MZT says that first we must analyze the primary contradiction in a society, from which all other contradictions build from.
My thought is that American working class do not revolt because our lifestyle is subsidized by the global poor. Of course there are impoverished workers (and lumpen) within America, but they are dissuaded by revolutionary organization because of this neocolonial dependence.
And I don't just mean "treats" although that's a big part of it. Many basic essentials are produced through the global supply chain and most people rely on income from companies who plunder the global south.
The financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy from neoliberal politics is the culmination of this. Why when workers made gains against industrial capitalists, production was moved to the global south.
I'm sure this has been discussed before by proper scholars, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'm just reading through On Contradiction now.
Wanting to improve material conditions for people in the imperial core can make things worse for people outside of it
I think it's more the inverse, that improving conditions in the global south would lead to degradation of the imperial core.
Workers in the core CAN improve their situation without exacting more from the global poor. We could get concessions from the American bourgeoisie, but somehow a sizeable percent of the population doesn't even want that. We could also build mutual aid and dual power to imrpove conditions in the core.
It is the ability of finance economy that allows the bourgeoisie to punish workers for trying to make gains, but those gains can be made. Finance has a remarkable track record at dividing workers. The idea of "owning your suburban home is the American dream" was a very effective way to divide the proles. Tying people's housing (as well as their 401ks, retirement, etc) to success of the finance industry turned many people into wanna-be-bourgeoisie.
You're right of course that brings us to the difference between demsocs and marxists. Demsocs would like to work within the system, while Marxists demand that new, equitable systems be built. But leftist movement is pretty far away from building our own Soviets.
yeah I think we're already extracting as much as we possibly can from the global south.
it's a bit stupid but this scene from a movie I loved as a kid always came to mind when it comes to the imperial proletariat wanting more of the share of the stolen loot. They do sort of have a point that it was them who did the violence to get the global souths money but also that's money that is stolen.
There's an argument to be made that colonialism is the primary contradiction within the US, but otherwise imperialism is the hegemonic global force holding down the working classes.
Yes but global forces holding down the working class is not an internal contradiction. Mao's emphasis was that that the internal contradiction of a society will determine the nature of it's external ones. Imperialist countries profiting off the global south is not a contradiction in and of itself. What is a contradiction is that the wealthiest nation in the history of the world still has unhoused people, lack of proper medical care for most people, unemployment, food insecurity, etc. Our bourg masters can't even properly bribe the proletarians.
I think our reliance on treats can account for the lack of class consciousness, as InfuziSporg pointed out in the comments below, it leads to people thinking of themselves as consumers rather than workers. I think deindustrialization and the service economy go hand in hand with this. Most people realize their job is some level of bullshit, or at the least has a large amount of bullshit attached to it. We lack productive work in this country, so most of us have no value in our identity as workers.
When the global south unifies against the imperial core, shit’s gonna get lit af. I think this is the best prospect for the destruction of capitalism within our lifetimes. The world beyond the imperial core seems vibrant and rapidly progressing while the imperial core itself stagnates and collapses.
Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina are in preliminary talks for a Latin American and Caribbean currency. Lula has been vocal about ending the Cuban embargo, the cruelty of it. Hard to be a :bloomer: but Latin America seems to be on the coolest track.
I imagine a world where Cuba was allowed to flourish without an embargo and become so sad. :sadness-abysmal:
I here would like to point out how well Cuba has done with a cruel and crushing embargo.
That is the :bloomer: vibe. Thanks for helping me remember the good
Consider that Cuba has, with a cruel embargo, kept its passenger rail network alive, unlike Mexico, which privatized and abandoned the entire thing in the 90s. Cuba has also led the world in medical research.
I think the nature of the struggle will mostly just change although the conditions will be objectively more hopeful. Capitalism always adapts and moves to where it will be most successful and there have always been dusks whether its Britain or Japan and Germany or the United States. It's good to feel hopeful about it but I think it is also important to keep in mind the objective conditions that capitalism moving into the third world is not in and of itself and indication that communism is coming.
I don't have a complete answer but I know that part of it is that the majority of people in the imperial core undrstand themselves as consumers, rather than as wage laborers.
You can have a core that exploits the colonies or periphery without the working class in the core making clear net gains from it. The distribution is mostly set by the ruling class in the core.
