The North American left is not merely ineffective; it has been structurally neutralized and largely complicit. This is the population most directly sustained by imperial extraction, and it shows. Political activity has been reduced to NGO choreography, permitted marches, and aesthetic outrage that never threatens power. What they call “protest” is often just a safety valve for the system they claim to oppose, angry parades so to speak. Unlike even other imperial-core societies, North America sits at the command center. There is no occupation, no imposed austerity from above, no external pressure forcing confrontation. As a result, the left there has lost even the basic capacity to disrupt. Risk, discipline, and organization have been replaced by moral performance, social capital accumulation, and endless denunciation—while the material machinery of domination continues uninterrupted. From the periphery, this looks obscene. Entire societies are immiserated, destabilized, or destroyed to maintain this system, while those closest to the lever of power treat politics as a lifestyle. The issue is not repression alone; it is that large sections of the “left” are materially invested in stability, whether through labor privileges, NGOs, or proximity to empire. Real struggle would threaten their position, so it never materializes. This is why your comparisons fail. Elsewhere, even under worse conditions, left movements have had to contend with survival, sovereignty, and direct coercion. In North America, the left has been absorbed, declawed, and turned inward. What remains is not a revolutionary force but a managed constituency: loud, angry, and ultimately harmless.

It’s because rest of the world only sees unbreakable flood of suffering caused by USA and no signs that it is going to stop, and it’s going for decades and it’s gonna soon kill us all and our planet. We as species don’t have another 150 years of waiting if maybe USA workers gonna finally rise, even if we know all the history and circumstances why it is that, as other posters already mentioned.

Not to mention the only window into worker politics in USA we have, internet, is mildly speaking not very encouraging.

This is a reason why many amerikan Internet communists believe this.

Lots of Internet communists lack discipline/patience etc of being dedicated revolutionaries. They want communists somewhere to be successful but They don’t want to do the extremely difficult task of long term revolutionary organizing, which can take decades to bear fruit, if it ever does. There’s a high chance you will spend time in exile or in prison. And there is never a guarantee of success. Therefore there is a tendency among Amerikan comrades to emphasis the material conditions which make revolutionary organizing difficult in the usa as the reason the Amerikkkan left is inherently useless, and therefore they can justify there spectator-like relationship to politics. They can watch from the side lines and root for the socialists/anti imperialists instead of taking and difficult and dangerous agentic role in politics. (Notably comrades from other countries often do this as well, it’s not solely an American problem)

It is true that the material conditions in the usa do not currently seem conducive to revolution, and that the state of the US revolutionary left is severely underdeveloped to put it politely. However to conclude that the US proletariat/left is entirely useless and should not even try is missing two points. Firstly, we can’t actually tell where revolutions will succeed, least of all decades in advance. Many Bolshevik leaders didn’t think they would live to see a socialist revolution in Russia. If they had given up on the organizing project, concluding that the material conditions were better in Germany or France, there would not have been a Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Secondly, by living in the usa you have many opportunities to disrupt the imperialist war machine, in acts of material solidarity with global anti imperialist forces. Whether or not your organizing actually results in a socialist transformation of the usa (which I hope it does) the opportunity exists to do some serious good.

Buddy, I’m gonna be upfront with you and not sugar coat it: stop whining about stuff like that during times like this. You have to understand why so many people in that thread have such a hate for americans, including american leftists, your country literally just did a coup and invason. People simply look at your country and how seemingly nothing changes coup after coup, invasion after invasion, overthrow after overthow - your political situation and enviornment isn’t getting any more leftist, in fact the opposite. People expect something, ANYTHING, from you because its your country thats destroying the whole world without any remorse, and those people see no meaningful praxis what so ever. Even your own argument with Germany doesnt work, because Germany had a revolution attempt, only a failed one. What are you looking for exactly? Validation? Coddling? Is this why you’re doing this for, why you are a socialist? Just accept these genuine criticisms of the people of the global south and actually do something that will earn their respect.

All my comrades say Death To Amerikkka. If you can’t honestly look at what the US is, what it does, and how its people think, and say the same thing, then I’m not going to take you seriously at all.

If there’s anything legit communists living the imperial core should agree on, it’s how brainwormed, apathetic and generally dogshit the supposed “left” there is. Half the country is openly fascist and the rest think liberalism is the opposite of fascism.

i think one of the most integral parts of correctly-applied marxism is understanding that the masses make history, and that the masses are rational: that the masses act and think in service of their material interests, wherever they lie in the multifaceted world of class contradictions. that means to accept the fact that, were you truly able to live in another’s shoes you would think and act exactly like they do, having experienced the same experiences and totality of material interests.

this applies to all the people you’re complaining about: of course non-americans would complain about the actions of the most successful and exploitative empire, and the global hegemon for decades. even within the global north non-americans get the short end of the stick, let alone the more exploitative relationship between the US and the global south. it makes sense that these people would be frustrated for this reason

but, this also applies to americans as well: of course revolutionary politics, theory and organization would be the weakest in the state in which people on the whole have the most to lose from upending the global status quo. this is complicated by the settler-colonial nature of the US, meaning that in a sense there is both internal and external imperialism, but i think most can agree that external imperialism is primary given the lack of revolutionary movement.

the correct marxist analysis accepts the validity of both sides, and synthesizes them. if history is any guide (which as marxists it definitely should be), then imperialism is the primary class contradiction globally, socialist revolutions are more likely (and perhaps only initially possible) in countries in which capital and the bourgeoisie is less developed, the proletariat’s anti-bourgeois class interests are aligned with anti-imperialism class interests, and countries in which imperialist class contradictions are particularly acute. non-socialist, anti-imperialist revolutions are still historically progressive.

