late stage capitalism, forever

contradictions – – - i heard hegel loved tht shyt

hegelian economics? im scared

[11/9/26] for clarification, though i sometimes label myself a communist to stir up things when i’m bored, i don’t really qualify. i guess maybe you could call me a “deleuzian” but a real deleuzian would never call themselves one, and i would, so i’m not. if i wanted to get along with people i would be going around self-identifying as a cryptobro, and as much as I’m joking, the reality of it is I really am just as much one as a “Marxist” - you see, economics was my special interest for a few years (what can i say, im “chinese” and i love to gamble bring out the mahjong table). i’m bringing this up now to continue to ask the question - where is humanity going? is it going anywhere? if so is it backwards? I stumbled upon an answer in an unlikely place - self-helpanomics. specifically Ray Dalio’s “How the Economic Machine Works” and “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order”. it can very quickly be understood by us as Das Kapital if it was a get rich quick scheme and the dialectical historicism is replaced with the “nothing ever happens” wojak. yes, it is written by a billionare hedge fund manager and the “beautiful deleveraging” is cope, but still - a cyclical, almost Spinozan cause/effect “human nature” understanding of history has been a lot more useful to my wallet and understanding of geopolitics than class analysis.

i may have gotten a little ahead of myself. his claim is this: the success of a nation (or any capital) naturally preseeds (and precedes) it’s downfall, because of the machinic nature of CREDIT (leveraging and deleveraging). and wow okay it’s like i can hear the taoist hegelian marxist spinozian deleuzian wolves in me howling in perfect harmony and i hope you can hear it too. he says this is why the stock market tends to move in cycles and waves. zoom out far enough in relation to a single nation and it looks like one up swing and one down swing as it gets replaced with another. Dalio thinks the next to replace America is China, then China will fall eventually too. to him American political inflammation is as much a sign of “late stage capitalism” as it is a “deleveraging”. this seems to give us a semblance of an answer to why we seem to always be in the “late stage” - because a deleveraging happens everywhere all the time in molecular and molar strata. the issue with the phrase “late stage capitalism” is that it suggests it will be over soon, that if things get bad enough things will fold over and be better for everyone forever. this of course is much too simple. because Dalio is only concerned with his hedge fund, a revolution doesn’t change a thing, only the set dressing. this is because there can be no “permanent revolution”, because revolution itself is just part of the cycle. revolution can only ever be constant and ongoing. let us invoke ursula k le guin

For her as for him, there was no end. There was process: process was all. You could go in a promising direction or you could go wrong, but you did not set out with the expectation of ever stopping anywhere.

apes iṋ a labcoat: biological devolution

[20/5/26]

ϑ’last 300 years or so ago, ϑere was a movement towards a new value system, on̅e ϑat moved away from rigid social hierarchy, religion, regressive tax systems, unchallanged torture, in favour of utilitarianism, capitalism, reason, technological progress, individualism. itꝬ a movement ϑat has spread so globally we take it for granted, ⅋ut put beside ϑ’rest of human history, we can see how radical & unnatural ϑis project really was. Marxists are always looking forward, pursue a better future, we døn’t often ϑink to lꙭk back. Deleuze tells us we should know better. Project 2025 America seems to give us a glimpse of what seems to be our primal instincts slipping ϑrů ϑ’cracks of the machine, integrating iṋto it. on ϑ’scale of animal & industrial, is there a secondary axis of socialism & barbarism? if we’re stratifying directions, itꝬ clear which on̅e is making a comeback. maybe humanity was never meant to be. maybe it was always just an act. apes iṋ a lab coat, apes running a factory, ԙ we really apes ϑat ԙ able to be whatever ϑey decide? ϑ’class conscious have loŋ declared fascism to be a reactionary movement ϑat reflects capitals decay, ⅋ut ϑis conclusion requires us to accept ϑ’Marxist idea ϑat humanity is in flux, iṋ a feedback loop w/ ϑ’environment & class conditions ϑey engineer. for ϑ’last century ϑis has checked out, ⅋ut in ϑis new embrace of what can only be described as religious fervour, our assumptions ԙ yet again brought iṋto quæstion. if we understand other animals to be limited by ϑeir biological instincts, acting only on ϑeir neurons preprogrammed by genomes, structurally organized by nature, who ԙ we to declare we ԙ any different?

this is the question that Different by primatologist Frans de Waal asks., he finds the implications of biological determinism are defeatist and cursed. lucky for us, they are also wrong. Frans says we ԙ just as much bonobo as chimpanzee. sure, we are primates, ⅋ut

We are, in sum, incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culture—and not through culture in general but through highly particular forms of it. — Clifford Geertz

even if we return to a purely biological basis for understanding ourselves, zoologist Adolf Portmann wůld point out from a Darwinian perspective ϑat as our need for narrow hips for bipedal walking got iṋ ϑ’way of our brains growing larger, we had to be born “early.” ϑis wůld entail ϑ’idea ϑat our brains are uniquely unwired (for about a year) outside ϑ’womb.

