What's happening in US is not revolution, it's counter revolution. Daniel Guerin described Fascism as a counter revolution that masquerades as a populist revolution.
In 1978, Chinese institutions were not evolved and Deng got the ball rolling on economic reforms. But US today already has these Weberian institutions operated by technocrats who maintain the state with proficiency. There's no point in dismantling IRS, Financial & industrial regulators, health agencies, scientific institutions, social security administration etc.
In US, it's a hostile takeover of the state by oligarchical forces. These forces are not homogeneous and hence there is no coherent strategy on how to run the government apart from destroying the governmental oversight and regulations over capitalists. What we are seeing is anarcho-capitalism and the paradox of it is that its self destructive. Capitalism only survives as long as it's backed up by state power (through regulations, rule of law, institutional managements etc). If you destroy the institutions and the state, the capitalism will also collapse.
What we are seeing right now is indeed something new. In the third Reich, the Nazis were able to consolidate power capitalizing on misery of great depression. But in America, Trump regime has taken over a healthy economy & plunging it into a depression. Such kind of turnaround has not happened in history of any modern state.
«But in America, Trump regime has taken over a healthy economy»
I guess taking too much Krugman extract can cause TDS symptoms like seeing "a healthy economy" 2020-2024 when over 50% of voters seem to disagree based on their personal experience of their living costs booming by 30-40% between 2020 and 2024 without their wages rising nowhere as much.
«In US, it's a hostile takeover of the state by oligarchical forces.»
Julius Nyerere: “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
Gore-Vidal: “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party [...] and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently [...] and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
Since that was written the Ds have become the party of Wall Street and the PMC, since Clinton no longer bothered to be “more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand”.
TDS. You need some help since you obviously do not understand at all what is happening in America. The majority has found their voice and is fighting back against the insanity that has infected all of the western societies. It’s returning to a normalcy and rising up against wokism and its anti-science, anti-personal rights and anti-common sense policies. It’s returning to normalcy that made the west societies great and protectors of personal liberties.
“Wokism” is nothing more or less than an effort to offer an alternative to the hardcore capitalist GOP within a political system where parties that actually do represent the interests of the bottom nine-tenths of the population have no means of gaining any funding whatsoever.
This has been definitive ever since Citizens United was decided in 2010, but as Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page showed a few years subsequently in their ‘Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens’ groups representing the interest of the bottom ninety percent of American have had zero influence on policy since at least 1980 and most likely ever since the 1973 oil crisis. If we study Ron Rogowski’s ‘Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments’ (particularly chapters five and six but also chapter one) we would expect that in a country with the endowments of the US mass interest groups will have influence on policy when and only when US trade is declining or permanently restricted. (As a sidelight, this restriction of trade need not originate within the US, and I suspect the US ruling class between 1917 and 1973 feared apartheid-type sanctions against the US, which would have strengthened US blacks economically and ultimately politically much more even than in South Africa).
"State capitalism is but a transitional stage towards socialism. This is what the Chinese Communist Party has been saying since the reforms started in 1978”??
Mao wrote Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, offering to come to Washington to talk personally, “China must industrialize. This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict”. All ignored him. [Barbara Tuchman].
If it can last a hundred years or an indefinite period, how is state capitalism under socialism distinguishable from state capitalism under capitalism?
Lenin mentioned “proletarians moving into factories”, so maybe when China has achieved a high enough urban %, it can collectivize again?
Or is there a reason it ever should, besides ideology?
«how is state capitalism under socialism distinguishable from state capitalism under capitalism?»
Our blogger seems to me to argue that in one case the government that sets the overall policies is socialist and steers state capitalism to socialist purposes but in the other case the government obeys the capitalists and steers state capitalism to support private capitalists:
“Lenin distinguishes state capitalism under capitalist conditions from state capitalism under socialist conditions. In the former, the state takes some of the power from the private sector in order to better maintain the dictatorship of capital; in the latter, the political power is firmly in the hands of the Communist party but many economic functions are delegated to capitalists in order to increase overall output.”
Zhao ZiYang memories report this:
«Chen Yun and Li Xiannian, however, emphasized the importance of a planned economy, especially Chen Yun, whose views had not changed since the 1950s. He included the phrase “planned economy as primary, market adjustments as auxiliary” in every speech he gave. The tone of his speeches didn’t change even after reforms were well under way. His view was that dealing with the economy was like raising birds: you cannot hold the birds too tightly, or else they will suffocate, but nor can you let them free, since they will fly away, so the best way is to raise them in a cage. This is the basic idea behind his well-known “Birdcage Economic Model.”»
«In 1987, I said in the Political Report of the 13th Party Congress that going forward, the economic mechanism should be “the state intervenes in the market, and the market drives the enterprises.” Since the overall political climate was very positive toward reform, the drafts of my reports were always sent to Chen Yun for his opinion. Even though he never openly expressed opposition, he never approved, either.»
«As early as May 21, I wrote to Deng Xiaoping regarding ideas for rafting the Political Report. I proposed using the concept the “initial stage of socialism” as the theoretical basis of the report. The report would systematically cover the theory, principles, and tasks of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. Beyond that, it would emphasize the two basic points defined by the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress [in 1978]: upholding the Four Cardinal Principles and upholding reform to reenergize the economy. The report quickly won the approval of Deng, who said the outline was great.
I would like to comment on two phrases in the Political Report: “initial stage of socialism” and “one central focus, two basic points.” Many people were under the impression that I first coined the phrase “initial stage of socialism” in the 13th Party Congress report. That’s not accurate. As early as the Sixth Plenum of the 11th Party Congress [in 1981], a resolution on historical issues contained the phrase: “Though the socialist system of our country still remains in an initial stage of development...” Hu Yaobang in his Political Report at the 12th Party Congress [in 1982] reiterated that “the socialist system of our country still remains in an initial stage of development.” Yet these two assessments had not elaborated on the meaning of the phrase or its implications. Instead, they emphasized the following viewpoint: “There is no doubt that we have already established a socialist system and entered the socialist stage of society. Any views that deny such a reality are incorrect.”
In other words, the phrase was intended to indicate that although we were still in the initial stage, we had already established a socialist system and should be able to create an advanced socialist spiritual civilization while building the material civilization. The purpose was to answer doubts some people had about whether our nation was socialist, or$ whether we were pursuing socialism.»
