AI can’t really generate wealth in the long run. Automation of all types generates temporary advantages in pricing, but other groups catch up eventually. This lowers the rate at which labor is exploited as a ratio of production, which lowers the actual source of profit. Absolute profits rise, while rates of profit fall.
The only way out is revolution, which begins with the people, mass class consciousness, and organized leadership that can help steer the movement in a positive direction. This is why grassroots organizations of disciplined workers are so critical, they can help us accomplish the tasks of educating, agitating, and organizing.
What’s largely different is that the US is a moribund empire, with a rising socialist alternative that it definitely cannot attack. We are in 2026, and that’s a fantastic time to get organized. Socialism is rising in popularity across the west among working people, and we will be able to establish socialism. It’s necessary, sensible, and possible.
Exactly!
My point isn’t that Trump is the exact same. My point is that, ultimately, he serves the same role, only at a different point in the decline of the US Empire. Time is not static, with each day and second that passes, the world changes, and these changes reinforce further changes. Quantity turns into quality.
If you look below, @lookitsjustin@lemmy.ca and I came to a relative understanding. I’m not trying to say there’s nothing unique about Trump, my point is to draw connections to what is actually similar. This mirrors how Marx radically transformed how we understand capitalism, by looking at how it was similar to feudalism and connected to it, not just by looking at the differences.
As for the Krasnov jab, ultimately the narrative that Trump is a Russian puppet is rather baseless. The war in Ukraine would already be over, and Russia would no longer be sanctioned. It seems this narrative is trying to make Russia a scapegoat for Statesian imperialism, and make it seem like it isn’t a core aspect of the way the US works.
Obama did destroy Libya. Is your point that it was better to turn Libya into a country with open-air slave markets and massacre thousands of people, or is your point that it’s better than the Iran War because it didn’t backfire as splendidly?
We will win. Not only is revolutionary optimism important for our own mental health, but it’s rooted in solid, materialist analysis. As far as Canada is concerned, I don’t personally know the parties that exist there, but I know Red Pen is based in Canada, and generally has good analysis and summaries of Marxist theory and analysis.
Well, the first step is understanding that we need socialism and to end capitalism. We are already there, you and I! The next is understanding how revolutions actually work. Throughout all revolutionary history, one central through line is common: it is the great masses of society that actually make revolution. This means that class consciousness must grip the masses, and that these masses must be organized.
This is where we can and must be proactive. We can and must start with our own education, our own study of our existing conditions. We must also build up a disciplined group of workers that, through constant political work amongst the rest of the workers, gain their support and respect. When crisis hits, and it inevitably does on a regular basis in capitalism, we take the momentum of the working classes and use our own experience and study to help steer it in a positive direction.
This general process has unfolded in Russia, China, Cuba, and many other places. It’s a proven strategy, one that we can rely on. We need to adapt to new surveillance, and the crackdown on speech, but revolutionaries have been in worse positions before. Over time, organizing has won more rights that cannot be as easily taken away. The intense concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people only serves to bolster our ranks and further outnumber them.
In essense, it’s the age-old adage:
I’m not trying to be mean here, just take your point to a higher level, one that gets at the heart of the issue. I disagree that the US Empire is being imperialist because of “an imperialist attitude.” Imperialism is not merely a whim, it’s a material process that evolves from earlier stages of capitalism. As capital consolidates, forming monopoly finance capital, it seeks to endlessly expand beyond its borders. This search for new profits leads to the establishment of military monopoly, IP monopoly, dollar monopoly, and cultural monopoly. This is the origin of institutions like the IMF, NATO, and more, and are how the US actually gains the wealth it has at it’s highest levels.
What’s important here is it means that an individual president cannot stop it. It also means that the west in general is reliant on these very same institutions, and thus benefits from it. Canada is an interesting point to bring up. Canada, like the US, is both an imperialist state, and a settler-colony. Canada too is reliant on imperialism and the very same institutions the US is. The US, however, is hegemonic, while also rapidly losing its unipolar position thanks to the rise of China and the global south in general. This leads it into conflict with its former allies, secondary imperialist powers, much the same as how Germany began colonizing Europe the same way Europe colonized the rest of the world.
What remains necessary is as I said, ending capitalism to end imperialism, and we can only do so through the establishment of socialism.
I don’t see how pointing out the instance I use disproves the points I raised. I think it’s fairly obvious that I’m a Marxist-Leninist, I don’t attempt to hide that. I suppose I could make an alt account and try to crypto-advocate for socialism, but what would be the point?
Sure, and then it will become whoever replaces him that’s the new problem. My point isn’t to dismiss Trump’s complicity in genocide and imperialism, but to instead highlight the actual problem: imperialism as a stage in capitalist development in general, and the US Empire’s present status as the moribund global hegemon in particular. Trump is a symptom of the problem, not the primary problem.
