What the black pill really means is the realization that only a chosen few will be allowed to have “normal” lives in the superstructure that we’re now living under. The gender war discourse’s definition of the “black pill,” which focuses on male looks determinism in the “dating market,” is a distraction from this context of rising inequality and civilizational decline. It’s part of a smokescreen that was created by big tech, which engineered the social collapse we’ve experienced and is now boosting reactive trends like “looksmaxxing.”
To escape the anti-human dystopia that the tech overlords have placed us into, we will need to synthesize black pill politics with revolutionary politics, turning all of today’s alienation towards mass revolt against these forces. To see where this fight’s battle lines are drawn, and who our allies are within the struggle against techno-tyranny, we must look at which parts of the masses have been most left behind by the social disruptions we’ve seen in this last generation.
In the broadest sense, the collapse is impacting everybody who’s suddenly found themselves under-socialized, with those who’ve come of age after Covid being the most damaged. The commentator Rafael recently said about this part of the decline that
We’re becoming panda bears in a zoo. Not extinct—just uninterested. Not incapable—just unwilling. Pandas don’t reproduce because their environment numbs them into passivity. Humans are drifting into the same place: overstimulated, under‑touched, and increasingly disconnected from the basic social rhythms that used to be automatic. What’s collapsing isn’t fertility rates or marriage statistics (though those are falling fast too). What’s collapsing is the cultural infrastructure that made dating, sex, and partnership feel normal, desirable, and possible…We’re just these fungible little economic units living in increasingly inhuman, toxic environments. You are supposed to drop whatever you are doing and move halfway across the country just to find a job or decent place to live. Can’t really build much of a society that way. Then there’s the fact it’s never been easier to just opt out of all social interaction entirely. This simply was not possible 50 years ago. Now it’s actually much harder to arrange for socialization, any socialization at all. It’s bleak. I don’t think the future looks good at all.
The fact that this disappearance of basic relationships is now being felt not just by the working masses, but also by a growing number of petty-bourgeois professionals, shows the alienation behind the black pill will ultimately reach into some of the most prosperous strata. Those within this intellectual and artistic class are responding to the alienation in different ways than the lumpenized shut-ins have been, with one of their more constructive outlets being to formulate analyses about the collapse.
When they talk about this issue, they often are able to provide a more class-conscious perspective on it than apolitical nihilists or right-wing gender warriors, since they recognize capitalism as the root cause of our social decline. And there are many in the professional class with genuine passion as activists; but the movement that defeats our technocrat regime will have to foundationally be a proletarian movement, and come from an anti-capitalism that’s based within the working-class experience.
For the professionals who make these left-wing critiques of today’s social order, this decline in interpersonal relations is the main contradiction which impacts their own lives. For tens of millions of people from working-class households, the daily reality is not just social isolation but an increasingly precarious existence; which those in the professional class may also come to if their career paths continue to disappear, but it’s the children of working-class parents who are already in a truly bleak situation. They represent the part of America’s unemployment and inflation crises that the bourgeois media doesn’t talk about, because our ruling class decided that they’re expendable decades ago.
For most Americans, the collapse happened in 2008; the media commentary sphere is only talking this much about a jobs crisis, or about a cost of living crisis, because these things are now impacting the labor aristocrats who can afford to live in modern big cities. So is also the case for the crisis of community and relationships, which is impacting working-class young people in a way that really does leave somebody isolated. A key part of this comes from how these individuals from low-income families don’t have the resources to play the career game Rafael describes, where people need to move across the country to get ahead. For those who were born in job-scarce rural America, or who simply are experiencing mental health problems that block their motivation, being left-behind and lonely is the outcome of this. The fact that all of these issues are disproportionately impacting men is what explains the black pill, and until the problem’s class origins are reckoned with, gender war politics will continue to dominate.
There is a rogue activist element within the petty-bourgeois liberal realm that’s genuinely looking for how to address society’s contradictions; but these renegades are increasingly being cast out of our institutions, and will only become connected to the class struggle when they’re brought into a working-class organization. The societal “critiques” from hegemonic media are based within what a tiny strata of urbanites can see happening around them.
These problems with the discourse about today’s capitalist crises should be addressed, and it’s important to call out the petty-bourgeois professionals who LARP as “workers.” Despite this, the position I’m taking is actually sympathetic towards the alienated aspiring professionals, because they are important potential allies of the workers movement. A revolution always needs the elements of society that were not always living on the margins, but have enjoyed benefits and then had these benefits taken away from them.
The American communist movement will be able to win over the petty bourgeoisie parallel to how Mao won over this class in China, where the petty-bourgeois masses were being impacted by hyperinflation and economic chaos along with the working masses. In both cases, the key ingredient is an authentic proletarian politics, one that’s proletarian precisely because of its ability to unify all class allies of the workers.
The anti-data center movement is creating the conditions for this unity, because it’s gotten the urban left-wingers who hate big tech’s AI scramble to defend farmers and rural America. There are leftists who look down upon farmers and the rural masses, but their position is being pushed to the margins by this growing popular revolt, and this trend is going to continue as our ruling class expands its techno-assault on our communities. Therefore when it comes to the petty-bourgeois professional activists, the next main problem won’t be about hostility towards the rural masses, but about an incomplete understanding of the problem.
These types of anti-data center activists were radicalized not on the basis of a proletarian experience, but on the basis of their careers being threatened by AI. This doesn’t mean they can’t contribute to the class struggle, it means their tendency within the struggle must be brought into a synthesis with the working-class tendency. All who seek the defeat of our techno-financial regime will be unified; but to bring about this unity in a timely manner, and not delay our victory for another generation, we’ll need to figure out how all of these different elements can be brought into a cohesive force. Past communists have successfully overcome the issue of how different social classes respond to contradictions in different ways, and we can do this too.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures from our era of accelerating inflation, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
