Peel posted:

what form do you think such tactical support should actually take?

Vladimir Lenin posted:

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.

Top City Homo posted:

imo homework explainer is a good poster and its fun reading his posts

but thats basically it

Homework Explainer posted:

this is tricky, to be sure. the "hands off XXXX" slogan is an effective one in anti-imperialism but it runs the risk of moving into "neither X nor Y" territory which more often than not is a non-materialist position. plus there's the problem of saying "hands off syria" while also thinking russian airstrikes against "moderate rebels" are kneecapping isis. which they are.

personally i agitate against american imperialism front and center and stress self-determination as key to that position. as far as syria and ukraine are concerned, my thinking is: the syrian government is legitimate, there's reams of evidence suggesting the uprising there was fomented by nato a la the libyan civil war. whatever government would rise from the ashes of ba'athist syria will undoubtedly be worse (see: "united states foreign policy, entire history of") and there's very recent events proving this pattern true.

ukraine is being led by actual neo-nazis and the poroshenko government is pretty nakedly a western puppet regime set up by cia coup. crimea is 90-plus percent russian. it's hard to argue with annexation or whatever you want to call it when the consequences of inaction are a hostile nato state on the russian border.

i also think it's kind of reductionist to claim anti-imperialism as knee-jerk or manichean when you look at the class base of american foreign policy and the havoc it has wrought upon the globe for the past century and a half. as usual, comrade lenin drops some knowledge.


maybe some people are unthinking in their critiques of empire, but as the united states creates more and more opponents after each day of wanton slaughter, i'd say the knee-jerk types are a tiny fraction of the global anti-imperial contingent.

Top City Homo posted:

whoops and then you slipped into dumb pro russian conspiracy theories about Ukraine.

Top City Homo posted:

whoops and then you slipped into dumb pro russian conspiracy theories about Ukraine.

Peel posted:

like i alluded to above though i don't think relitigating ukraine and syria is a good direction for the thread, it'll suck everything up and then attract tub-thumpers

imidge posted:

When you say actual Odessan do you mean you live in Odessa?

imidge posted:

Oh so like the first generation Cubans that live in Florida. That probably gives you some unique insight if I'm being totally honest. Cool. [prints out your post and throws it in the garbage]

Top City Homo posted:

i understand why some us lefties would think it is plausible because the US loves to overthrow govs but in this particular situation it happens to be Russian imperialism, revanchism and nationalism trying to impose a puppet government on a society it calls The Ukraine, like a territory.

The banderists and right sector people were not prominent enough to lead the revolution and their involvement in what amounted to a mass call for self determination against being a Belorussian style russian puppet state doesn't mean that the majority of Ukrainians who wanted to chart a course for Europe suddenly became fascists lusting for ruskie death

Homework Explainer posted:

it seems kind of like a chicken and egg scenario where one power acted first but now both are contesting the territory directly or by proxy. maidan may very well have begun in good faith but obviously the new government is acting in alignment with western interests. having a new imf debtor nation with public assets that can be sold off worked out pretty handily for the united states and the eu, no?

Top City Homo posted:

btw anyone can tell me wtf is happening in Venezuela?

like why are they always missing food despite having a shitton of oil

im genuinely interested to find out and will accept all conspiracy theories as plausible.

Top City Homo posted:

btw anyone can tell me wtf is happening in Venezuela?

like why are they always missing food despite having a shitton of oil

im genuinely interested to find out and will accept all conspiracy theories as plausible.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

They're not any more a benefit to capital if you unionize them, you loving idiot. You may as well be asking why young adults are integral for worker solidarity. There's always more every year, and they're competing for your job!

DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:

it's a pretty straightforward explanation which doesn't require the intervention of the CIA, US government, aliens etc.

quote:

By late 2001 he [Chavez] introduced land reform and oil industry reform legislation that touched on the elite’s two most important sources of economic power. In reaction to this move, the opposition launched the April 2002 coup attempt and the December 2002 oil industry shutdown. These efforts at political and economic destabilization provoked a massive bout of capital flight in early 2003. At first, the government tried to counter the capital flight by intervening in the currency market, using its dollars to purchase the bolivar, in order to keep its price stable. However, this caused the central government to lose dollar currency reserves precipitously and so it abruptly changed gears and introduced a fixed exchange rate in March of 2003.
...
Of course, almost immediately a black market for dollars sprung up, with an exchange rate that was very different from the official one. At first the official exchange rate was 2.15 bolivars per dollar, while the black market rate quickly reached double or triple that rate.

For a long time, from 2004 to 2008, the Venezuelan economy did quite well, growing at a very rapid rate of, on average, 10 percent per year.
...
However, in mid-2008 the global financial crisis struck and drove the price of oil down from US$140 per barrel in mid 2008, to less than US$40 per barrel in early 2009.
...
Another measure that the government took during this time was to restrict access to dollars at the official exchange rate.
...
Also, since fewer goods could be imported at the official exchange rate, more and more importers began to use the black market to import goods, thus driving up inflation. Even if they used the official exchange rate, rather than undercutting importers who had to pay for goods at the black market rate, people knew that they could make a killing by pricing goods at the far higher black market rate and thus did so.
...
As a result, more and more people became involved in efforts to acquire dollars at the official rate, mostly by purchasing subsidized goods in Venezuela and (re-)exporting them across the border for an enormous profit (people known as bachaqueros). Of course, major companies are involved in this process too, claiming that they need to import essential goods, and then either not importing these or re-exporting them to acquire dollars. In mid-2014 president Maduro estimated that up to 40 percent of all goods imported into Venezuela (at the official exchange rate) were smuggled right back out again.
...
The big question that everyone asks—both within Venezuela and outside—is, if the low fixed exchange rate is leading to so many economic problems, why has the government not raised the rate? There are two main explanations for this. First, raising the official exchange rate so that it is more in tune with the black market exchange rate and with the prices in neighboring countries would mean raising prices for products imported at the official exchange rate, thereby further stoking an inflation rate that is already far too high. And unless wages are raised correspondingly, changing the exchange rate would also mean a corresponding decrease in incomes and thus an increase in the poverty rate. Second, changing the official exchange rate would represent an admission of defeat in the context of what the government is calling an economic war against Venezuela.
...
In other words, the current situation in Venezuela is a result, first, of the exchange rate control that was meant to defend the currency against the destabilization attempts of 2002, which themselves were the result of the Chávez’s government’s attack on capitalist class interests. Second, an already relatively fragile exchange rate control became worse in the wake of the oil price declines of 2008 and again in 2014, which made it increasingly difficult for the government to meet the demand for dollars without going further into debt. Third, the opposition’s new destabilization efforts against the Maduro government the day after Maduro’s election in April 2013 and again in early 2014, turned the existing economic volatility into a vicious cycle of inflation, shortages, black market devaluation, and renewed inflation.

Top City Homo posted:

that part is pretty terrible

but being involved with the imf is generally terrible

i don't think its a conspiracy though because the whole point was to align with western interests

but in the sense of integrating with europe not integrating with the pilfering gaunt bureaucrats of the IMF

Peel posted:

there's a venezuela thread in D&D that can give you the 'orthodox' view. it's the least of a shitshow i've ever seen a venezuela thread be with only a couple of outright eyeroll ideologues, but now that things are really bad under maduro it's definitely a solidly anti-PSUV thread that places PSUV mismanagement & corruption as the cause of the crisis and holds them as dangerously illiberal and dismissive of the rule of law.

the opposing view i'm sure this thread will elaborate on would be that the PSUV's programme has been undermined by domestic and foreign capital to encourage the public to remove them from power.