Regardless of whether the working class in the imperial core has a net favorable position, and regardless of whether they have enough insight to realize this, they have a story they are told about the fundamental justice of the system and the majority of them believe it, for whatever reason.
he majority of people in the imperial core undrstand themselves as consumers, rather than as wage laborers.
Very important, but this is not a material condition. It is more of the superstructure that informs the base.
The distribution is mostly set by the ruling class in the core.
Herein lies the contradiction.
That's what China is doing right now and they seem to be making a half-decent job of it all things considered.
Marx was basically just wrong about the pre-conditions of socialism (rare L) needing an industrial capitalist base. The actual successful socialist revolutions were done in non-industrial societies. Unfortunately, we can't model ourselves exactly off China and Cuba because they had largely rural economies.
The primary contradiction within the imperial core is undoubtedly imperialism. I can not stress enough that the principal enemy of communists of the imperial core is monopoly capitalists and any gains we can make to defeat them is priority number one. Every domestic win against the monopoly capitalists is two wins for communists in the periphery.
With this our tactics should be particularly clear. Our goals are not a class collaborationist end, but all class struggle will involve making alliances across strict class lines. In the struggle against monopoly capitalism we will need help from the middle and lower capitalists, those who are being crushed under the weight of monopoly capitalism. I think understanding that this unity can be made is tactically important, but it also means we have to be careful of who leads our movements. We espouse proletarian ideology and although it's easy to have movements get captured by petty bourgeois ideology, our efforts to maintain a proletarian basis for class struggle will ultimately determine our success
Sorry I got caught up on a couple different things, but ultimately we have to do what we can to struggle against the monopoly capitalists, and in the process our relationship to the non monopoly capitalists will change and we will begin a different stage of struggle. 21st century fascism is about capturing the hearts and minds of the non monopoly capitalists and we will have to be particularly careful and clear about our tactics around them, but for the moment being they are not the principle enemy.
The primary contradiction within the imperial core is undoubtedly imperialism
Yes, but imperialism has changed significantly than say the time on Lenin. I'm starting to think we should frame modern imperialism as the marriage between the finance, military, and energy industries. The true three branches of the American oligarchy.
In the struggle against monopoly capitalism we will need help from the middle and lower capitalists, those who are being crushed under the weight of monopoly capitalism
A take I don't see often, but it is definitely true in the imperial core. We have too many petit bourg or wanna be bourg or labor aristocrats or whatever. I think this is effective if we focus on the 3 monopoly capital industries I mentioned above. Rent is too high on your small business, that's the fault of finance guys jacking your rent while the electric company hikes prices.
I wonder though how you balance the needs of workers getting organized against the desires of the petit bourg? Unionization is good for workers, but higher pay and benefits is bad for the petit bourg. There's a reason we call them small business tyrants.
I would also add that if courting the "middle ground" is good, then we need to court the lumpenprole who have already been squeezed out of normal capitalist society.
I agree w your assessment. Trying to engage in a true proletarian revolution is laughable in the face of the large middle class, but the conditions for one can be worked towards. Historically there have been issues with labor representing petty bourgeois interests of farmers and such and losing their touch w the masses and very quickly dissipating. I think that what is needed is a broad united front, uniting the oppressed nations and nationalities within the United States with those struggling under monopoly capitalism, while maintaining at the same time a strong core involving functions such as a people's army.
This is where my analysis reaches it's limit as any further conjecture is just the rambling of a person without specific material evidence but I personally see virtue in the idea of maoist and syndicalist approaches to whittling away at the state through dual power and trying to reconnect people to community in the present, representing an alternative life path to the obvious doom waiting for us at the end of the capitalistic one; instead of saying revolutionary suicide and preaching a pie in the sky, we should be advocating the building of communism in the present and practicing what we preach proving in real time to people at large that this we are not simply an idealist movement. edit* i guess i should add that essentially organizing is two fold: dual power to weaken the grip of the strength, and political power to force demands of the state.
