You don't need to accept all the points or even the overall point of the book. The primary reason most of us want people to read and understand it in detail is to get people to focus on the American struggle as more of a strategic struggle as part of a wider whole. The very concept that revolution in the heartland of capitalism, the most valuable and important, the core of the beast, would ever be possible -- it is extremely unrealistic. That however does not mean that struggle, pressure and anti-imperialist action within it is not incredibly useful in the wider worldwide fight.
Our victories -- practically all of our victories -- occur in the periphery, the so-called "third world".
We want American leftists to have a greater understand of this, of the impact on the global struggle that their activities can have. Anti-imperialism is the single most important effort of the world today because anti-imperialist successes have genuinely resulted in the emancipation of countries from imperial rule. It has freed millions and millions of people.
You don't have to accept the concept that revolution is never possible in the US. But you should take away from it the points comparing the minorities of America and that of the struggles of the periphery, and you should take away from it a far greater understand of the need to be anti-imperialist. Every country we free in the world is a tentacle of the beast cut off, if we cut off enough tentacles we may one day be able to kill the beast once and for all.
You don't have to subscribe to this argument for third-worldism to understand it has incredible value. It is an argument that promotes the radical acceptance of anti-imperialism, this is why it is pushed so much.
Well maybe then it would be better to read books that actually take that point of view and not the weird online third worldist POV. I'd say that the worst thing about the praxis of the people who buy into third-worldism is that they have a very counterproductive view of praxis. Like, do as many anti-imperialist marches with 5 people as you want, set up weird blog posts, whatever, you're never gonna achieve anything if you don't actually pay attention to class struggle that concerns a big chunk of the population, because no one will care, and if no one cares, then you will never manage to be relevant, and no one will care when the cops show up either. This viewpoint diminishes the value of broad class struggle in first world countries and particularly the US. This is bad. And it is evidenced by the fact that literally none of the people who have followed this advice by heart have ever managed to do anything remotely resembling even inching close to a minor victory (not talking about 3rd world people, just 1st world third worldists).
First of all, thank you for actually engaging in a productive manner and not just calling everyone who disagrees with you an idiot, like in some of the other reactions I've got here.
I don't live in the US, so for my personal engagement with politics it's irrelevant, but it saddens me to see that comrades give up on 3 quarters of their population. That’s defeatism in your own country, and it weakens the support you can give to revolutionaries in other nations.
Anti-imperialism is the single most important effort of the world today because anti-imperialist successes have genuinely resulted in the emancipation of countries from imperial rule.
This is true if you're in the third world but if you're in the US and you only limit yourself to solidarity with different peoples, you won't achieve anything. If you want to engage in a large scale struggle you'll need to talk about the issues close to home to the proletariat that you're organising. Why are they living in poverty? Why do their lives suck? And then organise on the basis of their suffering. You have to start from their lived experience (sorry if that phrase sounds liberal), that's what all succesfull revolutionaries always have done.
My own party always starts with doing surveys in the working class neighbourhoods about what people think is the most important issue that affects them. Before we did that, we only had a couple of hundrerds of members and we were irrelevant in every sense of the word. Since we switched in our approach we steadily growed and now we're a major political player.
I think that optimism is nice but ultimately unrealistic. We've seen several hundreds years so far of failure to achieve a revolution within the core, not a single one has succeeded. Not just the USA, all of them across Europe, Canada, Aus etc. This isn't caused by a lack of effort and it's not going to be resolved by simply trying all the same basic strategies (such as mass line) that have been tried.
I believe it is more realistic for communists to simply cripple the core in such a way that projects elsewhere in the world may flourish. Then the core can simply collapse as its power shrinks. It has demonstrated time and time again the ability to prevent the efforts of the left.
This is not a defeatist attitude, it is a "we should be focusing on a different strategy as the existing ones have proven uneffective" attitude.
Let's accept the premisse: the imperial core has been too strong to allow a revolution. You'd still have to grapple with the fact that the relative power of the imperial core is shrinking in comparison with the rest of the world, which in turn would make it possibel again. (Accept if you're talking about absolute power instead of relative, but then the amounts of places where it's possible has been shrinking and there's probably nowhere left.)
Nowhere left? What do you mean? We have ongoing currently active revolutions in more than one country. Phillipines has had an operating people's war for decades? The Tigray region just got plunged into war? Lebanon is on the cusp? Dozens of ML parties are actively building in Africa? Iraq and Iran are probabilities in the future. And these are just the obvious battles to come, somewhat more peaceful movements are to come across south america and south east asia.
Did I just misunderstand you? There's a lot out there.
What I tried to say, but didn't come over apparently, is that if you say that it has been impossible to wage a revolution in the imperial core so far, that implies that the relative weakening of the core makes revolution possible again. When for example China surpasses the US and becomes the new hegemon, the US is, by definition, no longer the core. Thus revoltion becomes possible again. But, this rests on the premisse that you were talking about relative power (in comparison to other countries). If, on the other hand, you say that absolute power prevents revolution, then it doesn't matter that China overtakes the US, because in absolute terms the power of the US remains the same: the CIA is just as efficient as before, and firepower of the US military is just as potent. Thus, revolution in the former core remains impossible. The logical implication of reasoning in terms of absolute power instead of relative power is that because of the endless growth which capitalism implies, all capitalist nations have a growing absolute power, and thus, it would logically follow that as time progresses revolution becomes less likely everywhere.
Edit: My point is that by your logic you have to accept one of the following statements: (1) revolution is becoming more likely in the core, because it's relative power shrinks (2) revolution is becoming less likely everywhere in the world, because the absolute power of the capitalist class and their states grows.
