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Too many people treat the trajectory of events as a matter of individual choice or political philosophy. They think if you just convert the broad mass of people to your point of view, things will change. This is idealist (in the philosophical sense), bourgeois, and wrong.

Capitalist society is based on universal competition. This includes a competition of worldviews. But it is precisely in this competition that capitalism exists: anti-capitalism becomes a marketable (the used word is “recouperable”) ideology the same as any other. Marxists who understand Marxism view it differently. Here is what Marx says on the matter: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through…


Capitalist society is based on universal competition. This includes a competition of worldviews. But it is precisely in this competition that capitalism exists: anti-capitalism becomes a marketable (the used word is “recouperable”) ideology the same as any other.

Marxists who understand Marxism view it differently. Here is what Marx says on the matter:

When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need — the practical expression of necessity — is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which are summed up in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the stern but steeling school of labour. It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organization of bourgeois society today.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch04.htm

It is, in other words, not a matter of intellectual conversion to Marxism or anticapitalism that will drive revolution; under capitalism, Marxism and anticapitalism can only ever be commodities. Rather, the entire system of competing dialectics tends towards its own abolition.

What does this mean in practice?

It is highly likely that things will get worse. Every victory of the Left tends towards consolidation (regulations benefiting major corporations at the expense of small businesses; higher minimum wages making small businesses unaffordable to start by prosperous workers; etc.). The petit-bourgeoisie disappears under the onslaught. Under capitalism, the Left can only ever serve Big Capital. This is what makes Capital Progressive, or Whiggish in a historical sense.

Capital will consolidate to the maximum extent possible. Only then will it become possible to abolish it.

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