Doug asked: >I'd like to hear someone argue to the contrary.
At the risk of appearing impossibly arrogant and irresponsible, I think it is quite possible to unleash a revolution in the United States, you just need to attack the weakest links in the chain there. All that is required is to create a sufficiently large disturbance in US money and capital markets, i.e. something which massively reduces investor confidence, such that the credit system practically collapses. We have already seen that just bombing a few buildings in the US (the 9/11 incident) could have a very powerful economic effect, but just imagine now, if the banking system as a whole became totally unworkable because somebody pulled the plug on it. If that happens, then quite simply very large numbers of people are blocked from any real monetary income at all, and have no option other than to take or barter what they need, to survive at all. The question however is whether this is ultimately a beneficial procedure, rather than an impatient ultraradical, extremist scam. Because, whereas you could technically completely stuff up the US economy through a few precisely targeted interventions, this does not necessarily mean that anything better will eventuate out of the fracas; that all depends on the political maturity and organisational capacity of the American working class and its allies to deal with the consequences, and the best indication of that political maturity is the ability of that class and its allies to invent real alternatives to the status quo, which really work. In addition, a capitalist collapse in the US just now would have gigantic adverse repercussions throughout the world; millions of people in addition to the number already dying of hunger and disease now, would also die. The ethical implications are horrendous. A revolution is not desirable for its own sake. It is merely an instrument, a means for reallocating power and wealth so that a better life becomes possible for all. Just because you instigate a revolution, doesn't necessarily mean any better society will necessarily emerge out of that. In fact, the Nicaraguan revolutionaries decided at a certain point that continuing the revolution in Nicaragua carried too high a price; imperialist aggression and blockade imposed too high a cost on the Nicaraguan people, offsetting the great benefits of civil security, land reform and economic management which the overthrow of US-supported dictator Somoza had made possible. So they agreed to step down, reluctantly perhaps, but they did it - on the basis of a sober assessment of the balance of forces and good ethics. Which is just to say that a revolution isn't always desirable. Lenin would have dismissed leftists who argue this as totally irresponsible. In the coming years, it is certainly possible that a certain sort of collapse could occur anyhow. But whereas the USA would be able to recover from that reasonably quickly in an economic sense, because of its internal resources, many other, much weaker dependent countries, would not be able to - they would suffer economically for a very long time. So, "wrecking economies to foment revolutions" is not part of the real socialist or communist program. For Marx at least, that sort of thing could be safely left to the bourgeois classes themselves, as they struggle with the contradictions of capitalism which their own theory denies. Jurriaan