The fact of the matter is that we're in the Crisis of a Megaunraveling. This entire saeculum has been an enormous Third Turning; it follows logically its Crisis will feel like a continuation of the Unraveling, though it is qualitatively different in content and tempo, just as World War II felt like an Awakening war of ideology and the Civil War like a High war of regime consolidation.
In the United States the period from the Revolution to the Civil War constituted a Megahigh - the establishment of a new civic and political order. The period from the Civil War to the Depression constituted a Megaawakening - the introduction of new values like socialism, progressivism,and so on into the broader discourse. The period from the Depression until now has been a Megaunraveling - a retrenchment of older forces of reaction in an artificial imitation of the Megahigh. And this period is going to end with a fractured, decentralized, localist, shattered society which has been thoroughly atomized by contemporary capitalism.
This is not to say progressive values will not have any number of victories; probably more than conservative ones in terms of the structure of society. But they will look like CHAZ/CHOP- efforts to survive the oppression of Capital via local responses. This solution will codify on Left and Right as we approach the chilly peace of the coming Megacrisis' High. Even reactionary communities will accept the value of Going Green locally, as the price they pay for continued autonomy in other spheres. This will devolve into a weird parochialism in some areas.
The Megacrisis will be an epoch of tectonic change driven, not by politics, but as Marx has it by "no longer hideable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need". It will be the Crisis of the Megacrisis that sees the final abolition of capitalism and the inauguration of Actual Marxian Socialism. This will occur during a period of wrenching climactic change, when the feeble localist solutions thrown up in this coming High are no longer sustainable and the working-class must for the first time assert itself as an independent actor on the world stage.
The coming Megacrisis- High will be localist, deevolutionist, and vaguely libertarian/left-libertarian tinted. It will loosely mirror the climax of the Megahigh - Crisis (the Civil War), befitting the culmination of a Megaunraveling which aspired to return to the Megahigh.
Neither side attained what it wanted out of this Crisis - Trump failed to reignite the Reagan Revolution; Biden, to reinaugurate the New Deal - and the only solution that this exhausted society has is localism safeguarded by a paternalistic overseeing capitalist State.
The Awakening is going to be directed almost entirely by the working-class. And it will be a response to automation, which around 2050 has begun to result in proletarian die-offs. It will be Apollonian, not Dionysian; rationalist, not irrationalist. It will be far longer and more intellectually intense than the past 4T, focusing not on nebulous values but on What Is To Be Done.
The Unraveling will be short, sharp, and utterly brutal,the reverse of the past Unraveling, as the American capitalist State reasserts itself and promotes something rather resembling a Neal Stephenson novel - an authoritarian capitalism predicated on control through technology.
The Crisis will be the final Crisis of American civilization. Around 2110, the era of liberal capitalism ushered in by the first bourgeois revolution will draw to a close, in the midst of genuinely apocalyptic social and environmental upheaval.
In the United States the period from the Revolution to the Civil War constituted a Megahigh - the establishment of a new civic and political order. The period from the Civil War to the Depression constituted a Megaawakening - the introduction of new values like socialism, progressivism,and so on into the broader discourse. The period from the Depression until now has been a Megaunraveling - a retrenchment of older forces of reaction in an artificial imitation of the Megahigh. And this period is going to end with a fractured, decentralized, localist, shattered society which has been thoroughly atomized by contemporary capitalism.
This is not to say progressive values will not have any number of victories; probably more than conservative ones in terms of the structure of society. But they will look like CHAZ/CHOP- efforts to survive the oppression of Capital via local responses. This solution will codify on Left and Right as we approach the chilly peace of the coming Megacrisis' High. Even reactionary communities will accept the value of Going Green locally, as the price they pay for continued autonomy in other spheres. This will devolve into a weird parochialism in some areas.
The Megacrisis will be an epoch of tectonic change driven, not by politics, but as Marx has it by "no longer hideable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need". It will be the Crisis of the Megacrisis that sees the final abolition of capitalism and the inauguration of Actual Marxian Socialism. This will occur during a period of wrenching climactic change, when the feeble localist solutions thrown up in this coming High are no longer sustainable and the working-class must for the first time assert itself as an independent actor on the world stage.
The coming Megacrisis- High will be localist, deevolutionist, and vaguely libertarian/left-libertarian tinted. It will loosely mirror the climax of the Megahigh - Crisis (the Civil War), befitting the culmination of a Megaunraveling which aspired to return to the Megahigh.
Neither side attained what it wanted out of this Crisis - Trump failed to reignite the Reagan Revolution; Biden, to reinaugurate the New Deal - and the only solution that this exhausted society has is localism safeguarded by a paternalistic overseeing capitalist State.
The Awakening is going to be directed almost entirely by the working-class. And it will be a response to automation, which around 2050 has begun to result in proletarian die-offs. It will be Apollonian, not Dionysian; rationalist, not irrationalist. It will be far longer and more intellectually intense than the past 4T, focusing not on nebulous values but on What Is To Be Done.
The Unraveling will be short, sharp, and utterly brutal,the reverse of the past Unraveling, as the American capitalist State reasserts itself and promotes something rather resembling a Neal Stephenson novel - an authoritarian capitalism predicated on control through technology.
The Crisis will be the final Crisis of American civilization. Around 2110, the era of liberal capitalism ushered in by the first bourgeois revolution will draw to a close, in the midst of genuinely apocalyptic social and environmental upheaval.