All was fated to happen, events of the past determine events of the future, man chooses his destiny but not as he wishes; fascism was fated to return, climate change was meant to happen, civilization would always have come to an end, the USSR never could have won the Cold War. This is all just the river, the spinning yarn of fate, capitalism will end, and that end will be horrific, I cannot see where causality leads us further into the future, but I can see where it brought us up to now. Remember, even the bourgeois lacks true control over its destiny, it is Capital itself which rules over all like a god and the market which determines the fate of men and the societies they inhabit, just as the feudal system did before, and just as the slave system did before feudalism.
We can leap out of the winding river, make a splash, maybe even a big one, but a leaping fish must always fall back into the river, and no matter how large the ripple is the path of the river does not change. Take heed strugglers, and keep struggling anyway.
If you're ready to die for the cause you might be a bigger fish than you imagine. The river isn't a single, linear entity. Rather it's a complex system of smaller rivers that merge into it upstream and split off downstream. When you look back it appears as a linear trajectory, but only because all the paths foregone have been obliterated. But when you look ahead, you will see that the river fans out into a massive, open delta, with many possible paths to take. Whichever path we go down, all other paths will vanish.
Look at the pic you posted. Is Berserk about how humans are just leaping fish in the great river of causality? Who would read that tripe? The whole point of the manga is to invert the hopelessness of apparent predestination, and it does it in the most convincing way imaginable. Suffering and adversity are the bedrock from which strong and willful people can emerge and make their own way. Needless to say in these conditions most people will simply suffer and be destroyed, but those that overcome can carve a path and inevitably others will follow. If you were a borderline immortal warrior in black armor capable of killing a hundred men by yourself you might not be so hopeless. Of course the current times demand slightly different qualities, but the point still stands: self improvement is always the answer. Read more, lift more, learn to handle a firearm, practice compassion with those that deserve it, etc.
This does not guarantee any change in the flow of the river, but at the very least your own life will improve. And as adversity rises and the system fails to meet demands, the average, clueless person will look to those strong and willful people for guidance. Become one of those people. The future is unwritten.
The only show that could ever make me care what happened to a boomer.
Asher Rogers
Except…it was
When capitalism fell into decline the return of fascism, especially with a weakened left, was an inevitability.
The collapse of capitalism being precipitated by the destruction of the environment similarly mirrors the collapse of feudalism, slave society, and primitive communism coinciding with the ecological devastation these modes of production wrought.
All societies turn to reaction when the struggle of classes reaches its climax, it will be no different this time, and just as those other systems ended, whether by extinction or defeat capitalism will end too. Neither bourgeois nor prole has a choice in this process, it will happen, the choice we have is the ripple we make, the slight change in the flow we can create, a slight change in the flow may decide where we go in the fork of the river, wether to the waterfall overlooking the jagged rocks, or the gentle pond at the river’s natural end.
Liam James
Love this post! Thanks for the motivation.
Blake Barnes
do you even know what dialectics mean? have you read Marx? hint: it's not deterministic fatalism
Henry Fisher
It is not, but the universe itself is deterministic, what happens is what is probable, people tend to act as other people do, and history mirrors itself. It is in the nature of class societies to destroy ecosystems and their means of subsistence, it is in the nature of class societies to either be destroyed from within or for all within to be destroyed from without, it is in the nature of ruling classes to embrace reaction once the system they rule has become a fetter on human development.
Luke Ward
yeah i think were are getting-vampire-castled again
James Watson
Isn’t vampire castle about idpol shit?
Anyway y’all niggas suck, can’t ever have some philosophical thought, everything legit gotta be scientific reasoning and pseudo-nihilism.
Andrew Nelson
I think you're the one confusing determinism (necessitarianism) with fatalism.
Brayden Hill
This.
Gavin Williams
This is nonsense not all modes of production were overthrown by environmental changes. Feudalism was overthrown by capitalists with better technology, better allocation of labour-power, and greater ability to facilitate distribution. I don't know what this means, hydrodynamic engineering allows you to divert rivers where ever you want
Technically this is true, but inciting fatalism, is another form of mood vampire-ing. Determinism (which is an intellectually valid position) isn't the same as fatalism.
Anthony Miller
The collapse of feudalism began with Black Death and the overexploitation of lands for agriculture, destruction of forests, and running out of easily usable coal.
…It’s a metaphor?
Carson Diaz
Who cares about "true" control, if I were bourgois I would be fine with being "enslaved to destiny" or whatever if I was living a life of decadent hedonism.
Nolan Long
But this didn't cause the change of the mode of production. Sigh yes i got that i just don't know what you meant with it.
Colton Ward
Isn't capitalism impossible if it can not grow?
Colton Reed
state-directed capitalism probably can deal with the environmental limitations for a while, but a change to a socialist mode of production is necessary, simply because you cannot have a group of decision makers who think they won't be affected by the changes in the biosphere, because they can always pay somebody to fix their personal problems while the rest of the world goes to hell.
Tyler Evans
You can though so feudalism would work too. Famines were pretty common and the lords still lived in luxury with barely any revolts and almost no successful ones so I would not be surprised to see this happen again.
there is no way back to feudalism, because feudal mode of production is worse at deploying technology than capitalism.
The feudal mode of production has no rational basis for deploying technology, at best you got a ruler who fancies technology who forces this on it's subjects per decree. Additionally the feudalist mode of surplus extraction relies on magical thinking, which will impede science and technology.
For capitalism cost-reduction that come from lower wages are equivalent to cost reductions that come from technology improved production. This means that capitalism has at least to some extend a rational basis for deploying technology effectively.
A socialist mode of production doing necessary labour time calculation is better than capitalism at deploying technology because cheating by lowering wages doesn't count as cost reduction for production. This is were we need to go.
