Late stage capitalism, AIBU to ask “what comes next?”

[overthinkersanonnymus]

I have seen a lot of posts on SM saying we’re in late stage capitalism, what happens after this stage? What does it even mean?

Im not very savvy about politics and the economy etc, but is this a good thing or bad thing, that we’re in late stage?

Ok yes there are a few thousand mega rich, but millions in the middle (most of mn) and millions at the bottom. Communism lacks the middle or the chance to go from the bottom to the top.

You are the exception that proves the rule as you can see the benefit of a short term hit for long term gain... remember under Paddy Ashdown the lib dems said they would increase tax by 1p... And got less seats

It's not necessarily that people resent paying tax (although the less bright do). It's more paying tax and seeing fuck all as a result.

For the wealthy this is because they simply don't accept that roads, schools, hospitals, and army, a stable government and a welfare state are in anyway responsible for their wealth.

And for the least wealthy, it's seeing prices rise with nothing anywhere improving, because the wealthy do get away without paying their fair share.

"I pay my taxes. They buy me civilisation". Something a 9th century Saxon may well have pondered as wave after wave of Vikings came a-plundering

In cultural materialism, “late stage capitalism” is synonymous with postmodernity — and it marks the point at which we can no longer critique capitalism from inside it, but are simply amalgamated into an endless circulation of commodification, simulacra, and the naturalisation of our own exploitation as economic resources.

Put simply, it’s the point at which revolution or escape from capitalism is no longer possible because we’ve been so thoroughly absorbed into it that we’re no longer able to navigate or even think our way out.

In that respect, late capitalism is the onset of exhaustion, capitulation, nihilism, and the evaporation of any sense of alternative orders or value, or structures of existence. In late capitalism we can no longer grasp on to anything real or solid to get us out of the endless circulation of money and simulated experience. Capitalism has won, essentially; and becomes our endless state of being, in which humanity becomes no more than the exploitation and circulation of economic value and nothing else.

Very cheerful stuff, in other words.

Late stage capitalism, AIBU to ask “what comes next?”

I don’t think anyone has ever predicted the future accurately, have they?

When's Star Trek world coming with no money and machines that create endless food?

"In late capitalism we can no longer grasp on to anything real or solid to get us out of the endless circulation of money and simulated experience. "

Perhaps not true of everywhere, especially cities, but outside of cities lots of people have already dropped out of this simulated experience. In cheaper to live parts of the country there are thousands, if not millions of people who live on the fringes of society, not working, living off savings, pensions or under the counter type 'work'. People who are pissed off with the commercialisation, enshittification and making he rich richer whilst getting sod all. These people are finding other ways.

I always refer to where I live as Poverty Paradise. A cheap to live place full of people who don't consume much, don't ask for much, are partially self sufficient in terms of skills/food/entertaining themselves and who are contented in a very old fashioned way.

It’s not really about that; it’s more about not being able, as a society overall, to hold on to value structures that previously offered an alternative “narrative” to capitalism (the church, the state, the family, etc.). Individual people or communities might choose to live more or less part of the “city/screen media” version of postmodernism/late capitalism. But trying to abscond from the trappings of modernity still doesn’t bring back a world where the “grand narratives” of truth, certainty, moral values, and so on, could be depended upon.

Living close to nature as a sheep farmer in the Hebrides, or choosing to become a devout Anglo-Catholic, or trying to establish an artisanal commune, or whatever, doesn’t stop Trump from doing what he feels like with the idea of a stable world order, or make AI stop infiltrating every aspect of computerisation, or stop massive derivatives trades putting the entire global economy at risk.

It doesn’t re-input all those previous value structures and certainties about truth, knowledge, good and evil, power and enlightenment back into global or local existence. It doesn’t stop you being subject to the operations of capitalism; it’s just a way of pretending that it’s not happening. Late capitalism is horrifying precisely because it dupes you into not seeing what it does any more. You can’t run away from it by cleaving to a pretend version of the past, or by trying to forget it: that’s what it wants (as it were).

