From the Trench to the Flying Taxi: A History of Human Escape

For too long, we have been told a “shizoland” history. We’ve been told that we are mere cogs in a “Global Blob” of capital.

This manifesto rejects that darkness.

History is not the story of our capture; it is the story of our escape. It is the story of how the individual, armed with nothing but love and a “typewriter,” outran the autocrats, the “cousins” in their palaces, and the meat-grinders of the state.

I. The Trench: Mourning the Stolen Boy

We begin by acknowledging the 100 Million. From 1100 to today, the State—not the market—treated the human body as disposable fuel. Whether it was the “Cousins’ War” of 1914 or the state-enslavement of the Gulags, the “Blob” was never about “producing labor”; it was about incinerating human potential for the ego of the elite.

  • The Truth: The boy in the trench was not a “unit of capital.” He was a son, a dreamer, and a bearer of “History 2″—the personal, unrepeatable soul.
  • The Escape: We honor him by refusing to be “managed” ever again. We recognize that the “Family Wage” and the “Private Home” weren’t prisons; they were the first trenches the working class dug to protect their children from the predatory state.

II. The Typewriter: The Sound of Agency

In 1808, an Italian named Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter for his blind friend Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano. He didn’t build a “disciplinary tool.” He built a love letter. He built the first typewriter so his blind friend, the Countess Carolina, could communicate without a gatekeeper.

  • The Truth: Technology is the “Hyper-Typewriter” of freedom. From the sewing machine to the laptop, every invention has been a tool used by women and men to bypass the “latifundia” lords.
  • The Escape: If the State wanted women at home to “produce workers,” the Market gave them the typewriter so they could produce ideas, invoices, and independence. The click of the keys was the sound of the individual becoming too “liquid” for the state to catch.

III. The Flying Taxi: The New Era of Mobility

Today, we see the “Low-Altitude Economy”—autonomous flying taxis like EHang’s rising above the old world. Federici’s theory cannot explain this joy. It cannot explain why we strive to fly.

  • The Truth: We are moving from “Body Theft” to Body Mobility. The flying taxi is the ultimate symbol of the “Outlier” logic. It says that the air belongs to the individual, and that the “sunken costs” of our lives aren’t for the state to harvest—they are the investments we make in our own soaring future.
  • The Escape: We are no longer tied to the land or the factory bell. We are “autonomous,” not as a state-licence, but as a biological reality.

The Core Principles of the Escape:

  1. Humans are not Cogs: We are “History 2.” Our love, our childcare, and our art are not “unpaid labor for capital”; they are the things that make us human and untouchable by the market’s logic.
  2. Agency is the Engine: Change doesn’t happen because a “Blob” decides it; it happens because millions of people make choices to improve their lives.
  3. Technology is the Weapon: From the typewriter to the flying taxi, we embrace the tools that give the individual a voice and a way out.
  4. The Home is a Sanctuary, Not a Factory: We reclaim the right to care for one another as an act of defiance against the “meat-grinder” of the state.

The era of the “shizoland” theory is over. We are not victims of a 500-year conspiracy. We are the survivors of the trenches, the writers of our own stories, and the pilots of the future.

This post references:

1. The Case for Agency & Innovation

Deirdre McCloskey – 

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (2010)
McCloskey argues that the “Great Enrichment” didn’t happen because of exploitation or capital accumulation, but because of a change in rhetoric. For the first time, societies began to give “dignity” to innovators and common traders. This book is the ultimate antidote to the “Blob” theory, as it places human ideas and the “joyful innovator” at the center of history. 

Enter the typewriter, the tool of women’s emancipation.

2. The Case for “History 2” (The Soul of the Individual)

Dipesh Chakrabarty – 

Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000)
Chakrabarty introduces the concepts of History 1 (capital’s logic) and History 2 (human diversity and belonging). He argues that Europe is not the “template” for the world and that local, non-capitalist narratives—like love, memory, and tradition—constantly disrupt and modify the system. This is essential for understanding why your “Italian typewriter” story is more than just an economic footnote. 

3. The Case Against the “Monolithic State”

Cedric Robinson – 

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983)
Robinson coined the term “Racial Capitalism,” arguing that capitalism didn’t invent inequality but rather “extended” pre-existing feudal and racial hierarchies. Crucially, he highlights the Black Radical Tradition—a history of resistance that Marxist theory often ignores because it doesn’t fit into neat “class” boxes. It gives a voice to the agency of those the state tried most desperately to “discipline”. 

4. A Reality Check on the “Blob”

HumanProgress.org (Database & Research)
This is a high-quality resource for tracking the actual data of progress. It provides evidence for how market-based societies have historically reduced violence and increased individual liberty. It is a great place to verify that the “Flying Taxi” era is indeed a departure from the “Trench” era.

