Is revolution actually possible in the first world or is this all a pipe dream?
It feels like everything is destined to just remain as it is.
If it is possible, then how do you see it happening?
It’s not destined to remain as it is, it’s desired by the majority to remain as it is. The “good news” is that’s not up to the majority, once that’s been confronted, then an appetite for revolution will develop.
the burger proletariat is just cucks
>>2687558I think its possible we just have over come the osbtacles of mass survielence and bread and circus pacification, the way the elites are pushing us rhere will be no bread or circuses,
Revolution in the imperial core is neither possible nor desirable
It'll happen, and it'll be in England and maybe the broader UK before anywhere else. The books will write Brexit as the transition point.
Take the post-left pill OP, you'll feel empowered and depressed athe same time
>>2687656
Not an American, just saying that a “communist” America would ramp up its genocidal campaigns of rape and exploitation of the periphery to maintain their standard of living
Maybe once the Funko pops stop rolling in.
Why not? Stranger things have happened.
You are asking the wrong fucking forum dude. This place is like a hepa filter that catches all the chuds serious enough to not want to larp as a Nazi but not serious enough to actually engage in rebuilding the left irl. All you will find here is people who hate their neighbors, which yes is like every other Treatler in existence. What makes them special is that they believe they are uniquely qualified to truly hate their neighbors. No wait what makes them special is the fact that it has a red coat of paint on it. There we go
>>2687630
Very funny that the most nominally "anti American" posters here engage in essential gen x reactionary core behavior, creation and posting of ai slop
I really do think the usa might expirence socialist revolution in the next 20-30 years. this place is pretty much a ticking time bomb waiting to implode.
>>2687896It'll happen but it'll just be some Weimar shit.
>>2687928nah america is too big. Whats gonna happen is america will dissolve into mutliple war lord states. Some socialist, some liberal, some fascist.
>>2687558Revolution is a dream cooked up by Madison Avenue to keep you hopeful for the future. Now we're gonna need you to come in on Saturday, mmkay?
God damn you thirdies are fucking retarded, it's not an issue if revolution is possible or not in the first world, is that it is a necessity to unite the international proletariat because the bourgeois won't think twice before uniting in case of a global class war.
Just ban third worldists already, they are beyond fucking stupid.
>>2688157Any second now bro
It won't happen in our lifetime, probably, if it will ever happen. Just live your life and stay vigilant, staying connected with orgs.
>>2687561trvke
I know many such parties.
>>2688179It must due to global warming
>>2688131>gonna beIt already is in the West. The means of production have been off shored out of the reach of its workers, but leftypol repeatedly has threads from western leftists expressing jealously towards nations where the production was outsourced to and demanding threads to prove they’re not still the revolutionary vanguard of the global socialist movement because their economy is the most “advanced” (read: their bourgeoisie are the wealthiest in the world)
People just listen to the strongest horse. If antifa started becoming a big t org against corporations people would respect and fear that. Itd have to be done right though. Killing jeff bezos would be a national tragedy whereas a stand off between the government and anazon warehouses would be considered the heroes of the working class.
>>2687558>Is revolution actually possible in the first world or is this all a pipe dream?Absolutely but not by the proletarian class.
>>2688157>is that it is a necessity to unite the international proletariatyeah well its been 150 years and firsties still dont overthrow their bourg, how is this not a real issue?
No. The first world must first collapse and even then its people will try to pick up its pieces. When the third world is no longer under the first world’s heel there is a chance for it to have a revolution and then the rest of the world will likely have to force socialism onto what remains of the first world after its collapse. Any real socialist should focus on supporting third world revolution.
>>2688360>Killing jeff bezos would be a national tragedy whereas a stand off between the government and anazon warehouses would be considered the heroes of the working class.No, killing Jeff Bezos would be celebrated by many while a standoff between Amazon warehouse workers and government would be seen as lunacy.
>>2688345>It must duejust because its necessary doesnt mean it will happen, "the real is rational" is hegelcel cope
Communism will be achieved by the next dominant species after humans.
>Is revolution actually possible in the first world or is this all a pipe dream?
