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ronya posted:so, kulaks If you want to discuss the collectivization policy of the Soviet Union, start an appropriate thread or link me to one. I made the mistake of indulging an unrelated post, and I'm not going to continue doing so.
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Jun 11, 2016 09:58
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Ormi posted:That's a bold claim. What are you basing it on? How hard will he have to get trounced for the popularity of his ideology to come into question, instead of his personal electability? On the strength of the words coming out of his mouth, Trump beat every other Republican contender despite the machinery and efforts and money of every professional Republican in America. How hard will he have to get trounced? I dunno, that depends; do you have a time machine that goes backwards? e; wait this forum probates for candidate chat, doesn't it... good stuff, good stuff...
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Jun 11, 2016 10:00
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Homework Explainer posted:e: Because I just had to deal with being called a Nazi sympathizer — something I've never heard in my life — let me reiterate: Making piles upon piles of dead Nazis may have been the greatest achievement of the Soviet Union, or been the greatest overall endeavor of the 20th century. I despise fascism. It makes me sick to my stomach. you're going to hear it a lot more, and a lot worse besides, if you want to write tankie essays like the OP it's just kind of historically unaware. it's one thing to be an unreconstructed 1960s-vintage Soviet apologist; it's quite another to be an unreconstructed 1960s-vintage Soviet apologist whilst being blithely unaware that it isn't the 1960s any more - you have to address the sheer nakedness of pro-ethnically-Russian imperialism clothed in internationalist socialist rhetoric (balanced against the obvious disaster that was Yugoslavia reacting against communist cosmopolitanism, etc etc). you could say: all that was actually really reasonable in the foreign policy context! for reasons etc etc etc. Also all the subsidization of Russian heavy industry was entirely fair given the cheap Russian oil offered in exchange, the protesters really were puppets of American capitalism, blah blah. I've seen these arguments advanced. But you have to advance them (and then be predictably accused of functionally endorsing the intra-European imperialism of the Nazis, for reasons which I hope are obvious, but you should have a better counterargument than pearl-clutching in shock) also there have been other things added to the leftist plate since 1919; feminism, greenism, and multiculturalism have all arguably gained a greater priority than vanguardism with the left at large. You might reject that. But you can't just say nothing about it. ronya fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 10:08
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op how is what the chinese are doing in the south china sea not imperialism? how do you feel about chechnya? Jose fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 10:15
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ronya-sempai you are the best poster on this entire forum, i'd just like you to know
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Jun 11, 2016 10:57
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To answer your post OP: Lenin was wrong. Namaste.
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Jun 11, 2016 13:45
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I agree that imperialism is awful, but I think you're misjudging the political context for leftists in Western countries. Leftists in Western countries don't need to make nice about a bunch of jerk off regimes in order to oppose imperialism, and actually doing so may be problematic for such efforts. Like, if you find yourself at the head of a socialist or communist revolution and are staring down the barrel of a military response from the imperialistic powers, then yes, you've got to be prepared to make a devil's bargain with anyone who can help you. However, we're not in that position. We're (mostly) within Western countries, and from the point of view of political agitation, being too on side with North Korea makes us look bad. It's far better to attack imperialism from the point of view that it is a selfish project, and that its reported objectives (to help out the citizens of the third world states it targets) is ridiculous. That it always ends up killing them in job lots. That it's expensive, that its ineffective. That it's more immoral than what it's attempting to dispense with. It is always wise to be prepared for the argument "We should bomb X because X is awful." but I think a better response to that, from a tactical point of view is "Do you think bombing it and killing hundreds of thousands of its people will make it better? And for whom?"
