There are two classes, the senatorial class and the plebeians. Just like in Rome with the worst psychopaths at the top.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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The way this is written... It's just so far from reality.
Rich people (most of them) aren't plotting to fuck us over for sinister reasons... They're fucking us over because they are selfish, greedy assholes.
The problem isn't that we're all being stepped on, it's that we're being used as steps to elevate these psychopaths.
Is a very important distinction, even if the results feel the same. You can't typically fight a problem effectively without understanding it.
It doesn't say anything about any sinister reasons actually. It simply states the fact that there is a systematic effort by the ruling class to extract more profit from the working majority.
They're pulling up the ladder behind them and kicking you in the face when you try to climb up the sheer cliff they "already climbed."
Silence, the two braincells of a progressist are working now.
But the threat is neither dead nor gone
For a while the ruling class managed to convince people that it really was the end of history.
This is why I advocate for, hear me out, liberal arts. 🤢
Soc 100 or 101, can't remember which, taught this.
I advocate for a socialist revolution instead.
After not enjoying Applied Calculus, I took Modern Math, AKA Math For English Majors, to complete my math requirement.
It was a great class! Lots of useful, real-world math skills. It didn't use anything much more complicated than simple algebra, but we talked about the traveling salesman problem and ways to fairly split up an estate.
We also talked about election math, and how first past the post is objectively a terrible election system, and how there are several systems readily available that are mathematically more representative of the will of the people. I don't even know if the teacher had a specific political stance, or if she was just mathematically offended by our outdated democratic operating system.
Great class. Wish they would start teaching subjects like that in high school.
As a STEM grad who spent 2 years undeclared, it sounds like a course even STEM people could use.
I'm so thankful that I sort of accidentally backed into a well rounded education. I cannot say the same for the majority of my STEM colleagues.
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Why is the threat gone? Cultural and political momentum died down while USSR was around and USSR being dismantled for sure killed off a huge chunk of the momentum and strength, but it's hard to believe the ideology would be dead and never coming back
Modern liberals drank their own kool-aid and literally thought it was "The End of History", and the future would just be liberal democracy, with some technocratic tweaks. These are people who genuinely believed freedom for capitalists was intrinsically tied to human rights and that capitalism eventually means the best outcomes for everyone. They'd just watched the USSR fall, and were so sure China was either going to embrace free markets and western-style democracy or stagnate until they were overthrown and replaced by a government who did.
I mean they were sorta right about the Chinese free market thing, but only partly and without the Western style democracy.
They saw China using markets and didn't understand the fundamental difference between markets being wielded by capitalists, developing the means of production in rare, specific cases where it helps them concentrate power and markets being wielded by workers to for the singular purpose of developing the means of production.
I meant more how they're now where there's billionaires there running huge private companies etc
Yeah, but unlike the US, those billionaires do not control the government. The government is controlled by the CCP.
It's the dictatorship of the (people who say they represent) the proletariat. Not the dictatorship of the people who buy the most politicians.
Yaaayyyy....
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The socialist market economy in China was a return to more classical Marxist economics than the dogmatic attempt to collectivize even small proprietors under the Gang of Four.
I mean more what became after the economic liberalization. Billionaires and huge private companies and stuff. That's probably partly what the people were expecting to see in the future.
Calling the socialist market economy "liberalization" isn't really accurate, as it implies the opposite direction, dogmatic collectivization, would be "more communist." It was a course correction. Either way, western liberals began projecting onto the PRC's economy what they expected of a capitalist economy, and now that it's increasingly evident that this is fundamentally incorrect they are scrambling to come to a new analysis of why China works and why the west is dying.
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No, they were wrong.
The liberal socialist wave of China 1980-2015
should be seen as the inverse
of the social democratic wave of the US 1930-1975.
Both ditched it once it became unnecessary to preserve their socio-economic structure.
Recommend: The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy - Jeffrey Winters
Don't worry about that, the threat will be back.
We just have to reach the level of peasantry that started the communist revolution.
Worry about that.
I fear with technology becoming so oppressive, it might be much more difficult to do so
I'd argue it started with FDR not the cold war. FDR did end up healing many Americans, but the concessions given slowed and/or completely stopped many workers movements in the US.
The middle class wouldn't emerge until the late 1940s, but the groundwork was set in the 30s
I like how slightly appeasing the socialists made the country way better for decades. Moar!
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