Rev Left Radio - Red Hot Take: Dialectics at the Dawn of Techno-Feudalism

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Breht discusses American Capitalism's Death Drive Accelerationism, how the only path that's left for capitalism is to return us to fuedalism "at a higher level", how dialactics plays out in this context, and why the purposeful cultivation of inner silence and stillness and love is more important than ever.  outro music: 'Breathe' by Alexi Murdoch Support Rev Left and get bonus episodes on Patreon Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow RLR on IG HERE Learn more about Rev Left HERE

The Trump era accelerationism. We really shifted into a new period of American life. It is just coming apart at the seams. Internationally, you know, and domestically, fuck, what is going on with these plane crashes? Trump comes in, he fucking slashes the FAA, already understaffed, already under-resourced, crucial departments and agencies,

does funding freezes, you know, sets his uh his dogs loose on the administrative state and then immediately fucking planes start falling out of the sky i know these problems aren't trump's fault 100% these have been building problems in the system for a long time and the neoliberal era is just a dismantling of government of the idea that there's any collective responsibility to anything and a privatizing of everything um and privatizing of everything makes some people really really rich but it sucks for the rest of us having to live in this fucking society that's being dismantled around our eyes. And in terms of developed nation states, America is falling behind in every single fucking stat

from life expectancy to infant mortality to infrastructure health. I mean, you name it. It's just circling the fucking drain. And the irony of this piece of fucking shit talking about America first coming. coming and just dismantling the what's left, you know, stripping the copper out of the fucking walls of this country. And this is like 11 days in. We got four more years of this onslaught against everything.

I mean, this is accelerationism. This is the death drive within capitalism. It is the decline of the American empire. And when the rest of the world slowly starts kicking you. you out and not letting you exploit and plunder them anymore, the ruling class of the U.S. says all we can do now is turn inward and rip whatever is still standing in this country apart. And that's why that metaphor of stripping copper from the walls of this decaying society is so spot on because that's the last thing you do, the last things of value, anything that's

survived the onslaught thus far, the multi-decade onslaught, whatever's left is being ripped out of the motherfucking walls and so how can you sustain levels of support doing this all the people that were tricked into supporting trump regular working and just by the numbers the majority of trump supporters have to be regular working people and and and trump has unleashed the wolves on them and their families and their futures this is the oligarchy unleashed um you know uh this is this is what is going to continue to happen and and the shift that has occurred from the first term, this bumbling, incompetent, taken by surprise, smashing against institutional barrier, first term of Trump, this is a whole new Trump.

In the intervening four years, there has been a shift in public opinion, but more importantly in the people around him for this comeback, and sort of Project 2025-esque analysis of, okay, next time we get in, we are we are fucking dead-eyed set on what we're going to do day one we're going to start dismantling shit and that's what they're doing and what it also betrays is like oh the democrats could have done this at any time because trump's not there are some things that are going to be contested in court but that's the functioning of the democratic bureaucracy and the system at large there's always these checks and balances and you try something you get sued for it etc but what trump is really doing is just taking executive power and wield

it in as belligerent of a way as he can for his causes. And it just shows that the Democrats could have been doing that the whole time, right? I mean, if the Democrats really wanted to help working people, if they really wanted stuff like minimum wages, like fucking access to health care, they could just be belligerent as Trump is, wield executive power for that, and let the motherfucking right scramble to try to stop them. They never wanted that. Their donor classes didn't actually want that.

So what the Democrats had to have done is posture like they're doing those things while at the same time holding back enough to allow those things to be defeated. Student loans, health care, you know, minimum wage. We go down the list of things that this society wants and needs and there's mass support for. Imagine like, you know, if like any Democrat, Bernie Sanders or even Biden, anybody got into power and started like doing what Trump is doing but for minimum wage increases. for health care, you know, for child care, for education. Huge swaths of America would be won over. Like, holy fuck, they're fighting for me. They are motherfucking fighting for me.