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Jun 11, 2016 13:56
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Hey thanks for making this thread I was looking forward to it. The main point I would have wanted to bring up (the question of whether multipolar imperialism will really be preferable to unipolar imperialism) is being put forward by better posters than me, so I'll dwell on this bit that caught my eye:Homework Explainer posted:In any case, not since Rome have we seen this kind of imperial fervor. No force in history has had the technology, the manpower and the unmitigated gall to wreak havoc on other nations' right to self-determination. With this force has come death, deprivation and a ravaged Third World on a scale never observed in history. How could we look the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the eye in 1945, much less now, with the knowledge that was only the beginning? I dunno dude. Does it really compare unfavourably to the 19th or early 20th centuries? When large chunks of the world were run by direct administration for crude robbery by the European great powers? The 20th century saw the collapse of the British and other empires and a much more hands-off approach, and even the burst of imperial delusion brought about by the fall of the Soviet Union has ended in bungled failure in Afghanistan and Iraq. On the face of it you could draw the exact opposite conclusion - the great empires collapsed between the weight of their own administration costs and the pressure of national libertation movements from below, and have continued to decline as the world outside of North America and Western Europe asserts itself and develops economically (which they are able to do because they have thrown off imperialism to a significant degree). The rapid rise of asian economies over recent decades is one manifestation of this, and even Africa is managing to climb out of the wreckage left by the 19th and 20th century domination of the continent. Of course this is just more capitalism, but it's international capitalism, not national imperialism. Peel fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 14:00
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I might be missing something obvious, but surely agitating for hegemonic succession would be more likely to produce an apocalypse than stave one off? I don't think we've really done a transition to a multipolar world in the nuclear age, so I think at least considering that would be important to your thesis.
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Jun 11, 2016 14:11
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Peel posted:Hey thanks for making this thread I was looking forward to it. The main point I would have wanted to bring up (the question of whether multipolar imperialism will really be preferable to unipolar imperialism) is being put forward by better posters than me, so I'll dwell on this bit that caught my eye: No. That was worse. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 14:21
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op seeing as how Tibet is still occupied and Taiwan operates effectively autonomously from China (separate government, currency, military, etc.) Tibet as 1950 and Taiwan as 1950s-to present should probably be reversed. despite military actions taken there by the Chinese how come you don't mention xinjiang or Inner Mongolia? do you really genuinely believe that they truly operate autonomously just because the government named them that? do you deny that "chequebook diplomacy" as practiced by the prc throughout the pacific does not come from an imperialistic mindset?
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Jun 11, 2016 14:22
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Jose posted:op how is what the chinese are doing in the south china sea not imperialism? If it is, it's kind of scrub-tier imperialism isn't it? I mean it's right next to them.
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Jun 11, 2016 14:22
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Just because they're bad at imperialism doesn't stop it being exactly that. The op thinks china is combating it lmao
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Jun 11, 2016 14:34
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Homework Explainer posted:If you want to discuss the collectivization policy of the Soviet Union, start an appropriate thread or link me to one. I made the mistake of indulging an unrelated post, and I'm not going to continue doing so. If you can't process the fact that there's such a thing as internal empire then I think the subject of your moral blindness is pretty relevant.
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Jun 11, 2016 14:34
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Russia, Iran and China are regional hegemons with internal policies that result in the violent suppression of dissent and external policies that basically amount to: "rebuild old empire we once had." They are not anti-imperial, they are in fact, just imperial. Supporting them just because they aren't America is to ignore their actions in the past and the present as well as to deliberately ignore their stated and unstated ambitions for the future.
