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worse than bronies posted:No, I don't think you understand my point. China needs to sell... why? To get money. Okay, what are they going to do with the money? Eat it? They need money so they can pay their workers or else Bad Things like "labor unions" might happen. Also $1.6 Billion in imports happened last month so while China is a net exporter they still import a lot of poo poo.
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Aug 31, 2013 03:43
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China imports a ton of food and fuel, which you might note are necessary to wage war. They also import most of their high-tech stuff from Japan and the US. Furthermore, the US military is about ten times stronger than China's. And no two nuclear states are going to go to war with one another because the moment either side looks like it's about to lose they'll just use nukes. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Aug 31, 2013 |
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Aug 31, 2013 04:07
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Yeah, modern-day China needs a massive amount of imports, including from the US, Canada and especially Australia. Moreover, their supply lines are easy to blockade and Russia doesn't really care about helping them out at this point. Thats the thing, China at this point needs international trade than the developed world needs it. Basically can't wage a war without collapsing their economy. And no, there is no way for them to "call in all that debt."
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Aug 31, 2013 09:22
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darthzeta88 posted:France is in so we wont go in alone. And we China is kinda territorial. So I honestly do not know if we will wage or not. But I am stocking on supplies like food and water just to be safe. I think you read way too much Tom Clancy or maybe Harold Coyle.
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Aug 31, 2013 09:39
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Soviet Commubot posted:I think you read way too much Tom Clancy or maybe Harold Coyle. Well they say better to be safe than sorry. Also stocking on food and water in a hurricane zone like Texas is never a bad idea.
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Aug 31, 2013 14:53
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worse than bronies posted:No, I don't think you understand my point. China needs to sell... why? To get money. Okay, what are they going to do with the money? Eat it? I don't know the entire answer either but the U.S. and the west in general still do a great deal of high end manufacturing and provide specialized services and technology. It's a safe bet that China doesn't ship us loads of iPhones out of pure altruism or because it likes our green pieces of paper.
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Aug 31, 2013 16:26
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EDIT: Very much the wrong tab.
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Sep 1, 2013 03:35
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Ytlaya posted:...what? No we don't. There is pretty much a zero percent chance of the US going to war with a major world power. The one good thing to come from global capitalism is that a war between great powers would cause far more harm than good to multinational corporations. Not to disagree or anything since the prospect of a war with China is ridiculous, but people did say the same thing about why WW1 wouldn't happen. Though if I remember right after the war starts Lennin explains why it happens since imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. So what happened to talking about the return/rise of neo-fascism in Europe. Exactly how bad is it in Hungary? I recall hearing that people are just blowing stuff like it no longer being the Republic of Hungary out of proportion. Also it looks like things are getting bad (worse?) in Ukraine as well. http://www.salon.com/2013/08/31/anti_gay_groups_mount_attacks_in_ukraine_partner/?source=newsletter
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Sep 1, 2013 04:03
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KomradeX posted:Also it looks like things are getting bad (worse?) in Ukraine as well.
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Sep 2, 2013 00:52
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darthzeta88 posted:France is in so we wont go in alone. And we China is kinda territorial. So I honestly do not know if we will wage or not. But I am stocking on supplies like food and water just to be safe. France's power projection abilities are as hosed as every other European military at this point. They'll run out of munitions within a day.
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Sep 2, 2013 03:38
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Soviet Commubot posted:
I'm hoping the fat fascist piece of poo poo in my town doesn't get elected, this is the 93 so pretty left wing but leftists don't vote during municipal elections it seems.
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Sep 2, 2013 14:40
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A friend of mine works in the immigration sector in New Zealand. Apparently he's started to get swamped by Russian/Eastern European applications for moving here - about 3/10 are requesting asylum, political or otherwise. With this massive anti-homosexuality witch hunt in the Balkans and our having just passed protection on homosexual marriages, it's very, very easy to draw the dots.  On the other hand, it'll be nice to have some new people come in. 
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Sep 3, 2013 07:55
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WarpedNaba posted:With this massive anti-homosexuality witch hunt in the Balkans Ukraine and Russia are not "the Balkans".
