lmao this is such a Hexbear post. you really cannot find it anywhere else on the internet

It depends on how fast America can rebuild its own supply chain. If the Global South can form their own alternative economic bloc that decouples from the dollar, then there is very little reason to export to America.

When countries export stuff to places like China, they can actually get real, tangible things in return. When you export to America, you get junk papers in return. For now these junk papers are highly desirable, because you need them to purchase energy/food and pay back your debt, but would you still want to obtain junk papers when you no longer need them?

With so much of US consumer products dependent on foreign imports (seriously, name a Made in America product at your home, and even then, how many of its components are actually locally made), it will ultimately depend on what America can offer to the world that is attractive enough that other countries would want to sell their stuff to you. Hospitals, schools etc. still need supplies, many of which America no longer make. Maybe China can ship some humanitarian aid to America or something.

I think America can still sell fossil fuel and food, but those are fairly low value added goods and not nearly enough to sustain a high income economy. The country isn’t going to starve or anything, but it will no longer be able to get cheap consumer products like it used to.

Does anyone know if Project 2025 has a Russian connection behind it?

Honestly “Project [number]” is such a Soviet/Russian way of naming a project/plan, and rather uncommon in the American lingo, that I find it hard to believe that the GOP is naming it this way without Russia behind it as a consultant/mastermind or something.

Socialism can indeed reindustrialize fairly quickly, but it is also contingent on how fast can the landlord/rentier class (i.e. finance capitalists) be rooted out. The purge and the civil war after the Bolshevik Revolution was extremely bloody, and so was Mao’s land reform - both of which were preconditions to neutralize the ability of feudal landlords to mount opposition against industrialization.

Let me just give you an example: with so much of the American retirement/pension fund being tied to the stock market, good luck trying to take out the financial sector. You’re gonna get a whole lot of reactionaries who would fight tooth and nail to oppose seeing their money evaporates. This is not to say it can’t be done, but it’s going to be bloody.

The US empire is unique in that it is the world’s first hegemon/empire that operates as a global debtor, whereas previous empires have all been global creditors. This means that the US simply prints money to get what it wants from the rest of the world (using “debt” that it will never have to repay), without having to build up a robust industrial core to serve a base to expand its imperialist ambitions.

So it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens if the dollar can no longer be weaponized.

It took 30 years for T-72 to finally get its revenge.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the Soviet made T-72 tanks suffered a severe reputation loss, when thousands of Iraqi T-72M (the export, stripped down version of T-72A) laid burning in the desert. Even though only a fraction of them were actually knocked out by M1A1 Abrams, and most of the losses were due to US air superiority, a well organized propaganda campaign was run to depict Soviet military equipments as so overhyped that they turned out to be complete trash.

It was a total propaganda victory for the American military industrial complex. In fact, the reputation of the T-72 was so bad that Russia had to rename its successor “T-72BU” (Project 188) to “T-90” to avoid the association. (T-90 is still one of the best performing tanks that have since taken on the British Challenger and German Leopards in the Ukraine War).

It would be more than 30 years before the T-72s would face the M1 Abrams on the battlefield once more, and this time - we finally have a good picture (literal photographs) of how the M1 Abrams fared against the T-72s without air support. History has finally vindicated the Soviet design - still one of the best designed tanks to exist today despite its age.

PROYEKT 2025 (Russian plot) BAD

RAYGUN GOOD

Semiconductor fabrication requires very specialized skill sets that take years of effort and dedication to master. It’s not something you can solve by just throwing money at it.

If you cannot build a plant that is so sterile that it does not contain a single speck of dust, there is no way you can compete with TSMC in Taiwan. You’re going to have to spend years to figure out how to do that first, and that’s just one of the first steps along the entire manufacturing chain that each requires very specialized skill and knowledge for the operation to become functional.

It is not a misconception though. See my other response in this thread - this is unique to the US whose wealth is built through financial imperialism.

Most countries on the other hand have industries that produce real goods and services - not real estate or the stock market - that can offer actual material gains to other countries. America can run a huge trade deficit simply because the dollar is the most desirable asset, not because it has anything tangible to offer to the world.

When the dollar is no longer the most desirable asset, its exchange value will plunge, purchasing power will fall, imports will become more expensive, and re-industrialization will be needed to rebuild/reshape its own economy until it has something real to offer to the world. This is going to take decades. Why else would other countries want to sell stuff to America when it doesn’t have anything to offer?

What you’re saying is not wrong, but you still have vastly underestimated the toll it’s going to take on America’s economy if the US can no longer rely on the dollar to get what it wants.

Let’s put it this way: what does America have to offer to the world?

Typically, countries trade with one another because they have something to offer that the other wants. The US is a unique case in that what it offers is a hard currency, something that every country in the world would like to get their hands on. This is what allows the US to run such huge trade deficits and practically get everything on the cheap without having to offer much to the world.

Who wants to sell to America when you can no longer offer the dollar as a highly desirable asset?

