Do you mind educating me as to why we want European devolution and independence? Isn't a united world what we should aim for? I'm seriously curious and looking to learn, not start a fight. Also, if we give the Native Americans back their land, that's basically dismantling the USA as a whole. Is that the goal? It's all their land. Wouldn't it be more productive to focus on making the USA an inclusive country where they feel welcome?
I really appreciate your response.
Your response regarding fragmenting countries in the EU gives me a lot to think about and I appreciate it. I didn't think about it that way. I think a United States of Earth would be a hell hole if it was a United States of America -> United States of Earth. Unless there's a communist foundation to build on, there's no way it could end well.
Regarding dismantling the USA. I agree a reformist approach will only result in a Green New Deal best case scenario that will lead to a follow up of reaction like you mentioned. The main thought I failed to convey was the forced mass migration of every non-native human in the USA back to whatever country(s) they are from. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me and I think it would make more sense to to keep the people here and provide reparations and actually follow the treaties we signed with the Native Americans. While this is their home, this is my home for better or for worse. I'm open to relocating within the borders of the USA if that's needed, but I don't identify with either Scandinavia, Germany, France, Ireland, Poland, Russia, Netherlands/Belgium, and the myriad of other ancestry 23 & Me found in me. Again, it's very interesting to think about the implications of the USA being forced to honor their treaties signed with the Native Americans.
I mean, yeah, until Indians literally just get colonized again due to now being the proud owners of a developed first-world country with neither the numbers, allegiances, or military expertise to defend it.
Am I wrong?
Like, okay. The US collapses, or gives all of it's land back to Indians and every descendant of the colonists gets in a boat and goes back to whichever country their ancestors originated from (ignoring the massive global crisis that would result from the displacement of three hundred million people, many of which are completely stateless now). They're left with a few million people scattered across a massive tract of developed land. The only thing that would stop them from immediately getting taken over by another imperialist country is if they found the nukes and their launch codes extremely quickly.
A 'united world' at the moment would simply mean strengthening the global status quo, which is a neoliberal one. The largest multi-national organizations like the European Union are all neoliberal in nature. Therefore, devolution is in our interest to weaken those organizations' power.
mate, the US genocided them and took everything they once had and has subjugated them for centuries. you're not internalizing that idea if you think it's possible for anyone to feel welcome in a society that has done that to their people again and again. do you know how many times we promised that this last time was the last and that we won't do it again, that we'll be peaceable from now on? this is so deeply chauvinistic and I encourage you to think hard about why you feel what you do.
You can't practically expect tens of millions of people to give up their homes for the sake of someone else out of, what, the goodness of their heart? You may as well try to revive Lenin instead with how likely that is to happen.
I dont think its about taking individual persons’ houses, its about giving sovereignty back to the people to whom it rightfully belongs
But how does that work in practice? Like, what material changes will actually be made?
This ^^ huge portions of land are owned by the current federal US government that could be easily ceeded. Lands that are owned by first nations can still have white people in them, as citizens of those nations, we aren't building ethnostates. It's also not like first people will demand the destruction of existing infrastructure, what's more, because of climate change we will need to have mass movement / transplantation of people away from the coasts and the equator. We can use this opportunity to rip out the roots of settler kkklonialism. People are gonna have to move anyways.
Not gonna lie I'm also kind of unclear on this and would really appreciate an explanation
I am understanding now that this is not what was being suggested and it makes me feel like a big dumb dumb. Thanks for the understanding.
You are reading more into what I said than what I meant. I am not talking about a reformist approach, I was really only thinking about the idea of forcing hundreds of millions in the USA to pack up their bags and leave the Americas. I didn't articulate that well and that's my bad. When I talk about a country I think in terms of the people instead of the government which is a bad habit as the will of the people living within a government isn't reflective of how the government operates. I don't think it would be productive to force hundreds of millions of non-natives to pack their bags and leave. I think the better solution is for us to work together and to honor their wishes.
Regardless of whether one is pro or anti China, I think people here are overestimating the probably of a clean and quick collapse. What seems more likely to happen, barring some unforeseen event, is a slow decline of US power leading to an international power vacuum and potentially another world war.
As quick as China’s rise has been, they are still at a disadvantage against the US military. As that recedes, it will almost certainly be replaced with a coalition of other rising powers like India, Vietnam, and existing industrial powers like the EU and Japan.
This could be a good thing in the sense that it could give other nations some much needed breathing room From US hegemony, but I think this is wishful thinking. A more likely scenario is that a combination of instability, fierce competition over resources, and the added pressure from climate change will result in a period of international conflict.