Lenin was certainly a great pragmatist, when he had to. But he was unable to make the greatest pragmatic step of all – to stop pretending that the Bolsheviks was a labour party. In reality it was a modernizing nationalist party, like the republicans in China, the reformists in Mexico, and the Novo Estado of Getulio Vargas in Brazil.
That would, besides being a honourable thing to be, have blocked a lot of deceit, both in the international labour movement and in the Russian domestic politics. And probably it would have been more sustainable, and even more salutary for the workers: when the industrial workers in the Ivanovo district northeast of Moscow struck against a 75% wages cut in 1932, they a. believed that the party would listen to them, and b. got so obliterated in labour camps that the story about them was known only during the Glasnost. Even with a Brazilian-style autocracy they would have survived better.
I don't understand why anyone, and especially someone as generally knowledgeable as the author of this blog, would take Lenin seriously as an intellectual. The man was certainly very clever, and cleverness will get you a long way in politics, radical or otherwise. But he had the mind of a debater, looking for arguments that support the position he wants or has to take. His points seem strong when you first meet them, before you look closely at their underlying assumptions and implicit theses.
There is a long history in Marxism of parties anointing their leaders as supreme thinkers, since the ideology claims to be "scientific". To put it differently, a CP's claim on Marxian authority doesn't come from the class background of its leadership or cadre but the assertion that it instantiates the scientifically correct understanding that's required to guide the revolution. That's why Lenin/Stalin/Mao etc. have to be geniuses.
As for the main point, yes, Lenin had to switch courses in the wake of the devastation of the civil war -- and in the absence of a state apparatus that could impose Stalin's type of rule. Indeed, if you take State and Revolution at its word, he had already shifted courses politically in a dramatic fashion when he suppressed the independent power of the Soviets, culminating in Kronstadt. Again, if he wanted to continue to hold power, yesterday's principles had to be discarded.
Lenin invented the term “State Capitalism” with the very clear intention to save face, when he was already basically on his deathbed. There is not much theoretical density to it -- he just needed to do what he needed to do to save whatever he could of the Revolution because a counterrevolution, at that point, would mean an anticommunist massacre and a complete decapitation of the communist movement in Russia. It was pure survival.
The thing is, during the End of History, the term gained a life on its own because China didn't stop rising as was expected from the Middle Income Trap theorists, so it became a middle-of-the-road term to describe the New China (that's how they call the communist-led era of China, from 1949 onward). This term is particularly preferred by the European Union bureaucrats -- probably because, in Europe, the term “socialist” still carries some respect and deference and in which there are still many powerful parties with “socialist” in their names (and to not associate China with the European Left, a socialist party in the EP).
Curiously, the enigmatic meaning of State Capitalism/NEP was used by some Marxists in the West to defend the reforms of Deng Xiaoping as still strictly socialist, so it is still a term in dispute in the West.
That, and, of course, the fact that Lenin became a titan of History as time went on, so, everything he published became very heavy, gained a lot of authority.
Lenin did not flip flop. When the Revolution was successful, his standard of comparison was the Paris Commune. He was hellbent to not repeat its fatal mistakes -- hence, e.g., immediately cancelling all foreign debt, immediately taking over the Russian Central Bank and printing money until it collapsed under a mountain of inflation. Allegedly, he celebrated when the Revolution completed 100 days of existence -- thus outliving the Commune. He did not, therefore, had great expectations on the Soviet Union, the original idea was for the Soviet Union to serve merely as the first domino to fall -- the main domino was Germany.
I think it's a case of history not repeating itself but instead rhyming. Trump, for example, is not an capable of expressing himself as an "ideological tour de force", as Branko wrote above about Lenin. It's more like where he's going with To The Finland Station: "I wrote (in The Ideology of Donald Trump) about what I think Donald J. Trump’s view of the world is: profits, neo-mercantilism, non-imperialist US nationalism. Each of these individual elements can be easily defined and none of them is new or unknown. But, as is often the case with historical turning points, only when put together do such views of the world define a new ideology. Its name we do not yet know. What is known however is that it represents a break with the ideology that ruled from the 1980s, and surely from the early 1990s, to today."
For me the hardest thing right now is to see what is in front of me. What the hell is *really* going on? Branko helps me put on some new lenses. Still a little blurry, maybe, but some things are coming into focus. But still clearer than almost everybody else.
«"[...]does not have the class content..."!? where have you been, Branko?»
I suspect that he means that the leadership of the Trumpist consolidationist faction is made of the same class as their opposing globalist faction.
But indeed the base of the MAGA movement has quite different class interests from the base of the globalist PMC+minorities coalition.
BTW I think that these terms have these meanings:
* Populism: a faction of the upper class allies with the lower classes against another faction of the elites (in particular "populism" is not demagoguery).
* Social-democracy: the middle class (in particular the lower middle class) allies with the lower classes against the upper class.
* Centrism: the upper class allies with the middle class (in particular the upper middle class) against the lower classes and another faction of the upper class.
* Socialism: the alliance of the various factions of the working class (and sometimes the lower middle class) and the under class against the middle class and the upper class.
Does populism by this definition involve an alliance against the middle classes — especially against the upper middle classes — as well as against another faction of the elites?
A lot of right-wing rhetoric ever since the George Wallace campaign in 1968 has been aimed against the upper middle classes and the “nouveaux riches”. This has been especially true after the 1994 “Republican Revolution”, as I can testify from reading writers like Peter Kreeft in the late 1990s and Pat Buchanan in the middle 2000s.
“Does populism by this definition involve an alliance against the middle classes — especially against the upper middle classes?”
I think that should not be part of a general definition.
During the classical greek period and the roman period and even occasionally during the feudal regime one faction of the aristocracy sometimes allied with the plebs or the peasant class against another faction of the aristocracy, and there was little middle class to be allied with.
But in our current period the struggle is between the "populist" upper-class consolidationist/nationalist faction of Perot, Buchanan, Trump allied with the working-class versus the "centrist" expansionist/globalist upper-class allied with the property/share owning middle-class.
Interesting point that alliances akin to populism occurred when there was not a middle class to ally against.
Nevertheless, is it not true that whenever there is a middle class, or at least an upper middle class, that group is the major target of populism?
