I don't have this idea and never said nor implied it. I have repeatedly been saying that this is a thing I have seen occur time and time again, not that it is true for every single person and case. I would appreciate it if you would not misrepresent what I'm saying comrade. It doesn't help anyone
ComradeRat
joined 5 years ago
Why not use your limited time on this Earth to build your comrades up instead of tearing them down in private? Why do you need to mock people, especially if your mockery hits your comrades in the crossfire? Is this a materialist analysis aimed towards revolutionary praxis or is this you just wanting to get more upvotes with le burn?
And you don't get a pass to mock people without that having consequences (e.g. POC especially from global south leaving whitedominated spaces time and time again because y'all care more about whining about metaphysics and spreading the gospel of Dawkins than actually getting off your asses and doing shit)
yes? Have been told by several queer friends from latin america for example that they've felt alienated from white/global north queer spaces bc of the casual mockery of their beliefs (with the justification that they are only mocking the "bad ones")
Liberals will point to how improvements in quality of life have occurred in capitalist countries in recent centuries (debatable, and certainly not true for the entire world, but let’s assume they are correct for now).
This isn’t debateable. The Imperial Core states and its outposts through the world have living standards more luxurious than ever seen before. We also shouldn’t place the Imperial Periphery, on whose falling standards of living the living standards in the core depend, to the side–this exploitation formed a key part of Marx’s analysis. Improvements in quality of life in the Imperial Core go with and are predicated on increasing impoverishment of the periphery.
famines were a harsh reality of life for much of human history, modern agriculture has allowed us to now be in a position where globally, we can produce more than enough food consistently for the whole planet.
This is only true if we refer to history in the narrowest sense (i.e. only the written past) and famine in the broadest sense (i.e. any period of going hungry is famine, regardless of whether or not there were deaths).
Famines in the broader sense are endemic to history in this narrow sense. When you have a stratified class society with surpluses and urban populations doing writing (i.e. fulfil the narrow sense of history) you have an (urban) population with control over distribution of the grain. This population, historically, will restrict the consumption of the ‘lower classes’ to maintain its own (often already inflated to include luxuries as ‘necessary’) consumption, which often leads to relative hunger (but not always or even usually deaths).
As you mention Chinese famines later on, here is an excerpt from Late Victorian Holocausts describing the Qing government’s response to the famine relief in 1743-44, not paralleled in contemporary European famines (where the starving peasants died for lack of cash for the crops they sold to pay rent):
the renowned “ever-normal granaries” in each county immediately began to issue rations (without any labor test) to peasants in the officially designated disaster counties.8…When local supplies proved insufficient, Guancheng shifted millet and rice from the great store of tributegrain at Tongcang at the terminus of the Grand Canal, then used the Canal to move vast quantities of rice from the south. Two million peasants were maintained for eight months, until the return of the monsoon made agriculture again possible.
Famines with certain deaths are an invention of the last few millenia, and are particularly concentrated at first in Europe, and thereafter to greater, more rapid extents, in places it colonises. In the narrow historical sense, “producing more than enough food consistently” has been the norm. In the broader sense of history, i.e. the entire human past recorded in writing or not, famines seem to be even less of a regular occurrence. Archaeological evidence suggests that, contrary to this stereotype of hungry and starving hunter-gathers turning into regularly fed farmers, the hunter-gatherers were consistently fed from a variety of sources with less wear and tear from labour.
Likewise in regards to medicine… in the past just getting sick could be a death sentence. People had to live with incredibly painful conditions their whole life that we now have cures for.
Not really the case (outside of the (ofc horrible) childhood mortality rates). In a lotta cases, medicine went backwards with the enlightenment as remedies/coping methods/etc for pains were regarded as “superstitions” that didn’t “truly cure the [incurable even today] ailment”. And ofc throughout the world (including Europe at some point) cultures that live on the land tend to know a variety of local medicines based on herbs, animals, plants, etc. These methods are ofc sought after today by multinational corporations so they can copyright them and sell them.