NewMars fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 14:43
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Homework Explainer posted:I ask that this thread not devolve into pointless digressions into how I or other anti-imperialists unequivocally love every listed government or head of state or think they never made a mistake. Besides being patently untrue, it's not the purpose of the thread. For much of these countries, my goal — and the goal of many other anti-imperialists — is improvement by means of mass workers' movements, which can better develop in periods of economic uncertainty brought on by anti-imperialist action. This isn't "accelerationism;" it's an understanding that apparatuses of repression are harder to maintain with a weakened economy. The same, of course, goes for the United States. I have to take issue with this because it's a bit of a cheap way to try to avoid the elephant in the room. How can you set up a discussion on anti-imperialism, spend all that time writing up descriptions of anti-imperialist countries, and then say, "Let's not talk about how many of these places are absolutely terrible and are not actually good examples of an alternative to imperialism"? It seems like you've included them in your OP because to omit them would be akin to an admission that they're actually "bad" (for the sake of brevity) countries, but you don't actually want to address that fact. Also, dismissing critical views on those countries as the product of "capitalist ideology" completely ignores the fact that in many cases, the whole reason we have critical views on those countries is because their very own people are bringing global attention to human rights violations, etc. there. Are these people also the victims of capitalist ideology? The problem that I have with the "Imperialism vs. anti-imperialism" world view is that it operates at such a high level of abstraction that it quite literally turns the world into a 2-dimensional one. You're an imperialist, or you're an anti-imperialist. Imperialism is bad, and anti-imperialism is good. This kind of thinking is at best lazy and at worst dishonest, because it forces you to take what are incredibly complex situations and boil them down into one of two categories. This is why the OP's section on North Korea essentially says, "Well, we're not really sure what's going on in there, and if you were Kim Il Sung wouldn't you do the same thing?", even though we are in fact quite sure what conditions are like there based on testimony from people who have escaped. Of course, the 2-dimensional reply to this would be something like, "This is what the imperialist media does; those people escaped, so obviously they've got something against the North Korean government; those people are lying", etc. The same goes for the section on Venezuela, which I can summarize in one sentence: "Things aren't that great there, but the US has tried a bunch of times to overthrow the government". Again, absolutely no regard for the complex situation on the ground. The 2-dimensional lens tells us that Venezuela is anti-imperialist so it's good, and when bad things happen there it's because of imperialism. I guess what I'm saying is that this kind of thinking lends itself to people who sympathize with the (very good) ideals of socialism to be essentially duped by these horrible governments that have figured out that if they just called themselves socialist or anti-imperialist, they're bound to pick up loads of support from uncritical people around the world. EDIT: Here's a link to the Venezuela thread. 71 pages of why you do not want to be associated with the PSUV, imperialism or no imperialism. EDIT 2: I did some learnin' and I understand now that this post didn't quite "get" your point, OP. Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 14:44
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This thread makes great case in favor of imperialism. My life in the western empire is pretty good even before you compare it to being under a supposedly anti-imperialist country.
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Jun 11, 2016 15:02
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Homework Explainer posted:Well, you're right, I do disagree with that assessment. After the chemical attack, America was spoiling for invasion and the deal Putin brokered was the only thing standing between Syria and full-scale military action by the United States. That deal suggests to me that Putin, for all his bloviating, isn't as bloodthirsty as he's made out. That was a strategic move, sure, but the end result was the prevention of a land war between Russian and American troops, undoubtedly an even bloodier result than the current situation. Nonsense. Not one word was said suggesting ground troops in Syria. The strategy was very openly to "punish" the Assad regime for using chemical weapons, so that the international norm was upheld. Based on the military build up at the time, and what insiders were saying, the strikes were going to be mainly cosmetic. There was no talk of working with the opposition or anything like that. The Obama administration was solely interested in degrading Assad's capability to use chemical weapons. That's as much as Obama was willing to commit at the height of the fervor, and he of course began to have doubts about going through with it very early in the process. He spoke about it with his advisers before the Russian proposal even came up. When the offer of negotiations with Assad over his chemical weapons came about, it gave Obama a chance to de-escalate the situation