This question implies that revolution is possible in the third world but I'm not seeing any apart from the holdouts of a bygone era like Cuba and the DPRK.
Possible? Absolutely.
Will the first world states be the main force of the next wave of revolution? Absolutely not.
The existence of the labor aristocracy doesn't make revolution perpetually impossible, but it does mean that the conditions for revolution don't currently exist in the first world and must be made through a combination of consistent principled political struggle internally (understanding as Lenin did that the principled position isn't always the popular one) and forcefully knocking down the pillars that hold up the first world lifestyle (again, understanding that this will not be popular).
>>2688395>When the third world is no longer under the first world’s heel there is a chance for it to have a revolutionThis is a vulgarization of the concept of JDPON that twists it back into prioritizing the first world. Revolution is a necessary part of collapsing the first world and we can observe now in the present collapse of reformist social-nationalist politics in the third world back into neo-colonialism that at this point revolutionaries must aim for nothing less than socialist revolution if any revolution is to persist at all.
>>2688424>forcefully knocking down the pillars that hold up the first world lifestyle (again, understanding that this will not be popular).I think it would be popular if properly explained. It is claimed that the first world gets welfare in exchange for imperialism but what I see in the USA is welfare getting cut while the military budget increases. It is claimed that the third world is bombed for my treats but the treats aren't even required for surivival. It is claimed that the third world grows our food, but American corporations throw out half the food before it even reaches the consumer, and then the consumer throws out half their food instead of eating it. so America only eats 25% of the food and throws out the rest. And is still fat. The imperialist loot doesn't even help us, but makes us a bunch of despised fatasses. The imperialist looting is basically burning every bridge in the name of short term gain. It is tremendously wasteful on a global scale, most "benefits" go right into the trash, and it is completely unsustainable long term. Fuck popular, just understanding this makes even the dumbest first world worker realize that imperialism makes no economic common sense even for them. It's just a moribund class digging its own grave desperately.
>>2688395>When the third world is no longer under the first world’s heel there is a chance for it to have a revolutionI'm not sure that this follows. If bourgeois governments in the third world manage to get out from under the thumb of imperialism then this would far more likely lead to a strengthening of those governments rather than a weakening. If they can develop a national capitalism on their own terms then this will likely lead to at least several decades of rapid growth and development which could create revolutionary conditions (if managed poorly), or it could cement support for a new status quo that is now improving so many people's lives. Historically speaking revolutions happened in the third world not because those countries were out from under the thumb of imperialism, but precisely because they were under it. They happened because communists in countries like Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, etc. managed to successfully take leadership of the national liberation struggle and fuse it with domestic class struggle. Ironically enough I think the end of the existing imperialist world order is more important for revolution in the first world rather than the third. Advocates of multipolarity in the first world often frame their position as being oriented around the needs and interests of the global south, but I support multipolarity out of purely selfish reasons. I think it will do far more for socialists in the Imperial core than those in the third world.
>>2688463Interesting points not raised often enough
>>2688397Are you sure? Theyd say he started with $300,000 and built an empire and turn it into s sob story.
Sure a standoff would be lunacy but itd be cool snd theyd be pardoned later on cause itd be cool and thats what matters.
>>2688463>>2688471Deboonked by lenin & stalin 100 yezrs ago.
Also epic intellectualizing of the fundamentally liberal "us imperialism is progressive actually"
>>2688424Finally, a smart Maoutist.
>>2688529The global imposition of cosmopolitan western capital will continue
>>2688529>Deboonked by lenin & stalin 100 yezrs ago.How do you figure? Historically speaking there is zero precedent for successful national liberation preceding a socialist revolution. Socialist revolutions have only ever happened when communists took leadership of the national liberation struggle and merged it with social revolution. There are no examples of a national bourgeois government leading to socialism. In fact the historical record shows that their degeneration back into compradors is far more likely.
>Also epic intellectualizing of the fundamentally liberal "us imperialism is progressive actually"Where did I say US imperialism is progressive? I just said that I don't think that the defeat of Western hegemony will necessarily lead to the emergence of socialism in the third world.
