Byzantium was in decline for seven centuries until the Ottomans pulled the plug. Rome was in decline for several centuries prior to its sacking.
Climate change and the accompanying plagues, droughts, famines, and calamities that accompany it might accelerate and exacerbate the state's capacity and willingness to respond to these crises, but all it might mean is that this is a new normal added to the reproleterization of American life.
I don't really have a point but it is just a thought that I (perhaps others) are going to have to accept that future, and that is a kind of new world I am unsure as to how to adapt to.
Overly optimistic counterpoint: in this era, everything seems to move faster than in the past. Germany rose, fell, rose again and fell again in less than a hundred years, for example. The USSR rose and fell in less than a hundred years too. Entire states can collapse in ridiculously short times (Syria for example). The US has already been in decline for a while, and all these compounding crises all at once might be enough of a push to destroy it.
That's not optimistic. The US state falling apart right now, with no left party at all, would be a massive disaster.
For us, sure. But it would be a net positive for the rest of the world unless we murder-suicide a few countries on the way out.
Hard to imagine something like that being a clean little implosion within our own borders.
There's still a sliver of hope, but that's all it is -- a sliver. I suppose you have to fight for that and steel yourself for the more likely outcomes.
We have more than a dozen nuclear-armed submarines out at sea right now, each with the capability to essentially destroy a continent. The collapse of this empire doesn't end well for anyone.
Libs always play the existence of previous apocalyptic feelings like a trump card about left overreaction, but European Christians approaching 1000AD didn't have weapons that could wipe out humanity.
The UK is still an empire in decline, they're also still one of the most powerful and wealthy countries on earth. This is where the US will end up.
It's very unlikely pax Americana is going to end any time soon. China is 20 years behind the US in terms of military technology innovation (something they can essentially never catch up on so long as the US still funds this stuff).
China has no real incentive for pax americana to end either, their recent military investment is mostly related to specific local concerns for them like Taiwan. China is a reserve currency within the IMF, they're on the security council.
The general consensus is just more regional economic powers. Automation is increasing a return to domestic manufacturing all over the world due to cheaper shipping costs. Renewable energy means less of a need to force oil markets open.
I promise you that the American decline won't take centuries. One point in The Long Twentieth Century is how the time the dominant world power has maintained it's position has been decreasing significantly throughout history, the height of the British empire only lasted a couple of hundred years. It looks like the US is on par to last about 100. We don't live in a time in which a decline of a state can linger over 300 years.
That last part isn't true. The UK and France still one of the most powerful countries in the world even though they've declines a ton since their peak.
There will be a president in 200 years still be talking about pax Americana and how great it must've felt to be president Bush.
But how much of that is because of their relationship with the US? They wouldn't have remained that powerful if they weren't a part of this American-centered nexus.
Both France and the UK has its own fairly powerful military. France maintains a relationship with African nation's only comparable to how the US treats latin america.
We don’t live in a time in which a decline of a state can linger over 300 years.
Definitely wouldn't say that, I think you're confusing correlation with causation. There's nothing about our time that precludes the possibility that a state that could last a thousand years (other than the whole global heat death thing).