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Sep 3, 2013 13:15
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WarpedNaba posted:A friend of mine works in the immigration sector in New Zealand. Apparently he's started to get swamped by Russian/Eastern European applications for moving here - about 3/10 are requesting asylum, political or otherwise. How is New Zealand as a place to live for foreigners, for example from Europe? I wouldn't mind living abroad and fortunately my girlfriend is very experienced and well educated in her field, despite her age. Our daughter speaks very good English as well. How does it compare to Australia for example?
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Sep 3, 2013 13:20
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OhYeah posted:How is New Zealand as a place to live for foreigners, for example from Europe? I wouldn't mind living abroad and fortunately my girlfriend is very experienced and well educated in her field, despite her age. Our daughter speaks very good English as well. How does it compare to Australia for example? If you've got a skill in demand, you'll be paid a fair bit and the climate is very suitable to anyone with a latitude further north than Switzerland. About 95% of Kiwis are totally cool with foreigners, the whole 'Taking our jobs' thing is usually directed at the Chinese or blamed on the weather (Seriously, our economy is so dependent on Agriculture and Horticulture that blaming recessions on the weather is a legit thing). Compared with Australia, you'll earn a bit less but you'll have better scenery, be yelled at less and generally be more relaxed. edit: Be warned, cost of living here is pretty high, being thousands of kilometres from what most people would call civilisation tends to have that effect. WarpedNaba fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Sep 3, 2013 |
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Sep 3, 2013 20:31
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OhYeah posted:How is New Zealand as a place to live for foreigners, for example from Europe? I wouldn't mind living abroad and fortunately my girlfriend is very experienced and well educated in her field, despite her age. Our daughter speaks very good English as well. How does it compare to Australia for example? Wellington and Auckland in the North Island are very multicultural, can't really see any problems for you, especially if you're white (Outside of general curiosity). Like WarpedNaba said we're a low wage country, but we don't get temperatures of a billion degrees like in Australia. As an aside, gay asylum seekers in Australia sounds like Tony Abbott's worst nightmare.
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Sep 4, 2013 10:59
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Man, I was wondering about the NPD in Germany; I was walking around Oranienburg today and saw their posters saying, "NATURALLY GERMAN" with a blonde German child, and another one saying "SEPARATE STATE FOR SINTI AND ROMA". I was like, huh, aren't Neo-Nazis banned in this country? It doesn't really seem like anybody likes them, though, even if I saw a bunch of their election posters. Jerry Manderbilt fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Sep 7, 2013 |
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Sep 7, 2013 16:48
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Can I ask a tangentially-related question? I was just reading the several posts on trying to quantify and qualify what fascism exactly is and it got me thinking about this. Years ago, being a teenager, I was very Far Left. I was in love with the October Revolution and Leninism. The internet was very accommodating, with a whole sight dedicated to Marxist theorists and collecting their various writings. I also found many a university video with a professor lecturing on how great the Revolution was and how Stalin perverted it. I recalled all this when I saw a documentary on the History Channel about the French Reign of Terror, which features a name I hadn't heard in a long time - Alan Woods. Now this all relates to fascism because I am...confused. This thread says there is a resurgence of fascism but I don't think there is a Fascism.org with writings from Giovanni Gentile, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Alfred Rosenberg, etc. I certainly can't find scores of speeches at big public venues like colleges where people openly preach fascism. I guess I could be missing these sites but my question is this. Why has Marxism survived in such a united, public form? The Western World spent a few years openly combating fascism while it spent several decades preaching and battling the evils of Communism. It just seems...odd to me that fascism is the super-taboo. Even fascists know they're never gonna get anywhere calling themselves fascists. THe public opinion is just more poisoned against than anyone else, even if they are supporting more benign forms of the ideology.
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Sep 8, 2013 03:28
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Because the USSR and China were a lot more successful in covering up and otherwise obfuscating the many deaths their policies caused, helped in large part by many Western useful idiots.