>>2688847China lets countries choose their government so theres that
>>2688847the western hegemon does a hell of a lot of heavy lifting for keeping compradors around though. National liberation sans socialists at the helm might not have worked out as well as hoped but I would be very surprised if the west being largely unable to maintain control over other governments would lead
nowhere >>2688456
>I think it would be popular if properly explained.
Of course it should be explained, but we can see in history that a revolutionary action being explained properly will not make it popular. The Bolsheviks did an excellent job explaining themselves and still did not have the wider popularity of many other "socialist" groups. Why is this? The answer lies within the nature of the class struggle within an imperialist state and among the dominant nation. This popularity shifted as the conditions shifted and imperialism became an active drag on previously complacent or vacillating sections of the workers and peasants.
>It is claimed that the first world gets welfare in exchange for imperialism but what I see in the USA is welfare getting cut while the military budget increases.
It's a vulgarization of the entire global economy to reduce these benefits down to welfare. In other parts of the first world much of this does go to welfare, but that's not the end of it nor has that been how this relation is expressed in the US at any point. Rather, we have to observe what made the "historic compromise" between labor and capital after WW2 possible: that being intensified exploitation of and extraction from the periphery. This historic compromise is the basis for current day artificially high wages in the first world, where despite playing a minor role in the overall creation of value in overall commodity production workers here are nearly-universally (prison enslavement and migrant labor excepted) paid disproportionately high wages for the labor they put in. I'm sure your immediate thought upon hearing this is to observe the downwardly-mobile labor aristocracy in many US cities, but that would be missing the point. Whether or not these wages meet the cost of living in the US (which it should be noted is not artificially inflated to the same degree as worker wages) doesn't change that the wages are inflated, nor does it change the reactionary nature of "free trade" unions struggling to maintain artificially inflated wages gleaned from imperialism. We also need to have a little perspective here. The conversation around that downwardly-mobile labor aristocracy today is largely around a reality that youth will largely not enjoy the same opportunities and prosperity as their parents, in particular housing is becoming difficult to buy and rents are increasing. But what are the workers who produce the bulk of global value facing daily? Rather than not being able to buy a house with a white picket fence, they face starvation and death, add torture to that if they organize. Even when they follow the rules, they face dangerous conditions daily and a cave-in or malfunction of low-quality equipment (among other things) can end their lives at any moment. The workers of the first world are facing a decline from an artificially high quality of life made possible by imperialism, and today are largely struggling to maintain or return to that condition. This is not comparable to the present struggle of labor in the third world and is materially disconnected from it through imperialism. If we expect the workers of the world to unite in a genuinely revolutionary way, rather than a chauvinistic one, we need to understand that the third world workers represent the primary section of workers where revolutionary conditions can exist, while first world workers will have a secondary role until their struggle is forced away from maintaining their place in a parasitic relation.
>It is claimed that the third world grows our food, but American corporations throw out half the food before it even reaches the consumer
Overproduction, an inherent part of capitalism, in no way indicates that first world workers don't gain material benefits from their relation to imperialism.
>and then the consumer throws out half their food instead of eating it.
Do you think this applies to the third world as well? If not, why can first world workers afford to do this while other workers starve? If you do think this applies to the third world, what are you smoking?
>so America only eats 25% of the food and throws out the rest. And is still fat.
>The loot doesn't even help us.
It objectively does.
>but makes us a bunch of despised fatasses
Oh boo hoo. What a shame that those irrational periphery workers hate you so when you're really just like them! If only they knew how hard you struggle to pay off student loans!
>The imperialist looting is basically burning every bridge in the name of short term gain.
This being true doesn't mean it impacts you to the same degree as third world workers.
>It is tremendously wasteful on a global scale, most "benefits" go right into the trash, and it is completely unsustainable long term.
Benefits being wasteful doesn't make them not benefits.
>just understanding this makes even the dumbest first world worker realize that imperialism makes no economic common sense even for them.
"If people only knew they would be against this!" is pure idealism and completely unsubstantiated by any struggle past or present.
>>2688875Theres places that are poor as shit as cambodia but overall it feels like the quality of life is going up across the board a little bit. Well even cambodia must have gone up a bit…
Pic rekated is nigeria
>>2688882I don't know why I bother.