ϑis iꝬ both our biggest strength & weakness - our neurological malleability. just as ϑere iꝬ nø limit to our collective intelligence, there iꝬ nø limit to our idiocy. ϑ’call of barbarism represents a biological devolution… iꝬ ϑis biological cultural link what we felt iṋ our earliest influences? iṋ our teenage years? cůld ϑis be ꝡ music & ϑeir respective scenes end up making up so much of our identity? “ϑere will never be anoϑer album like Icedancer” my ass. yes, my unenlightened twin, music iꝬ sacred!

microtextures of ϑ’petty bourgeois - ϑ’entirety of ϑ’machine

[notes on 1933: micropolitics and segmentary 27/4/26]

marxists recognize a complexity in their molar interpretations of oppressed and oppressor.., the petty bourgeois., the nomad handyman that can swing towards either team, that exists separate from the wage worker / mass exploiter dynamic. but the reality is this dynamic is interwoven across strata at various points. it is at this intersection where someone can be a freedom fighter in the streets, and a misogynist in the home,. or a wrecker in the sheets and carer in the kitchen. while it seems at first to be contradictions, the multiplicity describes every assemblage functioning by making and breaking connections for wildly different flows (in the soul, the lover, the worker, the state…). it is tempting to say, for example, that America lusts for their own destruction, that they perpetuate and find jouissance in their helplessness.. to follow daddy’s lead, ⅋ut the reality is much different.

The microtextures — not masochism — are what explain how the oppressed can take an active role in oppression: the workers of the rich nations actively participate in the exploitation of the Third World, the arming of dictatorships, and the pollution of the atmosphere.

it is much more accurate to understand the money machine as a single body that engulfs the proletariat’s flows of desire between their organs, rather than a separate entity. to simplify things, we can understand this connection between the worker and exploitor to function like a “voluntary” (it’s not, we are engulfed) “social contract” (it’s not, it is a flow of desire), in which the molecular exploitation of their labour is exchanged to be part of the molar exploitation of their global dominance. the proletariat are not tricked into participating in it’s destruction, they are in perfect harmony with it. this seems to be why, now, there is such resonance between the black holes of the nationalist and those of the neoliberal. by enforcing an abstract nameless national facility, an illusion of the molar identity is reinforced and forms a feedback loop, integrating into the money machine. the neoliberal and fascist are not merely “in bed together”, on this strata, they have found each other, molten, and coagulated into one entity.. hardened into a committed romantic relationship. this is true even as The Father abolishes the department of education, it’s not a libidinal bimboification, it’s merely part of the subjected “contract” that keeps the relationship between power and impotence running.

this whole chain and web of power is immersed in a world of mutant flows that eludes them. It is precisely its impotence that makes power so dangerous. The man of power will always want to stop the lines of flight, and to this end to trap and stabilize the mutation machine in the overcoding machine. But he can do so only by creating a void, in other words, by first stabilizing the overcoding machine itself by containing it within the local assemblage charged with effectuating it, in short, by giving the assemblage the dimensions of the machine. This is what takes place in the artificial conditions of totalitarianism or the “closed vessel.”

manufacturing consent is only one menial aspect of the machine that provides conscious justifications for its existence, but the unconscious subjectification of the proletariat had long been stratified. it’s a performance. this is nøt to say the bourgeois does nøt aim to mislead the prolitariat, only that it does nøt matter. that either way it is the same machine and the same flows of desire. so following a single flow’s narrative, it’s manufactured “consents” (Brexit, 9/11, Tiananmen Square…) often overlook the entirety of the machine.

though this totalizing view, that the prolitariet are inseparable from their own exploitation, can make us feel even more helpless, i also maintain that there is no “libidinal band” only a cancerous machine that consumes everything. the jouissance in it’s consumption is a coincidence, or side effect, rather than the instigator. the proletariat do not “hold onto their chains” out of sheer intensity of feeling, b∵c microtexture is nøt skin, and the “chains” are non-linear. the masochism surely exists, but it is not why we are here.

fear of ϑ’face: Blancoφobia, Heteroφobia, Suburboφobia, Facialiφobia.

[notes on year 0. 27/3/26]

while blancophobia & heterophobia seem to be very real (in my personal experience) ϑey have a very different naturæ ϑan types of discrimination it iꝬ often compared to (at least in my milleu): homophobia (ϑat house is haunted), transphobia (transformers was heavily subsidized by ϑ’department of defense), fatphobia, racism (against people of colour), singlism (you just need to get yourself out there!), heightism, lookism (opinion discarded), & so on. Deleuze describes ϑem as a facialty, ϑat revolve around a despotic signifier, a centre, a singular ideal, ϑat all people & ϑiŋs ԙ compared in relation to. xenophobia ϑat reduces complexities iṋto a single digit, measuring distance from it. tw̅̅o black holes.

ϑis framework iꝬ far reaching enůgh to explain ꝡ my UIUX lecturer seemed to talk just like a microfascist. “nø! ϑat iꝬ nøt how menus ԙ supposed to lꙭk!” “ԙ you mentally ill? you may need professional help” (yes he really said ϑis) Œdipus! systems built on conventions built on systems built on conventions…

heterophobia comes from a different set of neurological processes ϑat exist simultaneously iṋ contradiction - a realization of ϑese horrors. seeing ϑ’black hole: “nø please døn’t put me in a skirt to make yourself feel bigger!”. blancophobia “hmm I’m nøt sure about ϑis race gap relationship”. finally, in year zero: christianophobia “all of you bullied me iṋ highschool!”

ϑ’argument against “reverse racism” ϑen, iꝬ nøt ϑat racism just “requires prejudice, otherwise it døesn’t count”, itꝬ ϑat it iꝬ operating on a fundementally seperate strata. when someone carries both in a hyperactive state, a TERF, gay conservative, and so on, iꝬ born - “men have hurt me, ⅋ut ϑose women… ϑey døn’t sit right with me” / “love is love so homophobia is wrong, ⅋ut gꙩd ϑese queers ԙ so fucking embarrassing”