Nah the US is a hilarious amount of money in debt and its living standards for citizens are directly tied to the petro-dollar which requires the whole world to stockpile dollars
The world in turn has to stockpile dollars because of the US military and the fact the US has over 900 military bases worldwide
Neoliberal economics has rotted out the base of society and this is percolating up into the superstructure
Information is instantaneous now and trade is basically instantaneous
When the US starts to collapse its gonna fall hard and fast much like the USSR
If we look at current fault lines and on how neoliberalism operates i'd imagine it would look something like 4-5 new countries with some areas as left behind wastelands
If you look at current cities like Detroit or Flint which have been left to rot or areas of Alabama where hookworm is thriving (a disease of extreme poverty) you could easily extrapolate that in an economic collapse in huge areas that eventually get ruled by extreme Christian militias
Hell the current Secretary of State is an evangelical Christian and the US hasnt hit real hard times yet. When hard times come to US most of the Christian rural areas will go fascist without battering an eyelid and you'll see a Christian fascism quite similar to Spain under Franco or Pre ww2 Poland under Pilzudski
During the height of the pandemic States were smuggling PPE equipment across state lines to hide them from the Federal gov
The cracks are already there and with Russia and China spending the last 6 years whittling down their dollar holdings and a looming economic catastrophe the US is running on borrowed time
There's a pretty good novel called The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
To keep it brief and spoiler free:
The near future US has a populist right wing, mostly ineffective neoliberal government
More fortunate people live in gated communities
Some live in gated company towns
But most of the US is a failed state like Somalia with incredible poverty and violence everywhere
We didn't even get to see the high point of america, we were the first generation to NOT see it though lol
I mean... it's socialism or barbarism, quite literally. The US's decline won't be a Soviet-style collapse into multiple states or lawlessness - that would most likely be the end of the world, given our military.
Absent socialism, it will be a further descent into the oligopoly we have now without the pretenses of freedom and democracy. Liberals in power are too scared to do something like go house to house confiscating guns - but an American Falange wouldn't. Mass deaths from hunger or war will be normalized, probably extrajudicial murder gets completely legalized.
Dude, whenever I think about US balkanisation I just end up thinking about who the hell is gonna end up getting nukes on their hands.
Arrighi put forward in The Long Twentieth Century that during the capitalist epoch, there has been a cycle that has repeated several times, of one hegemonic empire replacing another. Each time, the empire has risen out of the ashes of a previous one, using finance from the previous empire to establish a huge manufacturing base, surpassing the previous hegemon as it declines. Then, after a period of time, the new power runs out of new markets to exploit and switches from a trade/manufacturing economy, to one increasingly based on finance - using the money (gained from empire over decades and centuries) to make more money, rather than making money from products.
I believe he analyses the venetians, the Spanish, the dutch, and the British empire, as well as the American one, and they all follow this pattern.
Interestingly enough, he also asserts that each time the cycle of rise —> dominance —> decline has occurred, it has happened faster and faster, that is to say the empires have risen and fallen quicker each time.
The American economy has been extremely based on finance since the 70s, and they’ve definitely been in decline for some time. If the pattern Arrighi points out holds true, the American empire will fall hard and fast.
And one more ominous thing from Arrighi - he also shows that every time a hegemonic empire is falling, there have been huge, worldwide conflagrations of war and suffering to establish the successor! So that’s something to look forward to. Think WWI/WWII as the Brits were fading, Napoleonic Wars as the Dutch declined, and so on.
times like these I'm glad that a decade ago I fled into the wilderness and became a subsistence farmer
The dream...
Not sure if I'll be able to make it a reality, if I'm honest, though.
I do powerful hallucinogens every full moon and live a low carbon nomadic hippie lifestyle. You can just go outside and work on farms and eat the fruit and stuff.
it’s way better than capitalism, and you are in for a treat!
How to adapt to new mindsets? Put yourself in new environments. In addition, popular illicit drugs are actually good for inducing beneficial personality changes and improvements in subjective ratings of mental health through modifying neuroplasticity. Be very careful to stick to materialism. It’s generally safe. And extremely fun.
Begin switching to a vegan diet if you haven’t done so already. Oat/soy milk is delicious and if the entire world doesn’t get to own a refrigerator, neither do you, comrade. Also for all we know this “politics” stuff might just be fiber intake.
The greatest advantage materialists are going to have right now, psychologically, is to be able to see that the end of capitalism isn’t the end of the world.