It is true that different sections of the upper middle classes actually seem to be targeted to different degrees by populists. For instance, academics have always been targeted much more than professional athletes by the Republicans and their spokesmen. This suggests is it not so much the property/share-owning middle class as the highly skilled intellectual middle class whom populism targets? The perception from both those sections of the ruling class who support populism and the lower class is that they do not deserve their status but are “nouveaux riches” supported by the state.
«whenever there is a middle class, or at least an upper middle class, that group is the major target of populism?»
The mass middle-class is a relatively recent invention so historically it had little political role.
This recent invention it is made of workers, but workers who are the "trusties" (supervisors, team leaders, managers, professors, journalists, ...) of the upper-class so it can ally with either the working-class to redistribute income downwards from the upper-class or with the upper-class to redistribute income upwards from the working-class.
«not so much the property/share-owning middle class as the highly skilled intellectual middle class whom populism targets?»
It seems to me that in the current periods the upper-class faction practicing "populism" targets the working class (or the impoverished middle-class of the "pushed behind" areas like the rust-belt).
So for me the alliance of a faction of the upper-class “property/share-owning middle-class” (which is largely the same thing as the “highly skilled intellectual middle class”) is called in current political terms "liberal democracy" in opposition to "populism".
"Liberal Democracy" means that the middle-class and the upper-class want to redistribute upwards to themselves from the working class with lower wages and higher property and stock prices, thanks to financialization, immigration, offshoring.
«This in no way implies the Party deviating from the final objective of the socialization of the means of production. It is a capitalism that can last for an indefinite period under the ever-vigilant eye of the Communist Party.»
But the CPC has become the party of "thatcherism with chinese characteristics" because the system of China-PRC is modeled on that of China-Taiwan or similarly China-HK (I think that the original intent was to take Singapore as a model but that turned out to be too "socialist").
That is a large majority of influential party and state official have significant private property holdings and private stock portfolios and these people are well trained in marxism-leninism and understand very well which class they now belong to (thatcherite urban petty bourgeoisie) and that their comfort and wealth will depend mostly on pushing down wages and pumping up property and business profits (like their "centrist" counterparts in the USA, UK, etc.). That is largely the legacy of the Jiang ZeMin/Hu JinTao "3 represents" and "laisser enricher" choices.
Xi JinPing still seems to have "socialism with chinese characteristics" leanings (or perhaps those are for "one-nation torysm with chinese characteristics" because of the pushing of confucianism) but he cannot win in the long term against a large majority of the party and state officials (never mind of the growing private middle class).
Broadly agree w/ your analysis of China. But what I had in mind is the official CPC position as represented by XJP. It does not mean that the XJP's line will remain dominant, but the long-term objective of socialism (as held by Xi Jinping) is compatible with an equally long-term NEP. In that sense, the current Chinese official stance is very Leninist--and capitalist at the same time.
«Lenin distinguishes state capitalism under capitalist conditions from state capitalism under socialist conditions. In the former, the state takes some of the power from the private sector in order to better maintain the dictatorship of capital; in the latter, the political power is firmly in the hands of the Communist party but many economic functions are delegated to capitalists»
One of my pet peeves is that "capitalism" is often used as a synonym of "private ownership capitalism", "socialism" as a synonym of "social/state ownership capitalism", "communism" as a synonym of "communal ownership capitalism", the point being that all three are "capitalist" systems.
In all three the industrial system of production is the same with the separation of labor and means of production, so the "capitalism" (the relationship between workers and owners of the means of production) is the same, most workers are still employees, what changes is who owns the means of production (private entities or society/state or "community").
Note: during pre-capitalism (which largely coincides withe the period before the dominance of the industrial system of production) in the crafts ownership of the means of production was personal rather than private or public or communal.
A mixed private/state ownership of the means of production can indeed happen in a system where the paramount power is exercised by either employers or workers.
«State capitalism is but a transitional stage towards socialism.»
In my view accordingly "state capitalism" is pretty much the *definition* of socialism. I would rewrite that for clarity as
"mixed state/private ownership of capital is but a transitional stage towards socialism (as long as the private ownership of some capital never ends up conferring dominant power to the private owners)".
As usual an interesting post and with what seems me a sensible overall picture, but this:
«While the Trumpist revolution in the United States does not have the class content that Lenin envisaged for the Soviet revolution, DOGE is involved in a similar attempt to change the deep ideology of the state and to make the new state follow the interests of new rulers.»
Seems to me a symptom of a mild TDS infection? Perhaps because I disagree with the very smart Lenin in this:
«Lenin explains: “Revolution consists in … destroying the ‘administrative apparatus’ and the whole state machine, replacing it by a new one…”»
Well I have thought about this in the past and to me a "revolution" is not a change in the “whole state machine” but a change in the *type* of the ruling group, that is a a taking of power of new ruling group unrelated (in interests but also in marriage/kinship) to the previous one (e.g. the french revolution was the Third Estate replacing the First and Second estates as the paramount power). Then the change in the “whole state machine” is usually a necessary consequence (also because at high levels "personnel is policy").
A revolution is not a mere change in the faction of the ruling group as Trump is trying to achieve from the centralist/consolidationist faction to the globalist/expansionist faction of the same class. Perhaps it feels to some a bit like a revolution because the globalist/expansionist faction of the USA ruling class have been in power for so long (since the Spanish War arguably and obviously since the late 1930s) and it has absorbed the vast majority of the Democratic Party since arguably Coelho and obviously since Clinton (with a similar history in the UK).
The USA civil war of the 1860s started instead as a revolution in the Confederacy because the local ruling class were feudal landowners and traders as opposed to industrialists and bankers.
Bolshevik revolution was obviously much more fundamental than the Trumpist attempt to purge the state apparatus of liberal elements. But I think that there is some (admittedly vague) similarity. After all, Lenin's book was titled "The state & revolution" and in it, he discusses (1) the take-over of the state, (2) representative democracy via soviets, and (3) the withering away of the state. (3) leads him to debate anarchists, (2) to debate Kautsky and the II International, while (1) I think has some similarities with Trump's and Musk's attempt to create an ideologically new state.
Roosevelt, the New Deal, was that an "attempt to create an ideologically new state"? Hardcore rightists at the time indeed thought it was the imposition of tyrannical socialist ideology on freedom-loving americans :-).
