“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
― Antonio Gramsci (misattributed)
Yep. Am American, sad about what a seemingly good idea got warped into over 250yrs. Fuck this joint, but there will most certainly be real monsters created in the void until things stabilize.
We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For, you must not forget, we can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie may blast and burn its own world before it finally leaves the stage of history. We are not afraid of ruins. We who ploughed the prairies and built the cities can build again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. The world is growing this minute.
—Buenaventura Durruti, interview with Pierre van Paassen (1936-07-24)
Well said. Maybe there’s a chance we can pull out of this nosedive.
The opening in the window for that is now barely wide enough to slip a sheet of paper into.
But hey, crowbars have done more, with less. Let’s see what happens.
Maybe there’s a chance we can pull out of this nosedive.
Though please don’t send the descendants back to Europe and Africa.
The opening in the window for that is now barely wide enough to slip a sheet of paper into.
Yep, like James Corbett (of The Corbett Report fame) said recently, some are sad the door’s only a crack open, and he’s hopping excited, YES, THE DOOR IS A CRACK OPEN! It having never been so in the decades he’s been doing this.
Now is the time.
Crowbar o’clock! :D
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Historically speaking, shit gets uber fucked before anything gets better. And getting better isn’t a guarantee. It’s why accelerationism is stupid. It just guarantees conflict, and with how completely destroyed the American left is from red scare shit, it’s highly unlikely some sort of more egalitarian state will rise from the ashes from conflict alone.
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AmeriKKKan KKKracKKKers can’t even see a cool anti-America meme without having a western fragility crashout in the comments, lmao.
No, that is not a bright and sunny outlook, no matter how you cut it.
For those of you cheering on the death of the American Empire and the rise of communism from its ashes… You know you’re never going to live to see that day, right? Maybe your children will, more likely your grandchildren if it happens at all. But between now and then, there will be a new Dark Age and it will last for DECADES minimum.
Get ready for food shortages, water shortages, critical infrastructure like power and Internet going out. Get ready for wars, bloody conflicts, authoritarian crackdowns that make today look like a cordial dinner party.
Like, you guys get that right? It’s not just a switch being flipped. If you want to kill the beast that is the American Empire, it’s going to thrash HARD. It’s going to cause a LOT of fucking damage during and immediately after its collapse, and it won’t be fast. It will be long, slow, and marked with untold amounts of suffering before something, if anything, can be rebuilt.
Yea, yea, society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they’ll never sit under. Just make sure you’re ready to struggle for survival for the rest of your life if you really want that shade to exist.
For those of you cheering on the death of the American Empire and the rise of communism from its ashes… You know you’re never going to live to see that day, right? Maybe your children will, more likely your grandchildren if it happens at all. But between now and then, there will be a new Dark Age and it will last for DECADES minimum.
This might or might not be true and overall I think your comment is a good point (the empire will keep doing damage as it dies).
However, I think the perspective of people from outside the US, especially in the Global South has to be considered. For them, AmeriKKKan “wars, bloody conflicts, authoritarian crackdowns” are already the reality and have been for a long time. America dying is purely beneficial to them, the slow death and thrashing from their perspective will just be the same thing America has always been, but less and less effective over time.
The “authoritarian crackdowns” are not entirely an American byproduct… It’s a product of capitalism. The billionaires aren’t moving to Honduras. So long as the global economy is either euro or asiatic-centric (aka where the money/power lives), the global south will continue to be the capitalists’ playground.
The Europeans have much less capability to intervene in the Third World than America, though they do do so on a smaller scale. I’ll entertain arguments about Asian countries when any of them are actually doing anything that even approaches the things America does. It’s very clear to anyone looking that the largest and most influential imperial power in the world right now is America by far, with the Europeans a distant second.
That is only because the US has outsourced it for them. Europe basically invented third world intervention and only back to back world wars stopped it. If power flips back to Europe and China, don’t think that means the global south will suddenly be interference free. Ask China’s neighbors and any country with fishable ocean how non-expansionist and non-interference they are.
Europe invented third world intervention, and after the US took that over from them most of Europe lost most of its ability to do it independantly. Most third world intervention today is done by the US, if the US collapses it won’t be replaced immediately by Europeans who can all of a sudden magically project power into Latin America.
Ask China’s neighbors and any country with fishable ocean how non-expansionist and non-interference they are.
Don’t compare what the US empire does to anything happening in the South China Sea, that’s a ridiculous thing to say. Even the very bad things China has done so far (for example, war with Vietnam) don’t come close to things the US does on a regular basis.
The US collapsing would create a huge imperialist power vacuum that would at least take time to fill, if that filling ever happened. I’ll quote my original comment you were replying to here.
However, I think the perspective of people from outside the US, especially in the Global South has to be considered. For them, AmeriKKKan “wars, bloody conflicts, authoritarian crackdowns” are already the reality and have been for a long time. America dying is purely beneficial to them, the slow death and thrashing from their perspective will just be the same thing America has always been, but less and less effective over time.
What you’re saying in response to this is, at best, pointless doomerism based on vague hypotheticals. I’m talking about the reality of the world today, which is that America is the only country with both a significant ability to carry out these interventions worldwide and a significant history of doing so.
My only point was that I think you are being incredibly optimistic on how long it takes to fill an imperialist power vacuum, or that the US is definitely currently worse than whatever would replace it. I would say that I am extrapolating from basically all of human history rather than doomerism, but I suppose that is a matter of perspective.
Chinese fishing fleets have been documentedly invading fisheries all over the world and not just the South China Sea. Latin America might experience more lag time on foreign influence due to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but exploitation in Africa is not primarily being done by the US currently so I wouldn’t expect to see massive shakeups there.
but exploitation in Africa is not primarily being done by the US currently so I wouldn’t expect to see massive shakeups there.
Debatable, the US is involved a lot in Africa. So are the Europeans, of course, as well as “Israel” and the gulf monarchies, but all of these are propped up to varying degrees by the American world order (except perhaps the French, but their empire is fading as we speak).
I’m not sure if you meant to imply that China was the primary exploiter of Africa (and I don’t want to assume you were saying that), but if so I disagree with the assertion that any degree of Chinese exploitation which might exist compares with what I’ve described in my previous paragraph (these countries routinely openly topple governments and start/support wars and genocides in Africa for their own benefit - in Sudan being the most well-known current example but not even close to the only one).
I would say that I am extrapolating from basically all of human history rather than doomerism, but I suppose that is a matter of perspective.
I think “all of human history” is a bit of a thought-terminating cliche in this case. Many things throughout history have been aesthetically similar (and in some ways functionally similar), but the material basis and therefore specific mechanisms were different. Imperialism in the financial capital sense (as in Lenin’s description) is a very recent thing, historically speaking (perhaps the past few centuries, approximately).
