Yh the whole thing kinda revealed that alot of white bois on the internet would have backed the Romanovs over their western home countries.
Similar on alot of the Iran and Syria takes tbh. Clearly alot of the people here have never met Syrian refugees or Iranian feminist activists.
I think alot of comrades are also equivocating between uses of the term 'empire' to deny that Russian has the negative qualities we associate with the word. On the older definition of an Empire which fits into the ideal of the Roman, Byzantine, Chinese, or Russian Empires, modern Russian does clearly seem to have such ambitions. Which isn't surprising because its a modern neoliberalized but increasingly state-capitalist state run by reactionary nationalists and the founders or descendents of the mafia who took control of the economy and made their money through corruption, sales of public assets, monpoly rents, murder, slavery, drugs and prostitution.
It perhaps does not fully fit the later, theoretically distinct (so referring to a different concept) Leninist use of the term where it refers to a particular stage in the later development of modern, mature, globalized capitalism. But this is just restating the fact that Russian does not as yet have the capability of the US to enforce a form of globalized dominance or hegemony over the international capitalist system of production, trade and commerce. But it's not at all clear why these comrades this in any way means that Russia is not the fucked up, depraved place that it is. For what it's worth, I think anyone who thinks that the Russian bourgeoisie would maintain their dominance any less ruthlessly in their sphere of influence than the Americans doesn't know nearly enough about them.
I think at times people have forgotten that their obligation is first and foremost to the well-being of the broad masses of society, including that of Ukraine, and that's been masked by paradox-game style speculations of when Russian 'will humiliate Ukraine', or rejoicing over the deaths of Ukrainians, even The most important thing, including when we take all the political considerations about US power, seems to me to be ending the war as soon as possible in a way that does not give the US its geopolitical objectives. Ofc then we'd have to worry about whether such a set back would make US policy makers more desperate and dangerous in the classic style of declining empires as opposed to feeling more disempowered and accepting that it cannot maintain unipolarity.
Most of the rest of world do not like Russia. They just don't give nearly as much of a fuck about white imperialists crying about a war they caused, and despise and increasingly feel less need to give a fuck about towing the line when the West is pressuring them through moral castigation and threats of material, economic, political and potentially miliary aggression if they don't fall in line. At best some of the more geopolitically aware and savy are conscious of and potentially optimistic for the prosects of a genuinely multipolar order. The Ukraine war is not even the most deadly ongoing conflict. That's the war in Ethiopia.
The interesting theoretical question is raises is whether a multipolar world order in which the major blocs are still all equally committed to deepening late, uber exploitative capitalism and often under very explicitly authoritarian governments, will be more or less prone to geopolitical conflict and war. I fear it's the later, but it also seems to obviously be something that will inevitably have to happen as US global hegemony has to be defeated for socialism as a global project to have even snowman's chance in hell.
Most people in the global south (the working classes of the world in general tbh) are too fucking poor, exhausted, overworked, concerned with more pressing material issues to be able to willing to give a fuck.
Yes, many people outside the west are making constant jokes about it, but this is not the same thing as having a developed theoretical opinion that Russia is a positive influence in the world or should win.
At no point did I imply that they cannot or do not. That's not at all the point. Their political opinions matter more immediately that americans lemme tell ya. But if you haven't had the opportunity to be educated on the topic because you're too poor and overworked, if you are too exhausted to keep up to date on info on a distant geopolitical conflict, then alot of people are simply not going to have the point of view that westerners on this website do developing their geopolitical theories from the leisure of their bedrooms, in particular the majority they don't sit around talking in technical leninst terms about imperialism and multipolarity. That has nothing to do with their capacities, but with other material conditions that restrain that or make it not a priority. If anything friends and fam around me have been joking about how little they give a fuck.
But again, as in my previous comment, at no point do I suggest that "working class people do not have the capacity to form their own theoretical and political opinions to emancipate themselves". They obviously do. But material conditions and their effects on our education on certain issues, or our time and energy to dedicate to it, don't magically disappear for most people because ideally we would like them to, and pointing out that fact is not negating people's capacities, it's pointing out that capitalism and imperialism rob us of our opportunities to actualise this potential. Like my mum is sharp as a whip. But she doesnt know shit about geopolitics because she doesnt have the time or energy, and her situation is common.