To me it was not a change of ideology: the "business owners rule through the markets and control politics" ideology remained, even if the policies to achieve that changed significantly.
BTW to me Trump despite using a "telesales" "carnie" approach to politics has always been fairly coherent and lucid and reasonable in his political programme which is neither isolationist nor mercantilist, and his ideology is the same as Roosevelt's. The anti-globalist faction he currently leads argues:
* The USA empire is over-extended (see bin Laden's programme) and because of this the long-term power of its upper class is becoming (relatively) smaller especially as the PRC economy becomes a bigger global magnet than the USA economy.
* The globalists do not care about the long term dominance of the USA upper class but only about making as much money as possible with the most expanded empire possible in the short term; some have already moved to China or Asia.
* An USA empire with an upper class that remains strong and dominant across the world in the long term can only be based on a strong core state.
* What the USA empire needs is a phase of consolidation and a policy of greater centralization rather than of expansion and dilution.
* This means *for now* a greater focus on the core state and the "near abroad" and making friendly noises to other powers while rebuilding core USA strength.
One can disagree with these Perot/Buchanan/Trump style arguments but to me they do not imply a new ideology.
«To me it was not a change of ideology: the "business owners rule through the markets and control politics" ideology remained, even if the policies to achieve that changed significantly.»
I am not the only one to reckon that ideology is an intellectual framework to "justify" the dominant position of a ruling group or class: whether it is "divine right of kings" or "freedom to contract in unregulated markets".
As such usually it can be changed only with a change of ruling group or class and with few exceptions this has to involve a lot of deaths as few ruling groups or classes do not resort to military force to protect their dominant position and just let go, and vice-versa groups or classes aspiring to rule prepare to use military force to take over.
Consider the Kissinger revolution in Chile carried out by his henchman Pinochet as an example. The ideology of Chile changed quite a bit.
Also consider this statement by "The Economist" about Corbyn:
2019-11-15 “The Thatcher revolution is coming under threat”
Was thatcherism really revolutionary or evolutionary? In my view it "merely" changed (quite a bit) the policies shaped by the same ideology as before. Relatedly Callaghan was not gunned down in Number 10 by troops commanded by Thatcher. :-)
T. Balogh, "The Establishment" (1959): «"Whoever is in office, the Whigs are in power." It was Mr Harold Wilson himself, many years before he came to the Prime Minister's office»
One nation whigs and two-nations whigs alternate; sometimes allied with social-democrats, sometimes with tories.
Actually, the present faction of the US ruling class truly came to power with Reagan in 1980. Traces of this transition were seen during the Nixon Administration, but even then regulation was being increased, and there was only limited efforts to lower taxes from the high levels created to fund World War II and the Marshall Plan. Even in the 1970s, tariffs and quotas were generally accepted as tools to aid local industry. For example, Australia introduced an import quota on passenger cars of 20 percent of total sales as late as 1975.
With Reagan, the attitude that government — that is government providing public services for the majority — was crippling the economy emerged for the first time since the Harding and Coolidge years. The shift of so much economic activity in the stagflation years of the 1970s to the Gulf petromonarchies undoubtedly helped factions of the ruling class who favoured radical globalisation and elimination of social spending. As exoteric rentier states, globalisation is the lifeblood of the super-rich Gulf royal families, and they undoubtedly were even then lobbying the governments of the West heavily to allow freer movement of capital, and to force radical reforms in most of the “Third World” in order to expand trade.
«Actually, the present faction of the US ruling class truly came to power with Reagan in 1980. [...] Even in the 1970s, tariffs and quotas were generally accepted as tools to aid local industry. [...] factions of the ruling class who favoured radical globalisation and elimination of social spending.»
The globalist factions has had different sub-factions within it, and from my point of view you are describing the transition from the globalist-industrialist to the globalist-financialist subfactions.
But I remain of the opinion that the globalist factions as a whole took over between the Spanish War when the USA oligarchs acquired the Philippines and Cuba as colonies, and WW1, when the USA oligarchs even sent troops to fight in an european war. S. Butler famously said of that period: “I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.” That looks like globalist imperialism to me.
The decades after WW2 were also a period of *industrial* american globalism: the dollar replaced sterling as the global currency and USA companies dominated international markets and USA policy dominated the world through the UN, the IMF, the WB and then the GATT. Every country conquered and occupied by the USA (that is nearly all western european countries and most asian ones) opened their doors to USA companies and their exports.
There were indeed restrictions and tariffs but these were accepted by the USA oligarchs as part of the consequences of WW2. But in general the crucial aspects (USA branch businesses, USA IP royalties, repatriation of profits to the USA) were quite common.
My impression is that you write from a purely USA-centric perspective: indeed up to 1980 the USA industrial oligarchs were somewhat protectionist *for the USA* (including protecting USA workers from foreign competition) but globalists *for everybody else*, after 1980 and much more so after 1991 the USA financial oligarchs globalized the USA economy itself with massive waves of offshoring and immigration. Consider this long term graph of *merchandise* exports as percent of global GDP:
There was a period of high industrial globalization under the english empire up to WW1, and then after the low point of 1945 there was a surge and that was mostly for obvious reasons USA industrial exports. The surge between 1970 and 1975 was likely due to the quadrupling of the price of oil in theat period. Then there is clear another surge after 1985, due to the opening of the USA markets, and then an even bigger one after the entry of the PRC into the WTO, the high points of financial globalism.
If a revolution consist of two parts: destruction of the old and installation of the new, contemporary political revolutions do not go all the way. Staying short of imposing a new order, they get fully satisfied with subversion - clearly to be observed in MAGA (counter)revolution. (Though, this is a revolution of the rulers, from above, same as the cultural revolution of 1966.)
The uncompleted revolution is maybe the most revolutionary of all. Camus noted that "The most elementary form of rebellion paradoxically, expresses an aspiration to order…" which makes revolutions almost absurd endeavours, aiming solely at replacing one team with an another.
What's happening in US is not revolution, it's counter revolution. Daniel Guerin described Fascism as a counter revolution that masquerades as a populist revolution.
In 1978, Chinese institutions were not evolved and Deng got the ball rolling on economic reforms. But US today already has these Weberian institutions operated by technocrats who maintain the state with proficiency. There's no point in dismantling IRS, Financial & industrial regulators, health agencies, scientific institutions, social security administration etc.
