robbo203
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“Every single claim in your long list is a lie propagated by the bourgeois press, academia and intelligence servcies. As you’re a Guardian Bro you are a credulous consumer of such untruths. You will wholeheartedly believe the most ridiculous claims made about socialists because you hate them. You only use Marxism to trash Marxists. Grover Furr does a great job debunking every one of the lies of the bourgeois press that you’ve just parroted”
_______________________________________________LOL This guy is living in a little bubble totally disconnected from reality. He bootlicks a repugnant authoritarian capitalist regime like the Putin regime and unquestioningly cites dodgy far-right conspiracy theory-based sources to back his ridiculous claims while mocking the sources of others. Then – fantasy of fantasies – he imagines himself to be some sort of Marxist or socialist. Ha! TS knows sod all about Marxism and socialism and scoffs at the Marxian concept of socialism (as do others like him on the far right) while advancing a completely idealist non-Marxist explanation of the war in Ukraine….
Never underestimate the power of ideology to beguile …
Excellent contribution Paddy!
Interesting to see the same old tired baseless anarchocapitalist argument surface – that we don’t live in a capitalist society but a corporatist society. Ancaps who plug this line should be asked to explain how exactly they propose to get us back from a corporatist to a capitalist society in their terms.
Are they going to use the state to “smash” big business? Do they expect the little corner shop to outcompete a supermarket chain and drive the latter into bankruptcy? Or what?
“TM asked for you to define what a nazi means to Russia in the context of this war.”
Extreme right nationalists who venerate Adolf Hitler or his collaborator Stepan Bandera and wish to lead the white race against their assorted imaginary foes.
________________________________________________________________There are plenty of extreme right-wing nationalists in Russia too – and racists! They might not call themselves specifically Nazis – as you pointed out, it is forbidden to form a Nazi Party in Russia – but what’s in a name? Is there anything that rules out a de facto Nazi – that is someone sharing the same ideological traits as an “official nazi” – opposing said official nazi? Nothing that I can see. After all, a Russian nazi or neo nazi being an extreme right-wing nationalist would naturally be opposed to Hitler as a figurehead given that the German army invaded Russia and yet share more or less the same ideological outlook as the German Nazis but be dressed up under a different name.
In fact, your whole argument is very weak and unsupported. I make the point again – there is very little to choose between the authoritarian right-wing capitalist regime of Ukraine and the authoritarian right-wing capitalist regime of Russia. They are cut from the same cloth.
Furthermore, you have failed to identify the true extent of those in Ukraine in a) the government b) the army and c) the population at large who self-identify as Nazis according to YOUR OWN definition of Nazi – namely “Extreme right nationalists who venerate Adolf Hitler or his collaborator Stepan Bandera and wish to lead the white race against their assorted imaginary foes.”
I suspect the proportions would be relatively low in each case. I don’t think interest in figures like Stepan Bandera necessarily translates into identification with Hitler and the Nazis. It is not as simple as that. Bandera was a Ukrainian nationalist and it could well be this and not so much the fact he was a fascist that fuels this nostalgic interest in him in Ukraine. As this article points out:
“Bandera was in occupied Poland when on June 30, 1941, his comrades proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Nazi-occupied Lviv — and the Germans banned him from traveling to Ukraine. Adolf Hitler rejected the idea of Ukrainian independence, and Bandera was arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until 1944.”
(https://www.dw.com/en/stepan-bandera-ukrainian-hero-or-nazi-collaborator/a-61842720)
“Except that’s not what the war is about. If one doesn’t understand the causes of the conflict, as you clearly don’t, how does one hope to resolve it?
Russia didn’t want this war. The Kremlin did everything possible to avoid it. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
____________________________________________________On the contrary, you don’t know what you are talking about. You are confusing the pretext for war for the cause which is basically economic in nature. This is the Marxian explanation for war which you oppose in favour of your own idealist explanation which is painfully inadequate. For example, the BS argument advanced by the Kremlin of wanting to “denazify” Ukraine rings particularly hollow when there is precious little to choose between these two right-wing, deeply authoritarian, and corrupt capitalist regimes.
