this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
183 points (100.0% liked)
chat
8548 readers
105 users here now
Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It is not naïve. We are very arguably living capitalism's last few decades right now. If you look at graphs of the rates of profits over time, it's pretty clear that it will tend toward 0 sometime between 2040 and 2060. And as you might know if you have at least a surface level understanding of the labor theory of value and the tendency for the rates of profit to fall, it is not something capitalists can do anything about for it is caused the very way capitalism function at its most fundamental level.
Much like slave society reached its peak during the Roman empire's "glory days" before declining until its collapse, so has capitalism reached its peak during capitalism's best decades last century and has been on the decline since.
All the basic infrastructure that has been utterly crumbling in the same capitalist nations that used to build Empire state buildings and Eiffel towers, all the de-industrialization sweeping through the same countries that caused and lived through the first industrial revolution and invented the assembly line, all the hipped up stage conferences where obscenely rich peoples promise incredible new technology that ends up never seeing the light of day that passes for innovation these days. All of that are signs of decline, signs that capitalism as a mode of production has run its course and has nowhere left to go, signs that the rates of profits are getting so close to the critical point that the very AI driven automation the ruling class are currently drooling at the thought of is all but guarantied to become the sword that slay the beast.
The capitalist ruling class is trying to find a way out of this doom, wildly throwing anything they have at the wall hoping something anything will stick. But there is no way out, there is nothing that can stick. nothing they do can save them, no damage they cause will ever be enough. At best, and with a lot of luck, they may be able to delay the inevitable for a bit, but not for long enough. They are the ant trying in vain to climb back out of the antlion's hole, oblivion waiting jaws wide open for them at the bottom.
The beast is dying, that is the undeniable truth. The poison of the profit motive in its veins is crippling it. Already the imperial core is increasingly incapable of producing the weapons and machines of war that have been keeping it alive and dominant through force. And the weapons they can produce are all affected by various level of 'enshitification' caused by that very profit motive.
As imperialism exports the worst of capitalism's contradictions out of the imperial core to the global south, it will make socialist revolution in the global south more and more likely as time passes while the imperial core will only get weaker and weaker, and when the 21st century's first socialist revolution finally happen at long last, it is unlikely the US, let alone the rest of the imperial core, will be in a position to do anything substantial about it. And once revolution has swiped through enough of the exploited nations? It will be the end. The definitive, irreversible end of capitalism as the dominant mode of production on Earth. With nowhere left to export the contradictions of their economic system, no more influx of cheap stolen resources, and no new markets to expend in, whatever remains of the capitalist world will shrivel, rot and burn. The remaining capitalists will be witness to the destruction of everything they striven for, they will see their wealth burn, their influence crumble and their assets be taken from them or destroyed. And a justly deserved end will soon be theirs at last.
But will the rate of profit falling, which is a tendency and not a law, actually end empire if no one takes action? What actions will people take in the core? Will the global south actually do the magical thing you suggest? I don't understand what we gain by painting this telelogical end unless we are so hopeless, weak, and vulnerable that we need a heaven/salvation myth forged from a religion of economics to cope with the reality that we have no real grip on history.
The laws of thermodynamic are "tendencies and not really laws" either, yet as any physicist worth their salt will tell you it is a certainty that entropy will increase over time. Don't mistake the difference between law and tendency with uncertainty, a tendency can be as certain as a law of physics if the phenomenon it describe has the right statistical properties.
Also, yes, that can and will end capitalism and any empire that still practices it by the times it reaches the critical point. Capitalism necessitate profit, if profits can't be made, capitalism stops working, it's that simple. As for people taking action, well, they will have no choice but to take action eventually because if capitalism breaks before they have a replacement ready, it will end badly for everyone involved. And by that I mean, if there is no mode of production handling production and distribution of food, water, and all that, peoples will start starving to death very quickly.
It's difficult to predict. We can say for pretty much certain that the core will keep getting increasingly economically and politically unstable until it cannot sustain itself anymore, but how the local population will react the this decline is hard to tell at best.
First, I suggest that you read theory, genuinely. If you think the Marxist prediction that revolution is unavoidable is some Cristian rapture-like prophesy of salvation coming for the believers, you don't understand Marxist theory.
It's not magical or theological, it's logical. I'm not gonna go through all the theory that explain this conclusion here, again, go read about all that yourself, but here's a bit of a TL,DR.
One of the benefits Imperial nations get out of imperialism is that some of the contradictions of capitalism get effectively offloaded to imperialized countries, they get cheaper and more exploitable labor that at home to make the things they sell back home for example. This exploitation of the imperialized nation by the imperial nation makes quality of life in the imperialized nation worse as exploitation keeps intensifying.
This will inevitably make the peoples of the imperialized nation revolt because that's what happen when the standards of leavings of an entire population get unacceptably low at the hand of a greedy ruling class, just look at any popular revolt of a people against their ruler throughout history for examples of this.
These revolts will necessarily be working class revolts, because the capitalist class is already the ruling class under capitalism, and there is no third class beside these two. Therefore, if these revolts succeed in overthrowing the capitalist rulers, they will put a working class government in its place because why would they overthrow capitalists to replace them by capitalists?
Thus, socialist revolution will happen. Not "by magic" but because it is the logical conclusion given the way capitalism and imperialism function at their core.