In US, it's a hostile takeover of the state by oligarchical forces. These forces are not homogeneous and hence there is no coherent strategy on how to run the government apart from destroying the governmental oversight and regulations over capitalists. What we are seeing is anarcho-capitalism and the paradox of it is that its self destructive. Capitalism only survives as long as it's backed up by state power (through regulations, rule of law, institutional managements etc). If you destroy the institutions and the state, the capitalism will also collapse.
What we are seeing right now is indeed something new. In the third Reich, the Nazis were able to consolidate power capitalizing on misery of great depression. But in America, Trump regime has taken over a healthy economy & plunging it into a depression. Such kind of turnaround has not happened in history of any modern state.
«But in America, Trump regime has taken over a healthy economy»
I guess taking too much Krugman extract can cause TDS symptoms like seeing "a healthy economy" 2020-2024 when over 50% of voters seem to disagree based on their personal experience of their living costs booming by 30-40% between 2020 and 2024 without their wages rising nowhere as much.
«In US, it's a hostile takeover of the state by oligarchical forces.»
Amazing news from America!
https://blissex.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/poliusabossesofsenate.jpeg
Julius Nyerere: “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
Gore-Vidal: “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party [...] and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently [...] and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
Since that was written the Ds have become the party of Wall Street and the PMC, since Clinton no longer bothered to be “more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand”.
TDS. You need some help since you obviously do not understand at all what is happening in America. The majority has found their voice and is fighting back against the insanity that has infected all of the western societies. It’s returning to a normalcy and rising up against wokism and its anti-science, anti-personal rights and anti-common sense policies. It’s returning to normalcy that made the west societies great and protectors of personal liberties.
“Wokism” is nothing more or less than an effort to offer an alternative to the hardcore capitalist GOP within a political system where parties that actually do represent the interests of the bottom nine-tenths of the population have no means of gaining any funding whatsoever.
This has been definitive ever since Citizens United was decided in 2010, but as Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page showed a few years subsequently in their ‘Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens’ groups representing the interest of the bottom ninety percent of American have had zero influence on policy since at least 1980 and most likely ever since the 1973 oil crisis. If we study Ron Rogowski’s ‘Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments’ (particularly chapters five and six but also chapter one) we would expect that in a country with the endowments of the US mass interest groups will have influence on policy when and only when US trade is declining or permanently restricted. (As a sidelight, this restriction of trade need not originate within the US, and I suspect the US ruling class between 1917 and 1973 feared apartheid-type sanctions against the US, which would have strengthened US blacks economically and ultimately politically much more even than in South Africa).
"State capitalism is but a transitional stage towards socialism. This is what the Chinese Communist Party has been saying since the reforms started in 1978”??
Mao wrote Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, offering to come to Washington to talk personally, “China must industrialize. This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict”. All ignored him. [Barbara Tuchman].
If it can last a hundred years or an indefinite period, how is state capitalism under socialism distinguishable from state capitalism under capitalism?
Lenin mentioned “proletarians moving into factories”, so maybe when China has achieved a high enough urban %, it can collectivize again?
Or is there a reason it ever should, besides ideology?
«how is state capitalism under socialism distinguishable from state capitalism under capitalism?»
Our blogger seems to me to argue that in one case the government that sets the overall policies is socialist and steers state capitalism to socialist purposes but in the other case the government obeys the capitalists and steers state capitalism to support private capitalists:
“Lenin distinguishes state capitalism under capitalist conditions from state capitalism under socialist conditions. In the former, the state takes some of the power from the private sector in order to better maintain the dictatorship of capital; in the latter, the political power is firmly in the hands of the Communist party but many economic functions are delegated to capitalists in order to increase overall output.”
Zhao ZiYang memories report this:
«Chen Yun and Li Xiannian, however, emphasized the importance of a planned economy, especially Chen Yun, whose views had not changed since the 1950s. He included the phrase “planned economy as primary, market adjustments as auxiliary” in every speech he gave. The tone of his speeches didn’t change even after reforms were well under way. His view was that dealing with the economy was like raising birds: you cannot hold the birds too tightly, or else they will suffocate, but nor can you let them free, since they will fly away, so the best way is to raise them in a cage. This is the basic idea behind his well-known “Birdcage Economic Model.”»
«In 1987, I said in the Political Report of the 13th Party Congress that going forward, the economic mechanism should be “the state intervenes in the market, and the market drives the enterprises.” Since the overall political climate was very positive toward reform, the drafts of my reports were always sent to Chen Yun for his opinion. Even though he never openly expressed opposition, he never approved, either.»
«As early as May 21, I wrote to Deng Xiaoping regarding ideas for rafting the Political Report. I proposed using the concept the “initial stage of socialism” as the theoretical basis of the report. The report would systematically cover the theory, principles, and tasks of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. Beyond that, it would emphasize the two basic points defined by the Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress [in 1978]: upholding the Four Cardinal Principles and upholding reform to reenergize the economy. The report quickly won the approval of Deng, who said the outline was great.
I would like to comment on two phrases in the Political Report: “initial stage of socialism” and “one central focus, two basic points.” Many people were under the impression that I first coined the phrase “initial stage of socialism” in the 13th Party Congress report. That’s not accurate. As early as the Sixth Plenum of the 11th Party Congress [in 1981], a resolution on historical issues contained the phrase: “Though the socialist system of our country still remains in an initial stage of development...” Hu Yaobang in his Political Report at the 12th Party Congress [in 1982] reiterated that “the socialist system of our country still remains in an initial stage of development.” Yet these two assessments had not elaborated on the meaning of the phrase or its implications. Instead, they emphasized the following viewpoint: “There is no doubt that we have already established a socialist system and entered the socialist stage of society. Any views that deny such a reality are incorrect.”
In other words, the phrase was intended to indicate that although we were still in the initial stage, we had already established a socialist system and should be able to create an advanced socialist spiritual civilization while building the material civilization. The purpose was to answer doubts some people had about whether our nation was socialist, or$ whether we were pursuing socialism.»
Lenin was certainly a great pragmatist, when he had to. But he was unable to make the greatest pragmatic step of all – to stop pretending that the Bolsheviks was a labour party. In reality it was a modernizing nationalist party, like the republicans in China, the reformists in Mexico, and the Novo Estado of Getulio Vargas in Brazil.
