this mostly applies to the U.S. but also most of the western world:
As Marxists we know that most policy is driven by what capital allows or within the increasingly narrow range of acceptable discourse it allows within bourgeois dictatorship
Obviously it’s not a conspiracy of ten guys in a secret room but a general consensus that develops from a chaotic web-like oligarchy of money peddlers, influencers, lackeys, billionaire puppetmasters, etc
But this really, really hurts Capital. they need the influx of cheap labor or face the real threat of forced degrowth. and we know every is trying to make it harder for people to be childless but short of forcing people to procreate at gunpoint…
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so why allow this to become a bipartisan consensus (U.S.) instead of say throwing some scraps of social democratic programs?
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or in Europe’s case allowing these parties to come to power instead of reversing some neoliberal austerity?
Is this a case of anti-immigration just being easier to do vs. building resiliency into the system? i mean it’s always easier to write laws crimializing stuff and throwing cops at a problem i suppose
Or something else?
We can apply this to modernity or the Islamic conquests or the crusades or fucking Rome or all these versions of people that tried to “enlighten” other people by stabbing them to death.
This is actually addressed in the earlier chapters of the book in which Amin analyses the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity from a Marxist perspective. How these religions deal with concepts such as modernity, universalism and the question of time. The analysis of Christianity and how that became the dominant religion in Europe at the dawn of “modernity” is very interesting, and one I hadn’t heard before. I’ll try find it now.
That sounds super interesting and if you can find a pdf I’d really appreciate it. There is a lot of stuff written about holy wars that is either too permissive or too condemnatory. Like you get all these pop history books that are either too forgiving or they do the “new atheist” shit that just is another way of trying not to understand the thing you are condemning. Marxist history is the only one worth pursuing. Edit: especially when it comes to things like holy wars
I just posted the section in another reply. It’s not really about the holy wars, but about Christianity as a whole and how it breaks from Judaism in key areas.
