Saying Americans are too comfortable is just reinforcing US propaganda that the USA is this free capitalist paradise where food and luxury rains from the sky. It ignores the psychological war constantly being waged against the working class in the heart of the empire. Yes they have food, but they're malnourished because it's made of cheap plastic slop. Yes they have circuses but even cavemen had entertainment, that's not a luxury. I can't believe I have to tell leftists that 'but you have iPhone' isn't a sign your life is easy. Especially because half of these 'luxuries' are just tools that:
- You can't take part in society without.
- Everyone fucking hates them but you're damned if you do, damned if you don't (good luck getting a job and feeding yourself without a phone, car and social capital of being a good consumer).
Ask the people working three jobs just to afford rent if they're comfortable.
Ask the people living in tent cities in they're comfortable.
Ask the young people grimly joking that they're going to die before they retire if they're comfortable.
Ask the people on the kill line who are one medical bill away from being on the street if they're comfortable.
Are there countries where life is harder? Yes, but playing the suffering Olympics ignores the real material conditions that the US (and it's vassals) face and we would be stupid to ignore it. Ignoring mental anguish and the exsaution of being human cattle just because they aren't being physically bombed is downplaying the severity of psychological violence. Telling the single mother burnt out working multiple dead end jobs worried if her kids are going to ever have a home or even a habitable planet that she's too comfortable is fucked and isn't going to create the vanguard.
Nearly every single person I talk to (excluding the owning class) is running on empty. Everyone is sick. Everyone is depressed. Everyone is hopeless. They have seen countless protests amount to nothing. They have seen our rulers commit every single unspeakable crime and go unpunished. They've watched the surveillance state grow and record their every move. They know, they fucking know. But their hope has died. The lack of riots over the Epstein files isn't the inaction of someone who has it too good to care, it's the inaction of a beaten spouse who knows their place.
They're doing nothing because their spirits are broken, not because they're too well fed. From their perspective they're too busy making sure they have the energy to put food on the table to start a revolution.
My point is that downplaying the struggles of the US working class is ignorant, reactionary, and ignores material conditions and therefore is unhelpful in mobilising anyone. I think this rhetoric needs to change if we are to be effective.
This is a good response. I don’t have much to add except that in my opinion the question in the imperial core is not revolution, not immediately. The question is how to undermine imperialism and to aid those most affected by it, including those at home. I dont excuse the lack of revolution but recognize that its way harder to bring down an empire at its core than it is to kick it out on the periphery.
Anti-imperialism at the core is fundamentally different from, but linked with the decolonial struggle abroad, in the same way that a white man can not really be the representative of a black or women’s liberation movement but nonetheless can find ways to support it. It’s a hybrid global struggle.
I do think that Lenin made a great contribution by re-framing Marx through the lens of imperialism. Anti-imperialism is what brought about every socialist revolution, in my opinion even the USSR when considering the degree to which the disaster of WW1 helped bring out the Bolshevik line in sharp relief against the social-democratic forces which, without WW1, very possibly would have won out first. We would have had a century of social democracy instead.
I think that is true as well and mentioned it in another comment here. Sabotaging fascism/imperialism and building logistical networks to protect colonized and marginalized people are more pertinent than trying to convince proletarians in the west to overthrow capitalism