“Small comic based on the amazing words of Ursula K. Le Guin”.
SCOTUS just ruled that US presidents have the divine right of kings.
Hot take (not entirely serious):
Now that Presidents can’t be prosecuted for official acts that are crimes, Biden should enact Project 2025 EARLY give himself unitary executive power, and refuse to leave office.
This would either destroy the country, save the country, or force SCOTUS to reconsider their ruling.
Of course he could just deem the imbalance on SCOTUS a threat to national security, and write an official law saying that all major parties must be equally repressented by the judges on there (a one out, one in law).
That would also work, and run less risk of tearing the country apart.
That isn’t how p2025 works, but in theory…he could do something a lot like it. While it is better than the other guy, it would be a deeply fucked precedent…
The King-Maker ruling will be a blight if it is not fixed fast!
Not to be downer, but there are people literally thinking Donald Trump is the second coming of Christ.
If anything, I’m more concerned with folks like Jamie Dimon and Satya Nadella and Andy Jassy. People who have trillions of dollars of capital at their command exert immense influence over my quality of life. Arguably much more so than any king or high priest or even any American president.
We talk about Divine Right of Kings like its a thing that came and went, but consider how a guy like Elon Musk has accrued phenomenal amounts of wealth and authority. Consider how people see him. And how he sees himself. Its chilling to consider how much power some of these people wield and how blind we all are to their intentions.
I think you can be concerned by both. All these examples are of people that can exert and incredible amount of power through their respective means.
I read intense concern about the results of the next election, without seeing anything approaching the comparative concern for a private monopoly of real estate, a mass privatization of our postal and shipping system, or the horrifying prospect of a computerized administrative state run out of Microsoft’s digital basement.
If you want to talk about the Divine Right of Kings, it should be noted how much of that authority was accrued through mystifying the mechanisms of authority. The modern capitalist state reinvents mysticism through contracts, borders, and advanced technologies, while working towards the same fundamental ends.
Kings and Priests would have plotzed at the power afforded by a credit card company or mortgage lender or OS vendor over one of its clients. And yet these are powers we hand over to modern capitalist institutions without a second thought.
I appreciate the perspective but nothing here says we can’t be coscerbed by both positions (or all sides) of power.
I don’t want kings or monopolies, or either by any other name. No need to split hairs on it.
I would also argue that “we hand powers over to modern capitalist institutions without a second thought” is a pretty loaded sentence. Who’s doing that? Me? You? It’s not like someone asked us. Sounds pretty dismissive to assume people are acting outside of their better interest.
I don’t want kings or monopolies
Its not really a matter of what you want. These are systemic issues, not personal choices.
I would also argue that “we hand powers over to modern capitalist institutions without a second thought” is a pretty loaded sentence.
Its a consequence of growing up in a world that functions in a particular way. Adopting the tools of a society means putting out substantially less effort for survival than trying to cut across them. Ask any homeless vagrant how easy it is not to have a bank account or to get by without a job in a commercial business or state institution.
It’s not like someone asked us.
You work within the system because you fear the consequences of transgression. Nobody has to spell out why you can’t squat in an empty apartment room or wander through a grocery store grazing out of the produce section. You pay your credit card balance and your car note because you know what happens if you miss too many payments, not because some repo man or loan shark has to spell it out for you.
Sounds pretty dismissive to assume people are acting outside of their better interest.
When you’re under the gun, its in your best interest for the other guy not to pull the trigger.
I see you’re picking and choosing what to try and call out here, but you dont have any clear call to action. You’re just being obtuse. If I’m wrong, by all means, spell it out, but otherwise it’s not particularly helpful.
you dont have any clear call to action
There isn’t a clear path forward. It’s a complex problem that is made deliberately intractable by the people who benefit from the current system.
And there are people who thought their kings were divine.
Oh, it is worse than that. There are accelerationist Christians that are certain he is the antichrist. They believe bringing him to power will bring about the end of days, the rapture(that will save them), and the 1000 years of peace promised after revelations. Religion is vile.
Oh my fucking god. We are fucked.
I read the comic and was like “didn’t Le Guin say something similar” than I read the subtitle and apparently, I was right
The comic’s author should have add the proper quote.
Her father was an Anthropologist, where as she seems to be more of a Sociologist.
Kings never went away, they just changed to a different form and name to remain accepted in society, as the ones with the crowns ended up in the gallows.
This isn’t good historical analysis. The feudal class society, with its aristocracy, church and peasants, was highly rigid in terms of class mobility. Peasants stayed peasants and aristocrats stayed aristocrats. The current dominant class, the capitalist owners, exert their power not by god-given rights over the population, but by legal control of the means of production. The current exploited class, the workers, aren’t tied to a lord anymore and pay tributes in kind on exchange for land and protection, but instead are “free” to work where they want for a payment in cash, and unable for the most part to have ownership of the means of production they themselves work.
