It is not just guns they have. Fucking tanks, choppers, drones. What can the workers do?
Just because revolutions are class wars doesn’t mean the work like a typical war, most of the time. You won’t see factory unions leading tank battles against the 2nd armor division. The American Revolution will be a rise of organization and intensity of worker agitation and national liberation movements, caused precisely by the failing power of the US, taking the reigns of power from the collapsing US state. As the US loses its grip on the international proletarian labor pool, which its currently doing a fantastic job at, the American bourgeoisie will have no choice but to bring back all those contradictions they successfully exported a century ago in a desperate attempt to retain their profit margin. Labor laws will be stripped, mass shootings will skyrocket, police repression will be rampant, and Republican/Democrat political theater will go bananas as they try desperately to get Americans to focus on literally anything but class consciousness. This all in an attempt to keep the bourgeois way of life intact.
This ironically is the best cocktail of ingredients to induce revolutionary fervor. With the USD inflating to Weimar Mark levels, a complete loss of international support and legitimacy with Europe falling to pieces over Ukraine, structural break down of the government due to political infighting, and a non-existent productive base leading to economic disintegration, the most expensive military in the world will be left with no supplies, no organization, and no soldiers (you really think US soldiers will kill their own countrymen if their not at least getting paid?) At that point the US will either have disintegrated into chaos or, if we’re lucky, have an organized proletarian movement take the reigns of power locally and nationally simply by being the only real organized political force left.
I give it 15 years tops
you really think US soldiers will kill their own countrymen if their not at least getting paid?
Yes. When the moment comes, the US ruling class will use every tool available as reaction to working class movements. They obviously won’t escalate to that point immediately, they know it would amount to a civil war. But that doesn’t mean the steps necessary to protect bourgeois rule will not be taken and probably will be accepted by a significant amount of the US population. Already the US government has and is using huge amounts of violence to pacify protests and uprisings via the police or the national guard. If necessary, all it would take them is to call a revolutionary movement anti american, or terrorist, or foreign backed, or anything that helps justify the use of military force. Easily they can blame it on Russia, or China, or Cuba, or whatever they don’t like, and then the escalation will happen as necessary. Anyways, before any of that happens, the US political establishment has proven to be very good at killing domestic revolutionary movements. Before the tanks start rolling on the streets (ie. Civil war), the US will use paramilitary means to crush the revolution. That is the police, the national guard, the CIA, or even far right shock groups. You mention the way the inflation in the Weimar republic went, but you have to remember how it ended. The left in europe and Germany thought that the sharpening contradictions would lead inevitably to socialist revolution, but instead it ended up in the most vile and brutal reaction by the bourgeoisie. The only thing America differs in that regard is that right now it seems they lack a clear Caesar figure, a person or group that unifies the factions of the ruling class against the bigger threat of revolution. The closest thing to it is war, but it isn’t as sure a force as fascism to hold together the bourgeois state. That’s something in my opinion the communists in the US could use, but the window of opportunity to do it is narrow before someone comes to the front in the class war and plunges the US directly into full blown fascism.
You’re definitely right in the short term. There’s no possible way a revolution would succeed in America as it stands right now. Things will get really bad and massive repression and open fascism will likely follow. But that can’t last long. The US has almost no internal economy. Post WWI Germany at least had a relatively intact industrial base for the Nazis to seize and send into overdrive to fund its military and terror campaigns. If the US’s resource supplies from puppet states in Latin America and Africa and it’s manufacturing bases in China, India, and Vietnam get cut off, US society will slam to a halt. And I think this likely will happen once countries are certain the US can’t retaliate against them for resisting anymore, which is coming soon enough. People won’t be able to buy food or basic supplies. The military won’t be able to get fuel, bullets, or jet/tank equipment. The US won’t be able to have the military/police successfully do anything, be it attack its own citizens or any foreign nation. It might flail out before all this occurs and try to fire nukes at China or something, but they’d likely all get intercepted and America invaded. Call me overly optimistic but I think it will be quite shocking how rapidly the US state falls apart, and stays broken, without it’s imperial spoils
spoiler
Look already to history and modern day: asymmetric warfare has NEVER gone in America’s favor. A few ragtag communist or fascist guerrillas can fluster the bloated, lumbering, and incredibly expensive American war machine, often until they simply throw in the towel as money is the only reason they fight in the first place, thus as it reveals itself to be too costly the eagerness to fight evaporates. For very cheap you can be a thorn in their side.
