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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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| 🦋 |
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15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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Ardennes posted:
I'm very ignorant on military stuff but one lesson that seems pretty important from political economy and military history is that this Russia place has quite a capability to build up if you give them reason and time
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Jul 13, 2023 16:49
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 12:44 |
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Lpzie posted:i read it all FF, thank you!
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Jul 15, 2023 07:11
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for real much appreciated for the military history posting and related stuff because after reading this thread for a bit I retroactively understand Engels a lot more lol
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Jul 15, 2023 07:15
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Frosted Flake posted:*Phone posting lmao hit me with that advanced industrial grade vyvanse
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Jul 15, 2023 17:31
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Frosted Flake posted:
hahahaha Seriously though, good take. Sure, we get to understand in abstract, but definite examples and commentary from the respective audience gives it a whole new level. From that angle, coming at it from political economy, I think the neoliberal MIC might very well be the best example of why capitalism is about market expansion and profits first and foremost, about commodification: absurd quantities of money are mobilized in R&D and production for equipment that fails to deliver because the point is not the gear, but the profit. I don't remember where I read it; it was a commentary on military industrial capability, not only on production and organization, but also quality. It mentioned how the UK went from the Lee-Enfield, a tremendously reliable rifle (please correct me if it is the case because I am a total layman here and I am just going iirc) to their present service rifle which was a whole comedy shitshow. The gist of the argument was simple: the MIC doesn't win wars. Not having decisive control over the specific means of production causes the society and the state to not have the ability to exercise the political economy of war. This is, imho, the "cognitive/ideological disjunction" that many people (especially the military on the ground) have about why the gently caress they are stuck on a quagmire. It's the same thing on other social spheres under capitalism: that intuitive feel that we do have the resources to solve the problem, why it doesn't happen? It seems to me that military experience causes that effect in a much higher degree because violence makes alienation much more explicit. Like, there are rivers of money on this, why the gently caress there is lovely, defective gear etc. Without the ability of a political economy of war, there is no way to have a resolutive approach: to organize and direct that money, those resources, into actually fulfilling a war to the best possible (or least worst) outcome.
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Jul 15, 2023 18:28
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January 6 Survivor posted:
Quoting to read later - but wanted to let you know that I really appreciate fully unhinged grognard effortposting, it is always educative
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Jul 15, 2023 22:05
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Frosted Flake posted:I don't know if it was this thread or Doomsday Econ, but someone suggested just paying the ruling class a bribe not to extract profits at the cost of the continuing existence of the state. They'd make the same amount of money, and we'd have functioning military equipment delivered, on time, in quantity. Win-win. Arguably, that was done in the absolutist states: subordinating the aristocracy/burghers into the bureaucracy and other functions was a sort of functional bribing program since those positions were often hereditary and had associated pensions. Nowadays, it wouldn’t make sense because the capitalist state is subordinate to capital, meaning that it serves to facilitate the mechanisms of surplus value extraction and, ultimately, of imperialism. Offering a compensation to capitalists was something attempted in Latin American countries. Brazil most famously tried the encilhamento, credit backed by the treasury to encourage industrial development. What happened is that the vast majority of the recipients used that credit to buy government debt and extract dividends from the state, which was a loving huge lmao Basically, capitalist classes aren’t inherently interested in development because that isn’t their social function, no matter how much incentive they have. For all the American nationalist discourse and rhetoric, their capitalist classes have absolutely no qualms in evading taxes and not returning profits into the country, much less doing reinvestment even if there is profit to be realized in doing so. It is, however, not as profitable as doing what they do already.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:16
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Frosted Flake posted:The Land and the King are one. So, every person is the body and blood of the King, the Crown Jewels are our treasures, the country's money has his likeness on it because it belong to all of us. Historical materialism has wormed into you already. It Is Known that an artilleryman under that force becomes a vanguardist, sooner or later. After all, Engels himself was a Prussian artillery officer (lol)
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Jul 17, 2023 02:26
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Jul 17, 2023 02:46
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Frosted Flake posted:I'll see if we have it in the work library or can get it on loan. got you fam https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA395290.pdf
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Jul 17, 2023 02:54
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Rugz posted:How can you feel happy about getting rid of a rat infestation? lobster shirt posted:problematic analogy... yeeeeeeeeesh lmao
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Jul 17, 2023 15:47
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meanwhile another artillery officerFriedrich Engels, Schweizerischer Republikaner No. 51, June 27, 1843 posted:Give me two hundred thousand Irishmen and I will overthrow the entire British monarchy
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Jul 17, 2023 16:35
