There Will Be No Revolution, Only Breakdown

Idealism is dying, greed and drugs are rising

Introduction

Much has been said on the increase in revolutionary sentiment in the West on both the right and the left over the past few years. The incumbent liberal-democratic governments and related institutions are failing to deliver and have lost the trust of the masses and so are resorting to more explicitly authoritarian methods, which acts as a feedback loop that causes further distrust. All the while the appetite for political violence among the politically active continues to grow. Ideas and ideologies that just a decade or two ago would have been beyond-the-pale-fringe are gaining influence in the public space, especially among the youth.

These extreme ideologies differentiate themselves by a rejection or at least downplaying of the electoral system as a method of gaining and maintaining power, replacing it with a more explicit political struggle or civil war. In this they draw from the well of 20^th century counter-liberal Anarchists, Communists, fascists and Nazis. Yet the conditions that allowed these revolutionary political actors to seize power no longer exists. Justified paranoia about “feds” has frozen all significant radical right-wing organisation for decades, something which revolutionary leftists too will be afflicted by if they ever were to pose a genuine threat to the decaying liberal-democratic order.

Most crucially, the class which sustained all revolutionary movements, the peasant, with their toughness, self-reliance and self-sacrificing ethos no longer exist. Their closest modern equivalent in terms of number and social position are welfare dependants and menial service workers, who are neither tough nor self-reliant nor self-sacrificing. These conditions mean that serious 19^th and 20^th century-style rebel armies cannot form, and if they somehow do form they cannot sustain themselves or advance their revolution for very long.

To be clear, I do not endorse the view that the current somewhat functioning liberal-democratic regime will last forever, but instead that it is progressively breaking down and being replaced by ‘greedy’ self-interested actors such as oligarchs and criminals rather than the proposed sweep of idealistic revolutionaries who are in reality incapable of organising and/or mounting a protracted resistance.

The Revolutionary Thesis

Alienated young men, growing wealth inequality, declining living standards, ethno-religious tension, new technologies and administrative incompetence are all well cited causes of previous revolutions and civil wars. These conditions also apply to current times and so are frequently used to support the position that civil war and revolution is soon coming to the West. What form the revolution is supposed to take is generally left quite vague, however the impression given is that it will involve a replacement of the current government with a new one that rejects democracy and the current lib-dem values, in favor of a particular flavor of leftist or rightist values.

On the left it is said to involve the confiscation of property and redistribution of wealth throughout society and the creation of more social programs. On the right it is said to involve the expulsion of certain ethnic and religious groups, regulation of sexuality and gender roles and greater national autarchy among other things, often mixing in elements of Communist redistribution but for the in-group. This is said to be achieved after a successful armed struggle against the incumbent order.

Death of Idealism

I question whether Zoomers have the idealism that previous generations had that led many in those generations to dedicate their lives to political movements. The impression that I get is that Zoomers don’t. This has implications for right-wing and left-wing efforts. We (I am a Zoomer) seem to be far more self-interested and cynical to broader politics, in describing this I try my best not to project myself onto a whole generation, but I still think it’s true. In the 80s, 90s and 2000s there would be music concerts where young people raised money for starving African children. Many starving African children still exist, but the young of today only have a passing awareness and would never care too much that a concert is raising money for them. Quite the change from 20 years ago. Perhaps people bring the concern over Gaza as a counter-point, but it is (or at least is seen as) different. Our governments are portrayed as complicit in it, with politicians in favour of the group of people causing the hardship of the Gazans. The Muslim and Jewish diaspora that inhabits the Western world who are both influential in their own ways and both inflame public discussion, although the Israeli side has completely lost the youth, which has been discussed elsewhere.

Take the Coca Cola advertisement above from the 1970s. This ad would be widely mocked by all sides today if it was released. Even if the ad was to be somehow updated to better suit Zoomer sensibilities while retaining its general premise it still would not have an impact. But when you check the comments of this ad it seems as though it was a religious experience to Boomers.

