the fall of the Soviet Union took everyone by surprise, even the CIA. America literally didn't believe it at first. The election fraud came later when Russia was independent. Like every one knew there were troubles, and there was the conservative coup, but that failed so people guessed the country might be okay and that the worse was over. We'd get some market reforms and end up looking somewhat like China. Gorbachev and Yeltsin will fight but now that the "old guard" just lost all their power surely the path for reform is clear and bright?
then Yeltsin and his gang started declaring independence, in 8 days Gorbachev went from ruling 15 nations to ruling nothing. Nobody wanted this except radical liberals like Yeltsin who just wanted to be in charge and be corrupt. But like a bundle of string, as soon as the cord snapped everything unraveled. Gorbachev technically still was president of the rump USSR for a couple for days, but simply no one listened to him anymore. The forces of history had passed him by and he had no means to steer them a different direction (like the hardline coup plotters tried to do to prevent this exact thing). Yeltsin told everyone to "Take as much sovereignty as you can grab!" and soon people were taking the chairs out of their formerly state-owned offices too whole Yeltsin's cronies emptied the state bank accounts.
The collapse of the USSR really shows just how delicate all these social and political structures human create really are. 10 years ago western newspapers would whine about how evil and tyrannical the General Secretary of the USSR was but when the state was faced with total annihilation Gorbachev couldn't find someone willing and able to just shoot Yeltsin and end the chaos. Of course Gorbachev just spent the last several years firing all the people who were the best at shooting enemies of the state in the head so of course there were none to be found to help him and he would have never ordered such a thing anyway. He was chosen as GS because he was soft and friendly. Not saying a harsh ruler would have fixed the situation, maybe it would have been worse, maybe much better, but everyone is constrainted by the conditions around them.
Like Lenin said: there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. The collapse of the Soviet Union was one of those historical weeks. I think the US will go a similar way. One week some governor will just decide to not obey the federal government and the President will suddenly discover that he can't make them listen anymore. Some other governors will decide to follow John Calhoun 3.0 and that will be it, the United States will be united no more. Maybe we have a civil war or maybe we just regionally balkanize. The government will be considered powerful until the moment it isn't.
I also wouldnt understate the importance of the party principle. Like we dont think of the US as having a "ruling party" in the Marxist sense since we all have liberal brain damage from growing up here. But the capitalist class has genuine solidarity and levels of power from senators to city council members. It's why, as much as they might bleat about 'muh tyrrany of the ebil democrats' all the republicans across the country ruling their little hills refused to really bit the bullet and follow their leader. Edit: One of the main powers of the capitalist system is that members of the ruling party don't necessarily have to be conscious of their membership. Simply being disciplined by capital depersonalized is often enough to get otherwise good people to become the personification of capital.
Like the CPSU had so removedd by the point of the collapse you didnt have any unifying energy holding it together. There were tons of reasons for this degeneration, and while it is fun to blame Khrushchev it wasn't all his fault. The fact that Gorbachev, who was basically a self avowed socdem, was able to become fucking General Secretary tells you all you need to know about how rancid the party had become by the late 80's. Basically Gorby had the delusion of adopting a system like in the Nordic countries and was shocked when the West fucking jumped in and cannibalized the USSR, fucking moron.
Thats why seeing leaked documents pointing out that Xi is a dyed in the wool Marxist and is improving party education in the CPC is really encouraging more than anything else. Gotta always cultivate people, capital may be helpful, but people is what make things move.
The fact that Gorbachev, who was basically a self avowed socdem, was able to become fucking General Secretary tells you all you need to know
yep yep yep. It was a slow process of rot followed by sudden collapse. Had the structures of state been sturdier and not rotten away with liberalism the situation would have been different. The "hardliners" at least had some communist cadres they could call on and some military officers who were still true believers. But who the fuck was going to help Gorbachev? George HW Bush? The EU? he purged everyone who actually cared about the Soviet Union's continued existence and replaced them with western educated liberals who wanted to line their own pockets
The fact that Gorbachev, who was basically a self avowed socdem, was able to become fucking General Secretary tells you all you need to know about how rancid the party had become by the late 80’s.
