I've probably said it before but not recently here I guess--I dislike the notion that "economics being yoked to political ideology" via class struggle and so forth is merely an arbitrary OTL hobbyhorse. I think it is a real and solid thing, having a perturbing effect on real world political alignments whether people are conscious of it or not. Most of the "oversimplification" Marxists and their critics alike are accused of OTL strikes me as the idle talk of talking heads on both sides, but actual mass movements align around real discontents and ambitions and hopes and fears, and those Marxists I respect the most are pretty good at factoring in realistic caveats and complications--in the abstract and in analysis if not so hot at putting the programmatic pedal to the metal of realistic and ear to the ground current politics. Indeed I think Marx personally and many a Marxist in his wake have failed to be very good politicians. Nevertheless analysis of evolving societies remains most astute and apt from a dialectical materialist point of view. The author wants it to be otherwise and I remain suspicious of the realism of any moves that are forced just to provide a contrast, but it is not so easy to discern that as things evolve in the various nations and alleged supernational Societist factions. It seems to plod on on pretty solid ground.
I get where you're coming from on this one, but I don't fully agree.
First off, you're more or less right that "who gets the money" is always going to be a question, and there will never not be class struggle in a given society. And I don't think Thande is claiming such either. I think what he's arguing is that class struggle isn't inherently the
sole vector of political struggle (or that it isn't inevitable it would be seen as such), and arguably, culture, cultural sovreignty, and identity are also huge concerns to many people. And indeed, one could claim that in the politics of the last few years we have seen the beginning of a drawing of battle lines between the forces of globalized, cosmopolitan, progressive culture and localized/nationalized, autarkic, traditional culture. That's at least part of where my "neoliberalism on meth" thesis emerged from. Also, geopolitics being based around economic system (or at least ostensibly- see: Zedong, Mao; Broz Tito, Josep; Hoxha, Enver).
Anyway, I note that you describe that Marx's analysis is most astute and apt "from a dialectical materialist point of view," which actually strikes me as the crux of my disagreement with your overall points. I mean, Marxist philosophy would be nigh-unrecognizable without Hegelian dialectics (a word I confused with "dianetics" for a longer period of time than I would ever dare admit). And Hegel was born decades after the PoD. Everything in history is highly contingent. Indeed a Marxist historian once said that it was Engels that made Marx one of the most influential philosophers of all time. Fredo, though forgotten today, was the co-writer of Marx's most famous work, a major ideological influence, and the posthumous compiler and publisher of many of Marx's works (not least of them Das Kapital), and, as a formative influence on the German SPD, helped elevate Marx into a crucial foundational influence on that party. If Engels dies in childbirth or gets sucked into one of his dad's machines in a freak accident, than Marx has written some Hegelian Philosophy, 18th Brumaire, various articles and essays, and maybe parts of Capital. In short, he ends up a lot less well-known, probably unknown outside the Teutonosphere and a few sundry intellectuals elsewhere.
Also, let's not forget how much Marxism was a product of OTL's post-Napoleonic days (1815-1847, for the purposes). That was a period of rural collapse, caused in large part by decades of crappy weather and crop blight, brutal expansion of Empire, vengeful political reaction (which helped exacerbate the rural collapse- no Irish Famine without the Tories keeping those fucking Corn Laws in place), and, of course, the Dark Satanic Mills. On the other hand, ITTL, the conditions are pretty different. In England, a lot of the work goes into the rebuilding of the nation, which is, to use the Marxist lingo, a far less alienating thing than spinning cotton. And, plus, even though the government is Toryish, Marlborough cares about developing the country and works to alleviate the famines and blights. In France, the Bonaparte Government is much more willing to reach a reasonable consensus than Chuckie X. In Germany, most of the blame for the worst of things can be stuck on reactionary princelings, and all the intellectual energy is in national unification. In Austria, at least there aren't dark satanic mills, because there's a luddite government. In terms of Empire, it's still there of course (particularly India, because divide-and-rule in 18th-19th Century India is childishly easy), but it's in fewer places (for instance, there isn't the grotesque spectacle of a once great, rich, and old state being turned into a hollow opium den), and done by more countries. South China, Turkey, Siam, and Corea are all reasonably industrialized. Russia is a modern, functioning state instead of a fucked-up agricultural dump. Germany isn't united under the nastiest gang of nobles that Germany had to offer (just ask the poor Balts). South America's doing well for itself. And so forth. Of course, there's still leftist, quasi-socialist ideology- that's more or less inevitable. But it makes sense that it doesn't evolve in the standard Marxist way, IMHO. And of course, Societism rises because there are more brutal wars, over arguably even more pointless and morally bankrupt reasons. That, combined with a clique so brutal, fanatical, and Machiavellian that Lenin and Stalin would be creeped out, makes conditions shift such that the culture struggle is seen as the key conflict of human history, rather than the class struggle.
