This post will probably piss people (especially Americans) off. Here, I talk only about supporting socialist revolution in the USA, and do not care much for the morality or treatment of Americans in order to get there.
The US’s position as the dominant capitalist power founded on settler colonialism means it will be the one of the last countries in the world to have a communist revolution. For the sake of all people of the world, it is also the most important country to have one in. The US would need to first lose its empire and have all Americans live as semi-feudal cyberpunk slaves before the possibility of communist revolution. Even then, Native Americans will probably still be treated like shit.
Because of this, revolutionary socialist parties have a difficult dilemma in the USA. They must fight for reforms that make life better for Americans in order to build public support, but because reforms are ultimately compromises by ruling capitalists, doing so makes US bourgeois ‘democracy’ appear responsive to worker demands and delays the future date of revolution.
Are there ways we can support revolution while circumventing this dilemma?
I think socialist-sympathetic petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie can fill such a role by playing the ‘bad cop’ to socialist parties’ ‘good cop’ role.
In the USA, power as an individual depends almost solely on money. Thus the most effective way for any person to shape US policy is to found a startup to get rich, then use it to bribe politicians to do shit. Of course, this approach is fundamentally not socialist, and anyone who gets rich enough to do so probably won’t hold socialist views anymore. For the sake of discussion, let’s say one of us socialists founds a company and gets rich.
The more ruthless a capitalist you are, the more successful your business will be.[1] Businesses run by ‘softies’ with morals always lose market share to (and are ultimately bought out by) competing businesses with none. This means there is a natural pressure under capitalism to make life worse. If a socialist starts a business with the goal of providing an alternative to this, they are fighting a losing battle which ensures future irrelevance.
In this US capitalist environment, should socialist-sympathetic businesses accelerate the revolution by instead deliberately making Americans’ lives worse? Doing so would produce more profit, which would ensure their continued existence and allow them to expand market share to make even more Americans’ lives worse, thereby accelerating the revolution further.
Of course, said businesses should also funnel a portion of profits to covertly supporting socialist parties. Alternatively, they could transfer money to China, thereby supporting the construction of global socialism.
Of course, this approach walks a fine line. Socialist founders must be vigilant that their business strategy ultimately helps revolution rather than just becoming another part of the capitalist system. Founders must also be extremely careful not to get found out, as that would jeopardise both their business’s attractiveness to capitalist investors, and look very hypocritical to the public.
In a vacuum, business which consistently reinvests it’s capital to develop production capacity, IMO, is working towards common prosperity and societal change. i think its legitimate to say that at some point in time, businesses in the US found themselves as the vanguard of production, the problem is that their ultimate goal wasn’t developing production for the sake of common prosperity, but to capture market share and establish monopolies for the sake of private profit. The US state foreign policy is a crystal clear tell.
With this in mind, to “help revolution” in the US, sympathetic businesses have to drop the goal of developing production, to pursue the goal of toppling the US goverment, which represents the parasitic capitalist class and bombs/murders the competition to its key industries, in order to establish a new state that legitimately pursues the development of production. There is no reformist way in the imperial core.
Honestly there wouldn’t be anything more revolutionary than a financial business, lets say a cryptoexchange, hustling americans from their savings to fund a movement that topples the US goverment.
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accelerationism (someone else did mention in their reply)
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lelouch vi britannica is an anime character and someone the likes of him doesn’t exist irl (intended tone:light)(sorry, couldn’t resist)
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“socialist-sympathetic petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie” don’t exist in the US at least not in any meaningful or organized capacity, and you more or less described why a hot mess contradiction would mean they self-select for “extinction” under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, but they (well, at least the national bourgeoisie) exist in the PRC. Obviously the difference is that the PRC is a dictatorship of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are not the ruling class, however, the national bourgeoisie are permitted and encouraged to cooperate in building the nation and the socialist project. One such guy [who’s shown up in english-language media from time to time] is a venture capitalist Eric Li 李世默, who I recall describing his venture capitalist role as “willing to take on more risk than the government normally would [in supporting/funding new businesses new tech new fields]”, but he’s just one example. I urge those curious to independently research the topic further, but keep in mind that the conditions, particularly historic and social, in the US are vastly different from those in the PRC.
(edit:I must note that all citizens in prc benefit from social goods and relevant conditions such as relatively affordable quality healthcare, with access still expanding to more rural areas, and relatively unprecarious housing. as such, there’s less pressure compared to both workers and capitalists in the US to scramble, squeeze, and cutthroat-compete, or blame others of their class or blame workers/immigrants [I can’t say non-existent tho. esp re:bigotry towards immigrants in places like hk]； well, for the blame game, there’s also some difference in political education [again not perfect… chinese liberals do exist and many are proletariats tho plenty are wannabe-bourgeois])
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People seeing businesses that are treating people like shit supporting socialist politics sounds exactly like the sort of thing that would generate fascists if anything.
Can I push back on the idea that the US is the most important country to have a socialist revolution in? I’d argue it’s more important to have socialist revolutions where the global proletariat are. Where is that; Where do you find slave and semi-slavery conditions forced up hundreds of millions of women and children? Places that you don’t hear about in the news (e.g. large parts of Africa, parts of Asia, etc). These are the workers that run the global economy and generate the profits.