for the most part, the material conditions in the US are the exact opposite of this, so anyone expecting revolution to occur within the US is anti-historical. anyone attributing its actions, the complacency of its inhabitants, or the backwards nature of its theory to a unique “evil” is not a marxist: the masses are just acting and thinking in accordance with their material interests.

i do think as the world becomes more legitimately multipolar the imperialist nature of internal american relations represents a relatively unique opportunity for revolutionary change, compared to europe for example. however, the vestiges of american hegemony would need to dissipate first: dollar hegemony, global military hegemony, etc., and we’re just not there yet.

in the meantime, instead of action for action’s sake, i think the best thing people can do within the imperial core and america specifically is to become disciplined, expert communists. if we truly think socialism is scientific then it can only come to be via the same expertise and academic rigor within the natural sciences. learn how to study, study, and study with others. use that expertise to write, edit and publish theory to advance scientific socialism within the imperial core. without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.

Tbf I say similar things about my country (Guatemala) and Latin America as a whole. I feel our settler-colonial culture and how many are easily swayed by American cultural exports leaves us as nearly a lost cause with only the indigenous really attempting something resembling leftism.

That dudes post got removed and people were shitting on it pretty good. And they were right to do so. That sounded like wrecker shit. Like, that sub has what? Maybe 40k subscribers on the high end and not all those are even Americans. There’s 300 million americans. So a fraction of a percent of them are active in that sub, and all of these people would agree that America is evil. And then this person’s plan is to… Attack the fraction of a percent of Americans that is actually on the right side?

Going into a leftists sub, with Americans that pretty much agree that America fucking sucks, and then attacking Americans for sucking? At best it’s achieving literally nothing because everyone there agrees Americans suck, so it’s just a rage induced circle jerk. The at worst, you are directly attacking the few people in that nation that’s on your side, and are actually trying to support actual socialism, while being surrounded by, as their post specifically details, are the worst people on the planet. So like, nothing benefiting the movement can come of that post.

People see american bombs hitting their towns, american weapons slaughtering their neighbors and then go on youtube or to the movies and see americans living in their sunny condos enjoying a 40 pound double extra cheese bacon whopper mukbang while they starve due to sanctions.

The american working class movement is very small, barely relevant and not visible outside a few cities. Most popular leftist content from america are radlibs tricking people into voooting and supporting american imperialism with a human face (aka bombs for Caracas, buses for new york)

I’m increasingly losing my patience with my own ostensible peers, but I have to remind myself that most people aren’t gonna alter the course of history - hell, most groups won’t, either. That just makes the little stuff we can do all the more important.

Based on what I’ve seen, it appears like more of a self-hatred problem than it is people outside of the imperial core focusing overly much on the individuals who inhabit it.

I think there are some misconceptions though, which contribute to a sense of near-hopelessness in reference to the imperial core. Such as:

• “The empire living off the exploitation of others necessarily means the people living in it are well off and so the rest of the world has to do a revolution before they would ever be motivated to.” On inspection, many of them are increasingly not well off and some are part of a marginalized group on top of that (such as black people in the US).

• “People in the US have never really tried.” The US is for sure the most virulent anti-communist there is in the world and it derives from a genocidal colonial project that transformed into a global imperial one. After saying that, it’s easy to stop and go “look at how it (seemingly) is now, a handful of weak reformists doing nothing.” But the one feeds into the other. The US had the red scare (well had, more like has ongoing) which vilified anything even slightly “leftist.” The Black Panther Party tried to build a vanguard party with dual power and faced assassination, imprisonment, vilification, infiltration, and so on. Earlier in its history, there’s the Civil War, which I won’t romanticize and pretend was some grand liberation struggle the white power brokers were partaking in, but it is important to note because post-Civil-War did not repress or dismantle the confederacy side properly and they went on to do things like romanticize slavery via The United Daughters of the Confederacy material pushed in schools. So it’s not just that USians (some way more than others) benefit materially from imperialism, it’s also that it has faced enormous internal political repression and a kind of ongoing aggravated internal state between the slave owner faction and the reform faction (and what those factions developed into later on). And it’s not only “non-white” who have ever tried anything. Eugene Debs is a notable socialist name, one who ran for president while being imprisoned over an anti-war speech. The Battle of Blair Mountain is a notable event of how the US state was willing to join in on waging class war against its own people (white included).

• “It has been this way so far, so it will keep being this way.” Change requires transformation, but it is possible. However, it also requires assessment of where things are going wrong and how to do different in a way that will work. When CriticalResist made the point some time back that so many imperial core parties are “ossified and failures” (I believe was the wording), I had an initial desire to push back. I think because I was concerned it was being too demoralizing a picture of ongoing struggle. But we do have to be sober about real failures and the goal of a vanguard party is not to figure out how to cozy up and co-exist with imperialism while doing some token opposition in the margins. So it’s more about movement than it is about judgment. People are going to judge and we will too, but at the end of the day, things are moving. Question is where do they get moved to.

Deserved!

I used to think that American leftists were selfish cowards for choosing to live with their privileges at the expense of everyone else.

But seeing those privileges stripped away as the imperial core becomes fascist and turns its wrath inward, I started to realise they’re not selfish cowards, they’re just cowards.

Probably my worst, most hateful take. But so many of my family have suffered from American greed that I don’t care. I will burn all my bridges and die on this hill.

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