Is there hope?
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I'm not reading the thread but being in favor of communism works in theory, but in practice (lol) all these settlers will actually lose their quality of life if we were to have a revolution since we would have to dismantle imperialism and the benefits it provides. Few westerners are going to accept that, and so they will choose the treat button 9/10 times. Revolution happens in places where they have nothing to lose but their chains, but losing brunch and U2 at the Vegas sphere is not gonna fly
I don't think this is so true. If the billionaire and high-multimillionaire class is liquidated, that's a lot of resources and more importantly political power that is back in the hands of the proletariat. The ability to (on average) live in a society that actually has policies like what you want instead of trudging on with a "this is what reality is" resignated sigh is valuable (especially since most people are minoritized in some way besides being proles). Resources being spent towards pro-social ends instead of on corruption and the vanity of billionaires is also a gain that's hard to fathom. Yeah, there will be petite-bourg fuckers who want to continue with their fiefdoms unchallenged by nasty things like labor rights, but that's always the case to some extent. There will be a fascist movement from them that needs to be crushed, but that doesn't override the huge amount that people have to gain from revolution.
i agree. this map indicates that the median american's wealth is slightly below the mean global citizen's wealth, meaning any revolution that managed to redistribute resources more fairly on a global level would actually improve the living conditions of most americans. the data is pre-covid as well, so wealth is even more concentrated today than the map indicates.
whether most yankkkees realize this or could be brought to think in these terms is a completely different question, however
Death to America
Wealth is one factor but removing the social and cultural context doesn't do any favors. It isn't just wealth that indicates someone's relationship to capital, and in the imperial core even people who make less than a person outside the core have access to certain luxuries and treats and ideological crutches that keep them yoked to imperialism. People are addicted to treats and ideas here that do not plague other places, they have no national identity, they have no relationship with their neighbors and no reason to have them. Of course we can say that all people will benefit from redistribution of wealth, even wealthy people since it will resolve the existential threat they too face from issues like climate change, but it is not enough to explain who will be interested in overthrowing imperialism and why
Thanks, I remembered something like that being true but wasn't sure how to word the search.
The debate is largely mute, climate change guarantees revolutionary conditions one way or another (whether that revolution is successful is another story)
But for an American revolution to materialize in any way, shape or form the overseas empire has to fall FIRST, for the simple reason the overseas imperial complex empowers and materially sustains the overwhelming security state at home
There is no American org (potential or actual) that can overcome the might of 18 intelligence agencies, 5 bloated military branches, 1,000,000 heavily armed police officers and a reserve of at least 100 million potential brownshirts
It's ironic, the US is in this specific aspect firmly a one-to-one with Czarist Russia, only a catastrophic overseas defeat can open the path toward revolution and even then 50 White Armies will spring up to meet the revolution
Death to America
The basic idea is not to fight the state in an open war, but to become ungovernable and deprive it of resources until it implodes. Yeah, it gets a lot of shit from other places, but it gets a lot of shit here, too. Lots of American jobs involve taking something imported and then processing it in some way (e.g. chip production) so it can be used for a higher-order function. The military still outsources a fair amount of industrial manufacturing processes despite its incredible girth.
p.s. it's moot
That's true, but the US has far more capacity to exert control at home than abroad, it's the weakest link that matters and can tip the scales, and all the weak links are overseas
It's impossible to become ungovernable if you're dead or in prison, but it's almost impossible for a state to guarantee that outcome if it's reeling from a collapsed military infrastructure
It is not, Czarist Russia actually had a very small segment of population supporting it, while America has majority of its population firmly tied to the state. A catastrophic defeat would be just a first step, you need to completely dismantle American Empire to even have a chance.
Over half the nation who voted chose for Trump and the other half chose Harris - these people need imperialism and will not give it up until the conditions get so bad due to economic collapse that they aren't getting the benefits of imperialism anymore
As anon says, about half didn't vote. Furthermore, a huge amount of the remaining people are ideologically incoherent, at least as far as politics are concerned because political agency is so removed from their lives that there's not much obvious reason to develop serious investment in it -- even more so for people who mainly care about issues that neither red nor blue cares about. Oh, and there are still minorities (each cycle less) who were scared into voting for Kamala for false promises of self-preservation. You're looking at a bunch of people who blatantly have various kinds of false consciousness and declaring that their informed class consciousness is as imperial lackeys based on their current actions. It makes no sense and opposes the current evidence, it's just revolutionary pessimism because "they're settlers, QED."
Half the people not voting has nothing to do with the material reality that those same people benefit from imperialism and an economic incentive to keep it going. It is a false assumption to say that because they didn't vote, they must have some revolutionary potential just waiting to be activated. They are part of a global labor aristocracy and will not do anything more than fight for the gains that improve their own lives, which come directly from exploiting other people. Until those benefits are removed through economic collapse and are no longer affordable for the ruling class, the labor aristocracy will continue and they will not go out of their way to end that privilege
https://hexbear.net/comment/5631230
Your idea that fighting for personal material gains is at odds with fighting against empire was already refuted. There are also other things, like "labor rights", "tenant rights", etc. that aren't part of the metric that a whole lot of people would like if given the opportunity and socialists have the chance to offer those where the other two parties don't even gesture at it.
