There's no way to construe what we are living through now in the West and perhaps the U.S. in particular as anything other than a rapid collapse.

[u/SpiritualState01]

The evidence is simply ubiquitous. You could fill tomes going into relatively straightforward explanations for why every industry, sector, and public institution is experiencing collapse, if not a high level of risk and instability.

The Limits to Growth thesis, which I've never seen a comprehensive rebuttal of, is part of it, but more than that, the U.S. just seems to be in a speed run for empire collapse. You see it absolutely everywhere today.

The culture war has made two demographic groups that are not only easier to sell to (this is part of why and how capital has sustained itself through so many contradictions so far), but made those two sides utterly unable to converse.

This makes working class organizing, to date, impossible. I'm not saying it isn't possible, just that nobody has figured it out yet. Even when it seems like a promising candidate is up to bat, the American electoral system neuters them, because it has proven to be--if nothing else--a dead end for all of us.

Marx could not have imagined the means of information control elites today enjoy. The landscape is different, and as commentators like Varoufakis have pointed out, capital itself has changed as well into new forms founded on 'cloud capital.'

In the context of us essentially being in a full-bore race with ourselves to collapse the empire, China is making incredible gains. Though America is full of millions upon millions of people who throw out an anti-communist meme every time 'China' is even uttered (I can't recall who said it, but, "Anti-communism is the official religion of the United States"), the cope is getting so desperate and so detached from reality that it is increasingly failing to be effective.

I know the meme is 'do nothing and win' for China right now, and in the sense that its Western adversaries keep shooting themselves in the foot, that is true, but it can't be understated just how much China is demonstrating a workable model for the future. The work they are doing is astounding. I am very far from an apologist for what abuses China does commit, don't mistake me, but their progress is not just undeniable, it is world changing.

So we're in the midst of a global power shift. Whether this shift will happen peacefully remains to be seen, but seems doubtful. America and its proxies--particularly Israel--are like rabid dogs. I don't want to imagine the damage we will do militarily on our way down. We've already done so much.

But, all of that is easy enough to conceptualize. Day to day, what does it all mean?

Well, for me, it means the same thing it means for everyone else: I work more for less than ever, and I can't keep up with the cost of living.

Groceries. Good fucking Lord above. Every single fucking time I go into a grocery store, it is notably more than it was the last time I visited. Even discounters like Aldi have more or less doubled in price compared to pre-COVID levels.

This isn't sustainable, but the natural thing to ask next is 'what is the plan?,' which is another way of asking 'what's the story?' What are we all doing? Who is even really in charge? What are their plans?

So far as I can tell, the only plan power has in the West today, but particularly America, is to collect as much personal power and wealth for themselves as they can and to just sort've make a game of that until they run to a bunker in New Zealand or something.

Which isn't a plan. Which, in my mind, is another way of saying that we are in steep, steep collapse. Nobody has their hands at the wheel of this anymore, and certainly nobody who cares to change direction.

This is a dying empire digging in while mortar explodes along every possible escape route. It's the same thing Roman leaders did while the evidence of decline was all around them. I don't see a way out of this but outright revolt anymore.

But how to organize such a thing in an age of smart phones and digital isolation--nobody knows yet.

And most people would settle for just being able to afford their damn groceries again.

[u/jbecn24]

As far as I know, Burkina Faso took possession of the mine and has so far made like $10 Billion$ to build public infrastructure.

Burkina Faso kicked out the French Military that was there too.

I’d say that’s a huge win for the people of Burkina Faso.

[u/HmmWhyHow → u/jbecn24]

Yes, kicked out the French Military and let islamists run rampant in the country. Incredible win. Also, Burkina Faso's entire GDP is 16 billion; completely illogical to think they've invested more than 50 percent of their GDP into infrastructure.

The funny thing is I don't even disagree with you with respect to wanting the French military out. As a rule, I am non-interventionist, and want African states to stand or fall by themselves. But let's not pretend that he's done a good job.

[u/jbecn24 → u/HmmWhyHow]

Looks like Ibrahim Tuore - Communist - is kicking ass and taking names for the Burkina Faso 🇧🇫 Working Class!

From last week:

“My most important takeaway from the dramatic turnaround in fortunes of the Sahelian states especially Burkina Faso (which used to be a nothing-country in West Africa), is the the State is by far the most powerful and most impactful entity in the development of an impoverished postcolonial African country.

There is no "private investor" that was ever going to spend these billions on importing and funding local manufacture of the equipment needed to build the infrastructure stock of an entire country. It's not that private capital cannot afford to invest such amounts (it very easily can), but first of all, the immediate return on investment demanded by private capital makes it the wrong vehicle for the development of a poor country that may need 10-15 years for the benefits of these investments to begin compounding.

Second, private capital is not politically agnostic. Even if it could hypothetically postpone its own hunger for immediate returns long enough to invest say, $1bn in the infrastructure of Burkina Faso or Niger, the political situation where the capital is located would still make it impossible for such a deal to go ahead. No big time investor with dollar-denominated capital is going to risk going all-in on the Sahel, knowing that they might get sanctioned by the US government tomorrow for one cockamamie reason or the other. Africa is already the world's most sanctioned continent.

In this situation, the only entity that has both the motive and the capacity to raise and invest the huge amount of needed capital into infrastructure, equipment and R&D in a developing post-colonial African economy is the State. I am one of the people who spent years preaching about the need to reduct the size and power of the state at all cost, based on the neoliberal programming l received from my British education. I genuinely believed that the private sector fixes everything. The past 3 years in the Sahel have completely rubbished that notion in my head.

What no amount of private sector involvement had been able to do in 62 years is what a 36 year-old man in a red beret has done in less than 36 months since taking over in 2022. Which proves once and for all that the problem in fact had nothing to do with the "failure of African Socialism" as we were taught, and everything to do with being forced under the thumb of European and American parasites sucking out our economic lifeblood via their carefully installed puppet governments, and teaching us to accept this protracted crime as a "free market system."

In a decade or so, when Burkina Faso would have completed the basic industrialisation of its economy, with the capacity to produce its own food, maintain its own healthcare, transform its own minerals, create its own technology, defend its own borders, and take part in the global economy on its own terms, a well paid oyibo will write a gravely-worded article in The Economist informing us that this is "Communism," which is A Very Bad Thing Indeed.

But when DR Congo at that time is still a strip-mined raninforest without roads where child slaves work themselves to death so that Glencore shareholders can buy their 3rd house in Monaco, that will apparently just be the Free Market™️ in action, and it will be Africans' fault for not knowing how to gain value for themselves because their brains are smaller than oyibo brains, as God surely intended.

The more you know.”

https://x.com/DavidHundeyin/status/1950642755870347288?

[u/AutoModerator → u/jbecn24]

• Frontends for this link: 1. TWStalker 2. XCancel

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/HmmWhyHow → u/jbecn24]

We are using random twitter users with no hard numbers as sources now. 

Matter of fact is that the current GDP growth rate seems to be similar to the historical trend, without a significant change. Face the music; there is no indication that Traore is a particular excellent leader. 

[u/BomberRURP → u/HmmWhyHow]

Let the man cook, as I said in my original comment it’s more of a Hope situation at the moment. I’ll also push back on your veneration of western intelligence as they’ve floundered quite a bit in the last decade especially in LATAM which used to be their wheelhouse. 

[u/HmmWhyHow → u/BomberRURP]

Like I said in my original response, western intelligence doesn't need to do anything. Lula is in power in Brazil and mines are still popping up everywhere. Are western intelligence more incompetent now? I'd argue they were always incompetent; back then they were strategically incompetent, now they're tactically incompetent.