So much has been happening the past few years, and especially lately: the US getting ready to bomb Venezuela, starting its new phase in the forever war against Latin America, Iran is basically in submission, Cuba is in deep crisis, China and Russia can’t bother to confront the west over Gaza’s occupation, Europe is locked into a cucked doom-spiral of military build-up, Democrats are (worse than) useless as always with conditions at home slowly but surely getting worse, etc. etc.
So those of us who are communists in the good ol’ USA, are we all that’s left? Are we going to have to be THE domino that actually gets humanity off this fucking train ride? It really feels to me like there is no external saving grace here (and it was foolish of me to think otherwise); China doesn’t want to rock the boat, the rest of the Global South is still trapped at the low-end of the global value chain, and climate crisis is just barely starting.
I’m not trying to express some idealist left-American exceptionalism or white-savior crap, but when you look at the global balance of power, and geographical reality, socialists in the imperial core are the only ones who could realistically do anything at all at this point (especially with the USSR gone). Maybe that’s already obvious to everyone here, but idk, this realization feels… daunting. We live in a completely deproletarianized society where people still largely view themselves (whether consciously or unconsciously) as consumers rather than workers and there exists basically zero connection to the radicalism of the New Deal era.
At this point, my pessimistic prediction is that the Abundance libshit Democrats and Nazi psycho Republicans synthesize a Fortress America plan, business hums along as usual, while everything south of the Rio Grande turns into a fucking blood bath. Waking this stupid place up–and I mean truly waking it up, not just voting for some careerist shitheel like AOC–seems like a Sisyphean task. The Mamdani election gave me some hope regarding general class consciousness, but the relentlessly extractive and exploitative nature of the global supply chain is by far the greatest contradiction of this whole thing; Americans just asking for cheaper shit is not enough. I think the lazy Third-Worldist in me was hoping the Global South could unshackle itself and us BurgerReichers would reap the consequences, but that was naive.
Idk, I’m just venting. Shit feels especially hopeless and I don’t know what to do beyond keep on my daily grind and get the bag. As far as I can tell, the people in my social circle are too comfortable to be concerned about any of this (and I can’t really blame them!). My life is not bad by any means but I can’t escape the feeling of being on this ladder and seeing the sewage slurry below slowly but surely rising as I try to climb up, up up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8D6QuLdZfY
We aren’t going to pull off 1917 tomorrow. There won’t be a 1905 either. They correctly assess that we’re in the 1880s and the people we’re trying to reeducate have no education to begin with.
This is the framework I use for understanding where organising fits into the bigger picture. If I can’t change the immediate future but I know it’s going to be worse, all I can do is build up dual structures that protect my community from it while demonstrating my values. I’m a unioniser in my workplace, do Food Not Bombs so that people know they’re entitled to their needs, and work with the only local orgs to at least create a footprint for the left in this area. I don’t expect any of that to solve things or even help ease the burden of the greater socioeconomic collapse. The most practical path I can see is that those people now have a sense of self-worth backed by an authentic community and know they can manifest it themselves. That doesn’t rupture the contradictions but it heightens them just in time for them to rupture anyway. It lets us have a fallback option when the American Century of Humiliation really takes hold. At that point I can eat the body and be strong enough to crawl out of the oubliette to give my enemies the plague.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
We have a special duty in the belly of the beast to stop what our empire is doing
we’ve never stopped the empire from doing anything
Fortunately, you’re not correct. If we never stopped the empire from doing anything, then chattel slavery would still be the norm. It was people’s power that was able to end things like mass chattel slavery in the United States, it was people’s power that was able to bring about a semblance of democratic rights in this country, it was people’s power that ground the United States to a halt in its genocide against the Vietnamese people, and acted as a huge buffer against its worst excesses during the Iraq war.
If the opinions or actions of the public had truly zero effect, then the United States would have already invaded Venezuela, already invaded Cuba, already invaded any country in Latin America that even gestured itself as socialist. Regardless, even if nothing that had ever been done by people in the United States had affected the overall orientation or direction of the empire, it’s still our responsibility to organize against it. It quite simply is our duty to fight for freedom.
We didn’t stop slavery, the industrialized northern bourgeois did. The civil war was an inter-bourgeois conflict between the rural southern agrarian slave owners and the northern industrialists.
It was people’s power that was able to end things like mass chattel slavery in the United States
Marx wrote an entire collection of essays on the American Civil War.
The semi-feudal slave economy of the American South saw a resurgence due to the Industrial Revolution in Europe, demanding large quantities of raw materials (e.g. cotton) for their proliferating textile industries. It became a threat to the industrial economy in the North, hence a Civil War was needed to end slavery.
Without the Industrial Revolution, the slave economy would have faded away by itself as they were uncompetitive against the much better industrialized economy in the North, but the sudden surge in demand for raw materials changed the balance, allowing the plantation owners of the South to amass large quantity of wealth.