Of course, any capitalist regime would prefer not to go to war with some other capitalist regime if they can get what they want by other means. Wars are costly and destructive but sometimes, when other means have exhausted themselves, war comes to be seen as the only option available
!AJJ, you say that “Workers have no land to fight and die for”. Yet they do don’t they, as we are seeing every day in Ukraine. But its not the “land” as such that they are fighting for. It’s the common life they have made on that piece of land (it has to be made somewhere, in some physical space). The right of a people not to be invaded derives from that common life they have made and not from any legal title to property they hold or don’t hold.
_________________________________________________________________How is that “common life” of workers living in a completely arbitrary piece of land called the nation-state impacted by a change of rulers or even a change of flag? If for the sake of argument the obnoxious Russian regime were successful in overthrowing the equally obnoxious Ukrainian regime what difference would it make to the “common life” of Ukrainian workers? What is this “common life” you talk of anyway? The ingredients of so-called national cultures are, often as not, romantic inventions or made-up fiction (read Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities”). Your average British worker regularly looks at American films, eats Indian curries (Britain’s most popular culinary dish apparently), and goes to Ibiza in Spain to party and have a good time.
Nationalism is just a load of meaningless BS and vacuous hot air. A Brexiteer might be comfortable with the idea of Britain “taking back control” (code for Britain asserting its right to your fanciful notion of the so-called “common life”) and we can all now see what a dismal farce that has turned out to be! Some “taking back control” as the British economy slides inexorably into deep recession! The problem is your ideas feed directly into the same kind of twaddle that people like Nigel Farage have been expounding.
The Russian workers and the Ukrainian workers have far more in common with each other than ever have with their respective ruling classes. They should tell their respective ruling classes urging them to fight in a capitalist squabble over Ukraine’s economic resources to go f**k themselves.
The common life of the working class is the common life of workers everywhere.
She should become a member or a journalist for the QAnon movement, and the christian ultra nationalist movement . She does not sound any different to the journalists of Fox News who are supporters of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement
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Yeah and I bet Margarita Simonyan – like the capitalist, Putin – has a luxurious home or two somewhere stuffed to the ceiling with western luxuries. And talking of Putin, apparently he is or was a part of a Russian consortium owning one of the most luxurious villas in Spain – near Marbella – as well as owning a number of other Spanish properties…
CHATEAU PUTIN: Who owns the lavish villa in the hills above Marbella on Spain’s Costa del Sol?
Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russia Today (RT) and long-time Vladimir Putin ally, said on Sunday for Russians it is better to go fight in Ukraine and possibly die rather than live in a western-dominated world.
Also this:
‘One day I will be prohibited to put dresses on my daughters and to explain to my son that he is a boy. This is already happening in many countries. For me, it’s unbearable. For me, this is worse than war. Indeed, it’s worse than war.’
Seriously???
LOL LOL LOL
“World ‘plunging towards societal collapse’ as era of cheap money ends”
“You wouldn’t recognise socialism were it to tear off one of your arms and beat you over the head with it. You denounce all the socialism and socialists who’ve ever actually taken power. It’s why no one takes you seriously.”
_________________________________________________LOL TS You haven’t got a clue what socialism is about, have you, and you have the gall to lecture us on what socialism means. In the Marxist tradition, socialism is a synonym for communism – a moneyless wageless stateless non market society in which we voluntarily give according to our ability and freely take according to our needs. What you call “socialism” is simply state-run capitalism with all the structural features pertaining to capitalism. Of course, we denounce it.
We are socialists after all! You clearly are not.
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“Lol. And capitalist states are just going to spontaneously disappear are they? It’s views like these that tell the world you’re not serious people.”