The only reason I am relatively well-informed on the geopolitical history of Russia and Ukraine is because I was lucky enough to do well in public education and get funding to support it further instead of working full-time.
On the point regarding Chinese academics, you're obviously correct, but the simple fact that there are Chinese scholars who support Russia's invasion is not much of an argument outside of what their actual arguments are. Some have better analyses imo, others worse. It also depends on whether or not their analyses are from a socialist or nationalist perspective.
Westerners obviously masters are lecturing the rest of the world on every topic under the sun. We all hopefully know this. But westerners are doing this all the time on this site and people only get in uproar when they dont agree with the take. At the end of the day what matters is whether or not that view is correct. Like I dont give a fuck whether a country's majority are anti-LGBT or think black people have souls, I'm still gonna say it's fucking wack, and honestly anything else is cowardice.
That didn't stop the poor, exhausted, overworked, concerned with more pressing material issues workers of Haiti, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Ethiopia from waving Russian flags. The Global South doesn't need to have big-brained analysis of pampered Westerners to decide that yes, Russia is the lesser evil to the point of not being all that evil. They are tired of the West's bullshit and want the West to gtfo by any means necessary. That's why Mali told the Danish and the French to gtfo while inviting the Russians in. Even the most uneducated members of those countries recognize this simple truth. If anything, it's the petty bourgeois NGO-brained members of their society who's mentally colonized and think the West can show them neocolonial mercy.
You're obviously 100% correct if everything you've said regarding revolution. People make their revolutions, not the ruling classes or the middle classes, petit-boug, or bougies who claim to represent them. If I didn't think that to my bones I wouldn't be a communist. I'm not disagreeing. But on the point of explicit support you're actually mainly referring to the states of those countries. The average urban or rural worker is not following the geopolitical minutiae of this conflict closely. Ofc, there are far more comrades outside the West than inside of it, and their opinions and analyses are in general more concrete and interesting of those western comrades. But we are still a political minority outside the West and have a range of reactionary domestic forces to compete with.
Yes people outside the west are generally far more more aware of the fact that the West and recently especially the US has been structurally ruining their lives for centuries and are contemptuous of Western liberal obliviousness this. That's why they don't give a fuck if the US/Ukraine loses, and I get and have the same immediate emotional reaction to people talking about it. But that's different to a colder, consequentialist geopolitical analysis where I think it the positive consequences for the global working class would outweigh the negative in the long run. Most people in the world are not radicalized and therefore not theoretically developed to the point of taking that view. The rest of the world still struggles with reactionary ideology, much as a direct resort of the imperialism and exploitation they have suffered at the West's hands.
Again, I don't even disagree that if I were forced to answer the question, I'd probably say with a decent amount of confidence that I think the overall consequences would be better if Russian got the edge rather than the West. What makes me uncomfortable is that how that seems to easily to slide into a kind of nihilistic gloating and tbh explicitly positive championing of Russian interests, whereas the fact that we want US hegemony to collapse does not imply that I have to want Russian nationalist imperialist interests to spread across Eastern Europe on the historical pattern which anyone who actually follows and studies the politics of the region is fully aware that Russia would like to do given its geopolitical status. Like do people here actually think that the Wagner company in Africa are doing good, humanitarian work? Evidently they've never met mercenaries.
except many people slobbering at the mouth for a crushing russian victory clearly don't understand it either lmao. Not as if they've been crawling out of the woodwork much to say that, from the pov of the russian working class, they would hope that the Russian working class also overthrows the Russian government. I also want Nato to lose, for obvious reasons. But it often looks on here like people saying they hope the Germans get defeated by the Romanovs but dont want the Romanov dynasty to fall because it would inevitably lead to a foreign intervention and imperialist domination of Russia, when the clear thing to want is that is fundamentally destabilizes both governments. But again, that's not what alot of people on here have been suggesting wrt russia (hey maybe because its mainly alienated people shitposting). Tbf, the best arguments I can think of in defence of that is the absence of sufficient leftist presence in Russia (due to that not being allowed by the gov). But it does raise the obvious question of when we should support anti-government movements in other countries. Like many people here seem to perceive every movement in countries opposed by Nato as astroturfed CIA-plants. The later obviously exist as a matter of public record at large, politically important scales (Ukraine's fascist coup d'était being the obvious example), but the latter normally need to latch on to and redirect organic social movements. Honestly I think alot of people just want to make the real world politics of this seem alot simplier and easier than it is from the comfort of their computer screens, abstracting from the messy detail by doing some geopolitical analysis.