No it wasn't, it was suggested with no evidence or grounding in reality, things required of a refutation to refute anything. You have a metaphysical idea that because people in the imperial core are workers somehow they will fight against the system they benefit from because on the other side of that fight the wealth distribution would benefit them more. This rejects a century of communist theory. You have taken out all context and material analysis of the condition of those workers and done class reductionism. People like myself who have actually been doing labor and tenant organizing in the US for years know this from experience. People have had the opportunity to organize the whole time, we have had labor and tenant unions for a long time. People join them to get more for themselves and when they do they move on. These are essentially charities and non profits in the modern context, not tools of political power. workers in the US won't be organizing shit until the empire collapses, largely due to it's own weight and not because of any organizing being done. Communists need to be organizing now in preparation for that collapse, but it won't be until things are incredibly dire that the average imperial core resident are counted among us. Until then it's going to be a very small amount of people who actually understand what it means to be a communist and will subscribe to that notion, and even many of those will still be plagued with metaphysical thinking and liberal brain rot
that is par for the course for how this population behaves en masse for the entire time this little place named the United States of America has been around. As far as this 30-something year-old blip on the radar has got something to say about it I’ll believe in cause for revolutionary optimism when I see it, and I ain’t seen it as long as I’ve been alive, at least
Revolutionary optimism is primarily a matter of discipline, you'll not see it until you start practicing it. That said, our project is international, you certainly don't have to look to the burgerlanders to move things forward. Westerners in general tend to suffer from main character syndrome and assume that if "big things" are happening on the world stage it is because of them. I'll not accuse of doing that, but your sentiment is at least a reflection of that mindset. "If the Americans don't do revolution then there is no cause of revolutionary optimism." Why?
Over the last year, especially, it has become abundantly clear that is not the case, and it is the brave fighters of the Resistance in the Middle East, the resurgent independence movements in Africa, the emerging BRICS power block (warts and all) that are the true engine of history. The US and its lackeys have been flailing around and responding to one failure after another, falling back on the same old tricks they learned as a much younger and stronger dog. There's plenty of reasons to be optimistic, if not certain of victory. As for the American/Western left (true left, not squishy libs) - of course they have their role to play in all this. They just might have to accept they're not going to be the heroes of this story. And there's nothing wrong with that.
I have plenty of optimism for the world; do not assume this “main character syndrome” of me. I merely live here, and I have no illusions about what’s coming at home. That’s all.
also lol at any of you who say shit like this cos y’all took the mask off back in 21-22 with everyone else I bet, huh? When’s the last time you thought about COVID? Whatever.
I'm not accusing you of main character syndrome, and I wrote as much in my original comment. But there are parallels in your comments on here, and it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Elsewhere you wrote that Americans don't want revolution, they want imperialism. I tend to agree. Thing is, the American empire is in a deep (and, inshallah irreversible) downfall and they may just not get it. As the endless fount of resources and labor stolen from the Third world start to dry up, Capital will (it's already started, really) squeeze harder at home. This is no reason for optimism on a basic human level, but a very good reason for revolutionary optimism.
9 million fewer people voted for harris than for biden. at least some of those must be disillusioned libs who are ripe for radicalizing on at least one issue. what is that if not cause for optimism
Death to America
I'm not saying they'll do it by themselves, there needs to be education campaigns, but you're literally just going off of vibes and excuses to give up instead of seriously considering the concept of class consciousness in the context of our present conditions.
I am not going off of vibes, I have been agitating and organizing wherever I’ve lived in this godforsaken place for like 15 years, Americans don’t fucking want this. They want imperialism. I don’t know how long we’ll have to keep doing this for it to really sink in with people who still think there’s hope beyond collapse of empire for this country but I’m through with it until everyone else wants to catch up.
There are many people who have not had your experience (however much resistance they still meet), so it's worth considering what the difference is between your experience and theirs.
Incorrect. About half of the population didn't vote.
Reread what I said and try again
What resources and where do they come from? Because ultimately, even if the final product or design is extracted from the US proletariat, the inputs (and increasingly the final product and design) are being extracted from elsewhere. With few exceptions (mainly agriculture, oil/gas lol, and some mining/forestry) everything we do, buy, or design at its base is extracted from elsewhere. Agriculture is its own can of worms since the labor is mostly imported and we need to end oil/gas extraction yesterday to have a habitable planet.
Sorry, I wasn't talking about, like, rare earth minerals, I mostly meant labor power.
There are very few kinds of labor that don't need some kind of material input to function. That material input comes from other labor that is mostly elsewhere. You can't assemble a transmission without steel and someone needs to make the steel, which necessitates the extraction of iron ore. Even an economy of e-mail jobs still needs computers to function. Even if labor doesn't need direct material inputs (like say a vocalists), the laborer still need food, clothing and shelter.
I think non-imperialism doesn't necessarily mean production autarky, that's more of a mercantilist/localist perspective, which isn't necessary for a Marxist economy to flourish.
Trade can, and I could argue should exist between socialist projects, in order to make the working class conditions better everywhere in the world. The biggest question there, is how to do trade differently than the way it's been for the past 300 years, that is, how it can be set up such that it's not an unequal exchange of material and embodied labor.
And most importantly (to me), how does this kind of trade it not perpetuate colonialist tendencies that even other AES states have demonstrated in the past, taking local communities' free and informed consent seriously, even if we "need" the resources in their land, as is the case with many indigenous peoples and small communities, and renewables.
Lol could’ve picked any other band
No, it's perfect. It's the archetypical band whose live performances are bombastic and completely superfluous (therefore wasteful), in the dumbest, most unnecessary venue possible.
I didnt know U2 was that popular, Im a bit young (23)
I can't blame you, they've been irrelevant for almost 20 years now. Back when they were big, they were well known for putting up these hugely expensive, elaborate, high-concept live shows, that really pushed the limits of what people thought a concert could be.
But now, they're creatively spent, and just use expensive gimmicks to justify the crazy prices their mostly Gen X audience can afford to pay for their shows.
It really felt like the perfect choice, I stand by it!