For cultural materialists, the only way out is to stay alienated from capitalism, and keep on experiencing the alienation and the discomfort. Perhaps this then may allow us to bring about some form of resistance to it; but many post-Frankfurt-School Marxists and cultural materialists are pretty sceptical about whether we can envision what resistance to it, or even revolution, might look like in advance (they acknowledge that “classic” modes of Marxist revolution risk just perpetuating the system, since they can’t envisage true freedom from within the capitalist structure).

But to try to forget capitalism is just to succumb to becoming an unwitting part of it.

(I did say this was not a cheerful form of thought….!)

Ok yes there are a few thousand mega rich, but millions in the middle (most of mn) and millions at the bottom.

Most of the millions in the middle will end up at the bottom.

Ha!

I disagree about Ikea. My Billy bookcase has stood the test of time - substance and sustenance 😄

Communism is long dead and buried, we're way beyond The End of History, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism

The people buying junk off Temu and Shein are middle aged women spending an average of £80 a month. They arent poor or young. They love buying shit off Temu. @RainbowBagels

This is so true. I made this exact point on another thread recently. Then they complain that their kids can't get part time jobs and the city centres with all the boarded up shops are too dangerous.

" Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains" Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Neo Fuedalism. Subscriptions for everything, no private ownership of property or land, digital control of our money, social credit system and fewer freedoms. The only private enterprise will be by the large corporations.

Ikea and Kardashian both focus on consumerism but IKEA is about functional comfort for the masses, simplicity and accessibility, affordable, practical, widely available not just for the rich, although they often dig Ikea too, so sort of egalitarian. Ordinary people affording functional and modern comfort* *in their homes.

The Kardashians’ brand highlight the division between the haves and have nots, where the “haves” are defined by image, status and wealth. Their aspirational but empty lifestyles, superfluous product lines and glamour but hollow social media presence is all about looking sleek and appearing rich.

In other words, IKEA is the aesthetic of modernity (classic industrial capitalism); whereas the Kardashians are postmodernity (seductive and nihilistic late capitalism!)

It’s a stupid phrase picked up from Marxists that people use to show how smart and sophisticated they are. Given that we don’t know what the stages of capitalism might be—Marxists think they do but they are simply wrong—we can’t know what stage we are in now and whether it is late or otherwise. We might actually be in early stage capitalism and it might last another millennium or two. Nobody knows. Next time someone talks about “late stage capitalism” just tell them you are puzzled why they say that and then quote Hegel at them “the owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk.” Out-pretentious the pretentious.

“We may see a future in which the likes of Musk and Bezos pay the rest of us an allowance so we can buy their products and keep them rich 🤷‍♀️”

This is the present, it’s their taxes (supposedly) contributing to keeping economies going, kids educated, population healthy, benefits paid, employment high. The problem for me is the gulf between rich and poor is already huge, and when AI takes away many opportunities for ordinary people to earn a decent living, I fear the vastly increased incomes of the ultra wealthy profiting from it will not trickle down to enable us all to have that great life of leisure; instead all economic benefit will go into their pockets and ordinary people will simply become poorer.

We are already seeing on the news the grab for the world’s last remaining resources. It’ll be back to the feudal system where rich barons (criminals, thugs and tech bros) hold all the power and access to basic human needs on a dying choking planet. Most of us will be enslaved drones. Hopefully the Black Death will wipe us all out again and the few remaining survivors can rebuild and learn the lessons of the past!

“Men honored deceit and power and scoffed at benevolence and righteousness. They put wealth and possessions first, and courtesy and humility last. Some commoners became so rich that their wealth was counted in the hundreds of millions, while among the poor there were those who could not even get enough dregs and chaff to fill their bellies.”

Social collapse as recorded by Suma Qian.

Humans - men - never learn.

The wealth means nothing and will not last. The world they destroy thereby is everything.

Hosea 8:7: ‘For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’