China supported the same rebels that the West did in Angola and Afghanistan to fight Cuba, the Soviet Union, and their allies. They invaded Vietnam to defend Pol Pot. They did far worse than peaceful coexistence, they actively aligned with US foreign policy all in the name of “anti-revisionism.” It’s ultraleft nonsense
i mean this as half serious opinion and half lighthearted jab at revisionism
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idk, seems pretty clear to me. They’re terrible opinions but they have little material impact
it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice
People here are seriously embracing literal mysticism as cope instead of reevaluating and doing material analysis
Isn’t the inaction of Russia and Iran precisely proof that these bourgeois governments are more driven by their own interests than by principled anti-imperialism? This seems deeper to me than a strategic mistake. They are not stupid and they have powerful capabilities. What they also have are their own bourgeois and national interests.
I think there is a persistent false dichotomy among communists between the “Western left” position that all these powers are imperialist and so equally bad and undeserving of support, and the self-styled anti-imperialist position that only the Western bloc is imperialist and so its opponents are necessarily anti-imperialist. These opponents are playing a counterhegemomic role and still they aspire to imperialism or at the very least to their own capitalist development (IMO the latter necessarily implies the former, that’s Marxism). It’s not an either/or.
Russia and Iran simply will not self-sacrifice to the extent of the DPRK, Cuba, or currently the Yemenis. Why would these powers be consistent anti-imperialists when their system is built to sell out? Following bourgeois interests is the same reason Russia began to fight NATO in Ukraine in 2022 instead of 2014. Back then it was preferable to sell oil to Westerners than to fight imperialism.
It is true that Russia, Iran, & Syria under Assad are better than the alternative. I agree that it has been right to critically support them. This situation is an absolute disaster; Syria is on track for an Afghanistan/Libya style nightmare, and this is the clearest victory for Israel and its backers in over a year. But they are not communists and that is a clear reason why they act the way they do.
In my view, Russia intervened in Syria in 2015 because they wanted to maintain a partner in an increasingly Western-dominated Southwest Asia, they wanted the use of their ports, and they wanted the Syrian market to be more amenable to Russian than Western capital and weapons exports. They perceived the benefits as worth the costs. Now supporting Assad and the like would be good money following bad, so they won’t do it. It is self-serving in the same way their betrayal of Armenia was. Let’s not forget their historically close relationship with Israel either.
Bourgeois powers can be worthy of support over other bourgeois powers in a particular context, but that should not cloud our judgment to the point we are surprised when they do not give up capitalist development for the cause. In the case of Assad, part of the reason the war began in the first place was his government’s neoliberal privatizations leading to mass popular discontent, which, as you know very well, the West promptly took advantage of to further destabilize and to promote Salafist insanity. (That is not incompatible with the Syrian government having no good options after the imperialist war began. I agree there’s little they could have done past that pivot point; that should not be the focus of criticism.)
As an aside, this false dichotomy plays into the ridiculous turf war on this site between “doomers”/“bloomers”. We need to break out of black and white thinking in general.
My idealistic guess would be the philosophical split between rationalism and empiricism, which is a lot less pronounced in Marxism. See: Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?
I don’t know what material factors would influence this division
I think the lib pantheon is a little more crowded because their leaders are more often notable for either intellectual or political work rather than both, the way Lenin onward are. Early liberal revolutionaries didn’t tend to write theory as significant or famous as that of their Enlightenment philosopher contemporaries, especially in Europe. Who in the modern day is reading Robespierre or Cromwell the way they would Smith or Ricardo? The United States had more crossover in fields though
Intellectually the 5 are probably John Locke, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Rousseau, snd Voltaire. Maybe swap in James Madison, David Ricardo, or de Tocqueville for one of them.
For political leaders and revolutionaries, Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, Maximilien Robespierre, Simon Bolivar, Giuseppe Garibaldi.
I ate a stinkbug accidentally. I don’t recommend it. Dry and blandly bitter before the stank kicks in
I have yet to see a single liberal on this Earth that isn’t also a Westophile
Lula da Silva?
thanks for the link
This is not in any way a justification, just my explanation of why it’s so pervasive and attractive
I see now. I wasn’t sure earlier if you were defending it or not. I think your earlier explanation as to why it appeals to people makes a lot of sense.