That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about here. Infrastructure getting built up with shiny buildings does not change the overall relations at work or the exploitation at its core. In fact in the colonial and neo-colonial countries it's a product of
intensified exploitation and domination, not less. Acting like "look
those people have cities too, they're just like me!" somehow disputes what I'm saying is playing into liberals jingling keys in your face
at best.
>>2688897The gini corfficient in Nigeria is 0.33 which is not bad. The us is like 0.5
Man it feels good not to be a burger
>>2687558You should focus on following the quotes from Marx, Engels and Lenin that I will post to help you act and think. First I will start with the question of communists participating in the bourgeois election:
<Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body.
<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1850, "Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League"https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm
<The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the movement is always the organisation of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers' party. And this step has been taken, far more rapidly than we had a right to hope, and that is the main thing. That the first programme of this party is still confused and highly deficient, that it has set up the banner of Henry George, these are inevitable evils but also only transitory ones. The masses must have time and opportunity to develop and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement–no matter in what form so long as it is only their own movement–in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn wisdom by hurting themselves.
<Frederick Engels, “Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1886”, Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge In Hobokenttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_11_29.htm
<Complete abstention from political action is impossible. The abstentionist press participates in politics every day. It is only a question of how one does it, and of what politics one engages in. For the rest, to us abstention is impossible. The working-class party functions as a political party in most countries by now, and it is not for us to ruin it by preaching abstention. Living experience, the political oppression of the existing governments compels the workers to occupy themselves with politics whether they like it or not, be it for political or for social goals. To preach abstention to them is to throw them into the embrace of bourgeois politics. The morning after the Paris Commune, which has made proletarian political action an order of the day, abstention is entirely out of the question.
<We want the abolition of classes. What is the means of achieving it? The only means is political domination of the proletariat. For all this, now that it is acknowledged by one and all, we are told not to meddle with politics. The abstentionists say they are revolutionaries, even revolutionaries par excellence. Yet revolution is a supreme political act and those who want revolution must also want the means of achieving it, that is, political action, which prepares the ground for revolution and provides the workers with the revolutionary training without which they are sure to become the dupes of the Favres and Pyats the morning after the battle. However, our politics must be working-class politics. The workers' party must never be the tagtail of any bourgeois party; it must be independent and have its goal and its own policy.
<The political freedoms, the right of assembly and association, and the freedom of the press — those are our weapons. Are we to sit back and abstain while somebody tries to rob us of them? It is said that a political act on our part implies that we accept the exiting state of affairs. On the contrary, so long as this state of affairs offers us the means of protesting against it, our use of these means does not signify that we recognise the prevailing order.
<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Apropos Of Working-Class Political Action".https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/09/21.htmLenin also agrees with me if you read the text “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder in the section written "Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?", so I will leave the link to the page if you want to read it:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htmNow let's begin with the issue of the labor aristocracy, which is greatly distorted by resentful opportunists here, so I leave you with a quote from Lenin:
<In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: “…The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.” In a letter to Sorge, dated September 21, 1872, Engels informs him that Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal Council of the International and secured a vote of censure on Marx for saying that “the English labour leaders had sold themselves”. Marx wrote to Sorge on August 4, 1874: “As to the urban workers here [in England], it is a pity that the whole pack of leaders did not get into Parliament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot.” In a letter to Marx, dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks about “those very worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.” In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”
<On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: “The most repulsive thing here [in England] is the bourgeois ‘respectability’, which has grown deep into the bones of the workers…. Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one realises, what a revolution is good for, after all.”[10] In a letter, dated April 19, 1890: “But under the surface the movement [of the working class in England] is going on, is embracing ever wider sections and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest [Engels’s italics] strata. The day is no longer far off when this mass will suddenly find itself, when it will dawn upon it that it itself is this colossal mass in motion.” On March 4, 1891: “The failure of the collapsed Dockers’ Union; the ‘old’ conservative trade unions, rich and therefore cowardly, remain lone on the field….” September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Congress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day, were defeated “and the bourgeois papers recognise the defeat of the bourgeois labour party” (Engels’s italics throughout)….
