, 11 tweets, 6 min read Read on Twitter
THREAD. With the restart of #GoT imminent, here’s a swift Marxist analysis of the situation. I will do updates during the Season. 1/ The White Walkers represent #Barbarism – what Marx called "the mutual ruin of the contending classes" …
2/ In #GoTMarxistAnalysis the mode of production on Westeros is feudalism. The surplus is extracted through peasants obligation to give their produce to the lord, who is obliged to perform military service to the King…
3/ Under feudalism the main form of entrepreneurship is to take someone else’s land (and their peasants’ allegiance) but there is also trade/plunder as with the House Greyjoy (aka the Vikings but with castles) …
4/ But feudalism is in crisis because money (aka the seeds of capitalism) has entered the system and disrupts all loyalties. Braavos with its hired assassins and central bank and money to pay the Golden Company (the clue is in the name) is the Genoa/Venice/Byzantium of its age…
5/ ...As a result in #GOT there is also a revolution in technology and ideology, so you get the emergence of proto-humanist ideas and semi-Renaissance men/women #GoTMarxistAnalysis
6/ The real-life feudal crisis led to mass religious movements like Protestantism and peasant warfare … but for now that’s been suppressed #GoTMarxistAnalysis
7/ The warring feudal families realise you need an absolute monarch, suppressing the power of all tributaries and guaranteeing the early economy of trade/banking… this is what Cersei and Daenerys are fighting over… #GoTMarxistAnalysis
8/ By pursuing renaissance values within the medieval university, Samwell has discovered that Dragonglass is a technology that can defeat Barbarism (and by doing so probably bring an absolute monarch to the throne)…
9/ The question is, will the outcome be dictated by uncontrollable objective forces (the Old Gods) or through the agency of minor and previously powerless people? #GoTMarxistAnalysis
10/ Bacon wrote in 1620: "printing, gunpowder, and the nautical compass . . . have altered the face and state of the world" - ie kickstarted mercantile capitalism. If any of these appears, end of story. #GoTMarxistAnalysis Finally...
11/ Here's the original Guardian article about Season 4 of #GOT ... theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2…
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