this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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It's not going to collapse. It's more likely that we'll have a full-scale inter-imperialist conflict before anything resembling a collapse would occur, and I still don't think it'll be a collapse, for any participants.
You would need revolution, requiring revolutionary conditions. Like the ruling capitalist class of the United States turning to a situation where capitalism just can't function anymore. We know, based on the 20th Century, that these conditions haven't really occurred in "the West", except temorarily and only causing at best what amounted to general strike, increased union activity, or spontaneous riot/uprising. Maybe we can give credit to the failed revolutions of Germany (Sparticist) and France (Paris Commune).
Aside from that, they turn their inability to rule into an irrationalist or even illiberal form of government. They strip away the facade and turn to fascism. That's how they save themselves from crisis, that paired with the ability to extract resources a la carte from the countries oppressed by the imperialist/neo-colonial relationship. If they don't bend to the will, we can crush their economies or incite political crisis. On top of that, the US is the most highly advanced and most stable liberal democracy in the history of democracy as we know it. They're doing just fine and a general crisis of capitalism can be managed to benefit exactly who needs to benefit and hurt exactly who they need to hurt.
If anything does happen, however, that creates revolutionary conditions, we have to remember that there is no economic determinism, no inevitable crisis/crash/collapse, no guarantee of choosing socialism over barbarism. China isn't going to save us. The deep global recession won't save us. Accelerationism isn't going to work.
It's simple. If you want revolution, you need to make it happen. There is no other solution, no easy way around it, no shortcuts.
Imperialism within the cores will not collapse so easily, yes. And I agree with your general sentiments as well, in regards to the necessity for revolution within the cores and the dangers of complacency. But imperialism as a global system is absolutely going to collapse, and is visibly doing so- economically, militarily, technologically, socially, etc. all the pillars that have imposed imperialism upon much of the world are falling.
The west is trying- and increasingly, failing- to maintain its empire abroad now. And even within the imperial cores, they're certainly not "doing just fine," and calling the US the "most stable" is also a joke. And while the western elites will surely turn their domestic crises towards their own advantage, the fact is that the walls are closing in, and the foundations of even the imperial cores are genuinely eroding- demographically, ideologically, economically, etc- and the west is, in a very real sense, cutting itself off, bit by bit, from the rest of the world (good riddance in that regard to the west, even though I live in it).
The west is not self-sufficient, and- frankly, it is not competitive, not at anything much anymore other than slander (and even that is in rapid decline) and genocide- and even then, as can be seen with the current Ukraine conflict, but also with the resistance against the Zionist occupiers, in Yemen, in Iran, in Syria and Lebanon and Iraq, and in Palestine itself- they can't win, and ultimately they can't and won't even break even. The empire is bleeding itself dry, and yet it is being outproduced- and in more cost efficient ways. Just Russia alone is outproducing and outgunning all of NATO; when and if China is added to the mix, the west will truly have no hope whatsoever.
The anti-imperialist bloc today is more advanced, more stable (in regards to the core 2 nations leading the charge- China and Russia), more capable and determined in every sense, than the west. The west has essentially, barring some nigh-impossible changes (basically China/Russia going belly-up and submitting despite holding all the chips) already lost; now all that is left is to see how much destruction and suffering they will get away with inflicting on the world before they are done, in that sense (the answer of course though being- a lot, with the very real possibility of even the complete annihilation of our species in the process). For much of the world outside the cores- though the process will take decades- the era of western savagery and infestation is over; the light at the end of the tunnel is in a very real and tangible sense to be seen, even if there is definitely much suffering and danger ahead getting there. And for the imperial cores- needless to say, the empire will either increasingly starve and cannibalize itself, or fall to revolution as the hunger sets in, or- as it certainly seems to be doing now- attempt to go out with a bang, to try to re-establish the empire by holding the world hostage in a final orgy of violence and bloodshed.
Why is the West just casually letting Russia and China outproduce them? Why are they this incompetent? When the Cold War started, you would never expect such weak behavior from the West.
