robbo203
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On the imperialist ambitions of Putin’s capitalist regime….
“He repeatedly denied Ukraine’s right to independent existence – and, at times, that the country exists at all as an independent entity. Instead he appeared to accept the unity of the two countries as historical fact. In doing so, he revealed the structures of an imperial ideology with a chronology and ambition that goes far beyond post-Soviet nostalgia to the mediaeval era.”
It seems to me that imperialism is only the logical expression of nationalist sentiment in the context of modern capitalism with its built-in expansionist dynamic. There is no nation-state anywhere in the world that is not manifestly or latently imperialist. The mistake is to assume imperialism is just military intervention and conquest but there is also an economic aspect to imperialism as well. In every sense of the term, Putin’s Russia is a fully-fledged imperialist capitalist power
Interesting article here on the support base of Putin’s authoritarian and neoliberal capitalist regime
“And just as the 1990s oligarchs were deeply entangled with the state, so the “siloviki” (securocrats) who have replaced them as the arbiters of political power under Putin are embedded in the capitalist system. For all their superficial differences, both groups turned the apparatus of the state into an instrument for individual enrichment. As business and mafia groups were gradually brought under the control of the security services, the state absorbed and internalized their profit-driven ideology and modi operandi.”
https://jacobin.com/2022/08/russia-liberals-scapegoat-working-class-vladimir-putin-war-ukraine
It makes you cringe but I am sure our resident apologist for the Russian capitalist regime will endorse her sentiments!:
“A Russian state TV commentator and longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin is encouraging Russians to die rather than lose to Ukraine and the West. Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT who is not eligible for conscription because she is a woman and media member, said during the most recent broadcast of Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov that the war is worth people dying because the world is at a “dead end” due to lack of values”.
“Just like a hand grenade will never be a vacuum cleaner, the Guardian will never be a “news” paper. The role of the Guardian is not to act as a venue for the expression of free ideas it is an apparatus for manufacturing consent.”
______________________________________________________________LOL TS. You are as ever, endlessly amusing. Granted, the Guardian is a capitalist newspaper that will frame the news from a capitalist perspective. But do you seriously imagine the trashy far-right capitalist organs like the racist “Russia-Insider” and others you draw your “facts” from are any different?? They pump out the pro-capitalist propaganda of the obnoxious Putin regime you simp for and you buy it all, lock stock, and barrel, without question and without demur.
Don’t forget – you were the one that started this daft line of argument that just because the Guardian is a liberal capitalist organ we can safely reject anything it says as false. Facts are to be judged not by their connection with reality but by the political acceptability of the source revealing them according to you. Now that that argument has boomeranged back on you are trying desperately to backtrack.
I thought you said he was a gajillionaire “richer” than Elon Musk? Do try and get your story straight. But anyways yes, dismiss what the Guardian says out if hand because it’s a lie. I’ve already explained why it’s a lie and provided evidence in support of my position.
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I never said that and you have done nothing of the sort.
According to you anything that the Guardian writes must ipso facto be nonsense because the Guardian is a trashy liberal paper. However, you feel quite free to quote and endorse trashy far-right commentators like “Russia-Insider” and others. Yet you feel offended when socialists point out the utter hypocrisy of you doing precisely that while arguing that just because they are far-right commentators does not mean what they say is not true. Well, by the same token just because The Guardian is a liberal bourgeoisie paper (we agree on that) does not mean that what it says is not at times correct, does it now?
And then you wonder why all your reformist efforts come to nothing.”
Oh, the irony. Remind me, how long has your little band of ‘brothers’ been pushing your “well-meaning” pipe dream? 🙂
___________________________________________________________Lizzie, it will remain a pipe dream unless and until people like you come round to sharing it and seeking to realise it. It’s not just our loss that it has not been realised; it is yours as well!
This is the point. The precondition for establishing socialism – the mass understanding and support it needs – has not even remotely been reached. The vast majority of the population is not socialist. We know this very well and it is precisely for this reason that socialism has not yet been tried.
However, capitalism has been tried and the reformist attempt to run capitalism in the interests of the workers – like running the abattoir in the interests of the cattle inside – has demonstrably failed. The same old problems keep cropping up again and again. We perceive them as problems from our personal perspective but from the impersonal perspective of the capitalist machine they are just a sign that the system is working perfectly normally
Capitalism has failed us yet you persist in supporting a system that cannot logically operate in our interests. You don’t see the problem in its wider context. Tiny reformist victories such as the abolition of the poll tax are held up as examples that sustain the illusion that the system is amenable to progressive improvement and perfection. You don’t see that, like water finding its own level, what the system gives with one hand it takes with another.
Yet you continue to support this system. It is the fact that you and millions like you continue to support this system that makes socialism appear to be a “pipe dream”. That is the only reason why it appears to be that
“His views on Trump and vaccines are irrelevant to the topic of Russia/Ukraine. Edward Snowden and Scott Ritter are also conservatives. Does that disqualify them as sources of information? Or what about Newton, who believed in alchemy, or Darwin who was a racist? As far as physics and biology are concerned their views stand the test of time.”
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How amusing. So TS, having criticized socialists for using sources like the Guardian (even though he has used western sources like Reuters!), now defends his use of comments made by right-wing trumpites and the like, on the grounds that their politics are irrelevant to the “facts” they report on. So if the Guardian reports that Putin has a personal fortune of 1 billion are we to dismiss this out of hand because it is just…er… the Guardian, a liberal bourgeoise rag, TS?
“Christ, you people are mind-crushingly tedious. No wonder your Party has such an infinitesimally small membership.”
