ICC international online public meeting, 25 January
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Citizenoftheworld.
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January 3, 2025 at 4:05 pm #256032
Alf
ParticipantICC international online public meeting
Saturday January 25, 2pm to 5pm UK time
The election of Trump will accelerate capitalism’s decomposition
The election of Trump is a clear product of the advancing decomposition of capitalism, but it will also be an active factor in the acceleration of this process, bringing with it sharpening conflicts within the US ruling class, heighted imperialist tensions, a new dive into the economic crisis and further proof of capitalism’s inability to deal with the crisis of the natural environment.
Above all, it signals further brutal attacks on the international working class:
At the economic level, through rising inflation and unemployment
At the political level, both through the divisions fired by populism and the campaigns for ‘democracy’ against the threat of the far right.
The discussion will thus aim to deepen understanding of the concrete perspectives for capitalism and for the working class in the coming period.The ICC is thus following up the international online public meeting it held in October (see An international debate to understand the global situation and prepare for the future) with a second meeting on the significance of Trump’s victory. The format will be the same as the October meeting, offering translations into English, French and Spanish.
If you want to take part, write to us at international@internationalism.org
January 3, 2025 at 4:25 pm #256034Moo
ParticipantThanks for warning us. We’ll be sure to avoid that meeting.
January 3, 2025 at 6:23 pm #256035Citizenoftheworld
ParticipantI think we should listen to the opinions of others political organizations. I have participated on online meeting given by the ICC ( CCI ) and I attend public meeting given by others organizations
January 3, 2025 at 6:46 pm #256036robbo203
ParticipantAlf
How is the election of Trump a “clear product of the advancing decomposition of capitalism”? I mean, I wish it was but it strikes me that if millions of American workers are willing to put their trust in a snake oil salesman cum billionaire charlatan like Trump, capitalism still has a got some mileage to look forward to.
It’s the same with the so-called revolutionary wave in the 1920s in Germany and elsewhere inspired by the Bolshevik bourgeois revolution. The vast majority had no inkling of, or desire for, socialism. Capitalism in some form remained the only possibility at the time
Sadly, I cannot see much that is different today…
January 3, 2025 at 7:11 pm #256037Citizenoftheworld
ParticipantCapitalism will not collapse by itself, it must be replaced by the world working class, and the world working class is not ready for that mission yet
Millions of workers still believe that capitalism is their only viable solution, and millions of US workers are still supporting capitalism and pro capitalist leaders, electing either one would have been the same thing. Capitalism as usual .
Donald Trump was elected by workers from different social backgrounds, including white, blacks, latinos, women, asian, and middle eastern, they believed in the promises of a right wing demagogue, in the same way that workers have believed in the promises of left-wings demagogues, and both have greased the wheels of capitalism
Capitalism is becoming more reactionary and recalcitrant but it is not collapsing, cyclical crisis is a normal process of the capitalist society.
I have heard the same thing about the decomposition of capitalism for several decades and capitalism is still producing profits and it has not collapsed.
It is the same mistake made by Rosa Luxembourg and that is the reason why she supported the uprising and she was killed, capitalism was not collapsing in her time .
There was not a workers socialist revolution in France and Germany, and none has taken placed around the world, on the contrary, workers have embraced capitalist nationalism.
Right wings populists are becoming popular and are winning elections without any coup d’tat, and have a large support among the working class due to the failures and the false promises, and false theories of the left-wingers social democrats, and others pro reformist groups including the Leninists
Argentina is the best example, with so many leftwings, anarchists, and Leninists groups ( several tendencies ) and the workers elected an ultra right wing leader, in this case, a so called anarco capitalist
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This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by
Citizenoftheworld.
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This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by
Citizenoftheworld.
January 16, 2025 at 11:42 am #256241IsiahahBlake
ParticipantAs far as I am aware the ICC don’t argue that capitalism will collapse ‘by itself’ (whatever that would mean). BUT the social system is increasingly reaching a point where its internal and ‘external’ contradictions are making it impossible for capitalism to offer a future (of any sort) to humanity. War is one expression, the climate crisis is perhaps the most self evident example of capitalism reaching the literal limits of its own capacity to keep expanding. The economic crisis won’t make capitalism disappear but it will constantly tend towards the exacerbation of these contradictions.
Even more importantly, the tendency for capitalism to destroy human community and to atomise/commodify every aspect of human and non human life has and will always continue to reach such absurd levels as to become a danger even to the functioning of capitalism itself.
Anyway, this is why decomposition is linked to phenomenon like Trump. The naked idiocy, amoralism and nihilism as well as the decline in the ability of any bourgeois faction to put forward anything like a coherent plan are all an expression of this underlying crisis of capitalism which can not do anything but get worse over time.
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This reply was modified 3 weeks, 3 days ago by
IsiahahBlake.
January 16, 2025 at 2:09 pm #256245Citizenoftheworld
ParticipantAnyway, this is why decomposition is linked to phenomenon like Trump. The naked idiocy, amoralism and nihilism as well as the decline in the ability of any bourgeois faction to put forward anything like a coherent plan are all an expression of this underlying crisis of capitalism which can not do anything but get worse over time.