Let’s imagine what happens when America can no longer leverage on the strength of its currency, what can America offer to the world?

Boeing planes? Intel chips? 5G telecommunication infrastructure? Google and Amazon services? The tech sector is already being surpassed by other Global South countries, and many of the technical deficits after half a century of neoliberalism will take years if not decades to restore.

Military hardware? Sell them to whom? To fight whom?

Hollywood/Netflix/cultural exports? This can be one of the surviving industries, but the investment cash that used to flush these industries would also be greatly diminished if the dollar is no longer the attractive asset that it is.

Fossil fuel and food/grains? These can also serve as export goods, but they’re pretty low value to sustain a high income society.

And we’re not even talking about how America as an immigrant country will no longer have the pull it has to poach skilled labor from other countries who raised and fed their own people for decades, only for America to just take these labor away through offering them a strong currency that they cannot obtain in their home country.

Who’s going to come to work in America? Who wants to come to America? These will also be big question marks. (The Soviet Union was able to take in talents from America thanks to the Great Depression, but who is America going to poach talents from when the empire itself finally falls?)

So, yes, even the working class in America will have to take a plunge in their purchasing power and hence living standards. This is simply what happens what you have little to offer to the world, and your wealth is built on financial colonialism.

And I’m going to be honest here: if it ever comes to this, you should consider yourself lucky if no Global South demands reparations from America. Otherwise it’ll put on an even heavier toll on the economy.

So, don’t be surprised if your average America chooses to rather be a slave worker under imperialism, who still benefits from the plunders of imperialism even if it’s just crumbs, than to accept the reality that America is no longer at the pinnacle of the world and rebuilding the country will take decades of hardship.

You have vastly overestimated the productive capacity of the Imperial Core. Jason Hickel’s latest paper Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy paints a drastically different picture:

We conclude that while Southern workers contribute the majority (90–91%) of labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global GDP. The yields of production are disproportionately captured in the global North.

The vast majority of the productive capacity is now in the Global South. The US imports most of its stuff from the Global South. The Imperial Core extracts primarily through financial means, and the end of Western imperial hegemony must necessarily mean the loss of such privileges, and in order to sustain the same level of living standards would mean importing more expensive goods relative to America’s actual productive capacity.

Yes, re-industrialization can and will eventually happen, but it won’t happen immediately. At least you still have to fight a civil war against bourgeois counter-revolution(s), which will almost certainly incur even further destruction of productive capacity (think the Russian Civil War immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution). And only after peace and stability is restored can re-industrialization truly happens. And in the meantime, Global South countries like China will have surpassed American industries by leaps and bounds, and the catching up will take decades.

This is not to say that America will be a bad place to live in, it is simply that its standard of living will be below what its citizens are currently able to “enjoy” (in relative terms to the Global South). Meanwhile, real economic growth will happen in the East where their living standards will be far above the former Imperial Core, and you can expect many skilled talents would seek to emigrate as well.

Once again, from history we know that the establishment of a socialist state is an extremely violent process that accompanies societal upheavals, and only through it can an emancipatory project be carried out. It is a historical and objective process not nearly as rosy as many fantasize it to be.

I hope the American left doesn’t fall into the American Exceptionalism thinking that somehow their country is so special it is immune to historical materialism.

Yes, but that assumes the exchange rate of the dollar remains the same.

The destruction of US financial imperialism necessarily includes the abolishment of the dollar hegemony, its currency revalued without financial capital e.g. stocks and bonds. This will make imports more expensive, and as such the plunge in living standards.

Re-industrialization is going to take decades - so at least one or two generations of its citizens will have to live with a worse living standards than they are right now.

The Global South makes, and the Global North takes.

This is simply the reality of how finance capital has greatly exaggerated the wealth of the Imperial Core and how they have been able to use such privilege to extract from the Global South to fuel their own rise of living standards over the past century.

You misunderstand - MMT has little to nothing to do with how US finance imperialism works.

Read Michael Hudson’s Super Imperialism for a thorough dissection of how US imperialism actually functions through its fiat currency.

The ability of a government to create new currency without restraint from “balancing the budget” has little to do with how the US dollar gains its hegemony. This is a neoclassical myth that is being perpetuated even among left wing anti-imperialist circles.

In short, any government with monetary sovereignty can print as much money as it wants for domestic spending, only restrained by the availability of labor, resources, productive capacity and technology.

Dollar hegemony, on the other hand, works by it being a global reserve currency that foreign central banks who have accumulated dollars from their exports have nowhere else to spend the dollars, so they have to buy US treasuries as savings (to earn a small % of interests). In other words, US treasuries serve as a “sink” to recycle spent dollars back to US shores, allowing the US to spend an unlimited amount of money overseas.

Two very separate things that people often get confused, and the prescribed economic solutions are very different indeed:

According to neoclassical theory:
For a developing country to develop, you have to borrow from the IMF, commit to “structural adjustments” (austerity), orientate your economy towards producing export goods, and sell your goods as cheap as possible (lower wages) to be competitive. Then you use that revenues to develop your country.