Honestly modern medicine is the one reason why I would rather live in 2023 than any other time.
When you say this are you accounting for the fact that, if you were randomly born in 2023 there is a >80% chance you’re born in the Imperial Periphery and therefore, rather than accessing such medicines you’re the one suffering for their production? You might be downwind of some industrial ‘development’ that gives you and your entire family diseases no one has ever heard of before, or you might have your entire village burnt to the ground to mine the minerals or harvest the plants used for the medicines up in the global north. Heck, even in the US or Canada we are still settler-colonial entities; you could very well be born up somewhere in Northern Alberta where much of the food you eat is contaminated with oil and the water has various industrial runoffs.
What I’m getting at is… though these advances did occur under capitalism, I don’t think I would give capitalism the “credit” for them.
I would give imperialism the credit for them. Having a large population that doesn’t have to live with the negative consequences of its luxuries (i.e. a nobility) is a key part of imperialism (and a necessity for surplus value realisation).
Obviously socialism was not possible 200 years ago. I’m not denying standard Marxist historical progression.
Did something fundamentally change between 1823 and 1848 when Marx began saying “socialism is possible”?
Marx doesn’t have a “standard historical progression”. Marx has a method of analysing society and looking for ways to transform it for the better. In his early works (e.g. the manifesto or german ideology articles) there is a schematic tendency, but this is abandoned mostly in Capital and totally in later notes and letters (e.g. to Zasulich in 1881). Marx’s near uncritical positivity towards capitalist development of productive forces also fades very quickly, to be replaced with scathing critiques of machines, agriculture (animal and plant), colonisation and peasant-clearing.
I think the only things you can give capitalism “credit” for is developing the productive forces, allowing for high levels of commodity production, and increasing levels of wealth (though not equally shared).
Because of how critical he was before the great acceleration and expansion of consumerism, I would think that Marx’s view on the current ‘development of productive forces’ would be rather more critical than you’d expect, especially since his views on all this don’t even take greenhouse gasses into account so he’d probably be even more negative on this.
The in between period is called the 'interregnum' because the Akaviri Potentate originally positioned itself as a temporary regency pending the discovery of a new dragonborn emperor, and because Tiber Septim leaned on the Reman empire for legitimacy, not because each warlord saw themselves as trying to become emperor.
The various warring states were not attempting to recreate the Reman empire; in general they were just returning to the status quo before Reman united most of the continent against the Akaviri invaders (who then swore fealty to him). When I wrote 'nominal' control I meant:
Reman troops on the coast of black marsh with most of the coastal argonians swearing some form of fealty on pain of having their hist trees burnt to the ground
Alinor officially being subservient, but even Reman diplomats not allowed outside the diplomatic district of the capital
Half or more of high rock, hammerfell and skyrim being de-facto independent (reachfolk, orcs, alikr)
An unknown portion of the jungles of cyrodiil filled by ayleids still
The Septims and Remans are entirely seperate entities with entirely separate organizational structures (as far as we know anyways; we have mostly just myth/song/legend for the Reman period).
Setting aside Reman empire bc there's a distinct lack of information on it, we have indication in Morrowind of the empire's relationship to the province it has the least official control over. So imo at least this tells us that the provinces outright conquered and forcefully integrated would have even more unequal trade relationships (and e.g. in Argonian account we hear of slavery in Black Marsh, of Argonians, by imperial immigrant-landlords).
exploitative core irl had new frontiers for a capitalistic expansion, but Tamriel doesn't have new anything new for many centuries besides Akavir which they don't successfully exploit. so people itt are postulating some sort of medieval neoliberal turnabout where a core territory of the Empire (Skyrim) is a peripheral subject. much simpler to just think of it as medieval China or Holy Roman Empire
I wanna re-iterate my position that Skyrim is part of the Septim/Mede Imperial Core; i have no interest in arguing about what others in the thread are arguing.
