I was thinking about how the idea of some form of secession of states is always discussed in some really silly right-wing fantasy contexts but has there been any discourse in leftist circles about this? Especially in terms of the completely broken political system.
Otherwise is this a completely stupid idea on its face? Either way I’m just interested to hear about people’s thoughts.
Balkanization is very likely under a collapse scenario as the states try to prop themselves up against one another. The moment they are no longer tied together economically, e.g. through imperial unequal exchange via militarism, they will be (1) impoverished and facing domestic unrest and (2) seek to maintain and expand their power, basically becoming (nearly failed) independent states. Who can say what boundaries would exist, it would depend on both larger economic trends and our ability to organize. For example, if the feds are weak/abandoned when the US has a dispersed and self-sustaining industrial base that is very different from a scenario in which it has concentrated agriculture and is reliant on imports. A reliance on imports would mean that border states control import but are dependent on wherever agriculture is viable. Any state with neither is immediately vulnerable, paying economic rent to both kinds of states. Under a dramatic collapse those areas would experience exodus and only become a target of acquisition by powerful interests for natural resources. At the same time, it is possible that by that time the surrounding states had locked down their borders.
The exact circumstances are difficult to predict because they depend on developments beyond our view. But we can predict the kinds of things that might happen and why. We can also say that Balkanization requires precedents, that it is quantitative change becoming qualitative, and that the major binding factor is US impeeialism and that without it the states would likely turn on one another.
Yes there is, or for Mexico taking back some US territory
Less so than a leftist case for it just an inevitable thing thatll happen. The US is big, and divided. The elites might be united in the uniparty but the people arent. Imo there will be an implosion as the empire collapses and the federal government will partially collapse. Youll probably see an initial fascist takeover of things and then as people tire of fascists there will be regional secession movements led by marginalized groups. Climate collapse will just make this worse. Idk what the borders will be but i can almost garuntee it wont be state borders, or national borders. Itll be messier.
Once all empires reach a certain point of decline, separatist movements are inevitable. It happened to all empires in the past and the US will be no exception. Well, I suppose the US could always murder-suicide the world with nukes when it’s at a point of irreversible decline and it doesn’t want China to take the throne.
So assuming the US doesn’t start a hot war with China, it will eventually reach a point of decline where the federal government has only nominal control over its territories. There might be a rump state and it might still have a seat in the UN (or whatever equivalent of the UN), but the US will functionally no longer exist.
Current secessionist movements are just memes. The instant California or Texas even secedes from the US, the US will simply sanction the state to oblivion and politically isolate the state. Without trade or formal state recognition by other countries, how would that state even function? No state is self-sufficient, so how would people in that state even survive without trade?
Tbh I think Texas has the best chance of making it as a self sufficient state.
Texas could not even keep electricity on over the winter. I get your idea, the area has everything it could ever need, in theory. It’s administration is completely incompetent tho.
hawaii, new afrika movement, land back to native populations
uh thats it really
I recently flash-fic’d a balkanization scenario that plays out during Kamala’s presidency, but I think that what will actually happen is just the Federal government continuing to weaken until all it does is enforce American hegemony and print USD. We’ve already seen this process play out to a pretty substantial degree over the past couple of decades - do you think that, in the America of the 80s, a number of states could pass laws in open defiance of the policy of the federal government without consequences? Could Texas take control of its border from Federal agencies in any decade other than the current one? Would the response to COVID by 90s America have been as scattershot and regionalized as it was in 2020?
I think the starting point for this process is most accurately fixed at deregulation under Reagan which allowed for multiple regulatory regimes to emerge in America, one of minimal interference in most of the country and one lead by California and New York that attempts to maintain New Deal/Great Society -esque control of the market’s excesses. The country will continue to “balkanize” in this way, as the Federal government cedes more ground to the market and the wealthiest states make their uncoordinated and sloppy attempts to fill the gaps it leaves, until we find a new point of equilibrium, with large swathes of the country reduced in stature from their previously privileged position and a new, smaller Imperial Core.
Another example of this, maybe less important but still notable, is the defiance of many states over Federal scheduling of cannabis (a C-I drug, therefore “totally illegal”). While the FDA claims jurisdiction over all drugs, probably using the Interstate Commerce Clause (be advised, IANAL), the states have looked at cannabis as a states rights issue. Right now, I think they are avoiding really big legal trouble by using a few loopholes (e.g. MN is deriving its delta-9-THC and other cannabis products from industrial hemp, a fairly inefficient process). Outside of Native American reservations, I’m not sure that any state is actually selling anything like cannabis flower. But it is real defiance on the part of many states, since delta-9-THC and other cannabinoids are the substances which are actually scheduled and regulated by the FDA, and they have really pissed off the Feds with their actions. I don’t think you would have seen this at an earlier time in US history, and it’s an interesting development.
Then there’s the Covid response, or lack of it, mostly thanks to the chuds turning it into another front in the culture war. That’s also one for the history books.
No, it’s never going to happen.
America has already exported its industries to the Global South. This is the price it has to pay for the ability to get “free ride” from all over the world simply through printing money. As such, all US states are bound together by the power of its currency - the loss of which will lead to severe plunge in purchasing power and living standards.