Marx supported the industrialized North because he believed that it would eventually lead to the proletarianization of the American working class under a capitalist system, as opposed to a semi-feudal slave economy. That’s what “progressive” actually meant.
I think if things get more heated, libs will find the serious ones to look to for advice and guidance. This happened a little IRL in 2020, I would see average city libs alongside the black bloc taking the tear gas and becoming radicals. Same with international help, I think there are comrades all over that can provide assistance.
People are enmeshed in the neoliberal conditioning but I am optimistic that when faced with more dire conditions and given the proper opportunities they can become comrades quickly. Most westerners are completely ignorant on politics but I think they generally agree nazis and racists are the enemy, and as history has shown only communists or other left radicals can truly confront fascists and neoliberal capitalism.
But even if we only had no more than the number of people on hexbear as true comrades, we have eachother, and a small number of people with enough dedication can achieve a lot.
i think regardless of your analysis on where the primary vein of communist revolution will be - i.e., whether you’re a third worldist or first worldist or whatever - as a USian communist your duty remains the same, which is to do your part to at least try to build a viable arm of that global movement here. whether we’d be leading the charge or supporting those who are, we still have a vital role to play.
i personally try to focus more on what’s in front of me and leave those larger questions in the hands of history & fate.
The most important thing any communist in the imperial core should be doing is building an anti-imperialist movement.
If you are a marxist-leninist, being in a party and building the party, particularly where it does not yet exist, should be a given. But this isn’t the only thing that someone can do, and honestly would fall short on its own without a radical shift in circumstances. The fact is that there must be a mass movement that permeates everyday life and drives ordinary people into action- it can’t be confined to online spaces. The left in the imperial core will also be hamstrung as long as the labor movement is weak and cowardly- but launching into unconstructive attacks on the political character of the labor movement from the outside will only confound the issue- it needs to grow and become emboldened.
Anyway, the thing is, the liberation of Venezuela and the rest of the global majority will rest in the hands of the people of the global majority, and until they are able to write their own history there won’t be any justice or progress. Resistance in the imperial core will mecessarily play a part in imperialisms eventual defeat, but we cannot be looked to as the world’s saviors, that would be perverse. We can only build the movement here and insist on a principled anti-imperialism- offering support to resistance to anti-imperialism wherever it may manifest.
The good news is that the mass movement for palestine is a historic development in the anti-imperialist movement within the imperial core. Millions has their eyes opened and hit the streets and it had anti-imperialist underpinnings that made it impossible for the ruling class to coopt effectively. So in some ways it is like a new foundation for a bigger movement ahead.
This feels like it could be in the doomer community, but I get it. I feel like we’re nearing the end of the empire now so there may be more options than we had before. We just have to get organized. It will be unprecedented if a revolution happens in the imperial core, but unprecedented things have happened before.
It was unprecedented that a slave state could rise up, and then Haiti did it. The workers had never risen up and controlled the state before it happened in Russia, nor the peasant before it happened in China. These seemed impossible, but they did indeed happen.
The toughest parts are educating the populace, avoiding the modern state surveillance apparatus, and probably most importantly, keeping some revolutionary optimism.
It is difficult or impossible to know for sure whether it is “all up to us”. Everything exists in degrees anyway; like climate change, it will be a question of “how bad” instead of a binary yes/no. But for myself, the approach remains the same regardless.
There are several ways in which people strengthen the empire. Participation in chauvinist political movements, paying taxes, serving in the armed forces or in the state’s geopolitical apparatus. Ways in which people weaken the empire are buildng internationalist movements, doing direct action, or simply giving the economy and the federal budget less resources to run on.
I would not do anything that involves sacrificing yourself, we’re not at a point where people will take up your cause when you’re martyred. Expand your ability to act, while not outright declaring war on the US.
The avenue I have chosen is to set up self-sustaining communal forms where people can live cheaply and still have a good quality of life. My readout is that the United States as we know it is on borrowed time*, and it is more important to survive the collapse in an advantageous position than it would be to bring on the collapse itself.
- *95% of our supply chains are overseas, in countries that are economically catching up in a way that will not be reversed. America’s geopolitical position is arguably at its worst in 80 years. Cars and computers and even cement-based buildings all face a cliff in the next 20-30 years. Yet we are more dependent than ever on these things. Our infrastructure is crumbling while we continue to build expensive exurbs. The economy cannot be retooled away from hyper-financialization without precipitating a sharp downturn that severs the political careers of anyone pursuing that route. Private and public debt continue to break records.
Secure a safe place and build an oasis there. The goal is not to sway the aggregate will and power of all Americans or to get them all on your side, but to have a better way of life to offer your current and potential comrades that aligns with siphoning away the strength of the empire.