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Sep 8, 2013 03:55
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NikkolasKing posted:Can I ask a tangentially-related question? I was just reading the several posts on trying to quantify and qualify what fascism exactly is and it got me thinking about this. In very, very simplified form, which admittedly leaves a ton of details out: Fascism is an ideology of violence, whereas Communism (in most though not all of its varied forms) is an ideology which has used violence. It is possible to conceive, though perhaps not enact, a pacifist or at least no-more-violent-than-Liberal-democracy form of Socialism/Communism. The same is impossible with any form of Fascism. For the former violence is structural, the latter functional. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 04:10
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NikkolasKing posted:It just seems...odd to me that fascism is the super-taboo. Even fascists know they're never gonna get anywhere calling themselves fascists. THe public opinion is just more poisoned against than anyone else, even if they are supporting more benign forms of the ideology. It's because neither one is seen as remotely threatening to the liberal political order but fascism is currently a low and lower middle class philosophy while communism is currently more the domain of the upper and upper middle class. Basically, the classes who control discourse in the west know people who went through a communist phase, but they wouldn't be caught dead hanging around someone who was a fascist. SickZip fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 04:11
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NikkolasKing posted:Can I ask a tangentially-related question? I was just reading the several posts on trying to quantify and qualify what fascism exactly is and it got me thinking about this. Fascism never has had the same firm ideological basis as Marxism and has traditionally been heavily influenced, especially regarding neo-fascism, by national circumstances. Also because Marxism is harder to argue against because of the historical faults of capitalism. Also, Marxism also hasn't survive in a "united public form." Also the historical records at least of Stalinist Russia are relatively open, the disagreement is over estimated numbers that go beyond recorded deaths (like excess deaths).
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Sep 8, 2013 04:16
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-Troika- posted:Because the USSR and China were a lot more successful in covering up and otherwise obfuscating the many deaths their policies caused, helped in large part by many Western useful idiots. You do realize that global capitalism has killed at least 100,000,000 people by starvation alone in the past OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 04:21
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Socialism is a pretty broad ideology that covers a pretty huge range of systems, from Stalinist dictatorships, anarchist communes, European social democracy (at least the popular conscious considers it socialism), syndicalism/trade unionism, Maoist third-worldism, etc. Fascism means pretty much one thing, and its a pretty awful thing.
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Sep 8, 2013 04:46
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Captain_Maclaine posted:In very, very simplified form, which admittedly leaves a ton of details out: Fascism is an ideology of violence, whereas Communism (in most though not all of its varied forms) is an ideology which has used violence. It is possible to conceive, though perhaps not enact, a pacifist or at least no-more-violent-than-Liberal-democracy form of Socialism/Communism. The same is impossible with any form of Fascism. For the former it is functional, the latter structural. Where as in this thread I have seen people claim their is no violence inherent in Marxism-Leninism specifically, which is just not true. Lenin posted:We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters — then we are for it! Lenin posted:Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws. The final stage of communism being nothing but a pipe dream.
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Sep 8, 2013 05:06
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A Sloth posted:Where as in this thread I have seen people claim their is no violence inherent in Marxism-Leninism specifically, which is just not true. Marxism-Leninism is not the only form of Marxism or Communism.
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Sep 8, 2013 05:20
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A Sloth posted:Where as in this thread I have seen people claim their is no violence inherent in Marxism-Leninism specifically, which is just not true. I fail to see how that refutes my main point about how, historically, Communists have used violence as a means to an end (however misguided this or that bunch may well be), whereas Fascists view violence as the end to be achieved. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 05:35
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But has been a common strain of Communist ideology, gets a free pass and has had people say it is not violent in this thread. Did I say it was the only sort? Also the OP has listed the UK governments anti illegal immigration campaign as fascist which is laughable. People can proclaim to be all sorts of 'ists' relating to violent 20th Century Politics. And quite easily get away with claiming violence was justified or deny it. People like Hobsbawn can stay comfortably accepted in academia where as those accused of Fascism or nationalism don't last. The point I meant to make is that the violent strains related to massive political violence are still accepted more. The question posed was dodged by saying not all Communism is the same. However he did say Marxism which is a lot looser, but it isn't like Leninists and Trotskyists have not been shoved out of academia or their association with mass murder kept in the limelight as much as fascists. A Sloth fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 05:35
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A Sloth posted:But has been a common strain of Communist ideology, gets a free pass and has had people say it is not violent in this thread. Did I say it was the only sort? Also the OP has listed the UK governments anti illegal immigration campaign as fascist which is laughable. Honestly, violence is regularly used to achieve many political objectives, including liberal ones. The issue isn't necessarily the use of violence but the extreme it is used and for what result. In addition, you could say that most capitalist states use the violence or the threat of violence to maintain itself. Stalin and Mao were extreme uses of violence but in the case of Stalin there is at least some argument be made about utility, which frankly doesn't happen in Fascism. Hitler's violence produced very little benefit. Obviously, it is much tough to make that argument about the cultural revolution.