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you know this topic is an extremely good place if you ever feel like finessing rhetoric/discourse we've talked about this here and in other threads, but one really difficult thing to break through is this thing of our time where a different affirmation is taken immediately as a negative/refusal. So, when people point out "hey there are nazis in the ukrainian forces", ideological discourse takes full steam in others and means that the person affirming that is obviously a sympathizer of Putin and favorable to the present Russian state but of course, both things can be true: there are nazis in the ukrainian forces and the present Russian state is led by a reactionary oligarch, who has his own fascist cretins also. and emphasizing such things work. People start to realize that they are going together with a bundle of assumptions about the topic because that's what ideological discourse does, and the gears shift accordingly (and of course it is much more effective when actually talking to people instead of posting)
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Jul 17, 2023 22:16
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Zodium posted:they're not in a position to make any deals because they're not organized. yeah, I mean, if there was an organized proletariat the CPU/CPR would at least be able to make that war a much more complicated affair to happen, since iirc both parties* were in agreement of what a shitshow this is * (though I have no idea how the informal organization of the party works in Ukraine since they got banned etc)
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Jul 17, 2023 23:32
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Ardennes posted:I think it is more there is some assumption they wouldn’t use local labor for whatever reason which doesn’t make any sense in the context of the former Soviet Union. this is a good moment to remind that actually and ultimately it's gorbachev's fault
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Jul 18, 2023 04:51
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BearsBearsBears posted:Are there any Romanovs left alive? There's legal precedent for seizing power by shooting them so let's just do that again. there are some dumbass brits who are related and even worse there are those who claim to be because some second cousin of nicholas or something was an assistant liaison to the british embassy
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Jul 18, 2023 04:53
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bedpan posted:turns out the model "new soviet man" was an idiot liberal as always 
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Jul 18, 2023 05:00
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Frosted Flake posted:I have it on very good authority from a liberal historian that the reason we are smarter than the ancient Greeks is our ability to turn theory into production: "It has always been a cause for puzzlement as to why the Greeks, intellectual pathfinders in every branch of pure science, should have revealed so stubborn a streak of tribal naiveté when it came to economics." Oh, that stuff is good. The apex of that reasoning is about Heron of Alexandria and his steam engine, leading of course to "why there was no industrial revolution" which is loving lmao. It's gamer's historiography: researching the tech means you unlock the thing. Steam engine means factories! Why it didn't happen? Technology isn't just an invention, it's the whole structure that makes an invention work for a determinate social purpose. That same bullshit about the Greeks and the steam engine has a very similar problem when they go into "why China or India didn't become economic superpowers and lost to the West". Again, gamer's historiography. China and India didn't have the steam engine and had obsolete tech, so they have to lose, right? Except that China was an economic superpower that held the lion's share of estimated GDP until the Opium Wars. It was able to outmatch European (and especially British) industrial productivity for a fair bit of the 19th century, which is why it didn't import much. The British state was able to inflict those defeats by having the organization to employ industrial means of warfare, inflicting commercial dependency, etc (besides the whole book of dirty tricks of imperialism ofc) What those people miss is that the socio-economic structure didn't need the sort of organization to employ productivity multipliers by technology, because such multipliers only become necessary through labor scarcity or through capitalism, where more production is required for the sake of further capital accumulation. With immense abundance of labor in a vast territory with even more abundant resources, it's possible to have literal millions of artisans supported by more millions of peasants producing everything necessary and more; economies of scale aren't exclusive to industrial production, after all. Besides, there has to be formative accumulation for those inventions to find their place. Industrial tooling comes from manufactories, which come from developing organized division of labor and so on, which are all social developments as well. Tribal naïveté is an astonishingly bad take because it neglects the much broader historical environment that makes an industrial steam engine not only very useful but also viable. The other side of takes like these is that it leaves wide open the issue of when you have the social conditions, the technology and economic understanding to direct those means into solving problems and deliberately develop productive forces, like in our present. Unlike these other contexts, ours is much worse because we are dealing with ideology, not with the actual horizon of material possibilities and that would be two mediums fries please
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Jul 18, 2023 17:45
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Zodium posted:but which the russian bourgeoisie were ultimately unwilling or unable to I think you cracked it here. There was no Russian bourgeoisie as an organized class because of the revolution, but the nomenklatura was an entirely different beast as a starting point to what we call the oligarchy today. I mean, there were the "hybrid" type like Abramovich who had a definite bourgeois affectation and got thoroughly owned once Western governments went for the sanctions. Billionaires who wanted in on the global game. There's this thing from Russian literature which struck me very close in sentiment to Latin American literature, when discussing that particular type. The character is wealthy, rich even, with strong liberal ideas and always looks abroad and outside for references. This type of character is always elevated and given spotlight in some trends of Anglo literature (in an even more specific niche its used as a comparative between the USA and England); in Latin American and Russian literatures, they are often criticized and sometimes even ridiculed. In the more politically charged works, the commentary basically