while still having at least something to defend himself for how the red line saga was handled. The idea that Putin somehow prevented the US from invading Syria is nothing short of ridiculous. We were never going to invade, and if we were, Assad making some weak rear end offer to hand over a declared stockpile of chemical weapons after he murdered 1,000 civilians with them was by no means a diplomatic checkmate that forced the US to stand down. Nobody was even talking about that offer until the US accepted it. And lol that the country who invaded Ukraine, shot down civilian airliners, then turned around and started bombing US backed forces in Syria is somehow the rational country at the table saving us from a war between Russia and the US, when Putin swings his dick around harder than anyone. quote:With respect to your position about a potential "vacuum" — and I don't mean to be rude or inflammatory, so forgive me if it comes off that way — your language mirrors that of the imperialists, or the colonialists of days past, even. We don't really know that the absence of American influence will result in disaster, do we? It's not a guarantee in the same way that the United States sticking its nose where it doesn't belong has proven to be over the last century or so. Just because an absence of influence MIGHT end up going sour doesn't make preemptive intervention an imperative. I gave you a very clear and specific example where the US was a background actor, Syria. You can bring up the TOW and CIA training programs all you want (the earliest of which began kicking off in earnest in 2013, years after KSA and Qatar had gotten deeply involved with the opposition), but the fact of the matter is that these programs were largely meant to appease people who were demanding action, without actually providing it. As a result, several other countries have played a more prominent role in shaping the Syrian Civil War than the US. And Syria is a loving disaster with no end in sight. Do you dispute that, and if so, why. quote:It's important to remember that American imperialism is written in most of these countries' DNA. Iran had its revolution over discontent with the Shah, who we put in power. You're oversimplifying. Iran did have its revolution in large part over discontent with the Shah, but who led the revolution? The clerical establishment. The clerical establishment who hated Mossadegh just as much as they hated Pahlavi. Khomeini called Mossadegh "a dog with glasses that they named Ayatollah." Influential clerical figures like the speaker of Parliament, Abol-Ghasem Kashani, despised Mossadegh, and allied with the British and the US to have him overthrown. Mossadegh had to move his office to his home because Islamist groups loyal to the Ayatollahs, like the Fadayan, were trying to assassinate him, and carried out successful attacks against people close to them. But yes, we live in a world where the clerical establishment in Iran had never heard of the term Sharia law until dear Mossadegh was unceremoniously removed from power by the imperialist west, and the current political environment in the country is 100% the product of US aggression. This is why you and your ideological allies are so difficult to take seriously. You so casually take these huge pieces and mash them together without having any clue what any of them are. You're taking a narrative and squeezing the facts to fit because you feel the narrative is right, so the facts should, in theory, align with it. But the narrative doesn't align with the facts, and this whole thing falls flat on its face with even cursory research on any of your claims. quote:I won't disagree that the countries you've named have engaged in military action. But I don't agree that all military action is created equal, and that any incursion on another border is an imperialist act by default. There's a really good — and long, fair warning — article that goes into detail on what distinguishes the two, using the Russian Federation as its example. Here it is. I'd be interested to hear about an example of a vacuum, a situation without the imperial powers getting involved, too, because I'm honestly drawing a blank. quote:Only somewhat less fundamental than the dominance by imperialist countries of global economic structures is the role they play in policing the world order. Countries of the centre are typically members of politico-military blocs directed against the periphery and semi-periphery. Leading imperialist powers have important weapons industries, and participate as sellers in the global arms trade. Ok so bombing Iraqi kids is imperialism but bombing Syrian kids isn't because Russia isn't the greatest of all world powers, so they are simply defending themselves against western aggression when they do it. This is a bit like saying rape is only rape if the perpetrator is taller than 6'3," otherwise it's ~something else.~ Nobody forced Russia to start bombing markets and hospitals in Idlib. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 15:05
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AlexanderCA posted:This thread makes great case in favor of imperialism. My life in the western empire is pretty good even before you compare it to being under a supposedly anti-imperialist country. That's the magic of it. Our oppression and slavery is neatly outsourced to our allies and prisons. We can picnic safely without having to think about such things.
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Jun 11, 2016 15:05
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Im not american, our prisons are fine.
