Time is on the side of the Russians in Ukraine and the Chinese on pretty much anything else when it comes to confronting the US empire.
But ever since the ceasefire in Lebanon and the fall of Assad I can’t help but feel that the Palestinian cause is getting worse every day. No one is lifting a finger for them except the Yemenis and it only seems that the Zionist fucks are getting closer to their objectives.
Civil war in “Israel” when? True Promise 3 when (lol)?
It doesn’t help that some of the loudest voices cheering for Assad’s fall where Palestinians and that sectarism is strong against Shia’s…
Valid. It’s true that the United States didn’t decide what I had for breakfast this morning. But “outsized degree of influence” is definitely an understatement. The US is the wold hegemon. It sucks to admit if you’re not American (I am not) but the world does revolve around the US. Every country needs to sell the US* their commodities to earn USD so they can buy oil, which can only be bought in USD, or US food exports, which are a major dependency for most developing economies that have turned to only farming cash crops. Jason Hickel points out that the Global South contributes 90% of the world economy’s productive labor, yet receives 21% of the global income [source]. So how does this happen? It’s clearly not just that the US has outsized influence, it has a role that is entirely distinct and of a different historical character to just “outsized influence.” It is an imperialist superpower, with unipolar hegemonic prevalence over all world systems.
Ok cool, a century and a half of Marxist analysis defeated by “if it quacks like a duck and swims like a duck.” I’m trying to meet you halfway here, if you brush off any kind of systemic analysis with ridiculous truisms then there’s no point to the conversation.
Russia is expansionist, although the current war in Ukraine is not of an expansionist character, as all states are. The nature of the nation-state is to be oppressive, expansionist, violent, etc etc. Putin is a chauvinist because he is the lead of a nation-state that is engaged in conflict and therefore holds up an imaginary ideal that it defends, that’s what heads of state do in times of conflict. These criticisms have been made for a long time (in fact, all the way back to Engels and later Lenin iterating on Engels) and they’re universal to all nation-states. So you aren’t giving us anything actionable that we can do about imperialism as you describe it, just bad vibes that are icky.
Why is Lenin’s analysis naive and fictional? And isn’t the fact that every prediction he makes in Imperialism about the development of imperialism would be vindicated by the next century of history more reason to take the theory seriously? Like, why should I trust your vibes based “quacks like a duck swims like a duck” theory of imperialism, that would actually have me believe all states are imperialist, when Lenin’s theory is what a group like the PFLP subscribes to in their real fight against imperialism?
Furthermore, you say that I’m saying Russia isn’t imperialist because they just aren’t successful as other imperialists and that somehow is a fundamentally incorrect argument. Wouldn’t it be correct to say that a rocket that burns up in the atmosphere is not a space station? If you fail to become an empire because of the conditions of the world, namely how the US has already achieved a hegemonic position, then you just aren’t an empire. That’s that. I’m not saying that there’s something different about how capital works in Russia, obviously if the conditions were different then Russia would begin exporting financial capital and exploiting the Global South as the US does. The thing is that we don’t live in an imaginary world where multilateral free market deals have created a balance of powers where the US, Russia, and some other imperialist powers are bullying around all the little guys. It really is just the US who has even successfully vassalized the other capitalist imperialist powers.
*Yes, they can also sell commodities to other countries that have USD reserves to the same end, but how do you think those countries got their reserves?
Dude. Russia is no longer a socialist country. Half a century of Marxist analysis doesn’t apply to modern day Russia. It is an autocratic oligarchy now. If you aren’t even going to acknowledge objective facts, then you aren’t arguing in good faith. Pretending like Marxist theory has any relevance to Russia’s current geopolitical role, is purely disingenuous. It cast off that mantle completely, when Putin took over. His leadership solidified its current status as an emerging imperialist state.
That’s why I said it “quacks like a duck”. If it checks all the boxes of being an imperialist state…then guess what? It is.
And that reality has absolutely nothing to do with the US’s status as also being an imperialist state. You can absolutely have more than one existing at a time. Lenin might have argued that the “GOAL” of a capitalist Empire is to achieve world dominance…and I do agree with that sentiment…but the idea that imperialism somehow doesn’t exist until that goal is achieved, is ludacris. Imperialism is identified by the way it chooses to expand its influence. And Russia.'s current actions fit that description just as well as the US.
What the hell are you talking about? Yes, of course the Russian Federation isn’t socialist, it’s capitalist. That’s why I’m using Marxist theory to describe it. What do you think Das Kapital was about? Are you under the impression that Marxism is only useful to describe communist countries?
Again this is a complete failure of reading comprehension. When Lenin was talking about imperialism in 1916 there were multiple capitalist empires. Germany was actually looking a lot stronger than the US at that point. So of course you can have more than one empire at a time, if you look at the literal definition we’ve been talking about all this time it specifically talks about how capitalist empires divide up the world among themselves. That’s not what I’m contesting.
I’m not saying imperialism can’t exist until a single empire dominates the world. I’m saying American empire won the game so rival capitalist states no longer can achieve that monopoly capitalist, exporter of finance capital position. If you go and actually read the book you might understand the economic reasons why that is, if you don’t skim through it and only read every other word as you appear to have done with my comments.
No, it really isn’t. You’re just trying to impose your vibes-based definition again, and this whole thread has shown that it’s incredibly useless. If I subscribe to your definition, I’m going to start reporting Palestine Actionists to the cops because their interventions sabotaging weapons factories have harmed Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian imperialism. This is deeply unserious.