goes: "this is the type of person who is going to bring us modernity?" Because lol, gently caress no they aren't. The caudillo here and the oligarch there share - in my view - a fundamental understanding of the material relations of power that the liberal purview has difficulty to understand, because the liberal mentality here and there is an imperial one. Meaning that ultimately it scoffs, underestimates and diminishes their own people. "Brazilians don't know how to vote and are bad citizens", "the Russian people love their iron chains". And that to me explains a fundamental issue of the bourgeoisie of the periphery - their colonized mentality made sure that were always complete and utter poo poo against landowners and aristocrats, because they couldn't fundamentally realize a national vision. How the gently caress is this liberal dipshit supposed to bring them to their Vendée if he doesn't have one? If he doesn't believe in his own people? The former Soviet bureaucracy, it seems to me, shares the reactionary sentiment of the South American caudillo in material terms because that's how they became oligarchs, but the historical experience of the Revolution and the social transformation makes them something different altogether. It is an effect impossible to disregard: that's a major reason to attempt to appropriate communist semiotics into a hideous nationalist frankenstein. Elements of the oligarchy wanted to play along and be liberal bourgeois, but the other oligarchs understood much better that the liberal order meant relegation of their interests and also their own necks on the line, not Western ones. Trimmed social services and a state organized enough to direct the economy means security and stability, which for them is more important than accumulation of capital (making that the other critical point of divergence between classes)
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Jul 18, 2023 22:10
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the sheer loving inability to executive order a national munitions plant lmao
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Jul 19, 2023 02:45
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VoicesCanBe posted:Why did they think this would happen, especially without air superiority? Was this supposed to be willed into existence by wishing for it hard enough? VoicesCanBe posted:The logic of neoliberalism has completely captured the US ruling class. The concept of state-directed industrial capacity doesn't even enter their brains, it might as well not exist. Palladium posted:neolib brains look at very cheap chinese widgets and conclude they must be very easy to make solely of their price, instead of understanding they are a result of decades of tens of trillions in investments in infrastructure so much for the arsenal of democracy. Ukrainians being told to git gud while being blown in idiotic moves for the sake of NATO-oriented grifting is ghoulish even for the institution's standards
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Jul 19, 2023 03:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:Gregory Liedtke's "Enduring the Whirlwind: The German Army and the Russo-German War" makes a strong case that the Ostheer actually did manage to completely rebuild itself between the 1941 and 1942 campaign periods, which belies the assertion that Fall Blau failed largely because the Axis militaries were depleted going into Spring 1942. In effect, the Soviets defeated the Germans twice, from their full strength.  like, holy poo poo, never heard anything like it before, that would be a serious deep cut. Like what the gently caress the German effort was downplayed to make the soviets not look better? what the f- quote:About the author (2018) well that ain't the marxist school of nanjing or the school of political economy of leningrad quote:Despite the best efforts of a number of historians, many aspects of the ferocious struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War remain obscure or shrouded in myth. One of the most persistent of these is the notion - largely created by many former members of its own officer corps in the immediate postwar period - that the German Army was a paragon of military professionalism and operational proficiency whose defeat on the Eastern Front was solely attributable to the amateurish meddling of a crazed former Corporal and the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Red Army. A key pillar upon which the argument of German numerical-weakness vis-à-vis the Red Army has been constructed is the assertion that Germany was simply incapable of providing its army with the necessary quantities of men and equipment needed to replace its losses. In consequence, as their losses outstripped the availability of replacements, German field formations became progressively weaker until they were incapable of securing their objectives or, eventually, of holding back the swelling might of the Red Army. WHAT
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Jul 19, 2023 05:58
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Cerebral Bore posted:not really surprising given that germany basically had the whole of europe under their thumb at that point and could plunder at will sure; my surprise comes from how much that narrative dominates even socialist historiography because I never seen that overall point challenged* (and makes sense as it portrayed the merit of communist organization and central planning) * not the profissionalism or discipline part, the production/logistics part - most non-military commentaries I've seen attest to the logistic capability of the USSR in wartime from the perspective of political economy, which was a much broader lens of analysis then suddenly not only that but oh the Red Army beat the poo poo out of the fucks twice on their full strength with them not having their alleged handicap? praise zhukov holy poo poo
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Jul 19, 2023 07:17
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Hatebag posted:Surely nato, which had a decades long program to provide weapons caches for fascists in case russia conquered european countries, won't provide weapons caches for facsists in a country conquered by russia and thus arming far-right paramilitaries and them acquiring political power as result (Piazza Fontana bombing, Pasolini's murder, Dutroux affair, etc etc)
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Jul 19, 2023 16:45
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blessed picture
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Jul 20, 2023 05:26
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Zeroisanumber posted:I've never understood the whole Russian hate thing. Most Russians are nice people with a hosed up government, same as Americans. dehumanization of the other/stranger is a basic move from the imperialism playbook. nuance to motivate to fight against a state instead of a people requires a more sophisticated approach. “The barbarians are at the gates” is a time honored tactic, but has the problem of making things worse in the long run as the barbarians prove to be rather resourceful and competent somehow in the fighting
