chapotraphouse

A fully dissolved and collapsed america will be Hell itself for its population of scavengers and murderers but it will be an unalloyed good for the rest of the world and the global south getting some breathing room is the only hope for humanity, so

Once all empires reach a certain point of decline, separatist movements are inevitable. It happened to all empires in the past and the US will be no exception. Well, I suppose the US could always murder-suicide the world with nukes when it's at a point of irreversible decline and it doesn't want China to take the throne.

So assuming the US doesn't start a hot war with China, it will eventually reach a point of decline where the federal government has only nominal control over its territories. There might be a rump state and it might still have a seat in the UN (or whatever equivalent of the UN), but the US will functionally no longer exist.

Current secessionist movements are just memes. The instant California or Texas even secedes from the US, the US will simply sanction the state to oblivion and politically isolate the state. Without trade or formal state recognition by other countries, how would that state even function? No state is self-sufficient, so how would people in that state even survive without trade?

Municipalism/libertarian socialism is all about seizing local control of governments and breaking away from the national bourgeois government. Basically, take over municipalities and townships and village councils, one by one, and form a confederation of independent local municipalities that can act independently from nationalist institutions and establish socialism.

It's not really a Marxist revolutionary theory, though. A synthesis might be possible but I'm not aware of anyone trying it.

it would be good for the global south because it would make the united states much weaker

hawaii, new afrika movement, land back to native populations

uh thats it really

No, it’s never going to happen.

America has already exported its industries to the Global South. This is the price it has to pay for the ability to get “free ride” from all over the world simply through printing money. As such, all US states are bound together by the power of its currency - the loss of which will lead to severe plunge in purchasing power and living standards.

Not a single state in America - not even the richest state - can afford to secede without losing a large part of material privileges they’ve been able to enjoy all these years through exploiting labor and extracting surplus from the Global South.

Unless they’re willing to live like Brazil or Italy, but Americans would rather wage a war with the rest of the world than to willingly degrade their own material conditions like that.

Post 2020 and the Covid19 epidemic the states couldn't decide on how to isolate, lock-down, and re-open. So they all split into "regional state medical associations" or something like that i don't remember exactly. This was not state secession or 'semi-autonomous region' recognition etc. But it was a clear and recent example how material situations can suddenly motivate or force a re-organization on national institutional scales. To spring-board off this we can theorize; if there was another "disagreement" between states on how to react to a new situation (medical or other) that they would make similar moves, such as re-organizing into state coalitions, or perhaps smaller break-away regions. Lead by whoever is sitting leadership at the time.

If all the states became their own countries then there would definitely be less war crimes committed by them.

There have been many advocacies of separations in the context of decolonization and landback. Struggles for Native Americans to take ownership of their land in many constants and many points in their resistance fighting and struggles throughout the entire settling period, and into more modernly as well pushing at least along treaty lines. And there have been multiple movements and phases in the Black liberation struggle that have seem plans to secede in a Black nation. The earliest plans saw this Black United States being formed in the South where slavery and the black population was densest. There have been other plans and attempts to formulate and realize Black nationalist countries within the current borders of the contiguous US since there were more migrations and movements of Black populations elsewhere in the US; as well as other movements which sought a more unitary multinational decolonization.

This really comes down to a lot of practical material realities more than an idealist "what we would want." How the organized forces of populations, of socialists and reaction, of state and federal forces, etc. are arrayed; geography relevant to these forces and their centers of population and operation, what landscapes are rendered uninhabitable due to climate change when these kinds of questions arise as practical issues, basic infrastructure and logistic concerns, etc. Native Americans would probably have a simpler construct to turn into material practical realities due to already having various reservation centers, but these are kept small, dependent, isolated, fragmented, and occupied, and are also proportionally a pretty small percentage of the population compared to forces potentially arrayed against them if it were just them trying to do this.