That would, besides being a honourable thing to be, have blocked a lot of deceit, both in the international labour movement and in the Russian domestic politics. And probably it would have been more sustainable, and even more salutary for the workers: when the industrial workers in the Ivanovo district northeast of Moscow struck against a 75% wages cut in 1932, they a. believed that the party would listen to them, and b. got so obliterated in labour camps that the story about them was known only during the Glasnost. Even with a Brazilian-style autocracy they would have survived better.
I don't understand why anyone, and especially someone as generally knowledgeable as the author of this blog, would take Lenin seriously as an intellectual. The man was certainly very clever, and cleverness will get you a long way in politics, radical or otherwise. But he had the mind of a debater, looking for arguments that support the position he wants or has to take. His points seem strong when you first meet them, before you look closely at their underlying assumptions and implicit theses.
There is a long history in Marxism of parties anointing their leaders as supreme thinkers, since the ideology claims to be "scientific". To put it differently, a CP's claim on Marxian authority doesn't come from the class background of its leadership or cadre but the assertion that it instantiates the scientifically correct understanding that's required to guide the revolution. That's why Lenin/Stalin/Mao etc. have to be geniuses.
As for the main point, yes, Lenin had to switch courses in the wake of the devastation of the civil war -- and in the absence of a state apparatus that could impose Stalin's type of rule. Indeed, if you take State and Revolution at its word, he had already shifted courses politically in a dramatic fashion when he suppressed the independent power of the Soviets, culminating in Kronstadt. Again, if he wanted to continue to hold power, yesterday's principles had to be discarded.
Lenin invented the term “State Capitalism” with the very clear intention to save face, when he was already basically on his deathbed. There is not much theoretical density to it -- he just needed to do what he needed to do to save whatever he could of the Revolution because a counterrevolution, at that point, would mean an anticommunist massacre and a complete decapitation of the communist movement in Russia. It was pure survival.
The thing is, during the End of History, the term gained a life on its own because China didn't stop rising as was expected from the Middle Income Trap theorists, so it became a middle-of-the-road term to describe the New China (that's how they call the communist-led era of China, from 1949 onward). This term is particularly preferred by the European Union bureaucrats -- probably because, in Europe, the term “socialist” still carries some respect and deference and in which there are still many powerful parties with “socialist” in their names (and to not associate China with the European Left, a socialist party in the EP).
Curiously, the enigmatic meaning of State Capitalism/NEP was used by some Marxists in the West to defend the reforms of Deng Xiaoping as still strictly socialist, so it is still a term in dispute in the West.
That, and, of course, the fact that Lenin became a titan of History as time went on, so, everything he published became very heavy, gained a lot of authority.
Lenin did not flip flop. When the Revolution was successful, his standard of comparison was the Paris Commune. He was hellbent to not repeat its fatal mistakes -- hence, e.g., immediately cancelling all foreign debt, immediately taking over the Russian Central Bank and printing money until it collapsed under a mountain of inflation. Allegedly, he celebrated when the Revolution completed 100 days of existence -- thus outliving the Commune. He did not, therefore, had great expectations on the Soviet Union, the original idea was for the Soviet Union to serve merely as the first domino to fall -- the main domino was Germany.
I think it's a case of history not repeating itself but instead rhyming. Trump, for example, is not an capable of expressing himself as an "ideological tour de force", as Branko wrote above about Lenin. It's more like where he's going with To The Finland Station: "I wrote (in The Ideology of Donald Trump) about what I think Donald J. Trump’s view of the world is: profits, neo-mercantilism, non-imperialist US nationalism. Each of these individual elements can be easily defined and none of them is new or unknown. But, as is often the case with historical turning points, only when put together do such views of the world define a new ideology. Its name we do not yet know. What is known however is that it represents a break with the ideology that ruled from the 1980s, and surely from the early 1990s, to today."
For me the hardest thing right now is to see what is in front of me. What the hell is *really* going on? Branko helps me put on some new lenses. Still a little blurry, maybe, but some things are coming into focus. But still clearer than almost everybody else.
"the Trumpist revolution in the United States does not have the class content..."!? where have you been, Branko?
«"[...]does not have the class content..."!? where have you been, Branko?»
I suspect that he means that the leadership of the Trumpist consolidationist faction is made of the same class as their opposing globalist faction.
But indeed the base of the MAGA movement has quite different class interests from the base of the globalist PMC+minorities coalition.
BTW I think that these terms have these meanings:
* Populism: a faction of the upper class allies with the lower classes against another faction of the elites (in particular "populism" is not demagoguery).
* Social-democracy: the middle class (in particular the lower middle class) allies with the lower classes against the upper class.
* Centrism: the upper class allies with the middle class (in particular the upper middle class) against the lower classes and another faction of the upper class.
* Socialism: the alliance of the various factions of the working class (and sometimes the lower middle class) and the under class against the middle class and the upper class.
Does populism by this definition involve an alliance against the middle classes — especially against the upper middle classes — as well as against another faction of the elites?
A lot of right-wing rhetoric ever since the George Wallace campaign in 1968 has been aimed against the upper middle classes and the “nouveaux riches”. This has been especially true after the 1994 “Republican Revolution”, as I can testify from reading writers like Peter Kreeft in the late 1990s and Pat Buchanan in the middle 2000s.
“Does populism by this definition involve an alliance against the middle classes — especially against the upper middle classes?”
I think that should not be part of a general definition.
During the classical greek period and the roman period and even occasionally during the feudal regime one faction of the aristocracy sometimes allied with the plebs or the peasant class against another faction of the aristocracy, and there was little middle class to be allied with.
But in our current period the struggle is between the "populist" upper-class consolidationist/nationalist faction of Perot, Buchanan, Trump allied with the working-class versus the "centrist" expansionist/globalist upper-class allied with the property/share owning middle-class.
Interesting point that alliances akin to populism occurred when there was not a middle class to ally against.
Nevertheless, is it not true that whenever there is a middle class, or at least an upper middle class, that group is the major target of populism?