By comparison, many white Westerners are highly overpaid compared to the work they contribute. This is why capital can so easily import foreign workers at a fraction of the cost. The US is already busy changing. It’s got a cultural war between one faction that wants to rebuild the white settler nation (e.g. by limiting access to birth control, importing white “refugees”, creating “trad”-wives, etc) and another that wants to reduce the privileged white sub-nation and build an alternative “privileged” class (special males, in specially male-gendered industries that pay well but contribute little to society – cars, weapons, computers) and that can police a new underclass (women and children, worldwide, working in low pay situations in socially-vital but very under-payed jobs designated for them). The capitalist class is happy to let these two sides duke it out, but either way, I think the US and its allies are busy, occupied with trends that will eventually make them more fertile ground for revolution.
I also think it’s worth considering that if you want to organize and build alliances you’ll have to show up for friends and their causes (by this I mean good causes, and I’ll assume you’re weighed the benefits vs risks) – being an accelerationist is going to often position you against these allies. I’d worry that being an accelerationist combined with the strategy you’ve proposed is going to look very much like being a regular capitalist (at least until the very last moment). I’m reminded of “effective-altruism”, which I don’t believe has a good track record of successes.
A couple things… firstly, there’s no way of actually knowing which country is going to have a revolution first or last, what that revolution would require in order for it to occur, or what outcomes would emerge from that revolution. Most everyone who’s tried to think this way has been wrong.
Also reforms are not “compromises.” Their functions are more similar to steam vents. Almost all reforms are phased out eventually or otherwise circumvented until a boiling point is reached again. There is no sliding scale. And there is no “socialist-sympathetic petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie.” Virtually no one would do the things you suggest. If they do, they’re probably tricking some local anarcho-whatever collective into throw bricks at striking autoworkers because they voted for Trump or something.
What you’re suggesting is called “accelerationism” and it’s not very popular. Turning up the heat doesn’t get you any closer to revolution unless there’s a preexisting socialist framework to replace and undermine the faltering structures of capitalism. That takes actual coordination and planning. Revolutions do not self-assemble like cell membranes. This is idealism.
Just hang around a bit, this stuff will become clearer.
should socialist-sympathetic businesses accelerate the revolution by instead deliberately making Americans’ lives worse?
No. The problem ,especially in america, is not that the working class are not poor enough to have a revolution. It is that they lack class consciousness. By being good to employees and clients a socialist business owner can open people up to agitation and propoganda.
Sure, but class consciousness depends mostly on material conditions. A comfy white-collar worker probably won’t be revolutionary until they and all their colleagues are almost homeless.
As much as it sounds nice for businesses in the U.S. to treat employees and clients nicely, in practice they just lose to ones that are more ruthless. A startup like Uber who seeks to grow as much as possible must ruin the jobs of as many taxi drivers possible, as quickly as possible, to become the dominant product. All the nice, moral, mom-and-pop taxi companies are all dead now.
Sure, but class consciousness depends mostly on material conditions.
Class consciousness is a material condition. It feels like you are conflating “material conditions” for “trends in living standards.” “Material conditions” means the entire state of things at a given point in time. Wealth inequality and worsening living conditions are major influences on revolutionary movements but class consciousness is what separates an angry mob from a proletarian revolution.
The conditions that lead to the Luddite movement did not impart class consciousness which is why the movement failed. If there had been more class consciousness and the movement had gone beyond the textile industry it could have sparked a proletarian revolution but instead it was limited to a violent trade union strike.
There is no such thing as a “comfy white collar worker.” The so called “middle class” is under intense pressure as it shrinks. The fight to maintain that level of “comfort” is far greater than the struggle of being poor. The most miserable and stressed people I have known were white collar workers earning 2x the median income.
A white collar worker who is properly propagandized can see the trends in labor relations and understand that even if automation isn’t threatening his job directly the rise in unemployment will put downward pressure on his wages and living standards. The ignorant ones blame fellow working class people for trying to squeeze in on their privilege.
As much as it sounds nice for businesses in the U.S. to treat employees and clients nicely, in practice they just lose to ones that are more ruthless.
“If I don’t steal it someone else will”
There will always be someone willing to be more immoral than you for a buck. If your business model isn’t able to compete without resorting to exploitation then it isn’t going to be viable unless you completely abandon all sense of morality. The only way a bougie, petit or otherwise, can be socialist is if they abandon their plans at being a bougie. You can’t have it both ways. You either fight for the working class or you work for the ruling class.
It sounds like you are either trying to whitewash a class traitor becoming a bougie or are trying to justify a bougie who is refusing to be a class traitor despite understanding the immorality of being an exploiter.
Delaying the date of the US revolution may not be a bad thing. The longer it takes for revolution to come, the weaker the declining US will be, the quicker and easier it will be to defeat it, and the quicker the people can rebuild afterwards, and the more prepared the rest of the world will be for it. That’s the way I see it.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