So it really matters on what communities have been and are more organized. If there are Latino communities organized seriously for communist revolution in the Southwest for instance, and have access to habitable land, routes, food and water supplies, fuel, etc. many nearer Native American groups could align forces with them. But these are all such far off questions as to be pointless fantasies as silly as the right wingers right now to think about in this way. It is much more practical to think on the lines of organizing ones own community, building socialism and rupturing the political contradictions which keep masses separated from revolutionary politics including in 'parliamentary' politics as broad masses still believe in it (such as breaking the democrats' duopoly and causing an upswell in socialist ranks); as well as basic furtherances of specific de-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist points and pressures such as honoring treaties, fighting against gentrification and ghettoization, basic health and infrastructure repairs in poor communities, expropriation of vacant housing, organizing prisoners and working prison abolition, pushing divestment from arms manufacturers and military in communities and in colleges (and pushing the military recruiters out of high schools

fucking psychotic country); agitating against military enlistments and deployments and direct action against militarism and its material capabilities; etc. These kinds of things.

It is much more serious and practical and practicable to be thinking and working along these lines and in years see where it has led rather than making some 'early case for balkanization'. For many reasons. It is in the present our work is done, contesting with the material living reality as it is. In general, also, Balkanization is more of a historical event and possible outcome of irreconcilable ruptures in society to be accounted for and adapted to and reckoned with more than it is something to be legitimately sought after and built towards from day 1. Especially if you don't already have supreme reigns of power a separation or balkanization is much more of just an advent of uncontained chaos and incomprehensible many-fronted civil war scenario than it is remotely a goal.

In the abstract one can think of such a phase. In practice, however, he who denies the sharp tasks of to-day in the name of dreams about soft tasks of the future becomes an opportunist. Theoretically it means to fail to base oneself on the developments now going on in real life, to detach oneself from them in the name of dreams.

Balkanization implies a civil war or internal conflict so its never nice, you have to remember its not going to be the federal goverment deciding to disolved the union like in the USSR, its probably going to be a collapsing fed trying to hold on to power aka so its going to be like a battle royal.

and thats only counting states, there are large white supremacists groups or ultra religious groups that are going to use the chaos to declare their own states, organized crime will probably too take over their territory too, Its going to be a bloody civil war if it happens honestly

kinda like the russian civil war but with more guns and also nukes altho those will only be a problem if the feds decide to use them since modern nukes only work if you have the nuclear codes

Ask gunther to do it.

Large copium mainly idealism borderline fantasy. It’s like a hexbear meme will eventually start becoming a talking point where people manifest it into becoming a soon to be reality. The US is never going to balakanize

Yes there is, or for Mexico taking back some US territory

Less so than a leftist case for it just an inevitable thing thatll happen. The US is big, and divided. The elites might be united in the uniparty but the people arent. Imo there will be an implosion as the empire collapses and the federal government will partially collapse. Youll probably see an initial fascist takeover of things and then as people tire of fascists there will be regional secession movements led by marginalized groups. Climate collapse will just make this worse. Idk what the borders will be but i can almost garuntee it wont be state borders, or national borders. Itll be messier.

Balkanization is very likely under a collapse scenario as the states try to prop themselves up against one another. The moment they are no longer tied together economically, e.g. through imperial unequal exchange via militarism, they will be (1) impoverished and facing domestic unrest and (2) seek to maintain and expand their power, basically becoming (nearly failed) independent states. Who can say what boundaries would exist, it would depend on both larger economic trends and our ability to organize. For example, if the feds are weak/abandoned when the US has a dispersed and self-sustaining industrial base that is very different from a scenario in which it has concentrated agriculture and is reliant on imports. A reliance on imports would mean that border states control import but are dependent on wherever agriculture is viable. Any state with neither is immediately vulnerable, paying economic rent to both kinds of states. Under a dramatic collapse those areas would experience exodus and only become a target of acquisition by powerful interests for natural resources. At the same time, it is possible that by that time the surrounding states had locked down their borders.

The exact circumstances are difficult to predict because they depend on developments beyond our view. But we can predict the kinds of things that might happen and why. We can also say that Balkanization requires precedents, that it is quantitative change becoming qualitative, and that the major binding factor is US impeeialism and that without it the states would likely turn on one another.