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submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Youssef Bouchi writes on the importance of American socialism from his perspective as an Arab immigrant in Canada:

"Grassroots movements in the U.S. already understand this [...] Our task from the outside is to support them."

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Socialism is internationalist. The world needs you to get some education.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

The point isn't some idea of American Exceptionalism, but that a successful Socialist revolution in the world's largest Empire will dramatically liberate the Global South.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

a revolution in the world's largest empire is extremely unlikely by virtue of it being the world's largest empire

[-] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

Imperialism is an unsustainable practice, and the Empire must still be overthrown, whether internally or externally. I don't think revolution is impossible, but either revolution or outside factors are still required to progress beyond the present stage in Imperialism.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

sure. it's not gonna come from within, though. it's no coincidence that no successful socialist revolution ever happened in the imperial core

[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

It will be a mix of both, most likely.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

China is already socialist. At least they claim to be.

[-] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

China isn't an Empire. Being a large country is not the same as being an Empire, the US is an Empire because of how it leverages IMF loans to force countries in the Global South into privatizing and opening themselves up for foreign plundering, as well as maintaining hundreds of millitary bases globally to keep this process of foreign plundering going.

China is Socialist, just not an Empire.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Has China made any progress towards socialism lately or are they solidly authoritarian capitalists?

[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

If we are to judge the PRC on Marxist lines, given that they are Marxist-Leninists, then they are already Socialist. The large firms and key industries of the PRC are already overwhelmingly under public control, while private enterprise is a mix of small corporations, sole proprietorships, and cooperatives, all of which would not be able to go away simply by making them illegal, and need to be developed out of.

That's a more classical interpretation of Marxism than the later Maoist era, which tried to achieve a fully publicly owned economy in an extremely underdeveloped economy. That's why Marx was such a stickler about developing the Productive Forces.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i. e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

I want you to look at the bolded word. Why did Marx say by degree? Did he think on day 1, businesses named A-C are nationalized, day 2 businesses D-E, etc etc? No. Marx believed that it is through nationalizing of the large firms that would be done immediately, and gradually as the small firms develop, they too can be folded into the public sector. The path to eliminated Private Property isn't to make it illegal, but to develop out of it.

The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital;[43] the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

This is why, in the previous paragraph, Marx described public seizure in degrees, but raising the level of the productive forces as rapidly as possible.

China does have Billionaires, but these billionaires do not control key industries, nor vast megacorps. The number of billionaires is actually shrinking in the last few years. Instead, large firms and key industries are publicly owned, and small firms are privately owned. This is Marxism.

If we are to judge the PRC on Anarchist lines, then no, they are certainly not Anarchists, but they aren't claiming to be, either.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

No one said it wasn’t? Socialism isn’t going to take over the world without a socialist movement developing within the imperial core, fighting imperialism from within. The imperial core is the greatest obstacle to socialism that there is, and the US is the global imperialist hegemon.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Socialism isn’t going to take over the world without a socialist movement developing within the imperial core

yeah it will. defeating the west is far more likely and more effective for that goal. we don't need the west leading anything, it needs to lose to socialism and take the back seat

all this is just american/western exceptionalism, but it is so embedded in your mind that you don't realize it

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

we don’t need the west leading anything, it needs to lose to socialism and take the back seat

I didn’t claim that it needs to lead anything. Yes, it needs to lose to socialism by any means necessary, whether within or without, or some combination of the two. I happen to be within it, so struggling from within is what’s available to me personally.

this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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