Thought to ask this after a pointless and exhausting argument with liberals who are convinced that Trump being voted out proves that liberal democracy works and that Bernie and AOC are going to fix capitalism.
Surely as capitalism continues to decay and it becomes clear that the only possible futures are socialism or barbarism, there's going to come a point where nobody is going to believe that the Bidens and Pelosis are going to save us. I fully expect most liberals to embrace fascism when that time comes, but I've still gotta wonder... what's it going to take? What will be the tipping point?
They'd have to reject the nation itself. Nothing short of that.
:amerikkka:
Rejection of the nation is necessary in every bourgeoise state. Desire to create a new nation is a pre-requisite for revolution in the west.
This is not a pre-requisite in the global south because restoration of the nation can be pressed instead, and restoration of any nation under the oppressive control of the imperial core is liberation of the nation from external powers in order to hand over the reins to internal powers.
In a bourgeoise state you are solely trying to overthrow internal powers to give the reins to a new internal power. That is not liberation from external forces it is the destruction of the existing nation and the construction of a new one.
Fascists on the other hand come from the angle of restoring the nation to its former glory. This puts them in direct contradiction to the goals of communists, and is a significantly easier pill for liberals to swallow than rejecting the nation.
I'll lay out some examples of things that could happen that could produce that effect, just for you to visualize.
▪️Grocery stores empty for two months
▪️Covid mutates to be fatal to the young
▪️Covid long term effects are severe (likely death before 60 for those who have had it)
▪️Lose a war with China
▪️Major city without power for 4 weeks+ (LA, NYC, Chicago, D. C)
▪️(LONG SHOT) sanctions / embargo placed on usa by UN
The way this will work is things will get worse until something breaks the camel's back. It'll probably have to be pretty drastic.
Honestly even covid mutating wouldn't do it since "that wasn't Biden's fault" and "he's handling it so much better than Trump would have"
But he won't be and their friends will be dying. Hard to use the disingenuous talking points when they become antithetical to your lived experience.
"Biden acknowledges Covid exists" is already more than enough to them.
The major city without power one seems the most likely. As far as us infrastructure goes electrical and storm water are the most venerable. Texas is worse off then than some of the us but not by much
I am slowly becoming more convinced that Marx was wrong and there is no saving the industrialized nations until they are reduced to roving bands of cannibals.
Not that I was completely or really at all serious, but it’s an interesting discussion to have. Surely things have gotten worse in terms of left presence in the US, but at the peak of labor involvement it was still nowhere close to instituting worker control, in America or in any industrialized nation. Taking a no second place trophy mindset here.
The closest would be Germany and they just had the shit kicked out of them in Versaillles. Perhaps Spain or Paris or some other areas but they were ultimately crushed by reaction within a few months or years. Only in places where the capital class is far away, weak, young, or destroyed, where the masses do not feel reliant on the “factory” for their livelihood, have worker revolutions succeeded. Sometimes I wonder if this is a matter of self-sustaining mechanisms disappearing like growing your own food or making your own clothes. Happy to be proven wrong with examples, I’m not the most comprehensive reader, but nothing occurs to me right now.
There is a lib book called the great leveler that I’ve been meaning to read. Their thesis essentially is the only way we have seen inequality fall has been due to war, plague, famine or disaster. Otherwise the ruling class will almost always have the upper hand because they have the power and mouthpiece of the state and media, and there will be too much diffusion of responsibility among a workers movement to overcome that. Want to see what value their ideas have - I don’t like being an accelerationist doomer but it has its points.
Yeah, revolution was stopped in Germany but was successful (or got further) in predominantly peasant Russia and China as well as whatever Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, and the various stabs in Africa and the Central and South Americas, were (settler-colonies that didn't turn into industrial places like the US did maybe?). It really seems that the core is too propagandized, too controlled to allow the room for a revolution to spark.
Material conditions have to plummet. I know there are many out there who are feeing it already, but libs overall are not there yet.
Changing the direct material conditions of people suffering under capitalism.
Mutual aid, community organising etc. were posthumously very well liked by liberals in regards to the Black Panther Party. They likely shed a lot of light then and now on how the state repressed universally good policies to preserve the hegemonic order.
Not only that, but this is, in part, evidence in favour of theories supported by Marxists and Anarchists alike. Building a political party and thus a movement for liberation is more than just leaflets and phonecalls and elections; its directly educating people in person.