The wildest thing is that all the "hardliners" and people Gorbachev would later smear as "stalinists" for any amount of dissent or even just insufficient enthusiasm in supporting him, they all worked with him when he was working for Andropov and after Andropov's death they all thought so highly of him as to support his appointment to General Secretary. Like at that point he doesn't even seem to have been a crypto-sucdem yet, and for several years he carried on with the same reforms Andropov had been overseeing with a few hairbrained ideas of his own tossed in. It's only after he started bringing in more outspoken "reformers" that he started doing shit like putting an anticommunist in charge of the state media, talking about his "wot if social democracy from the left?" nonsense, and actively working to hamstring and isolate the Soviet communist parties at every level.
So either Gorbachev was an incredibly sneaky and skilled fanatic sucdem who managed to trick a bunch of dedicated communists into thinking he was one of them for decades of his career, or he was actually just a kind of dumb and impressionable but likeable bureaucrat who wound up in way over his head and chose the worst allies he possibly could have in trying to keep up the appearance of knowing what he was doing and having a plan. I personally think it's the latter, or something like that: clearly Gorbachev was at least a competent bureaucrat and charismatic enough to get where he was without anyone going "hey why is this dipshit with all these bad ideas continuing to get promoted?", but once he actually had to lead what did he do? He kept doing what his predecessor had been doing but tried to mix in his own ideas too, and his own ideas were terrible and blew up in his face so he went looking for other people with bold ideas and then just did what they suggested to absolutely catastrophic effect, at which point he just sort of panicked and couldn't commit to any plan of action to salvage the situation. It's entirely possible that if he'd never become General Secretary he'd just have continued going with the flow and been forgotten as just a generally competent bureaucrat.
But then there's also a systemic failure of the Soviet education system to actually educate people on how the global economic worked, so you got a generation of liberal professionals who'd listen to fucking Radio Free Europe broadcasts and buy western media on the black market who came to the conclusion that market liberalization would mean they get as many treats as Americans got, without comprehending that American consumption habits were only enabled by imperial extractive mechanisms in subjugated periphery states, and by America's larger industrial base (which the Soviets would have reached parity with in the 70s or so if it weren't for someone's "wot if instead of making industry to build treats, we just made a few treats now?" policies).
Then they got their free market and not only did they not get their treats they also lost stable access to even basic necessities. :surprised-pika:
Honestly I think Gorby was just a complete fucking idiot. He was like any bureaucrat or engineer who had extremely detailed and sophisticated knowledge of a highly specialized area of expertise, the mastery of which gives a massively inflated sense of ones general knowledge. He spent a huge amount of time in the west and, because he was extremely poorly educated in foundational Marxism and general economics, he bought the propaganda bullshit. I cant remember where I read it, but I remember reading he believed that if the USSR just adopted western style "democracy" the the USSR would be welcomed into the 'brotherhood of western nations' with open arms, and was completely shocked when Capital ripped the USSR apart like rabid wolves.
One week some governor will just decide to not obey the federal government and the President will suddenly discover that he can’t make them listen anymore
Already happening with the Oklahoma governor throwing a fit over the vaxxx mandate for National Guardsmen.
I thought that Covid was potentially going to trigger this either internationally or possibly within the US with a split of firmer borders between states/countries doing nothing to keep their constituents safe, and those that want to do something. Turns out pretty much all of them except a few countries wanted to do nothing at all, so there was never an issue
yes this vaccine mandate and all of coronavirus response has really revealed how this country is actually very disunited. Libs can't pretend everyone will "join together" in times of crisis anymore like everyone did to bomb brown people back in 00s and chuds just overtly want to kill their "removed" fellow citizens now. It is not a sustainable situation and it will break down eventually.