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Jun 11, 2016 15:11
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Anti-imperialism of the sort of the OP advocates is explicitly called a deal with the devil in the thread title, I don't think it's fair to accuse him of being unaware that his proposed allies are bad. He literally compares them to Satan. Rather it's directed against American hegemony as a particularly harmful manifestation of imperialism, such that we can justify aligning with unpleasant and even imperialist forces to oppose it, since the alternative is aligning with almost nobody at all. It's not a facially ridiculous idea since the USA is an incredibly belligerent and duplicitous country, and in this era where military intervention is less and less viable*, creating a situation where small countries can shop around for patrons sounds good just by analogy with the economic theory of monopoly vs. competition. But I think this post has a good counterpoint to that: FBH991 posted:Like, if you find yourself at the head of a socialist or communist revolution and are staring down the barrel of a military response from the imperialistic powers, then yes, you've got to be prepared to make a devil's bargain with anyone who can help you. However, we're not in that position. *A point I liked in the OP is the idea that anti-war activism makes war less palatable for governments. We've gone from throwing men in to the meatgrinder in WW1 to the controversial draft in Vietnam to a few thousand deaths being a scandal in Iraq. It's only hypothetical that anti-war movements are a cause rather than symptom of social mores around war though. If we can work out how the trick works, repeating it in upcoming imperialist countries could be the best long-term move.
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Jun 11, 2016 15:16
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Peel posted:Anti-imperialism of the sort of the OP advocates is explicitly called a deal with the devil in the thread title, I don't think it's fair to accuse him of being unaware that his proposed allies are bad. He literally compares them to Satan. Yeah, you're right. I re-read the OP and I can see that he's well aware that a lot of these places are absolutely terrible. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I cannot in good conscience say, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and then go ahead and throw a bit of support behind North Korea, Syria and Venezuela. I can understand why someone might be OK with doing that, but I personally cannot cross that line. I'm not sure this position necessarily equates with support for imperialism, because I definitely don't like imperialism. What do you do when you think both options are terrible?  EDIT: Let me expand a little: I can't justify supporting a government like the Venezuelan one, which violently suppresses peaceful demonstrations, jails political dissenters, diverts public money into private pockets at the cost of creating a crippling shortage of food and medicine and violates human rights on a systemic level simply because I dislike the USA more. I just don't understand how it's OK to make a deal with one devil against another. At the end of the day, aren't you still shaking hands with bad people? Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 15:23
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AlexanderCA posted:Im not american, our prisons are fine. Ah, then you must benefit from your country's fealty to ours, in which case the same applies.
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Jun 11, 2016 15:24
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Thanks for taking the effort to make this thread, OP. Sorry so many are being so nakedly hostile. You've probably already seen it, but last year Monthly Review published an entire issue centered around contemporary analyses of imperialism, with some very strong content. I'm seeing that a lot of people aren't quite apprehending the first principles expressed in your post. For what it's worth, there are a handful of passages in Lenin's "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination" that might help further clarify your "devil's bargain" angle: quote:By supporting the right to secession, we are told, you are supporting the bourgeois nationalism of the oppressed nations. This is what Rosa Luxemburg says... (From ch 4 & 5, emphasis added.) So, just to recapitulate: Opposing imperialism entails supporting people fighting it, but the latter may have problematic aspects in their own right. At first glance, it might seem the only sensible thing to do is to denounce all parties equally. Yet, in an unequal world, such a blanket approach in the final analysis serves the hegemonic power, much in the same way one could argue that mocking everyone "equally" tends to privilege the dominant chauvinism(s). The different tendencies of the forces in question, though they appear as a unity, need to be separated conceptually — almost in the manner one would decompose a vector into multiple independent ones, or a musical note into its sine-wave components — and prioritized accordingly. And with imperialism being the greatest contradiction at play in human affairs these days, it tends to get top billing. Thus, we wind up with what some have called the "greatest-danger principle." Thus, a Marxist might be compelled to provisionally support the liberation struggle of a national bourgeoisie, even if their first allegiance is unquestionably to the proletariat, as the occupying power poses a greater threat to the rise of a workers' movement. This doesn't mean that said support would extend beyond the bounds of the bourgeoisie's anti-imperial praxis. Similarly, if your house caught on fire at the same time that your bathroom sink sprang a leak, prioritizing the first problem doesn't mean you're "pro-leaky