Again, just to change the reference a bit to Iran and Syria, its really, really evident from how they talk about these issues that a bunch of people here have not really interacted with many people from these places, let alone been to them. Like would people here be making their Assad jokes to comrades who've come out of a Syrian prison, or iranian feminist activists who've been raped in prison? It's obviously correct to not want Nato to intervene imperialistically in these countries affairs, and people in the west have a political responsibility to organize to prevent that, but many people on here who make the pro-russian/syrian/iranian comments are not even doing that. They're playing video games and watching anime. Its important to be conscious of the fact that you're then talking about yet more governments that use mass repression, killings, torture and rape prisons against masses of communist, socialist, anarchist, feminist and indigeneous activists and militants, and use the political power they have to crush genuinely progressive movements as well. They'd murder you in a heartbeat if necessary or convenient. The other side of the revolutionary defeatist equation is normally not being consistently brought up here either, nor the related question on what conditions make revolutionary situations possible in these countries, and so when and how to support them if possible in any way.
The irony is that many people are would then point out that the Russian Communist Party has a decently sized base in Russia, not realising how reactionary the current org bearing that name it (to not get into the details of the other groups), and how they are fully integrated into the current ruling regime in Russia, seen as a asset by Putin's faction to bolsher United Russia.
Yh the whole thing kinda revealed that alot of white bois on the internet would have backed the Romanovs over their western home countries.
Similar on alot of the Iran and Syria takes tbh. Clearly alot of the people here have never met Syrian refugees or Iranian feminist activists.
I think alot of comrades are also equivocating between uses of the term 'empire' to deny that Russian has the negative qualities we associate with the word. On the older definition of an Empire which fits into the ideal of the Roman, Byzantine, Chinese, or Russian Empires, modern Russian does clearly seem to have such ambitions. Which isn't surprising because its a modern neoliberalized but increasingly state-capitalist state run by reactionary nationalists and the founders or descendents of the mafia who took control of the economy and made their money through corruption, sales of public assets, monpoly rents, murder, slavery, drugs and prostitution. It perhaps does not fully fit the later, theoretically distinct (so referring to a different concept) Leninist use of the term where it refers to a particular stage in the later development of modern, mature, globalized capitalism. But this is just restating the fact that Russian does not as yet have the capability of the US to enforce a form of globalized dominance or hegemony over the international capitalist system of production, trade and commerce. But it's not at all clear why these comrades this in any way means that Russia is not the fucked up, depraved place that it is. For what it's worth, I think anyone who thinks that the Russian bourgeoisie would maintain their dominance any less ruthlessly in their sphere of influence than the Americans doesn't know nearly enough about them.
I think at times people have forgotten that their obligation is first and foremost to the well-being of the broad masses of society, including that of Ukraine, and that's been masked by paradox-game style speculations of when Russian 'will humiliate Ukraine', or rejoicing over the deaths of Ukrainians, even The most important thing, including when we take all the political considerations about US power, seems to me to be ending the war as soon as possible in a way that does not give the US its geopolitical objectives. Ofc then we'd have to worry about whether such a set back would make US policy makers more desperate and dangerous in the classic style of declining empires as opposed to feeling more disempowered and accepting that it cannot maintain unipolarity.
Most of the rest of world do not like Russia. They just don't give nearly as much of a fuck about white imperialists crying about a war they caused, and despise and increasingly feel less need to give a fuck about towing the line when the West is pressuring them through moral castigation and threats of material, economic, political and potentially miliary aggression if they don't fall in line. At best some of the more geopolitically aware and savy are conscious of and potentially optimistic for the prosects of a genuinely multipolar order. The Ukraine war is not even the most deadly ongoing conflict. That's the war in Ethiopia.