One week some governor will just decide to not obey the federal government and the President will suddenly discover that he can’t make them listen anymore.
Not really, the Soviet Union fell apart because of election interference from the west resulting in selling off vast swaths of publicly held industry in addition to the drain of the arms race to defend against western aggression.
This is probably an oversimplification and someone else can surely give a better answer than me.
I'd say it will look similar but instead of selling off assets internationally the US will implode by cannibalizing itself trying to contain China's economic influence, much like the Soviet Union couldn't maintain an arms race with the US we can't maintain an economic race with China, we already sold off all our production and all we have left is a financial capital bubble backed by a huge military budget and nukes.
I look at it like this. We are still living in the tail end afterglow of the movement that peaked in the 30's and 40's and was finally crushed in the 70's. Everything since the volker shock and stagflation has been prewar capital reasserting itself over the social democracy that the liberals had been driving. I see three outcomes here on out.
The first is the continued trend we have seen of capitalism reasserts itself only in a new more explicit form as capitalism enters into a fascist phase of accumulation through direct dispossession and proletarianization. In this situation the US re-industrializes as it recreates a domestic industrial working class and enters into a genuine imperial war mode. There are lots of aspects to this but tldr, capital successfully rises to meet the challenge of China and we all die of climate change.
The second is a complete collapse of the US as nativist and fascist elements clash with the remnants of the old order. The US system and empire falls apart under pressure, both explicit and implicit, from the rise of China. The US basically falls to a second tier state, sort of how the Europeans stand to the US now. In this scenario the real longterm outcome depends on China and their own internal class struggle. If the socialist elements win we might see a better future where climate change is averted and a better future for humanity is possible. If the capitalist elements win, well "you know the thing" as a wise man once said.
The third is a domestic resurgence of genuine working class energy and a drive toward socialism. I have no idea what this would look like, as it seems to unlikely based on history, but we are seeing a dramatic rise in labor militancy and socialist action. This would be the best of all possible worlds, but also is the one that requires the most work from us.
Mostly I just saw these posts and felt the need to mind vomit.
How it went with the soviet union right? It just suddenly fell apart, like there was no big event.
the fall of the Soviet Union took everyone by surprise, even the CIA. America literally didn't believe it at first. The election fraud came later when Russia was independent. Like every one knew there were troubles, and there was the conservative coup, but that failed so people guessed the country might be okay and that the worse was over. We'd get some market reforms and end up looking somewhat like China. Gorbachev and Yeltsin will fight but now that the "old guard" just lost all their power surely the path for reform is clear and bright?
then Yeltsin and his gang started declaring independence, in 8 days Gorbachev went from ruling 15 nations to ruling nothing. Nobody wanted this except radical liberals like Yeltsin who just wanted to be in charge and be corrupt. But like a bundle of string, as soon as the cord snapped everything unraveled. Gorbachev technically still was president of the rump USSR for a couple for days, but simply no one listened to him anymore. The forces of history had passed him by and he had no means to steer them a different direction (like the hardline coup plotters tried to do to prevent this exact thing). Yeltsin told everyone to "Take as much sovereignty as you can grab!" and soon people were taking the chairs out of their formerly state-owned offices too whole Yeltsin's cronies emptied the state bank accounts.
The collapse of the USSR really shows just how delicate all these social and political structures human create really are. 10 years ago western newspapers would whine about how evil and tyrannical the General Secretary of the USSR was but when the state was faced with total annihilation Gorbachev couldn't find someone willing and able to just shoot Yeltsin and end the chaos. Of course Gorbachev just spent the last several years firing all the people who were the best at shooting enemies of the state in the head so of course there were none to be found to help him and he would have never ordered such a thing anyway. He was chosen as GS because he was soft and friendly. Not saying a harsh ruler would have fixed the situation, maybe it would have been worse, maybe much better, but everyone is constrainted by the conditions around them.