And yeah, maybe some of these things don't go through, but they are belligerent with it. They are swaggering. They're confident. Like Obama, after fucking the Bush years, he had way bigger mandate than Trump does now. He had a super majority. Trump doesn't have that in Congress, a supermajority.

Imagine if he came in like a bowl in a china shop for the things he promised in that 2008 campaign. And just said, fuck you if you get in my way. But they don't really want that. Because once you start doing that, then you bump up against the donor class interest. And they're going to tell you to chill the fuck out. So Trump is simultaneously revealing what the Democrats could have done. They actually cared, and they actually cared about working people. They actually wanted to make fundamental change.

And at the same time, he's hit in the gas pedal on the death drive inherent in a dying empire and in the neoliberal capitalist epicenter of the world, the American, you know, the United States of America. And the mass deportations, destroying lives, actually also going to destroy the economy, right? You're brutalizing communities. you're ripping away these roles that immigrants play. These often exploitative roles, et cetera. We can go into a whole critique of them, but that's not why Trump's doing it.

He's not doing it to lessen exploitation, right? But what's going to happen is you're going to see an increase in the cost of living. You're going to see communities fucking separated. You're going to see Americans that have undocumented workers and migrants in their families, watch their families be torn apart. We're already seeing that. and so this can't last what's going to happen

what's already starting to happen is as I said in the Patreon episode on Rev. Left is the Trump administration and the MAGA Freaks interpreted their popular win and their winning of the House and the Senate as an overwhelming mandate on par with Obama's in 2009

and they're overreaching already they're overreaching they think they have more support than they do and they're going fucking ham And as they go ham, they only increase the contradictions of American society and generate the backlash that will eventually displace them. But if they're successful, then the dismantling of what's left of democratic apparatacies to stop them is what they're going after. So they also know, we got to go floor to the pedal here. We got to go all in.

yes it is going to increase the backlash it is going to make people you know our support go down over time for sure but we got to fucking if we can dismantle the democratic mechanisms that are left that are on their last lifelines right if we can dismantle that then it doesn't matter if we have support it doesn't matter if there's a big ground swell of of reaction and backlash to us because we'll have dismantled any semblance of institutional mechanisms by which that backlash could be manifested into political power or political opposition. So they have to go all out. You know, this is a dying empire.

This is the last gasp of neoliberalism. The rise of these ideologies on the right, like Curtis Jarvin and Peter Thiel and Mark Andresen of this like aristocracy of the corporate overlords. They know that this is their really their last shot to make this fucking, to fully entrench this. You got Scotis on your side. Let's dismantle whatever's left of American democracy. What little is left, dismantle it, create the backlash in the process, but by dismantling the mechanisms by which that backlash could manifest itself into political power, will protect ourselves from it, and we'll move into the era of a corporate, oligarchic aristocracy, you know? And once we get AI online, not only can we displace these fucking workers and not depend on them and not have to worry about unions or organizing or anything like that.

we can we can we can we can use that AI to to further dominate them to increase the surveillance and and and policing capabilities of this system such that not only have we dismantled the democratic institutions by which anybody can fight against us but we've imposed you know a high tech surveillance police state to make sure that we keep these fucking rabble rousers in line that's you and me and our families we're dismantling democracy what's left of it the democrats have helped the republicans have held neoliberalism has been a 40 year assault on democracy it is the subtler mechanism than fascism more subtle than fascism neoliberalism is the way that the capitalist class protects itself from democratic um input you got dismantle unions because you can't the working working class has all their only powers through organization in the form of organized labor so dismantle that and then dismantle democracy itself and then we can live in a blade runner-ass scenario where the rest of us writhing masses in dirty crime-filled streets unable to access housing and education and health care and a small elite high up in their skyscrapers almost unimaginably distant from us up there somewhere

they're going to have the world's first trillionaires they're going to have generational wealth for ten generations of their family lines they're going to nepotistically just like we're returning to feudalism techno-futalism, the ironic endpoint of capitalism being able to survive beyond its expiration date is that it brings us back to feudalism at a higher level, dialectically. Now we got AI-enforced feudalism. That's where this is going, and I don't think that's a hyperbolic, dystopian, or hysterical take.

