I wonder why a site built by Marxist-Leninists to answer the failings of Capitalist Reddit due to the profit motive has a bunch of anti-Capitalists. Who knows?
The problem is that this time we’ve likely got a few decades at the most to form a movement before a huge chunk of the world becomes uninhabitable and society crumbles under the weight of war and famine.
Looking at how things are going, I have little hope that the majority of people are willing to let go of the status quo.
The point is that societies could progress past it, that it’s not inescapable.
So the fact that there are still absolute monarchies does not invalidate that societies that are better are possible, like most of our societies today.
Every empire seems unassailable and eternal, until it doesn’t. The USSR seemed like it will last beyond our lifetimes, until it didn’t.
I just finished it two days ago. I agree completely.
I will caution people that because of the writing style the beginning of the book (at least to me) is a bit disorienting. It takes a minute to find her rhythm.
I just finished the dispossessed. Didn’t find it as compelling as reviews had me hoping. The sci-fi depiction of anarchism wasn’t flattering and the main character wasn’t easy to like either.
Spoiler and trigger alert: I put the book down for a while after he sexually assaulted a woman, but eventually finished it and wasn’t impressed by the ending or by the fact that his assault was glossed over and not mentioned again.
Yes, that’s a fair assessment. It’s not an enjoyable book and to some extent isn’t meant to be – the cover of the version I read said something about an “ambiguous utopia,” the story structure is pretty far from a Campbellian Hero’s Journey, and the main character is not relatable. The book is more memorable than enjoyable.
On top of a depressed economy from endless war and poor management of state funds, the details of the lives of nobles started to get published for just anyone to read which was unprecedented. Although no single thing can be attributed to causing the revolution, I think that just learning about how the nobility lived really put a difficult situation over the top for them.
“inherent humanity” - what a magical term. you might have a magical worldview! which means you won’t even recognize this as an insult, which is sad, but a little funny.
That would make sense for capitalism, if humanity didn’t have to have its permanent, essential characteristics beaten, traumatised and groomed out of them with land seizures, branding, whipping, workhouses, schools, prisons, debtors prisons, being forced to sell their children, slavery and the threat of homelessness and starvation for hundreds of years.
People didn’t just accept either of those two systems and there’s nothing remotely inherent about them. They were both forced on people through violence or the threat of it.
Not really, no. Even though feudalism doesn’t consider greed and resource hoarding inherently virtuous like capitalism does, both are at their core about the few rich and powerful exploiting and abusing the many poor and powerless through ownership of the necessities for life and a greater capacity for violence.
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