i always took the various “socialism or barbarism” quotes as hinting at the various fascist resurgences. that no longer seems like a satisfying answer to me. after all, how can there be a reactionary fighting force of capital without any capital? i recently read the following:
Sometimes, as in the Roman Empire, the inability of new forms of production to develop meant that eventually there was no longer enough wealth being produced to maintain society on its old basis. Civilisation collapsed, the cities were destroyed and people reverted to a crude, agricultural form of society.
- Chris Harman, How Marxism Works, Chapter 3
what would this look like after capital? what if the proletariat, for whatever reason, never takes power on a global scale? in short, what is barbarism?
i hope this is a coherent and answerable post. it’s very late for me so maybe there’s an obvious hole in my logic that i’m just not seeing that deflates the whole thing.
Well, I assume you mean global capitalism in its current form? Because it has already happened in some regions. Libya for example. Total state collapse. Open air slave markets. etc. Now this was not caused by the mechanisms you are talking about, it was caused by imperialist aggression, but the result is largely the same. A breakdown of order, and a region that is ruled by whoever has the most ability to inflict violence on others. It is the proto-state.
The difference is that when collapse happens globally it is much worse. Libya can still import food from an existing global economy for example. If global capitalism collapses it will not be even or all at once. But the most impactful result will be the collapse of the global food system. AES countries will need to embrace many Juche principles to survive this period. But they can survive. They’d just need to be self sufficient.
Non-socialist countries would very quickly collapse into warlordism as a famine sweeps the globe. Most food is grown far from where it is consumed, and without the supply chain to move food to where it is needed most major cities would be graveyards within weeks. The population would collapse to pre-industrial levels outside of the socialist nations that have prepared for such an event (China, DPRK, etc).
Luckily, nuclear weapons aren’t as big a concern as you might think in this scenario. While nukes would no longer be controlled by stable nations it is actually very hard to make a nuke go off without the codes. So some random warlord can’t just launch ICBMs on a whim. You’d need a lot of technical expertise to pull it off, and that implies a level of organization on par with a nation state anyway.
What needs to be understood is that the state is simply a more evolved version of a warlord, or a cartel. The organization that controls the monopoly on violence in a region. These proto-states have authority, but it is loosely enforced, and used largely for personal gain. As states evolve they move through stages of development. A band of raiders becomes a warlord state that becomes a kingdom and so on. As states get more complex their class dynamics shift and their institutions need to be more complex to match.
Barbarism is the reset back to the base state. If the system that underpins the state does not evolve, it does not stop the increase in complexity. You reach a point where the complexity of governance, and the class dynamics are such that the state becomes untenable. It cannot sustain itself.
At this point is when revolution by the newly resurgent class, be it the merchant class overthrowing a nobility, or the workers overthrowing those same merchants, can take root. If this revolution, the thing that would have enacted new institutions, and allowed for the state to become stable once more in its current conditions, fails to do this then the state remains stagnant. It does not evolve to meet the needs of its changing conditions, and instead reacts with violence and oppression (fascism) to try and hold on to its power. To prevent collapse. This does not work.
Fascism is an inherently unsustainable system, and so it runs its course. Then is either destroyed by external forces (WW2) or implodes in on itself. If there is no external stabilizing force like the Comintern, and Allies after WW2 then the state ceases to exist with nothing filling the void. You have a period of chaos and then natural proto-states begin to emerge as the cycle repeats itself.
This will always, without fail, result in a mass dying of humans. Because our technology is not what allows us to keep our population so high. Our systems are. Without human organization there is no way to sustain our population, and so we’d rapidly see a correction down to a much lower level through famine. The only places exempt from this as I said are nations that know this and have prepared for it. There is a reason China has the largest food reserves in the world, and is investing heavily in agriculture for example.
This would not be the end of humanity, but it would be a very dark chapter, and we would have to hope that the AES nations that already exist could lead the rest of the world’s survivors out of it into a long overdue socialist future.
Honestly I think the AES countries are going to do fine, China’s already pushing heavily towards autarky by reducing its need for foreign imports (see them moving away from coal in favour of renewables for energy generation.) as well as modernizing and expanding out food production considerably, honestly I’m quite confident china will be fine.
I mean, the thing is non-ideological warlord states tend to have this tenancy of getting obliterated by ideological ones, for an example, during the Chinese warlord period the Kuomintang managed to destroy the Beiyang government largely because they had a ideological line and mass scale popular support (which they them subsequently lost.) but still ideoglical warlord states would likely be the ones to succeed the most over that of “clique” warlords
I agree. I think that after a period of collapse you’d see a lot of like “experimental” ideologies. People remixing old ideas and trying out new things while claiming to be the “enlightened” ones who know best. Who won’t make the mistakes of the past. I think ultimately these will all pale in comparison to AES states and the rest of the world will slowly just willingly start copying them. Simply because success speaks for itself.
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i think the current state of things is the barbarism. just look at gaza.
This is at most a preview.
the pit has no bottom, yeah
Barbarism doesn’t just mean, “People or states doing evil things”.
What OP was most likely referring too was the breakdown of globalism and fragmentation of the human population into infinitely small cliques, warlords, factions, and failed states that are scrambling to survive the collapse of logistical chains.
War zones are an edge case as the normal laws of society break down under the constant state of emergency. Gaza is also a forced scenario that would otherwise not exist if the constant pressure of Israeli aggression were removed. While things have certainly gotten worse, Gaza is also still a part of the globalist system, and relies desperately on foreign imports and aid to eek out a tiny subsistence existence.
As an unseasoned comrade I’ll have a go first. Capital has fallen before. Look at the British Empire, the Dutch empire, The Spanish empire, The German empire etc. When capitalist empires fall they just get replaced by an emerging empire. I don’t think barbarism is something that is ever likely to occur even if workers 100% submit to their oppression.
Also considering that in modern times fascism always ensures after a collapse of capital there will be a breeding ground for revolutionary activity during this time. Maybe barbarism is only a thing that can occur pre-capitalism when the proletariat class hadn’t yet formed.
