The problem with this is how stratified and disjointed American society is. Yeah, a lot of people in the US have something to lose. It's pretty common to have a fairly normal life with access to plumbing, clean water, and a high school education.
But for people like a homeless black family in a poor area of town, society has already collapsed. They already live in a fascist police state. Not to pull out the Stalin quote, but it's hard for me to imagine what freedoms are being enjoyed by those currently in extreme poverty.
Could it get worse? Yeah and it probably will.
If your position is, "bring on the US collapse; maybe it'll ease the boot off the Palestinians' necks," all I can say is that I hope you're right and I hope you're prepared.
If your position is, "bring on the US collapse; I mean how much worse can it actually get?" you probably have no clue what you're talking about unless you've personally spent time in a war zone or lived through Katrina or something like that.
One of the things that struck me while studying the Russian revolution is just how much of an academic relationship we communists have to major periods of historical change. From our position it's way easier to imagine ourselves in the room with Lenin trying to make a tough decision on agricultural policy than it is to imagine stretching your food store through a region-wide famine and crop failure, or watching your family all catch cholera, or getting shot by the white army...
Yes finally, my family didn't have any for a fucking week in that heat
I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I've lived in Houston, I can imagine how miserable it was.
Yeah I was just trying to say the "how much worse can it get?" People are being myopic, coming from someone who has been to the poor parts of India, Nepal, and Mexico, and China pre economic surge.
Lots of those places are bad because of American and western colonialism and imperialism in the first place. Focusing only on American domestic situation is chauvinism and is the actual privileged position, aping and pretending to be thinkin of the littlefolk when it's really just nativist masturbation
FYI I grew up in Egypt and lived through the Arab Spring and I want the chickens to come home to roost. I live in the US now and will happily support a collapse of this shithole
coming from someone who has been to the poor parts of India, Nepal, and Mexico, and China
Very interesting, could we know why?
deleted by creator
Eh y? I was guessing u went on a gap year or sthing
Oh I just didn't wanna leave any identifying info, it was mostly visiting friends/family
Why does this imagination mind game mean anything at all? We're not "in an academic relationship" we are self-conscious proletariat aware of our world-historical role. It is our job to destroy the imperialist machine from within. The navel-gazing is irrelevant. One way or the other the only way forward for humanity is the destruction and implosion of the US.
It means you have to tread carefully when organizing, and that it's important not to be callous about hardship.
we are self-conscious proletariat aware of our world-historical role.
We're a bunch of dorks on a tiny niche internet forum that's mostly goofy commie memes.
imagine stretching your food store through a region-wide famine and crop failure, or watching your family all catch cholera, or getting shot by the white army…
If hardship is necessary for a better future, it's necessary. But people should contemplate what that hardship will actually look like and understand what they're actually advocating.
Socialism is a mass project: educating the masses and gaining their support. People will endure hardship if it's necessary and they understand why it's necessary, but they'll fight if it's imposed from above with indifference or flippancy.
My position is that my hoping one way or another probably doesn't have much influence on the outcome.
Man I should really tone down my posting or it might actually cause the American state to collapse. Thanks, that was close one
It's not something you can ever be ready for. There's not much to do ruight now except organize where you can and try to find humor amidst the horror.
there will be no revolutionary potential until the conditions worsen, and their worsening is inevitable, so
it can always get worse
it can always get better
it's never profound to point this out
"it can always get worse" is usually being used to shut people up
so on the rare occasion that it's not, don't be surprised when people don't respond to it well
At some point worsening conditions just results in the US rehashing evil shit it's already turned into an art form. Roving bands of vigilantes rounding up undesirables and committing unspeakable violence against them? What little public safety nets exist being completely shredded in favor of a little more profit for some finance vampire? Living under constant threat of global nuclear war?
That's just us replaying our greatest hits. The victims of the last rounds are mostly still around, they can tell you all about how fascist this country has been for its entire existence. Rhetoric among the people reflects the conditions they live under, not the other way around.
If you're in a house that's on fire, and all the exits are locked, yes, it will get worse... But do you expect people to be excited when you say team blue is fighting hard to make sure you will be have access to buy a fire extinguisher with a 50% tax credit 2 years from now?