sink," or a "floodist" or whatever. Ultimately, it's a finite world. Anyway, I hope this ramble is helpful to someone. FBH991 posted:Like, if you find yourself at the head of a socialist or communist revolution and are staring down the barrel of a military response from the imperialistic powers, then yes, you've got to be prepared to make a devil's bargain with anyone who can help you. I see what you're saying, but can you also see how that approach might be a bit self-defeating? If, in pursuit of ideological purity, everyone of conscience distanced themselves from that hypothetical "anyone," irrespective of the merits of its assistance, wouldn't this only serve to chip at the legitimacy of the intervention, and by extension the movement they're seeking to help? Moreover, I have a real hard time with blanket condemnations or praises on the whole; for all its heuristic appeal, "this is a bad country" vs. "this is a good country" is simplistic to the point of childishness, and smudges out any class content to boot. Saying "North Korea is bad" is what leads to people saying things like "well then let's just glass 'em and be done with it," when in fact people probably don't have the North Korean people in mind in making the original statement. Your sensitivity to current "position" is, however, of paramount importance; I think few would disagree that trenches tend to breed a different mindset than cushy desk chairs. This probably also says a lot about what to expect from a discussion such as this in most affluent, comfortable venues. Peel posted:Of course this is just more capitalism, but it's international capitalism, not national imperialism. It's different for sure. A comprehensive discussion of imperialism today would need to focus heavily on neo-colonialism, unequal exchange, and related phenomena (as does this one). That said, I don't feel qualified either intellectually or morally to comment on which iteration is "worse." Aeolius fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 15:25
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Aeolius posted:Anyway, I hope this ramble is helpful to someone. It was. Thank you. I feel like I have a much clearer understanding of the premise now.
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Jun 11, 2016 15:30
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Homework Explainer posted:The Sino-Soviet Split was the biggest political blunder of the 20th century. Lots of mistakes followed, for sure. I agree with the notion that actions speak louder with words, but I also think it's in the best interests of the political left to stand against American excess without endorsing Chinese state capitalism masked as "communism." So long as the American public is scared of socialism because we make it easy to attach it to regressive authoritarian powers, we won't get anywhere. I missed most of the thread because I fell asleep, but I'd like to point out that as the embargo falls and Cuba becomes reintegrated into the world, they represent a great chance to show that a socialist state isn't a big scary boogeyman without having to endorse Russian fascists or whatever.
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Jun 11, 2016 15:30
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Aeolius posted:It's different for sure. A comprehensive discussion of imperialism today would need to focus heavily on neo-colonialism, unequal exchange, and related phenomena (as does this one). That said, I don't feel qualified either intellectually or morally to comment on which iteration is "worse." I wouldn't want to make a definitive judgement without proper study either, but I tend to assume the modern is better on the strength of the economic performance of peripheral countries (e: and, importantly, ordinary people in those countries rather than just a domestic elite), of which this is the most recent discussion I've seen. The world outside the metropoles isn't sinking into deeper relative penury but gaining in wealth and power (interestingly the best performer here is China, which the OP is a relative fan of and even considers socialist rather than capitalist). They didn't get there by refusing participation in the modern imperial system of banks and 'free trade', but by participating in it judiciously, and they were able to get away with it to the tune of rapid increases in national development. Compare to the old imperialism where China was hobbled and India outright conquered by military force, which had to be thrown off before the modern growth could happen. In this light the American unipolar system looks like a blip caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union rather than a lasting triumph of the imperial project. But as I said, I'm not going to make a claim to authority on the strength of one blog post. I'll have a read of the MR issue. Peel fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 15:57
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Aeolius posted:Thus, a Marxist might be compelled to provisionally support the liberation struggle of a national bourgeoisie, even if their first allegiance is unquestionably to the proletariat, as the occupying power poses a greater threat to the rise of a workers' movement. This doesn't mean that said support would extend beyond the bounds of the bourgeoisie's anti-imperial praxis. Similarly, if your house caught on fire at the same time that your bathroom sink sprang a leak, prioritizing the first problem doesn't mean you're "pro-leaky sink," or a "floodist" or whatever. Ultimately, it's a finite world. Hey Aeolius! It's an elegant principle but it buries the lede, so to speak. It as given as obvious to commentators as to which sides are the foreign occupying power or the embattled legitimate claimants. Since Lenin was arguing with a fellow anti-Russian-nationalist communist, the question does not arise for him. But for us mere mortals, attempting to apply the principle to other nationalist conflicts (in a world where everyone who matters is nominally committed to the full self-determination of all peoples), things are much less clear! And, really, the invocation of practical interest of the working class is a slippery thing. Consider the relative material trajectories of the working class in West and East Germany, or North and South Korea. Never mind the dubious sponsorship of assorted degenerated worker's states; it seems very odd that it's so much materially better to be sponsored by the unabashedly capitalist state than the degenerated worker's state to begin with. ronya fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 16:09
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I'm not sure I follow exactly what point you're trying to make. would you care to relate what you wrote to the topic of this thread? The point is not to denounce all 'equally', the point is to denounce exactly what you see, when you see it. To refrain from that honesty, is to obsfucate the struggle and the process of struggle from both yourself and others. Besides, what exactly do socialists have to gain from what the OP proposes? What material advantage is conferred? Nothing. Supposing the anti-imperialist action succeeds. Are we in any better of a position? No, the problem of creating a better world under a dominant capitalist hegemony is just as intractable as that same goal under a menagery of great powers. You've wasted time, effort, resources and initiative to further the goals of people who do not give a poo poo about you, will not help you, and are no less a bunch of assholes than the people you're trying to replace (Arguably, they're worse). Maybe, instead choosing between the dickhead who used Sarin gas on kids in their homes, or the empire that drone strikes weddings in Waziristan, out of some pretension that your stance on the issue has global reach, you lay out your own agenda and pursue that. rudatron fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 16:18
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Chuck Boone posted:Yeah, you're right. I re-read the OP and I can see that he's well aware that a lot of these places are absolutely terrible. I think a larger question is, what do we, as Western people who oppose stupid imperialistic wars, gain from supporting North Korea or Syria (current Venezuela seems busily betraying the ideals of its revolution, though they're in a bad state due to low oil prices, so who knows where that will go)? It doesn't seem like it'd help our cause very much, and it actually plays into the imperialist's propaganda about the anti-imperialist movement, so I think it's a tactical error. Aeolius posted:I see what you're saying, but can you also see how that approach might be a bit self-defeating? If, in pursuit of ideological purity, everyone of conscience distanced themselves from that hypothetical "anyone," irrespective of the merits of its assistance, wouldn't this only serve to chip at the legitimacy of the intervention, and by extension the movement they're seeking to help? Moreover, I have a real hard time with blanket condemnations or praises on the whole; for all its heuristic appeal, "this is a bad country" vs. "this is a good country" is simplistic to the point of childishness, and smudges out any class content to boot. Saying "North Korea is bad" is what leads to people saying things like "well then let's just glass 'em and be done with it," when in fact people probably don't have the North Korean people in mind in making the original statement. As a government, you're primarily responsible for the welfare of your own people, simply because they are the ones you have the most power to affect. Like, if I am suddenly the Premier of the Socialist Republic of Britain, I must take most responsibility for what happens to the people of Britain, because I have a lot less power to affect the lives of people in France or whatever. I may not like [whoever]. I may think they are the devil, but I still have to take their aid because anything else is a betrayal of the people who put me in a position of leadership. To your second point, I'm obviously simplifying, but I would defend such simplification, because it can often be easier to understand than digression. What I'm saying is that if you're a government in trouble, you're better off biting back your disapproval of China's policy in the SCS and accepting their weapon shipment, unless you can see a concrete social or material loss from doing so. FBH991 fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 16:37
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FBH991 posted:I think a larger question is, what do we, as Western people who oppose stupid imperialistic wars, gain from supporting North Korea or Syria (current Venezuela seems busily betraying the ideals of its revolution, though they're in a bad state due to low oil prices, so who knows where that will go)? It doesn't seem like it'd help our cause very much, and it actually plays into the imperialist's propaganda about the anti-imperialist movement, so I think it's a tactical error. Right. These countries' governments are so obviously deplorable for a long list of good reasons that supporting them appears to be a case of wilful blindness purely because "they're not the US". I think you're right in saying that it actually hurts the cause because it turns people off: "you support THAT maniac!?". Is there no room in this framework for, as rudatron suggests, calling a spade a spade and "denounce exactly what you see, when you see it"? Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 16:47
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Lol if you think imperialism isn't a direct consequence of elites directing resources to themselves. There world will never be free of empire until full communism.
