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?
All great answers. But there’s something people are missing, and it’s a trap created by modern neo-liberal economic thinking.
Humans are not perfectly rational entities. Capital is not an external alien force that is perfectly rational either (yet). It moves and is brought to life by human hands.
The ruling forces at the moment are losing their grip. They are desperate. Somethings ARE running away from them.
They are acting irrationally all the time. They are shooting themselves on the foot, over and over. This is one of those things imo.