I have had this in my mind for a little while. I’m Californian and I feel we should make a push break this state from the US of Amerikkka.
The new state can form with Mexico, South America, China…
This thing I’m pretty sure wouldn’t be majority white. So it would be inherently anti Amerikkkan. I would emphasize race mixing.
I know this isn’t super realistic on paper since USA would violently try to destroy this movement. I actually expect it to be a pretty grossly thing. But I’m ready to put on the heat. Any other Californians ready to reject your Amerikkkan allegiances and to organize and do other stately things on that basis?
I’m going to develop this idea more and prepare more material on it.
U.S. balkanization is an interesting topic. Texas passed a law allowing for an independence referendum by 2023, but it’s probably mostly just saber rattling at Biden. The state responded by saying that it would be a declaration of war and this matter was resolved during the Civil War. They won’t let Texas go without a fight, their oil and gas is too valuable.
California… if it were independent, I think would become like the
23rd5th largest economy in the world? Something like that. Californian independence would likely cripple the Amerikan empire to such an extent that it would become more of a footnote to history than the UK or Portugal when it comes to imperial ambitions. They’d probably nuke California before losing it.5th largest economy!
Holy shit I was way off. Yeah that’d destroy the U.S. lol, thanks comrade.
How much of it is due to overblown corporations like Tesla?
Lots, however, Cali is actually one of the few states that does have a robust real economy in the manufacturing and agricultural sector. It’s not all finance and service industry there like it is pretty much everywhere else in the US.
Thanks, I stand corrected then
I still go back and forth on balkanization, but overall we should probably be turning the imperialists playbook against them: ie we should push for balkanization of the imperial core (breakup of eu, nato, the us), and push for a strong united south america, carribrean, africa, middle east, se asia, indian subcontinent, etc.
The other side is that although balkanization would harm their militaries and economic hegemony over world trade, it would also mean the collapse of the small number of social services they do have, and economic hardships. We still gotta keep in mind tho that the global north is a minority of the world’s population, and their subjection of the third world has been far worse than anything that could be done to them.
California and Texas state legislatures attempting to secede would be incredibly entertaining tho. Imagine the media shitshow that would ensue when US troops / national guard get sent in to occupy the state houses.
would harm their militaries and economic hegemony over world trade
Might also collapse the world’s economic system, since USA has worked hard to center it around themselves
I just don’t think balkanization can work at this point for the US, there aren’t enough national contradictions for any sort of balkanization project to last. Yes, there is a possibility for separate native states, but they would be quite small and unable to defend themselves against a larger US. A new afrika type state could exist, and would be quite large, but again wouldn’t be able to drift away from greater US influence. There aren’t much clear divides in the US where you can draw clear borders for new states. The US national project has already been mostly successful, most of the country has been “americanized” and sees itself as part of the greater project. If you were to just create separate states, those states would just see themselves as heirs to a greater national project and attempt to unify against the contradiction that people of the same nationality also exist in the other breakaway states. The country would plunge into perpetual civil war till one state unifies into the greater US. Much like how warlord era china eventually resulted in the KMT attempting unification and then the PRC completing it, because the contradiction that all these separate warlord states existed yet still held the same Chinese nationality couldn’t last.
The closest we got to an actual divide and fracture in the US national project was the civil war, where Dixie, the south, truly did try and have a different national identity then the Yankee dominated north due to the domination of a slave owner elite and an economy almost entirely dependant on slave labor and cash crops. But that national identity is as good as gone now. Yes, people in the south still fly Confederate flags, but they do so because they’re racist, not because they hate America or don’t see themselves as American.
I just don’t see balkanization working unless a greater power intervenes constantly to make sure the bickering warlord states don’t eventually unify, which would be an incredibly costly endeavor. Didn’t work out well for the Japanese for example.
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Except fresh water
maybe in LA, but NorCal has some of the best water reserves in the west
The worrying aspect for southern California is that the Colorado river runs deep into the continent, it’s a security concern.
In LA desalination will be necessary.
Mixed feelings on this one. Leaning on it be a failure. California technically has the best chance to be a balkanized state out of most of the country. It is one of the largest food producing regions in the world, nevermind just in the US. It has ample opportunities for wind, solar, and hydro, even some minor opportunities for geothermal and nuclear energy, plus the industrial capacity to maintain these sectors. And despite the LA basin, which is fundamentally unsustainable (which i’ll go into), the state would still have opportunities for water. California would be able to continue it’s dominance as a leading exporter of agricultural products, entertainment, and technology.
