context [fae/faer, fae/faer]
oh, i know that one, it’s the cover photo for dirt owl’s high concept independently released solo album little dirty birdy
the version that’s been rattling around in my head for a bit is “laws are the codification of political violence”
part of the problem is that ruling class ideology defines “political violence” as something that attacks mainstream society, never the violence that mainstream society inflicts. police clearing a homeless encampment isn’t “political violence” it’s just they way things work.
the hedge fund managers and c-level and other highly paid people in capitalist systems derive their wealth and income from control over ownership of capital: real estate, shares of companies, and so forth. real estate value ultimately depends on the ability to extract rents and mortgages from working people, taking a portion of their labor value in exchange for a temporary reprieve from the organized political violence that excludes people from using property. the value of ownership of a company depends on the ability of the company to make a profit, collecting more revenue than it pays out in expenses, including payroll. so it depends on the ability of the company to extract a portion of the labor value of its employees and transferring that to hedge fund managers, shareholders, and ceo’s. that is the logic of capitalism, and it’s how every billionaire obtains their wealth: extracting the value of others’ labor.
i mean, this dude is just spouting bullshit, but yes, in a way. it’d be better to say that the gnostics were describing the proto-capitalist roman imperial slave-based system that eventually evolved into modern capitalism. but the early ecumenical conflicts and subsequent violent repression of so-called gnostic heresies were, imo, mostly about control of the early christian anti-imperialist movement and figuring out how to synthesize it with the existing roman power structures, a process that took 300 years.
in modern terms, the demiurge is the paperclip-making super ai, a blind, unthinking, extremely powerful entity of human creation but no longer under human control. and capitalism is certainly that.