Introduction and Ch.2 “Two Capitals”, Book Chapter in Provincializing Europe : postcolonial thought and historical difference, by Chakrabarty, Dipesh, [2007 edition]., Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000

Reference Guide: The Anatomy of Human Escape

1. History 1 vs. History 2 (Dipesh Chakrabarty)

  • Concept: History 1 is the “logic of Capital”—treating humans as abstract labor units or cogs. History 2 consists of all the “un-capturable” parts of life—love, tradition, religion, and personal quirks.
  • Application: While Federici claims “History 1” (the system) conquered everything, this manifesto argues that History 2 (our humanity) is what actually drives invention and survival.

2. The “Outlier” Theory (England vs. The Continent)

  • Concept: The idea that “Free Market” Capitalism was not a global norm but a specific English outlier. While the rest of Europe remained under autocratic or “Frankenstein” state control, England’s unique property rights and wages provided the first “escape hatch” from feudalism.
  • Application: It explains why English women and men gained agency through wages earlier than those in state-controlled “Latifundia” systems (like Southern Italy).

3. Racial Capitalism (Cedric Robinson / Al-Bulushi)

  • Concept: Capitalism didn’t create inequality; it “harvested” pre-existing racial and social hierarchies. The state often used “othering” (the Irish, the African, the “Witch”) to justify exploitation.
  • Application: This acknowledges the violence and body-theft of the state without falling into the “shizoland” trap of thinking it was a successful, logical conspiracy.

4. The “Family Wage” as Protection (Labor History)

  • Concept: Historically, the “male breadwinner” model was a demand made by unions and families, not a gift from the state. It was designed to pull women and children out of the “Satanic Mills” (dangerous industrial labor).
  • Application: It refutes the idea that being a “stay-at-home mom” was a state-imposed prison, framing it instead as a hard-won victory for the dignity of the private home.

5. Technological Agency (The “Typewriter” Effect)

  • Concept: The “Liberal” view of history (like Deirdre McCloskey’s) which argues that innovation—from the sewing machine to the autonomous taxi—provides individuals with “exit power” from patriarchal and state structures.
  • Application: It shifts the focus from “Tools of Discipline” to “Tools of Liberation.”

Summary of the Text’s Logic

The text argues that The State (autocracy, monarchs, and “cousins”) is the primary engine of human suffering and “body-theft,” primarily through War (100 million+ dead). The Market and Individual Agency, while often messy and exploitative in their own right, provided the tools (Wages, Inventions, Mobility) that allowed humans to finally escape the state’s “meat-grinder.”

It is a history of flight, not of capture.

The Reference: Silvia Federici

Work: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004).

The Short Recap:
Federici argues that the transition to capitalism required a “war on women.” She claims the state and early capitalists launched the Witch Hunts to terrorize women, break their control over reproduction, and force them into unpaid domestic labor. In her view, the “housewife” was a state-created role designed to produce a “non-stop supply of workers” for the capitalist machine. She views the body—both male and female—as being “colonized” and “disciplined” by the state to serve as a work-tool.

Why She is Wrong: The “Logic Gaps”

1. The “State-as-Manager” Fallacy

  • Her View: The state launched witch hunts to increase the population for factories.
  • The Reality: The peak of the witch hunts (16th–17th centuries), unrelated to the modern state (only formed after the first parliaments formed/the monarchy started collapsing). Furthermore, the most “Capitalist” country (England) had the fewest witch trials, while the fragmented, non-capitalist Holy Roman Empire had the most.

2. Ignoring the “Meat-Grinder” (The Soldier)

  • Her View: The state’s primary goal was to “protect” and “reproduce” labor power.
  • The Reality: The history of the European State was a history of incinerating labor. Between 1100 and today, over 100 million people (mostly young men) were sent to die in wars. If the state were a “rational manager of workers,” it wouldn’t have destroyed its own workforce in the trenches of the “Cousins’ War” (The kIngs of Germany, Russia and Britain were first cousins).

3. Her Theft of Agency

  • Her View: Women were “banished” to the home and men were “bribed” with the family wage.
  • The Reality: Working-class men and women fought for the “Family Wage” and the “Private Home” to escape the “Satanic Mills.” For a woman in the 1840s, leaving a coal mine to manage her own home was an act of upward mobility, not a prison sentence. Federici ignores that people choose family and care for “History 2” reasons (love), not “History 1” reasons (capitalist output).

4. The Technology Paradox

  • Her View: Science and technology are “disciplinary tools” to control bodies.
  • The Reality: Inventions like the typewriter, the sewing machine, and now the flying taxi are “escape hatches.” They provided women with wages that bypassed patriarchal control and provided the individual with mobility that bypassed state control.

Summary my Blog

“Federici’s work serves as a ‘shizoland’ map—a conspiracy theory that views humans as passive victims of an all-knowing ‘Blob.’ She misses the most important part of history: The Escape. By ignoring the millions who died in wars and the millions who used the market to buy their freedom, she turns a story of human resilience into a story of total defeat. We reject her view of the ‘Womb-as-Factory’ and reclaim the ‘Home-as-Sanctuary’ and the ‘Market-as-Tool’. We choose agency, mobility and freedom.”

Leave a comment