It appears to me that the complete deindustrialization of the imperial core is a historical arc that, since 1973, has been more or less unstoppable. The question is, if a socialist world revolution were to happen in the near future, and they basically established JDPON, how would it be possible to reindustrialize the former imperialist nations without relying on exploiting the former periphery countries? The actual productive capacity has been decimated.
Yes, tremendously easy with internationally coordinated central planning.
The US and Canada have a wealth of mineral and energy reserves, as does Australia, in addition to significant agricultural capacity.
Consumer goods would diminish (at least the short term, unrepairable gizmos that dominate consumerism) and there would need to be significant retraining away from bullshit jobs, but the progress of the USSR in 20 years - without 170 years of capital accumulation - is instructive.
The GDR was a thing. They manged, even when they were blocked from a lot of global trade.
Yes it is, but it would require very far going changes in politics and economic, basically a revolution.
I don’t think industrialization requires exploitation, that’s just a cheat code that imperialists use to develop at a rate that allows them to maintain the illusion of stability in the core. The West will just have to go back to being a poor backwater and build up their shit honestly this time.
That’s definitely true, but exploitation free industrialization is close to unprecedented. There’s a good reason the USSR had to adopt the NEP.
The USSR also had to play catch up with empire to maintain an effective resistance. Organic development is slower, but that’s how you develop culture and arts. Which is what the west really needs to spend its time on. We’ll just import high quality Chinese goods for a couple of centuries while America becomes an afro indigenous commune and the Irish teach the rest of Europe the concept of having a good time.
Even if a socialist world revolution happened in the near future which it wont re-industrializing the imperial core nations wouldnt even be on the to-do list near term. We would be much harder pressed to shrink the entire global economy down and get climate change under control. Most people would be dedicating their time to subsistence activities. We only have maybe a decade before there are mass crop failures everywhere to a scale we cant deal with currently. They already happen but we make do by hiking up prices and letting the poor go hungry. Eventually everyone will need to tighten their belt. Who is exploiting who wont really be a concern anymore itll be more how to we keep deaths to a minimum and what do we do with the 2 billion or so refugees fleeing uninhabitable zones around the equator.
The imperial cores current (stupid) plan is to just villify immigrants and start killing refugees once it gets bad. Thats not only evil but it wont work. The capitalists all think short term they are idiots who dont know how to plan for a centuries long ecological disaster. We are heading towards a global depopulation event of billions of people due to starvation and dehydration, and before that starts it looks like we are gonna do a little WW3 for funsies. The Imperial core will only partially re-industrialize itself which yes theyll be very exploitative in doing. They wont have time to do it fully. Itll mostly be military stuff, and the basics they start to make at home again. Theyll probably loot small nations to steal their equipment and goods and bring it home to their population during the war too. I don’t think the war will end because 1 side wins but because the situation gets so bad with climate change that the imperial core will reassign all its military forces to looting mostly defenceless nations. While countries like Russia, and China will sit at home, and use their militaries to defend themselves and their immediate neighbors.
After that period ends as they use up all the easy targets we will enter into what i call the “Trash Economy” where we are living off the trash of the old economy. Lots of peoples jobs will be to sort trash and recycle it. Even at this point they wont be industrialized again. I think very few nations that exist today will continue in their current form past the next 50 years or so. The ones who survive the famines will reorganize into city-states most likely. The only places that will survive are places that are already preparing to be self sufficient like China, the DPRK, etc.
If somehow a magical world revolution happens tomorrow these challenges dont go away. The imperial core would need massive bailouts from the rest of the world to rebuild their ability to support their own basic needs (Especially Euros. America is actually much better off than Euro Zone nations). But the rest of the world would be too busy preparing to survive whats coming so while i imagine some places could offer help, like China with the BRI, I do not think it would be enough to actually get the imperial core ready, and those nations would mostly collapse. Their populations would flee to other regions or just subsist off the land for a few decades and when the rest of the world got its shit together theyd come help rebuild the regions that collapsed. Which wouldnt just be the Imperial core. A lot of regions will have a complete societal breakdown pretty much no matter what we do at this point.
Pure doomerism. We are headed for crop failures, but we currently massively overproduce food for the human population, and produce that food very inefficiently.
Even the worst case scenario for climate change predicts a peak production in 2040, at almost 50% higher than current, and then a decline of 25% over the next 50 years. If there’s mass death, it will be because capitalism fucks over distribution and acclimation as it always does, but the scenario you are describing isn’t supported by any climate/agricultural science.
There is enough space, there is enough water and there is enough agricultural land to accommodate two billion climate migrants in the north and south over the next eighty years, and it’s something we can accomplish.
Maybe, but I think if the goal was to avoid a major economic collapse in the west then peripheral nations would end up having to support former imperial powers as they re-industrialized. Ironically, I think China has been hoping for this to happen naturally as it’s the only path the world really has towards a long term stability. Unfortunately, I don’t think western countries have the capacity to plan for the long term and enact the kind of industrial policy necessary to make it happen. Even if those in power can see and understand the problem at hand, they are incapable of doing anything about it. As such, I think it’s more likely they’ll have no choice but to resort to various forms of imperial domination which just makes an economic crisis more likely if they fail.
no
Possibly, depends on how it’s done. I think a better question is; can the west re-industrialise without destroying the planet?
In this type of scenario I think the industrialization would be possible by using a lot of robots and AI and much less human labor to manage and oversee it all. This would cut labor cost enough to make up for the increased material cost
That seems like it just exacerbates the issue, though. What industry remains in the core is extremely capital intensive and is only sustainable because of exploitation of the Global South; making it more capital intensive is incompatible with deconstructing imperialism.
Yeah I don’t think it’s really going to happen, and honestly it probably would be prison slave labor instead of robots that cut labor costs.