Not a single state in America - not even the richest state - can afford to secede without losing a large part of material privileges they’ve been able to enjoy all these years through exploiting labor and extracting surplus from the Global South.
Unless they’re willing to live like Brazil or Italy, but Americans would rather wage a war with the rest of the world than to willingly degrade their own material conditions like that.
While you are right, it only means the currency will have to go to the drain first.
Not a single state in America - not even the richest state - can afford to secede without losing a large part of material privileges they’ve been able to enjoy all these years through exploiting labor and extracting surplus from the Global South.
…but do they know that? Or is the political class insulated enough from reality that a critical mass of them might decide that being in charge of a reduced America is better than being a regular Governor in current America?
Just saying, the collapse of the USSR was disastrous for their economy too, but Yeltsin and co still fukken chose to do it.
The USSR dissolved under the illusion that they were going to liberalize their highly industrialized economy and open up to the entire Western market.
The richest state in America, California, derives half of its tax revenues from capital gains e.g. stocks and bonds and various financial assets. If this is the economic structure of the richest state (I don’t even have to talk about New York property market), then every other state in the rest of the country is going to endure an even worse fate. Good luck seceding and immediately losing the privilege of having the strongest purchasing power in the world.
Any serious attempt at doing so will immediately find out this is impossible at the planning stage, because they first have to figure out how to run their economy independently from the rest of the country. Any talks about secession are mere rhetoric and can never happen in America as long as the dollar is king.
The USSR dissolved under the illusion that they were going to liberalize their highly industrialized economy and open up to the entire Western market.
Both things happened actually, but both liberalisation and opening market didn’t meant investment, it meant looting. What were they even thinking though, west did that every single time they “opened” some place up and even revisionist socialists should have this covered in fucking school.
and can never happen in America as long as the dollar is king.
Thankfully, this is going quickly down the drain. And the worries of the economy will only matter so long as the American economy meaningfully exists…
that said, probably the best-case scenario is a civil war sometime down the road for whatever reason, I wouldn’t expect the US to (relatively) peacefully dissolve like the Soviets nor let go of their 250-year reich without some blood shed (and better internal infighting amongst state elements than it trying to take the world or rebelling populations down with it)Full and infinite support for the balkanization of the devil settler-state IMO.
it would be good for the global south because it would make the united states much weaker
Ask gunther to do it.
Post 2020 and the Covid19 epidemic the states couldn’t decide on how to isolate, lock-down, and re-open. So they all split into “regional state medical associations” or something like that i don’t remember exactly. This was not state secession or ‘semi-autonomous region’ recognition etc. But it was a clear and recent example how material situations can suddenly motivate or force a re-organization on national institutional scales. To spring-board off this we can theorize; if there was another “disagreement” between states on how to react to a new situation (medical or other) that they would make similar moves, such as re-organizing into state coalitions, or perhaps smaller break-away regions. Lead by whoever is sitting leadership at the time.
Just look at water rights. States are fighting each other (in the courtroom atm) over water already. Things will not improve.
A fully dissolved and collapsed america will be Hell itself for its population of scavengers and murderers but it will be an unalloyed good for the rest of the world and the global south getting some breathing room is the only hope for humanity, so
The global south is already getting breathing room and will continue to by China’s influence and ability to finance development usurping the IMF and World bank and breaking the limbs of US sanction capabilities. Especially with Russia and China allied more because Russia has no such compunctions of “non-intervention” while China is also helping train military and police as announced in the China-Africa summit.
Also there are way too many variables to say that the US “collapsing” would be an ‘unalloyed good’ for the world because what the hell does that collapse look like and into whose hands are regions consolidated under? It would certainly not remain a local event either; both to neighboring countries as well as all of the foreign military bases and navy contingents will still be active. and there are also nuclear bombs which would likely fall into the hands of whatever warlords or groups, which again “fully dissolved and collapsed” in such an idealist phrase with no concept of what that would look like, how that would happen, what the arrangement of forces would be, etc. tells us nothing. ‘unalloyed good’ is a drastic overstatement from zero information for such a world-shaking event as that would be. It also just writes off the US’ internal colonies and their fates in a very eco-fascist-adjacent kind of way.
China’s plan is much more thoughtful and shrewd for the global south to de-imperialize, and is without haphazard idealist concepts and showing itself to be successful and sustainable. And how the global north’s working class prepares and navigates and dictates the subsequent and inevitable ensuing revolutionary moments as capitalism runs into catastrophic crisis due to not being able to expand, and contracting heavily due to expansion of Chinese capital, irreconcilably for the west multi-polarizing the world and global south is its own question — which should have the actual communists already be organized in ways to do everything they can to not have it fall into whatever fascistic fallout world you’re envisioning, but instead successful socialist revolutions including de-colonial socialist revolutions where it applies.
Does it necessarily need to be a completely chaotic process? Could there be a pathway for new forms of government or organisation that’s better for people?