In one person’s case, this Coca Cola advertisement was literally a religious experience

The Boomer Encounters the Zoomer, A.D 2022

Alternative – Criminals, Non-State Actors, Corruption

The Zoomers and I presume the generations that proceed us do not have the idealism for mass-movements, so instead we may see more patronage networks, crime and corruption. Have you noticed how many rightist groups are following patterns of patronage networks? Such as

Walt Bismarck

’s Tortuga society (not a slight against Walt btw). In Latin America, leftist guerrilla revolutionaries have evolved into self-interested drug cartels who puff themselves up with their own mythology about how they are saving the poor. Quite the turn from the idealistic revolutionaries of Che’s era. Perhaps this is the blueprint for the future of all political extremist groups.

The illicit drug trade has just barely begun to make its full impact on the world. Scholars decades from now will be able to tell a much richer story of how illicit drugs have altered the course of the 21^st century, right now we are in the beginnings. One of the effects of the illicit drug trade is that it infuses massive wealth to any group (Non-State Actors) that can effectively act outside of the law. As the law weakens due to neomedievalisation, it acts as a feedback loop that begets stronger Non-State Actors and a further weakened state. This has been on display in Mexico for the past few decades. It also means that revolutionary groups could be self-funded, but also could be devoured on the inside by greed and those who are more interested in the profits of the drug trade than the ideals of the uncertain ‘revolution’, as has happened in Latin America.

I go into more detail on the move away from mass-movements and the rot of the state and the rise of non-state actors in my neomedievalism post. I highly recommend it if you want to better understand the dynamics of the West over the past 50 years and in the years beyond. It has gotten more attention than I anticipated.

Death of the Peasant, Rise of the Lumpenprole

In the Russia of 1916, 85% of the population were classified as peasants, with 75% of all Russians being full-time farmers. These were a hardy, cruel yet cooperative people. The Russian peasant suffered a deep poverty which hasn’t been seen anywhere in the world in a long time. Russian peasant women typically had around 10 children, yet generally only 3 or 4 of their children would survive into adulthood. The mothers would often kill their infants themselves, though not openly. Always at least a tad hungry, the children would source a part of their food themselves through scavenging. Fistfights among boys were encouraged, and the torture of animals was a source of entertainment.

Accounts by Olga Semyonova, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia, 1900

Cats and dogs are also less useful than other animals, and peasants will torture them just for the fun of it, just to see what will happen. Little children like to throw cats and puppies, when they can catch them, into the water to see if they can swim. When I ask, “Don’t you feel sorry for them?” the children respond: “Why feel sorry? They’re not people, just dogs.”

Cases of infanticide of illegitimate babies are not at all rare. A married or unmarried woman gives birth alone somewhere in a shed, smothers the baby, and dumps it into the river (with a rock secured to its neck) or leaves it in a hemp thicket, or buries it either in the yard or somewhere in the pigpen.

The shortage of straw forces peasants to use their clothes for bedding and to heat the house with dried manure or weeds such as burdock, thistle, and nettles. Accordingly, illnesses increase in such a year. The lack of fresh bedding is one cause. The poor fuel likewise does much damage to the eyes. In the drought years of 1891–1892, around ten people in two of our small villages (each containing about fifteen households) lost their eyesight temporarily or permanently from the smoke of their stoves. The smoke, which was produced by burning dried manure and weeds found on the roadside and in ravines, was so acrid that the victims (mostly old people and children) developed cataracts. All of them were admitted to the regional hospital in town, but three of them never got their eyesight back.

This incredibly rough upbringing creates the right material for a revolutionary. It creates men who are willing to subsist off of almost nothing for years and fight to the death for the chance of creating a world they see as better, and doubtlessly also fight for the thrill of it. It is also a society in which revolutionaries can feed, clothe and hide themselves amongst the population. In Che Guevara’s book ‘Guerrilla Warfare’, he took it as a given that revolutionaries would have their subsistence met by villagers. In Russia, China and all other places where revolutions have been successful, hundreds of thousands of self-sufficient villages gave voluntary support or were pillaged to continue the fight against the authorities. This world no longer exists, certainly not in any developed country.

A real image of Russian peasants. Imagine if these guys were 80% of the population. They would later die in the 10s of millions over 3 horrifying wars.

Peasants as a social group simply don’t exist anymore. The remaining farmers (1.2% of the US population) are bourgeois producers that bring their commodities to market for cash, then buy processed goods from the market. They do not process their own produce and they occupy vast tracts of land and use very little labour. The modern farmer is often said to be ‘asset rich, cash poor’. All their assets mean that they have much to lose if they ever get caught supporting revolutionaries. They aren’t landless peasants, they have a real stake in the current order with a several hundred acre farm with expensive machinery and a solid roofed home that can all be held over the head as ‘collateral’ if they are non-compliant.

Perhaps due to the erasure of the rough peasant lifestyle, moderns are also ill-prepared for violence. I was somewhat shocked when an American Republican Kristi Noem created a massive controversy with immense political cost to herself when she revealed in her biography that she killed her violent dog. Republicans are supposed to represent the more practical types in American society, yet she was shunned by many for this very practical decision. I do not wish to present this as a uniquely American issue, there would be a similar controversy if this happened in my own country of Australia, but the fact that this was controversial outside of vegan circles has/had me perplexed. How would such masses react to killing political opponents if they can’t even handle an undesirable dog?

The working (and unemployed) class of the modern West either is or functionally resembles the ‘lumpenproletariat’ of the 19^th century. Very little of the typical proletariat remains. I consider essentially all blue-collar service workers to be lumpenproles, in addition to criminals, prostitutes and the unemployed. Lumpenproles differ from the proletariat as they are disconnected from the production process, while also being poor. Successful Marxist revolutionaries considered lumpenproles as non-contributors to a revolution. Lumpenproles of the West are lumpenproles because they don’t produce products, the Chinese proletariat does. As lumpenprole jobs (such as retail and hospitality) are less demanding of physical strength, they can be done by both men and women. This, in addition to the servile nature of the work, feminises the workplace. Unions may be present, but often aren’t. Their strikes never amount to physical resistance, the furthest they go is walking off work engaging the media, sometimes in ridiculous ways (flash mob Walmart strike). In 1921 10000 armed West Virginian coal miners fought against 3000 strikebreakers in the Battle of Blair Mountain. The shootouts lasted 5 days would lead to 50-100 coal miners being killed. Such an action would be unthinkable among Starbucks employees. Can you envision Walmart wagies marching shoulder to shoulder with guns in their hands, ready to die for each other?

West Virginia coal miners

When a workplace is made up of 40-60+% women, a violent strike doesn’t become viable, if people can even conceive of violent strike because the workplace culture has been castrated. Male-female job sites don’t have the cohesion and will necessary. Naturally, the brotherhood on mixed-gender job-sites which was rallied for strikes for the whole industrial period is not present.

Conclusion

The increase in revolutionary rhetoric across the right and left will not yield in a mass-armed struggle resulting in the toppling of governments and the creation of a new state moulded in the successful revolutionaries’ image. The erasure of the peasant class, the replacement of the proletariat with the lumpenproletariat, profits of illicit drugs and the greed and cynicism towards politics of the Zoomers and likely following generations will mean that resistance will take new 21^st century forms. This empowers oligarchs, criminals and other Non-State Actors, with political movements taking on a self-interested component.

The 20^th century was the age of utopian revolutionaries. Those utopian visions failed, so the 21^st century will be something different entirely.

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Addendum

I may write a future article on the transition of Latin America’s leftist guerrillas toward essentially becoming criminal organisations. It’s quite instructive.

Originally I was going to have a focus on median age, however an article by

Kulak

had an interesting idea that chaos and conflict would lower the median age and act as a feedback loop (paraphrased) that would cause even more violence as the abundance of old and sick would have high mortality if systems erode. Perhaps the high median age (10-25 years higher than the previous counter-liberal upheaval of the 20^th century) acts only as a source of initial friction that stops the appearance of violence, but once ‘the dam breaks’ that initial high median age is not so relevant.

Kulak

’s article:

Civil War Scenario: Blockade & Airstrike

I believe median age still matters, but I need to think on it more. Essentially, if 10 teenagers lived in a nursing home with 100 elderly they will act much more castrated than the 10 teenagers living in an abandoned nursing home free of elderly. Imagine this on a country-wide scale, that’s today.

I have hunches that the establishment are far better at combating centralised revolutionary groups through spies, false flags and other techniques than in the 1910s and 1920s. This idea should be further developed.

As always, discussion and suggestions in the comments are heavily encouraged.