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The U.S. Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China
(features.csis.org)
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this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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Rebuild manufacturing and recreate the conditions that were favourable to the revolutionary left, or don't rebuild manufacturing and lose to an inability to project violent power.
They have a decision between losing to the left internationally, or losing to the left nationally through revolution.
Or at least, that's how the capitalists are interpreting it.
if domestic manufacturing is rebuilt, US will just go full fascist and start hunting down communists and supporting milquetoast labor unionists. not saying its impossible, but socialism has never come from the imperial core. imo US has to suffer a massive humiliation and multipolarity must dominate before the conditions are right (less labor aristocrats and generally lower standard of living)
I am not convinced the US has all the resources it needs to do domestic manufacturing and compete. The economics do not work out. The only people it will be selling its manufactured products to will be domestic citizens and in order to get them to buy them it will have to shut out cheaper foreign products by taxing them to the hilt or banning them.
For a war it will need to massively scale up ship building somehow. And planes. And bombs.
For all of these, it will need to massively scale up steel, parts, and electronics.
For all of these it will need to first create basic consumer industries.
To do all of this the standard of living for US citizens will have to completely collapse. If they go through with it, they will need something to blame that does not look like it was the plan all along.
thats true to an extent. if the US is intent on decoupling from China, some goods will start to be more economical to manufacture ourselves. for example, chemicals are generally similarly priced no matter where they are produced with the exception of China; China's chemical industry represents so much of the global market share that every country relies on them for chemicals as industrial inputs and consumer products. buying these chemicals from another country (Japan, Germany, France) would be so much more expensive (if they even produce it) that the US would be better of making it themselves. of course, other countries could buy from China and resell to US companies, but the US would try to prevent this at all means bc it increases cost and defeats the purpose of decoupling.
i see where ur coming from, and it will def take a decade or longer to do this
the US will have to gut its service industries ofc, and ur right abt standard of living dropping, but the police and military likely have the capability to keep the "peace"
also i was just going along with ur hypothetical. i think the US is bluffing abt decoupling. imo the most likely thing is the US angrily falling from its hegemonic position, engaging in proxy wars, dancing around the idea of nuclear war, and supporting increased industrialization of Latin America, South/Southeast Asia, and Africa
They need to do it within 10-20 years. Because of the short timescale they need to collapse living standards to achieve it. If they had 40-50 years they might be able to do it safely, but they lose internationally before then.
What I'm getting at here is that... They need a catalyst for this living standards collapse. They need a reason for it, like a major war that causes people to accept "sacrifices had to be made". This needs to be a major event that justifies the change in standards but does not destroy everything in a nuclear armageddon.
This need for a catalyst is what I am most worried about right now, it keeps me up at night. The size of what they need to do to get away with this is absolutely massive.
I don't agree that the police and military will be able to keep the "peace" alone. It's not just left revolutionaries they have to worry about, the US itself balkanising as political opportunists and capitalists see opportunities for looting is a more likely outcome before revolution. A sudden collapse in living standards doesn't just threaten the country from the revleft but from many others as well.
I don't think the US would remain one country through an attempt at decoupling without a catalyst to use as political excuses and a lens to direct people's focus. This is why I think one is very likely if the attempt to decouple is really carried out.
yeah ur right. thats scary as fuck. i can def see petit bourgs and PMCs being the first to revolt after being deprived of their treats. then conditions worsen further for the underclasses bc of the cost of concessions given to the petit bourg/PMCs. then discontent just snowballs until there's a civil war. hopefully communists have the sense to stay alive until the right time comes, it'll be hard to tell tho
Exactly, so if they do carry out decoupling then they'd do so alongside some sort of ridiculously massive catalyst to justify a change in era for the whole world. Some sort of very serious war they can blame for all the policies that need to be undertaken.