On Sun, Mar 2, 2025 at 08:02 AM, hari kumar wrote: > > I do think that just as most Marxist-Leninists and Marxists would > generally agree that the rule of an capitalist ruling class domestically > in a single state - is most unlikely to be overcome by the proletarian or > toilers except by the use of force. There may be rare exceptions - but > overall it is most unlikely to happen peacefully. I think in the > international imperialist realm similar considerations apply.
I don't the the analogy does apply, Hari. I also don't know of any instance when the transfer of power *between* classes has occured peacefully, and it would be no different if the working class were to try to seize state power today. But there have been many shifts of power *within* classes - for example, from large agrarian producers favoiring protection to manufacturers favouring free trade or from craft to industrial workers - where conflcits have been resolved by political and economic pressures rather than military means. Even today, US, Eueropean, and Asian transnationals backed by their respective states aggressively compete with each other without these erupting into war. The competition with the Soviet Union was a different matter. Its wholly state-owned model posed an existential threat to capitalism in the context of already widespread class struggle which it encouraged and further deverloped through the worldwide formation of mass Communit parties. The Soviets were twice invaded by imperialist powers - immediately after the October revolution and then by the Nazis in WW II. As it happened, the allied imperialist powers came to the aid of the USSR in WW II but this was a marriage of convenience forced on them by the simultaneous efforts of Germany and its Axis partners to contest their domination of the world economy. If the Soviets had not developed nuclear weapons, the subsequent Cold War with the Americans would have been a hot one instead. It's telling when the USSR collapsed, it did not result from war but from sustained economic pressure from the more advanced and prosperous West and its own internal rot at the state level and other contradictions. Frankly, I'm surprised to see all the drum-beating for an inevitable or likely war with China since many on the list who promote it don’t see much difference between the two social systems. China is widely characterized as “state capitalist” and it doesnt actively seek to export its ideology. The only real influence it wields abroad is not through mass parties of anti-capitalist workers but among aspiring entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and politicians in emerging markets (and even in the West) who prefer its model of state-directed capitalism to the older US private sector model it sees as stagnating and in decline. I also noted previously that China does not have its own self-contained economic system as did the USSR and its allies but instead welcomes foreign capital and has energetically sought to integrate into the glonal capitalist economy. This is why I think it is more rather than less likely that the US and China will resolve their differences short of war which could quickly turn nuclear though, like yourself, I'm not insisting that mine is the "certain" or "inevitable" outcome, just my attempt at reasonably informed speculation. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#35613): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/35613 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/111412499/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: marxmail+ow...@groups.io Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