Like Lenin said: there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. The collapse of the Soviet Union was one of those historical weeks. I think the US will go a similar way. One week some governor will just decide to not obey the federal government and the President will suddenly discover that he can't make them listen anymore. Some other governors will decide to follow John Calhoun 3.0 and that will be it, the United States will be united no more. Maybe we have a civil war or maybe we just regionally balkanize. The government will be considered powerful until the moment it isn't.
I also wouldnt understate the importance of the party principle. Like we dont think of the US as having a "ruling party" in the Marxist sense since we all have liberal brain damage from growing up here. But the capitalist class has genuine solidarity and levels of power from senators to city council members. It's why, as much as they might bleat about 'muh tyrrany of the ebil democrats' all the republicans across the country ruling their little hills refused to really bit the bullet and follow their leader. Edit: One of the main powers of the capitalist system is that members of the ruling party don't necessarily have to be conscious of their membership. Simply being disciplined by capital depersonalized is often enough to get otherwise good people to become the personification of capital.
Like the CPSU had so removedd by the point of the collapse you didnt have any unifying energy holding it together. There were tons of reasons for this degeneration, and while it is fun to blame Khrushchev it wasn't all his fault. The fact that Gorbachev, who was basically a self avowed socdem, was able to become fucking General Secretary tells you all you need to know about how rancid the party had become by the late 80's. Basically Gorby had the delusion of adopting a system like in the Nordic countries and was shocked when the West fucking jumped in and cannibalized the USSR, fucking moron.
Thats why seeing leaked documents pointing out that Xi is a dyed in the wool Marxist and is improving party education in the CPC is really encouraging more than anything else. Gotta always cultivate people, capital may be helpful, but people is what make things move.
yep yep yep. It was a slow process of rot followed by sudden collapse. Had the structures of state been sturdier and not rotten away with liberalism the situation would have been different. The "hardliners" at least had some communist cadres they could call on and some military officers who were still true believers. But who the fuck was going to help Gorbachev? George HW Bush? The EU? he purged everyone who actually cared about the Soviet Union's continued existence and replaced them with western educated liberals who wanted to line their own pockets
The wildest thing is that all the "hardliners" and people Gorbachev would later smear as "stalinists" for any amount of dissent or even just insufficient enthusiasm in supporting him, they all worked with him when he was working for Andropov and after Andropov's death they all thought so highly of him as to support his appointment to General Secretary. Like at that point he doesn't even seem to have been a crypto-sucdem yet, and for several years he carried on with the same reforms Andropov had been overseeing with a few hairbrained ideas of his own tossed in. It's only after he started bringing in more outspoken "reformers" that he started doing shit like putting an anticommunist in charge of the state media, talking about his "wot if social democracy from the left?" nonsense, and actively working to hamstring and isolate the Soviet communist parties at every level.
So either Gorbachev was an incredibly sneaky and skilled fanatic sucdem who managed to trick a bunch of dedicated communists into thinking he was one of them for decades of his career, or he was actually just a kind of dumb and impressionable but likeable bureaucrat who wound up in way over his head and chose the worst allies he possibly could have in trying to keep up the appearance of knowing what he was doing and having a plan. I personally think it's the latter, or something like that: clearly Gorbachev was at least a competent bureaucrat and charismatic enough to get where he was without anyone going "hey why is this dipshit with all these bad ideas continuing to get promoted?", but once he actually had to lead what did he do? He kept doing what his predecessor had been doing but tried to mix in his own ideas too, and his own ideas were terrible and blew up in his face so he went looking for other people with bold ideas and then just did what they suggested to absolutely catastrophic effect, at which point he just sort of panicked and couldn't commit to any plan of action to salvage the situation. It's entirely possible that if he'd never become General Secretary he'd just have continued going with the flow and been forgotten as just a generally competent bureaucrat.
