The USA has been on the wrong side of every struggle for liberation everywhere on the planet since the Spanish-American war

Its ability to project power in that way must be utterly demolished

I view it as inevitable. The US / Western hegemony will decline and several countries will fill in that vacuum. My bets now are China, Russia, and India will be the big new ones. Question is will the world actually improve? I kinda doubt it.

TL;DR: “Multi-polarity” is simply a by-product of a declining US unipolar hegemony, the main question is in identifying the historical forces behind such movement and whether it is beneficial to the proletariat of the world.

First, the war in Ukraine is indeed an inter-imperialist conflict, but one that is between the US and European imperialists, with Ukraine and Russia caught in the middle as peripheral states.

To understand this, you first need to see this conflict as part of a much larger struggle between finance and industrial capital.

Ask yourself this: why would the US want to destroy Russia in Ukraine? Russia’s economy is tiny, it serves zero threat to the US hegemony unless we’re talking about nukes. Russia has no major industries that are in active competition with the US (name one except for military industrial complex - we’ll get to that in a moment), it has no financial foothold in the international stage (85% of the world’s transaction runs in dollar).

What does Russia have? What role does Russia play in the context of global imperialism? Serving as a cheap resource colony for Europe.

The European Union was formed in 1993 following the collapse of the Soviet Union and through the financialization of the crumbling post-Soviet economy, was able to establish itself as competing rival to the US imperialist hegemony. The establishment of eurozone in 1999 further threatens to compete with the dollar itself.

There are only two major rivals to the US today: China and the EU. To take on China, the US cannot risk Europe throwing its weight behind China which could tilt the balance of power away from the US. Therefore, Europe must be destroyed before the US financial capital can move to directly take on China’s industrial capital. Ukraine was the entry point to destabilize Europe.

After the global financial crisis of 2009, the EU was able to rapidly recover its manufacturing industries by forging closer economic ties with Russia. Nord Stream 1 opened in 2011, supplying cheap Russian gas to bolster European manufacturing sector. It is not a coincidence that the Maidan revolution happened in Ukraine in 2013. It is also not a coincidence that when Nord Stream 2 finished its construction in 2021, the US kept finding faults to delay certification throughout the year, and through endless provocations led to the war in Ukraine in 2022. As the Europeans began to cave in to the blowback of sanctions against Russia, both Nord Stream pipelines were bombed.

The above events, and the outcome of the war in Ukraine after nearly two years, can only make sense when understood in this context. Europe has been properly disciplined by the US, with its financial capital now completely aligned with the US, while sacrificing its industrial economy in the process. Europe was “forced” to donate their military hardwares to Ukraine, and are now being replaced by signing contracts with American military contractors. Most importantly, it is simply a prelude to the final confrontation with China.

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Second, once you have understood that the US global hegemony is largely financial in nature, you’d understand that no left wing governments and movements can flourish so long as the US imperialism remains in place.

Here’s what Michael Hudson wrote about Argentina, and the lesson about why every left wing government is forced to behave like a right wing government in the Global South (the election of Milei by the Argentinian people can only make sense once you have understood how the economic and financial arms of US imperialism work to further entrench its global hegemony):

Among the BRICS+ countries, Argentina is a case in point. Its foreign dollar debt has grown largely by IMF sponsorship. The IMF’s main political function in US foreign policy has been to enable pro-American client oligarchies to move their money out of countries whenever there is a chance of a left-wing or simply democratic reformer being elected. Convert their Argentinean currency into dollars lowers the peso’s exchange rate. Without IMF intervention, that would mean that as the exchange rate falls, the wealthy classes engaging in capital flight receive fewer and fewer dollars. To support the currency – and hence, the hard-currency dollars that capital-flight actors receive – the IMF lends the right-wing government dollars to buy up the excess pesos that the client oligarchy is selling off. That enables Argentineans to move their money out of the country to obtain a much higher amount of US dollars than they would if the IMF were not lending money to the right-wing puppet government.

When the new reform government comes in, it finds itself loaded down with a huge foreign debt owed to the IMF. This debt has not been taken on in a way that helped Argentina develop its economy and earn dollars to pay back the loan. It is simply a result of IMF support of right-wing governments. And the IMF then tells the new government (whether Argentina or any other debtor) to pay off its foreign loans by lowering the wages of labor. That is the only way that the IMF recognizes for countries to “stabilize” their balance of payments. So the reform government is obliged to behave just like a right-wing government, intensifying the class war of capital against labor. The “cure” for their balance-of-payments deficits thus becomes even worse than the original disease, that is, its rentier oligarchy moving their money out of the country.