"Tamriel" is a continent. The Empire is based in the human core of Cyrodiil, 1/2 of High Rock and Skyrim. The Imperial Core of the Human Empire has tons of New Frontiers to expand into; Black Marsh, Morrowind (Temple preserve of Vvardenfel newly open for business and settlement in Morrowind), Valenwood, the Orc controlled territories of High Rock (eventually taken over through co-optation), the goblin controlled territories of Cyrodiil, any area considered 'wild' and therefore being "unproductive" (given time, this would likely see the empire drawn into conflict with the Bosmer bc green pact, but thats part of why the Septim empire pushes the cult of the 8 and 1 so much).
And you mention the HRE, but it should be noted there was a whole frontier (both for the feudal lords and for the bishops) to the East of it for the entirety of its existence. There was continual economic pressure put on them, German merchants (and bishops) and outright settlers throughout Hungary, Poland, the Baltic. When the HRE was created, like half of Germany wasn't even German or Christian and that would change within 300 years.
yeah like the Romans. but Oblivion, Skyrim, and Daggerfall offer basically no evidence for that besides an aesthetic affinity between the Empire and Romans.
I'd argue this is intentional; the Septim Empire consciously mimics the Reman empire's aesthetics to bolster its legitimacy.
after however many thousands of years of Lore there is for Tamriel, "core territory" surely expands
I wanna point out that Tamriel the continent has existed for thousands of years, but the Septim Empire of a United Tamriel lasted only around 400 years, and during a large part of that was consumed with internal conflicts, outright civil wars and failed Akaviri adventures.
Before the Septim empire, there was a thousand year interregnum of warlords under a nominal akaviri potentate. Before that, there was a Reman empire for a few hundred years which nominally controlled the entire continent except for morrowind, but the extent of its control on the Summerset Isles was getting tribute.
I also think that the imperial core of the Septim and Reman empires is likely not just cyrodiil, but likely extends to High Rock and Skyrim (empire of (tamrielic) man after all). It should also be noted that not the entirety of Cyrodiil, High Rock or Skyrim benefits from being "imperial core" to equal extents (c.f. beggars) or at all (e.g. goblins, reachfolk, orcs). In historical imperial cores, the benefits of imperialism trickle down, so to speak, to the imperial core's relative poor rather than being spread to the imperialised so i would assume this to be the case here
Tamriel is not a capitalist country, but imo it seems pretty clear the province of Cyrodiil is a province wherein the capitalist mode of circulation prevails and enjoys the patronage of a continent-spanning empire to extract various luxury/exotic goods from periphery areas for profit.
In Morrowind, this was ofc very, very clear (East Empire Company, monopoly on Ebony, paper contracts, co-opting local rulers, etcetc its all very British empire).
In Oblivion we see the imperial core which is suitably saccharine on its surface but horrifying just below (e.g. the murderous countess of Leyawiin, the feeding of prisoners to vampires in Skingrad, Bravil's general horribleness, beggars everywhere, etc.)
In Skyrim we see a part of the Imperial core (but not the core-core) 200 years after the Empire suffered its greatest crisis, defacto collapsed and 'returned' with a tiny portion of its territory (notably missing: the sugar plantations of Elweyr, the Ebony mines of Morrowind and Hammerfel; the tropical trees of Black Marsh i.e. the areas from which the majority of wealth would have likely been extracted).
Also I'd note that client-kings was very much characteristic of early Roman expansion (although definitely not so much the periods of higher imperial power). Pseudo-feudalism isn't really descriptive of what we see in any of the TES games imo; Oblivion uses titles such as 'count', but so did/does capitalist Britain.
It should very much be noted that the imperials, despite the facade of cosmopolitan diversity, do engage in a lotta the same colonialist policies both in of assimilation (they push the cult of the nine on basically everyone and demand they join the imperial economy), Cyrod-centrism and the like.
We should of course all be supporting the goblins and rieklings in their struggle against the genocidal elves, lizards, cats and hairless monkeys
Imperials are more bourgeois-ified than aristocrats afaik.