But then there's also a systemic failure of the Soviet education system to actually educate people on how the global economic worked, so you got a generation of liberal professionals who'd listen to fucking Radio Free Europe broadcasts and buy western media on the black market who came to the conclusion that market liberalization would mean they get as many treats as Americans got, without comprehending that American consumption habits were only enabled by imperial extractive mechanisms in subjugated periphery states, and by America's larger industrial base (which the Soviets would have reached parity with in the 70s or so if it weren't for someone's "wot if instead of making industry to build treats, we just made a few treats now?" policies).
Then they got their free market and not only did they not get their treats they also lost stable access to even basic necessities. :surprised-pika:
Honestly I think Gorby was just a complete fucking idiot. He was like any bureaucrat or engineer who had extremely detailed and sophisticated knowledge of a highly specialized area of expertise, the mastery of which gives a massively inflated sense of ones general knowledge. He spent a huge amount of time in the west and, because he was extremely poorly educated in foundational Marxism and general economics, he bought the propaganda bullshit. I cant remember where I read it, but I remember reading he believed that if the USSR just adopted western style "democracy" the the USSR would be welcomed into the 'brotherhood of western nations' with open arms, and was completely shocked when Capital ripped the USSR apart like rabid wolves.
Already happening with the Oklahoma governor throwing a fit over the vaxxx mandate for National Guardsmen.
I thought that Covid was potentially going to trigger this either internationally or possibly within the US with a split of firmer borders between states/countries doing nothing to keep their constituents safe, and those that want to do something. Turns out pretty much all of them except a few countries wanted to do nothing at all, so there was never an issue
yes this vaccine mandate and all of coronavirus response has really revealed how this country is actually very disunited. Libs can't pretend everyone will "join together" in times of crisis anymore like everyone did to bomb brown people back in 00s and chuds just overtly want to kill their "removed" fellow citizens now. It is not a sustainable situation and it will break down eventually.
We saw glimmers of this during the pandemic lol
deleted by creator
Not really, the Soviet Union fell apart because of election interference from the west resulting in selling off vast swaths of publicly held industry in addition to the drain of the arms race to defend against western aggression.
This is probably an oversimplification and someone else can surely give a better answer than me.
Makes sense, so what could you compare the USA's collapse too?
I'd say it will look similar but instead of selling off assets internationally the US will implode by cannibalizing itself trying to contain China's economic influence, much like the Soviet Union couldn't maintain an arms race with the US we can't maintain an economic race with China, we already sold off all our production and all we have left is a financial capital bubble backed by a huge military budget and nukes.
I look at it like this. We are still living in the tail end afterglow of the movement that peaked in the 30's and 40's and was finally crushed in the 70's. Everything since the volker shock and stagflation has been prewar capital reasserting itself over the social democracy that the liberals had been driving. I see three outcomes here on out.
The first is the continued trend we have seen of capitalism reasserts itself only in a new more explicit form as capitalism enters into a fascist phase of accumulation through direct dispossession and proletarianization. In this situation the US re-industrializes as it recreates a domestic industrial working class and enters into a genuine imperial war mode. There are lots of aspects to this but tldr, capital successfully rises to meet the challenge of China and we all die of climate change.
The second is a complete collapse of the US as nativist and fascist elements clash with the remnants of the old order. The US system and empire falls apart under pressure, both explicit and implicit, from the rise of China. The US basically falls to a second tier state, sort of how the Europeans stand to the US now. In this scenario the real longterm outcome depends on China and their own internal class struggle. If the socialist elements win we might see a better future where climate change is averted and a better future for humanity is possible. If the capitalist elements win, well "you know the thing" as a wise man once said.
The third is a domestic resurgence of genuine working class energy and a drive toward socialism. I have no idea what this would look like, as it seems to unlikely based on history, but we are seeing a dramatic rise in labor militancy and socialist action. This would be the best of all possible worlds, but also is the one that requires the most work from us.
Mostly I just saw these posts and felt the need to mind vomit.
🐬 ☢️