I was thinking about how the idea of some form of secession of states is always discussed in some really silly right-wing fantasy contexts but has there been any discourse in leftist circles about this? Especially in terms of the completely broken political system.
Otherwise is this a completely stupid idea on its face? Either way I’m just interested to hear about people’s thoughts.
Once all empires reach a certain point of decline, separatist movements are inevitable. It happened to all empires in the past and the US will be no exception. Well, I suppose the US could always murder-suicide the world with nukes when it’s at a point of irreversible decline and it doesn’t want China to take the throne.
So assuming the US doesn’t start a hot war with China, it will eventually reach a point of decline where the federal government has only nominal control over its territories. There might be a rump state and it might still have a seat in the UN (or whatever equivalent of the UN), but the US will functionally no longer exist.
Current secessionist movements are just memes. The instant California or Texas even secedes from the US, the US will simply sanction the state to oblivion and politically isolate the state. Without trade or formal state recognition by other countries, how would that state even function? No state is self-sufficient, so how would people in that state even survive without trade?
Tbh I think Texas has the best chance of making it as a self sufficient state.
A fully dissolved and collapsed america will be Hell itself for its population of scavengers and murderers but it will be an unalloyed good for the rest of the world and the global south getting some breathing room is the only hope for humanity, so
The global south is already getting breathing room and will continue to by China’s influence and ability to finance development usurping the IMF and World bank and breaking the limbs of US sanction capabilities. Especially with Russia and China allied more because Russia has no such compunctions of “non-intervention” while China is also helping train military and police as announced in the China-Africa summit.
Also there are way too many variables to say that the US “collapsing” would be an ‘unalloyed good’ for the world because what the hell does that collapse look like and into whose hands are regions consolidated under? It would certainly not remain a local event either; both to neighboring countries as well as all of the foreign military bases and navy contingents will still be active. and there are also nuclear bombs which would likely fall into the hands of whatever warlords or groups, which again “fully dissolved and collapsed” in such an idealist phrase with no concept of what that would look like, how that would happen, what the arrangement of forces would be, etc. tells us nothing. ‘unalloyed good’ is a drastic overstatement from zero information for such a world-shaking event as that would be. It also just writes off the US’ internal colonies and their fates in a very eco-fascist-adjacent kind of way.
China’s plan is much more thoughtful and shrewd for the global south to de-imperialize, and is without haphazard idealist concepts and showing itself to be successful and sustainable. And how the global north’s working class prepares and navigates and dictates the subsequent and inevitable ensuing revolutionary moments as capitalism runs into catastrophic crisis due to not being able to expand, and contracting heavily due to expansion of Chinese capital, irreconcilably for the west multi-polarizing the world and global south is its own question — which should have the actual communists already be organized in ways to do everything they can to not have it fall into whatever fascistic fallout world you’re envisioning, but instead successful socialist revolutions including de-colonial socialist revolutions where it applies.
Does it necessarily need to be a completely chaotic process? Could there be a pathway for new forms of government or organisation that’s better for people?
Nuclear weapons make it pretty hard to visualize. I can’'t imagine a way that different nuclear sites landing in the hands of opposing quasi-states in a hot war could ever end well.
hawaii, new afrika movement, land back to native populations
uh thats it really
No, it’s never going to happen.
America has already exported its industries to the Global South. This is the price it has to pay for the ability to get “free ride” from all over the world simply through printing money. As such, all US states are bound together by the power of its currency - the loss of which will lead to severe plunge in purchasing power and living standards.
Not a single state in America - not even the richest state - can afford to secede without losing a large part of material privileges they’ve been able to enjoy all these years through exploiting labor and extracting surplus from the Global South.
Unless they’re willing to live like Brazil or Italy, but Americans would rather wage a war with the rest of the world than to willingly degrade their own material conditions like that.
The USSR dissolved under the illusion that they were going to liberalize their highly industrialized economy and open up to the entire Western market.
The richest state in America, California, derives half of its tax revenues from capital gains e.g. stocks and bonds and various financial assets. If this is the economic structure of the richest state (I don’t even have to talk about New York property market), then every other state in the rest of the country is going to endure an even worse fate. Good luck seceding and immediately losing the privilege of having the strongest purchasing power in the world.
Any serious attempt at doing so will immediately find out this is impossible at the planning stage, because they first have to figure out how to run their economy independently from the rest of the country. Any talks about secession are mere rhetoric and can never happen in America as long as the dollar is king.
The USSR dissolved under the illusion that they were going to liberalize their highly industrialized economy and open up to the entire Western market.
Both things happened actually, but both liberalisation and opening market didn’t meant investment, it meant looting. What were they even thinking though, west did that every single time they “opened” some place up and even revisionist socialists should have this covered in fucking school.
and can never happen in America as long as the dollar is king.
Thankfully, this is going quickly down the drain. And the worries of the economy will only matter so long as the American economy meaningfully exists… that said, probably the best-case scenario is a civil war sometime down the road for whatever reason, I wouldn’t expect the US to (relatively) peacefully dissolve like the Soviets nor let go of their 250-year reich without some blood shed (and better internal infighting amongst state elements than it trying to take the world or rebelling populations down with it)
Full and infinite support for the balkanization of the devil settler-state IMO.
it would be good for the global south because it would make the united states much weaker