The US controls the global supply of energy, food, trade and financial transactions through a network of global financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and WTO and threaten the Global South countries who refuse to submit to this liberal free trade order with economic sanctions.

When such threats of economic warfare fail to dissuade emerging left wing governments seeking to assert their own economic sovereignty, the more direct, fascistic military coup takes place:

The Afghan communist government, whose progressive policies once allowed women to go to schools and hold professional jobs, had to be brutally destroyed in the name of anti-Soviet communism.

The Indonesian communist-aligned government, who once proposed a Non-Aligned Movement for the Third World countries to become independent from the US and the USSR (Bandung Conference), had to pay with one million innocent people murdered in the name of anti-communism.

The Iranian social democratic government, who once sought to nationalize its natural resources from being exploited from foreign corporations, had to be couped and the corrupt monarchy restored, which eventually precipitated in the Islamic Revolution and the rise of religious conservatism.

The Chilean social democratic government, also sought to nationalize its resources, met again with the same fate of hundreds of thousands of left wing activists brutally murdered by right wing death squads, and the introduction of neoliberal shock therapy to completely ruin whatever remains of its economy.

As you can see, progressive left-wing movements have emerged many times throughout the Global South, and wherever you look, you can see the fingerprints of US imperialism behind their destruction over the past century.

All this talk about “supporting left wing movements” are complete nonsense and useless if they are not paired with the destruction of US imperialism itself.

The worst circumstance I can imagine is a totally or near totally unopposed US-NATO ruling class.

The unequal exchange would become increasingly bad, quality of life in the core for the vast majority of people would get worse. After the professionals in such a world complete the fully automated war machines and surveillance equipment they'd be done away with as well. Palestine is the test bed, that's what the ghouls who've given up on anything other than saving themselves in bunkers or outer space will 100% do to everyone.

My uninformed take: historically, socialism/social democracy took hold in European nations as a concession by capitalists as a way to assuage revolutionary demands of the population fueled by the example of a communist superpower a few hundred KMs east.

Since the fall of the USSR, neoliberalism has been allowed to run rampant, leaving hollowed out husks in it's wake. If it were challenged, or weakened, by a multipolar world, western nations would be less able to impose their will on the developing world. And maybe, with an alternative in view, in addition to a faltering place on the world stage, western populations could force concessions from their governments

Most of the people you are paraphrasing are philistines. Even if you take an extremely pessimistic stance on China, that it is a bourgeois state, etc., it still objectively represents a historically progressive force at the moment and it's not even close. When Lenin talks about "reactionary anti-imperialism" there, he was clearly referring to actually historically reactionary agendas (i.e. those that would serve only to push human political development further back) rather than "insufficiently progressive anti-imperialism".

Examples in his day of reactionary anti-imperialism (though later than that writing) include the mythologies of the fascist movements that precipitated WWII. Germany and especially Italy were very concerned with the idea of being pillaged by other European powers -- British bankers and such -- but they both misunderstood the problem and ascribed wildly detrimental "solutions" for it.

A "second as farse" example is the chauvinism that fueled some of the Brexit vote, opposing the EU's "exploitation" of Britain on reactionary grounds before deciding to just fuck themselves for reasons I still don't really get.

The PRC, even if we just accept it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, is still not at all reactionary in this way and is generally helpful to the development of the imperial periphery.

The only people against multipolarity are USians, US-bootlicking nationalities from the various US vassal states, and US-brainwashed individuals. Virtually everyone else, even many Europeans who haven't been completely brainwashed to worship the US, either see multipolarity as inevitable or beneficial.

In regards to imperialist states, the only two choices are inter-imperialist rivalry and inter-imperialist cooperation. The critics care about inter-imperialist rivalry as if inter-imperialist cooperation isn't a million times worse. Their fatal assumption is that when the working class of an imperialist state rises up against the state's bourgeoisie, they false believe every other imperialist state would just sit on their ass instead of, you know, doing something about it. Inter-imperialist rivalry means the other imperialist state would help the working class overthrow the imperialist state while inter-imperialist cooperation means the other imperialist state would help their fellow imperialists crush the workers.

We can see this in the colonization and decolonization of Africa:

The Berlin conference was inter-imperialist cooperation par excellence. African polities previously had opportunities to play European powers against one another. But once the imperialist powers came together and planned out who colonized what part of Africa, Africa was finished.

WWI and WWII was inter-imperialist rivalry par excellence. It was through the devastation of the two world wars that the European powers weakened and bankrupted themselves. The wars also gave Africans practical training on how to wage modern warfare. It was at the imperialists' weakest moments that Africans seized the opportunity and freed themselves.

