Comment by samirillian | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samirillian | Hacker News Reader

I like Tbray's posts but I want to quibble over language.

What's happening to the term "late stage capitalism"? Feels like it's becoming a meme like neoliberalism. What does it even mean to say that it wasn't tech's fault, it was late stage capitalism's fault? Kind of dodging a particular responsibility with a generality.

I think LSC came to prominence through cultural marxists like David Harvey and Frederic Jameson. (People I read and liked btw). But the people I now hear regurgitating the phrase make me wonder what happened. For Marxists I think the implication is that capitalism will soon die with its host. Which like all prophecies will probably be proven ironic in retrospect, but who knows.

But I'm starting to think the way people use it now, it's like they sub-consciously think there was a good capitalism time just like there was a good Google time.

Hegel observed that the US was founded on greed. When I look at tech, I see greedy people. That's more general and just as specific as the ambiguous term "late stage capitalism".

So from my experience most of the people using it won't think there was a "good capitalism time". I think the prevalence of that term is used to evoke the idea that continuing for too much longer on the current path is impossible without something major breaking. The ecology of the planet is slowly going to shit, basic necessities like housing and medical care keep getting more expensive, and pay for most people in real terms has been stagnant (even with huge productivity gains).

In contrast to that corporate profits are off the charts but there's the sense that they are getting that by squeezing everything else too much and eventually something is going to give and it's just a race between whether what breaks is the planet, the labor force, or the broader structure of society.

Take this all with a bit of a grain of salt though as this is just why it's caught on in the particular circles I run in.

> cultural marxists

I think maybe you mean just "Marxists". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...

To your question, I do think the term is becoming heavily watered down as I see it being used frequently by people who clearly lack the context on Marxist thought to be able to use it with it's original meaning. More often, when people use the term, I infer the sentiment that the "capitalism" we live in is regressing into oligarchy or corporatocracy.

You think, you can reach people that speak of "cultural marxism" with wikipedia?

I dont and i dont know an alternative since cognitive biases slowly take away the ability to freely reason about contradicting statements; their ability to reason in general.

Well, the OP seems to know a few lofty theorists and cites Hegel, yet resorts to the inflammatory meaningless epithet, so their post is all over the place. No level of depth is easily gleaned from the post; it is one of contrasts. Whatta dialectic.

Reading the OP charitably, I think it was a genuine mistake.

Actually I meant Western marxists

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism

> Less concerned with economic analysis than earlier schools of Marxist thought, Western Marxism placed greater emphasis on the study of the cultural trends of capitalist society, deploying the more philosophical and subjective aspects of Marxism, and incorporating non-Marxist approaches to investigating culture and historical development

I thought Western marxist would be obscure to hn readers and that in the context what I meant by cultural Marxism would be clear, but I guess not.

I'm dismissive of the alt-right usage of cultural Marxism to the point of forgetting how much other people care about it

Maybe cultural theorist Marxist or cultural critique Marxist would be clearer. I hadn't heard of those thinkers you mentioned but everyone is at least faintly familiar with Žižek's shtick.

fwiw, "late stage capitalism" feels to be a phrase that's been around as popular parlance since at least the mid-2010s. It's even brought up in the Wikipedia article for the term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism#Modern_usage_o...

It's cliche by now. They should probably move on to a new buzzword. Actually, in tech, it does exist: enshittification is a good replacement as any.

If you look at trends Late capitalism must be when markets became increasingly top heavy with ever escalating layers of state intervention favouring mega corps and entrenched players. Which resulted in things like the housing supply crisis or the destruction of small banks, where the banking market was reduced to 5 megabanks because after every market fluctuation new rules get added which only megabanks can afford (and these rules keep coming and coming https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/business/banks-capital-ba...). There's a ton of other examples in pharma, retail, farming, etc.

After the next few media cycles of AI doomerism and fear mongering we're probably going to see the same thing with AI where any minor risk is intolerable to gov technocrats so they'll make controls where only some megacorp like OpenAI or Google, who has friends and lawyers in the right places, gets to operate with a green light and small players will need to hire a team of lawyers and developers to enforce an ever growing list of controls.

You don't need state intervention to get monopolies; actually it's quite the opposite - economies of scale push for consolidation, and you eventually need government to intervene. Whatever it was known for, the Gilded Era doesn't seem to be associated with large-scale government regulation, but you certainly had mega corps. And given enough leeway, the mega corps will start to take on functions you'd normally associate with government - company tows, stores, and scrip as examples.

Id argue that neoliberalism is not just a meme and what the author, i think, refers to with LSC is an underlying systemic property of capitalism, that tries to do its capitalism thing in a saturated world.

Capitalism is great in growing, greed is not per se bad but these capitalist incentives start to cannibalize everything once growth hits deminishing returns. The "good capitalist times" end exactly here. Thats what makes it "late stage" (e.g. after the european conquerors took the americas, where growth was still easy. Or consider the chinese development).

You think this incentive structure, which actually explains well enough recent developments and can be seen pretty much everywhere -- you dont even have to actively look for it -- is just a meme!? To me, this smells like your bias to unreasonably dismiss the far-radical-left explanation. Your loaded language (like mine here) lets me suspect a distorted perception.

I realize cultural marxist was confusing word choice but I meant it in a purely descriptive sense.

I'm critiquing Tbray who is obviously not a radical leftist from the left. And I'm questioning the implicit claim made by some Marxists that capitalism is now on its last legs, not from left or right but as a question of fact.

You question the phrase "late stage capitalists" and use the phrase "cultural marxists"? Shoo.

Meme words attract other meme words. On average people's brains tend to operate on simple reductive trends, things get grouped with over simplified patterns. You can fight it but they'll just express the same ideas in double speak if you make it a no no phrase. I wouldn't use it personally but like what OP is saying, it used to he "neoliberal" then that became boring/overused so they invented "late stage capitalism" as the new bucket to throw every criticism of modern economics into. Likewise with "cultural Marxism" for popular social justice trends.

There will be a new phrase for these same groupings that we'll all get upset about in a few years once these get fully played and become taboo.

It’s not a no-no phrase because it’s taboo; it’s a virtue signifier that denotes the user is a meme-parroting, trend-following, partisan rube. It’s gauche.

Most socialists only hang out with other socialists. This has tricked them into believing capitalism must soon be coming to an end because everybody they know hates it.

It's pure delusion. Capitalism isn't coming to an end any time soon. None of the candidates for the 2024 election are even close to being anti-capitalist.

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