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Jul 22, 2023 23:00
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psychologists that don't agree with schools of thought that include things like "ideology" end up, unsurprisingly, batting for imperial hegemony (among the reasons why peterson got tractored by zizek)
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Jul 25, 2023 16:05
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Frosted Flake posted:C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre. isn't that the usual way when american military forces in any war after ww2
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Jul 31, 2023 16:37
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West Africans telling the French government to gently caress off with a bit of Pan-Africanism going on? very good poo poo
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Aug 1, 2023 06:47
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lol if Algiers tags along how the gently caress they are going to fight the Sahara
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Aug 1, 2023 07:15
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Cuttlefush posted:presumably they'd drive over it on the big highway? I mean more the Nigerian forces/pro-NATO people trying to fight a combined Mali-Niger-Algiers force in their turf
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Aug 1, 2023 07:20
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Regarde Aduck posted:i was just a bit overwrought because yeah it is that simple, neoliberalism is 'stripping the copper out the walls' the ideology with what is essentially a religious following but since it is ideology, the people there don't realize they are taking out the copper wiring, instead they think they are reforming the building and making it better like, almost everything in military industry immediately drives it towards a natural state monopoly, it loses advantages when under market dynamics. It creates perverse incentives right from the get-go once with any significant private share in it. Like, a state fighting a war and has to do a bidding contract to procure ammunition? That it needs a whole legal effort to make sure none of the bidders are doing cartel efforts or conspiring in any other form etc? Lol gently caress that
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Aug 1, 2023 15:38
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Orange Devil posted:Yeah but as soon as you allow the logic that one thing is better-off under state control because it avoids perverse incentives, cartels and conspiracies etc etc or even just plain is a core function of the state ensuring its own continuity, you're going to get people asking difficult questions about other things for which it would then be very difficult to argue the same logic does not hold. Like say, utilities and transport infrastructure. Oh yeah, deffo. A major reason why military had a historical pass on that because mercenaries, according to some stuff I recall from political economy Like, once the nation-state comes up, a capitalist looking after their surplus value through procurement contracts and taking every advantage (read: being very competent at what they propose to do), well that looks reaaaaaally bad to everyone. IIRC this has been mentioned as one of the very very rare issues where everyone gets pissed: conservatives, liberals, socialists, reactionaries... Everyone despises mercenaries lmao
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Aug 1, 2023 15:55
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Orange Devil posted:Question for Zodium: The former: personally, I disagree. I think Zodium can elaborate far better than me on the peculiar of the cybernetics, but regarding contemporary Marxism, the nation-state is a much tougher beast than present-day dominant capital gives it credit for. Especially the revolutionary nation-state, which forms perhaps the most successful counter to it As for the latter, I do agree with some Marxist positions that fascist degeneration is consequential from imperialism and colonialism, but not an end-state. As capital eats itself in a former empire, it blasts pieces of its own walls. This is where the new possibilities will lie
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Aug 1, 2023 16:11
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Al-Saqr posted:the military of algeria is corrupt as poo poo and sucking the blood out of the algerian economy dude, you do know that has a whole lot to do in opposing France, right
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Aug 1, 2023 21:39
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Lostconfused posted:It's just the education system failing tbh. Would be simpler if it were just that. Credentialism has poisoned the development of professional qualification through education by itself for a while (that can be seen pretty well for example on tech), thinking that technical know-how in an institutional capacity isn't a very precious thing to have There are companies who instead of falling for that bullshit simply foot the bill to train people and voilá, they fare much better. That argument of "not worth to train somebody for them to just leave the moment they get an offer" doesn't hold when costs are factored in - even in ridiculous estimates of rotation, the time and cost to get the desired skilled professional is way, way higher than forming one; especially because you can train multiple people at the same time instead of combing the market.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:23
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de-industrialization and Germany are two words I never imagined coming up together as a thing for real hahahahahahhahahaa lmao
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Aug 7, 2023 03:38
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DiscountDildos posted:Good news for Ukraine iirc this guy got seriously owned in his own field lots of times for not knowing poo poo (again iirc he went for Deleuze and almost got intellectually murdered)
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Aug 10, 2023 15:40
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the philadelphia of europe does he mean philadelphia, pennsylvania or ancient philadelphia, asia minor
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Aug 11, 2023 15:34
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 12:44 |
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it's no wonder how you guys up there north end up with silly things like maoism-third-worldism when so much categorization is done to say "actually I am not a true proletarian"
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Aug 11, 2023 16:02
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