You don't need to accept all the points or even the overall point of the book. The primary reason most of us want people to read and understand it in detail is to get people to focus on the American struggle as more of a strategic struggle as part of a wider whole. The very concept that revolution in the heartland of capitalism, the most valuable and important, the core of the beast, would ever be possible -- it is extremely unrealistic. That however does not mean that struggle, pressure and anti-imperialist action within it is not incredibly useful in the wider worldwide fight.
Our victories -- practically all of our victories -- occur in the periphery, the so-called "third world".
We want American leftists to have a greater understand of this, of the impact on the global struggle that their activities can have. Anti-imperialism is the single most important effort of the world today because anti-imperialist successes have genuinely resulted in the emancipation of countries from imperial rule. It has freed millions and millions of people.
You don't have to accept the concept that revolution is never possible in the US. But you should take away from it the points comparing the minorities of America and that of the struggles of the periphery, and you should take away from it a far greater understand of the need to be anti-imperialist. Every country we free in the world is a tentacle of the beast cut off, if we cut off enough tentacles we may one day be able to kill the beast once and for all.
You don't have to subscribe to this argument for third-worldism to understand it has incredible value. It is an argument that promotes the radical acceptance of anti-imperialism, this is why it is pushed so much.
Well maybe then it would be better to read books that actually take that point of view and not the weird online third worldist POV. I'd say that the worst thing about the praxis of the people who buy into third-worldism is that they have a very counterproductive view of praxis. Like, do as many anti-imperialist marches with 5 people as you want, set up weird blog posts, whatever, you're never gonna achieve anything if you don't actually pay attention to class struggle that concerns a big chunk of the population, because no one will care, and if no one cares, then you will never manage to be relevant, and no one will care when the cops show up either. This viewpoint diminishes the value of broad class struggle in first world countries and particularly the US. This is bad. And it is evidenced by the fact that literally none of the people who have followed this advice by heart have ever managed to do anything remotely resembling even inching close to a minor victory (not talking about 3rd world people, just 1st world third worldists).
First of all, thank you for actually engaging in a productive manner and not just calling everyone who disagrees with you an idiot, like in some of the other reactions I've got here.
I don't live in the US, so for my personal engagement with politics it's irrelevant, but it saddens me to see that comrades give up on 3 quarters of their population. That’s defeatism in your own country, and it weakens the support you can give to revolutionaries in other nations.
This is true if you're in the third world but if you're in the US and you only limit yourself to solidarity with different peoples, you won't achieve anything. If you want to engage in a large scale struggle you'll need to talk about the issues close to home to the proletariat that you're organising. Why are they living in poverty? Why do their lives suck? And then organise on the basis of their suffering. You have to start from their lived experience (sorry if that phrase sounds liberal), that's what all succesfull revolutionaries always have done.
My own party always starts with doing surveys in the working class neighbourhoods about what people think is the most important issue that affects them. Before we did that, we only had a couple of hundrerds of members and we were irrelevant in every sense of the word. Since we switched in our approach we steadily growed and now we're a major political player.
I think that optimism is nice but ultimately unrealistic. We've seen several hundreds years so far of failure to achieve a revolution within the core, not a single one has succeeded. Not just the USA, all of them across Europe, Canada, Aus etc. This isn't caused by a lack of effort and it's not going to be resolved by simply trying all the same basic strategies (such as mass line) that have been tried.
I believe it is more realistic for communists to simply cripple the core in such a way that projects elsewhere in the world may flourish. Then the core can simply collapse as its power shrinks. It has demonstrated time and time again the ability to prevent the efforts of the left.
This is not a defeatist attitude, it is a "we should be focusing on a different strategy as the existing ones have proven uneffective" attitude.
Let's accept the premisse: the imperial core has been too strong to allow a revolution. You'd still have to grapple with the fact that the relative power of the imperial core is shrinking in comparison with the rest of the world, which in turn would make it possibel again. (Accept if you're talking about absolute power instead of relative, but then the amounts of places where it's possible has been shrinking and there's probably nowhere left.)
Nowhere left? What do you mean? We have ongoing currently active revolutions in more than one country. Phillipines has had an operating people's war for decades? The Tigray region just got plunged into war? Lebanon is on the cusp? Dozens of ML parties are actively building in Africa? Iraq and Iran are probabilities in the future. And these are just the obvious battles to come, somewhat more peaceful movements are to come across south america and south east asia.
Did I just misunderstand you? There's a lot out there.
What I tried to say, but didn't come over apparently, is that if you say that it has been impossible to wage a revolution in the imperial core so far, that implies that the relative weakening of the core makes revolution possible again. When for example China surpasses the US and becomes the new hegemon, the US is, by definition, no longer the core. Thus revoltion becomes possible again. But, this rests on the premisse that you were talking about relative power (in comparison to other countries). If, on the other hand, you say that absolute power prevents revolution, then it doesn't matter that China overtakes the US, because in absolute terms the power of the US remains the same: the CIA is just as efficient as before, and firepower of the US military is just as potent. Thus, revolution in the former core remains impossible. The logical implication of reasoning in terms of absolute power instead of relative power is that because of the endless growth which capitalism implies, all capitalist nations have a growing absolute power, and thus, it would logically follow that as time progresses revolution becomes less likely everywhere.
Edit: My point is that by your logic you have to accept one of the following statements: (1) revolution is becoming more likely in the core, because it's relative power shrinks (2) revolution is becoming less likely everywhere in the world, because the absolute power of the capitalist class and their states grows.