I agree with your assessment here about pseudoscience. Magical thinking is a product of alienation and can give people hope and reassurance, but there’s a fine line between self-soothing and denial of reality and necessity.
I think we have to be careful to disentangle our view of pseudoscience and magical thinking from judging the character of their adherents. I don’t think we can always ignore these beliefs as an issue for a later date. Addressing these beliefs now can and should be done with empathy. I think this counterreaction to “reddit atheism” has come about from conflating their belligerence, lack of respect, and laundering science for progressive-washed imperialism, with their ontology being incorrect. We have to make a positive case that confronting life’s problems without magical thinking gives people a more genuine agency and sense of agency, which is emotionally fulfilling too.
as always, Marx put it best:
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.
We shouldn’t be afraid to call on them, we just have to be careful and empathetic.
And thirdly, through the supposed ‘compatibility’ of different star signs, it gives people a guide to who they should try to form a relationship with. Statistically, by far the number one danger to women is their male romantic partners, both in terms of physical violence but also in terms of the possibility of psychic distress. Will he dump me? Will he cheat on me? Will he leave me to do all the house work? He seems like a good guy now, but is he just tricking me until he thinks I’m stuck with him? Does he secretly listen to Andrew Tate? Will he start doing that a year into our relationship and suddenly completely change?
What’s the point of a guide with an irrational basis? It seems deeply dangerous to me to try to answer these questions based on the timing of someone’s birth. Sure, there’s no 100% reliable way to answer these questions, but there have to be better methods than literal mysticism. Like say, investigating what his friends are like.
I understand that people find comfort in beliefs, but the idea that you can trust someone based on the alignments of stars and planets is so wild to me. And that goes for conventional religion too. I don’t think most Christians or Muslims feel these sorts of questions can be answered simply by knowing the other person is also a believer. If they did, I think they would be making a mistake. You can be hurt by people who fit the right “type”, or who share the same beliefs as you. Find comfort in what you want, I suppose, but basing trust in people off of spiritual belief can have catastrophic results. like abuse in cults
These responses describing astrology as just a psychological comfort or even as entertainment, equating it with using the internet or playing a game, seem to ignore that the repeated practice of a belief can instill that belief, and that true belief impels you to act based on that belief. Lots of people treat astrology as just a fun fantasy to discuss, and I really have no problem with that. But truly believing in it and acting on it seems not only not Marxist, but more importantly a risky and misleading way to live life. If we don’t embrace irrational reasons for making political decisions, why should they be embraced for making personal decisions?
China has been unwilling to challenge the dollar with yuan
IMO this is actually a good thing for socialism and potentially signals China’s long-term commitment to it. Of course it would also be great if the dollar were replaced, but replaced with what is very important.
If the yuan were internationalized, China couldn’t impose the kind of strong capital controls which have allowed it to develop the economy toward socialism while retaining markets to a (likely necessary) degree. Further, there would be much greater incentive to export capital internationally rather than use it domestically, which could lead to a kind of social imperialism.
The synthesis of maintaining capital controls and dehegemonizing the dollar IMO is that the dollar is replaced not by another single nation’s currency (which is just a different kind of unipolarity, after all), but instead by an international currency like the Bancor proposal.
(A dual-circuit thing like the USSR under Stalin would be better for transitioning away from money itself ofc, but I have no clue how that would work across borders and it seems impossible that any capitalist countries would accept such a system. If the world got to that point, socialism as a world-system would have practically already won)
Is this supposed to be a surprising secret? I was taught this in American public schools as the core reason.
The real wake-up call isn’t learning about the historical importance of expansion itself, but assigning a different moral value to it. It’s realizing Manifest Destiny is just Lebensraum that won, that there’s nothing morally justified about it.
At a party in a cabin in the woods
Thanks for the source
HTS officials order Palestinian resistance factions to disarm, close bases in Syria