That’s fair criticism, and I guess that is something that happens in my psyche as well. But the thought process is basically:
The communist movement of the 20th century had been pushed back by a mix of Social Democracy succeeding in mitigating class conflict in the West, world market structures creating conditions for the exploitation of internationally cheap labour in service of upholding the global profit rate while still maintaining high living standards for the big Blocs, the conditions after WW2, where so much had been destroyed, creating opportunities for massive growth and basically 0 unemployment for a few decades - and the hope of the Soviet Union maybe actually being a viable solution directing class struggle into imperialist bloc-think instead of political struggle for the working class itself.
The Social Democratic welfare state is basically in retreat across the board, from what I gathered, even in its traditional places of strength, like Scandinavia, it develops more exclusionary mechanisms. One of the main reasons of this happening is related to point #2, that the global net profit rate has been in crisis since the late 70s, which prompted neoliberal politics (and ultimately also the crisis that furthered the collapse of the Soviet Union due to their dependence on the global resource market). At the same time, international, cheap labour has become less ubiquitous, mainly due to China developing a new, massive middle class, which removed a huge chunk of that cheap labour, and which is now also becoming a player in the kind of economic imperialism the west had been doing to uphold its own balance. (Note that China is now starting to face its own crises as well, as that period of growth begins to stagnate). The Soviet collapse also shook things up, removing what in hindsight turned out to be a false hope, but percisely the removal of a false hope opens up the room for a new one.
Thus, the underlying class conflict is erupting again, and from that, political organisation is necessarily as well. Say what you will, but there suddenly were phenomena like “socialism” being a genuine word even in US political discourse. There’s currently disorganised flailing around of politics without an underlying organisation and consciousness, as that old middle class is dying to serve the profit rate. The way I see it, we are in the chaotic times of growing problems and suffering (also exacerbated by the climate catastrophe), but those problems and suffering have always also created the contradictions and conditions for change. The very fact that fascism is organising is in my eyes a symptom of the upper class reacting to a new, burgeoning class struggle.
Now, I have no crystal ball to see what will happen, no one does. (And I’d like to stress: Pessimistic positions don’t, either. Just because there is a current in our ideology upholding the status quo to immediately dismiss anything remotely hopeful as impossible.) But it seems clear to me, that the material struggle between classes is very real, again. And the tools have all still been there, if anything, the internet actually increases international organisational capabilities.
I think across the world, you have the phenomenon of the younger generations being less interested politically in the old status quo, while material conditions continue to get worse and consolidation of capital does so as well. In recent elections here in Germany, the younger generation has been as split as never before, between leftist movements on the one hand, while their support for fascism was about the same as in the rest of society, and the old centrist parties had shrunk to a clear minority in their support, as one example.
No matter what it will be calling itself, I indeed think it is inevitable, that there will be a new movement of international struggle, that will fit the bill of “communist” - the really existing movement in opposition to capital and its tendency to create a growing class of people that own nothing beyond subsistence but their labour power to sell.
How strong it will be, how it will pan out in the end - that will be decided by us and our actions. But the political necessity of asking questions of property relations and class, that exists and will become more prevalent, I am sure of it.
Are you sure you’re not in a bubble? I agree that people are more disillusioned with the existing class structure than ever, but outside of a few limited internet forums I don’t see any support for an alternative organization, be that socialism or anything else. Younger generations are paralyzed by apathy on the one hand and a utopian childish “just do a revolution bro” armchair warrior mentality on the other. The few serious places are hamstrung by purity testing and ideological infighting and really obvious infiltration by Chinese and Russian state interests.
Maybe I am, part of being in a bubble is, that it is hard to properly know that you are. Although I think I prefer the term “to live in ideology” - because it is perfectly possible to consume lots and lots of different, real-life sources, and still delude oneself into believing things, by only viewing them through a distorted lens. But I do see what you mean, and my answer has been: That was also the case when socialist movements first formed, needing to go through a phase of disillusionment with the former French Revolutionary period, as well as Utopian Socialism first developing as a multipronged movement/collection of ideas, until the realities of class struggle shaped it in a specific way. For example: Yet immature phenomena like the Luddites or the Silesian Weaver’s Uprising were indeed necessary steps, for further developments later on.
I also cannot say as much about the state of things in the US, outside of internet chatter and mainstream news, that much is true.
I had a talk about this with a friend a few years back, who essentially made the same argument as you did, because all he saw was things getting worse. I think that observation isn’t wrong, and will probably remain true for years, probably one or two decades at least. All with political confusion, further vanishing of the middle class and increased barbarism within politics. But it’s precisely because things will get so unbearably bad, globally, that I think a material movement opposing it will appear again - successful or not - because that has always happened in history.
Concerning the younger generations: The apathy is precisely a thing, that is also upheld by ideological structures making organisation impossible, by basically making the very thought of being hopeful in any way seem foolish. I don’t know if it ultimately will be foolish - but I do know, this sort of pessimistic current has been one of the main ways the status quo defends itself. (See for example Ẑiẑek’s famous interpretation of the “coffee without milk/coffee without cream” joke - about how what is presented as not within the status quo is essential to how the status quo presents itself; Similarily with his exploration of how ideology nowadays tends to work by not believing yourself, but deferring to people believing for you - “I myself don’t have superstitions, but the others do, so I shouldn’t try to exert influence over society that, it would be futile/disrespectful.”) Thus, I, of course, don’t know how it will pan out either, but I do remain convinced - it’s basically impossible to have the total collapse of many essential structures as we, in my opinion, will have/are having, without a dialectically growing answer in the form of a new material movement.
And besides that, younger generations also need some time to escape utopian, childish interpretations, one way or the other - not just in the way movements develop historically, as I mentioned in the first paragraph - but also, how people develop and mature with age.
What in the world would make you think that? Sounds more like hope.
That’s fair criticism, and I guess that is something that happens in my psyche as well. But the thought process is basically:
The communist movement of the 20th century had been pushed back by a mix of Social Democracy succeeding in mitigating class conflict in the West, world market structures creating conditions for the exploitation of internationally cheap labour in service of upholding the global profit rate while still maintaining high living standards for the big Blocs, the conditions after WW2, where so much had been destroyed, creating opportunities for massive growth and basically 0 unemployment for a few decades - and the hope of the Soviet Union maybe actually being a viable solution directing class struggle into imperialist bloc-think instead of political struggle for the working class itself.
The Social Democratic welfare state is basically in retreat across the board, from what I gathered, even in its traditional places of strength, like Scandinavia, it develops more exclusionary mechanisms. One of the main reasons of this happening is related to point #2, that the global net profit rate has been in crisis since the late 70s, which prompted neoliberal politics (and ultimately also the crisis that furthered the collapse of the Soviet Union due to their dependence on the global resource market). At the same time, international, cheap labour has become less ubiquitous, mainly due to China developing a new, massive middle class, which removed a huge chunk of that cheap labour, and which is now also becoming a player in the kind of economic imperialism the west had been doing to uphold its own balance. (Note that China is now starting to face its own crises as well, as that period of growth begins to stagnate). The Soviet collapse also shook things up, removing what in hindsight turned out to be a false hope, but percisely the removal of a false hope opens up the room for a new one.
Thus, the underlying class conflict is erupting again, and from that, political organisation is necessarily as well. Say what you will, but there suddenly were phenomena like “socialism” being a genuine word even in US political discourse. There’s currently disorganised flailing around of politics without an underlying organisation and consciousness, as that old middle class is dying to serve the profit rate. The way I see it, we are in the chaotic times of growing problems and suffering (also exacerbated by the climate catastrophe), but those problems and suffering have always also created the contradictions and conditions for change. The very fact that fascism is organising is in my eyes a symptom of the upper class reacting to a new, burgeoning class struggle.
Now, I have no crystal ball to see what will happen, no one does. (And I’d like to stress: Pessimistic positions don’t, either. Just because there is a current in our ideology upholding the status quo to immediately dismiss anything remotely hopeful as impossible.) But it seems clear to me, that the material struggle between classes is very real, again. And the tools have all still been there, if anything, the internet actually increases international organisational capabilities.
I think across the world, you have the phenomenon of the younger generations being less interested politically in the old status quo, while material conditions continue to get worse and consolidation of capital does so as well. In recent elections here in Germany, the younger generation has been as split as never before, between leftist movements on the one hand, while their support for fascism was about the same as in the rest of society, and the old centrist parties had shrunk to a clear minority in their support, as one example.
No matter what it will be calling itself, I indeed think it is inevitable, that there will be a new movement of international struggle, that will fit the bill of “communist” - the really existing movement in opposition to capital and its tendency to create a growing class of people that own nothing beyond subsistence but their labour power to sell.
How strong it will be, how it will pan out in the end - that will be decided by us and our actions. But the political necessity of asking questions of property relations and class, that exists and will become more prevalent, I am sure of it.
Are you sure you’re not in a bubble? I agree that people are more disillusioned with the existing class structure than ever, but outside of a few limited internet forums I don’t see any support for an alternative organization, be that socialism or anything else. Younger generations are paralyzed by apathy on the one hand and a utopian childish “just do a revolution bro” armchair warrior mentality on the other. The few serious places are hamstrung by purity testing and ideological infighting and really obvious infiltration by Chinese and Russian state interests.
Maybe I am, part of being in a bubble is, that it is hard to properly know that you are. Although I think I prefer the term “to live in ideology” - because it is perfectly possible to consume lots and lots of different, real-life sources, and still delude oneself into believing things, by only viewing them through a distorted lens. But I do see what you mean, and my answer has been: That was also the case when socialist movements first formed, needing to go through a phase of disillusionment with the former French Revolutionary period, as well as Utopian Socialism first developing as a multipronged movement/collection of ideas, until the realities of class struggle shaped it in a specific way. For example: Yet immature phenomena like the Luddites or the Silesian Weaver’s Uprising were indeed necessary steps, for further developments later on.
I also cannot say as much about the state of things in the US, outside of internet chatter and mainstream news, that much is true.
I had a talk about this with a friend a few years back, who essentially made the same argument as you did, because all he saw was things getting worse. I think that observation isn’t wrong, and will probably remain true for years, probably one or two decades at least. All with political confusion, further vanishing of the middle class and increased barbarism within politics. But it’s precisely because things will get so unbearably bad, globally, that I think a material movement opposing it will appear again - successful or not - because that has always happened in history.
Concerning the younger generations: The apathy is precisely a thing, that is also upheld by ideological structures making organisation impossible, by basically making the very thought of being hopeful in any way seem foolish. I don’t know if it ultimately will be foolish - but I do know, this sort of pessimistic current has been one of the main ways the status quo defends itself. (See for example Ẑiẑek’s famous interpretation of the “coffee without milk/coffee without cream” joke - about how what is presented as not within the status quo is essential to how the status quo presents itself; Similarily with his exploration of how ideology nowadays tends to work by not believing yourself, but deferring to people believing for you - “I myself don’t have superstitions, but the others do, so I shouldn’t try to exert influence over society that, it would be futile/disrespectful.”) Thus, I, of course, don’t know how it will pan out either, but I do remain convinced - it’s basically impossible to have the total collapse of many essential structures as we, in my opinion, will have/are having, without a dialectically growing answer in the form of a new material movement.
And besides that, younger generations also need some time to escape utopian, childish interpretations, one way or the other - not just in the way movements develop historically, as I mentioned in the first paragraph - but also, how people develop and mature with age.