Nuclear weapons make it pretty hard to visualize. I can’'t imagine a way that different nuclear sites landing in the hands of opposing quasi-states in a hot war could ever end well.
whoever controls north dakota and eastern montana will be the new Great Khan
in some places material conditions will improve and embryonic new social orders will form. There’s a silver lining to be found if you squint hard enough
Municipalism/libertarian socialism is all about seizing local control of governments and breaking away from the national bourgeois government. Basically, take over municipalities and townships and village councils, one by one, and form a confederation of independent local municipalities that can act independently from nationalist institutions and establish socialism.
It’s not really a Marxist revolutionary theory, though. A synthesis might be possible but I’m not aware of anyone trying it.
A synthesis might be possible but I’m not aware of anyone trying it.
That’s cause they put them on Turkish prison island.
Notably Öcalan has become increasingly anti-Marxist and anti-Communist, so he would not represent this synthesis. In fact, he’s the “thought leader” behind this ideology which has been compatible with US Occupation of Kurdish land in Syria.
I don’t blame the last part on the guy whose spent 25 years in Turkish prison often in solitarity and cut off from lawyers and family. Even if yeah Rojava has been quite the disappointment.
There have been many advocacies of separations in the context of decolonization and landback. Struggles for Native Americans to take ownership of their land in many constants and many points in their resistance fighting and struggles throughout the entire settling period, and into more modernly as well pushing at least along treaty lines. And there have been multiple movements and phases in the Black liberation struggle that have seem plans to secede in a Black nation. The earliest plans saw this Black United States being formed in the South where slavery and the black population was densest. There have been other plans and attempts to formulate and realize Black nationalist countries within the current borders of the contiguous US since there were more migrations and movements of Black populations elsewhere in the US; as well as other movements which sought a more unitary multinational decolonization.
This really comes down to a lot of practical material realities more than an idealist “what we would want.” How the organized forces of populations, of socialists and reaction, of state and federal forces, etc. are arrayed; geography relevant to these forces and their centers of population and operation, what landscapes are rendered uninhabitable due to climate change when these kinds of questions arise as practical issues, basic infrastructure and logistic concerns, etc. Native Americans would probably have a simpler construct to turn into material practical realities due to already having various reservation centers, but these are kept small, dependent, isolated, fragmented, and occupied, and are also proportionally a pretty small percentage of the population compared to forces potentially arrayed against them if it were just them trying to do this.
So it really matters on what communities have been and are more organized. If there are Latino communities organized seriously for communist revolution in the Southwest for instance, and have access to habitable land, routes, food and water supplies, fuel, etc. many nearer Native American groups could align forces with them. But these are all such far off questions as to be pointless fantasies as silly as the right wingers right now to think about in this way. It is much more practical to think on the lines of organizing ones own community, building socialism and rupturing the political contradictions which keep masses separated from revolutionary politics including in ‘parliamentary’ politics as broad masses still believe in it (such as breaking the democrats’ duopoly and causing an upswell in socialist ranks); as well as basic furtherances of specific de-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist points and pressures such as honoring treaties, fighting against gentrification and ghettoization, basic health and infrastructure repairs in poor communities, expropriation of vacant housing, organizing prisoners and working prison abolition, pushing divestment from arms manufacturers and military in communities and in colleges (and pushing the military recruiters out of high schools — fucking psychotic country); agitating against military enlistments and deployments and direct action against militarism and its material capabilities; etc. These kinds of things.
It is much more serious and practical and practicable to be thinking and working along these lines and in years see where it has led rather than making some ‘early case for balkanization’. For many reasons. It is in the present our work is done, contesting with the material living reality as it is. In general, also, Balkanization is more of a historical event and possible outcome of irreconcilable ruptures in society to be accounted for and adapted to and reckoned with more than it is something to be legitimately sought after and built towards from day 1. Especially if you don’t already have supreme reigns of power a separation or balkanization is much more of just an advent of uncontained chaos and incomprehensible many-fronted civil war scenario than it is remotely a goal.
In the abstract one can think of such a phase. In practice, however, he who denies the sharp tasks of to-day in the name of dreams about soft tasks of the future becomes an opportunist. Theoretically it means to fail to base oneself on the developments now going on in real life, to detach oneself from them in the name of dreams.
Thank you for your detailed response, I appreciate the time and knowledge! Is there any particular text you can recommend, especially around the native and black movements? I think it would help to view things from a wholly different perspective.
I do agree though about it being an “event” or a consequence rather than an explicit goal. Having partly lived through the balkanization of Jugoslavia, it’s a topic that’s a personal interest. If anyone’s got good recs on that I would also be very interested!
Balkanization implies a civil war or internal conflict so its never nice, you have to remember its not going to be the federal goverment deciding to disolved the union like in the USSR, its probably going to be a collapsing fed trying to hold on to power aka so its going to be like a battle royal.
and thats only counting states, there are large white supremacists groups or ultra religious groups that are going to use the chaos to declare their own states, organized crime will probably too take over their territory too, Its going to be a bloody civil war if it happens honestly
kinda like the russian civil war but with more guns and also nukes altho those will only be a problem if the feds decide to use them since modern nukes only work if you have the nuclear codes
If all the states became their own countries then there would definitely be less war crimes committed by them.
