Pol Pot also defined himself as Marxist-Leninist. I feel like lines are being blurred everywhere.
Does Lukashenko deserve our critical support in defiance of Western hegemony?
We literally have had actual leftists on the ground from Belarus posting about this situation and explaining whats happenening and yes he isnt a communist but he deserves critical support in the current situation
What does bringing up motherfucking Pol Pot has to do with anything jfc
Belarus is the only post-USSR state that didn't go full fire sale on nationalized industries and welfare state.
While I wouldn't lionize Lukashenko, the antics in and outrage over Belarus over the last year or so is transparently another color revolution-style regime change attempt against a Russian neighbor and ally, as part of the greater scope of US imperial policy to encircle Russia and sell off all assets to profiteers.
THE ALTERNATIVE IS FASCIST OCCUPATION AND THE ULTIMATE DISTRUCTION OF THE SOVIET LEGACY- SO I THINK LUKASHENKO IS EXTREMELY COOL AND SHOULD BE IN POWER UNTIL HE DIES REGARDLESS OF HIS POLITICS
SO I THINK LUKASHENKO IS EXTREMELY COOL AND SHOULD BE IN POWER UNTIL HE DIES REGARDLESS OF HIS POLITICS
This is stupid.
Also the "Soviet legacy" isn't doing so great regardless.
'Critical support or not' is often framed like 'is this a good guy or a bad guy' and that's a very stupid POV. That said, if it were fascist paramilitaries and rich profiteers being corrupt in Belarus, we in the US would never hear about it and that should tell you something.
if it were fascist paramilitaries and rich profiteers being corrupt in Belarus, we in the US would never hear about it and that should tell you something.
Eh, this is not entirely true, Russia has plenty of rich profiteers
like Bill Browder, an American who has been canonized by the Russiagaters
are the russiagaters really complaining about the lack of oligarchs in russia, or is putin just a convenient scapegoat?
even if they are, it should also be understood that russian oligarchs oppose American ones, unlike many other oligarchs around the world
Social safety nets are socialism when non-US-aligned countries do it
I honestly wouldn't call him a socialist, more of a nationalist (not the fash kind but "fuck off foreign powers" kind) but Belarus is currently the front line in the NATO-Russian Cold War. To me it seems like he tries to play the two sides off eachother for the benefit of Belarus (this is based and I respect it), but ultimately the country is aligned with Russia due to strong cultural and historical ties. He doesn't seem to be lavishly corrupt (a little corruption is expected and okay). He does maintain that small social safety net which is not so easy for a country like that to sustain under western pressure. Neoliberal regime change would likely be devastating for Belarusians, and we already saw the CIA's dirty fucking hands all over the protests there last year. I'd say he's fine and you should at least oppose the CIA's efforts to depose him.
(Also he kept a bunch of Soviet icongraphy and let Steven Seagal visit his Presidential Palace and pick carrots so for me the cool factor makes me like him lol)
he can have a little corruption, as a treat
but for real, people should be compensated according to responsibility, and if that means he gets a nice house and good food, so be it. anything like the amount of wealth CEOs siphon off their workers today is haram of course
critical support is not about laundering genuine complaints. fuck Lukashenko for doing corruption if he is.
no, you're right, I don't know how extensive his corruption is.
I'm just saying on principle, a socialist society would maintain differing levels of compensation for a while, until the big red communism button is pressed
people should be compensated according to responsibility,
This is literally a liberal talking point to justify the CEO thing.
Also we're talking about corruption.
I'm talking like slightly higher wages, not billions in tax havens. DPRK has a base salary and a production based bonus, so you will never starve, but still get rewarded for hard work.
"Responsibility"=/=harder work. Responsibility is what the libs will tell you to justify why a CEO makes so much money and it is a weird abstract concept.
Corruption isn't how much a politician is paid. Corruption is abuse of a politician's office for additional illegal monetary gain.
I mean if you think the western world is any better with "corruption" I have news for you, they just found different ways to legalize and legitimize it via lobbying and "charity events" and stuff. Corruption isn't such a big deal in Eastern Europe, even the more blatant kind. As long as it doesn't go overboard, there is some expectation that office holders can abuse their power for personal gain a little bit. You'd wouldn't want him to act like an ascetic saint, that'd just be disingenuous, since every politician these days abuses their office and every Eastern European knows it.
