cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44201302
Governments will change, people on the top might change. The question is whether they will face any consequences for their actions. Will the US as a whole face any consequence of its actions. Like the consequences other countries face when they do the stuff America is doing right now.
Or will it be back to normal as soon as the regime changes.
Will there be any lasting effects in how the world deals with US?
You’ve almost got it, as capitalism progresses it turns into imperialism, which itself is self-defeating. The US Empire is also short on what it needs to keep producing arms, due to tight controls on rare Earths and other raw materials from China. This is why Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is useful, we see how imperialism causes de-industrialization and undermines itself.
Yes, the US of 35 years ago had a stronger millitary. The US Empire has fancier tools, but cannot produce them at the same scale they once could. Quantitative buildup results in qualitative changes, this is why dialectics are necessary, not just metaphysical materialism. Materialism must be dialectical.
It is how dialectics works. History is not a series of snapshots, but something that unfolds and changes over time as internal contradictions result in development and change. I’m not going into economic determinism, ideology itself has a material basis. You’re trying to hide idealist analysis behind materialist phrasing, but by treating the ongoing problems with the US Empire as a result of Trump alone you’re literally ascribing to Great Man Theory.
Sure, my point here is that the US Empire’s ability to wage war is hindered. Iran will not fall no matter how much the US bombs it, they need boots on the ground to do so and the Statesian public has no appetite for this.
Fascism is simply capitalism defending itself from decay. It has material conditions that drive it forward. I’m aware that actions have real effects, but you need to connect it to historical trends. Development happens in spirals, not just because of the actions. Actions create new conditions, but the material conditions impact what ideas are had and what actions people take. As people shape the material conditions around them, their ideas are re-shaped, in an endless process.
Europe is imperialist too, and utterly subservient to the US. However, the imperislist system both depend on is weakening. Europe has practically no hard power, and the US Empire’s hard power is a shadow of its former self. Both are going down in a sinking ship.
The US Empire isn’t falling tomorrow, but it isn’t going to take a century either. In the grand scheme of things, the fall of the world’s largest empire is quickly approaching and will likely happen within our lifetimes.
I think you should probably brush up on dialectics, I recently read through Materialism and the Dialectical Method by Maurice Cornforth, and if you ignore the Lysenkoist views of genetics (taken out once the gene was proven, but this is based on an earlier edition), it’s really a fantastic overview. The four basic principles of dialectical materialism are as follows:
Dialectics does not regard nature as a collection of static, isolated objects, but as connected, dependent, and determined by each other.
Dialectics considers everything as in a state of continuous movement and change, of renewal and development, where something is always rising and something is always dying away.
Dialectics is not a simple process of growth, but where quantitative buildup results in qualitative change, and qualitative change result in quantitative outcomes, as a leap in state from one to the other, the lower to the higher, the simple to the complex.
Dialectics holds that the process of development from lower to higher takes place as a struggle of opposite tendencies that forms the basis of their contradictions.
When you pin the current downfall of the US Empire on Trump’s actions, you miss the context of why those actions came to be, and why Trump’s strategy isn’t nearly as effective at securing imperialist gains as Reagan’s was. The US Empire of today is not the same as the US Empire of 30-50 years ago, and the biggest changes between then and now are that the US Empire has offshored most of its production, and the global south now has far more south-south trade and can escape the exploitative north-south trade by which unequal exchange functions. This results in development, and decreased superprofits.
Which was part of the reason behind the whole Greenland ordeal. A problem which they’ve now seemed to be able to circumvent.
That’s because the fancier tools are higher quality and therefore more expensive to produce. Furthermore, since the cold war ended, thousands of small suppliers have been closing up by the decade because there’s no more business. This lead to consolidation in the hands of a few big players e.g., Lockheed Martin. The US could build back up to Cold War levels of preparedness if it wanted, but it’d take at least 5 years. That’s the real historical materialism here.
Ideology has a material basis, but do you know that that same ideology acts upon the material base as well? This is why i mentioned Althusser because he goes into this stuff. Also, i never said the ongoing problems of the US Empire are solely due to Trump, i only said that he’s accelerating its demise and acting as a baseboard from which other Western powers start to chart their own course. I am fully aware that real material conditions gave rise to Trump’s reign. The next step is realising how the material realities that DO come out of Trump’s presidency affect the US’s downfall and i assess them to be more than substantial.
And its defense somehow necessitates an ethnonationalist character? Are we talking about the same fascism?
Once again, quickly approaching is a stretch. It will most certainly happen within our lifetimes, but not in 10 or 20 years.
I did not do this. I only pointed out how Trump’s actions will serve as an anchor point in the future for Western powers. World leaders themselves aren’t sitting around contemplating material contradictions and dialectical movement. All they see is Trump’s actions and how it’s harmful to their own interests. In a sense this is dialectical as Trump’s actions represent a qualitative change resulting from the accumulation of multiple quantitative factors.
Not exactly. The rare earths aren’t the biggest problem themselves, it’s the tech to refine and utilize them, which China has a near global monopoly on.
Not quite. These are more expensive because the US is far more financialized. They are marginally better, but far more expensive. A big mac in Switzerland isn’t over three times as good as a big mac in Taiwan. Further, the US cannot re-industrialize in 5 years, if the US wanted to re-industrialize they’d need to cut the cost of labor, implement strong central planning, and sacrifice profits for re-industrializing.
In modern warfare, Iran is holding its own with drones that cost them a few thousand to make against multi-million dollar patriot missiles. The patriots are not hundreds of times more effective. Historical materialism requires recognizing the different circumstances of today.
The reason why I said you put too much of an emphasis on Trump is because you listed him as the reason, and not the symptom. Trump has an impact, of course, so as long as you aren’t putting him as primary then we’re fine.
Ethnonationalism is a symptom of fascism, not necessarily how you categorize it. Ethnonationalism usually rises in fascism, but isn’t definitional to it.
I think 10-50 years is a pretty reasonable window, and soon enough to call where we are at the “death throes.” You can disagree with that if you wish, but that’s where I think we are at right now.
If we can agree that Trump is not the cause, but instead a symptom, then we are more in agreement than not. Symptoms have material impact, but they aren’t the primary reason. Putting it in Marxist terms, Imperialism is principal and Trump is secondary to that, but that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t impacting it.
Then we’re not talking about the same fascism. One can only wonder why you use the term fascism as Mussolini who invented the term includes ethnonationalism.
It’s not about the time period. It’s about countries visibly shifting away from the US camp. That isn’t happening yet
Fascism is a large and well-studied subject. It has manifested in numerous ways, but has specific material causes. What gives rise to it is capitalist decay, it’s an immune system to protect the system, and arises from petty bourgeois consciousness as it trends towards proletarianization. This often involves insular groups and rises in ethnonationalism.
As for countries shifting away from the US, this is already happening in the global south, which is where the US Empire gets its superprofits from. That’s why Belt and Road is so dangerous to the US, it builds up infrastructure for south-south trade, which in turn results in development and independence.
Your paragraph about fascism reads like a regurgitated book quote. Fascism is a specific ideology created by Benito Mussolini. What you’re describing seems to be an umbrella concept that simply includes fascism. Pick a different term.
About the Belt and Road, what you described is just multipolarity and global south countries diversifying, not the US on its last legs. What would look like the death cry for the US Empire is: the dollar no longer being the backbone of global finance, US tech companies no longer leading the global stock market, and NATO becoming redundant. None of those things are happening yet.