If you destroy the USA as it exists today, you would create a power vacuum. I assume that would lead to a multipolar world. So, regardless of whether you are in favor or against a multipolar world, successful opposition to neoliberal hegemony would probably lead to a world that is, at the very least, more multipolar than it is right now.

Unless im missing something about what the term multipolar is supposed to mean.

The idea that the form of multipolarity we're seeing right now is reactionary in nature is incorrect IMO. China is clearly progressive in comparison to the US and NATO, and so are some of the other BRICS countries (not Russia and Saudi Arabia, of course). So I think the natural application of Lenin's criticism of imperialism would lead to the conclusion that those of us who live in US-NATO bloc countries ought to oppose NATO expansionism and US foreign policy.

Personally, I think your friends (particularly the one who says that Russia's motivations aren't imperialist in the Leninist sense, but that doesn't mean the invasion is good) are right. And I think they're completely right about the most important point, that we still should practice revolutionary defeatism. Now, as far as the discussion about whether Russian communists should practice revolutionary defeatism, I think it's ultimately up to them because it really would put the world in a very bad position overall if NATO humiliated Russia again. But I also am never gonna say that people should enthusiastically join in a reactionary state's invasion of a much weaker country that easily could fall into a nuclear conflict.

Don't support China?

Don't support the country lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty?

Don't support the only country doing anything about climate change?

Get fucked because that's the entire point. Weird leftists need to stop making purity tests to deride some of the only people in the world that are doing anything.

Capitalism is hell for what it does to people. If it worked as ideally as liberals described it we wouldn't have a problem.

China appears to be using Marx derived principals to advance the position of the global working class. Anyone who doesn't support that is a dingus who needs to go do some agrarian labor.

Multipolarity is inherently unstable due to capitalism's drive towards monopolies as they generate the most profit, but unstable situations are where socialist organizations tend to thrive. Could the Russian Revolution happened without the inter-imperialist battle of World War 1? Could the communists in China have achieved victory without World War 2? In my view, the decrease of US hegemony will lead to a tenuous multipolarity correspondingly increasing, and if uncontested, will eventually result in one power becoming the capitalist hegemon once again. The opportunity for a revolution to end capitalism lies in the transition period, and we're already seeing countries wake up to the possibilities. As such, talking about "should you be for or against multipolarity" makes as much sense as asking whether you should be for or against a hurricane or volcanic eruption - the pertinent question is what your reaction will be while the destruction is occurring, and how you will organize to rebuild.

To what extent the Russian invasion is justified and/or necessary is a matter debated on this site to this day. At the end of the day, a world where NATO wins is, in all ways, worse than a world where Russia wins, so I am therefore pro-Russia in that sense. That all being said, the Ukraine War should be understood as NATO using Ukraine to try and weaken its enemy. Ukraine is nothing to NATO and despite the rhetoric, will be entirely sacrificed without NATO officials losing a second of sleep over the mountain of corpses. It was, NATO thought, a perfect war - opening Russia up to massive military and economic commitment while not requiring a similar commitment from NATO in terms of economics or military.

If there are two main mistakes that NATO made, it was a) not going into the war with sufficient planning or even understanding of how to put economic pressure on Russia, resulting in frankly ridiculous sanctions schemes that failed to cause even a meaningful threat of internal collapse; and b) committing their own equipment to the cause once the ex-Soviet stockpiles ran out, thus opening themselves up to be militarily weakened, in fact much more weakened, than Russia was. If I was NATO, I would have ditched Ukraine as soon as the last ex-Soviet gear was destroyed on the battlefield and basked in all the new orders coming in from those countries for new orders of Western military equipment. For whatever reason, they did not do this, and it will be their downfall.

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Free-Marketeers should be happy with it as its "more competition" and "less monopoly" on the world stage... right... right?

I guess if its a multipolarity of fashy states deciding that the USA project isn't good enough for them could be bad... but that doesn't seem to be what is happening.

Its China and a handful of South American countries and an ever increasing number of African countries that are just deciding to cut out the USA and their allies from their dealings. Which is probably a good thing for the world in general, even if its going to turn the place where I live into "Mad Max but with more trees".

I had an argument with my wife's cousin about multi-polarity -he's against it and thinks the US does a better job managing the world than China will. I obviously disagree, but what I can't stress enough is that it doesn't matter if you're for or against it, it's going to happen regardless because the US is a failed state and other states will fill the gap that it used to dominate in global politics.

I love multipolarity