And I responded:
I received a few questions like this, also from seleucusnicator and butterfliesandbeaches, so I’m going to answer them all in one go.
I’m probably one of the older folks on Tumblr – pushing 40 – so I feel confident in saying that we have all lived our lives in a period of deep reaction on a global scale, since the late 1970s at least. The 60s generation and their wonderful stories of struggle seem to come from another planet altogether. No wonder it is hard for many people to imagine a socialist world.
However…
The great contradictions of capitalism and imperialism, exposed by Marx, Engels, Lenin and many others, have not changed fundamentally in the past century. They haven’t gone away. In fact, in the world around us right now, we can see them sharpening.
We are still living in the epoch of imperialist war and socialist revolution. Like any great historical period, it does not proceed in a straight line, but with forward charges and humiliating set-backs, twists, turns and diversions. Remember that it took capitalism at least 400 years to consolidate itself on a global scale, and capitalism is a system that generates itself spontaneously. Socialism, on the other hand, requires a high degree of consciousness among vast masses of people.
During the last 30 years, the profit system got a big boost, first from the high-tech revolution and second from re-conquering the territory and labor of the former USSR and Eastern European socialist bloc. But it was a brief respite for the bosses. Today even the drug of enormous war spending isn’t working. Global capitalism has run aground with no relief in sight.
The socialist revolutions and socialist-oriented national liberation struggles of the Twentieth Century took place on the periphery of imperialism, where it proved easier to break the chains. Without exception, these great revolutions unfolded in countries and regions of the world held down and kept underdeveloped by colonialism and imperialism. Each one had enormous internal obstacles to overcome along with the unrelenting war of U.S. and other capitalist powers against them, through direct military intervention, nuclear threats, internal subversion, economic blockade, etc.
In the years following 1917, no one in the Bolshevik Party (and I mean no one, despite later claims by some) thought that the revolution would survive unless there was a socialist revolution in a major imperialist country. As we know, unfortunately that didn’t happen.
Lenin had already laid the basis for understanding why in his groundbreaking study of Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, where he showed how monopoly capital created a labor aristocracy dependent on crumbs from the super-exploitation of oppressed nations. These labor lieutenants of capital were able to divert the struggles of the workers into safe liberal and social-democratic channels over a long period.
The eventual downfall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and dangerous compromises with capitalism like those undertaken by the current leaders of China, are not the result of inherent flaws in socialism. The combination of economic hardships of underdevelopment, imperialist military threats, and lack of revolutionary support from the West is what caused the difficulties and political decay that plagued many of the workers’ states attempting to build socialism. What is most amazing – and in my opinion is further proof of socialism’s vitality – is that the USSR survived over seven decades in spite of all this (and incidentally, defeated Nazism in the bargain)!
While imperialism’s fundamental contradictions haven’t changed, one thing has: its constant drive for expansion has now created a vast working class all over the world, and a highly-skilled one in many places. While communists and socialists the world over were fighting just to hold on to our ideas and organizations, the bosses were busy creating more of their own gravediggers.
Today we see that, far from building up a labor aristocracy, the big capitalist powers are tearing down the working class in their own countries, forcing them into a race to the bottom against super-oppressed workers who are no longer isolated from the means of production, thanks to the high-tech revolution. Also, as it becomes more and more difficult for the growing global working-class to find decent jobs, immigration is increasing. Ultimately, I believe, all this is laying the basis for more militant fight-back in the imperialist countries and great international class solidarity.
I highly recommend Fred Goldstein’s recent book, Low Wage Capitalism, which analyses these developments in greater depth.
As far back as 1940, the revolutionary communist Leon Trotsky predicted the “shifting of revolutionary gravity” from East to West. It seems that this prediction is finally poised to become fact – if not tomorrow, than at least in the near future, historically speaking. Whether that means years or decades, no one can predict.
(This is not to discount the importance of the new wave of socialist struggles throughout the rest of the world, which will grow along with the burgeoning working class, and which today provides such an inspiration and breath of fresh air – from Nepal to Venezuela.)
Trotsky also observed that while it is easier to start a revolution on the periphery of imperialism, it is harder to carry it through because of the low social and economic level imposed from outside. In contrast, in the imperialist centers, it has proven much harder to begin the revolutionary struggle – but once workers’ power is consolidated here, it will be relatively easier to convert to a high level of socialist economic equality. And perhaps most importantly, removing the jackboot of U.S. imperialism from the necks of the world’s people will free them to make quick work of their local ruling classes.
Imperialism is dangerous, deadly – never more so than when it’s backed into a corner. But as Mao argued in the face of the U.S. nuclear arsenal – and as the Vietnamese and many other people showed in practice – it is not invincible. If humanity is to survive, there really is no choice but for the working classes to enter onto the road of planned, sustainable economies that provide everyone with their basic needs.
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