This is not a joke. I actually don’t know.

  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    The simple answer is that “an America with its inner power structures replaced with communist ones” would simply not name itself after Amerigo Vespucci, in the same way as it would not erect statues of Confederate generals.

    The slightly longer answer is that the settler-colonial nature of the United States has afforded whites more class mobility and broadly more comfortable lives that disincentivize class consciousness. This means that the actual proletariat of the United States, the exploited section of the population with the greatest class consciousness, are the “othered” ethnic and racial minorities — and these groups already have names for their own countries, solidarity with one another, and desire that their countries should be liberated from their exploitation by a foreign power. When we reach the point where whites in the United States actually are exploited enough to develop true class consciousness, these whites will understand very well the need for solidarity with every section of the proletariat, in order to further the interests of the class as a whole. This means that the correct stance for white American workers is to support the liberation of the exploited countries.

    This is really no different from the example of Sweden and Norway, where Norway’s independence was directly the result of the Swedish working class striking and otherwise fighting against the efforts of the Swedish bourgeoisie to keep Norway by force. Lenin praised the Swedish working class for its efforts, which strengthened bonds between the working classes of Sweden and Norway and ended the friction between the countries. The only real difference between the example of Sweden and the example of the United States is that there is essentially no land that legitimately belongs to the United States. It then follows that showing solidarity with workers of all countries, means that the United States of America must be abolished in its entirety. Whether there should continue to exist a socialist state whose borders largely correspond to those of the USA, is a matter for the working class of the region to decide when the revolution is a reality.

    I’m sure there’s more to be said, but I’m sure there’s already a lot more comments in this thread already going over things I haven’t thought about.

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      Incidentally, if I may ramble about my WIP future fiction: the United States of America, which by the time of the socialist revolution had annexed Canada, was replaced with the Union of the Leagues of Commons of Turtle Island, commonly known as “Locoti”. The terms “America” and “American” were largely relegated to the history books after that point, except in reference to:

      1. A new ethnic group descended from refugees of the Second US Civil War, who called themselves “Americans” partially to skunk the term in reference to any bit of land between the Atlantic and Pacific.
      2. American Sign Language and its users.