this mostly applies to the U.S. but also most of the western world:
As Marxists we know that most policy is driven by what capital allows or within the increasingly narrow range of acceptable discourse it allows within bourgeois dictatorship
Obviously it’s not a conspiracy of ten guys in a secret room but a general consensus that develops from a chaotic web-like oligarchy of money peddlers, influencers, lackeys, billionaire puppetmasters, etc
But this really, really hurts Capital. they need the influx of cheap labor or face the real threat of forced degrowth. and we know every including is trying to make it harder for people to be childless but short of forcing people to procreate at gunpoint…
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so why allow this to become a bipartisan consensus (U.S.) instead of say throwing some scraps of social democratic programs?
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or in Europe’s case allowing these parties to come to power instead of reversing some neoliberal austerity?
Is this a case of anti-immigration just being easier to do vs. building resiliency into the system? i mean it’s always easier to write laws crimializing stuff and throwing cops at a problem i suppose
Or something else?
It flows directly from a path of least resistance, the democratic wing of US capital is just as white supremacist and bigoted as their republican counterparts, but crucially less obsessive about it, largely because they have a more secular conception that originates from a New England style mode of capital management, republicans are still by and large southern aristocrats in their epistemology of capitalism
But both still have an instinct toward nativist policymaking, republicans because of their aristocratic obsession with blood and soil, and democrats because they believe it maintains the college educated racial hierarchy of professional asset managers
Without a left to point out the disgusting nature of both these ideologies, the river flows only one way and it’s a toss up of which faction enforces their instincts, the democrats obviously being the more dangerous ones because of the soothing effect they have on the general public and activists, while Republican policy agitates more people toward real and effective opposition
It’s easier to oppose a rotting syphilitic aristocrat, than a clean smart-talking corporate broad member, and this dynamic fools even capitalists who should know better