant, immortal worm-monster (this character is not in the movies or TV shows) — but this reference really is just meant to emphasize the supremacy of the leader in fascism. Trump probably won’t turn himself into a giant worm monster.
- White supremacy as doctrine – includes male supremacy, hetero supremacy, cis supremacy, etc.
- No legal rights for any minority groups — declared non-citizens — The way fascism works is through the idea of citizenship. Basically, it just declares a group to belong to a different “nation”, then strips them of the privileges of citizenship, and then once that has happened they can be disempowered, relocated, or even murdered at will. In contrast, the left rejects the idea of citizenship completely, and believes everyone should have rights regardless of the circumstances of their birth.
- Total war against all real and perceived enemies — Total war is an important concept to understand. It means that you have no rules about who may be killed, how they may be killed, or where and when they may be killed. In fact, total war means that total extermination of all enemies is compulsory, making them suffer before you kill them is a bonus.
NEOLIBERAL FUTURISM
A neoliberal dystopia where 10 people control most wealth… but 5 of them are women! These are the people who seem to be winning at the moment; the promoters of this worldview overwhelmingly supported Biden in the election, and most Americans agree with this worldview. If you want to know who the promoters are, just look at the richest 15 people in the world on the Forbes list. The central concept is that technological progress will inevitably make things better, and so economic and power inequities are both irrelevant and justified. Features:
- Corporate feudalism (a kind of fascism) — Corporate feudalism is the natural evolution of neoliberalism and the dream of the banking industry. This would end nation-states and replace it with corporate rule — we’re already halfway there. This is the correct meaning of “globalism” (and is the opposite of global Marxism). Under corporate feudalism, your rights come from your association with a corporation (like how you get health insurance through your employer).
- Reduction to 2 classes — You’re either someone who controls capital or a serf — no in between, a very simple hierarchy.
- Everything is quantified — especially YOU. Converts everything from material goods, to religions, and even people to quantifiable resources
- Requires poverty — It is inherently comfortable with poverty, and even requires that it continue to exist. It’s part of how a labor market exists — there have to be surplus workers to keep the cost of labor down.
- Technology as a religion — Technology is the pretty wrapper around the dystopia that gets naive people excited about it. They imply that other worldviews don’t have technology, but do we really think Socialists — or even Fascists — can’t make new technology? Some surface-level ideas that come out of this are: Occupying Mars, Transhumanism, and AI as liberator of humanity. In reality, Mars will never be anything more than a mining facility, or an expensive place to conduct experiments. Transhumanism isn’t for you — it’s for the rich. Like other kinds of automation, capital will use AI workers to make themselves richer and drive down wages — it won’t make your life better.
Side note: Ultimately, AI will be used to do more than control the means of production, though — it can be used to directly control the means of violence, which is the longterm checkmate in this game. The typical AI dystopian fantasy entails the AI rebelling and either destroying or enslaving humanity — but in the very near term, the issue is who is controlling AI, and how is it serving them — the concern is the same: destruction, enslavement.
- Violence, racism hidden —Pretends it doesn’t contribute to violence or racism. Still allows both to exist, though, which enables them. Initiates violence to enforce property rights, or gain control of a resource, but insists it is defensive violence. Pretends that racism doesn’t exist by insisting that the data indicates that everyone’s social position is justified by non-racial factors.
- Preparing for The Event — Neo-liberal futurism disconnects the fate of the rich from everyone else. They are preparing for “The Event” — the event is a disaster; billionaires will survive this disaster, and it will basically cleanse the world making way for the corporate feudal utopia that billionaires dream of. They see this discontinuity as something that can elevate their kind, if they can figure out how to survive it. The Event could be anything, though, including an asteroid hit or nuclear war or a new virus. I’ll remind you that this isn’t a conspiracy — this is something that’s being discussed fairly openly.
Related: We Appreciate Power — a song by Claire Boucher (stage name: Grimes), the mother of Elon Musk’s child. It’s about the inevitable global rule of AI and humanity living in a virtual reality environment. The ideas of neo-liberal futurism are securely wedged into human culture at this point.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
Karl Marx
Importantly, neoliberal futurism is what the far right thinks socialism is. (They are wrong.)
NEO-FEUDALISM vs. NEOLIBERAL FUTURISM
- Both hate the poor — poverty as a moral failure that should be punished further
- Both love a hierarchy — they just strongly disagree about the details
- Both are more focused on their fear of “Socialism” than on their own agenda
- Both are horrific, but Neoliberal Futurism is slightly better for most people
- Both are racist — Neoliberalism protects racism by pretending it doesn’t exist
Neither one is currently serious about addressing climate change …but both have mechanisms for doing so:
- Neo-Feudal: “Royal Forest” model (prohibiting the serfs from accessing resources that must be protected), eco-fascism (see Democracy Now: Ecofascism: Naomi Klein Warns the Far Right’s Embrace of White Supremacy Is Tied to Climate Crisis)
- Neoliberal: Accurately quantify nature
Both seek to protect those higher on the hierarchy from those lower on the hierarchy and offload the costs of climate change onto those with the least impact and responsibility. Given that conservatives erroneously think neoliberal futurism is “socialism”, they are technically correct that “socialism” will use climate change as a strategy to make their lives worse.
Ethical behavior leads to success.
“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”
Marie Curie
“[W]e choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.”
Chidi Anagonye (a fictional character from TV show “The Good Place”)
So what’s the right answer?
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM
You knew we’d end up here, right? Features:
- “A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”
- Uses a complex organization structure that maximizes local control and minimizes the influence of political parties or other collusions of the powerful; i.e., maximum democracy
- Actively works to minimize bigotry
- Advocates for all people, everywhere (the international part)
- Recognizes the obligation that the present has to the future
- Embraces the values that have been successfully villainized by the right wing: Empathy, Generosity, Kindness, Fairness, Community
Related: How democracy works in Cuba, Iroquois Confederacy
If the above features are things that you agree are good, but you just can’t stand it because I called it “International Socialism” then please go ahead and call it something else. We’re here to support good things no matter what they’re called. If you can only support some of the features I listed, then please go ahead and do that. We will support your support of those things, and agree to disagree on the rest. But if you’re going to tell us that goodness is obviously pure evil in disguise, then you really just need to pull your head out of your ass.
Fascism and Neoliberal Futurism both probably become socialism after they murder all the undesirables. In my opinion, fascism is the more likely of the two to completely eat itself.
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