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Sep 8, 2013 05:46
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Those quotes by lenin only further reinforce the point about what makes fascism different: lenin explicitly couches the violence in it's necessity to achieve a real, tangible goal (a new political system) directed by at a group of people that oppose that transition because they control the current one. There's a tendency to say that fascism is violence, but that's not true. Rather, it positions violence as a device to transform/change/mutate people or society. The society is analogized to a biological organism that is 'cleaned' through the use of force - who it is directed at doesn't really matter, nor why. People who look different or behave different, a minority ethnicity or weak group is then a favorite target, and that's what makes anti-immigration groups fascist. They position themselves as restoring the REAL COUNTRY (which in this case has a racialized component) through pointless violence against those that don't fit that conception. Immigrants and recent immigrants are not in a position of power or control, they don't really pose a threat to the current social order. This makes them an easy target for an ideology based on transformative violence. Same with roma, homosexuals, etc. Marxism and its derivatives aren't based on notions of biopower or concepts of people as needing (or ever able) to transform themselves. It is based on historical materialism and the ultimate power of material conditions. The transition from capitalism to socialism to communism isn't then dependent on expecting people to act in a different character, merely that acting communally will be easier than not. Liberalism and it's derivatives actually has somewhat similar assumptions, but it's focus is purely on the state and balancing the power of the state versus the groups it must govern (the monolithic 'public'). That's why you can end up with widely accepted authors on what constitutes a 'liberal' or 'socialist' vision, but you can't do the same with fascism. It's not for a lack of trying, Fascists imitate ideologies to give themselves legitimacy, but there's not one vision that you can point to and say "That is The Fascism". It's particular to the area and time it emerges from. It TRIES to keep up an appearance of being intellectual and analytic, but it can't do that because it has no rigorous conception of what a human being is and what society is. It takes 'common-sense' inherited cultural notions to their terrifying conclusion. It attempts to create an answer without first examining what exactly the question is, as a real scholar would do. It has all the trappings and and pretense of modern thinking, without any of the responsibilities or obligations. rudatron fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 05:53
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At the end of the day the ideologies of Leninism and Fascism promote violence as a means to an end. The difference in their ends doesn't change that, nor does the Marxist belief that the transition towards Communism is an inevitability. The Marxist-Leninist and Maoist states used violence in great measure to transform society.
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Sep 8, 2013 06:04
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rudatron posted:That's why you can end up with widely accepted authors on what constitutes a 'liberal' or 'socialist' vision, but you can't do the same with fascism. It's not for a lack of trying, Fascists imitate ideologies to give themselves legitimacy, but there's not one vision that you can point to and say "That is The Fascism". It's particular to the area and time it emerges from. It TRIES to keep up an appearance of being intellectual and analytic, but it can't do that because it has no rigorous conception of what a human being is and what society is. It takes 'common-sense' inherited cultural notions to their terrifying conclusion. It attempts to create an answer without first examining what exactly the question is, as a real scholar would do. It has all the trappings and and pretense of modern thinking, without any of the responsibilities or obligations. It's interesting that both fascists and Marxists are united in their common denial of the crimes committed by regimes labeled as Fascist or Communist. I mentioned earlier that a lot of Marxist apologists these days totally distance themselves from Stalin. Well, Fascists try to distance themselves from National Socialism, insisting only Italy was ever "truly Fascist." THen again, I read other points saying that Nazi Germany was closer to Fascist ideals than any other country. It's all very confusing to me. The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that Franco's Spain wasn't Fascist.
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Sep 8, 2013 07:02
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Liberal democracies use violence to attain their goals literally every day in every capitalist democratic state, city, etc. There is no such thing as a viable political ideology which does not use violence to attain its ends. If you're mad at fascists and communists for using violence but don't care about the ongoing systemic brutality used by liberal democracies to enforce and attain their ends, you're a hypocrite who should admit that the violence is not what you really object to.