If California represents a model of a functional country by amenities, it however also inherits the dysfunction of the US politically. There is no other state more socially and economically stratified, with both the worse unhoused crises of the country and the highest concentration of wealth. Property relations define the state before all else, as living costs skyrocket yet city administrations continue to push for luxury lots which remain vacant but help consolidate their own wealth. Some of the largest organized crime rings, including child sex trafficking, are conducted in California. To function as they do, the state depends on illegal actions, such as abuse of migrant workers, continued impoverishment of native peoples and locating dehumanizing, environmentally destructive work near their reservations, neglecting wildfire safety, destroying wetlands and watersheds for development, and so on.
And politically, it’s a complete mess. California is one of the most divided of states, if not the most. Effectively the democratic centrist and marginally progressive wing controls the cities, yet political leaders of those areas are also responsible for some of the worst human rights issues of the state, and are consistently reactionary. In the interior, you find far more ‘moderates’, and ouright right wing and far right elements. The State of Jefferson, first urged in the early 1940s, was one of the original separatist movements, focusing on NorCal as far south as Oroville incorporating parts of Oregon and Nevada into a new state. In these areas, you will still see flags of the proposed state (a yellow emblem akin to a mining claim backgrounded in forest green). Predominately libertarian chauvinist, the original promoters talked of individual freedoms. And today, the majority of the serious adherents are alt-right, with strong contingents in militia hate groups such as the 3%'ers and Proud Boys. NorCal and foothills communities still consistently show degrees of xenophobia to the rest of the state, from the new age anprim permaculture cannabis waves of Mendocino, Sonoma, and Humboldt coasts, to outright white ethnonationalist compounds in gold country. On a mainstream political level, we can see the conservative political power of Tulare, Kern, Fresno and Madera counties producing heavyweights such as Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy, and the allegiance of other rural counties is similar. Even in the populated coast, we have techbros consistently bringing up the division of California into up to to 5 states, which are regional caricatures of their demographic strengths (for example, the “central valley” proposal has no economic centers but Fresno and Bakersfield, and would create massive headaches for food, water and energy trade, whereas the “silicon valley” state would be almost entirely dependent on imports).
I haven’t even brought up the great ecological catastrophe that is California. Once home to over a hundred flourishing indigenous tribes and clans, the gold rush and subsequent colonization has forever destabilized the ecological health of the state. By diverting, consolidating, draining, clear cutting and contaminating creeks, rivers, lakes, wetlands, meadows, and forests, the state has seen a decline of almost all it’s biodiversity. I don’t recall exactly, but I believe species loss approaches 80%. The genocide and displacement of indigenous communities also in turn disrupted the land ethic and land management strategies. Paired with deforestation, killing of beavers and their habitat (a crucially underestimated keystone species), consolidating water into projects for agri-industrial and urban use, and encroachment of highly invasive species that worsen drought and fire conditions, California, despite all its vast resource wealth and ostensibly environmentalist attitudes, is already in the cycle of collapse. The LA basin, once a massive wetland where the Los Angeles River and La Ballona would merge for miles across during the wet season, will now be seeing increased fire risk, massive flooding, no locally available water, and for the first time wet bulb temperatures as atmospheric changes are exacerbated by climate change. The Central Valley, once home to the largest lake west of the Mississippi (see: Tulare Lake), is now embroiled in massive water wars, irrigating water-hungry commodity crops in a desert. Seafaring ships could literally arrive in SF Bay, head down the San Joaquin and arrive at a lake near present-day Bakersfield, which at one point boasted 5 canneries and a harvest of two tons of fish per day (not for long, obviously, within 40 years the fishing industry busted, and with the central water project the entire lake was drained to grow cotton in a desert). All this water disappeared due to ecocide and vast ignorance of the importance of maintaining the hydrologic cycle, and restoring any resemblance of it would take radical, massively destabilizing acts.
With all this said, I’m hesitant to say California could emerge successfully without greater federal assistance. I get massive accelerationist vibes from the whole prospect. There is no coherence and too much neoliberalism to really make something solid. CA is definitely the “indicator species” for the USA… if it fails or secedes, the US is doomed.
Yeah in in EDC. This prospect is not something that would happen easily I don’t think. Basically it would require a ton of input energy from us so it would likely have to be a very high energy event which in most cases is not ideal.