I'd argue there are two reasons- the first is, that this is a product of all the contradictions of capitalism, which, particularly after Reaganomics and then the triumphalist "end of history" as the Soviet Union fell, reached a point wherein the beast began truly devouring itself- and all the foundations which it had built itself upon- at a pace greater than it could plunder back or reproduce in turn, and with ideological justifications and systemic corruption (ie. neoliberalism and the environment that enforces it- finance capitalism, the rentier-monopolist classes, etc) that have made recovery difficult if not nigh impossible without revolutionary change.
The second reason is that, simply put, barring genocide of the majority of the masses of the non-western world, this was the natural path of things- the global south, the colonized, far outnumber the west, and with the decadence, and also arrogance of the imperial cores, this decline was nigh inevitable as the rest of the world caught up and outpaced the west, and as deterrence and through it the ray of hope for independent powers and blocs emerged. The contradictions of capitalism and the empire prevented the actions needed for its final victory (if it were even possible); frankly if you ask me, the only way this victory could have been assured would have been if a thoroughly inhumane (and utterly monstrous, in a way that not even the worst genocidaires in history such as Hitler were) western leader, taking the logic of empire, would have undertaken Churchill's proposed "Operation Unthinkable" before the Soviets had developed their own nukes- and they would have not only nuked the Soviets, but used nukes, biological and chemical weapons, etc, etc. upon the entire rest of humanity to destroy even the seeds of hope and resistance- and even then it would likely not be enough, as the contradictions of capital and the empire are such that the bulk of their labor and extracted resources are from the periphery, and even of those truly and purely from the imperial cores, such a horror would inspire resistance, whether out of moral principles, the awareness that those within the core would increasingly be next, or the pragmatism of not wanting to rule over ashes.
China alone is already more populous than the entire west combined. Without a constant (and by necessity- explicitly genocidal) suppression, this development- where China would retake the place it has held for the vast majority of human history- was inevitable; even just the Chinese people alone can produce more than the west, innovate more than the west, and frankly for that matter they have a superior (indigenous) civilization (well, frankly I'd argue that every non-western civilization is inherently far superior in this aspect, so it's not just China) which is not founded upon the imperialist divide-and-conquer contradictions that exist even within the imperial cores- the settler-states most obviously, but also even England proper, France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc... the empire, and capitalism, is founded on a kind of chaos and conflict- the eternal suppression and beating down of the lower classes, the eternal search for the "other" to vilify and scapegoat for the flaws in the system, and the eternal race to the bottom, with whatever underhanded or destructive means necessary to gain a quick buck. Without the global south to plunder, and to vent its frustrations and contradictions upon, the west would have collapsed long ago, in the same sense that Nazi Germany (as an embodiment of the true nature of the west), in a triumphal world where they had eradicated all the "untermensch" and established a "pure 'Aryan' society" across the globe- would have eaten itself alive. If you ask me, the western system is such that not even a "virgin earth" all to themselves, could be enough to satiate even a capitalist nation as small as the Netherlands (nevermind the fact that being cut off of the bulk of the world's labor which it depends upon would be disastrous for it).
Competent imperialist could- and did- try to sustain the empire, further still. They co-opted and cannibalized new contenders- like Japan and Germany- successfully carved apart and mangled all the true (non-western) civilizations of the world- the Russian/Soviet, Chinese, Islamic, South Asian, West African, etc. civilizations. But the nature of the contradictions inevitably led to their arrogance, and seeking to extract more, more, and more from the global south and the working class, to the point where they exported even the foundations their empires were built upon (industrial production) to the colonized with the expectations the colonized, the "lesser slaves" could never build up against them- and better than they ever had- in turn; and to the point those nations that could have been co-opted, post-Soviet Russia in specific, but also countless other nations- the gulf Arabs, the south Asian states, nations across Latin America, Africa, Asia- was spurned rather than added into the fold without any consideration as to the basic dignity and volition it, and all of humanity, had to not simply go quietly into the dark, to not accept being carved apart, piece by piece, and eternally plundered.
@SadArtemis@lemmygrad.ml has lain the second reason pretty well, but if you want more there’s TriContinental / Vijay Prashad:
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: