When committing aggression in a foreign country, U.S. imperialism can only employ part of its forces, which are sent to fight an unjust war far from their native land and therefore have a low morale, and so U.S. imperialism is beset with great difficulties. The people subjected to its aggression are having a trial of strength with U.S. imperialism neither in Washington or New York, neither in Honolulu nor Florida, but are fighting for independence and freedom on their own soil. Once they are mobilized on a broad scale, they will have inexhaustible strength. Thus superiority will belong not to the United States but to the people subjected to its aggression. The latter, though apparently weak and small, are really more powerful than U.S. imperialism.

The struggles waged by the different peoples against U.S. imperialism reinforce each other and merge into a torrential world-wide tide of opposition to U.S. imperialism. The more successful the development of people’s war in a given region, the larger the number of U.S. imperialist forces that can be pinned down and depleted there. When the U.S. aggressors are hard pressed in one place, they have no alternative but to loosen their grip on others. Therefore, the conditions become more favourable for the people elsewhere to wage struggles against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys.

Everything is divisible. And so is this colossus of U.S. imperialism. It can be split up and defeated. The peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America and other regions can destroy it piece by piece, some striking at its head and others at its feet. That is why the greatest fear of U.S. imperialism is that people’s wars will be launched in different parts of the world, and particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and why it regards people’s war as a mortal danger.

The universality of people's war doesn't mean bringing peasant guerrilla warfare inside the US, it means that the radical sections of the US labor aristocracy act in the same way as urban populations do in supporting the people's war in the countryside. Distraction, pulling resources, providing intelligence, and sowing divisions at home prevent the US imperial machine from sufficiently deploying its resources at all the hot spots that pop up.

A correct analysis of labor aristocracy within the US is impossible to fully develop while the superprofits keep flowing in. It is only when those superprofits start to get disrupted through a combination of economic crisis, environmental crisis, and military crisis from global revolt that the US working class will be able to look back on the past objectively. However, the primary political development of the labor aristocracy in reaction to this will not be communist, it will be overtly fascist as the blindfold obscuring the superexploitation is ripped off for all to see.

The question becomes: how do we organize against this eventuality? We organize against it by striking at the strongest contradictions. We tie in the national question and the imperialist question into one fist against the social and economic order. No communist formation today will be able to organize and grasp the impact of the labor aristocracy, but they can lay the seeds and create the conditions for later formations to grow that are able to integrate a correct analysis of labor aristocracy into praxis within the imperial core.

Edited by pogfan1996 (Sept. 14, 2020 00:35:03)

pogfan1996 posted:

However, the primary political development of the labor aristocracy in reaction to this will not be communist, it will be overtly fascist as the blindfold obscuring the superexploitation is ripped off for all to see.

I had a half-thought-out idea for a post I was going to call KKKOPS IN TRUKKKS after watching some documentaries about mercenary companies in Iraq such as Blackwater. They made a lot of enemies as you would expect by shooting people, running them off the road and driving very aggressively. And the subjective experience of these guys was like living out a Wild West fantasy with the Iraqis playing the unwilling role of the "Indians." It is suggested that these guys believed that by creating this aura of aggression around them and being the baddest dudes on the block all the time, that people wouldn't mess with them. That might also not be true, rather they did it because they wanted to, maybe, and because they could. Anyways, the idea that this kind of behavior deterred people from messing with them is mistaken. The aggression doesn't bounce back right away, but the more aggression they created, the more people they pissed off, the more it eventually came back around on them. If you're going about your day and some guys drive past you blasting Papa Roach and shoot up your car, it's not like you forgive them for that.

And then I thought about the guys I see hauling ass in big trucks bought with big, fat, white paychecks with "OIF/OEF" stickers on them and Punisher skulls with blue lines through them. And a decent chunk of these guys are probably ex-military, some of them are probably cops, and other white men trying to emulate them and acting out the same aggressive mentality toward the Amerikan population around them that a mercenary would do in an occupied country. There has been a lot of reporting on military equipment filtering to police departments, but I haven't seen as much written about this colonial-like occupier mentality other than from Sakai, and there you discover it goes all the way back to the beginning, that's how that class always has been, and that it was exported. It was Sakai who also made a comparison to Loyalist bands in Northern Ireland who march into Catholic neighborhoods and boundary zones and bang drums really loudly to exert aggression. There's a parallel now to these pro-cop convoys that will drive into a city as a show of force with pig escorts, which has a precedent in Klan night riders and armed "flagger" groups in the south that will drive through a black neighborhood flying Confederate flags.

pogfan1996 posted:

My initial thoughts are that organizing within a local labor aristocratic communist party with a strong anti-imperialist, anti-settler position is the most likely route of success for us as individuals. They will be the best organized to resist state and fascist repression and there is a greater level of experience in different struggles to pull from. I think the worst possible outcome from this analysis is cynicism and inaction, but I would love to hear about different strategies that you all think would be better.

Well, I'm just throwing down my thoughts ITT. I don't really know, but I have to think this stuff I'm describing is also just pissing people off at a certain level. There are a lot of people in the cities who are not going to take kindly to Cracker ISIS waging a commuter war on them because the Cracker ISIS has decided the cities have been "lost" and are now inhabited by their enemies.

RE: the labor-aristocratic thesis not being a good basis yet... yeah I have noticed an automatic defensive reflex go up when that gets mentioned among some white leftists I've interacted with. It's pathological. Like, you're talking about Sakai? Uh oh, danger zone! You're trying to create disunity among the working class! Yeah, well, I brought up Northern Ireland one time and said, you know the Orangemen when they come banging the drum and set bonfires alight decorated with racist slurs and effigies -- it's kinda like that, and it's a system people are immersed in from birth, and while it's a social construction it's dangerous to pretend it doesn't act itself out in a material way. That might get it to click for some. But it's not something I want to waste a ton of time on.

Edited by trakfactri (Sept. 17, 2020 06:10:26)

dizastar posted:

To conclude, ill be pretty clear. engaging in the political landscape as it is is hopeless, so instead of trying to weasel and mold myself in, I'd rather form a cell with less people than i have fingers, with a defined, clear cut line to follow and abide to. it starts with a wordpress, then maybe a zine and dazibaos on the walls of the concrete jungle. this sounds like meaningless and maybe selfish to some, particularly a lot of people here who i assume have a lot of experience on the streets with organizing. but this is what i believe is needed to further the conditions in my vicinity

I actually think this is the other most viable approach, including within the us context. A small group operating to advance theory and practice along the correct political line is what Maoism calls for. I think the toughest part with either strategy is how you are determine if you are pursuing a correct strategy. A labor aristocratic communist organization can look at party membership, demonstration attendance, mass org growth, etc to determine if they are doing things in a way that moves left.

I wish there was a study of RAIM-D since that was the most significant cell of people that held an accurate labor aristocratic view and did mass work along an anti-imperialist line.

Part of the driving force for my view is that it's currently such a fringe view that getting together a cell or even a reading group is extremely difficult, and even if you got together 5-10 people with a correct line, what can you do with it?

Our resolution asserts, given the primary role of colonizer-colonized contradiction in the contemporary world situation, that the struggle for national liberation must be the primary force for the struggle against capitalism-imperialism and the world-spanning dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This follows from the fact that the vanguard role afforded to the proletariat has itself been modified by the colonizer-colonized contradiction. Thus, within the settler-colonial u.s.a. context, because the working class has been shattered by the allegiance of broad sections of the settler proletariat to the maintnenace of the bourgeois dictatorship, we assert that the leading role has principally fallen to the indigenous, New Afrikan and Chicanx proletariat, whose struggles for national liberation are storm centers within the u.s.a. Only through a shift in allegiance, what com. Ignatiev called “treason to whiteness” but what should be better called treason to its own petit-bourgeois tendencies, can the settler proletariat discover again a place at the vanguard of the revolutionary masses.

In reality, their organizing consists of yelling at Gonzaloites online, doing food/clothing giveaways, and setting up community gardens. This gets to the heart of how it is difficult to measure success of a line and strategy within the imperial core. Ultimately, it comes down to this question: which method of practice and political line weakens the ability of the us to attack its enemies?

Horselord posted:

i think that the declining rate of profit will continue to degrade the labour aristocracy until its a more classical proletariat again, and that this will happen much faster than you can convince people to lose in a cool way

My argument is that this will degenerate into unbridled settler fascism unleashed on the world and on oppressed nationalities within the us. The questions are: how do we best organize against this happening and how do we best organize until until a collapse of global value chains happens

pogfan1996 posted:

Horselord posted:


i think that the declining rate of profit will continue to degrade the labour aristocracy until its a more classical proletariat again, and that this will happen much faster than you can convince people to lose in a cool way



My argument is that this will degenerate into unbridled settler fascism unleashed on the world and on oppressed nationalities within the us. The questions are: how do we best organize against this happening and how do we best organize until until a collapse of global value chains happens

"we" is doing a lot of lifting for a problem coming from within the US when talking on an international webforum. living in europe my plan is to wait until america invades us and then shoot at them

cars posted:

i don't have a model m but thats very close to what my computer looks like irl

Horselord posted:

any question of how to organize in the uk or america is going to be very different because the current state of the left in those countries is very different from each other, the immediate tasks aren't the same. going "did you know they're both the center of western finance capital??" doesn't make a one size fits all discussion viable

I was just being glib. I don't know Europe very well, to be honest. However, as a Canadian, I'm very familiar with cooking up a a sense of pride out of 'opposing' Americans, which is what your line about 'don't assume I'm American, I'm going to shoot Americans when they come here' reminds me of. I think pogfan's analysis is applicable outside of the US, too. How is the labor aristocracy going to turn back into a proletariat without factories returning? Don't you see elements of the European bourgeoisie aligning themselves with Amerikkka as it intensifies its death throes?

c_man posted:

In what sense is this true?

i mean back when post ww2 both industry in europe peaked along with the living standards

Even in settlers sakai notes that europeans made substantially more working in the US than in europe.

i didnt mean peak in the sense that they had it better than anyone else. i meant it in the sense that it was their peak point within its whole history of existence. yanks had it better pretty much most of the time and i wouldnt object to that at all

I think its more precise and accurate to say that the labor aristocracy in europe arose out of the european labor movements as a mechanism for diverting them. Another way to say this is that class struggle also peaked in europe when wages and industrialization peaked.

okay but this is in line with what i meant. industrial labor in europe gave european workers a higher capacity to organize and fight for their interests, which meant that they received more and more benefits and they actually *became* more labor aristocrat instead of less because they were working in the factories. therefore saying the european or american working class would turn into proles and stop being labor aristocrats only if factories return is like the opposite of reality. it s not like labor aristocracy came into existence with the deindustrialization in the reaganite/thatcherite era

sovnarkoman posted:

they actually *became* more labor aristocrat instead of less because they were working in the factories

I think i agree with your general gist but i think its important to emphasize that industrial labor organization isnt the cause of labor aristocracy, rather the position of being in the imperial core and capable of being bought off by profits generated elsewhere.