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Is a revolution in the USA possible?
Source Juriaan Bendien
Date 04/03/16/10:37

At the risk of appearing impossibly arrogant and irresponsible, I think it
is quite possible to unleash a revolution in the United States, you just
need to attack the weakest links in the chain there. All that is required is
to create a sufficiently large disturbance in US money and capital markets,
i.e. something which massively reduces investor confidence, such that the
credit system practically collapses.

We have already seen that just bombing a few buildings in the US (the 9/11
incident) could have a very powerful economic effect, but just imagine now,
if the banking system as a whole became totally unworkable because somebody
pulled the plug on it. If that happens, then quite simply very large numbers
of people are blocked from any real monetary income at all, and have no
option other than to take or barter what they need, to survive at all.

The question however is whether this is ultimately a beneficial procedure,
rather than an impatient ultraradical, extremist scam. Because, whereas you
could technically completely stuff up the US economy through a few precisely
targeted interventions, this does not necessarily mean that anything better
will eventuate out of the fracas; that all depends on the political maturity
and organisational capacity of the American working class and its allies to
deal with the consequences, and the best indication of that political
maturity is the ability of that class and its allies to invent real
alternatives to the status quo, which really work.

In addition, a capitalist collapse in the US just now would have gigantic
adverse repercussions throughout the world; millions of people in addition
to the number already dying of hunger and disease now, would also die. The
ethical implications are horrendous.

A revolution is not desirable for its own sake. It is merely an instrument,
a means for reallocating power and wealth so that a better life becomes
possible for all. Just because you instigate a revolution, doesn't
necessarily mean any better society will necessarily emerge out of that. In
fact, the Nicaraguan revolutionaries decided at a certain point that
continuing the revolution in Nicaragua carried too high a price; imperialist
aggression and blockade imposed too high a cost on the Nicaraguan people,
offsetting the great benefits of civil security, land reform and economic
management which the overthrow of US-supported dictator Somoza had made
possible. So they agreed to step down, reluctantly perhaps, but they did
it - on the basis of a sober assessment of the balance of forces and good
ethics. Which is just to say that a revolution isn't always desirable. Lenin
would have dismissed leftists who argue this as totally irresponsible.

In the coming years, it is certainly possible that a certain sort of
collapse could occur anyhow. But whereas the USA would be able to recover
from that reasonably quickly in an economic sense, because of its internal
resources, many other, much weaker dependent countries, would not be able
to - they would suffer economically for a very long time. So, "wrecking
economies to foment revolutions" is not part of the real socialist or
communist program. For Marx at least, that sort of thing could be safely
left to the bourgeois classes themselves, as they struggle with the
contradictions of capitalism which their own theory denies.

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