The interesting theoretical question is raises is whether a multipolar world order in which the major blocs are still all equally committed to deepening late, uber exploitative capitalism and often under very explicitly authoritarian governments, will be more or less prone to geopolitical conflict and war. I fear it's the later, but it also seems to obviously be something that will inevitably have to happen as US global hegemony has to be defeated for socialism as a global project to have even snowman's chance in hell.
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Most people in the global south (the working classes of the world in general tbh) are too fucking poor, exhausted, overworked, concerned with more pressing material issues to be able to willing to give a fuck. Yes, many people outside the west are making constant jokes about it, but this is not the same thing as having a developed theoretical opinion that Russia is a positive influence in the world or should win.
deleted by creator
At no point did I imply that they cannot or do not. That's not at all the point. Their political opinions matter more immediately that americans lemme tell ya. But if you haven't had the opportunity to be educated on the topic because you're too poor and overworked, if you are too exhausted to keep up to date on info on a distant geopolitical conflict, then alot of people are simply not going to have the point of view that westerners on this website do developing their geopolitical theories from the leisure of their bedrooms, in particular the majority they don't sit around talking in technical leninst terms about imperialism and multipolarity. That has nothing to do with their capacities, but with other material conditions that restrain that or make it not a priority. If anything friends and fam around me have been joking about how little they give a fuck.
deleted by creator
But again, as in my previous comment, at no point do I suggest that "working class people do not have the capacity to form their own theoretical and political opinions to emancipate themselves". They obviously do. But material conditions and their effects on our education on certain issues, or our time and energy to dedicate to it, don't magically disappear for most people because ideally we would like them to, and pointing out that fact is not negating people's capacities, it's pointing out that capitalism and imperialism rob us of our opportunities to actualise this potential. Like my mum is sharp as a whip. But she doesnt know shit about geopolitics because she doesnt have the time or energy, and her situation is common.
The only reason I am relatively well-informed on the geopolitical history of Russia and Ukraine is because I was lucky enough to do well in public education and get funding to support it further instead of working full-time.
On the point regarding Chinese academics, you're obviously correct, but the simple fact that there are Chinese scholars who support Russia's invasion is not much of an argument outside of what their actual arguments are. Some have better analyses imo, others worse. It also depends on whether or not their analyses are from a socialist or nationalist perspective.
Westerners obviously masters are lecturing the rest of the world on every topic under the sun. We all hopefully know this. But westerners are doing this all the time on this site and people only get in uproar when they dont agree with the take. At the end of the day what matters is whether or not that view is correct. Like I dont give a fuck whether a country's majority are anti-LGBT or think black people have souls, I'm still gonna say it's fucking wack, and honestly anything else is cowardice.
Brave of u assume i must be from the west.
deleted by creator
Well for the record I'm not, but I've lived in Europe for a long while and guess I learned to speak similar to them when in English.
That didn't stop the poor, exhausted, overworked, concerned with more pressing material issues workers of Haiti, the Central African Republic, Mali, and Ethiopia from waving Russian flags. The Global South doesn't need to have big-brained analysis of pampered Westerners to decide that yes, Russia is the lesser evil to the point of not being all that evil. They are tired of the West's bullshit and want the West to gtfo by any means necessary. That's why Mali told the Danish and the French to gtfo while inviting the Russians in. Even the most uneducated members of those countries recognize this simple truth. If anything, it's the petty bourgeois NGO-brained members of their society who's mentally colonized and think the West can show them neocolonial mercy.
You're obviously 100% correct if everything you've said regarding revolution. People make their revolutions, not the ruling classes or the middle classes, petit-boug, or bougies who claim to represent them. If I didn't think that to my bones I wouldn't be a communist. I'm not disagreeing. But on the point of explicit support you're actually mainly referring to the states of those countries. The average urban or rural worker is not following the geopolitical minutiae of this conflict closely. Ofc, there are far more comrades outside the West than inside of it, and their opinions and analyses are in general more concrete and interesting of those western comrades. But we are still a political minority outside the West and have a range of reactionary domestic forces to compete with.
