• @Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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    191 year ago

    I like Rainer’s writing style, but I feel he’s being unnecessarily optimistic regarding the instability of USA. I suppose he’d know better than me, living there and all, but if you read him you’d think USA was already borderline Mad Max. From the outside it doesn’t appear to be the case

    • @ihaveibs@lemmygrad.ml
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      141 year ago

      It is Mad Max and has been for a while but the ideological apparatus upholding capitalism is so strong that people can’t see it.

    • @Giyuu@lemmygrad.ml
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      121 year ago

      Attempting revolution, and even organizing, is suicide in the US. Not only is the surveillance the strongest its ever been, but it is wielded by a united bourgeoisie. And that ruling class can still squeeze so much more out of its workers as the profits abroad dry up. In other words, there’s quite a bit a ways to go.

      This can change, but right now there is great unity against China within the ruling class and they are also succeeding at turning the proletariat against China. And living conditions have still not hit critical for most.

      US comrades should not risk their lives. It may seem doomerist, but I don’t think that really anything can be done. The situation abroad (in the global south, etc) has to change first.

      • relay
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        131 year ago

        They have nukes tho. At least padding the superstructure with the concept of maybe we should be nice to people leads the US to a decline instead of a nuclear war.

        • @Giyuu@lemmygrad.ml
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          101 year ago

          Absolutely I agree the objective should be to avoid war. Foreign policy should be directed in a non-aggressive direction. Jeffrey Sachs has been warning for years now to deescalate. Unfortunately it looks like the politicians in the US are not for that.

          If you can organize along those grounds, and try to affect foreign policy and self determination for the US colonies in the pacific, those are tangible goals. But I think organizing for a revolution is, again, just going to get a lot of comrades killed.

          • relay
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            41 year ago

            Yea don’t do it in a way that is obvious. Revolution in a feudal society of imperial periphery of the 20th century will look different than revolution in a mass surveillance 21st century society of the imperial core.

      • @TeezyZeezy@lemmygrad.ml
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        101 year ago

        I don’t know, comrade. I think you have a good point in surveillance being strong and having unity against China/Russia among most of the population, but this is changing. Not only that, but we don’t need absolutely everyone to be on board, right? That’s kind of the point of the vanguard, if I understand correctly. To have a spearhead of the most educated and dedicated revolutionaries lead us to victory in the interest of the proletariat. Of course, the more supporters the better, and we must remain vigilant in maintaining the people’s interest, but it is not required that 51% or whatever magic number of people are properly educated and radicalized.

        Also, if we just sit back and wait for the situation in the global south to get to a point where revolution is viewed as “ripe” in the US, too, we will run out of time. With climate change breathing down our necks, there is no time for waiting. Revolution must happen at some point in the US and no matter what it is going to be incredibly difficult. No sense in waiting until they destroy the world, I say.

        What do you think?

        • @Giyuu@lemmygrad.ml
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          71 year ago

          It’s certainly up for debate. I mean, I’m not sold on my own position, but what I’m mostly against right now is comrades getting themselves killed, thrown in jail, or denied jobs or travel because they tried to organize explicitly against the government.

          I guess my main point is that it will happen “when the conditions are right”, and these conditions cannot be accelerated by us. They are dependent on the global south and America’s own ruling class. I think the best we can do right now is to build meaningful relationships with people we can trust, so that when the real fascist “crunch” comes (almost in tandem with climate change) in the form of knocking on doors, homelessness, hunger, stripping workers rights etc., those relationships allow people to lend a hand and relieve suffering. Things like organizing for food handouts and shelter are very crucial here.

          I agree that it will happen at some point, and spreading the gospel of Marx is something that should be done at all times. And the community organizing/relationship strengthening/educating people about socialism all play into the formation of an environment that makes it easier for a vanguard party to establish itself. These are the things that are within our control. In other words, I think by navigating the challenges of a declining America in a socialist manner you already start to lay the foundation for whatever happens in the future.

          It’s true we don’t need a majority, but there are other major events that may need to pass before a vanguard party can be established. Things that are outside of our control. And part of that is a weakening of the ruling class (if it’s by a split, well who knows when they’ll split, which would weaken them tremendously). Whether this happens through gradual decline or suddenly through war with China I don’t know. And the other part is a (severe) decrease in the living conditions of white America/“middle income”/intelligentsia/whatever part of the proletariat is bought off/etc.

          I think most Americans need to prepare for living conditions that can (and almost surely will) get much worse.

