I was recently in a conversation with a self-described MagaCommunist who held the position that the primary contradiction in the USA was that the financial owning class owned all of the means of production and that the contradictions of settler colonialism were secondary and could only be resolved through a workers’ state.
I realized that I hold the position that settler colonialism is the primary contradiction in the USA, but I also found that I struggled to articulate it effectively. I’m looking for your own thoughts or writings that I can study to learn more on this topic.
Hard to say, we are treading uncharted territory here. Even if somehow a principled communist party that understood the global class struggle took power, it would be extremely hard to manage considering the drastic drop in living standards it would mean to drop US imperialism.
But then again, political parties mantaining power through insane drops of living standards is not unheard of (the dismantlement of the USSR for example).
My honest opinion is nope, nothing good will come out of the US and other imperial core countries, the working class of these countries is largely reactionary and would be more than eager to genocide other nations to get theirs.
I think this is pretty important and something I didn’t have a good line of reasoning on. But from other replies I’m understanding that ending imperialism means ending dollar hegemony and that would immediately raise the price of everything in the USA. Are there other ways to understand the drop in living standards that ending imperialism would mean?
Its hard to say, but massive shortages in a wide array of commodities, a massive shift from bs white collar jobs to more exhausting blue collar jobs while they redevelop some industries, massive loss of labour-power since migrants would definitely leave, loss of purchasing power, etc…
I dont think it will be as massive as the crisis in venezuela, north korea, china, the ussr, etc because of how priviledged the US is in terms of strategic resources like arable land and oil reserves and no one would enforce a criminal blockade like they have done, even if they deserve it.
Caused by the end of dollar hegemony or caused by something else?
Caused by the end of dollar hegemony or caused by something else? Of note, the MagaComm thinks the 25% blue collar workers have the revolution potential but hasn’t said what the 50% white collar workers would be in their analysis, which is a good line of questions for me to pursue.
This one is interesting. Why would migrants leave if, for example, a DotP took hold in the USA?
Countries all over the world need to mantain trade surpluses (value $ of export more than import) in order to get dollars in order to pay debt or buy other commodities, like oil from saudi arabia (which explicitly only sells it on USD, aka the petrodollar).
Who produces the dollars? The US. So basically the US can mantains this insane trade deficit (value $ of import more than export) because they literally have the ability to print the international reserve currency and the currency does not super hyper inflation because of the high demand worldwide, any currency would collapse in a minute with a trade deficit like the US.
So the USD losing its global status would mean that the US can no longer import as much commodities as they do, theyd need to start producing much much more commodities to balance their international trade.
In order to produce more commodities, more productive blue collar workers will be needed instead of the non-productice finance white collar bs.
Yes, Dollar hegemony makes it viable for the US to import a much larger quantity of commodities than would be otherwise possible. The loss of imports would not just affect consumer goods, but also intermediate goods. The loss of dollar hegemony will cause a temporary slowdown in many of the productive industries that America does have.