just a power move, yo
https://archive.vn/MGLne
I love this lib take. "People sometimes just want power, not economic benefit" like the economy is just money and not the material focus of production that underlies power in the first place.
You don't understand. Money is shiny, and that's why it has value. It's not a shorthand expression for power and ownership at all. Anyways, back to my essay about how none of Jeff Bozo's money is actually liquid so you silly commies could never seize it. I am the money understander.
LOL. When I was a lib my mind was blown when I found out commies cared about property relations and didn't really give a shit about money which y'know was like air, just a thing you took for granted.
Decided to check this bloke's profile out after coming across this and, not only is he an avid r/neoliberal poster, he also decided to bless the world with this gem recently:
And then everyone clapped.
:xi-clap: :xi-clap: :xi-clap:
my uncle works for nintendo and the uyghurs they use to make luigi games told me 'wow happybadger you're so smart and cool and you have a girlfriend anyway we and also you're good at nintendo anyway china makes us into chili and makes our parents eat it like that one south park episode but real'.
[…] my girlfriends dad is in the CCP, he says that he hopes 3 Uyghurs d*e for every Han death at the hands of Uyghurs.
Infinitely more humane than the satanic liberal Friends of Jeffrey Epstein who mourned the "World trade center" (what are they trading, sex slaves?)
I love to gain the abstract concept of power while not gaining concrete economic power
If the global south is poor because of colonialism and subjugation but the north didn't benefit from it, where did all that labour, wealth, and resources go then according to these people?
Well as it turns out, the evil communists ate all the wealth. They put it on the only piece of bread Russia had and gobbled it all up!
They spent it all on power politics, duh. Did you even read the tweet smh
Well subjugating people costs money. That money was paid to soldiers which supported their families in the imperial core. You see, it is a net loss paying your soldiers (which seems to imply that productive labor matters, instead of capitalists).
Hun figured they’d but shit with it back in the imperial core. Silly me for thinking that m.
Leopold II actually cut off all those rubber plantation worker's hands just to flex on King Nikola I Petrović-Njegoš of Montenegro
two industrial revolutions
Ah yes, all those British cotton mills, spinning British cotton from the famous cotton plantations of... I dunno, Kent
Edit: Here a link to askhistorians which supports my post
The fun thing is that it is assumed the UK got one body and that all acts are in accordance with rationality of that body. You know, instead of viewing it through a material lens of class struggle and contradictions within a class.
Even if (for the state or in sum of pounds and all that) it was a net loss, then there are exactly those farms you mention, the subjugation of people for economic gain, the manufacturing of textiles from the produce of those farms within the core of the empire, benefiting the owners of those factories, benefiting the liberal factions associated with that, benefiting indirectly the citizens of the core and also giving the workers at the factories income that could be slightly above the income without empire bonus (which, spoiler alert, was mostly not given to the workers, but kept in the hand of the capitalists and associated groups).
Or to put it another way: Lignite (brown coal) is produced, even though it got a huge ecological and health cost, as well as many death in producing it - still it is produce for capitalist reasons and to secure "energy security" in the battle of major powers.
That said, the new markets the colonies delivered, the comparative advantage due to the stream of goods against the continental powers and all such are major reasons to keep up empire. Furthermore the cost of imperialism were a reason the East India Tea company (basically a libertarians wet dream) was founded and they curiously managed to turn a profit from imperialism.
While it is true that for some cases in the beginning colonialism can be a net cost for the state in terms of money, the full picture can only be seen from the material analysis of the actors involved, the people at the place and as always the material and social conditions.
That’s why once the whole world is divided and the booty is becoming harder and harder to find, they hit you with that MONOPOLY FINANCE CAPITAL :lenin-shining:
I am not sure I agree. It is a good bit, but I believe that the competition with the US and wars of independence were larger factors than having stolen everything.
It was just a power move to import a bunch of slave labor that was conveniently a different color so you could easily tell them apart.
like isn't the fact that they did it for no reason at all worse like "OH IT WAS NOT MOTIVATED BY ECONOMIC GAIN" so they just did awful things for no actual reason they just really wanted to make slavery a thing for a while
international relations
I wonder why petit bourgeoisie need to obscure class relations?
:porky-scared: :gui-better:
colonialism was actually to help queen victoria power up her super saiyan
This one is especially worse for me 'cause they're a Liverpool fan. If I see that avi I'm already hostile.
This is why class analysis is important. Iraq was a huge money sink for America. Trillions down the drain. But the elites still made a ton of money and they stuck the government (and Americans) with the bill. This is one of the contradictions of capital that production and extraction are social but profit is private. You went to Iraq to fight, kill, and die in groups but it's the profit is taken by the capitalists who only benefit from the war.
Cheaper for who? Sure its cheaper for workers or even for the government. But the workers are not in charge, and the government is run by different factions of capital that don't get along.
Of course I am agreeing with you that the costs are basically not quantifiable. So many people lost their lives and a whole region was destroyed. But some still made profit.
Yeah that happens when you end up stealing everything not nailed down including tearing out the walls to strip the copper wiring.
The kernel of truth to what he’s saying is that a lot of colonies where on paper economic losses for the colonizers. But the benefits of colonization were often more geo-political than economic, and also the economic benefits were often not as straight forwardly easy to calculate.