1mpper posted:

1mpper posted:

this is a pretty textbook example of a bad right-wing post about venezuela. essential to it is avoiding essential context and information. first let me begin by pointing out the absurdity of the claim that people who dedicated their lives to socialism are "cartoonishly corrupt" without much evidence, despite the fact that it would have been far more lucrative and easier (and personally safer) to just accept neoliberalism and u.s. influence if the aim was to simply to enrich themselves like other far more corrupt latin american countries.

anyway, this article does a decent job of filling in the glaring gaps in the above post: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11716


and now today, oil continues to be at a low due to policies by OPEC and increased American production that seems aimed to economically effect countries like russia and venezuela. secondly, companies with a vested interest in seeing regime change in venezuela have been supporting the black market with documented cases of commodity hoarding or smuggling subsidized goods into other countries. combine this with destablization efforts by the opposition in the form of right-wing street violence, etc. and instability and uncertainty that goes with that all adds up to what is described as an "economic war".

fortunately the chavista social programs have so far been able to prevent growth in extreme poverty and poverty statistics remain low, which is pretty noteworthy considering the situation.

finally, considering the large amount of evidence of previous us-supported coup attempts, and well-documented on-going funding by the government and u.s. businesses to venezuelan right-wing opposition groups, it's incredibly dishonest to portray the claim that much of the pressure on the venezuelan economy derives from policies and activities of the u.s. government as an insane conspiracy theory. to say this crisis is entirely the psuv's creation is incredibly dishonest and myopic, and just generally blind to the long history of u.s. economic involvement and pressure in latin america towards governments attempting socialism. this isn't to say that there haven't been frustrating failures and mistakes on the part of the chavistas, there have, but the situation is certainly not so "straightforward".

The Saurus posted:

You can't unionize them if they're illegal, and mass immigration only ever happens when it's of benefit to capital. More supply of labour = lower value for an individual labourer, regardless of anything else you want to say.

Name one time in modern history where there was mass immigration, and they were quickly unionized and didn't take jobs with lower wages and conditions than the native workforce.

Jewel Repetition posted:

Do the socialists here support unfettered trade too

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

The IWW was organizing Chinese and Japanese laborers in the early 20th Century, and the UFW organized Filipinos, Mexicans, and other Hispanics after their immigration wave in the 60s.

Read a loving book.

The Saurus posted:

Of course - the media told them it's racist to do otherwise.

1mpper posted:

it's actually a pretty materialist view of the world to think the U.S. has "tendrils everywhere" considering the trillions of dollars the U.S. invests to keep their "global hegemony" intact through covert programs and non-covert military bases the world over. i laughed when you contradicted yourself within the span of one sentence, by the way. but that's cool, why even bother to engage with someone now denying that imperialism exists.

Jewel Repetition posted:

Do the socialists here support unfettered trade too

Homework Explainer posted:

that thread is really loving bad tbh, there's a lot of outright wishing for a coup despite the history of honduras, nicaragua, chile, cuba, and venezuela (like, a decade ago!) showing us these kinds of crises are almost uniformly exacerbated by the imperial bourgeoisie if not outright caused by them. it's most likely the former in this case.

DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:

this incredibly stupid person, for instance, seems to ascribe capital flight in the early 2000s to an organized attempt to sabotage venezuela, rather than terrified investors fleeing the country after a dictator expropriated (and subsequently ran right into the ground) large sectors of industry.

Dead Cosmonaut posted:

Chavez is dead dude

Peel posted:

i'll admit my view is nostalgic for when there was some serious back and forth in it without turning into a stupid slapfight, which there isn't really any more since nobody really wants to defend maduro.


investors evacuating the country because they're worried about expropriation/taxes/whatever is one of the ways capital destabilises left-wing governments. it doesn't have to be centrally directed, capitalism is all about how things can happen without needing central direction.

when syriza takes power in greece and the bond crisis gets going again this is simultaneously a rational response by capitalists to the events in the country (including the crisis itself due to how these things spiral) and capital enforcing itself over the desires of a left-wing government. nobody ever claimed capitalists weren't acting in their own interests.

The Saurus posted:

A) those groups immigrated mostly legally

B) Those groups took jobs with lower wages and conditions than those of the native workers, resulting in downward pressure on wages and conditions.