TreadOnMe [none/use name]
Matt argues that the steps that would lead to capitalism, in particular the empowerment of bourgeoisie, came out of as a ‘hammer to many nails’ solution to several independent political crisis, because the economic model, on a smaller scale and based mostly in trade, not industrial development, had already been developed and morally justified by the dutch. He argues that it likely would have come about even earlier if it hadn’t been for the crisis period, but the political crises themselves came out of wealth growth (and subsequent feelings of independence) seen by the German princes who were interacting with this model. Essentially, the thirty years war was an attempt to prevent the spread of political and economic power caused by what was already occuring, but the political crises itself proved that such conflict would be unending unless the large powers also adopted those economic methods to sustain the structural changes that they had made in responding to the crisis.
Idk if he would say it was ‘historically inevitable’, it’s just that it was likely ‘inevitable as of the Thirty Years War’ and the fact that the crises couldn’t get rid of it meant that it was here to stay. Hence the references to birth and midwifing, the fetus is already fully formed, it just has to survive the ‘first trauma’.
Edit: I also want to be clear that a) it has been at least half a year since I listened to this (though I have listened to it fully twice) so I could be very wrong here, and b) I don’t know enough about this period of history to really know who is correct or incorrect here.
I believe that Matt’s general argument was that England had it’s own political crisis, which was similar, but far less destructive, the English Civil War. The simultaneous nature of both crises essentially created a ripping up of the old feudal order, and from there the search began for the next thing that would create stability between the great powers, which clearly wouldn’t be bloodlines. It was the fact that their political crisis wasn’t nearly as destructive that allowed them to ‘get ahead’ in terms of capitalist development.
While England didn’t become absolutist (at least after the death of Cromwell) it did completely consolidate the effective state away from the king and around Parliament. However, both types of restructuring created a need for more diverse wealth generation (as they were now in competition with each other), which created the need for an empowered bourgeoisie class, in all European states.
It wouldn’t come crashing down for the European monarchs until Napoleon, and because of the nature of the development of the English bourgeois, the monarchy never actually had another reckoning.
I’m very confused by his portrayal of Matt’s point. I thought Matt’s point was that the unprecedented levels of chaos and destruction in the Thirty Year’s War created the need for the absolutist administrative state and standing armies, all of which needed a new economic model that could sustain it, which by necessity, birthed capitalism, which then eventually devoured it’s father. The very destruction present itself created the drive of creation.
Most of this stuff is in his YouTube shorts, which is where I first ran into him. He has a lot of cute ferret content, but things just started adding up over the way he presented things and his strange takes. If you have the patience to go through his content, it’s all there out in the open. He doesn’t obfuscate, he just always has good spin on things, and isn’t quite able to put it together when he’s fucked something up because he has lived an incredibly charmed life.
I will say, one of the things he said that has always stuck with me is that Blizzard usually makes more money on a single WoW mount drop, than they have for the entire existence of SC2. Which explains why WoW is still garbage despite years of tweaks and overhauls.
Edit: He really loves making diagrams, as if it adds an extra layer of truth to whatever he’s saying. Probably convincing to a layman or someone who hasn’t worked in corporate America for a long time, but it’s just like, ‘You aren’t saying anything complex, you don’t need a diagram for it.’
The best boy.
Not only a hilarious title, but also is basically the right hand of production. Generally speaking they are going to be more hands-on than the producer, and when the best boy does their job well, nobody notices, but if the best boy fucks up, everybody knows and complains about it onset.
This is because he was, despite his mythologizing, not very good at his job. He was a nepo hire, and basically got paid to prank people and call it security testing.
In theory, that can help tighten security, but in reality, it only marginally helps, because (and say it with me) the vast majority of leaks and security breachs are internal, from disgruntled employees, and Blizzard was/is a really, really crappy place to work, something that Thor himself literally acknowledges.
And he says this despite also mythologizing the CEO that much of the bad shit happened under, blaming middle management for ‘obscuring the vision’, as if CEO’s aren’t also blood-sucking reptiles more than half the time.
STEM people usually get paid to do their doctorates. It’s just that it is far too tempting for most of them to stop at a bachelors and make money than pursue the higher education necessary to actually advance the field, particularly for engineers. However, the real thing is that China just has way the fuck more people, so even if there were, by percentage, statistically less people pursuing higher level education, the actual amount of people doing this research in China is staggering.
I’m not ‘exiling’ myself. I just will not pay dues to the DSA ever again until I see a real shift in the relationship between the regional and national parties.
CPUSA, to my knowledge, started demcent, then became cent over time as the leadership tightened under ‘fed’ (or democrat comprador, at least) control, to the point now that it is now completely centralized. The history is alittle wonky there, at there is a lot of documentation on that is old head and zine knowledge lost to time at this point imo. I am unsure of the trajectory of the PSL in that regard (which is something to look into), I just assumed by their stances and prominence they would be nearly completely centralized (which hey, egg on my face). In my personal experience, I have just had easier times discussing the state of things with their members, so imo clearly they are doing something right imo from an education or recruitment perspective. They seem clearly focused on getting ideologically trained members willing to participate in immediate and responsive direct action (one of the reasons I didn’t join, cause I wasn’t sticking around in tbe area). To what end, I couldn’t say, perhaps their protest logistical training is poor.
I already have to talk to social democrats and baby leftists all the time. It wouldn’t help me for them to have organizational cover.
For context, where I am living now, there is no left-wing movement to speak of at all. Most of the students I was around didn’t even know what ‘Palestine’ was, let alone that there were protests going on at other campuses. The ones who did know either had friends on other campuses getting arrested, or because their conservative parents had asked them about it. But I do what I can, go to Marx reading group, discuss Marxism in public when the topic arises and history broadly when I can, but between working two jobs in the summer and a job and school it is tough to remain politically active in an area where it is not really self-sustaining.
If you are actually in the thick of it, you are more active than I am atm, and can make better judgements as to where your time is best spent. I was not impressed by the DSA to say the least, but hey, time moves ever forward.