Another variable to consider is that we are assuming a warm/hot war on U.S. soil against its own civilians. While there would certainly be tremendous effort from the capitalists, the liberal and conservative media/society alike, and fascists to portray any communist revolutionaries as barbaric, butchering, senseless animals from hell, cockroaches to be squashed, the fact of the matter is it’d be a lot harder to manufacture consent to bomb American cities and kill American civilians than it is to convince The People™ to do the same to brown people in faraway, foreign lands.
Honestly I’m worried less about the seeming omnipotence of the American military, and more about the broad fascist tendency of the American People™. At this point, we would have no numbers, but our enemies would have plenty. I’d even be less concerned about a drone vaporizing me before I knew what hit me using sci-fi technology than the idea of being captured alive by American fascist militias eager to practice a lifetime buildup of depraved sadist curiosity against a victim unable to fight back.
Another issue is willpower. I already do not trust the ability of Americans of any political stripes to be willing to die or even to fight a hard, dirty war sans dying. To be frank this is definitely a part of the capitalist effort to inoculate the country against revolution: we here in America are infantilized, conditioned to be docile, fearful, content. We are showered with gory violence, pornography and ruthless cruelty in our media, yet the uglier parts of life are kept from us; many fellow Americans I know are barely capable of being confrontational, let alone getting physical. Many of us have never thrown nor recieved a punch, let alone a bullet. I’m speaking in generalities here, and I’m not speaking as “holier than thou” as many of these tendencies have been baked into my behavior as well and it’s taken most of my adult life to try and pry away from them. And of course these sort of things would change as cracks continue to form in the bubble and we are slowly introduced to an uglier life; revolution is probably not suddenly springing up tomorrow, and a hot war would likely have a reasonably long warmup period. But it’s definitely a variable to keep an eye on.
To be frank, at risk of sounding some type of way, another variable potentially in our favor is Latino migrants, who could potentially bolster our numbers and who do not suffer from the same lack of hard life experience as much as we do.
Another variable to consider is the Internet, and the fact that this is the imperial core. While the affects of technology on warfare have been foreshadowed to us, revolution in the imperial core has no real precedent. Knowledge of previous wars and lessons learned are imperative but at the same time there is absolutely no predicting how a revolution would pan out.
Important is also the state of the rest of the world. Who would be supporting us, who would be supporting America, and how? Who would abstain? How far has America and its remaining allies waned?–it’s important to remember America grows weaker year by year these days. What of technology–weapons, defenses, A.I.? What of climate change? These variables and many others will set the realm of possibility.
I doubt things will be easy, in fact they could be hellishly terrible, but they could also go surprisingly in our favor. It just really depends what life looks like over the next couple years.
well said. no mercy on the fascists and let’s take the help we can get, play it cool and smart. We don’t need to make martyrs of ourselves.
Yes, if it becomes irreparably hopeless my official take is “grab what you can and let’s GTFO this sinking ship to hell.” Up until it reaches that point though, if we have any chance at all, we should fight. Either way savvy smarts, a mountain of resolve and a good splash of luck will be needed for each and every one of us.
The bolsheviks only had whatever sticks, knives and guns they could steal. Even then, it’s not like the bolsheviks just up and rounded up peasants and marched to the winter palace.
It happens through militancy, being out in the streets agitating, and educating yourself. Go out, add to the momentum.
Fucking tanks, choppers, drones.
Look at Vietnam. Look at Yemen today. The Houthis are going up against all this armament, and winning.
Looking at other revolutions, lots seem to follow wars. I suspect the mass mobilisation into fighting units might be key. This might be why the west now avoids the “total war” of the past
The revolution will start in the third world which will cripple the economy of the west. The military will be occupied fighting against them (and hopefully fail) so there will be little to defend the imperialists. At one point they won’t be able to manage it all
First off, war and governance are completely different. War is about killing the other side and capturing territory. Governance is about obedience, which is much harder. If they came at us with tanks, bombs, etc., many workers would die, and many others would leave, so the wages of the remaining workers would have to go up.