I mean, I think that is the only place left for capitalism to retreat to. and if you don't have your empire you don't have the ability to plunder and dominate and exploit people around the globe that you don't have enough funneling of resources and wealth to not only maintain your power elite but to satiate enough of the working class to keep them at bay so this is your last hope and the tech billionaires lining up behind trump even though two years ago four years ago they were criticizing him in the sharpest terms possible they've all shut the fuck up and are lining behind behind them because they know what's coming. They know that if they're not in Trump's good graces, that their businesses and their

ability to stay atop the class hierarchy is a real threat. So they're saying, fuck it. We're throwing in with the fascists. Because this is our, this is our chance to, like, to become the fucking techno-feudal aristocracy. So they're all lining up. And that's what we're seeing. and the Democrats aren't coming to save anybody

already look at their internal internal fucking memos and stuff they are putting the cabash still on any attempt within the Democratic Party to move it leftward especially on economics their donor class won't allow it these are all millionaires

name me a politician and the Democratic Party millionaire and not only a millionaire but a millionaires with political power what do they have to gain by dismantling the system that put them in the elite what do they have to gain by shifting to a Bernie Sanders-style social democracy or democratic socialist thing

that would dismantle their class hierarchy and their class privileges? They're not going to do that. They're going to be this impotent, incompetent, half-hearted opposition force. That's really no opposition force at all. And it still strikes me as fucking insane. that some elite doesn't emerge you know because like think about it like FDR let's just go back to FDR in the new deal

all you know take into consideration all the failures and the racial dynamics and all that shit FDR was an elite right he came from the elite class and he moved the society into a new direction and took on another aspect of the elite

and well you know quote unquote welcomed the hatred of the corporate oligarchic elite and fought for a more fair just society where at least white people because it's still a deeply racist fucking structure. I don't ever want to hide from that or obscure that reality

that white people could have a really fucking, you know, you could support a family on one income, you have affordable housing, affordable health care, the top marginal tax rate is 91%. It's been dismantled to like what, 15, 20 percent, 15% on capital gains. And Trump's trying to capital gains of course are money you make off investment so money you make off

capital investment contributing nothing of any labor or value to society you're just using your money to make more money and when you make millions of dollars doing that you're taxed at a lower rate than somebody who goes into work every day and actually builds fucking society and Trump's looking to lower the the top marginal tax rate and the capital gains tax eliminated if you can eliminate public education in this society shift public funds away from public education and into private education dismantled the EPA drill baby drill

I mean this is death drive accelerationism and it's our family's futures that are on the fucking line and there's not one elite that's willing to rise up read the fucking tea leaves and move in that direction

no because if there was and Bernie Sanders is probably the closest we're going to get to that they would be stopped not by the Republican Party but by the Democratic Party as the final bulwark against the rising of anything like an FDR type figure

so that's not coming and if you're waiting for that to happen good fucking luck the only hope we have is the fact that especially as things continue we are the working class majority and until they fully institutionalize

their crazy dystopian scheme of techno feudalism we still have a chance to fight back a general strike tomorrow could shut this whole fucking thing down still we still have enormous power and they are desperately frantically trying to fucking hit the gas pedal and rip away whatever last chance we have as standing up to these motherfuckers away from us so that we can't ever do it again and you dismantle democracy you dismantle unions, you devastate and miserate working class people's lives so they don't have the time or the money or the energy to organize. You make life so grindingly toil-filled and unenduringly fucking difficult that people don't even fucking want to look up because their head is to

their nose is to the grindstone and they're working every day just to keep their fucking family's heads above water. So they know what they have to do. They're consciously doing it in a way that the first term was bumbling and incoherent with no vision. It's not like that this time. And our only motherfucking hope is bottom-up organization. And we do still have time. And this is dialectics. As the pedal is crunched on the death drive,

you create more and more and more and more and more and more people, regular everyday people, who become disillusioned with the two-party system, who see the failings of capitalism, who understand this system, is not in their interest and whose class consciousness is raised and who move in a different direction and become radicalized. That's dialectics.

