Anons, I was thinking about this the other day, and it might not be too in-depth of a question...

Anons, I was thinking about this the other day, and it might not be too in-depth of a question, but is Brazil an example of how the United States might turn out in a few decades?

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I don't think the USA is going to improve.

That would entail the manufacturing sector actually IMPROVING.

So, no.

I think Brazil's problems run deeper than they seem at first, both in the base and the superstructure. America's foundations on both areas are far more solid. As much as America can fall, I don't think it will be anything like Brazil. If anything, America's fall will involve secession.

A few decades?
brasilwire.com/us-brasil-inequality/

Not Brazil exactly because it will still be the vanguard in technology and economic power, but favellas might eventually for everywhere given population growth and the shit market

Relevant:
youtube.com/watch?v=gEPdOZbyzbw&t=148s

Which aspects do you mean? Are you talking about the jeitinho braseilero stuff that goes on which is toxic to politics?

That's part of it I suppose, tho probably not real, even for spook standards.

Anyway, it begins all the way back during the first wave of colonialism, back when the early European powers were invading America and building a shitload of exploitation colonies and a handful of settlement colonies. I don't know how common knowledge this is, so bear with me if you do, but there's an extremely strong correlation between areas that were colonized for settlement, and future prosperous, advanced capitalist societies. The exploitation colonies, well, you can guess.

This exploitative origin left scars that, barring tiny island-countries in the Caribbean, no country managed to escape so far. All the American countries (plus the Phillipines, maybe Indonesia too but I know too little about it) born from exploitation colonies share key traces. I would say the most important superstructural one is a tendency of subservience coupled with inferiority mentality, both much stronger among the elites than the people. The ruling classes always were and still are extremely oriented towards the European powers rather than its own countries, and dedicate unending adoration to them and submission to their culture and way of life. In other words, the colonial elites always thought of themselves as kin to the colonizers.

Here's the main superstructural problem that that creates. Imagine that, after independence, the US elites were entranced by France, writing in their newspapers how America should be like it and adopt more and more of their culture, and they sent their children to be educated in Paris, and of course, were subservient to the French ruling classes. The US government is their lapdog, signing treaties that end up harming America and engaging in extremely unequal trade, with bullshit arguments like "whatever is good to France is good to America" (a Brazilian bigshot politician actually said this in regards to the US, by the way). More important of all, the US doesn't develop their own culture, but instead mimics France, and thus by definition it will always be inferior to them. Now imagine what kind of country that would turn out. Yep.

Now, the main base problem. Brazilian elites, like those from other countries descended from exploitation colonies, bow down to Europe and show their asses to their own peoples. This has a particularly nefarious economic aspect, called comprador bourgeois, originally meaning porkies who, moved by their subservience/inferiority towards the foreign powers, bought their products and re-sold them in their native countries – at considerable profit, of course. Nevermind the fact that this mercantilism produces absolutely no value, the worse effect takes time to manifest. This harms the industry their country has and discourages further investment into that area, thus making their countries permanently dependent on the foreign products; they condemn their own countries to be unindustrialized, agrarian economies and their people to be poor and, once more, exploited by foreign powers. Of course, these porkies don't give a shit. They got their money """without harming anyone""" so fuck everything else. And this base issue feeds back into the superstructure; this deluge of foreign goods further reinforces the subservience inferiority. Again, let's look at America's development. Imagine that, instead of fostering industrialization and railway construction, America's elites would be content just acting as middlemen of American tobacco to Europe, and European cigarettes and cigars to to America. The country essentially remains a colony even after independence.

And that takes us to today. Whatever revolutions and rebellions happened either simply failed or were bourgeois in nature anyway and accomplished just tepid reforms. The comprador system remains the same, plus a few tweaks, of course. And the thing is, these elites could develop their countries, which is to say, finish the fucking bourgeois revolution they began so long ago. I mean it's not rocket science. The actual theory behind it is relatively simple, the hard part is the political power and the collective will to do it. But these porkies have the former but not the latter. They're content being happy merchants, counting their cash while their countries bleed money to foreign powers.

So then, these are the big two problems in Brazil, which are also present in all former exploitation colonies. Adding to those, some problems are also common, while some are unique to a country.

Superstructurally, former exploitation colony societies have this malaise of generalized fuck-you-got-mine. Many people have no interest in building their country, and seek just to enrich themselves and, in many cases, skedaddle to a developed country. This mirrors the way that old colonizers treated the exploitation colonies: it's just some place you go to get rich and probably return to your country. Anyway, this disregard the former-colonial people have for their own society also manifests as epidemic corruption and higher crime in general, increased alienation, worse mental health, weakened communities etc. Lesser evils are, yes, jeitinho brasileiro, as well as lack of enterpreneurship (one of Anglo settlers' biggest advantages, together with the famous Protestant work ethic), lowered cultural production married with a torrent of foreign culture (which also reinforces alienation, which I know from experience), brain drain (dunno if this is in the base tho) and many more. Of course, all of these problems feed back into the base.

Regarding the base, the end result is the biggest thing socialism takes aim at: poverty. So I hardly need to expound on details, so I'll just list other effects: weak economy means less government budget means poor infrasctruture, education, healthcare that further hurts the economy and life standards; capital flight; chaotic urban development (tho I have the feeling that old Portuguese and Spanish urbanism influences this); dependency on imports for certain goods; again, higher crime etc.

So then, this turned out longer than I expected. Have I answered your question or did I ramble away from the topic?

my dad always said our country is like a rich uncle whom everyone mooches off until it dies someday.

nobody gives a shit about brazil in brazil, i love this place but the anguish is suicidal tbh

You might want to read thus.

tl;dr: the world is boned

Fuck, it's long.
I just randomly jumped into the middle and I landed on a great analysis of my home city, what are the odds.
Sounds like a great subway read, thanks.

Brazil has an active socialist activism.
One can hope Americunts would be so lucky.

Thank you, that was a very good response. You really articulated the colonial mentality that afflicts our countries in a way that I couldn't articulate.

Out of curiosity, which books would you recommend on the topic?

aren't integralists facists?

Que?

settlement colonies were also exploited, that's the whole point of mercantilism

I just wanted to post a picture of Brown facists. The cuckness makes me smile.

Well it's hard to tell if a nazbol praising fascists is being facetious or not.

Regardless, integralists always had internal discussion about race. Some wanted it to be whites-only, but the founder was adamantly against racism. Their slogan was "Union of all races and all peoples".


Naturally, but it was a whole other level. Settlement colonies basically provided troops and taxes, whereas exploitation ones were built around extracting as much as possible from the land, being even worse to native peoples. The colonists would send immense amounts of goods to Europe, and in great part didn't consider themselves to be living in that new place, but rather were just Europeans who moved to a new venture to try to get rich and return, without regard for the new land.

Huh, now that's a good question. I never actually read real books about it, because it's something I figured I already knew from school, TV, print press etc. Minus the Marxist framing, what I said, or at least parts of it, is fairly common knowledge among anyone who's more literate than average.

But I can say that the key term here is "dependence theory". Also I recall Ha-Joon Chang writing often about neoliberal canards, which includes colonial heritage as part of the reason of modern poverty. But he usually writes to layman normies tho.

Oh yeah, I ended up writing a rant in another thread about our current situation.