The other thing is, this century will not be like the last. IMO the most important difference will be the mass-migration of networked workers who can keep in touch with friends/family back home in real time from whereever they work. This will give labor organizing a multinational dimension.
Every immigrant worker is an ambassador for labor. Capitalistic climate destruction will cause hundreds of millions of people to leave their home countries. That means multinational labor will confront multinational capital. Imagine strikes that span continents, that cover every stage of production, from agriculture and extraction to light and heavy industry to information work.
The other thing is, this century will not be like the last. IMO the most important difference will be the mass-migration of networked workers who can keep in touch with friends/family back home in real time from whereever they work. This will give labor organizing a multinational dimension.
This is important. Labour organizing needs to become international in any situation where the labour pool is. It’s why liberals love open borders so much.
It is worth remembering that offshoring worked precisely because labour wasn’t international enough. In the UK we used to bring migrants from India etc to work in factories and mills. They struck for better pay and conditions, as well as respect, like everyone else. They benefited from the pro-union laws. Offshoring undermined that.
Watch out comrade, you’re getting dangerously close to sounding like Trotsky and we’re not all that welcome around here.
If you’re talking about the US, secession and balkanization is a significant possibility for how the US ends. It’d be much easier to make changes on a state level.
Also, look at former Yugoslavia and USSR and how the constant inflow of bullshit has people believing capitalism is good actually even though it turned their economies to shit and continues to exploit them and suppress their development to this day. But those regions are just where it’s more obvious. Class consciousness is suppressed all over the Western world.
Cutting down the US’s ability to manufacture that bullshit is the best thing Americans can do not just for revolution at home, but all over the world. Ironically that while liberal propaganda keeps portraying the US as ‘saving the world,’ by dismantling itself they actually could save the world from capitalism.
Same applies to the UK. It’d make a good dozen states, none of which could plausibly project themselves in the same way that the UK does today. Critical support for secessionists is a good move.
Interesting. I do actually see the USA becoming balkanised. Something along the lines of Gilead (from The Handmaid’s Tale) to start with.
All three of those require fuel. I don’t think anybody could plausibly hope to win a war or revolution without it. So, maybe start with helping to unionise oil refineries and distribution networks? Or, hypothetically, let’s say they ought to not be available to the state. Ahem.
They’ll start thinning the herd once automation becomes widespread.
Is it not already? Unless military itself is involved I don’t see the worker class rising up. Capitalists won’t have mercy using any means
Fascists won’t have any mercy. Capitalists will have to fight a long fight for the privilege of using no mercy: they will be fighting Americans, many of which are white and have social media presence on the English-speaking internet. American citizens on U.S. soil. This is a lot different than fighting black and brown people in alien foreign lands that no American could find on a map.
I think the MOVE bombing shows that the American government will actually be okay bombing their own citizens on their own soil and most people will ignore it
Those were black anarchists living in some obscure neighborhood, so that probably played a part in it being ignored. Can they truly get away with bombing apartment blocks in city centers in California though?
Philadelphia is obscure? It was the original capital. They militarize against their own people openly and frequently. Tourists go and play vacation in the currently annexed Hawai’i. I’m very hopeful for the strength of community organizing, but I do think it is quite optimistic to believe that the negative response against the State for attacking their own cities would be as widespread as you think. Large swathes of the population would absolutely buy into anti-extremist/anti-riot propaganda, especially if it would be inconvenient otherwise.
I don’t want this to come off as defeatist so I will edit to add: outreach and education is still, as always, they key to any movement. As long as we continue to work with others in their struggles, we can build a strong foundation of resistance, and prepare people to be unaccepting of escalating State violence
Don’t forget, any and all means of electronic communication can be instantly severed or targeted portions blocked.
The only way people can rise up is together with a common goal with their local neighbors and friends.
But yeah, at this point the only thing that could actually hurt the state is a countrywide general strike which doesn’t require you to organize very much.