This is a pessimistic view, but I think it would be a realistic outcome of US power waning while the current global capitalist system remains intact. Global socialist revolution would obviously be an ideal remedy to this.
To put it in more simple terms, I think a global system that is destined to produce certain outcomes will continue to produce those outcomes regardless of whether it’s led by the US or some other superpower, or a coalition of powers.
The US having such a large military at the time of it's inevitable descent is actually really scary. Nothing about that country or its history says "ah yes we're the sort to go down quietly"
this is very important, especially with the general opinion of "if I can't have nice things nobody can" that the people in command have makes me kind of concerned.
yep...it's like imagine if the declining british empire with it's vast naval power flipped fash (mosley or british union of fash) instead of germany (which was a devestated 2nd rate empire with little international reach). only add nukes to the naval power and a coresponding land army capable of invading nearly anybody
Yeah that's a perfect way to describe it, if the us goes down they will make sure we all will suffer
There's going to have to be a massive internal resistance to something like that here. There aren't any boarders that people can escape through or other nations with militaries strong enough to resist American expansion on this continent.
I wonder how far they'd make it before partisan movements ground down the will of our volunteer army? How many more would sign up to fight at our boarders? We could very well be entering the physical occupation and annexation phase of US neoliberal colonialism if the empire continues to crumble like it is.
A system is only destined to produce certain outcomes as long as that system continues to exist. There has never really been capitalism without the US. The US is the global center of capitalism, it keeps the system functional and somewhat sustainable. It is the arch-reactionary, counterrevoltionary anti-vanguard that stops socialism anywhere in the world it can. Without the US as it is now the whole thing very well may just fall apart.
Remember, comrade: communism is inevitable.
There has never really been capitalism without the US. The US is the global center of capitalism
I'm just going to nitpick on this. While it's really irrelevant to your point, Capitalism began in earnest in Europe with the industrial revolution, and the while the United States followed this trend closely and engaged in a litany of its own colonial projects, I wouldn't consider it to be the vanguard of Capitalism as an economic system at this time. Up until around World War Two, you could argue that England remained the epicenter of the financial system. This is when things truly shifted and the US took the reigns on a global scale.
In the time since then, the US has consistently remained the center of the imperial core - particularly throughout the entirety Capitalism's phase of global imperialism, which Lenin and Luxemburg predicted with startling accuracy.
A system is only destined to produce certain outcomes as long as that system continues to exist. There has never really been capitalism without the US. The US is the global center of capitalism, it keeps the system functional and somewhat sustainable.
Capitalism is now truly global, which means it no longer really needs the US as it currently exists. I do agree that the fall of the US as a global power presents a potential opportunity to attack capitalism. However, I think we should also be aware that, if threatened, it will adapt by forcing the US and it's military into an openly fascist system and/or adopt new hosts elsewhere, as it has done in China.
China is deeply embedded into the current global capitalist system, and subject to the same contradictions and incentives toward exploitation that exist in capitalism anywhere else. Why should we have any faith that one capitalist country is more likely to bring the downfall of capitalism than any other capitalist country, given what we already know about what capitalism inevitably leads to?
Remember, comrade: communism is inevitable.
I certainly agree with you, but I also think that how we get there can take many forms, some of them being quite horrific. We should try as much as possible to direct that path ourselves and use the opportunity to hasten the transformation to a more a more genuinely socialist system, as opposed to assuming that struggles between competing capitalist states will some how work out in our favor. We can't simply rely on any one country or individual to save us.
Why should we have any faith that one capitalist country is more likely to bring the downfall of capitalism than any other capitalist country, given what we already know about what capitalism inevitably leads to?
The existence of a single ruling Marxist-Leninist party, which regularly exerts supremacy over capital and prevents a bourgeois class from gaining power, is a pretty good reason to think that it might be different.
There is always the possibility of the capitalist elements in the party wresting control, but their peak really was under Jiang Zemin and the Shanghai Clique. What we’ve seen from Hu Jintao and Xi Jingping is a conscious dismantling of that faction and a strengthening of the party-state.
It’s less faith, and more choosing to give a socialist project the best chance of success, especially when the alternative is American hegemony.
I am honestly not educated enough to have engage in a real leftist debate about China specifically.
But I'm sure of one thing: if you still have a world view were there is a place to fight for as a single global power (that is a country - not an ideology - whatever that country might be), you are at the very least 30 years late, very probably 50 years late. You may even never have been right. Being a global power sound like imperialism to me.