________________________________________________________________LOL yourself. Idiotic claims like the above demonstrate you clearly have zero understanding of the socialist case. No, we don’t expect capitalist states to just “spontaneously disappear”. Jeez, Spare me this utter drivel….
___________________________________________________________________“No, they were not. Russia tried for eight years to avoid this war. It didn’t want it. It wanted the Minsk Accords 1 and 2 to be respected and worked tirelessly for them to be so. But the Nazis in Ukraine and their handlers in Washington had different ideas. And with that, Robbo’s narrative about Russian imperialism goes up in smoke. Pfft.”
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How on earth do you come to such a dumb conclusion, eh, TS? Let us say for the moment the Putin regime’s motivation was what you claim it was – to get the Ukrainian regime in good faith to comply with the Minsk accords. Even so and despite this, it still embarked on a military invasion of Ukraine, evidently with the intention of capturing Kiev and installing a puppet regime. That’s the actions of imperialist power however you want to dress it up. You might want to say Russian imperialism was driven by good intentions but that does not make any the less the act of an imperialist power.
Of course, useful idiots like yourself take the Putin regime’s propaganda at a face value and loyally regurgitate it on demand. The regime couldn’t care a toss about the plight of Russian speakers in Ukraine. That is only the pretext for its imperialist invasion, not the reason. This is a capitalist war of economic resources and spheres of influence, not lofty ideals. The Ukrainian regime is no different. I find it remarkable that you are defending one of these disgusting authoritarian capitalist regimes against the other when their modus operandi is uncannily similar. They are both corrupt and anti-democratic to their rotten core. If the Ukrainian regime is a nazi regime by your standards then so too is the Russian regime. That doesn’t stop you from tirelessly simping for it. How pathetic can you get TS?
“Capitalism, like it or not, and for all its perceived imperfections, is the only extant and viable game currently in town.”
————————————————————-Yes and, by your very actions and ideas, you and many millions more like you ensure that capitalism remains the “only extant and viable game currently in town”.
The question you should ask yourself is are you happy with this state of affairs? Are you content to leave intact a rapacious socio-economic system that could quite conceivably drive humanity into extinction?
Because, make no mistake Lizzie, by accommodating yourself to capitalism you are in effect supporting it and prolonging its shelf life. You are actively preventing a realistic alternative to capitalism from emerging.
That alternative has no realistic chance of emerging while it remains the outlook of only a small minority. But this has become precisely your excuse for accommodating yourself to capitalism instead of working with socialists to change that minority into a majority. What exactly have you got to lose by doing this?
Please don’t tell me that it is imperative that we should try instead to humanize and tame capitalism. This has been tried for over two centuries or more. Look around you and ask yourself if such an approach has actually worked. Reformism has long attracted mass movements and secured the majority support of the people, unlike revolutionary socialism, and yet it has failed miserably. That should tell you something about the inherent limitations of what it is you are advocating for …
Perhaps the time has finally arrived for a new game in town. Are you willing to play?
It is hard to imagine that anyone can be so utterly gullible and naive as to believe that the likes of Putin and his fellow parasite cronies care a toss about ordinary “Russian speakers” in Ukraine or elsewhere and are rallying to their defense for that reason. After all, he is quite content to send hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russian workers into the meat grinder that is the Ukrainian war in pursuit of his own imperialist dream. The same goes for Zelinsky and his fellow cronies. This war is not about high ideals like democracy versus dictatorship. It is about resources of spheres of interest between rival capitalist blocs. The west and its prostitute media are just as much to blame as the disgusting capitalist regime of Putin.