On the lumpenproletariat I think it's important to note that like all socioeconomic categories in a class society, the lumpen have proletarian and bourgeois class elements. Inherent to the lumpenproletariat class position is a betrayal of consciousness similar to what class traitors who join the military and police suffer from, however unlike them the lumpenproletariat are not distinctly aligned with the bourgeois. Courting members of the lumpenproletariat would mean finding and advancing specifically the lumpen with proletarian class interests and not wasting your time with the backwards elements w anti proletarian class interests. Imo it's less a matter of should we or should we not and more so to what extent do the specific conditions of the lumpen lend themselves towards a proletarian or bourgeois class interest.
without specific material evidence but I personally see virtue in the idea of maoist and syndicalist approaches to whittling away at the state through dual power and trying to reconnect people to community in the present
This is essentially what the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords did in the 1960s. Reading about them (and the Rainbow coalition) is my best source of :bloomer: material. The Community Breakfast program from the BPP and the Garbage offensive/Hospital offensive are perfect examples of direct action that engage the community and show how communal action leads to material improvements. I have been meaning to get off my ass and try to get a "garbage offensive" going in my home town's poorer area that has a ton of litter. Like just communists walking around and cleaning up the city is a powerful statement, but eventually I'd like to shit like fixing potholes or more mutual aid.
As conditions decay for the petit bourg and labor aristocrats, hopefully we will have these mutual aid systems in place to catch them and radicalize them. If we don't, then Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson will catch them and radicalize them.
And your comments on lumpen are very intriguing, hadn't thought about that before. I don't know exactly what the "how" is yet, but I'm sure Housing activists are a good place to start.
definitely the same here and the direct action and mutual aid of the BPP etc is something that i can feel sorely missing from the world, even if i understand that it is more so overdetermined by historical conditions than "efforts of the lefts" or whatever.
something i think is particularly interesting and completely missing from the communist playbook that has historically been a significant point of class struggle is the demands for immediate relief. if you take a look at CPUSA's heyday in the ~30's they had begun to develop essentially American soviets as their mass tactics - at the time called "unemployment councils". but one critical element that should imo always be mentioned with mutual aid is that our job is not to share the poverty but to take back society from the capitalist state and immediate relief is the tactic to do that. immediate relief is essentially organizing people to demand relief from corporations for basic necessities and you can see it in the demands for protests like the Ford Hunger March that was organized by the CPUSA.
and its totally understandable that getting started is really the hardest part. i think also perhaps it might be good to try to get in touch with other like minded people so you are both not shouldering the entirety of the burden on yourself (which is asking for hurt) and also to have some community and accountability with your community. simultaneously i think you would have a lot of success even just going around talking to people and asking them about what problems they are facing in their daily lives and organizing around the issues that seem to be ubiquitous and would therefore maximize the effectiveness of your work. wishing you luck and don't beat yourself up too hard (but a little bit is okay) about getting started!
Thank you. My goal is to get more involved with DSA and see if they are open to the Mass Line tactics you laid out. And if not move on from there to a more radical org or something else.
good plan. getting active and staying active is the most important thing! also last thing to note is that many socialist organizations in the US today are propaganda orgs and not direct action orgs, so a lot of the ground work for what needs to be done in the present day is still semi untreaded ground which can be discouraging but I think that just makes the work that needs to be done all the more important.
It's climate. Continuing to let the rich do whatever they want is going to destroy the entire planet.
Not only do I think it's the most acute contradiction in the imperial core, but it's the most powerful point to organize around - I think the only hope of revolution in the imperial core in the near future is to push this point hard.
I'm not really sure I understand you. Imperialism sucks and is evil, but isn't really contradictory as many workers in the imperial core, maybe even most, benefit from imperialism more than they suffer.
I also really don't understand where you're coming from suggesting I'm arguing to fight for climate without class consciousness - in fact quite the opposite I'm not sure where in my comment I suggested otherwise. I'm saying the blatant contradiction that letting the rich do what they want is something that destroys the Earth, which is something that affects all workers. This is an animating, radicalizing contradiction that can be leveraged to push for an overthrow of the ownership class primarily because liberal reformism cannot solve it.
which is something that affects all workers
I think the problem is it does not affect all workers evenly. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change outside the imperial core, Syria, Pakistan, any island nation, etc. But the US especially will be insulated from the worst impacts of climate change due to it's geography as well as people having the wealth to mitigate it. Essentially I'm worried that most Americans will ignore climate change until it's too late.
Of course resource extraction is inherently linked to imperialism, but I wonder if it's one of the contradictions that arises from the larger contradiction of capitalist imperialism.
In battle, one army is victorious and the other is defeated, both the victory and the defeat are determined by internal causes. The one is victorious either because it is strong or because of its competent generalship, the other is vanquished either because it is weak or because of its incompetent generalship; it is through internal causes that external causes become operative.
Very interested in this line of thought.