But I’ve lived in California my entire life now and I don’t see any future for myself as an Amerikkkan honestly.
That’s why I want to explore this as a vector in a larger operation to defeat capitalism.
Living in EDC I see we would need to assume land and redistribute land.
Wow, I love the ecological breakdown of Cali. Nearly 80 percent loss of species?! That’s crazy. Beavers are awesome.
I don’t know about hating on acceleration though. I’m reading Guevara’s guerrilla warfare book rn, and it talks about dismissing concerns that not all contradictions need be met for revolutionary warfare. For example, according to the book, guerrillas should be established in mountainous areas and should be teaching peasants and farmers about stuff, this accelerates if not outright creates the conditions of revolution. The empire will fall and a revolutionary moment will come. Those conditions can be created; maybe revolutionaries should create them. Guerrillas fight wars where they are outnumbered 10-1. I think that’s a philosophy that can be learned from in “peaceful” actions as well, like radicalizing populations in peripheral areas. Inner city/ghetto/agrarian.
Acceleration should be considered a tool and not a norm. And we shouldn’t engage in struggle that is not winnable for the sake of accelerationism. I argue that what we really need, in cali too, is to use our limited energy to fight winnable projects, and in educating and winning over the persons in the periphery of empire. I think it doesn’t matter much if Cali de-federated or not, what matters is winning, and spreading the revolutionary spirit.
That’s what I’m getting from this book so far anyway. What do you think?
Accelerationism isn’t something I’d strongly discourage, but it’s consequences will be catastrophic I feel. So my belief is in the event of unsustainable conditions deteriorating, California will be radically transformed, geopolitically, and become unrecognizable as any sort of coherent state. Which good or bad, will have massive consequences beyond balkanization.
I agree the periphery are vital locations to agitate, educate and organize. The historical processes of the settler-colonial state of Amerikkka however are very unique, even contrary, to historical liberation struggles, especially in regard to the rural and “peasantry.” White settlers expanded into the west and have maintained a cultural hegemony, particularly in rural spaces, ever since. Rural property owners across the country are 98% white, and that representation trends higher in western states.
So unlike a soviet peasantry or indigenous campesinas, the periphery of California in this context is home to some of the strongest reactionary, white supremacist values of the state, and furthermore those intentionally marginalized are effectively landless and migratory. There are some areas that are promising, however, due to the population density and community strength of farm workers (especially towns like Delano, Selma, Fresno, Visalia, places of strong UFW heritage). Elsewhere, where climate adaptation is the absolute concern (such as the foothills), there have been arguments to appeal to the libertarian/anarchic ethos that dominates those areas, especially regarding land management, but I am highly skeptical, having been politically conscious and active in rural spaces for coming on 15 years.
I know you haven’t specifically meant the periphery as those regions i described, but I just wanted to put context on how that strategy may differ from historical examples. I have strong hope in general of these peripheries actually flourishing in collapse, because California is a bit more politically conscious over many areas of the country, and also too the examples you give of inner city, urban-agrarian and intentionally ghettoed areas (as well as dual power through indigenous-lead decolonization) are very encouraging from an an organizational and resource-independent way.
I go on this three mile walk in my neighborhood on many days. There is this mucky pond area with many turtles and once I saw something go under that was prob a beaver or something. Sadly to me it looks like it is drying up as it goes around here.
Some Beavers have survived, and others are being reintroduced thankfully. Many years ago I was in Martinez walking to the harbor from midtown, and in one of the creeks (a ditch at this point) was a mama beaver with her pups on her back. Melted my heart!
This thing I’m pretty sure wouldn’t be majority white. So it would be inherently anti Amerikkkan
Would it be anti-capitalist though?
Oh sorry I misread.
I couldn’t be sure that it would be at least initially.
It may carry out with the greatest support we can get, which may involve bringing a good few in who aren’t really real leftists. And a lot of others who have other motivations like nationalism even maybe. Certain folks probably be thrown under the bus (Like rural white reactionaries and the bourgeoisie, ancaps, etc) in favor of minorities like natives who will get reparations.
And with the end game of drawing this area away from the ‘western’ sphere, and hopefully developing socialism that benefits us very much.
Don’t mean to be super Larp’y. Brainstorming.
Yes because it’d be against white supremacy. Break the identity.
Wish I could cross post this in !latestageusempire@lemmygrad.ml