According to MMT:
A developing country must not take on any foreign debt. Instead, work on becoming energy and food self-sufficient. This may require forming a protectionist bloc with neighboring countries to support one another. Do not borrow from the IMF. Use central bank fresh money creation - not export revenues - to stimulate domestic spending and drive the development of domestic industries.

Again, Hudson’s Super Imperialism is a foundational text towards understanding how US financial imperialism actually works.

When non-imperial core (or wannabe imperial core) countries try to enact it, like Greece under Varoufakis era of the early 2010s,

Greece cannot enact it because Greece cannot print its own currency. It is part of the eurozone.

And yes, a Grexit will be infinitely better for Greece’s economy than to stay within the neoliberal EU bloc, if they know what they’re doing.

You misunderstand - the US dollar revalued without its stock and bonds will make everything much more expensive. It will take decades for the US to re-industrialize itself under socialism, and during those periods, the standard of living will fall.

The re-distribution of wealth presumes the value of the dollar remains constant, but that would not be the case if the US is to lose its imperialist hegemony and its ability to get free lunch from the rest of the world.

I will use my favorite example here to illustrate: https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/11/29/california-finance-department-spokesperson-explains-how-state-went-from-record-budget-surplus-to-possible-25b-deficit/

In 2022, the Californian finance department accidentally revealed that nearly half of their tax revenues came from capital gains (stocks and bonds). This is the richest state in all of America, and how thoroughly distorted is its wealth calculation by finance capital. This also means that a re-valuation of the US dollar (that will inevitably occur if the dollar hegemony is to end) will mean a much much lower value than it actually is today.

This is simply the uncomfortable truth for many living in the Imperial Core, if the dollar hegemony is to be abolished. In this case, how many of them will still support a “revolutionary defeatism” in their home country?

Curious question: how many Americans who identify as socialists are actually just national socialists?

By this I mean people who want free healthcare and education, but are fine with reaping the fruits of American imperialism imposed upon the rest of the world.

They simply want the plunders of imperialism to be shared more equitably with the working class, rather than being hoarded by the top 1% of the bourgeois elite class.

And when it is made clear that anti-imperialism would require the US to give up the privileges of its strong currency, and with it the standards of living will plunge by a few fold, they’d rather have national socialism (fascism) if having their own welfare state means the rest of the world has to suffer for it.

This extends to self-proclaimed socialists who only feel comfortable talking about being pro-Palestinian because it is safe to do so (i.e. just “feel good” rhetorics about their moral superiority but knowing deep down that nothing of substance will change for the Palestinians). Protests that are never threatening to the imperialists. And if the Palestinians and their allies actually threaten the empire and upend the status quo, they will go all out and condemn Hamas terrorism.

The Democratic strategy is to take over the entire Republican party. This has always been their goals. You can call this the “skinwalking strategy”.

In a decade or so, the GOP will be nothing more than MAGA crazies obsessed with culture war shit. This is a huge win for the liberals and the Democratic party. They are the competent fascists.

The libs will simply respond with “then why didn’t they endorse Trump????”

You’re not going to convince them with this argument. In their minds, the Raygunites are so disgusted by Trump that even they have to jump over to the Democratic side, which is exactly the strategy the Democrats is playing.

Project 2025 is worse

Oh I agree with you, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now that the nationalist coup in Russia has failed.

It’s been pretty clear since Putin’s new cabinet did not involve significant change in personnel - the only consolation prize being that Belousov got the Ministry of Defense, which means that the Russian state will control the military industrial complex (necessary for completing its military operations in Ukraine), which is what the libs are willing to compromise but they get the rest of the economy in return.

The libs in Russia and China are now making a come back. Putin and Xi have, at least for this round, failed to wipe out the libs when the opportunity arises.

This has nothing to do with hope or optimism or pessimism - this is just how history works: a coup against liberalism has failed. The contradictions of capital will intensity, new crises will emerge, and classes will struggle. As Mao said, fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again… until victory.

But in order to fight, one has to first wake up from the dream that we’ve all had for the past 2.5 years and start recognizing the harsh reality that awaits us. Only then can we turn inaction into action. And eventually, everyone here will have to wake up from this dream - the only question is when.

Here’s the scary part: the empire will die, it’s a question of whether it takes the world down with it or not.

IMF to send first mission to Russia since Ukraine invasion

The first official IMF mission to Russia since the war in Ukraine will commence tomorrow, September 16, in an online format headed by Argentinian Jacques Miniane.

Russia's finance ministry has also officially confirmed Ksenia Yudaeva’s nomination as the head of the Russian delegate, who was the former deputy head of the Russian central bank.

This concludes the expansion of US finance capital into the European front, the subjugation of both the EU and Russia into the US financial sphere, coinciding with Chinese banks succumbing to the US imposed secondary sanctions.

Everything lines up just in time as the US ramps up its anti-China campaign. The focal point of US imperialism now shifts towards Asia Pacific.