Honestly hilarious imo
"What a spiteful little bitch you are Putin." - Ritaredditonce +2900
"I'm starting to think this Putin guy might be a bit of a twat." - RudigherJones +413
😂
EDIT - Also I'd like to thank y'all for the amazing thread we've got going here. Real mix of comedy and quality discourse on the material situation
I mean Gorby is pretty universally disliked in Russia these days, its a fairly easy political boost at minimum, but also Putin certainly despises Gorby for dismantling the power of the former USSR and handing it over to the US to be sold off to the highest bidder.
I doubt Putin is in any way marxist in the way that we define things, but frankly I dont know enough background and cultural relevancy to have a solid opinion on Putin lol
Putin chased away the vultures that were feeding on the corpse of Russia, stitched soviet nostalgia into its skin and made it walk upright, for now. It is however a frankenstein's monster and the stitching will eventually come apart.
I like this take - I think Russia is in uncharted waters historically, it could go a number of different directions. Does a long history of socialist/communist education within a larger national/cultural identity withstand decades of post-fall ad-hoc capitalist stop-gap measures? Will another collapse lead the way Marxists would hope or would we see another autocracy?
I think its impossible for any western analysts to speculate with any degree of certainty, always need to remember our place in national/cultural self determination.
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liked the rest of the post a lot, but i don't think this is correct
i do think most of what china did was correct for their particular material conditions (not just domestically, but geopolitically as well), but if i ever had a revolution in my own country it should be vastly different
In my opinion a collapse must not happen in the conditions that we currently see in the world. It would be taken over by the western imperialists and turned into another front against China which is their true target.
I think the major marxist victories in the past have occurred in these ways:
WW1 + 2. Soviet Union and China. These victories could not have been won without such large distractions sucking up resources of the imperialists.
Supported by Soviet Union. Many of the african and middle east victories.
Blindspot. These marxist victories were accidents that the imperialists weren't paying enough attention to and didn't realise the significance of until too late. (Cuba for example)
Russia will not be a blindspot to the imperialists. It can only be won by communists at a time when the imperialists are in such deep crisis and/or distraction that they can not interfere. Until that time arises I oppose any attempt to collapse it as it will absolutely not work out in our favour.
It is not enough that revolution occurs, it must occur in the correct conditions for marxists to be the winners of it.
:100-com:
A current revolt with the imperialists fixated on Russia would 100% be quickly taken over by color revolution liberals and their fascist militant arm even if it didn’t start out that way. A communist revolution in Russia will only occur after the imperialist nations collapse or are infighting
This is partially why I think China has been pushing so hard on the sovereignty issue.
If national sovereignty is respected and outside interference in countries is stopped then homegrown communist revolutions legitimately become possible. As it currently stands it is fucking impossible because homegrown revolutionaries can rarely compete with the CIA and their funding/support for opposition.
Problem is there isn’t much you can do to counteract spook shit except your own counter-spook shit. Otherwise you are just naively believing the lies of their politicians saying they aren’t up to anything, and you are a sitting duck for their actions.
China can say to respect sovereignty all day long, but at the end of the day the US can just coup Pakistan their “iron brothers” and ally and China just sits there doing nothing
China is going to need to emerge from their cocoon of ignoring geopolitical realities, shielded by their economic ties to the west
I agree. It is a misguided position.
See and I think they do focus their spook shit, but it is entirely on buying American politics. Even American conservatives especially the biggest employers, cannot resist the siren song of China's cheap markers, and so will never truely get rid of that economic and political relationship.
Basically their position is still on trying to keep that shielding up, which makes sense for them militarily.
let's not overrate the CIA, they're not an all-powerful entity
i know we talk about the blunders that happened during trump's term as if they were his own, but imperialism is weakening and has been so for the past few years regardless of who happened to be in charge
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Dude was one of the vvultures. He stole like 100 million as advisor to a mayor right after the fall and Russia only kinda recovered cus new source of oil was needed during Iraq war. He's just a really competent yes man cus soviet education is fire
Lmao. The dude was twerking at the west and tried to join NATO. He only wake up when the west intention is to subjugated his country and want to turn it into another Poland. Satellite state without nuclear weapons
“The colonized nation only became anti-imperialist when it started getting colonized”
No shit, cut the moralism and look at outcomes
Not moralism to expect all countries to be anti-imperialist.
