American democracy is doomed
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Incredible that this was written before even the first trump presidency, and it so elegantly captures this moment in time.

What are your thoughts? I don’t see how democracy in the US survives this moment. Can other democracies in the rest of the world live on alone, or will they too succumb to technofeudalism?

  • archomrade [he/him]English
    2·
    5 days ago

    Fair, but Marx wasn’t a technocrat. He was primarily concerned with how the working class could overthrow capital, and the working class was primarily illiterate - transatlantic telegraphs wouldn’t have been a relevant tool to them in their ceasing of capital from the bourgeoisie.

    Marx specifically wrote the Communist Manifesto in easily-understood language so that the few literate members of the working class could organize and recruit those who wouldn’t have been able to read it themselves. Even if he understood the telegraph to be a revolutionary technological innovation, it wouldn’t have been relevant to an impoverished working class that did not have the luxury of basic education.

    Not that it would have been impossible for anyone to see the potential significance of the telegraph back then, but that was never going to be a Karl Marx who optimistically thought the revolution could happen within his lifetime (and here we are almost 160 years later not even a step closer to that reality)

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Absolutely, I was not dogging on Marx, just pointing it out.

      And further, while I think Debord is really onto something, his work would not have existed had Capital not already been written. His work functions on literally copying Marx’s (and others!) own words and changing the words to fit his own narrative. He called it detournement. The modern equivalent might be “culture jamming” where you’re take a corporate message and twisting it into a message of freedom and rejection of corporate control.

      Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

      And I would personally even detourne this statement from Debord. I think “false idea” and “right idea” are too strong. I would use “unhealthy idea” or “antisocial idea” and “healthy idea” or “prosocial idea.” I think “right” is kind of tooting his own horn just a bit too much.