————————————————————————————Right wing populism is a world phenomenon and Trump is not the only one. I have seen some places where the whole left has been wiped out completely by the workers and they have elected and selected backward, and reactionary right wing candidates, they do not even care about the immoral characters of the candidates, in traditional terms they can be called lumpens, and crooks, and they have forgotten about everything honestly done in the past by others political groups. This reality is also affecting the minds of the workers
The communist manifesto said it very clearly that the development of capitalism was going to produce all those changes in our society
January 16, 2025 at 3:22 pm #256246DJP
ParticipantIrreconcilable contradictions or antagonisms are one thing. But the idea of splitting the history of capitalist society into just two phases – with one of these being a long period of terminal decline (which so far has lasted 120 years!) – doesn’t look like it matches the empirical facts to me…
January 16, 2025 at 4:17 pm #256247IsiahahBlake
Participant120 years isn’t that long for a historic era though is it? Also if there are irreconcilable contradictions then it stands to reason these will increase in severity over time, no?
You can split it into as many stages as you want but there is a fundamental difference between capitalism before and after it became THE world system. Seems like 1900s/1914 is a decent place to start . There’s a lot of debates to be gad within this wider scope but I don’t think the points I’ve made can be particularly controversial for Marxists.
January 16, 2025 at 4:25 pm #256248DJP
Participant“Also if there are irreconcilable contradictions then it stands to reason these will increase in severity over time, no?”
No, that doesn’t follow.
“120 years isn’t that long for a historic era though is it?”
If it’s supposed to be a period when things only get worse and worse then yes. How great were they before then!?
January 16, 2025 at 4:39 pm #256249Moo
ParticipantWhether the world socialist revolution will happen or not, no-one can say.
However, as technology gets better & better it becomes more & more ridiculous that we’re still living in capitalism.
To give one example of how mad capitalism is: it got rid of an aeroplane (Concord) that could fly from London to New York in 3 hours!
January 16, 2025 at 4:51 pm #256250IsiahahBlake
ParticipantFirstly ‘i dont think so’ isnt much of an argument but here we go: If there is an underlying contradiction between capitalisms need for constant expansion and the finite nature of the earth (for example) then the more capitalism is either curtailed in its expansion or continues to expand (in more and more dangerous and destructive ways) then the results will become consistently worse.
The idea that decadence means ‘things get worse’ is firstly not accurate, secondly such an idea would have to be understood on a historical scale. Decadence means an end to the progressive role of capitalism. Once capitalism is a world system it A) has nothing to be progressive in opposition to B) no longer has a useful role in laying the foundations for communism.
Any’improvements’ that may have occurred in the 20th century the overall trend is for capitalism to become an increasing threat to human survival. This is the historic epoch we are in. Unless capitalism is overthrown in the next century, humanity is very very likely not to survive this century. That seems like a society that has become historically NOTHING BUT a barrier to ‘progress’ to me.
Also, if capitalism is in a position of insoluble contradictions it stands to reason that solutions within that system will become increasingly fraudulent/insane. No?
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This reply was modified 3 weeks, 3 days ago by
IsiahahBlake.
January 16, 2025 at 5:59 pm #256252DJP
ParticipantSo now ‘decadence’ has become not a theory of economic collapse, but a theory of an ecological one?
January 16, 2025 at 6:29 pm #256253IsiahahBlake
ParticipantIt was never just an economic theory. It is a basic Marxist positions that societies/modes of production rise and fall. They go through a progressive or ascendant phase in which they grow and develop and offer new possibilities and a decadent period of decline in which they become a barrier to progress or to social existence more generally.
There are various economic explanations / aspects to this but it was never reducible to ‘economics’ alone.
Capitalism being around for as long as it has means it’s ecological destructiveness has reached undreamt of levels and the longer it survives the worse this will get. Imperialist war is very similar. It can do nothing but become mire snd more destructive and more and more of a threat to humanity.
January 16, 2025 at 7:01 pm #256254ALB
KeymasterDecadence means an end to the progressive role of capitalism. Once capitalism is a world system it A) has nothing to be progressive in opposition to B) no longer has a useful role in laying the foundations for communism.
That’s fair enough. But “Decadence” and “Decomposition”, with their connotations of decline, rotting or falling apart, seem over the top as a descriptions of this situation.
Despite having already laid the material conditions for world socialism and so no longer being historically “progressive”, capitalism has continued to grow not decline. At one time the ICC used to deny this, arguing that what appeared to be growth was in fact just replacing what had been destroyed in a world war. I don’t know if they still do.
The fact that capital has continued to accumulate since capitalism became a world system (whether this dates from 1914 or a couple of decades earlier) does not mean that it has not ceased to be historically progressive. It no longer is and hasn’t been for well over a hundred years. What it means is that socialism is now on the historical agenda, irrespective of whether capital accumulation has continued or not, and that this is what socialists say the working class should be striving for as an immediate aim.
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