        • QueerCommie
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          1 year ago

          It’s possible in the next century, almost 45% of Americans support “socialism” if we can convince a reasonable amount of them that its not just socialism we need, but communism and it cannot be achieved by reform, then we may have a chance. As we sink further into fascism and people’s material conditions worsen there will be more who are willing to fight for a better future. (Source on 45%: https://www.newsweek.com/socialism-america-gallup-poll-1431266) Also, the US has the most armed population. As Marx said “Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempts to disarm the people must be stopped, by force if necessary.” if enough armed Americans become based revolution may be feasible.___

    • @TeezyZeezy@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      It absolutely is Mad Max. Police (gang members wearing blue) everywhere, poverty everywhere, mass destruction of the environment, and a select few (MLs) fighting back but being silenced through propaganda and force.

    • Yeah we are just going to let it get bad enough to the point we scream louder to destroy Russia and China. People just want to be a normal, self righteous, rich country at the end of the day and nothing more. We are not going to face ourselves over this. We don’t even know who we are.

    • relay
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      101 year ago

      more like nightvale’s motto if you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget.

        • relay
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          141 year ago

          Nightvale is a fictional town where elderich horrors attack the town on the daily that it becomes kind of banal. The cops are useless at best or at worst suppressors of truth. the story is told mostly from the perspective of a really petty and biased public radio host as diagetic radio programming. It is a podcast called welcome to Nightvale.

          The USA is losing its former glory but it seems like ill manners to bring it up in public. Everyone seems to be repeating the same thing that their favorite news channel or podcast broadcasted and insist that remembering such a thing is a sign of intelligence, not just merely parroting what they were instructed to say. You can look around and see where the structuralal issues are affecting everyone’s lives but they don’t want to think about it. Telling the truth ruins the vibes. Don’t think about it just buy that new thing or indulge in something that makes the world worse for your own entertainment. Become a pick up artist to make women’s lives worse. Enjoy the ride of terrible drugs that addict and destroy you because why should you really be living? Enjoy the most unhealthy food available to humanity. Play video games that function the same as casino games. Laugh at people get angry and point this out. You can also feel great pointing it out but we all know that you have no agency over the corporations or the government.

          • @Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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            131 year ago

            Thank you. Although it is an interesting example, because that’s partially what I meant. The lives of proletariat might get worse on the average, but the system itself appears to be pretty well entrenched. What really threatens the rule of the bourgeoisie? In the example of Nightvale, citizens get attacked, but police apparently don’t mind. They’re stable, they have the resources. Same in real life. A train derails and unleashes a toxic cloud? The villas in Miami are still standing. A school shooting ends with dozens dead? But the children of wall Street executives are fine and continue on their merry way. And despite all those internal issues, the establishment still has plenty of power left, certainly enough to cause trouble for others in order to engorge itself. See Nord Stream, tanks in Ukraine, etc.

  • @xenautika@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    As to this article being optimistic, I think we can look at the US like a state which has artificially inflated it’s petit bourgeois class as a buffer between the state and the working class. The US does this while simultaneously extracting from the petit (as they would with proles) while subsiding the social health through privatization and having this base be able to afford it without much consequence (traditionally). We can see this historically by designing Amerikkka as a settler-colonial state, granting stolen land access on stipulation of providing production, security and expansion for the state.

    The petit bourgeois-- small business owners, law enforcement, administrators, realtors, educated technicians and specialists-- have traditionally made peace with the state as their industries have grown along with the neoliberal paradigm. However as Rainer points out, Amerikkka is finding less exploitable conditions it hasn’t already mostly extracted from to maintain it’s hegemony, including the working class base of the country, which has always been heavily extracted from yet has also been disenfranchised in the political process, as the state delegates authority to the petit bourgeois, whom determine labor and property access for the proletariat.

    Steadily, the contradictions between the proles and petit are increasing and they are ever more at odds with each other, while the state begins extracting labor value from the petit beyond simple rants in the local city’s chamber of commerce. Petit-bourgeois will be consumed at both ends, and they are the dominant force behind the Trump/outsider reactionary wave. They are ahead of the game, having privilege and resources to organize and insert themselves in the political process.

    Meanwhile, the vying ruling classes, are at ever more tension against each other, destabilizing and undermining each others efforts every election cycle, wasting massive resources with infighting while diverting their life-support systems to fuel their imperialism abroad. As for the working class, flanked from all sides, they are developing mutual aid, assemblies and somewhat of a dual power structure, but at this point these efforts are still very disorganized and decentralized, and still brutally put down by the police apparatus.

    Am I optimistic? That things will get worse, yes. Whether we get it together, I’m not sure, but we as a political body haven’t quite been stressed to the breaking point imo.