No it isn’t, Marx specifically wrote towards the end of his life that no revolution was possible in the colonizing nations without a break of that relationship and a “few very bad years”
He definitely avoided the moralizing and blame game that settlers engaged in, but he came to roughly the same conclusion of the necessary path forward. Those inside the colonizing nations should organize as communists and fight their own imperialist regime and organize for peace, while those inside the colonized nations must struggle first and foremost against their colonizers.
Has a revolution ever happened when times were good and the Empire was at it's height? Seems intuitive that great change requires great sorrow to motivate that change. It's why ironically Britain might be the most likely anglo nation to radicalize given how fucked they are.
Well the key point here is that the break in the colonizing relation is what would cause the very bad years, and the point that the English working class had material interests in aligning with global imperialist capital and that their relative comfort was created via this extractive relationship with the world. Cut the colonizers off and they will eventually implode and the true class conflict will come to a head. Marx was barely starting to investigate in this direction when he passed, and Lenin continued his work to its logical end
Yes, the largest times of growth for socialist and communist parties after 1848 was during times of economic growth and expansion. If misery and poverty is what creates a self conscious working class then South Asia and Africa would be communist. Iraq would have become more communist after America's brutal invasion instead of more reactionary.
South Asia is predominantly socialist. There are strong socialist movements in Latin America and Africa as well. If not for imperialist interference and the collapse of the USSR most of these places would be communist.
Every Marxist-Leninist revolution has happened in poor colonized nations, none happened in rich core nations.
Poor and deteriorating conditions within a capitalist society is a prerequisite for revolution. It’s necessary but not sufficient, revolutionary consciousness and organized Marxist parties are also necessary
Which South Asian country is predominantly socialist? The control of some regions in India is left to socialist parties because they do not present a threat to the country at all and collaborate in making the country stronger and more attractive for foreign investment.
If not for imperialist interference and the collapse of the USSR most of these places would be communist.
There will always be imperial interference unless there is a revolution in the heart of capital. This is a given. It will always happen. Local collaborators will even invite invaders.
I never said imperialist bourgie dictatorships are going to suddenly stop doing imperialism on their own whim. I said that it is the duty of communists within imperialist nations to work towards destroying their own empire before all else. They need to be a fifth column and internal division, focused on annihilation of their own bourgeois state above all other concerns. The reason imperialism was so potent throughout the 20th century was because socialists within imperialist nations were social chauvinists and refused to do what was necessary. They formed the anarcho-Trotskyist-hippy anti-communist left and contented themselves with moral purity tests, attacking socialism, feeding into the red scare and fence sitting. This was all under the backdrop of unions being decimated by neoliberals, all radical movements being snuffed out, communism in the west being crushed. That mistake must not be repeated
At the time when Britain, France, Germany directly ruled the world, a revolution in those countries was necessarily also a revolution in their colonies.
Except we saw that did not happen on its own and the colonial relationship and extraction of value is still ongoing. The western empire still rules the world. Marx initially thought it would be possible for England to have a revolution during his life and then later came to the conclusion it would be impossible without first a break in the colonial imperialist relationship.
Thus it is not the first task for a communist party in a core nation to implement a communist revolution. The first task is to break their own empire and stand in solidarity with those outside of it fighting against it through revolutionary defeatism. Only then is it possible to have a communist revolution.
Appears it was actually Engels in a letter to Marx, but the two were much in agreement on this topic.
The business with Jones [3] is very disgusting. He has held a meeting here and spoken entirely along the lines of the new alliance. After this affair one is really almost driven to believe that the English proletarian movement in its old traditional Chartist form must perish completely before it can develop in a new, viable form. And yet one cannot foresee what this new form will look like. For the rest, it seems to me that Jones’s new move, taken in conjunction with the former more or less successful attempts at such an alliance, is really bound up with the fact that the English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable. The only thing that would help here would be a few thoroughly bad years, but since the gold discoveries these no longer seem so easy to come by
No it isn’t, Marx specifically wrote towards the end of his life that no revolution was possible in the colonizing nations without a break of that relationship and a “few very bad years”
He definitely avoided the moralizing and blame game that settlers engaged in, but he came to roughly the same conclusion of the necessary path forward. Those inside the colonizing nations should organize as communists and fight their own imperialist regime and organize for peace, while those inside the colonized nations must struggle first and foremost against their colonizers.
Has a revolution ever happened when times were good and the Empire was at it's height? Seems intuitive that great change requires great sorrow to motivate that change. It's why ironically Britain might be the most likely anglo nation to radicalize given how fucked they are.
Well the key point here is that the break in the colonizing relation is what would cause the very bad years, and the point that the English working class had material interests in aligning with global imperialist capital and that their relative comfort was created via this extractive relationship with the world. Cut the colonizers off and they will eventually implode and the true class conflict will come to a head. Marx was barely starting to investigate in this direction when he passed, and Lenin continued his work to its logical end
Yes, the largest times of growth for socialist and communist parties after 1848 was during times of economic growth and expansion. If misery and poverty is what creates a self conscious working class then South Asia and Africa would be communist. Iraq would have become more communist after America's brutal invasion instead of more reactionary.
South Asia is predominantly socialist. There are strong socialist movements in Latin America and Africa as well. If not for imperialist interference and the collapse of the USSR most of these places would be communist.
Every Marxist-Leninist revolution has happened in poor colonized nations, none happened in rich core nations.
Poor and deteriorating conditions within a capitalist society is a prerequisite for revolution. It’s necessary but not sufficient, revolutionary consciousness and organized Marxist parties are also necessary
Which South Asian country is predominantly socialist? The control of some regions in India is left to socialist parties because they do not present a threat to the country at all and collaborate in making the country stronger and more attractive for foreign investment.
There will always be imperial interference unless there is a revolution in the heart of capital. This is a given. It will always happen. Local collaborators will even invite invaders.
Laos, Vietnam, China.
I never said imperialist bourgie dictatorships are going to suddenly stop doing imperialism on their own whim. I said that it is the duty of communists within imperialist nations to work towards destroying their own empire before all else. They need to be a fifth column and internal division, focused on annihilation of their own bourgeois state above all other concerns. The reason imperialism was so potent throughout the 20th century was because socialists within imperialist nations were social chauvinists and refused to do what was necessary. They formed the anarcho-Trotskyist-hippy anti-communist left and contented themselves with moral purity tests, attacking socialism, feeding into the red scare and fence sitting. This was all under the backdrop of unions being decimated by neoliberals, all radical movements being snuffed out, communism in the west being crushed. That mistake must not be repeated
Wasn't mass starvation caused by potato crop failures a key component in the 1848 revolutions?
Pre 1848 and 1848 revolutions are not Marxist.
So which revolutions are you specifically referring to? I'm not disputing, just asking.
At the time when Britain, France, Germany directly ruled the world, a revolution in those countries was necessarily also a revolution in their colonies.
Except we saw that did not happen on its own and the colonial relationship and extraction of value is still ongoing. The western empire still rules the world. Marx initially thought it would be possible for England to have a revolution during his life and then later came to the conclusion it would be impossible without first a break in the colonial imperialist relationship.
Thus it is not the first task for a communist party in a core nation to implement a communist revolution. The first task is to break their own empire and stand in solidarity with those outside of it fighting against it through revolutionary defeatism. Only then is it possible to have a communist revolution.
I'm curious about the Marx break quote you've brought up a couple of times. What are you referring to?
Appears it was actually Engels in a letter to Marx, but the two were much in agreement on this topic.
https://snylterstaten.dk/letter-from-engels-to-marx-manchester-7th-october-1858/