Chivalry was about being loyal to some rich asshole. Samurai were the same. The main advancement of capitalism was the rich handing their knights to the state. The knights no longer fight each other, mostly suppressing peasant rebellions and protecting property. The wealthy fight each other through the law, which is less costly and dangerous than fighting with soldiers you often pay to train and can potentially die.
essay on empire/capitalism/power
However, the rich still give up a lot of power under capitalism, mostly giving up the ability to use violence outside of the state mechanisms. If effective regulations get put in place that hurt their power, it usually isn’t worth resisting. They have a social contract with a monster not even they can fight directly. Instead, they buy politicians and weaken the state’s ability to regulate. Over time, they both extract all the wealth from workers and make the state incapable of restraining or resisting them. Late stage capitalism.
However, the driving force behind feudalism falling off was the rise of states who throughly monopolized violence. Empires had risen and fallen, with lords varying conversely in strength throughout history. Industrialization coincided with a rise in that state domination, with power centralizing more so than ever before. Strong central governments and world shrinking technology allowed capitalist states to become the most powerful empires.
Even when anticapitalist empires emerged, capitalism remained in the form of social and political capital. The exact same power dynamics played out in those cases through informal systems where single players dominate the entire system. Cults of personality equal to kings effectively become the real state, the real empire. The dictators often hold power for a single generation, splitting the bureaucracy into multiple competing factions, risking state fragmentation as they try to build a throne.
Fascist strongmen rise to power in late stage capitalism due to the weakening of the state as an institution and the instability caused by competition. Unethical behavior compounds upon itself in an unregulated market, creating discontent in the workers who seek radical change. They’re prime targets for fascist movements, allowing a strong leader to dismantle and become the empire.
This is where the state dies and capitalism actually might end. The leaders and their supporters crave power and domination, driving them into conflicts with each other. In the past, total wars of conquest between empires were possible to win, but now they aren’t. No one really wants WWIII, but even institutions know backing down from an empire means defeat. They refuse to appease, endangering the entire human population through famine and unsurvivable explosions. The entire global capitalist system might break, leaving smaller agents to fight each other and rebuild it all once more.
I think the lionizing of accelerationism at the end isn’t great, but aside from that, it looks good.
The problem with accelerationism, and many Marxists really, is that capitalism is only the current manifestation of the power amassing system that’s existed for far longer. The last paragraph makes fun of the idea that ending capitalism is somehow a win.
The current capitalist system is not as invincible as people assume, but the will to power in our global society is. If capitalism(empires) ended, feudalism(local warlords) easily take its place. Only global democracy, the redistribution and decentralization of power on a universal scale, can actually end the system.
I’m a proponent of a global government that every person has an equal say in personally, as I think we need some organized system logistically. It’s anarchistic in the sense of opposing hierarchy, but it’s also a global government. I’m not even sure if it would necessitate a true state, as every person would have the duty of limiting power accumulation and ensuring every other person has enough. Honestly, the League of Nations idea is kind of the root of it, except it would be explicitly opposed to imperialism and capitalism.
Hierarchy is natural to life because life simply favors what works. If one lifeform benefits from a strategy, it gets pushed as far as it can until it no longer provides benefit. This can also work against hierarchy, as if maintaining hierarchy ends up costing more than it benefits, it gets toned back until it reaches equilibrium. We are out of equilibrium as a species, mostly thanks to our individual actions favoring short term power grabs. The global government would be about working towards that equilibrium quicker than through blind and bloody evolution.
I’m sorry, yes; I misunderstood. I’ve played with the idea of global governments, and I’m still not entirely sure if they’re a good idea or not. I’ve been leaning towards “no” recently, but I find them appealing on an aesthetic level.