I am honestly not educated enough to have engage in a real leftist debate about China specifically.
That's never stopped anyone else from weighing in though
Being a global power sound like imperialism to me
Having power is not imperialist, nor is it necessarily bad.
I know a lot of people here have negative opinions of China, and even I have negative opinions of how they treat their own citizens (not interested in debating it; I don't think it's some hellworld but it ain't the cuddly place some of y'all make it out to be) but anyone who doesn't believe this is dumb as shit. China gets their resources, such as oil, by trade. They got Ethiopian oil by building up infrastructure for Ethiopia. The US gets its resources, such as oil, by invading nations and killing millions. One is objectively better for the world, and in fact a net positive rather than a lesser evil in terms of their impact as a superpower.
Again, it doesn't matter what you think of their internal affairs, China's conduct as a superpower is a net positive.
Here's my beloved Yanis speaking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBgbYQ5QAM0
The Sino-Soviet split is long gone, its been decades sense they've tried geo-political maneuvers remotely similar to what they did in the 70s and 80s
Chinese foreign policy has always been shit tbh. I wish they would do more socialist internationalism but it seems like its driven more by realpolitik than anything else
Both of which were long ago at this point, prior to retooling for the belt and road initiative type of diplomacy. But I do see your point.
170 comments 58 upvotes, Hell yeah its struggle time:smiling face with sunglasses:
I mean, we could also try just... not having global powers? and no colonialism? and...no? fuck.
for my part? not endorsing or attempting to support any bullshit empires.
I know you're excited to try a new flavor of imperialism, but I'm really really not.
You said we need to "just" not have global powers. Great! No one thought of that. Let me wave my wand.
Long story short, Supporting social democracy (which 99% of american leftists did) over neoliberalism and right wing is same logic really as supporting China over the US, and its even more clear in the latter case cause globaly the differences between the 2 will impact billions differently. And people who just chose to do one and not the other are hypocrits cause materialy there is no logical destinction
Please reword this bit. I think I agree with you but am having a hard time parsing this. Especially this part
Supporting social democracy (which 99% of american leftists did) over neoliberalism and right wing is same logic really as supporting China over the US,
edit : Okay, I think I got it now. Sorry.
Harm reduction in critical support of China over the US is the same as arguing in favor of Biden over Trump. Both can be shit, and you don't have to support either.
The "China will transition from capitalist authoritarian state to benevolent socialist state" is the dumbest fucking take I've ever read on the internet. You think people willingly give up power? After they've spent decades working to acquire it?? After installing themselves as President For Life??? I've done enough drugs to euthanize an entire amphitheater of Juggalos, and I still want to know what you fools are smoking.
Harm reduction in critical support of China over the US is the same as arguing in favor of Biden over Trump. Both can be shit, and you don’t have to support either.
Biden will quite possibly be worse than Trump. At least Trump is incompetent and isolationist.
A better comparison is support for Sanders. If he won, he was going to give some better healthcare, but leave the substantial bulk of US institutions untouched, especially its foreign policy. But he was still unquestionably better than any of the alternatives, and would have taken the world in a positive direction.
Realistically, do you know what happens if the CPC falls? First up, its entire state sector will be acquired by high ranking cadre in the party and by foreigner capital, like in Russia. It’ll then see quality of life plummet, like in Russia. It’ll then have the only remaining power base as the intelligence services and military, like in Russia. It’ll then, after a few decades, be back with a vengeance, an oligarchy, and no more ideology than a nationalist desire for resurgence.
You know the ‘repression’ in Hong Kong? If the mainland hawks had their way, the PLA would have rolled in the tanks months ago.
You know Xinjiang? If the hardliners had their way, Islam would be eradicated.
There is no feasible ‘more left’ option for China. So as we enter into a period where global fascism is resurgent, let’s not root for the destruction of one of the few substantial socialist projects still in existence. I guarantee you, whatever comes next will be worse.
After installing themselves as President For Life??? I’ve done enough drugs to euthanize an entire amphitheater of Juggalos, and I still want to know what you fools are smoking.
Friendo I think what you've actually been smoking is a shitload of propaganda that you have uncritically repeated on this thread
Having no term limits is nowhere near being president for life, my god
who gives a shit about term limits, Lenin didn't have a term limit, Stalin didn't have a term limit, Moralez has a term limit and look where he's at now
Fucking New Zealand doesn’t have term limits.
Even the USA only brought them in because they were scared of the degree of change a popular president like FDR could do if able to keep getting elected.
