When you grow up in the imperial core; Europe/America, its logics, norms, and values are internalized. It can become difficult to imagine that things can be organized differently.
Three wishes from a genie (no wishing for more wishes, hehe) and most people would follow Alladin's choices and wish for riches and status and Title. A wish that still leaves many others poor and starving. They do not think to wish for an entirely different mode of production: one that overcomes exploitation and alienation and liberates the weak and poor.
The cool thing is, we don't need fairytale magic to actualize this wish.
We only need tell the Truth uncompromisingly and to face it with unshakable courage.
One such Truth is that under capitalism, over production of food and medicine exist side-by-side with starvation and chronic illness.
That is because capitalism is not just America and Europe. It is also Bolivia and Kenya, Columbia and Panama, Palestine and Nepal. The online shopping malls may look overwhelming, but that does not mean this system satisfies the needs of the population. Abundance in the markets is not a sign that wealth and resources have been distributed effectively.
The systemic violent oppression of the Third World throughout the 20th century were necessary for capital accumulation. Violence and oppression, in the form of the super-exploitation of labor, namely in the global south, is the very mechanism that allows for the cheapening of goods to make such abundance available. They extract value from the periphery countries and accumulate it into the imperial core.
A dock worker's labor in South Africa does not produce100x less value than that same dock worker in San Francisco. But in order to make things appear affordable, appear abundant, appear in-order, this false "truth" must be enforced.
However, it is important to be reminded that capitalism, like all other historical modes of production, had a beginning, and must have an end. A better world is on the horizon.
The problem is that the capitalists will divest. They will salvage as much as can be salvaged from this broken economy while purposely dilapidating the rest. Just like the housing crash, the energy crisis, and the AI bubble.
The capitalists privatized the profits but when this thing implodes, they will socialize the losses. Just like they did in 2008. No one was ever held accountable for that, BTW.
Within this unsustainable mode of production, it is not possible to raise the living standard of the global population to that of those living in the imperial core.
A revolution is the only way forward. One that will radically change how we produce, consume, and organize. No longer based on privatized wins and socialized losses. A mode of production rooted in collectivization.
The transformation towards this end can be smooth as the global south de-links from imperialism and creates alternative international orders.
Or... this transformation will be horrific and traumatic resulting in world wars and the deployment of super weapons. If such a transition is not "the end" for us all, we will likely start from scratch. We must avoid this outcome: we must avoid revolutionary adventuring in our strategy.
If capitalism is still the dominant model in the later half of this century, then catastrophic social and economic collapse are easy to forsee.
It is in this unstable and dramatic circumstance that the end-game of capitalism will likely be realized.
The strategy for our struggle, the ways in which we can rigidify ourselves, our community, our infrastructure, and our life support systems are what we aim to discuss on this page.
Capitalism will not survive the turn of the century.
It's up to us to make the transition as smooth as humanly possible.
A better world yearns to be born. All we have to lose are our chains.
No genie magic needed.
