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.
Man, even the apologies are tinged in exceptionalism. I promise you guys aren’t the first (or even best) to persecute dissenters.
Look, I know I come across as just pushing back to be contrarian, but if anything it’s a hopeful message. I think the US left and a lot of the worldwide left have been negligent and self-centered in their political action. But I also think American leftists give their ability for action way too little credit.
There’s a bit of that exceptionalism. Like if you aren’t changing the fundamental fabric of the system at a national scale you are not “making a difference” or whatever, but what I’m saying, for good and bad, is that movement leftward is about institutional networks, unified strategies and long-term groundwork.
Maybe it’s too late now, I don’t know. But the goal should always be to get the right people to the right places. As a country in the Americas struggling with oligarchy and rising populist fascism in an unstable political landscape I say this now more genuinely than ever: you’re not that special.
There are playbooks out there. Problem about playbooks is you need a team to run the plays. It’s not going to be a switch flipping from degenerated neoliberalism into socialist utopia.
Definitely. The problem is that America isn’t special. It might’ve been the dominant empire for most of our living memory, but every empire falls, and given the alterations being made to the military, it’ll become capable of separating into multiple nations in the long run. That won’t happen overnight and won’t be caused by leftists, but they have no reason to stop it.
The long term strategy that American leftists failed to use for years was a local one. The local leftist politicians suck at appealing to local issues rather than the bigger picture, and your not wrong about it.