Sure corruption is a bad societal ill and is essentially robbing from the public (much like private property), but under capitalism where people are motivated to seek material wealth above all it's unavoidable that many people are going to try to turn their political power into money. But there's still a difference between skimming a few million from the state budget over many years of rule (which I believe is Lukashenko's situation) and orchestrating a scheme to sell off the multi-billion dollar state oil company to your banker friends like Yeltsin did in the 90s. Plus the CIA likes to level vague charges of "corruption" on their regime change targets all the time because you can find it in basically every country.
not even a socialist revolution will completely eliminate corruption, at least not without great effort and some time. So some dude stealing a few million in taxes is not that big of a deal compared to the crimes against humanity that occur everyday in the realm of "legitimate business"
i don't think anywhere is free of corruption, but the learned cynicism of eastern europeans doesn't make it okay or make it necessary for us to lower our expectations. China is executing people for corruption all the damn time, and we applaud it. i'm not going to have a double standard for eastern european 'anti-imperialists'
Ideally there is no corruption, but in practice a few bribes can be overlooked if the politician generally has their people's wellbeing at heart.
ideally, people abusing their political office should be shot in the head
in practice we're approving it on the principle of 'he's good in his heart, really, trust me'
shithead =/= shithead the US should overthrow
Yeah no, that is not what I am saying. Until we hit the communism button, or at least have an advanced socialist state, people in the business of politics will be a little corrupt. If they weren't, they could never get to a position of power. Focus on whether the corruption is getting in the way of governing(such as allowing dangerously sub-standard construction) or violently immoral(such as accepting a concubine). I can understand if you disagree on this point, but I want you to understand what I am saying.
Does Lukashenko deserve our critical support in defiance of Western hegemony?
Yes.
Not because he's good but because the fall of Belarus will also be the fall of Russia. I can not understate how incredibly important Belarus is in the context of strategic and political defence of Russia. If it becomes west-aligned Russia as an anti-imperialist power ends and that would be a fucking disaster.
Either way you should be deferring to the socialists in Belarus and the rest of the former soviet states on this issue -- 100% of which all support Lukashenko.
That is besides the point, it is capitalist but not imperialist and represents the strongest anti-imperialist opposition in the world right now, at least until China takes on a more active role helping small states oppose imperialism.
If it falls you end up with a neoliberal Russia aligned with the NATO and the entire world against China. If you want to see everything we've gained disappear this attitude is precisely how it will happen. It is literally irrelevant how you feel about Russia, stop moralising and think.
Quoting from Lenin, he outlines imperialism as:
(1) The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
(2) The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy.
(3) The export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance.
(4) The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves.
(5) The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.
Please explain how you come to the conclusion that Russia is imperialist under this understanding of imperialism. Capitalist? Yes. Imperialist? Fuck no. And they are OBVIOUSLY anti-imperialist in their actions fighting against ACTUAL imperialist states.
Might they be imperialist in the future? Of course. But no they're absolutely not right now and they represent a force against the actual imperialists in the world today. If you don't understand that it's a serious problem with your thinking. Their collapse would be fucking devastating for socialists.
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Yes.
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No. You can not sidestep this. The construction of this pre-requisite is well underway but incomplete. Russian finance capital is an interesting topic though and worth getting into if you have time.
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Exports of commodities are not exports of capital. There is a distinction here, the export of capital is different to the export of commodity. You can't use commodity export as a tickbox here.
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Literally every socialist country in the world today is a WTO member except the DPRK. It's an organisation that represents 96% of all global trade, membership does not mean imperialist power within it. Russia has within the WTO prevented powers being used to advance the western imperialist project.
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What? There is no "posturing" around them. NATO is trying to colour revolution states into neoliberalism one by one and Russia is simply acting as a barrier to that helping states to prevent it.
We meet 2 of these. Not 5. 1 and 3 are met, 3 is met because Russian banks take part in considerable export of capital through investment in projects that generate debts for other countries.
