Everything that we’re seeing happen today is whiplash from when capitalism had to give up its old mode of production, and surrender to the flow of history. The capitalist ruling class did this when capital reached its monopoly stage, where financial speculation came to be the central driving factor; and then the system reached a phase where it could no longer exist in its old, competition-driven form. It was likely during the First World War when capital’s breakdown became this advanced, and when the system therefore needed to switch towards a model that’s fundamentally state-managed; this is what rule by central banking means in our era, and it’s where capital was always headed.
Because in this stage, capital is no longer based within industry at its core, the effect is that more and more parts of the old system become superfluous—ultimately including the traditional bourgeoisie itself. It’s this context that explains why within the countries where capitalism is most developed, we’re seeing the rise of a new kind of underclass. An underclass whose ranks are still made up of the old lower classes, but whose experience as members of these subordinated elements has taken on a new characteristic. What’s unprecedented about much of today’s workers and unemployed workers is that they’ve been excluded from community and familial relationships, to a degree that’s never before been seen in history. And for them to have been pushed into this role, our financial order needed to render the old productive roles increasingly obsolete, with this process accelerating as time has gone on.
In 1845, Engels described the first steps in the outmoding of the old producers and traders. This was an upheaval that would create a new “middle class”; which mitigated capital’s worst social effects for a time, but in the end that class would also be pushed out of the economy. Wrote Engels about the ascendancy of this class:
Manufacture centralises property in the hands of the few. It requires large capital with which to erect the colossal establishments that ruin the petty trading bourgeoisie and with which to press into its service the forces of Nature, so driving the hand-labour of the independent workman out of the market. The division of labour, the application of water and especially steam, and the application of machinery, are the three great levers with which manufacture, since the middle of the last century, has been busy putting the world out of joint. Manufacture, on a small scale, created the middle-class; on a large scale, it created the working-class, and raised the elect of the middle-class to the throne, but only to overthrow them the more surely when the time comes. Meanwhile, it is an undenied and easily explained fact that the numerous petty middle-class of the "good old times" has been annihilated by manufacture, and resolved into rich capitalists on the one hand and poor workers on the other.
The centralising tendency of manufacture does not, however, stop here. Population becomes centralised just as capital does; and, very naturally, since the human being, the worker, is regarded in manufacture simply as a piece of capital for the use of which the manufacturer pays interest under the name of wages.
Capitalism did create a layer of prosperous workers, as well as a new kind of social cohesion for the lower-class workers. One where these workers were obviously still exploited, but the system necessitated that they live in a highly centralized way, and would therefore experience community which was more tight-knit and expansive. In the new era of finance capital, where tech has become the greatest center of financial monopoly and everything has become globalized, this advantage for the underclass has disappeared. Capitalism initially could provide a replacement for the traditional model of community that it destroyed, but ultimately this replacement would vanish as well.
What’s left in its absence is an increasingly precarious social hierarchy where most in the post-Covid generation are absolutely not on the path to having children, while even those with relatively better luck under this system largely find themselves navigating an unstable lifestyle. Aside from the massive proportion of Generation Z who are completely estranged from biological reproduction, there is a layer within Gen Z who are simply in the category of delaying children; which means that though they’ve been able to avoid the outright isolation which is being experienced by many in the underclass, it still doesn’t economically make sense for them to rush towards starting families. So we’re seeing a “delay” that realistically will be permanent in many cases, because the family has fundamentally been shattered by the deterioration of capital.
The predominant lifestyles for the post-Covid generation are either arrested development, where you fall behind in all areas, or a “normal” way of living where you’re constantly working just to keep the bare minimum. Because in a stage when finance has become what truly defines capitalism, and finance has decided to degrow its industrial infrastructure, you’re in danger of becoming superfluous even if you’re bourgeois—or a “bourgeoisified” labor aristocrat, as most within the successful minority are.