It is true that different sections of the upper middle classes actually seem to be targeted to different degrees by populists. For instance, academics have always been targeted much more than professional athletes by the Republicans and their spokesmen. This suggests is it not so much the property/share-owning middle class as the highly skilled intellectual middle class whom populism targets? The perception from both those sections of the ruling class who support populism and the lower class is that they do not deserve their status but are “nouveaux riches” supported by the state.
«whenever there is a middle class, or at least an upper middle class, that group is the major target of populism?»
The mass middle-class is a relatively recent invention so historically it had little political role.
This recent invention it is made of workers, but workers who are the "trusties" (supervisors, team leaders, managers, professors, journalists, ...) of the upper-class so it can ally with either the working-class to redistribute income downwards from the upper-class or with the upper-class to redistribute income upwards from the working-class.
«not so much the property/share-owning middle class as the highly skilled intellectual middle class whom populism targets?»
It seems to me that in the current periods the upper-class faction practicing "populism" targets the working class (or the impoverished middle-class of the "pushed behind" areas like the rust-belt).
So for me the alliance of a faction of the upper-class “property/share-owning middle-class” (which is largely the same thing as the “highly skilled intellectual middle class”) is called in current political terms "liberal democracy" in opposition to "populism".
"Liberal Democracy" means that the middle-class and the upper-class want to redistribute upwards to themselves from the working class with lower wages and higher property and stock prices, thanks to financialization, immigration, offshoring.
Thank you very much for complex historical events brilliantly explained.
«This in no way implies the Party deviating from the final objective of the socialization of the means of production. It is a capitalism that can last for an indefinite period under the ever-vigilant eye of the Communist Party.»
But the CPC has become the party of "thatcherism with chinese characteristics" because the system of China-PRC is modeled on that of China-Taiwan or similarly China-HK (I think that the original intent was to take Singapore as a model but that turned out to be too "socialist").
That is a large majority of influential party and state official have significant private property holdings and private stock portfolios and these people are well trained in marxism-leninism and understand very well which class they now belong to (thatcherite urban petty bourgeoisie) and that their comfort and wealth will depend mostly on pushing down wages and pumping up property and business profits (like their "centrist" counterparts in the USA, UK, etc.). That is largely the legacy of the Jiang ZeMin/Hu JinTao "3 represents" and "laisser enricher" choices.
Xi JinPing still seems to have "socialism with chinese characteristics" leanings (or perhaps those are for "one-nation torysm with chinese characteristics" because of the pushing of confucianism) but he cannot win in the long term against a large majority of the party and state officials (never mind of the growing private middle class).
Broadly agree w/ your analysis of China. But what I had in mind is the official CPC position as represented by XJP. It does not mean that the XJP's line will remain dominant, but the long-term objective of socialism (as held by Xi Jinping) is compatible with an equally long-term NEP. In that sense, the current Chinese official stance is very Leninist--and capitalist at the same time.
«Lenin distinguishes state capitalism under capitalist conditions from state capitalism under socialist conditions. In the former, the state takes some of the power from the private sector in order to better maintain the dictatorship of capital; in the latter, the political power is firmly in the hands of the Communist party but many economic functions are delegated to capitalists»
One of my pet peeves is that "capitalism" is often used as a synonym of "private ownership capitalism", "socialism" as a synonym of "social/state ownership capitalism", "communism" as a synonym of "communal ownership capitalism", the point being that all three are "capitalist" systems.
In all three the industrial system of production is the same with the separation of labor and means of production, so the "capitalism" (the relationship between workers and owners of the means of production) is the same, most workers are still employees, what changes is who owns the means of production (private entities or society/state or "community").
Note: during pre-capitalism (which largely coincides withe the period before the dominance of the industrial system of production) in the crafts ownership of the means of production was personal rather than private or public or communal.
A mixed private/state ownership of the means of production can indeed happen in a system where the paramount power is exercised by either employers or workers.
«State capitalism is but a transitional stage towards socialism.»
In my view accordingly "state capitalism" is pretty much the *definition* of socialism. I would rewrite that for clarity as
"mixed state/private ownership of capital is but a transitional stage towards socialism (as long as the private ownership of some capital never ends up conferring dominant power to the private owners)".
As usual an interesting post and with what seems me a sensible overall picture, but this:
«While the Trumpist revolution in the United States does not have the class content that Lenin envisaged for the Soviet revolution, DOGE is involved in a similar attempt to change the deep ideology of the state and to make the new state follow the interests of new rulers.»
Seems to me a symptom of a mild TDS infection? Perhaps because I disagree with the very smart Lenin in this:
«Lenin explains: “Revolution consists in … destroying the ‘administrative apparatus’ and the whole state machine, replacing it by a new one…”»
Well I have thought about this in the past and to me a "revolution" is not a change in the “whole state machine” but a change in the *type* of the ruling group, that is a a taking of power of new ruling group unrelated (in interests but also in marriage/kinship) to the previous one (e.g. the french revolution was the Third Estate replacing the First and Second estates as the paramount power). Then the change in the “whole state machine” is usually a necessary consequence (also because at high levels "personnel is policy").
A revolution is not a mere change in the faction of the ruling group as Trump is trying to achieve from the centralist/consolidationist faction to the globalist/expansionist faction of the same class. Perhaps it feels to some a bit like a revolution because the globalist/expansionist faction of the USA ruling class have been in power for so long (since the Spanish War arguably and obviously since the late 1930s) and it has absorbed the vast majority of the Democratic Party since arguably Coelho and obviously since Clinton (with a similar history in the UK).
The USA civil war of the 1860s started instead as a revolution in the Confederacy because the local ruling class were feudal landowners and traders as opposed to industrialists and bankers.
Bolshevik revolution was obviously much more fundamental than the Trumpist attempt to purge the state apparatus of liberal elements. But I think that there is some (admittedly vague) similarity. After all, Lenin's book was titled "The state & revolution" and in it, he discusses (1) the take-over of the state, (2) representative democracy via soviets, and (3) the withering away of the state. (3) leads him to debate anarchists, (2) to debate Kautsky and the II International, while (1) I think has some similarities with Trump's and Musk's attempt to create an ideologically new state.
Roosevelt, the New Deal, was that an "attempt to create an ideologically new state"? Hardcore rightists at the time indeed thought it was the imposition of tyrannical socialist ideology on freedom-loving americans :-).
