The logical conclusion of Washington’s suicidal campaign to assail China is a scenario where the U.S. government, out of sheer desperation, launches a war against its own people. This is going to be the final resort for a ruling class that can’t subdue anyone abroad, and that’s made the people of the core into its most dangerous enemy. When the war on China reaches a stage of direct military confrontation—or proxy confrontation through Taiwan—this will bring an internal imbalance which the United States can’t handle. The economy will be strained too much, the military will be too exhausted, and the masses within the empire’s core will have gotten too disillusioned. These developments will create an opportunity for revolution which the USA hasn’t yet seen. So as the day of the big China provocation gets closer, we have to use this time for building up the class struggle’s strength.
Our enemy’s actions are giving us a better understanding of what to do. We’re seeing how the state is working to criminalize dissent, attempting to establish precedents that can define anti-imperialist speech as violent or treasonous. So it becomes more apparent that we need to master secret work; that we must construct cadres and networks within our organizations which operate only with the knowledge of those involved.
Essential to this is building connections with above-ground labor organizations that likely won’t be illegalized; if we can establish a real presence within the unions, we’ll be able to keep expanding into the most advanced sections of the workers, even if we’ve been forced underground. Organizing within a freedomless system is possible; there are resistors who manage to operate under the anti-democratic regimes which U.S. foreign policy has installed. If we can adopt a strategy that keeps us going amid the crackdown, we’ll be in place to take advantage of our enemy’s vulnerabilities.
U.S. imperialism is no longer on the ascendancy, and is struggling to reverse its losses. Every new war that it enters into accelerates its own unraveling. Washington believed it could destabilize Russia, and therefore weaken China, by instigating the proxy war in Ukraine. Then Russia drained the militaries of not just Ukraine, but also the broader NATO bloc, while continuing to economically grow. It’s because Russia has beaten the United States that China will wage a war for Taiwan with utter confidence; the PRC sees that if Washington couldn’t win the proxy war in Ukraine, it won’t win a new proxy war against China. And even if the U.S. foreign policy establishment gets its other desired proxy conflict in Korea, this will only give the DPRK an opportunity to further hurt Washington; the DPRK won that fight the last time around, and today it’s far better prepared.
These problems for the empire will be compounded if Trump’s foreign policy circle enacts its absurd plan for a full confrontation with Iran. Should such a conflict happen, this will make the hegemon’s collapse even faster, because war with Iran would multiply the present oil price crisis. It would be like the Ukraine situation, but several times more economically damaging. The U.S. would also be made unable to embark on any serious military effort in east Asia, which is why I expect the dominant wing of our ruling class to try to steer Trump away from confronting Iran. No matter which ideological camp among the imperialists prevails, though, there’s no winning path for monopoly capital’s war machine.
In its desire to mitigate U.S. capital’s crisis of overproduction, our ruling class is determined to get a new big war. Because of this, the economic and social unraveling that Ukraine exacerbated is going to get exponentially worse. And there will be no re-conquest of Eurasia; the east’s great anti-imperialist military forces of Russia, China, Iran, and socialist Korea have become too strong and unified. The only war our government has a chance of winning is the assault that it will ultimately carry out against U.S. citizens, who it hopes won’t be sufficiently prepared to assert their rights.
Our ruling class is aware of the threat that the USA’s people pose. It knows that the spirit of 1776 has made the country’s masses maintain a rebellious spirit; that Black and Native Americans especially have a history of fighting back against the state’s oppression; that the broader U.S. proletariat has acted as an absolutely formidable force in the past. Against the wrath of an American people who’ve become unified and properly focused, there is no winning. So the oligarchs can only hope to survive this storm by manufacturing divisions, and by diverting the people’s focus. This is the most important part of the counterinsurgency our government is waging; more important than Cop City, or mass surveillance, or whatever domestic military occupation plan that may be implemented. If the masses are prepared to advance their freedom struggle, the state’s repression and terror will only provoke them more, strengthening popular support for the effort to throw off this monopolist dictatorship.
When we’ve brought the struggle to that stage, the people’s victory will truly be inevitable. At the present moment, though, there’s much work we have to do to create such a tipping point. The wars and crises that capital creates are not in themselves enough to bring revolution; as Miguel Ángel writes in the latest issue of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform’s publication:
Stalin not only aptly described the imperialism of our day and its military weaknesses in the face of the peoples willing to fight it. He also exposed the relationship between the military defeats of the imperialists and the development of socialist consciousness among the masses…But war was not enough to clear the road to revolution. The subjective factor was also present: during “the years of fascist domination in Europe, the communists have shown themselves trustworthy, courageous, ready to make sacrifices to fight the fascist regime and to fight for the freedom of the peoples…’ To take advantage of this combination of circumstances, Stalin advised “To unite the working class with the other working masses on the basis of a minimalist program: the time for a maximalist program has not yet come. In essence, the party will be communist, but they will have a broader base and a better task for the present moment.”
We will build this communist party, and we’ll do so by connecting with that broader revolutionary base. This election, and the reactions to it, have shown where our future allies can and can’t be found. They can’t be found among the liberals and leftists who’ve sided with the Democratic Party while it’s committing a genocide. They can be found among the MAGA supporters and Libertarians who don’t like the idea of neocons getting into Trump’s cabinet. An even bigger proto-revolutionary element is the one which has already become too alienated to vote; this includes both the millions of workers who are functionally shut out of the electoral process by their circumstances, and the Palestinians or Palestinian allies who’ve deliberately boycotted the Democrats. Our job is to unite these anti-establishment groups, and provide them with leadership in overthrowing the imperial state.
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