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Sep 8, 2013 07:05
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Liberals are more than capable of excusing or denying crimes committed by their regimes or allies (Iran-Contra, pinochet, any of the african famines, etc). If you stand there, cross your arms and say "they don't count" then you're denying them - if you talk about how times have changed, then you're just distancing yourself from them! What makes fascism exceptional isn't that what is does is criminal from any arbitrary point of view, but that what it does is pointless. It's not after a tangible goal but an perceptual attainment of an immaterial goal - the metaphorical transformation of society - whose definition can be changed and moved because it never really had one in the first place. rudatron fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 07:19
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rudatron posted:Liberals are more than capable of excusing or denying crimes committed by their regimes or allies (Iran-Contra, pinochet, any of the african famines, etc). If you stand there, cross your arms and say "they don't count" then you're denying them - if you talk about how times have changed, then you're just distancing yourself from them! Marxism has an economic base for its reasoning that is based on history, while Fascism has a cultural and an emotional base that is almost always a hisorical. Mussolini's Italy had nothing to do with the Roman Empire, and Hitler's regime has very little to do with the "First and Second Reichs" beyond some monarchist holdouts. History is a means to an end, rather than a part of a body of evidence to support a theory. In addition, there are still frequent academic battles amount of deaths attributed to communism including famine and excess deaths which aren't in other circumstances like British India.
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Sep 8, 2013 07:30
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Ardennes posted:Also because Marxism is harder to argue against because of the historical faults of capitalism. Yeah, people applying Marxist philosophy to their political systems has resulted in nothing but utopias, right? Capitalism has been around longer than either Fascism or Communism. That alone means it's gonna have more points in whatever you're scoring it in, both good and bad.
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Sep 8, 2013 08:03
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NikkolasKing posted:It's interesting that both fascists and Marxists are united in their common denial of the crimes committed by regimes labeled as Fascist or Communist. I mentioned earlier that a lot of Marxist apologists these days totally distance themselves from Stalin. Well, Fascists try to distance themselves from National Socialism, insisting only Italy was ever "truly Fascist." THen again, I read other points saying that Nazi Germany was closer to Fascist ideals than any other country. I don't think it follows that socialists rejecting Stalin are doing so in order to deny culpability for crimes in the USSR under Stalin. The largest anti-Stalinist bloc within revolutionary socialists are Trotskyists. Trotsky and Trotskyists fought against Stalin before and during his regime, with tens of thousands killed or sent to gulags for their efforts. Yet by your formula, Trotskyists who challenge the legitimacy of Stalin's regime are only doing so in order to try to cleanse their hands of his crimes - which is obviously nonsensical. Show me the fascist ideology whose members fought for years at great personal risk against Hitler. I also find it interesting that many of those in this thread piously denouncing violence and embracing liberalism are completely ignoring centuries of enormous violence and suffering inflicted by liberal capitalism. European empires alone killed hundreds of millions of people. In the case of British India, for example, the starvation to death of tens of millions of people was a direct result of liberal thought with regards to free trade and government spending.
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Sep 8, 2013 08:04
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All the discussion of fascism and violence is once again missing the point, which is that violence is an end- that is, a worthy goal in and if itself- rather than a means in fascist ideology. There is no fascist utopia on which violence is "no longer necessary." A fascist utopia is a society in which sadistic violence is inflicted on a daily basis as an integral aspect of the social order, because that is a good and desirable thing according to fascist ideology. I have no patience for anyone who would obscure this fact to score points against some imaginary ideological enemy or supposed hypocrisy.
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Sep 8, 2013 08:16
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Fojar38 posted:Yeah, people applying Marxist philosophy to their political systems has resulted in nothing but utopias, right? Ultimately, the faults of capitalism and Fascism are unavoidable, the same can't be said of Marxism. At best, capitalism can be reformed when a strong Marxist world prescience exists.
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Sep 8, 2013 08:26
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Ardennes posted:Ultimately, the faults of capitalism and Fascism are unavoidable, the same can't be said of Marxism. How do you know that? Seems like history had demonstrated that communism is heavily predisposed to authoritarian tyranny and its idealism is easily and almost unavoidably perverted to such ends. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Sep 8, 2013 |
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Sep 8, 2013 08:44
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