I thought all of this shit going down would lead to the collapse of the US and the final triumph or something. Damn this is fucking depressing. The escalation of the genocide by Israel, the Ukraine-Russia war, the protests, the self-immolations, the riots, the invasion of Lebanon by Israel, the Iran-Israel war, the India-Pakistan war, the Trump Epstein files, the massive forest fires, AI emergence, Covid19, Beirut port explosion, UFO / drones footage, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the death of Elizabeth, the mass deportations in the US, the fall of Syria… so much shit yet nothing has happened for the communist movement, still under the capitalist mode of production.
A collapse isn't happening, nuclear war isn't happening, a revolution isn't happening. It's all so tedious.
Why is it taking so long? Well when we look at the transition from feudalism to capitalism, that took centuries as well. Between the merchant Republics of medieval Italy to the Industrial Revolution in England, Capitalism took several centuries of development before emerging in its modern form: The sovereign industrialized bourgeois Republic. The working class forms of government are still historical prototypes. For Socialism we are still in the phase capitalism was in during its embryo form in the medieval maritime merchant republic. The new society is born inside the old society, and has its birthmarks.
Marx says something about this:
<No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society." - Karl Marx, from the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
So the question becomes, how do we know when this point is reached? Deng was actually optimistic in this regard:
<“I am convinced that more and more people will come to believe in Marxism, because it is a science. Using historical materialism, it has uncovered the laws governing the development of human society. Feudal society replaced slave society, capitalism supplanted feudalism, and, after a long time, socialism will necessarily supersede capitalism. This is an irreversible general trend of historical development, but the road has many twists and turns. Over the several centuries that it took for capitalism to replace feudalism, how many times were monarchies restored! So, in a sense, temporary restorations are usual and can hardly be avoided. Some countries have suffered major setbacks, and socialism appears to have been weakened. But the people have been tempered by the setbacks and have drawn lessons from them, and that will make socialism develop in a healthier direction. So don't panic, don't think that Marxism has disappeared, that it's not useful any more and that it has been defeated. Nothing of the sort!” Deng Xiaoping, Excerpts From Talks Given In Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai And Shanghai, 1992
>>2414050>Denglmfao
the productive forces have already been developed. capitalism is everywhere today
>>2414055ok but analyze the quote itself, not just who said it. he was speaking in the year after the end of the USSR
>the productive forces have already been developed. capitalism is everywhere todaynot uniformly. imperialism persists because there is a core and periphery. sure even a place like rural afghanistan is relatively developed compared to 1850s England, but it is still less developed than contemporary england. it is not a matter of absolute development, but the relative development of territories in comparison with each other, which postpones the abolition of the developmental gap.
<A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.
<An appreciable rise in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures. Therefore, although the pleasures of the labourer have increased, the social gratification which they afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the stage of development of society in general. Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature. >>2414083I remember reading about a peasant revolt, can't remember what it was called but it was a big famous one, but basically they hated the local barons or whatever and sought help from the king. The peasant leaders met with the king and were slaughtered in ambush.
I'm not if people nowadays have a much better political understanding than those naive peasants.
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