We're seeing increased pressure in the imperial core to reinvest in public funding for industry and social programs due to competition from a large socialist project.
This happened throughout the first cold war, so it's telling to see the same patterns re-emerging.
Something I missed a couple months ago - The Senate Overwhelmingly Passed a Bill to Bolster Competitiveness With China
Passed back in June, the "Innovation and Competition Act" only really picked up support when it was renamed from the "Endless Frontier Act" and positioned as being an anti-China bill.
The more than 2,400-page bill greenlit almost $250 billion in funding for U.S. manufacturing and technology. It passed with a 68-32 vote in a Senate that has otherwise been mostly gridlocked by electoralist excuses (parliamentarian, manchin, fillibuster, etc).
Really telling quote from a Republican senator at the end of the linked article:
“Frankly, I think China has left us no option but to make these investments,”
Another quote with Schumer saying the quiet part out loud again:
“They [China] believe that squabbling democracies like ours can’t come together and invest in national priorities the way a top-down, centralized and authoritarian government can. They are rooting for us to fail so they can grab the mantle of global economic leadership and own the innovations.” - source.
A spokesperson from China's foreign ministry said that bill was “full of cold war zero-sum thinking” that “distorts the facts [and] smears China’s development path and domestic and foreign policies". - Source
In a strange way, this could result in some benefits for those workers trapped in the Imperial Core as it could potentially lead to renewed spending on social programs, especially as China's standard of living continues to improve.
I unfortunately don't view that as a net positive since we're already experiencing a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes, but it is interesting to see Capitalism's ongoing response to its global power being challenged for the first time in decades.
What other examples of this have you noticed? Were benefits like the (still underwhelming) stimulus payments also caused by this pressure?
ha fun fact Jamie is actually a DSA member and in Emerge which is the communist caucus of nyc dsa, i think she interviewed Marvin from the IC recently whos also in Emerge. I think we do good work, its a lot of building political cohesion and pushing back against other tendencies, ive been happy with how things have been moving over the past this past year. if ur in a random place in the country with no communist caucus it might be harder to figure out whats going on tbh at first but id recommend getting involved if youre interested in stuff like the international committee! a lot of problems w dsa is just capacity issues, its always helpful to have more ppl getting involved to help out both locally and in national stuff
heres some helpful resources, CPN is also mostly a commie caucus but not so explicitly, and there might be some other local left caucus you could look at. b&r and r&r are both trots and smc is all over the place i wouldnt recommend those last three at the bottom
https://dsa.carrd.co
Pushing back against other tendencies?
theres different contention of power within dsa between various tendencies and ideological factions yeah. b&r, r&r, tempest, and some others 3rd campists have all been mad at the recent Venezuela trip and dsa moving to join sao paulo for example, while the commie caucuses have all been at the center of supporting it and getting things like resolution 14 passed at convention. this also extends to things like pushing for more base building initiatives like tenant organizing.