We’ve reached the second iteration. There isn’t a lot separating us from the third iteration. And the material conditions were bad enough, at the latest, sometime between the first and the second iterations.
People know socialism exists. People are experiencing sufficiently bad material conditions that they want change.
People have picked up neoliberal ideas from living in a neoliberal society. These ideas give people a framework to process their material conditions so that they do not rise up in sufficient numbers. People need to learn that these ideas are part of an ideology designed to enrich the owner class at the expense of the worker class. Things will continue to get worse unless people understand that everyone needs to own their work.
This education is work that still needs to be done after hypothetically defeating the current fascist dictatorships and is probably part of what will be needed to defeat them.
I keep having this conversation with people and seeing the accelerationist line of reasoning, so I wanted to address it with a visual.
Well, as a not-American whose left wing actually secured a government, you are wrong. Winning is the ONLY goal, because when you win you get to do things and when you lose you do not get to do things. And if you’re not doing things you’re just talking online and I genuinely have less depressing stuff to discuss online if that’s the only goal.
I also fail to see how finding that we need to work harder is convenient. From where I stand it’s a pain in the butt.
I have taken many things from US cultural imperialism, good and bad. I am not taking cushy leftie defeatism the-system-won’t-let us nonsense. Every American I’ve met is simultaneously convinced that any change or victory is impossible and also that the revolution will be immediate and violent.
Screw all that noise. The left wins when it deploys a winning strategy and engages in politics to secure more power than it loses over time.
Yeah, I get that. A big issue in America that makes leftism seem so impossible is just how tied up anti-leftist sentiment is with American national identity. Capitalism and a hatred of marxism is ancient, with most of the most powerful unions of the progressive era being staunchly anti-communist. It is illusory, as it is innately tied to our imperial identity, which is why dismantling it in the American psyche is so important.
For the record, I was fairly invested in promoting institutional power until recently, holding onto the fleeting hope that liberals would be willing to work at all to save their own system, and leftists would wise up and use what tools they had available. Now that America as a nation is irrevocably toast, I hope to weaken the tribal identity. I only seek to use the tools I have available, and national institutions are not one of them.
However, my real goal is simply survival. I can’t get rid of Trump, so I only have to outlive them.