We can see beyond capitalism and maintain unity and revolutionary optimism, and ultimately become the universal soldiers that we will need to be to protect humanity from extinction (and any more suicidal fascist plots)
considering how pretty much the only things that make life worth living for me are Treats, the end of civilization may as well be the end of the world for me
ye i mean in the past a civilizational collapse / "dark age" in the area of the dominant empire usually happens whenever the empire truly collapses as a grand scale, end of the bronze age, western roman empire, etc, so I'd imagine that'll happen with all the ancillary shit going on (climate change etc) People compare it to the western roman empire or the UK or whatever but I think it's probably gonna be like the end of the bronze age oopsies (fun fact huge parts of the world lost written language lmfao)
and specifically with the UK reference, I don't think that's similar because they can just be subsumed into the grander vision of the US in their decline. With the collapse of the US you've got all sorts of other shit to worry about and it's not like someone is just taking that slot unless China gets in on it, but i just dont see that happening yolo, probably more like bronze age where everything just collapses and then there's a period of "dark age" whatever that'll mean in the modern context, rather than a decline and rise of another power
Have you ever read Eric Cline's 1177BC? It's about the collapse of the Bronze Age. He wrote it as a historical/archaeological book, not overtly political, but reading it I kept thinking aha, and now imagine it's 2022AD...
Imagine being in England being too stupid to fix any of the Roman ruins that were slowly crumbling around you for 1000 years. Imagine 1000 years of not knowing how to fix an aqueduct that you rely on for water.
I don't mean "not" I mean literally can't. As in, nobody even knows how to do it and nobody has for centuries. Imagine if our technology was still from the 17th century and also nobody knew how to fix it when it broke so it just... stayed broken forever and became a ruin.
We absolutely can fix Flint by replacing the pipes, that's not a mystical unknown technology for us. Flint is just a matter of no political will to help the helpless.
Well obviously, morally Flint is much worse than Dark Ages London. I wasn't talking about how the English were morally worse than the Romans at building aqueducts for 1000 years.
ye actually, though id disagree that it isn't political, it has a pretty clear message about what he thinks of syrian refugees iirc
I think the US government is going to stay where it is. The 2nd Amendment has ironically made revolution much harder and more violent for the proletariat. It seems the people who most want to buy guns and use them on other people actually side with the tyrannical government in order to legally kill protestors, revolutionaries, rioters, terrorists, whatever word you prefer.
Now there's a layer of militias an prole revolution must fight through before it even gets to the first layer most other revolutions face first, the militarized police, and beyond that the military before finally reaching the political elite.
I don't think the left is strong enough to defeat that combined force, so I don't think the USA will fall to revolution, at least not a typical one. It's either long, slow decline if fascism is politically defeated, or, if the rising fascism that Trump's politics represent wins out, the USA will become a global supervillain of comic book proportions and will need to be defeated militarily as it reenacts the Iraq War on some other country, second time as farce.
And since I'm way off into speculation land, let me predict who would probably join a coalition against the USA that could beat the USA. I think the combined forces from Turkey, China, and Russia would be likely partners to beat the USA, who would probably ally with Japan and probably some European fascist states like Poland.
So my plan is to just move. To where, I don't know yet. I'm trying to figure out what won't be an absolute hellhole in 50 years that I can also afford to move to and live in.
I don’t disagree with your general point, but keep in mind there’s often been right wing militias for left revolutionaries to contend with as well as the bourgeois state (this was the case in the Russian rev for example).
Byzantium kinda had its ups and downs, but unlike the us, it was facing the slow grind of encroaching enemies. Even then, it wasn't until the fourth crusade that things collapsed. After that it was pretty much on life support, but still had its moments. These things about empires spending centuries in declines are more a narrative rather than an accurate reflection of history. It's true collapses rarely happen overnight - more like over decades, until the situation reaches a percolation point, and after that it's years or months...
I'm going off-grid. Once I get stable, I plan to help others pursue a life that can exist outside of the system. Skill swaps, farmers markets, and other living off the land type classes.
Turn on, tune in, drop out is alive and well at my house
reproleterization More like enserfment. Production depending on human labor or intellect is an ideal outcome of this ongoing crisis - it would mean we have some leverage for change.
