Between pipelines getting jammed, the slow-motion general strike, protests everywhere all the time, Sheikh Jarrah, mass shootings every day, new covid strains in India, and just the general background noise of life getting worse and worse for almost everyone on the planet, it feels like someone tied a brick to the big “accelerate the contradictions” lever.
Anyone else felt this way lately?
I really can’t tell if the empire is actually just so deep into collapse that all of the facades are falling away or if I’m just old enough and aware enough to see past them now
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” :lenin-sleeping:
So many people are hyping themselves up for some big return to normalness party this summer
It’s amazing, there was careful optimism with the vaccines. Like get your vaccine, but please remain socially distanced and stay at home as much as possible. But now I’ve even seen liberals throwing caution to the wind because they want to get out and go to brunch so bad.
Nah, I feel these crises are just fed into our daily lives a lot more through a greater media influence. We’re better informed than most as to all the awful stuff happening and generally dig deeper to find the causes, and thus understand them better as a result, whcih makes them feel more personal and interlinked.
The strike cannot be called as such as there’s no organization, no concrete demands, and no fallback. It’s lasting only because of unemployment payments, but as soon as those dry up or get abolished in the next spat of small business tyrant-lobbied state legislation it’ll be back to the salt mines for seven bucks an hour out of desperation. If and when a real general strike occurs, you will know it because nothing, and I do mean nothing, will work except what the unions allow to run, not just a couple of shitty fast food joints.
Life gets worse and worse and more violent for everyone, but only as long as they’re in the global south. The west as a whole is still very much stable, and even neoliberal hellholes like europe can compromise with their bourgeoisie just enough to keep the proles from revolting. Equally depressing is that there’s no real opposition to any of this. The western left is deader than ever through a steady process of Pasokification in Europe, and the US doesn’t know what the left even is.
Yet despite all this, violence is contained, and the bourgeois state apparatus is in full control, and still maintains the monopoly on violence.
Make no mistake, the contradictions are heightening, but it’s not as if there’s a ceiling they can hit before it all goes to shit; they’re very pliable things and they can be held up by the state so long as it feels it needs to tolerate them to maintain supremacy; after all, the ruling classes will never feel even a fraction of the suffering they inflict or allow to be inflicted by capital. We are definitely approaching a crisis point, but I feel the ruling classes are aware and are doing what they can to maintain the illusion of stability, and that tipping point is anyone’s guess as to what and when.
There was a disaster every month last year, while covid raged the whole time. That used up all the remaining strength of the system, so now everything it was just barely holding back is seeping through. We need to start working hard now, because I believe this could be our big break. However, I have just barely read a little theory and have not really done any organizing, so feel free to ignore me.
No, you’re right. I don’t think this is the Revolution yet, but this is definitely the time to be organizing and educating. I’m right with you on trying to read more theory too; currently making my way through Mao’s Selected Works.
I think this could be it. We’ll never know until everything is over, but things look just about right right now.
