Capitalism as the Oligarch’s Tool and Vietnam’s Form-Based Escape
Capitalism is not a neutral market logic, nor a democratic choice made by working people. It is a top-down instrument of control, engineered by and for oligarchs, masked as “freedom.” While sold as opportunity, its structure was never chosen—it was imposed, generation by generation, as a tool to extract labor, redirect recognition, and monopolize resources.
What began with the serfdom of feudal Europe evolved into the wage slavery of industrial factories and today into the digital branding of the self. At each stage, capitalism refined its methods, not to serve life, but to convert life into labor, labor into profit, and profit into power.
From an Eidoist perspective, capitalism is not a phase of human development—it is a loop acceleration machine. And Vietnam, though partially drawn into this trap, still retains a deep Form-Based memory it must now protect.
Coercion, Not Consent: How Capitalism Was Imposed
Capitalism did not emerge from voluntary exchange. It was engineered through enclosure, force, and dispossession.
- Serfs were expelled from communal land and told they were now “free”—but only free to sell their labor or starve.
- Early industrial workers lived in slums, died in mines, and endured child labor while a handful of factory owners amassed generational wealth.
- Colonized nations were not given markets—they were stripped of form and forced into monoculture exports, dependency, and debt.
This was not a mistake. It was the system functioning as designed: to concentrate recognition and capital in fewer hands, using the rest as fuel.
Capitalism Is the Language of Oligarchs
Despite the façade of innovation and entrepreneurship, capitalism rewards those who already own capital. Wealth grows not by making value, but by owning the system that extracts it.
- Landlords earn more than farmers.
- Banks profit more from money than builders do from homes.
- Tech giants harvest more recognition than the artists, thinkers, and workers they monetize.
This system creates a recognition pyramid, where the top 0.1% perform minimal labor but accrue maximum symbolic and material reward. The working class is told to perform harder, hustle more, but the structure ensures they chase a moving target.
Capitalism thus becomes the currency of the oligarch, not the citizen. It converts every human effort into upward flow, leaving symbolic crumbs behind.
Trade and Consumption: The Illusion of Participation
In this model, trade is no longer mutual—it is strategic domination. Multinational corporations do not seek balance; they seek extraction with local compliance. “Free trade” is only free for those who already dominate.
Similarly, consumption is not empowerment. It is manufactured dependency. People are conditioned to believe their freedom lies in choosing between brands, not in questioning why they must buy to begin with.
The worker earns just enough to consume what the system sells back to them. Even rebellion is monetized—style, identity, resistance all become products, not threats.
Vietnam: A Nation Pressured, Not Defeated
Vietnam did not invent this game—it was dragged into it. Colonized by the French, battered by wars, and finally opened to global capitalism, it began importing recognition-based models of success: shopping malls, Western branding, luxury condos.
But unlike the West, Vietnam still holds onto something rare: its Form-Based roots.
- Village structures, ancestral worship, communal rituals, and non-market value systems still live beneath the surface.
- Tết remains a moment of symbolic renewal, not financial excess.
- Many still find status through family, contribution, and context, not visible wealth alone.
These are not weaknesses—they are reserves of resilience. If protected and modernized without being absorbed, they could serve as the foundation for a Form-Based economy—one that Vietnam could export to the world, instead of importing its collapse.
A System Built to Fail—But Not for Everyone
The contradictions of capitalism are not accidents:
- It must expand demand, even after needs are met.
- It must overproduce, even when waste grows.
- It must reward visibility, even when structure erodes.
- It must deepen inequality, even when it promises inclusion.
This is not an error. It is the essence of a system designed to channel recognition upward, regardless of human or ecological cost.
But the system does not fail for the oligarchs. It only fails for the billions caught inside it.
The Eidoist Alternative: Exit the Loop, Not the World
Eidoism does not call for nostalgia or primitivism. It does not propose utopia. It offers a mirror: one that reveals the recognition loop beneath all systems—and the chance to see it, slow it, and redesign life around form.
- Form does not require growth. It requires fit.
- Form does not reward performance. It rewards coherence.
- Form does not promise success. It promises sufficiency.
Vietnam has a choice: to become a delayed copy of collapsing models, or to become a pioneer of a post-performance society, rooted in its own cultural DNA.
The Future Is in the Past—If You Know Where to Look
Capitalism is not the future. It is a refined version of the past—just dressed in plastic, pixels, and performance. Its roots are in oligarchy, not freedom. Its logic is survival through visibility. And its cost is invisible: the erosion of form, meaning, and human depth.
Vietnam, still scarred by war and colonization, stands at a rare crossroad. It can follow the path of late-stage Western consumerism—or it can look inward, revive its structural forms, and become a living example of how to exit the loop.
The world does not need another shopping mall. It needs a place that remembers.
And protects what it remembers.
