[MG] Apart from Cuba, I also can't offhand think of any examples where
anticapitalist revolutions succeeded outside the context of a war, or where
substantial reforms were wrested from the ruling class without the support
of the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie which concluded that such reforms
were in it's longer term economic and political interests.
>
[WS]> The point I am trying to make is that the US state is deliberately
structured in way to derail any attempt to change it, especially in a way
that disrupts the public-private symbiosis between business and political
establishment. The US labor was probably better organized, at times, than
many of its European counterparts, yet it failed to implement any of the
reforms that Europeans did precisely because of the institutional
architecture of the US state that is carefully crafted to derail any such
reform - and has succeeded derailing them for 200+ years.
[MG] Which reforms are you referring to apart from state-sponsored heathcare? The other major reforms - the universal franchise, shorter working hours, public education, the right to organize and strike, unemployment insurance, pensions, civil rights for racial and ethnic minorities, women, and gays, etc. - are common to both the US and Europe.
[WJ] As I said elsewhere, the US state is selling out family silver to buy more time and in a few years, likely during our life time, it will be reduced to a regional power akin to its rival the x-USSR. But it will not be reformed in any substantial way. If anything, political patronage and pork and barrel - which is at the core of the US state- will only intensify to contain growing resentment of the downwardly mobile public.
[MG] The US does appear to be in secular decline, and I would bet on living
standards continuing to move in the opposite direction to those in big
emerging capitalist economies on the periphery. I doubt it will become a
second-tier regional power though, at least not in our lifetime. It's
corporations and military still span the globe though they are increasingly
becoming more "multinational" and less "American" as they integrate more
foreign troops and managers into their operations. Unless the US economy is
restructured on the basis of new industries which produce accompanying
labour shortages, I also see working class resentment trending to the right
and not very good prospects for a revival of trade unionism and movements
for reform.
>
[WS]> To reiterate "all hope abandon, ye who enter here." If you want hope,
or social change, look to India, China, or Brazil where the center of global
action is moving. The US is a "has been," a force that if not entirely
spent, is increasingly looking inward to maintain its ossified institutional
structure. Many empires ended in a similar way, lingering in its ossified
shell for decades or even centuries until some external force put them out
of their misery.
[MG] I tend to agree, as noted above. However, nothing is certain. I've hedged my bets about the future ever since the abrupt and astonishing restoration of capitalist relations in the USSR and China and the disappearance of a once vibrant labour and socialist movement in the West.