The more you try to put your fucking hands around the throat of the working class and squeeze it, the more the working class resists it. And on the international level, we can look at bricks. We see the bricks come out and we see, you know, we know what bricks is doing. It's trying to have an alternative currency to the U.S. dollar so that the U.S. can't so easily use its economic power to sanction and strangle economies around. around the world. They want it, they want an alternative to that. What does Trump say? Anybody joining bricks? We're going to put 100% tariffs on your goods. What does that do

dialectically? It increases the fucking necessity of the rest of the world to find an alternative to the US dollar. Right? The more you try to fucking say stop this, we're going to fucking punish you and we're going to, you're proving their point. Or we're going to impose 100% a tariffs and we're going to sanction your country if you keep trying to stop us from imposing tariffs and strangling your economy and you know same same exact logic

dialectically the more you oppressed the more you give rise to resistance and you can see it internationally you can see what Israel does to the Palestinians you can see what the ruling class in this country does the working class Americans and so that's the double-edged sword here

is that as Trump hits that fucking gas pedal and accelerates it's like a equal and opposite movement where he's trying to get as fast as he can to techno feudalism to dismantle what's left of our power to dismantle whatever tiny fucking shreds are left of democracy in this country obliterate that but as he moves towards that direction he also increases the resistance that's trying to stop him from doing that

but time is running out so he can't take off the gas he can't he's not capable but even if he was he couldn't to be more subtle or more long term about it, things are reaching a crescendo. The empire is in decline. Time is running out. Things are going to break one way or the other. The status quo that we've lived with our entire lives is coming to a fucking abrupt end and is going to break one or two ways. And the more that they push it to break in their way, the more they create the very resistance to it breaking that way and decrease the possibility of it doing it. You can't increase oppression without increasing resistance.

So this is going to be a fascinating, fascinating historical moment in these next four years, internationally and domestically. And our job is the same as it's always been since the day I first came to the mic and since the day I was born and since the day before I was born and the day before you were born. It is to organize and educate and raise class consciousness and show people what the fuck is happening and work around the ideological mystification of what's really a fucking occurring.

And to build up that anger and that resentment that is justified in, self-righteous against this system that is willing to sacrifice us and our families and our futures on the altar of its never-ending profit and is using the technology that humanity has created the civilizational technological progress of humanity he's trying to weaponize it to to entrench and defend its perpetual rule of a small minority of global elites owning everything using the civilization that you and I and our ancestors

built from the ground motherfucking up over the last several thousands tens of thousands of years they're trying to grab that all for themselves and say this is ours now

fuck you and that can be that can generate despair but dialectics works against that I just told you oppression equals resistance crank up the dial on oppression you crank up the dial on resistance it's not over till it's over as long as i'm breathing and you're breathing i'm talking you're talking i'm listening you're listening

we still got hearts fucking beaten the fight's not over so don't fucking despair get exhilarated this is the fucking crescendo of the system it's happening one way or the other we're living through a crucial fucking time in history an accelerated time in history. Things are moving faster, given the nature of technology and communication and globalization. Things are not only moving,

but they're moving faster and faster and faster and faster and faster and faster. It's getting exponential. This is going to play out in our lifetimes. This is not next century. This is this fucking century. 500 years of European colonialism, capitalism, capitalism, and imperialism are going to break one way or the other. Techno-feudal dystopia.

or radical fucking revolutionary change all around the planet. So, I mean, it's scary in the same way that jumping on a roller coaster is scary, but it's also exhilarating. And we have a role to play. We're alive right now during this fucking time period. Holy shit. That's kind of fucking cool that we get to actually be these agents of history. And it's not going to be easy. Nothing fucking worth having is.

