>>13 Reactionary is a meaningless buzzword. Yes, the result is often not what Marxists want, but that’s because Marxists are wrong and their goals are not actually desirable for most ordinary people, including their beloved working class. Today, the nation-state model faces unprecedented crisis and anyone who knows Chinese history knows your claims about peasants and nomads is false. Nomads are not defined by the city. They are defined by their movement. Regardless, the “revolutionary class” is not the traditional salaried proletariat who are locked down to one territory, but roving and mobile populations that the global system rapidly produces. The result will not be the old progressivism, that relic of the 19th and 20th century which leftists continue to peddle. It might not even lead to a whole new system, but a kind of apocalypse where new formations are built amid the ruins or zones where control has collapsed and hybrid forms of life created. The global state system is constantly challenged by tribes armed with automatic weapons, insurgent colonies, and cybernetic communities, international networks of roving terrorists, drug cartels etc. these may not lead to ideal outcomes, but something is changing clearly.
Key to revolt now is movement and speed. Those in power today know this well. It’s why ID cards, visas, passports, racial hierarchies, gender identities exist. The construction of movement and time. Similarly, life can be sped up to a rapid rate to keep the fixed position proles busy, as in Amazon warehouses. But the key things they want to control are the comings and goings of outsiders, the flow of footfall on the streets, the dozens of ‘unproductive’ wanderers that roam around. The Taliban won in Afghanistan because they conquered the asphalt and were faster than both the Americans and their local stooges. The offensive that toppled Assad exploited the law of speed, made the roads and highways its target and its foot soldiers were the mobile masses. The challenge for those in power today is to control the flow of populations and regulate their speed while moving faster than their adversaries.
Reactionary is a meaningless buzzword. Yes, the result is often not what Marxists want, but that’s because Marxists are wrong and their goals are not actually desirable for most ordinary people, including their beloved working class. Today, the nation-state model faces unprecedented crisis and anyone who knows Chinese history knows your claims about peasants and nomads is false. Nomads are not defined by the city. They are defined by their movement. Regardless, the “revolutionary class” is not the traditional salaried proletariat who are locked down to one territory, but roving and mobile populations that the global system rapidly produces. The result will not be the old progressivism, that relic of the 19th and 20th century which leftists continue to peddle. It might not even lead to a whole new system, but a kind of apocalypse where new formations are built amid the ruins or zones where control has collapsed and hybrid forms of life created. The global state system is constantly challenged by tribes armed with automatic weapons, insurgent colonies, and cybernetic communities, international networks of roving terrorists, drug cartels etc. these may not lead to ideal outcomes, but something is changing clearly.
Key to revolt now is movement and speed. Those in power today know this well. It’s why ID cards, visas, passports, racial hierarchies, gender identities exist. The construction of movement and time. Similarly, life can be sped up to a rapid rate to keep the fixed position proles busy, as in Amazon warehouses. But the key things they want to control are the comings and goings of outsiders, the flow of footfall on the streets, the dozens of ‘unproductive’ wanderers that roam around. The Taliban won in Afghanistan because they conquered the asphalt and were faster than both the Americans and their local stooges. The offensive that toppled Assad exploited the law of speed, made the roads and highways its target and its foot soldiers were the mobile masses. The challenge for those in power today is to control the flow of populations and regulate their speed while moving faster than their adversaries.