Education of the political ends of socialism doesn't lend itself well to doorstep activism like many political orgs do. To build the deep interconnected relationships needed to foster a lasting revolutionary movement you need to build rapport with communities and individuals that go beyond electoral goals and candidates. Only when you have comrades coming to meetings regularly can you educate them on deeper theories, as well as utilise the solidarity for base building.
Perhaps this is all preaching to the choir, but I think its important to note that the "Wizard of Oz" moment where suddenly the mask is pulled away from the state and capital and class consciousness spreads immediately is mythological at best. The war that lead to the chance of the USSR/Rojava/Cuba/etc. existing were only formed after YEARS of deep education and organising for people's direct needs. The state pushback was the escalation and catalyst for consciousness.
Yeah, seems to be like a snowball rolling downhill, gaining mass and momentum.
Nothing. It will never happen. Though they may embrace fascism. But most people (especially in the USA) are just too far gone with liberal/capitalism brain-worms.
I'd consider embracing fascism a rejection of liberalism. Liberals see themselves as champions of things like women's rights, freedom of speech, democracy, &c while fascists openly oppose them. I'm talking about the widespread realization that capitalism is incompatible with humanity, whether those who do so then proceed to reject capitalism (communists) or humanity (fascists).
Misery. Lots and lots of misery, inflicted on the public. Once they lose their indoor plumbing they'll come around real quick. Already tons of small and medium sized businesses have been destroyed, never to return. Those were the backbone of strength of conservatives. Can't be a conservative if you've got nothing to conserve. :big-cool:
Can’t be a conservative if you’ve got nothing to conserve.
That's when they go full mask-off fascist
Is it not already? 50% of the country are RWNJs and a lot of the remainder are basically held hostage by the Dems. How many true believer libs are there, 20-25%?
That’s not even taking into account the completely apolitical, only what, 40% of people even vote?
The 2020 election was won on a platform of "Nothing will fundamentally change." I think that indicates a pretty high degree of faith in the system.
It was won on a platform of “trump bad” tbh. With a side of a once in a century health emergency.
The election wasn't just the general. Even in the middle of a pandemic, democratic voters during the primary were offered universal healthcare, decided it wasn't necessary, and backed the status quo.
People held hostage by Dems are libs too, because otherwise they wouldn't be held hostage.
Going to second the inevitable collapse of the US will kill neoliberal dreams world wide for a long time. I'm an optimist, so I think even the descent will begin to wear at even the libbiest libs minds when all their idols fail to save them and even begin to say 'mean things' to them.
Genuinely can't wait for Obama to yell "This is why you have to vote!" in response to the 2nd American Civil War breaking out.
I hope that the fall of the United States will do the reverse of what the fall of the Soviet Union did to the rest of the world :)
thinking about when Hillary got electorally owned by a clown, but they just got every liberal to foam about RUSSIA instead
And the moment Biden won, they flipped from "Putin rigged the completely invalid election" to "American elections are uncontestable" overnight without a shred of self-awareness.
In the same ways that conservatives are against all sorts of things, right up to the moment it turns out that being against those things hurts them personally, maybe?
As China looks inward and finances developing countries more, that's when we will see what exactly is the outcome stateside. Wages remain stagnant while rent goes up, but cheap commodities still flood the market. China has a burgeoning "middle class" that seeks higher quality products. If I'm not mistaken, the likes of Samsung have started relocating facilities to more "viable" places on the planet, since Chinese labor cannot be exploited as easily anymore. If China plays its cards correctly, it would reduce the areas these large firms can operate in, as this would come into direct conflict with Western hegemony. Of course these days megacorps are states unto themselves, so it makes for a tense situation.
Lot of what keeps the American public blinded is the continuation of the capitalist propaganda machine and these cheap commodities, plus a welfare state to just keep enough crumbs flowing. The US still remains the largest exploiter of third world resources, and even its most poor people benefit. That's why war is seemingly inevitable - capital requires cheap labor. It'll do anything to massacre or cannibalize whatever it needs to. Whether that's the labor force at home, or the labor force abroad.
Beyond that, climate change is coming for all of us. I don't really see any grand socialist revolution. That's one thing Marx seemingly hasn't been on point about, and even Lenin after him, with his own considerations and additions to socialist ideology, probably couldn't see how encompassing the neoliberal hegemony has become.