nothing worth having is easy you want a long-lasting marriage it's not easy you want kids you want to raise kids not easy you want to change the fundamental relations of the entire human civilization and move to a new mode of production it's not easy it's hard and scary

and it comes with a fuck ton of losses and tragedies and failures and defeats but it's not over tell us over and I truly believe in the bottom of my heart there are more good fucking people on this planet than there are bad ones and there's a lot more of us than there are them that will always be our advantage and people don't like a boot on their fucking neck

empires don't last there's not a single empire in human history that has lasted they all fall they all crumble what continues the human spirit that's never died that's always been here since we climbed out of the motherfucking trees

that's infinite that won't go away until the last human fucking heartbeat is stopped so empires fall modes of production fall elites fall the human desire

for a better world never fucking ceases so we got some real motherfucking advantages and don't lose sight of that And don't let others lose sight of that. There's no time for despair. But it's going to be a bumpy ride.

And unless these fucking health conditions take your boy out, I'm going to be standing right here shoulder to shoulder with you. And I only wish that we could be closer than through this mic and at a distance. I wish we could meet up in real life instead of over Zoom. And maybe one day we will. But no matter what the distance is between us, we are in this together. And if you're listening to this and your heart rate's increasing a little bit

and you're feeling that fucking feeling in your gut that you want change, that things have to be better, you feel that the tears start to swell up in the very margins of your eyes, indetectable from anybody else looking in, but you can feel it kind of welling up behind your eyes.

That's because you're a human being. And more than dry academic languages or telling people to read books, it's that human fire in your belly that makes your heart rate increase and your eyes swell up with tears of love and compassion and desire for better that's what connects with people so foster that within you foster that human spirit within you that light that refuses to go out within us because you're going to need it meditation that's important because what in this time of turmoil and distraction and chaos what better skill set personally for you to cultivate than the ability to be okay with stillness

and silence and to sit with what is and to not be scattered by the overwhelming influx of information you've got to find that point of stillness and silence within yourself if you have any hope of withstanding the storms that are here and that are going to intensify. Literally the storms that are going to intensify and the metaphorical, political, economic, and social storms that are going to intensify. You have to have that space within you

that is still and silent and cultivated so you don't get overwhelmed. And you have to lead every decision you make, ideally, even if it's impossible. You've got to try to let love for other people guide you. that trembling, hurt, painful heart that when it opens up and accepts the pain of others, can barely take it.

Keep that heart open, wide open. Because that pain is the cost of love. When you love things, when you love people, it hurts to see them hurt, to see them oppressed, to see their futures being snuffed out. And so a lot of people turn away from that. They close off their heart. I can't take it. But if you're going to have an open heart,

that means being open to the pain and suffering of others. So keep that heart wide the fuck open. It is not... There's a place for hate. I hate the people that hurt people. There's a place for anger and rage. But they should always be subordinate to love. Because the only way we're building the better world

is if we build it from love up. we cannot build a better world if it's rooted in more hate more division more rage more ego more pain it has to be love so cultivate that within yourself cultivate the stillness and the silence cultivate the robustness of being with what is and cultivate that trembling fucking heart and open it wide open and let that love kill you let that love swore Womp you, become a vessel for that love. And then we might have a chance. in the corner of a room

darkness moves upon you like a cloud across the moon you're aware in all the silence of a constant that will turn like the windmill left deserted or the sun forever burn So don't forget to breathe Don't forget to breathe

Our old life is here No 11th hour of breathe So don't forget to breathe Keep your head above water, but don't forget to breathe. And all the suffering that you've witnessed and the suffering that you've witnessed they remind you how it's endless how endlessly you fall

then the answer that you're seeking for the question that you've found drives you further to confusion as you lose your sense of ground So don't forget to breathe Don't forget to breathe Your old life is here No 11th are a brief

So don't forget to breathe Keep your head above water But don't forget to breathe and don't forget to breathe, don't forget to breathe, don't forget to breathe. you are here, but you find your one to leave, so don't forget to breathe. Just breathe. Just pray. Thank you.