The thing is that China isn't authoritarian. I discuss it here in the same thread. Take a look at that and the previous comments. If Chinese citizens don't think it's authoritarian, then who are you to say it is? Do you know better than them?
People in the US don't understand the ways that the US is authoritarian and genocidal. The average lib or conservative alike is well trained in being able to casually wave away events as disgusting as murdering the indigenous peoples to steal their land, slaveowners writing about the inalienable freedoms of man and building a country on slave power, Japanese internment, etc. We got all this here manufactured consent. I'm not going to sit here and say I don't trust the word of Chinese citizens. Just that capitalist systems are great at manufacturing consent and it seems insane to me to suggest that China isn't doing that as well. And it makes it really difficult to evaluate what is actually going on there when the American media is manufacturing sinophobic consent here and Chinese media is manufacturing their own consent there.
If Chinese citizens don’t think it’s authoritarian, then who are you to say it is? Do you know better than them?
Plenty of people think the US and it's democracy are just fine, who am I to doubt the majority of people
Because it's literally not the majority of people. The same polling shows most Americans don't consider it a democracy. 48% of Americans to 73% of Chinese. Read the damn links, people.
I can't tell what comment you linked to
But you are correct, 59% of Americans are dissatisfied with democracy in the US.
I don't know anything about China really, and don't have much of an opinion, but I see no issue with disagreeing with the majority of people somewhere
Comment links are a little sketchy right now because on long threads the page doesn't load all the comments right away. Something on the TODO list.
Yeah, installing oneself as President For Life is a paragon of democracy.
While I'm here, my other nitpick is the "China might have the 2nd most billionaires, but they aren't afraid to jail one of them and are therefore the spitting image of Kropotkin!" If that's the case, then hell, let's throw all our hats into Russia's ring where they routinely assassinate and jail billionaire oligarchs, and therefore Russia's model is what we should seek to emulate. This reductive reasoning is so damn basic and an affront to any deep thinking.
So just to be clear, you do know better than the people of China?
Edit: To make it obvious what I'm talking about, since you probably didn't read anything I linked: 73% of Chinese citizens consider their country a democracy. This is 20-30% higher than Western nations, excepting Scandinavian countries. Also, Chinese people have an overhelmingly positive view of the central government's performance, and this is only improving over time.
If being critical of my government will incur visits from state authorities or get me jailed, as well as have impacts on my financial, social, professional, and family's future, then you can bet those answers are under Stockholm Syndrome duress. If you think self-reporting is the airtight, end-all, be-all of cross-sectional studies, then you're on some Jonestown Kool-Aid.
But will it? Do you have any evidence at all to support the idea that responding negatively to a poll will get people jailed or that that is a fear of Chinese people? You've constructed a perfect rhetorical shield, where high support of the government is proof of low support of the government. But it doesn't match with the data. The second link explicitly discusses the change over time in government approval and how it correlates with material changes in what the government does and delivers.
If being critical of my government will incur visits from state authorities or get me jailed, as well as have impacts on my financial, social, professional, and family’s future, then you can bet those answers are under Stockholm Syndrome duress.
Uh yet you still feel free to criticize the US despite this being the literal, actual reality in the US as we speak
Did I say that? Or did I point out the inherent flaw in your reasoning?
China isn't going to become the world's sole superpower (would be cool if it did), if the US falls the center of global capital shifts back to Europe, western capitalist's would rather inaugurate World War III before they'd let china get its hands on the global reserve currency
And that's to say nothing of the enormous cultural backlash China would face from the west, you can already see the seeds of it developing now
I have a lower opinion of European power globally. The EU has made itself subservient to the US in many ways, and that weakening of their military power in particular will make it much harder for Europe to rise up as a rival. Not to mention that Europe is not at all a single entity - many large European countries (Italy, Greece, Spain, maybe France) would happily align themselves with China in the power shift I'm predicting.
And even if I'm wrong, it'll be a much more even split of power, and that's better than what we have now.
Greece is already part of the belt and road initiative so...
Right. China has, smartly, been making a lot of inroads in Southern Europe: Spain, Italy, and Greece are high population countries (in European terms) that have been fucked by the EU's neoliberalism and have a history of socialist politics and/or diplomacy with the USSR during the cold war. They are perfect allies for China. These moves demonstrate the EU's long-term inability to act as a unified global power. Not to mention with the UK leaving, the EU has lost its second largest and most economically important member.