The crocodile tears its leaders shed for the lives of ordinary Ukrainian workers are in stark contrast to their complete indifference to what is now going on in the Horn of Africa where the scale of the slaughter is, if anything, even greater. Why? Are not Black Africans, human beings fully deserving of our sympathy and support as much as anyone else? The difference lies in the economic significance of this arbitrary piece of land called Ukraine which the Russian parasite class, headed by Putin, has recognised as well
Interesting article by Michael Roberts on Russian imperialism:
“All this makes a joke of the arguments in the Western media that Putin’s regime is some sort of reversion to the Soviet state. For a start, Putin has often attacked ‘Bolshevism’ and, in particular the views of Lenin that nations like Ukrainians had a right to self-determination. Instead, Putin has turned to the feudal imperialism of Russia’s Peter the Great as his model for the invasion of Ukraine. Putin has eulogized Peter’s conquests in the Great Northern War and praised him for “returning” historically Russian lands. “It seems that it has fallen to us, too, to return (Russian lands),” Putin commented. For him, Ukraine is not a nation but part of Russia, which the nationalist in Kyev and Western powers are tryng to separate.”
Also from the same article – the capitalist motives for the invasion:
“However, there is a problem for Western capital and Ukraine’s oligarchs: it’s Russia. The war has already led to Russian forces gaining control of at least $12.4trn worth of Ukraine’s resources in energy (cola), metals and mineral deposits, apart from agricultural land. If Putin’s forces succeed in annexing Ukrainian land seized during Russia’s invasion, Kyiv would permanently lose almost two-thirds of its deposits. Moscow now controls 63% of Ukraine’s coal deposits, 11% of its oil, 20% of its natural gas, 42% of its metals, and 33% of its rare earths.”
BS. Kiev lost its right to ever again rule over ethnic Russians when it tried to exterminate them.
Knobbo, when you don’t know shit about shit, don’t say shit. Lol
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It seems our resident simp (or should that be pimp?) for Russian capitalism and its imperialist tzar, Vladimir Putin, has been rattled. So much so that in his haste he hasn’t even bothered to read what others write before jumping headfirst into the fray with his customary rant.
Look, as a socialist, I couldn’t care two hoots about the “right of an independent Ukraine” to exist. Or an independent Russia. Or an Independent Britain or United States. I look forward to the day when the toxic institution called the nation-state along with its supporting capitalist ideology of nationalism disappears off the face of the earth.
“True Scotsman” (the name says it all!) understands nothing of this. Sadly he hasn’t got a socialist bone in his body. His pathetic nationalism makes him willing cannon fodder in the cause of some or other capitalist state. Presumably Scotland but also apparently Russia too. What a dilemma our kid must face – I assume he is little more than a precocious teenager judging by his cocky writing style – should his beloved Scotland find itself at war with his beloved Russia.
Anyway, the point is that I simply quoted from an article on “Putin’s imperial ambitions and Ukraine’s three-hundred-year road to statehood” and TS immediately jumps to the conclusion that I support the worldview of the author writing that article. I don’t but that does not mean I dismiss everything that the article said.
TS clearly – and as usual – did not read the article in question. Because very clearly there are sentiments recorded in that article expressed by Putin that affirm his imperialist outlook.
Putin really does see himself as some sort of modern-day version of Peter the Great notwithstanding that he sees himself as being on some sort of moral mission like “denazifying Ukaraine” (he could start with Russia if he was that intent on denazification). In March 2014 he said in a speech “Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities,” and argued that Russia and Ukraine were historically inseparable. “Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other.” A few days later Russia annexed Crimea.
I fail to see how anyone can plausibly deny this is an instance of blatant imperialist annexation. It doesn’t matter what the motives were and no one here is defending the actions of the Ukrainian state vis a vis the Russian minorities in Crimea or the Donbas. But the facts speak for themselves. The actions of the Russian state in sending invading forces into another country were technically those of an imperialist power and there is no getting around this.
That, mind you, as I said is on a pretty narrow definition of imperialism – equating it with military invasion and conquest. We Marxists would take a wider view of imperialism in terms of which it can be seen as the latent or manifest expression of capitalism’s own expansionist dynamic. In short, imperialism is a global phenomenon in the same sense that capitalism is. It is merely the symptom of capitalism and capitalism is global