When south Korea reached the logical conclusion of this collapse process, and its society’s birth rate became so low that the country itself was on track to go extinct, its government responded by implementing measures to make parenthood easier. Yet south Korea is still going extinct, because this is a crisis that can’t be solved by simply giving more aid to those who are experiencing it. The overwork, extremely competitive employment market, and de-industrialization that are behind this crisis will continue to exist until the workers have seized the means of production. There is no reforming our way out of the form capitalism is in now; this form is the one that capitalism has taken after exhausting its previous options for how to function. When capital switched to its centrally managed stage, soon enough it would come to “abolish the family” in the same sinister kind of way that anti-communists accuse Marxists of wanting to do.
Those who’ve been left behind under this system, so much that their lives haven’t been able to develop in the “normal” ways, have a unique advantage in understanding the system—and thereby in waging the fight to overthrow it. This is because so long as they’re seeing reality clearly, they aren’t caught up within the psychological type of “bourgeoisification” that’s being propagated by our cultural institutions right now, where the masses are encouraged to merely gain individual success and completely divorce themselves from the collective.
The right-wing populism of Reaganite politics relies on bourgeois “family values,” while this newer trend discards even that pretense. There are efforts by figures like Andrew Tate to funnel the “left-behinds” into this maximally superficial lifestyle, but their advice for joining the elites won’t even change the proportion of elites vs. underclass; nothing can overcome the material contradictions we’re facing, other than an evolution to the next productive mode. And the ones who find themselves unable to move up within the system, no matter how much they apply their strengths, have an exceptional opportunity at this moment.
If the system has decided that you are “excess,” the only way to go is forward. You have nothing to lose within the system, and are—in certain key ways—untethered from the game that’s been set up to entrap the masses. The contradiction between what “normal” life is supposed to be, and what you’ve been allowed to be, is creating a friction that millions upon millions of others like you are also needing to grapple with. The emergence of a problem necessitates conflict, mental conflict; this is how someone becomes radicalized. The system is trying to keep this conflict neutralized by providing society’s most despondent members with endless entertainment and chemical sedation; but the conflict will continue to play out, and it will produce some of the most dedicated participants in the class war.
When this war is won by the proletariat, those who devoted their time to investigating, planning, and designing during the present chaotic era will be able to make integral contributions towards humanity's next steps. And from those among the despondent who’ve managed to guide themselves towards such higher goals, we will see some of the greatest among these achievements. In terms of practical advice for the “left-behinds” who are trying to win their inner conflicts, I can point to Mao’s analysis on mental and physical excellence:
Physical education not only harmonizes the emotions, it also strengthens the will. The great utility of physical education lies precisely in this. The principal aim of physical education is military heroism. Such objects of military heroism as courage, dauntlessness, audacity, and perseverance are all matters of will. Let me explain this with an example. To wash our feet in ice water makes us acquire courage and dauntlessness, as well as audacity. In general, any form of exercise, if pursued continuously, will help to train us in perseverance. Long-distance running is particularly good training in perseverance. 'My strength uprooted mountains. My energy dominated the world' [from a poem attributed to Hsiang Yu] — this is courage. 'If I don't behead the Lou Lan, I swear I will not return'— this is dauntlessness. To replace the family with the nation — this is audacity. ' [Yu] was away from his home for eight years, and though he thrice passed the door of it, he did not enter' [ reference to Mencius ] — this is perseverance. All these can be accomplished merely on the basis of daily physical education. The will is the antecedent of a man's career.
Because finance capital has taken away the family from the bulk of the post-Covid generation, it may be that our only option is to replace the family with the nation; at least until the nation can reach enough strength for the family to be restored. This is the position that history has forced us into, and we must respond by becoming active agents within history; by shaping history as conscious participants in it, which starts with resolving the interior wars that our conditions have made us need to fight. These inner conflicts are a direct extension of the civilizational collapse that our rulers are engineering; it’s when those trapped in these conflicts recognize this that they can find the path forward.
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