Homie is threatening to shut down any businesses that aren't unionized lol. Chad move

  • Bread_In_Baltimore [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    In all honesty this is because he realizes that the protests were staged by the petit bourgeois and the proletariat, which was generally on the side of the government, wasn't organized enough to fight back against them. In the event that the west stages a coup against him, the unionized workforce could stage a massive general strike.

    • Bedandsofa [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      the proletariat, which was generally on the side of the government, wasn’t organized enough to fight back against them.

      They weren't fighting back against the "staged" protests, because the protests literally began with a general strike against Lukashenko's government, which is absolutely guilty of advancing austerity policies (raising the retirement age, privatization policies, cutting benefits) and losing the support of a layer of the working class.

      From an article outlining the situation in August:

      "Grodno-Azot (chemical fertilisers), Belmedpreparaty (pharmaceutical), JSC “Grodnozhilstroy” (construction), Terrazit (PVC and aluminium), Minsk Electromechanical Plant (MEZ) and the Zhabinka sugar plant have joined the strike movement. Strikes and protests have also taken place at Agat Electromechanical Plant, and factories operated by the “Keramin” ceramics manufacturer. At the same time, the Philharmonic went on strike. And a number of small businesses too. Even employees of the Institute of Physics of the National Academy of Sciences are involved in the strikes.

      As we are writing these lines, news arrives that taxi drivers at Uber and Yandex have also announced they are joining the general strike.

      Most importantly, a strike started at the Belarusian Automobile Plant BelAZ. Today, thousands of BelAZ workers in the city of Zhodino were chanting: “[Lukasheno] Leave!"

      Earlier, enterprises such as Belarussian Steel Works BMZ, VIPRIL Control (flight controllers) and many others went on an indefinite political strike."

      The workers of the Minsk Tractor Works plant went on strike the day after that, and when Lukashenko showed up to talk to the workers, they shouted him down.

      Working class uprisings aren't especially likely to generate, and stick to, demands that go outside the bounds of capitalism without access to a revolutionary political leadership, and thats exactly what you see in Belarus. That doesn't mean the class composition of the general strikes was "petite bourgeois."

      Like the fact that there are competing forces at play, and that the liberal opposition is winning out in the absence of an organized working class leadership, doesn't retroactively transform the whole thing into a staged petite bourgeois "color revolution."

      Some of you have such an obsession with boiling down complexity and contradiction into black and white categories, good or bad, that you lose sight of the class struggle perspective in a situation where the working class struggle is erupting.

    • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      In the event that the west stages a coup against him, the unionized workforce could stage a massive general strike.

      And he can do the same when the left gets stronger.

      • Bread_In_Baltimore [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        The left in Belarus is pro-government, mostly represented by the Communist Party. It certainly doesn't look anything like the western left but nothing like that exists there. There are pro-Russia conservatives, pro-western neoliberals, the Communists and independent conservatives (majority of government). The trade unions favor the government because they don't want their factories sold to western capital. It will be a while before they are antagonistic to the National Bourgeoisie.

        • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
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          4 years ago

          Are they pro government because anti-imperialism or because they genuinely support the governments policies?

          • Bread_In_Baltimore [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            A bit of both. Some of the policies are maintaining relatively strong state-owned enterprises and government services. The anti-imperialism mainly stems from a fear that the government could open up to western capital which would gut the state enterprises and sell them for parts. If I had to guess, the Communists see anti-imperialism and domestic policy as being in a dialectical relationship. Moderation of Communist parties and engaging in a United Front with the National Bourgeoisie is a common phenomenon in places that are either under the imperial boot, or are threatened by it. It's a shitty situation but they know they can't start a revolution or stage a Communist coup while the west is banging on their front door.

            • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
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              4 years ago

              Moderation of Communist parties and engaging in a United Front with the National Bourgeoisie is a common phenomenon in places that are either under the imperial boot, or are threatened by it

              Well it's definitely a thing where i live but here a lot of communists broke with the party for the exact same reason, most younger communists think they're out of touch clowns, so the party is basically dying and there are lots of fragmented smaller organizations.

              I mean it surely doesn't help that - at least here - the state owned businesses are just as gutted as the private ones.

              • Bread_In_Baltimore [he/him]
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                4 years ago

                Are you saying you live in Belarus or another Euro country with Communists in Parliament? Just curious because I haven't spoken to anyone from there about this, just commies from Poland and Greece who have a better perspective than most in the US have. Still not as good of a perspective as someone actually in Belarus though.

                • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
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                  4 years ago

                  I live in Hungary. No commies in the parliament and they won't be allowed to get in until Orbán croaks at best. The situation is kinda similar tho because he's also playing this waltz between the west and the Russia-China axis (probably gonna move to the latter in the next years heavily) and he also has a national bourgeoisie built up of his friends who are basically used to get privatised enterprises back to the orbit of the government. What i wrote originally - that government mandated unions can be used against a leftist movement as well - is based on my perceived similarities between the two systems and seeing how Fidesz has put their own cadres into unions so it's nearly impossible to get any strikes to be organized which might be useful in an anti-imperialist struggle, but if we're looking at the bigger picture, it only harms working class movements.