Kings have disappeared, classes in society haven’t
Divine right of kings lasted for a long long long time, and caused the deaths of untold millions
What point are you trying to make? That it would have been better if the divine right of kings ended sooner? I’m sure Ursula K. Le Guin would agree.
Or are you trying to say we shouldn’t be complacent in working to end capitalism? Because I’m sure Ursula K. Le Guin would agree as well.
The point of even saying this is to rally people who might feel there’s no point in trying, because the current system seems unstoppable.
to me it read like “that’s a nice thought and I’m sure one day we’ll move beyond it, but i doubt I’ll live to see that”
The only thing stopping people from ending the system is lacking the knowledge that they should end it, and lacking the knowledge that they can collectively end it. Pushing for hope towards the end of the system is positive
Just pondering the difference between something that is practically inescapable in a finite human lifespan vs something that is surely escapable given a removal of that metric. Merely the first thought I had when enjoying the art, no point to be made of it… More mumblings of a idle fool/thinker?
An important thought. What we tell ourselves needs to be true, or at least be believable, in order for us to take action. I tell myself that whether we reach such and such a goal in my lifetime, I want to have contributed to moving whatever tiny amount closer to the goal. It would be disappointing to me to not have tried to contribute something.
I like the Le Guin quote because it touches on that mental block to action, “Is trying to make change pointless?” On the one hand it is pointless, because we all die. On the other hand, it’s possible to contribute to a multigenerational project.
I’m sure one day we’ll achieve some sort of utopia if we aren’t killed off by climate change or some other catastrophe, but my bones will have eroded to dust by then.
Millions of deaths compared to what alternative? The difficulty with attributing causes in history is that we have no ability to conduct controlled experiments.
“Listen, the Crusades seemed bad, sure. And the Mongolian hordes did kill a lot of people. And maybe the globe spanning feudal industrialization of Victorian Era England leading headlong into a pair of World Wars decimated whole continents. But hear me out. Maybe coulda been worse?”
Unfortunately there is no double blind studied alternative to capitalism that demonstrates without a doubt that it’s statistically significantly better than capitalism as a system so I’m sorry to tell you that your children deserve to die because you’re too poor, hope that helps
Unfortunately there is no double blind studied alternative to capitalism
I’ll never understand why people believe clinical trials for pharmaceutical efficiency are the baseline for all forms of scientific inquiry and sociological research.
How on earth do we study astronomy, paleontology, or seismology without double-blind trials?
We just have to let the capitalist experiment play out. When this world is destroyed whatever humans remain if any will start the next trial. Trust me, capitalism still has a fighting chance.
If you’re going to propose a communist paradise as an alternative to human-sacrificing Bronze Age god-kings, I’m going to call you out as being a little bit unrealistic. Government isn’t just an idea, it’s a technology, and it relies on other technologies (communication, record-keeping, organization) to function.
The kinship networks of pre-agrarian indigenous groups worked just fine when everyone knew each other. Where things started getting difficult is when agriculture paved the way for population explosions.
If you’re going to propose a communist paradise as an alternative
Claiming that paradise is preferable to purgatory is not the same thing as knowing the road out of hell.
The kinship networks of pre-agrarian indigenous groups worked just fine when everyone knew each other.
One of the most effective methods for instituting an enduring state of capitalist exploitation is alienating you from your neighbors.
That is the question best asked I suppose.
In contrast to a monarchy, where people cannot choose their leader, in capitalism people can choose from which company they buy, or even create their own.
As another person already pointed out, these are obviously two different categories.
The question then is, why do people choose the way they do, both when buying and when running a company? To me it seems, they don’t because of some external pressure (like monarchy requires).
The point can be summed up as a question: Why don’t people run (more) non-capitalist services and productions, and why don’t they prefer them when looking to satisfy their demand?
These non-capitalist things exist, it’s certainly possible. But as far as I know, they are all very niche. Like a communal kitchen, some solidary agriculture or housing project. Heck, entire villages of this kind exist.
So the alternative is there, but it requires actual commitment and work. I don’t see how capitalism could be abolished in an armed uprising (in contrast to monarchy). But it can be replaced by alternative projects. Partially. Why are they so small and few?
The question then is, why do people choose the way they do, both when buying and when running a company? To me it seems, they don’t because of some external pressure (like monarchy requires).
The ideas that people have are shaped by their Material Conditions, and people generally act in their best interests. People will buy what is available in the market, and Capitalists work to accumulate more and more money in an M-C-M’ circuit.
The point can be summed up as a question: Why don’t people run (more) non-capitalist services and productions, and why don’t they prefer them when looking to satisfy their demand?
These are 2 questions.
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People generally don’t run Socialist services as frequently because in the framework of Capitalism, it is excessively difficult to gain the Capital necessary to start one, and furthermore the people with access to Capital continue to act in their own interests and accumulate more profit off of ownership.
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People do not care where their commodities come from, largely, as they work for their income and thus their access is limited by the money they have.
