America into a re-vitalized, progressive nation with strong social welfare. (This may sound absurd, but I have a whole set of reasonings and indicators supporting this that are too long to elaborate here)
How’d that one work out?
America into a re-vitalized, progressive nation with strong social welfare. (This may sound absurd, but I have a whole set of reasonings and indicators supporting this that are too long to elaborate here)
How’d that one work out?
I’m gonna ignore stages 1-3 which I have various disagreements with but isn’t the main problem really, I just want to ask why you think stage 4 will be a socialist outcome and not a fascist outcome given historical precedents or revolution attempts in the imperial core.
Two things. First I got a bit carried away at the last part that I was being a bit too generous to socialism. Notice that in my original comment I talked about a “re-vitalized progressive nation with strong social welfare” which is pretty much a Keynesian-style social democratic system not dissimilar to the 1950s and 1960s America before neoliberalism came in.
Second, it is still likely that socialism will win out because for this to happen, it would have been the final stage of capitalist development where the triumph of finance capitalism has set it irrevocably against its very own contradictions: industrial capital (domestically) is forced to return because you have killed industrial capital (elsewhere) - a dialectical outcome that can severely weaken the bourgeois state while strengthening labor movement (a condition that has never really existed in the previous attempts that ended with fascist victory). I cannot say this is the only outcome, for it can just be as you have said, that fascism could crush socialism. However, for that to happen, Marx would have to be wrong. The entire thesis of Marx about the development of capitalism and its contradictions giving way to socialism would have to be wrong.
So what happens to all the ideological fascists we’ve seen grow over the last 20 or so years? At what point do they stop growing and why don’t they play a major part in any of this? Does Biden murder them all or do re-education programs?
It was wrong in that he believed it would happen in advanced industrialised countries rather than those that are at the highest level of exploitation. This was his euro exceptionalist brainworms talking at the time.
The answer to your question is surprisingly simple: the fascists are beaten by… the socialists!
Is it so hard to believe that fascists, with their liberal backers weakened, cannot be defeated handily by socialists?
Once again, the conditions by that point would be completely different than the ones we are in today. Think about it this way: the imagined scenario presumes that the parasite (finance capital) has run out of hosts to feed on (industrial capital), at which point it would be at its weakest.
Their backers aren’t weakened. Industrial and manufacturing labour simply exists where it previously did not. Their backers retain all the money and power they always had on top of gaining a far greater incentive to invest in fascists as an opposition to the growing labour movement.
Socialists will not win under these conditions, against half a country already fascist that only needs organising, and a political structure that is already seeing true believer fascists funded by democrats and getting into power. You think Florida is magically going to stop being fascist after what has been done to it? When? Why? What is happening with all the fascists? Nothing is. They’ve been on a path of growth for 35 years now and they will continue on this path.
You do also think that the US stays monolithic hegemomial due to the dollar game, while the multipolar world doesn’t come to fruition. I do think that if industrial capacity somewhere else is destroyed then other places will get to the forefront, this doesn’t have to be the USA.
Your question is already covered in my Stage 3 paragraphs - there will be a transition period where the rerouting of global supply chain will take time (a decade or two, if not more) to completely replace the Chinese exporters. This will be the phase when neoliberal capitalism will be at its weakest, which contradictorily also the moment when it is securing its victory over industrial capital.
Think about it this way: if the parasite (finance capital) is killing its hosts (industrial capital) faster than its hosts can reproduce, then you will come to a point when the parasite will run out of hosts to feed on. That will be its weakest moment, until more hosts become available for them to feed again (industrial capital being funneled to the other countries). So during this transition period, in order to survive, the parasite has to rely on some form of self-feeding or a limited ability of converting external food sources for energy (re-industrialization).