To me it was not a change of ideology: the "business owners rule through the markets and control politics" ideology remained, even if the policies to achieve that changed significantly.
BTW to me Trump despite using a "telesales" "carnie" approach to politics has always been fairly coherent and lucid and reasonable in his political programme which is neither isolationist nor mercantilist, and his ideology is the same as Roosevelt's. The anti-globalist faction he currently leads argues:
* The USA empire is over-extended (see bin Laden's programme) and because of this the long-term power of its upper class is becoming (relatively) smaller especially as the PRC economy becomes a bigger global magnet than the USA economy.
* The globalists do not care about the long term dominance of the USA upper class but only about making as much money as possible with the most expanded empire possible in the short term; some have already moved to China or Asia.
* An USA empire with an upper class that remains strong and dominant across the world in the long term can only be based on a strong core state.
* What the USA empire needs is a phase of consolidation and a policy of greater centralization rather than of expansion and dilution.
* This means *for now* a greater focus on the core state and the "near abroad" and making friendly noises to other powers while rebuilding core USA strength.
One can disagree with these Perot/Buchanan/Trump style arguments but to me they do not imply a new ideology.
«To me it was not a change of ideology: the "business owners rule through the markets and control politics" ideology remained, even if the policies to achieve that changed significantly.»
I am not the only one to reckon that ideology is an intellectual framework to "justify" the dominant position of a ruling group or class: whether it is "divine right of kings" or "freedom to contract in unregulated markets".
As such usually it can be changed only with a change of ruling group or class and with few exceptions this has to involve a lot of deaths as few ruling groups or classes do not resort to military force to protect their dominant position and just let go, and vice-versa groups or classes aspiring to rule prepare to use military force to take over.
Consider the Kissinger revolution in Chile carried out by his henchman Pinochet as an example. The ideology of Chile changed quite a bit.
Also consider this statement by "The Economist" about Corbyn:
https://www.ft.com/content/5584b204-079a-11ea-a984-fbbacad9e7dd
2019-11-15 “The Thatcher revolution is coming under threat”
Was thatcherism really revolutionary or evolutionary? In my view it "merely" changed (quite a bit) the policies shaped by the same ideology as before. Relatedly Callaghan was not gunned down in Number 10 by troops commanded by Thatcher. :-)
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/122751398/
"The Sydney Morning Herald" 1966-08-12 (page 9)
T. Balogh, "The Establishment" (1959): «"Whoever is in office, the Whigs are in power." It was Mr Harold Wilson himself, many years before he came to the Prime Minister's office»
One nation whigs and two-nations whigs alternate; sometimes allied with social-democrats, sometimes with tories.
Actually, the present faction of the US ruling class truly came to power with Reagan in 1980. Traces of this transition were seen during the Nixon Administration, but even then regulation was being increased, and there was only limited efforts to lower taxes from the high levels created to fund World War II and the Marshall Plan. Even in the 1970s, tariffs and quotas were generally accepted as tools to aid local industry. For example, Australia introduced an import quota on passenger cars of 20 percent of total sales as late as 1975.
With Reagan, the attitude that government — that is government providing public services for the majority — was crippling the economy emerged for the first time since the Harding and Coolidge years. The shift of so much economic activity in the stagflation years of the 1970s to the Gulf petromonarchies undoubtedly helped factions of the ruling class who favoured radical globalisation and elimination of social spending. As exoteric rentier states, globalisation is the lifeblood of the super-rich Gulf royal families, and they undoubtedly were even then lobbying the governments of the West heavily to allow freer movement of capital, and to force radical reforms in most of the “Third World” in order to expand trade.
«Actually, the present faction of the US ruling class truly came to power with Reagan in 1980. [...] Even in the 1970s, tariffs and quotas were generally accepted as tools to aid local industry. [...] factions of the ruling class who favoured radical globalisation and elimination of social spending.»
The globalist factions has had different sub-factions within it, and from my point of view you are describing the transition from the globalist-industrialist to the globalist-financialist subfactions.
But I remain of the opinion that the globalist factions as a whole took over between the Spanish War when the USA oligarchs acquired the Philippines and Cuba as colonies, and WW1, when the USA oligarchs even sent troops to fight in an european war. S. Butler famously said of that period: “I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.” That looks like globalist imperialism to me.
The decades after WW2 were also a period of *industrial* american globalism: the dollar replaced sterling as the global currency and USA companies dominated international markets and USA policy dominated the world through the UN, the IMF, the WB and then the GATT. Every country conquered and occupied by the USA (that is nearly all western european countries and most asian ones) opened their doors to USA companies and their exports.
There were indeed restrictions and tariffs but these were accepted by the USA oligarchs as part of the consequences of WW2. But in general the crucial aspects (USA branch businesses, USA IP royalties, repatriation of profits to the USA) were quite common.
My impression is that you write from a purely USA-centric perspective: indeed up to 1980 the USA industrial oligarchs were somewhat protectionist *for the USA* (including protecting USA workers from foreign competition) but globalists *for everybody else*, after 1980 and much more so after 1991 the USA financial oligarchs globalized the USA economy itself with massive waves of offshoring and immigration. Consider this long term graph of *merchandise* exports as percent of global GDP:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-trade-volume-in-absolute-terms-and-relative-to-GDP-from-1900-to-2014-Source_fig1_330922636
There was a period of high industrial globalization under the english empire up to WW1, and then after the low point of 1945 there was a surge and that was mostly for obvious reasons USA industrial exports. The surge between 1970 and 1975 was likely due to the quadrupling of the price of oil in theat period. Then there is clear another surge after 1985, due to the opening of the USA markets, and then an even bigger one after the entry of the PRC into the WTO, the high points of financial globalism.
There are big revolutions and small revolutions – the size depending of how different the new rulers are from the old. Otherwise I agree.
If a revolution consist of two parts: destruction of the old and installation of the new, contemporary political revolutions do not go all the way. Staying short of imposing a new order, they get fully satisfied with subversion - clearly to be observed in MAGA (counter)revolution. (Though, this is a revolution of the rulers, from above, same as the cultural revolution of 1966.)
The uncompleted revolution is maybe the most revolutionary of all. Camus noted that "The most elementary form of rebellion paradoxically, expresses an aspiration to order…" which makes revolutions almost absurd endeavours, aiming solely at replacing one team with an another.