this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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Capitalism is a dynamic system that evolves over time. The general mechanics of the system lead to increased capital concentration over time, so late stage capitalism starts to look largely indistinguishable from feudalism.
It's so lazy to describe capitalism backsliding towards feudalism as "late stage capitalism". If capitalism actually had "stages", you'd have to progress forward to reach later stages. Backsliding towards the feudalism that birthed capitalism isn't some kind of "late stage", it's capitalism failing and feudalism reasserting itself.
It obviously does have stages that progress towards each other, and the reason it progresses in a certain way is due to mechanics of the system. It's not backsliding towards anything, it's evolving under the selection pressures encoded in its rules. Incidentally, this is what the game of monopoly illustrates. Everybody starts on even footing and over time, through competition, all the capital accumulates with a single player. This happens regardless how many times you play the game.
It' intellectually lazy to think that feudalism just magically reasserts itself without thinking about the process that leads to capitalism turning back into feudalism.
Sure, sure.
Imagine not being able to understand how selection pressures work. 🤦
Imagine thinking political theory involves selection pressures.
Politics is literally the rules of society which are the pressures on human behavior. People behave in a way that the conomic/political system rewards, and avoid behaving in the way it punishes. Amazing that this could be a difficult concept for people to understand, yet here we are.