I think the point is more that the house is not yet on fire. Currently for most Americans it's more like the house has a leaky roof and it smells of dead rats in the walls. We're nowhere near the house on fire yet.
No but I probably still would not support any movement aiming to hasten collapse, because people with the indifference to bring about what that entails could not be trusted to lead in any humanistic way
Who’s trying to make the collapse come faster? It’s not like accelerationism is a strategy or something, it’s just a reasonable accurate view that helps one cope.
If there was such a movement trying to destroy America from within it would be incredibly based. Unfortunately for us, no such thing exists and instead it’s all chauvinist squishy libs doing nothing and acting like they know the path forward when they are clueless
chauvinist squishy libs doing nothing and acting like they know the path forward when they are clueless
I'm clueless too, but maybe I am a lib.
Do you know what the words “revolutionary defeatism” means and do you believe it is your duty as a socialist?
Yeah, are you suggesting as socialists we should do whatever we can to help the status quo because things could get worse? Should we vote Biden and try to prevent capitalism’s crises? We already do espouse what could be done reformistically for propaganda purposes. The crisis is terminal, I don’t know what you want.
Do you know what the words “revolutionary defeatism”
I don't think the context here is the same as when Lenin coined that term. He was largely advocating for defeatism in Russia because he thought weakening the Czar would enable a communist revolution within the country, which it did. That's not going to happen in the US, if anything our empire weakening will just make people here more reactionary.
You can, and clearly do, and I agree, support socialists within the Imperial Core trying to hasten the Empire's collapse any way we can (which isn't much honestly) as anti-imperialist praxis, but I don't thing the term "revolutionary defeatism" is really applicable to this strategy since it's not going to lead to a revolution, not here anyway.
I mean the second poster isn’t wrong. Public schools in America are badly underfunded outside of select suburbs that lean more white. And I say select suburbs because I remember living in the US and even some of the whiter districts had iffy funding. The white and rich districts had the top public schools.
Yes but right now the worst public schools are still where the kids can depend on for possibly their sole meal of the day, socialization, donated goods, free life enriching activities, daycare when parents are working, respite from abusive environments, etc. even if all of these are sub par. This completely collapsing would be manifold worse than it still running on fumes.
Public schools have fired lunch room workers for giving kids with outstanding lunch bills food. What you're referencing is exactly as frogmanfromlake said it is - some schools do that , many already do not.
It's not that that doesn't occur, but currently it occurs in a small portion of the many school districts in America and the prominent coverage of these is due to the outrageousness of it happening anywhere at all. When that becomes actually widespread the picture is unfathomably worse than it is now.
currently it occurs in a small portion of the many school districts in America
Currently 8 out of 50 states provide free school lunches.
Universally yeah, but nearly all states still have a subsidy that guarantees breakfast and/or lunch to the poorest students.
socialization
Maybe I just went to an especially awful school, but I can honestly say that my days in public school were easily the worst years of my childhood.
We rarely did group projects, the teachers regularly encouraged us to be ‘quiet as a snowflake’, and when she came into a room full of talking students, she was unhappy. One student got me in serious trouble by falsely reporting me for swearing. The few friends that I made either moved away, lost interest in me, or turned out to be horrible people. There was one kid whom I mistook for a friend for a few weeks until his brother thought that it would be funny to squirt a lighter full of water at me and say that he was going to burn me. Then my ‘friend’ pushed me on the ground and told me not to even come near his house anymore. I was in such a state of shock that I hid myself in my room as soon as I got home, and I told nobody about it until years later. (I once mentioned in passing to my parents that my school kicked out somebody, and for some reason they would not leave me the fuck alone until I said more about that.)
Admittedly, there were times when I acted shitty too, like throwing pebbles at others for fun, and I thoughtlessly told somebody that he was going to Hell just for disobeying the teacher, but at least I felt guilty about how I misbehaved. Whatever the case, I learned from my mistakes by acting more reticent.
Then years later, when I said on a forum (the Penny Arcade one, in case somebody cares) that I didn’t consider socializing an important part of school, somebody responded by calling me “[insert ableist slur here]”… it should have been a sign that maybe something in my childhood went horribly wrong, but nope, he instantly concluded that I must have been the problem, which is so hideously lazy that I can’t even begin to describe it. Americans are very antisocial as a people.
