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Heltaher
Heltaher

The Persistence of Power: Class Struggle Beyond Ideology

Key Insights
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  • Class struggle persists as a structural property of systems allowing power asymmetries to compound.
  • Ideology rationalizes power outcomes after the fact, rather than determining them.
  • Capitalism stabilized by exporting costs, socialism by centralizing control—both recreate elites.
  • AI threatens to eliminate labor’s bargaining power, reviving class conflict in new forms.
  • No system abolishes hierarchy by design; stability requires continuous power constraints.

References
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  1. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848/1888). The Communist Manifesto. London, England: William Reeves.
  2. Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York, NY: Crown Business.
  3. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  4. Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2014). The Second Machine Age. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
  5. Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.