These non-capitalist things exist, it’s certainly possible. But as far as I know, they are all very niche. Like a communal kitchen, some solidary agriculture or housing project. Heck, entire villages of this kind exist.
This is known as Mutual Aid, which is a big cornerstone of Anarchism. The issue is that Anarchism generally relies on individuals making the right decisions due to their horizontal structures and has issues with scaling horizontally. These structures tend to have great success locally, such as Food Not Bombs feeding people, but without strong organization scaling becomes difficult and action becomes unfocused.
So the alternative is there, but it requires actual commitment and work. I don’t see how capitalism could be abolished in an armed uprising (in contrast to monarchy). But it can be replaced by alternative projects. Partially. Why are they so small and few?
Why don’t you think Capitalism could be abolished via revolution? It’s been done before.
Secondly, it is not simply capable of being replaced entirely via parallel systems because that depends on individuals outcompeting the immense resources of the Bourgeoisie. It’s certainly possible at a local level, but at a state level takes enourmous power and unity.
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SCOTUS got you covered, fam. The new King-Maker ruling by the regressives should get us back there in no time flat!
We agree that the current situation won’t change itself, and change to this system from inside of it would likely be stifled and repressed.
I agree that we need to keep trying to find a better way, because there are many people are will certainly keep trying to make things worse for us.
The first step is a better way to communicate between ourselves about what we want, why we want it, and how to enact our intentions.
With the advent and use of the internet we now have the possibility for a new way to organize our collective wants.
This system, which I call a consensus engine, would let us as a species make long term goals and work towards their fruition. Without some way to communicate that is less sustainable to misinformation I don’t see any way we can get out of this into something better.
You’ve described liberal democracy. The combination of individual freedom plus democracy is supposed to provide a framework for curating precisely the kind of political agency you describe.
They’ve described the opposite. A collective, grassroots, democratic institution in which people can freely discuss their thoughts and political opinions and direct the policy of their country in that way, is less reminiscent of top-down political parties with representatives voted every 4 years as in liberal democracy, and more reminiscent of worker democracy or direct democracy as anarchists or communists defend.
They described democracy as implemented through parliaments.
You are describing the US implementation’s flaws.
My favourite author. LeGuin, that is.
Read Marx, everyone.
the bottom picture would look pretty cool in a shaun video
The quote is correct, but as I recall the divine right didn’t end because the people cried out for freedom. Royalty was replaced by governments of the nobility or military, neither of which are necessarily better for the people.
I mean that’s the rub right? Enlightenment liberalism clawed its way out of the corpse of feudalism. Marx assumed communism would do the same thing to the corpse of capitalism. So far he’s just been wrong, at least in terms of the revolutionary/vanguardism model. That’s why there’s been an entire century of revision to that model to incorporate more democratic forward values. It’s just you average internet leftist refuses to acknowledge this, because the fan service isn’t as good.
That’s why there’s been an entire century of revision to that model to incorporate more democratic forward values
How is a representative election every 4 years in a system where mass media are owned by the capitalist class more democratic than the ideas of Marx? The Soviet Union started out as the name implies, as a union of republics in which soviets, or worker councils, had the decision power. The fact that international interference and civil war (such as 14 countries invading the USSR militarily and many more sponsoring the tsarist loyalists or the anti-revolutionary Mensheviks) didn’t allow for a high degree of work democracy without extreme risk to the stability or the country, has more to do with the material and historical conditions of the USSR than it has to do with the ideas of Marx and Lenin.
Part of the problem is that, while Marx writes well regarding the economic flaws of capitalism, he isn’t as good at writing about the politics of change.
When induced by the body politic, we see that some of the economic surplus can be reallocated to the workers provided there is political pressure. It can come in the form of state backed rights, progressive taxation, and even direct welfare payments.
It probably isn’t the perfect system Marx envisioned, but enlightened liberalism is able to make subtle shifts over time in a way that absolute monarchies can’t.
What problems are there with the solutions he gives? Welfare Capitalism solves none of the problems with Capitalism Marx describes.
Your comment portrays a lack of reading of Marxist literature. Lenin, as far back as 1916, talks about this surplus being reallocated to workers through political pressure. He describes the leftists who pursue this as “opportunist socialists”, and explains why this is only possible in imperialist countries which exploit the resources and labor of other countries. It’s why basically all socialist revolutions have taken place in less developed countries, whether it be democratically like Chile under Allende or Spain and its second republic and Iran under Mosaddegh, or a coup as happened in Libya, or a bloody revolution as in the USSR or Cuba.
In what manner has Marx been wrong? Where in the history of Marxism has democracy not been core to the central ideas of it, especially when compared to Capitalism?
I saw panel 2 and only saw a sales funnel, am I broken? ;)
At least you saw a funnel.
This comic would slap harder if not for the Supreme Court under christofascist influence from the belief in the divine right of kings having today ruled that Presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts.
That whole divine king thing isn’t nearly as dead as the last panel would like to portray it.
