The systemic breakdown that our socioeconomic system is creating has the potential to do more than worsen the suffering of the people. Capitalism has survived so long because it’s been able to exploit the crises it creates, to profit off of wars, depressions, pandemics, and environmental catastrophes. Yet in certain instances, these crises have instead produced victories for the working class. World War I made the Russian revolution possible, World War II made the Chinese revolution possible, the living standards crisis that the IMF engineered across the Global South made the formation of many anti-imperialist governments possible. When the capitalists disrupt society, they do so with the risk that the outcome will be not greater profits but an end to their rule.
As to this article being optimistic, I think we can look at the US like a state which has artificially inflated it’s petit bourgeois class as a buffer between the state and the working class. The US does this while simultaneously extracting from the petit (as they would with proles) while subsiding the social health through privatization and having this base be able to afford it without much consequence (traditionally). We can see this historically by designing Amerikkka as a settler-colonial state, granting stolen land access on stipulation of providing production, security and expansion for the state.
The petit bourgeois-- small business owners, law enforcement, administrators, realtors, educated technicians and specialists-- have traditionally made peace with the state as their industries have grown along with the neoliberal paradigm. However as Rainer points out, Amerikkka is finding less exploitable conditions it hasn’t already mostly extracted from to maintain it’s hegemony, including the working class base of the country, which has always been heavily extracted from yet has also been disenfranchised in the political process, as the state delegates authority to the petit bourgeois, whom determine labor and property access for the proletariat.
Steadily, the contradictions between the proles and petit are increasing and they are ever more at odds with each other, while the state begins extracting labor value from the petit beyond simple rants in the local city’s chamber of commerce. Petit-bourgeois will be consumed at both ends, and they are the dominant force behind the Trump/outsider reactionary wave. They are ahead of the game, having privilege and resources to organize and insert themselves in the political process.
Meanwhile, the vying ruling classes, are at ever more tension against each other, destabilizing and undermining each others efforts every election cycle, wasting massive resources with infighting while diverting their life-support systems to fuel their imperialism abroad. As for the working class, flanked from all sides, they are developing mutual aid, assemblies and somewhat of a dual power structure, but at this point these efforts are still very disorganized and decentralized, and still brutally put down by the police apparatus.
Am I optimistic? That things will get worse, yes. Whether we get it together, I’m not sure, but we as a political body haven’t quite been stressed to the breaking point imo.