_________________________________________________________________Lizzie, why do you say that? You do the SPGB and its members a great disservice by imagining some abstruse topic like finance capital or “money creationism” is all that interests them. Like many other members, I have a wide range of interests, many of which go way beyond the field of economics…
At the same time, it’s silly denigrating attempts to get to grip with these topics as “mind-crushingly tedious”. Well-meaning reformists like yourself are forever trying to rush in to solve this or that problem capitalism throws up without really bothering to understand how these problems arise. And then you wonder why all your reformist efforts come to nothing. Impatience is not a virtue
“No, I don’t support Islamo-fascism so I don’t support the Taliban. But neither did I support the NATO invasion of the country. Did you support NATO’s invasion?”
_____________________________________________________________After all this time on this forum, it is astonishing that TS can even ask this question. Of course, we don’t support NATO or any other capitalist bloc including Putin’s Russia. It is the only sane and socialist response one can give. A plague on all their houses. To hell with all their nationalist warmongering. Nationalism is a toxic mental disease that needs to be expelled from the body politic of the working class
This will spell the end of the world. If it happens better quit your job and spend all your money quicksmart. Neither will be of use any longer.
https://www.newsweek.com/finland-will-allow-nato-place-nuclear-weapons-border-russia-1754925
_____________________________It takes two to tango. Of course, the provocative actions of NATO and its expansionist policies are part of the reason why the world is in the perilous state it is but equally, if a nuclear war happens as a result of NATO placing nuclear weapons in Finland, the abhorrent capitalist regime in Russia would also be responsible. There is always a choice – even in the face of NATO expansion. There is no law of the universe that says you have to insanely press that nuclear button and destroy humanity.
It’s because the Russian regime just like the appalling regimes that constitute the Nato alliance are all driven by the sick fantasy called nationalism. They all think there is something called their “nation-state” that is worth hanging on to and defending. TS, and millions of workers like him, with his own attachment to this toxic mental disease called nationalism, is part of the problem, not the solution
“And where does Marx say that workers can not have leaders?”
_________________________________________________________For the benefit of our ignorant anti-socialist “True Scotsman”….
“As for ourselves, there is, considering all our antecedents, only one course open to us. For almost 40 years we have emphasised that the class struggle is the immediate motive force of history and, in particular, that the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is the great lever of modern social revolution; hence we cannot possibly co-operate with men who seek to eliminate that class struggle from the movement. At the founding of the International we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. Hence we cannot co-operate with men who say openly that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves, and must first be emancipated from above by philanthropic members of the upper and lower middle classes. If the new party organ is to adopt a policy that corresponds to the opinions of these gentlemen, if it is bourgeois and not proletarian, then all we could do — much though we might regret it — would be publicly to declare ourselves opposed to it and abandon the solidarity with which we have hitherto represented the German Party abroad. But we hope it won’t come to that. https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1879/09/18.htm
“Lol, ideology is not a true/false proposition, it’s a matter of values. You are comparing apples and oranges. Go back to philosophy for kindergarteners class.”
_________________________________________________________Yes and according to your “kindgartener” logic your own values must fit quite comfortably with a Nazi outlook which must be considered “right” by your standards given the sizeable electoral support the Nazis attracted. Mind you I am not surprised. Your bootlicking, craven support for the disgusting authoritarian capitalist regime of Putin and his fellow oligarchs speaks volumes. If anyone is a dupe of ruling class propaganda it is you TS
“I guess our resident clown, TS, must think that the Nazis were “winning the battle of ideas” when the Nazi Party secured 37.3 percent of the popular vote in the July 1932 elections…”
37 per cent is not winning.
__________________________________________________________Not the point
You are equating the validity of an argument with the number of supporters it attracts. Therefore according to your daft logic, there was quite a lot to be said in favour of the Nazis and that, indeed, you would consider yourself to be some extent a Nazi as well – at least to the extent that you believed they were right which they must have been having garnered 37% of the electoral support
TS> “And yet you vomit up your ruling class’ propaganda at every opportunity. Putin is a billionaire/ Russian aggression…Guardian article after Guardian article. At some point a disinterested observer has to conclude these people either collaborate with, or are the willing dupes of, their ruling class.”
“So do please explain – how then can we possibly be “simping” for this class when we oppose both regimes in this conflict?”
Just did.
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Further proof that our resident clown could not argue his way out of a paper bag if he tried …How, pray, can we collaborate with or be the willing dupes of the Western ruling class when we explicitly oppose BOTH SIDES in this capitalist war? The fact that we might quote an article from the Guardian or some other newspaper does not mean we are “spewing up ruling class propaganda”. That’s a stupid argument. You yourself use capitalist sources to back up your own claims. A quick scan of this page alone shows you using Reuters as a source.
Apart from that, the fact that the capitalist press might report for example that “Putin is a billionaire” or whatever does not make it untrue, does it now? Your feeble line of argument seems to be that just because an article in the Guardian says Putin is a billionaire it must obviously be false because the Guardian is a capitalist propaganda outlet. That’s a pathetic way of going about proving your point.
If you want to say Putin is not a billionaire then what you need to do is go about marshaling facts that demonstrate that Putin cannot possibly be a billionaire. You don’t do that. Your whole mode of argumentation is based on ad hominem attacks or ridiculing sources. That’s weak. Very weak
People like Marx drew on capitalist sources like contemporaneous newspapers and periodicals to build up his argument. Would you say he was therefore spouting ruling-class propaganda?
TS “Building socialism is a process. Who are you to criticise how actual, real world socialists arrive at the destination?”
____________________________________________________________Because trying to arrive at socialism via state capitalism is a complete dead end. You are not building socialism. All you are doing is building capitalism. Even you cannot possibly be so naive as to imagine that the authoritarian capitalist regimes like China, North Korea, Venezuela etc ad nauseum intend to establish the Marxian goal of a moneyless wageless stateless and non-market alternative capitalism