Regarding “whataboutism,” comparistics is a valid form of analysis. My point isn’t to erase Trump, but to put him in his proper context. Pinning the blame squarely on Trump as though he is individually responsible obfuscates what’s actually going on, and leads us to the idea that if we just vote him out, our problems will be gone. They won’t. This is why we need proper analysis of the problem. We cannot end imperialism without ending capitalism, and replacing it with socialism.
This cannot be done at the ballot box either, it must be comprehensive, otherwise it will get reverted just like the social democratic period under FDR (which primarily benefited white workers in the US while leaving black and brown workers to remain as underpaid labor, as well as the expansion of imperialism).
Settler-colonialism began in Turtle Island well before the USA was founded. The colonies did not appear out of thin-air on 1776.
It’s not just a Trump thing. Bush destroyed Iraq, Obama destroyed Libya, Biden destroyed Palestine, Carter destroyed Cambodia, Truman destroyed Korea, etc. Statesian imperialism and genocide is bipartisan.
I can agree with it being the morally wrong decision by leadership while also understanding that the progression of history is driven primarily by material conditions, rather than the actions of individuals. The social struggle in Iran is one that is driven by the consciousness of the masses in Iran, and their struggle at this moment is principally against Israeli and Statesian aggression. Unfortunately, the fight for women’s rights in Iran cannot be genuinely struggled against when Israel and the US take every chance they can to leverage that into being able to commit genocide against the Iranian people.
Would it be excellent if women’s rights were improved from the top-down in Iran? Yes. Is it likely to happen? No. This is why taking a materialist analysis of the Iranian war and events leading up to it is so critical for understanding our historic moment.
Regardless, the Iranian people presently near-fully support the IRGC and the Iranian government. Even if some do have a desire to socially reform Iran, achieving better rights, right now it’s secondary by far to surviving the war and maintaining sovereignty. That’s why these struggles are interconnected so closely.
More like >400.
I’m okay with Iran shutting down the internet to stop a Mossad-backed color revolution intended to pave the way for the modern war against it. Do you think between the protests and the bombing of Minab elementary school that Israel and the US suddenly decided to get involved, or do you realize that this was a part of the actual plan the entire time?
The people of Iran should be able to chart their own course, free from the interference of the genocidal US and Israeli attacks.
Do you think “Statesian” is a big, confusing word? I don’t acknowledge “America” or “Israel” as legitimate states.
I did not make a “no you” argument, I explicitly addressed your argument and changed it to one of comparistics. I referenced hard data and gave a materialist response, drawing on the immense improval of living conditions in China.
The fact that the US’s propaganda apparatus has existed for centuries longer can be understood by the simple fact that the modern Chinese and Russian states are less than a century old. Both saw immense changes in societal makeup and organization between the old states and the new. The US emerged as the world’s imperial hegemon in the aftermath of World War II, as I already explained earlier, while China was just forming its new society and attempting to overcome the problems of feudalism. The USSR, meanwhile, dissolved in 1991, resulting in the modern Russian Federation and intense economic devastation, devastation that resulted in the single greatest drop in life expectancy in history outside of wartime.
As for Ding Jiaxi, he was organizing directly against the socialist state of China, in a subversive manner. This is openly understood to be illegal in China, as it is in every state. China is a socialist country, not capitalist, so the process of developing socialism comes through reform, not subversion. China has been governed by Marxist-Leninists since 1949, and this has only strengthened under Xi Jinping. More schools for Marxism have been opened in China, and the CPC has over 100 million members.
You do not have an argument, you merely copy and paste what I said while changing keywords. This is ineffective propaganda on your part at best.
I agree that women’s rights not only can, but should be improved in Iran. The important nuance here, though, is that social progress is severely stunted when a society is under active siege and infiltration. All states inevitably become more repressive than they otherwise would be when their legitimate security concerns are relentlessly violated. The quest of the Iranian people for social progress is interconnected with the quest of the Iranian people for sovereignty.
Mossad infiltrating the protests, that started with legitimate grievances, exacerbated the violence in an attempt to weaken the Iranian state, preceding the war. It was deliberate, and not for the benefit of women in any capacity. Iranians now are more socially cohesive than before the protests ramped up precisely due to the resistance against imperialist aggression.
For sure, automation represents an incredible opportunity for workers, presuming workers actually are the ones directing the development of society. It does reduce the inputs required to produce goods, which frees up time for redirection and reduction of labor overall. I was more trying to combat the idea that AI will be a magic bullet for capitalists, when really we’ve already seen the impacts of automation before. It comes in a new form, with new particularities, but it’s not fundamentally different.