I would say that the lack of progress in educating the people in the imperial core is not due to “brainwashing” or any mind-control apparatus (see Roderic Day’s essay on “brainwashing”), but that the populace understand or implicitly acknowledge that they gain from the imperial setup of the world. By hating on other kinds of systems/nations you can feel better than the rest of the world (which the West is materially: better off).

Now if people in the West think they have nothing to gain from socialism because they at least don’t have to work in neo-colonial mines, then what hope is there for us to effect change in the imperial core countries? Well the contradictions of American hegemony are increasing and de-dollarization is around the corner. The rise of China and an alternative to the “rules-based order” of pillaging and looting of the overexploited countries by the IMF and the world’s bourgeoise is slowly coming to fruition. Since profit needs to keep coming and the exploitation will drop off in the third world, that exploitation needs to move somewhere else, and where it will move is most likely into the imperial periphery. The imperial periphery will now have a choice to break the bonds with the core so eventually the exploitation needs to ramp up in the imperial core: we get fascism. (Roderic Day argues that imperialism is fascism every day for the exploited countries which I agree with, so I’m using the term here as the phenomenon of the raw exploitation of capitalism replacing the liberal democracies in the core).

Most people will not accept fascism since it sucks for the majority, and that is where the communist parties have a role to play. When the material consequences of fascism arise people will look for answers to their material conditions worsening, and we need to be there to explain how they can get out of or avoid fascism by building socialism instead. Mobilizing the people and workers at this stage should be at lot easier since they have a lot to gain.