this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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GenZedong
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"As the empire declines the ruling class acts on ideology instead of real material politics" is in the OP's screenshot?
That can be taken to mean that the ghouls ignore reality and assume their conception of the world (which is borne out of their ideologies) to be true instead.
Their actions are rational in attempt to maintain their class rule?
In that respect they are. But whether the course of action chosen is correct or not for the purpose of fulfilling their goals depends on whether they have a good grasp of reality. If they instead believe in incorrect ideologies (wunderwaffens can alone bring down Iran) they will make mistakes even though they are acting rationally insofar as the end goal is concerned.
Rationality does not have to presuppose correct predictions (ie account for all variables + outside metaphysical observer who believes such an accounting will lead to a particular determined path). Was the Soviet Union not socialist under Stalin because it failed enough to consider a Kruschev taking over? Was Stalin not rational?
Edited to add: this is not to mean that leaders do not have agency but what actions they are allowed to do in powered and enabled by the system that awarded them that power. As marxists we can consider all bourgoisie leaders as "stupid" but that framing is a double edged sword because they were still intelligent enough to be more powerful than us.
There isn't a universal definition of rationality. How do you expect someone to account for the totality of information? That seems like a high bar.
We can't; we can be rational without that. And they can be rational from their perspective.
If a driver does not understand how his engine works but finds the throttle no longer working he may then push the car from behind out of the petrol pump station in an effort to move the car forward. We could in turn say the low fuel light was blinking and the driver was stupid for not filling up his car with petrol instead. That does not mean the driver did not act rationally because he did not account for the reality of the warning light.
(Yeah that was a stretched analogy. I'm sticking with it)
Edited to add: to clarify - I'm adopting an Hegelian (-esque? Or at least an attempted marxist twist of it) defintion of rationality and very specifically the US ruling class actions are rational and borne of a material reality, not separate from it.
What if even though the car was out of gas, the driver thought for reason that the problem was with the engine oil and replaced that instead? Would that be rational or irrational?
From his perspective it is still rational. The point of the analogy was the "wrong decision" has an internal logic based on material conditions. His ideas of whether to use engine oil or push the car is not separate to the material but borne out of it.
The idea that ruling classes are not rational is an extension that we who apparently have insight also sit above the material rather than be borne of it. That is wrong.
Our wins may be different to the ruling classes but that does not make theirs any less rational to them. Especially given that is the same rationality that gave them the power in the first place; ie they have more personal evidence of wins than we do for ourselves (unless you live in a socialist country) - their lack of science compared to ours did not stop them from gaining leverage.
Either we have to concede that our truth is less than theirs. Or instead we understand that a more fuller understanding of reality is not sufficient to gain power, and it is in understanding that difference we do then gain power.
This difference is how we not undermine the enemy and minimise our chances of losing, and if we do lose then how we can better our chances of winning next time. Even if one of the enemy administrators is a guffawing buffoon.
Rational from an out of touch perspective, yes. In the way that interacting with daturs hallucinations is rational to the person on datura and nobody else
Maybe we consider the bourgeoisie "science" was never a closer approximation to reality than the marxist-leninst one but that that did not exclude their rationality or leverage on power; their "hallucinations" were rational enough to win despite the lack of hallucinations of the marxist-leninist.