Unlike Alabama greece has a huge navy for its size,lots more people than Alabama, a better geographical position and is a weak link in the EU. Loosing Greece could also mean the loss of other southern european countries.
The size of the Greek navy is completely irrelevant as is the population size and I don't know why you lot assume I'm talking specifically about the EU I'm talking about Europe as a whole
China can not become a superpower without the US collapsing and the global reserve currency being pegged to the renminbi, for western capital even a weakened Euro is preferable to the vagaries of the Chinese system
You gotta tell me how in hell the EU is irrelevant when talking about Europe, remeber that Greece is a member state. As for the currency The EU is too weak to be a superpower. it doesn't have an army, it has many currencies, it has already lost an important member state and risked losing others already and there's way too many rivalries inside of it to work properly as an hegemon superpower. You know malta could decide to veto every single proposal if they wanted to right?
I didn't say the EU was irrelevant I said I was talking about Europe as a whole which will remain powerful whether the EU survives the decade or not And like I said a historically a divided Europe has never stopped the continent from dominating global politics whether it's the Euro or the next best European currency the global reserve currency will never shift to Asia
If the US falls there is only one place western capital can migrate to and that's Europe and with the steady rise of Far-right Euro parties we can already see the outline of a nationalist neo-imperial Europe potentially empowered by American capital flight and I see no evidence that Spain, France or Italy would ever align culturally and politically against their largest continental trading partners
And the fact Europe is divided is a mute point, at the height of European imperialism Europe was far more fractured then it is today, that didn't stop the continent from dominating global politics
During the height of European imperialism the only non-white power in the world was Japan. China is already second only to the US today in global power, and many non-white countries play major roles on the world stage.
The economies of non-white countries still play a complementary role in relation to Europe and the anglosphere and Japan is no longer a global hegemon which leaves only China and India as the potential rivals, but no one is gonna claim India is gonna become a superpower with a straight face, China is outnumbered on all factors that actually matter
yes. especially when it comes to low-income countries. i don't give a fuck about "chinese imperialism". Not a single country that loaned money from china is unable to pay them back. While the "development" loans from the world bank, imf, wto, ... are desinged not to be paid back. China is actively raising populations out of misery. The anti-china propaganda in europe and the US will increases by the amount of international leverage they lose to china; forcing countries to choose sides cold war style, while the US holds a (almost) literal gun to their heads. You don't have to be a dengist to see that and know which side to choose
But Bill Gates has a charity! He's so kind giving all that money to Monsanto to develop mono-culture industrial farms in Africa while doing nothing to prevent desertification! They're all getting jobs!
I agree. That's actually why I'm posting this. The awful slide into fascism of an already reactionary country is very scary to anyone living here. Fascism is unsustainable, and even if Biden pulls it back to the standard neoliberalism of the last 40 years, it won't reverse the decline. The America ship is sinking. This country won't last.
The reason I posted this in the first place is because I've learned a lot about China the past few weeks and have suddenly found myself sincerely saying China Good. And that gives me some real hope that even as things look bleak here, worldwide there is a lot of potential. China can be the course-correcting force for the whole world.
The reason I posted this in the first place is because I’ve learned a lot about China the past few weeks
If I only have time for 1-2 books on the topic, what do you recommend?
I would cautiously say "yes" only in terms of reducing the US's imperialistic actions and as a general socio-political reference for lib countries.
I don't like the idea of singular world powers, especially authoritarian bureaucracies, but if the collapse of US dominance can spark popular political and class revolution here and lead to similar revolutions in other lib countries with an overall reduction in military intervention I'm all for that.
Take a look at this comment chain in the same thread, where I address the "authoritarian" claim. (I've never linked to a comment on here before so hopefully this works)
So sure, that's fair especially if the people see their government as democratic.
I guess the authoritarian thing stems from viewing China's government in isolation, while being used to American systems that are inherently authoritarian.
So things that I'd like to point to as authoritarian for China (can't vote out party officials, union powers reduced or next to nothing, political dissent is treated as criminal, surveillance state, labor camps, censorship and misinformation, police brutality, corporations and state economic goals are given preference over the public spending, etc) are all true for the US also.
That being said, I still hold that China is authoritarian even if it stacks up well against other authoritarian states.
But you're talking to an ancom, so I view most sorts of centralized bureaucracies with pyramidal hierarchies and monopolies on violence as inherently authoritarian.
No.
The cycle will continue, China will be bound even more to the chains of global capital, and will succumb to the countless innumerable stale generalised banalities of said chains.
We need internationalism, not a brand new nationalism coloured red.