Late Septim empire was more 1500s/1600s but with magic than ancient roman (The ancient romans are the Remans).
This is most evident in Morrowind, but even in Oblivion there's stuff like printing presses, near daily papers, etc. This is also clear in Skyrim when one approaches locations associated with trade (e.g. Windhelm or Solitude) and meets bourgeois-aristocrats such as Vittoria Vicci owner of the East Empire Company.
Friend your citation is to a book chapter which mentions the author's previous work on the industrious revolution...in the early modern (i.e. Ming) period. It does not say what you want it to say.
Large, centralised, powerful states inhibit the expansion of mercantile power. Historically (cf. Aglietta & Bai China's Development: Capitalism and Empire) the Chinese states would break up concentrations of merchant power.
Also to add to what Dolores said about Qing, I wanna point out that it (and Ming, etc) had superior famine relief and general peasant living standards. To quote Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts: "In Europe's Age of Reason [c.1700] the "starving masses" were French, Irish and Calabrian, not Chinese".
Capitalism's development is things going wrong. What we have today is the result of class struggle (paricularly around the mediterranean) ending in "common ruin of the contending classes"(Manifesto p.1) at best, triumph of the oppressing class at worst, repeatedly, for millennia. It is not a system that develops when a society is healthy or flourishing.
This whole idea that a Chinese Empire would engage in European style colonial policies is absurd, because we have historical examples of what Chinese expansion looks like; generally a slower (but still bad, brutal etc) encroching process with tribute taken as personal gifts for the emperor / court (here I am drawing primarily on Ye's The Colonisation and Settlement of Taiwan and Walker's The Conquest of Ainu Land). Native autonomy maintained often by military action from above against local officials. That the tribute is generally restricted to articles for use rather than exchange means "no boundless thirst for surplus labour will arise" (Kapital p.345), hence no boundless, rapacious growth. This sorta tribute (and de jure acknowledgement of Chinese supremacy) came from places as distant as Southeast Asia, East Africa and Hokkaido.
The two big waves of (again, still brutal, traumatic etc) migration of mainland Chinese to Taiwan during imperial era was during one of the medieval dynasty transitions, when the loser fled to Taiwan, and in the mid 1800s, when China was trying to prove that it was being a "real" empire and "civilizing" the area.
Idealism. Claiming that ideas are the root cause of a great deal of the world's problems is the opposite of materialism.
It has actually treated religion very kindly and respectfully. Like Marx read the bible repeatedly in multiple languages. He told his wife to seek spiritual edification in the jewish prophets rather than a secular church. His analysis of religion is constantly and consistently respectful and to the point with the notable and glaring exception of people who say "i'm a christian/jew/etc" and then ruthlessly exploit their workers. And even then, Marx's disrespect is usually quoting scripture to show how far they've gone from it rather than "lol u believe in man in the sky".
Marx actually admits to an existence of a ton of abstract, non-material social things in Capital which exist, objectively, without a material form. The entirety of communism is a belief that Marx had could become reality. As many indigenous folks have argued (for example, deloria jr. in "Same old Rock" in Marxism and Native Americans) Marxism is itself a religion that demands taking a lot on faith (revolutionary optimism is faith; belief in revolution is faith; belief in an eventual better world in the future? Faith.
And if you read indigenous activists, theorists and so forth (e.g. Coulthard Red Skin, White Masks) you will see it argued very strongly that indigenous religions/spiritualities are materialist in that they are methods of describing and organising empirically obtained information, disregarding theology which no longer holds true to investigation. When you research religions besides Christianity in the global north in particular and organised hierarchical monotheistic religions which developed to support material inequalities and sufferings it becomes very evident that this is how most of them work, except for the religions of the nobility who write things down and get obsessed with literalism.
If you don't mind my asking comrade what sorta investigation into religion (past or contemporary) have you done? What sorta investigations into the structure of science and how it works (e.g. Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Siltoe ed Local vs. Global Science or Aikenhead and Michell *Indigenous and Scientific Ways of Knowing Nature) have you done?