<That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an “aristocracy among the working class”, of a “privileged minority of the workers”, in contradistinction to the “great mass of working people”. “A small, privileged, protected minority” of the working class alone was “permanently benefited” by the privileged position of England in 1848–68, whereas “the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement”…. “With the break-down of that [England’s industrial] monopoly, the English working class will lose that privileged position…” The members of the “new” unions, the unions of the unskilled workers, “had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old unionists’” …. “The so-called workers’ representatives” in England are people “who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism…”[…]
<The bourgeoisie of an imperialist “Great” Power can economically bribe the upper strata of “its” workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million. And how this little sop is divided among the labour ministers, “labour representatives” (remember Engels’s splendid analysis of the term), labour members of War Industries Committees, labour officials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is a secondary question.[…]
<The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era. Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys a monopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements, partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital.) This difference explains why England’s monopoly position could remain unchallenged for decades. The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; the era of imperialist wars has begun. It was possible in those days to bribe and corrupt the working class of one country for decades. This is now improbable, if not impossible. But on the other hand, every imperialist “Great” Power can and does bribe smaller strata (than in England in 1848–68) of the “labour aristocracy”. Formerly a “bourgeois labour party”, to use Engels’s remarkably profound expression, could arise only in one country, because it alone enjoyed a monopoly, but, on the other hand, it could exist for a long time. Now a “bourgeois labour party” is inevitable and typical in all imperialist countries; but in view of the desperate struggle they are waging for the division of spoils it is improbable that such a party can prevail for long in a number of countries. For the trusts, the financial oligarchy, high prices, etc., while enabling the bribery of a handful in the top layers, are increasingly oppressing, crushing, ruining and torturing the mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat.[…]
<On the economic basis referred to above, the political institutions of modern capitalism—press, parliament associations, congresses etc.—have created political privileges and sops for the respectful, meek, reformist and patriotic office employees and workers, corresponding to the economic privileges and sops. Lucrative and soft jobs in the government or on the war industries committees, in parliament and on diverse committees, on the editorial staffs of “respectable”, legally published newspapers or on the management councils of no less respectable and “bourgeois law-abiding” trade unions—this is the bait by which the imperialist bourgeoisie attracts and rewards the representatives and supporters of the “bourgeois labour parties”.
<One of the most common sophistries of Kautskyism is its reference to the “masses”. We do not want, they say, to break away from the masses and mass organisations! But just think how Engels put the question. In the nineteenth century the “mass organisations” of the English trade unions were on the side of the bourgeois labour party. Marx and Engels did not reconcile themselves to it on this ground; they exposed it. They did not forget, firstly, that the trade union organisations directly embraced a minority of the proletariat. In England then, as in Germany now, not more than one-fifth of the proletariat was organised. No one can seriously think it possible to organise the majority of the proletariat under capitalism. Secondly—and this is the main point—it is not so much a question of the size of an organisation, as of the real, objective significance of its policy: does its policy represent the masses, does it serve them, i.e., does it aim at their liberation from capitalism, or does it represent the interests of the minority, the minority’s reconciliation with capitalism? The latter was true of England in the nineteenth century, and it is true of Germany, etc., now.
<Engels draws a distinction between the “bourgeois labour party” of the old trade unions—the privileged minority—and the “lowest mass”, the real majority, and appeals to the latter, who are not infected by “bourgeois respectability”. This is the essence of Marxist tactics!
<Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the “defenders of the fatherland” in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.
<The only Marxist line in the world labour movement is to explain to the masses the inevitability and necessity of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for revolution by waging a relentless struggle against opportunism, to utilise the experience of the war to expose, not conceal, the utter vileness of national-liberal labour politics.
<V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm >>2687896The only revolution the US will get is a Huey Long situation or in other words Peronism.
>>2687930Its hard to picture but this can absolutely happen and the US breaks apart. Wouldn't even be shocked if Florida becomes a monarchy under House Trump run in Mars a Lago and House Columbia lead by Prince Harry in California because of a liberal desire to match the peak country(Sweden).
It's never gonna happen. The logic of Marxism just insists that it will because it's historically inevitable but that's an assertion with very little to back it up
Never gonn happong
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