- cross-posted to:
- europe@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- europe@lemmy.ml
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I’m a relatively old (let’s say more than 40, less than 55) guy living in a dependent country in the periphery capitalism (Brazil). It always felt to me that building strong socialist movement in core capitalist places like the US or in Western Europe would be damn near impossible.
Back 20 years ago it felt like those countries had a very solid way of providing life’s necessities and a more or less comfortable existence for a fraction big and politically strong enough of their populations that it would be really hard for organic movements to raise and make people see the exploitation. Hell, it’s hard to talk about radical politics with workers here, who see the exploitation first hand and are mostly aware that the game is rigged against them. I imagine how hard it would be in a place where everyone you know have a car, a house and so on.
Of course that was built on the backs of the Global South. But it felt like exploitation had been exported to places where it was invisible and wouldn’t make any waves back in the places to which this wealth was flowing.
I’m not a well versed in marxist theory to be honest. Just enough to understand we’re all being fucked and need to take over. But I always thought that any next big revolutionary movement with international impact would start in super-exploited places like Latin America, South East Asia, Africa, … I made an analogy with the Russian Revolution. The first revolution happening in a rich but relatively relatively peripheral country. It was Russia, not Germany or France. It wasn’t the most advanced capitalist country. It was a place where there was enough capitalist development for a proletariat to emerge and material conditions that made proletarians more readily radicalizable for whatever reasons.
So, I thought, maybe it will be India or the Philippines, places that already have active revolutions going on. Maybe it will be Brazil, Malaysia, etc…
But this right-wing turn in politics in the last 10 years, the successive crisis and the need for more and more exploitation to keep ever increasing accumulation seems to be bringing over-exploitation right to the core of the system. More and more the working classes of Europe and the USA are being impoverished and denied what used to be available to them.
I wonder if that doesn’t make those places a lot more prone to political radicalization than they were 20 or 30 years ago.
I’ve been wondering the same thing for a while now, and all the evidence I see is that yes it does. People are a lot more prone to political radicalization than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But unfortunately all I’m seeing is a growth of the far right. Being on the left is hard, people want easy answers.
That and we’re actively fighting against the status quo, fascists actually support it
depends on what countries, the far-right are making huge gains in germany, spain, Scandinavia and eastern europe. But France, belgium and the UK I have noticed a large conscious awakening, the workers party in belgium is growing steadily over these past few years, france has seen riots against the authoritarian-liberal macron state, and the UK I’ve seen the old corrupt trade unions are now finally being replaced by new radical ones.
My analysis is that there will never be a time where europe can de-radicalise anymore, the corporations have too much power and veto anything that can take away their wealth, and the liberal democracies refuse to even implement sufficent anti-trust laws, even when companies goes against state interests! (like agri-corps funding the farmers protests in the netherlands, and blockading ukranian grain from the european market, and implementing inflation continent wide wo reap more profits). I can go on forever why this is the case but with the wealth of world being diverted from the Atlantic to the pacific is also a major factor, unlike the cold war where most of the wealth was in the western world, the global south is seeing an increase of the middle class, whereas in the west its declining. Sure propaganda will play a part, and more europeans will become insanely more racist, xenophobic, and anti-communist (because they need something else to blame other than their shitty liberal-democracies), but soon there’s going to be a wake up call.
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You can only keep a body hidden in the closet for so long before it begins to rot and decay. Eventually, others will take notice. Now could you have kept the body in a freezer instead in order to delay it being discovered? Of course! You could and you would. But not the capitalist. All they can think about is the added expense of the freezer. The cost of electricity to keep it running. Their greed will ensure a haste full decline for their system.
I can’t tell if this is cringe or not, but fuck it! Post!
There is a lot of radicalization but even more false consciousness. Absent a huge and effective counter propaganda campaign it will be the same old fascist duck waddling on the fascist leg, then the social democrat leg ad infinitum.
You do have a point. I notice this too while doing party work here in Belgium. There’s a growing sentiment among lower and middle class, with people going ‘Hey, wait, we ARE being fucked!’ and I wonder where it will lead. It’s up to parties like ours to prevent people falling into fascism, which is growing at a worrying pace as well.
well said
This war is nothing compared to what is coming. This was planned decades ago. Some of Europe at least got to enjoy having social safety nets and relatively sane labor laws but those days are going to very quickly end.
To me it is crazy that they say that increasing wages will contribute to inflation. So what? Let’s just let everyone starve for the sake of the economy? 🙄
They mean to imply a lot with that statement.
First is the false claim/thought that “cost of living will increase proportionally to wage increase.” ie if a worker is paid $100 more per month, rent, food, etc. will all increase instantly or in short order to absorb that $100 thus keeping the new higher wage earner in the same position and slightly fucking harder people above and below. Of course this ignores reality where this doesn’t happen and even if greedy landlords, etc. did attempt it… Governments have a lot of power to make them not able to do it. This is not a legitimate or logical reason to not raise wages.
The second big one is the implied fear or pressure put onto the workers who are doing ok at the moment. The right wing loves to make them fearful of the loss of their privileged positions that they “earned” in society via working hard! or whatever the fuck. Crab in a bucket mentality shit basically. There’s some crab not getting his eye stabbed out by a crab above him and other crabs suggest that they reposition slightly to stop stabbing the eyes of the lower crabs. Higher crab fears that if there is no lower crab being eye-stabbed, a position he was assured must and will always exist, then HE might be the crab to have his eye stabbed! Or at the very least he’ll be closer to eye-stabbery. So he opposes changes which he sees would be beneficial because he fears losing the position or becoming more equal. All the crabs miss the point that they are all in a bucket and will all be taken home and eaten tonight. They could pile up on side and tip the bucket to escape, destroy this bullshit bucket-system, or even just allow less cruelity, but the fear makes action feel impossible. The bucket is so heavy, they are just light little individual crabs, unorganized, eyes being smashed, or smashing eyes, and they see no way out and just want the smashed-eye crabs at the bottom to stop crying so much. Let the higher crabs enjoy the sun and slight breeze. No one can escape anyway, just accept your position, because I, the higher crab, am in a nicer position and am mostly ok with it as long as I never get my eye smashed.
Well not everyone, obviously. Mr Moneybags von Richass can’t be allowed to go on a diet, he’s too big to fail!
But you and me? Into the furnace we go
my salary went up about 15% since before the pandemic, and yet my disposable income has gone down. increasing rent, utilities, pettol, groceries, etc.
I feel like I am worse off than 5 years.
Good points
Thanks! But, why not use Mastodon and let fascist Twitter die out?
It’s not my tweet.
You mean 𝕏?
Yep 1/3 porn 😂
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That’s no way to talk about our comrades. It’s the capitalists that are causing this, not the workers. We need to convince them to throw off their chains, not tell them to get fucked.
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