We do not meet the bar for imperialism. And we can objectively point to plenty of anti-imperialist actions Russia undertakes. These may be because Russia itself wants to be the imperialist state in future but that does not change the fact that it is currently in opposition to the imperialist project in the world, it is not a competing imperialist power, we only have one imperialist project underway, that of the NATO aligned neoliberal west alliance of finance capital.
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This is a decent article on the "Russian imperialism" question. The West desperately wants regime change in Russia to install another neoliberal puppet (Navalny in particular) for Western capital and finish off what Yeltsin started in privatization for Western plunder. This would be a return to the neoliberal hellscape of 90s Russia. Like in Ukraine, the most reactionary fascist elements would also likely be unleashed to establish a Western puppet state. Russia contains about 30% of the world's natural resources valued at about $75 trillion. It's the second largest exporter of petroleum. Russia has the largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and is the largest exporter of natural gas. Oil and gas account for over a third of its federal budget revenues (which are essential for funding public services/education/healthcare and the large-scale privatization that the West wants critically threatens this). It's also the third largest arms exporter in the world. While obviously not being a socialist country, it still retains a high degree of state ownership for a capitalist country with the state controlling over half of banking, almost half of the oil and gas sector, and over a third of the utility sector. State-owned enterprises account for almost 40% of the capitalization on the Russian stock market.
Russia also plays a large role in undermining Western regime efforts against other countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. According to neocon ghoul Elliott Abrams:
We underestimated the importance of the Cuban and Russian support for the [Venezuelan] regime, which has proved I think to be the two most important pillars of support for the regime and without which it wouldn’t be there, it wouldn’t be in power.
Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, on Cuban relations:
We did make huge mistakes in the 1990s while turning our backs on Cuba. That time is definitely over, and I'm absolutely sure that our relations deserve better attention from Russia.
They deserve more investments from Russia both in terms of finances and equipment of course, but also human resources. And definitely we should assist, we should help, Cuba; we should support Cuba as long as it's discriminated against, as long as it's sanctioned, as long as it's blockaded by the United States."
In 2014, Putin forgave about 90% of Cuba's debt that it had accumulated from the Soviet era. In 2019, Russia had sent Cuba 1,000 minibuses, 50 locomotives, tens of thousands of tourists, and a promise to upgrade the island's power grid with a multi-million dollar improvement plan. Russia is currently building 4 power plants in Cuba and pledging over $1 billion to revitalize Cuba's railroad system.
In Nicaragua, Russia is heavily arming Nicaragua's socialist government, distributing food aid, working to improve Nicaragua's public transportation, and helping the country's ability to manufacture vaccines.
Russia and Belarus serve as buffer zones against the West and NATO for Vietnam, China, DPRK, and Laos.
So, yeah, Putin obviously isn't a comrade and he certainly opposes socialism at home as it threatens his own power and the Russian oligarchs that support him, but the current Russian government nevertheless plays a crucial role in establishing the multipolar world order that socialism desperately needs to survive. Putin's current shitty oligarchy also still manages to be far better for Russians than what neoliberal Western sellouts like Yeltsin ever was (a low bar I know).
the fall of Belarus will also be the fall of Russia.
It definitely wouldn't, this is a massive exaggeration.
If it becomes west-aligned Russia as an anti-imperialist power ends and that would be a fucking disaster.
Russia is not anti-imperialist, Russia is an imperialist power at odds with the US.
I'd worry more about our freedom-loving democratic allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
you dont need to know anything other than that NATO wants to capture it. it is written so clearly on the wall.
Listen the only cases this matters for you to know a damn thing is to do the Thought Stopping TM ritual to people who say he should go. our support means absolutely nothing, all we can do is shut down dangerous speak
Lmao, they just described like half of the leaders in Europe and America, yet only this one is the problem. Goldfish brain.
critical support in defiance of Western hegemony?
all countries that aren't straight up fucking fascist deserve critical support when they defy imperial core hegemony. russia's occasional anti-imperial stances are worth a modicum of very critical support and they are way more reactionary than belarus. the best way to interpret it imo is back them when they are pushed against a wall by imperialists and then later discuss the more problematic parts of it.