Yes people outside the west are generally far more more aware of the fact that the West and recently especially the US has been structurally ruining their lives for centuries and are contemptuous of Western liberal obliviousness this. That's why they don't give a fuck if the US/Ukraine loses, and I get and have the same immediate emotional reaction to people talking about it. But that's different to a colder, consequentialist geopolitical analysis where I think it the positive consequences for the global working class would outweigh the negative in the long run. Most people in the world are not radicalized and therefore not theoretically developed to the point of taking that view. The rest of the world still struggles with reactionary ideology, much as a direct resort of the imperialism and exploitation they have suffered at the West's hands.
Again, I don't even disagree that if I were forced to answer the question, I'd probably say with a decent amount of confidence that I think the overall consequences would be better if Russian got the edge rather than the West. What makes me uncomfortable is that how that seems to easily to slide into a kind of nihilistic gloating and tbh explicitly positive championing of Russian interests, whereas the fact that we want US hegemony to collapse does not imply that I have to want Russian nationalist imperialist interests to spread across Eastern Europe on the historical pattern which anyone who actually follows and studies the politics of the region is fully aware that Russia would like to do given its geopolitical status. Like do people here actually think that the Wagner company in Africa are doing good, humanitarian work? Evidently they've never met mercenaries.
TFW you don't understand revolutionary defeatism.
except many people slobbering at the mouth for a crushing russian victory clearly don't understand it either lmao. Not as if they've been crawling out of the woodwork much to say that, from the pov of the russian working class, they would hope that the Russian working class also overthrows the Russian government. I also want Nato to lose, for obvious reasons. But it often looks on here like people saying they hope the Germans get defeated by the Romanovs but dont want the Romanov dynasty to fall because it would inevitably lead to a foreign intervention and imperialist domination of Russia, when the clear thing to want is that is fundamentally destabilizes both governments. But again, that's not what alot of people on here have been suggesting wrt russia (hey maybe because its mainly alienated people shitposting). Tbf, the best arguments I can think of in defence of that is the absence of sufficient leftist presence in Russia (due to that not being allowed by the gov). But it does raise the obvious question of when we should support anti-government movements in other countries. Like many people here seem to perceive every movement in countries opposed by Nato as astroturfed CIA-plants. The later obviously exist as a matter of public record at large, politically important scales (Ukraine's fascist coup d'était being the obvious example), but the latter normally need to latch on to and redirect organic social movements. Honestly I think alot of people just want to make the real world politics of this seem alot simplier and easier than it is from the comfort of their computer screens, abstracting from the messy detail by doing some geopolitical analysis.
Again, just to change the reference a bit to Iran and Syria, its really, really evident from how they talk about these issues that a bunch of people here have not really interacted with many people from these places, let alone been to them. Like would people here be making their Assad jokes to comrades who've come out of a Syrian prison, or iranian feminist activists who've been raped in prison? It's obviously correct to not want Nato to intervene imperialistically in these countries affairs, and people in the west have a political responsibility to organize to prevent that, but many people on here who make the pro-russian/syrian/iranian comments are not even doing that. They're playing video games and watching anime. Its important to be conscious of the fact that you're then talking about yet more governments that use mass repression, killings, torture and rape prisons against masses of communist, socialist, anarchist, feminist and indigeneous activists and militants, and use the political power they have to crush genuinely progressive movements as well. They'd murder you in a heartbeat if necessary or convenient. The other side of the revolutionary defeatist equation is normally not being consistently brought up here either, nor the related question on what conditions make revolutionary situations possible in these countries, and so when and how to support them if possible in any way.
The irony is that many people are would then point out that the Russian Communist Party has a decently sized base in Russia, not realising how reactionary the current org bearing that name it (to not get into the details of the other groups), and how they are fully integrated into the current ruling regime in Russia, seen as a asset by Putin's faction to bolsher United Russia.
WTF does "yh" mean?:jesse-wtf:
think it's an even further truncated version of "yeh", so probably meant to be read as "yeah"