I don’t expect imperialist nations to be anti-imperialist. I expect them to be destroyed by anti-imperialists and from their own contradictions.
Likewise, saying Russia is bad because their anti-imperialism isn’t pure or ideological, merely out of necessity, fails to grasp the entire concept of materialist analysis. There’s no such thing as “good” or “bad” using this specific lens on geopolitics and class struggle and the direction of imperialism. Russia is not the “bad” sub-type of anti-imperialism because their intentions are impure. They are just anti-imperialist because they oppose the imperialists, regardless of the reason for doing so
Lotta' words to say nothing of value.
I’m deeply sorry you cannot grasp materialism and are stuck in idealism and moralism as a framework
Moralism is when good and bad exist.
Yes.
A Marxist lens does not require any morality whatsoever, and the injection of it vulgarizes its analysis. You start thinking in utopian judgments, such as your earlier comment imagining that all nations could be anti-imperialist in a world system of imperialist capitalism. This is not possible and is a utopian dream.
Imperialism isn’t defeated by the imperialists deciding to knock it off after they have been scolded for being naughty and have a change of heart. It’s ended by the movement of history and violent struggle by the forces and interests opposed to it, and by its own contradictions.
At this current point in time, the Russian federation is one of the most powerful forces opposed to the empire and is therefore by definition de facto anti-imperialist. No mind reading, ideology or anything else required just brute facts and interests
To say that he was always antagonistic to the west is so contrary to the evolution of Russia under Putin. He was effectively privatizing industries and liberalizing the economy, painted as the savior that would heal the relationships between Russia and the West on Time, and whatever prestige shit rag being published in the west at the time.
It's only after he discovered the West will always be xenophobic against Russia and see it as a hostile power that he changed his tune and nationalized some of the same industries he helped tear apart.
Putin mostly led nationalizing efforts after Yeltsin privatized everything. Please stop talking about Russian politics if you are just going off of vibes
I'm talking about the early 00's, not the 90s.
Let’s take a look at the timeline of Gazprom ownership as an example that is indicative of the bigger picture:
1943: Gas production was centralized under the Soviet state
1989: Established as the first state run corporate entity
1992: Privatized by Yeltsin. Sold off as shares to connected cronies. Given tax exemption loopholes and deregulated. Asset stripping started.
2000: Putin comes to power and re-nationalizes Gazprom. Fires the corrupt chairman crony running it and installed his own clique of loyal bureaucrats. Stops asset stripping and orders other companies to return what was stolen. Private entities were regulated and forbidden from exporting gas, only Gazprom and the state held the option. Protectionist tariffs were used and state subsidies to build up capacity
It’s not socialism, but calling Putin’s politics “oligarchy” and “neoliberal” is simply incorrect and conflates him with those forces within Russia that he is opposed to. It would be more accurate to label Putin a protectionist nationalist and anti-imperialist, most similar analogue I can think of would be Gaddafi or Lukashenko. There’s a reason why people preferred Libya under Gaddafi over the neoliberal market anarchy of today, and why Belarus has a better standard of living than the rest of Eastern Europe & why Russia reversed economic course under Putin and differed drastically from Yeltsin’s market anarchy.
If he’s just a competent western comprador vulture like the rest then why is he so uniquely reviled by the west? He’s clearly not the lapdog traitor the others were because he nationalized industry and recovered the Russian economy
He did tried to join the west circle once. Let’s not forget that, it’s when the west reject him and want to subjugate his nation, that when he wake up
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Sure but he didn’t. Why are people here so obsessed with mind reading and moralizing intentions?
All that matters is outcome, and at the end of the day Putin stands in opposition to the neoliberal imperialists and the “oligarchs” in his own nation have a complicated and adversarial relationship with his government. That’s a fact.
It doesn’t matter if a man fights off the imperialist invader for principled anti-imperialist reasons or just to regain control over his home. He’s still fighting them.
Yes but he also browbeat the national bourgeoisie incredibly hard and brought them all into line. It is inarguable that the conditions of the average Russian has been improved by him in doing so, partially why it hasn't fallen apart yet.