pooh [she/her, any]
How about 3DPrinting and/or DIY?
Regardless of whether one is pro or anti China, I think people here are overestimating the probably of a clean and quick collapse. What seems more likely to happen, barring some unforeseen event, is a slow decline of US power leading to an international power vacuum and potentially another world war.
As quick as China’s rise has been, they are still at a disadvantage against the US military. As that recedes, it will almost certainly be replaced with a coalition of other rising powers like India, Vietnam, and existing industrial powers like the EU and Japan.
This could be a good thing in the sense that it could give other nations some much needed breathing room From US hegemony, but I think this is wishful thinking. A more likely scenario is that a combination of instability, fierce competition over resources, and the added pressure from climate change will result in a period of international conflict.
This is a pessimistic view, but I think it would be a realistic outcome of US power waning while the current global capitalist system remains intact. Global socialist revolution would obviously be an ideal remedy to this.
To put it in more simple terms, I think a global system that is destined to produce certain outcomes will continue to produce those outcomes regardless of whether it’s led by the US or some other superpower, or a coalition of powers.
A system is only destined to produce certain outcomes as long as that system continues to exist. There has never really been capitalism without the US. The US is the global center of capitalism, it keeps the system functional and somewhat sustainable.
Capitalism is now truly global, which means it no longer really needs the US as it currently exists. I do agree that the fall of the US as a global power presents a potential opportunity to attack capitalism. However, I think we should also be aware that, if threatened, it will adapt by forcing the US and it’s military into an openly fascist system and/or adopt new hosts elsewhere, as it has done in China.
China is deeply embedded into the current global capitalist system, and subject to the same contradictions and incentives toward exploitation that exist in capitalism anywhere else. Why should we have any faith that one capitalist country is more likely to bring the downfall of capitalism than any other capitalist country, given what we already know about what capitalism inevitably leads to?
Remember, comrade: communism is inevitable.
I certainly agree with you, but I also think that how we get there can take many forms, some of them being quite horrific. We should try as much as possible to direct that path ourselves and use the opportunity to hasten the transformation to a more a more genuinely socialist system, as opposed to assuming that struggles between competing capitalist states will some how work out in our favor. We can’t simply rely on any one country or individual to save us.
I think it was much worse than that. I think they actually fudged the results in Texas and a number of other states that were relatively close.
Much thanks for the great list of links :)
I’ll be sure to check these out when I have the time.
Related, but I’ve also been planning to start reading “The People’s Republic of Walmart” which supposedly covers modern planned economies in more detail, and specifically the internal economies of global retailers like Walmart and Amazon.
Brutalism is cool and all, but what about Catalan Modernisme?
What if you also made bumper stickers that say, “JESUS IS MY COMRADE” with the Christian Communism symbol next to it as a way to further confuse them and normalize leftist ideas with that group?
