Steps up onto soapbox
According to Zak Cope in Divided World Divided Class, if the global economy was rearanged equitably income in the global north would drop by an average of 240%. This is a massive barrier to building socialism. Mitigating this problem should be a top priority for communists. If we ignore this we risk failing to build socialism, failing to show international solidarity, and we risk obstructing socialism’s construction around the world.
As unions and labor organizations become more necessary to maintain quality of life in the core, it is of paramount importance that these unions are plugged in to a greater political movement that is based on international solidarity. If all we can achieve is labor organizing that fights for marginal gains for workers in the core, then we fight for maintaining imperialism.
We must find a way to proliferate international proletarian politics into unions and organizations. If we cannot then inevitably we subject ourselves to the revolutionary violence of the proletariat. In Sri Lanka people have taken over and destroyed the Prime Ministers residence while he flees. This is the future of the global north if the course of history continues and if we continue to fool ourselves into thinking we can win the class war by focusing solely on the immediate concerns of workers in the core, and without solidarity with and strict guidance from the global proletariat.
Socialism is often branded as Utopian. As a sort of paradise of justice and equality. As marxists we must destroy this narrative. Socialist revolution will not bring prosperity to Amerika it will bring a death blow and this is the point. Workers in the core that ally themselves with the global proletariat must prepare for survival in a world without imperial and colonial spoils. We must prepare our neighbors and our families. We must not tell people the lies of Utopian socialism or allow the working class to be whitewashed into a class that lives off of the stolen wealth of nations.
You forgot to step down insert laugh track
Would the end of capitalism (including reparations for imperialism to exploited countries) actually have a negative effect on most workers in the imperial core, especially those who already have a relatively low standard of living? For example, would there be an energy shortage for essential production and household use? (I know that some countries, such as France, steal most of their energy from other countries, but surely the then-former imperial core would be able to generate enough for domestic use, at least after a while?)
Great question. Fuel usage, for one, could be massively reduced with better public transport, a 4-day working week, homeworking as standard, and planning laws to encourage the (re-)development of ‘local’ centres (in contrast to moving everything to major city centers and to retail parks).
Would it help to ask: considering that so much of the wealth flowing (unequally) to the global north gets siphoned into the deepest pockets (usually in tax havens), would the working class really miss that wealth if at the same time as the global south liberated itself, so did the workers of the global north?
Obviously the West would miss such easy access to rare earth minerals and cheap food, etc. But it continuous to need so many metals and minerals because planned obsolescence means technology gets outdated quick and it’s impossible to be a worker without using the ‘latest’ tech. If the West became socialist, one of the first things the workers could stop is planned obsolescence.
At the same time a socialist government in the global north could still trade with the global south, offering technical help as well as hard cash. Zac Cope argues that brain drain is one of several mechanisms by which value unequally transfers away from the global south. Would countries in the global south maintain good relations with e.g. a socialist France if it not only tried to stop brain drain, but actively sought to reverse it?