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Jun 11, 2016 16:52
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Chuck Boone posted:Right. These countries' governments are so obviously deplorable for a long list of good reasons that supporting them appears to be a case of wilful blindness purely because "they're not the US". I think you're right in saying that it actually hurts the cause because it turns people off: "you support THAT maniac!?". You really can't figure out why people might not like the North Korean or Assad governments? You think people just choose to not like them because they're not the US? Really? Arglebargle III posted:Lol if you think imperialism isn't a direct consequence of elites directing resources to themselves. There world will never be free of empire until full communism. Which is the point when one should look at the list of supposedly anti-imperialist countries in this thread and note the incredible amounts of corruption and graft present along with the massive inequity issues and utter lack of accountability. I guess Assad might be seeing some accountability depending on whether his tribe (and the Iranians/Russians) lose the war against his country. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 16:53
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Aeolius posted:Thanks for taking the effort to make this thread, OP. Sorry so many are being so nakedly hostile. You've probably already seen it, but last year Monthly Review published an entire issue centered around contemporary analyses of imperialism, with some very strong content. You're burying the lede though, because the very next sentence after the one you bolded reads: quote:But insofar as the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation stands for its own bourgeois nationalism, we stand against. I can't speak for all the anti-"anti-imperialists" in this thread, but I think a number of them (particularly in the Russian and Chinese cases) oppose the facile "anything against America" stance for this very reason. One need only look at how the Russian oligarchs benefit from Putin remaining strong, how Venezuela's ruling PSUV elite are the only people gaining significant economic benefit from the country these days while starving the masses, or how China's interests in the nine-dash line are primarily economic in nature. When people look at these things, I think it is only natural to start asking questions as to whether blind support for these nations is supporting a fight against imperialism or if it's really just supporting the corrupt bourgeoisie of these countries.
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Jun 11, 2016 16:57
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Warbadger posted:You really can't figure out why people might not like the North Korean or Assad governments? You think people just choose to not like them because they're not the US? Really? No - I'm saying the opposite of that. I'm saying there's a billion reasons why people do not and should not like the governments of Syria and North Korea. I'm saying that I'm not OK with supporting the Syrian and North Korean governments just because they're not the US or they're anti-imperialist (or whatever).
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Jun 11, 2016 16:57
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Chuck Boone posted:No - I'm saying the opposite of that. OK, I just misread it.
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Jun 11, 2016 17:00
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Oof, lots of posts overnight. I'll try to get to answering some of these questions soon.
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Jun 11, 2016 17:18
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Its funny, to me, that because of chinese imperialism all of the rest of south asia is welcoming US support including vietnam
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Jun 11, 2016 17:22
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Homework Explainer heard the part of Trump for America where it says "we gotta fight... America!" and thought it was one sentence
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Jun 11, 2016 17:40
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Homework Explainer posted:This is heading into digression territory, but how is giving ethnic minority groups autonomous republics imperialism? In all sincerity, I have to ask if I might be reading this wrong. Would you describe what China is doing with Tibetans and Uyghurs "giving ethnic minority groups autonomous republics" ?
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Jun 11, 2016 17:42
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