My sources for the preamble come mostly from here, here, and here.
The thread image depicts Kenyan police, trained by the Zionist entity, in a meeting with President Ruto before being sent to Haiti, sourced from this article.
As has been planned for the last couple years, foreign police officers have been inside Haiti for a few months now. It will surprise nobody to learn that this has not gone very well. Gangs continue to control much of the country, and violence has continued in the form of massacres and forced relocations (approximately 1.3 million). Something like 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, is under the control of one gang or another.
The aim by the US was to import 2500 police officers to Haiti from a wide variety of countries. One of those was Kenya; President Ruto had to fight his own country's courts to force this through, and ironically is now apparently considering withdrawing those officers once the UN mandate expires on October 2nd. The issue here is not only the limited manpower (Haiti has a population of 12 million), but also very pedestrian things, like the fact that the officers who arrive don't even speak the language.
The situation in Haiti appears to be a fairly standard operation of American national control, in which both battling sides are being supported by the US in order to create maximum disorganization and prevent a coherent political force from arising and thus threatening their Caribbean interests. While the US funds foreign forces to arrive in Haiti to "control the situation" or similar justifications, the Haitian gangs get their weapons smuggled in from the US itself. That this is happening alongside escalations against Venezuela is obviously not a coincidence - in a world in which American interests are being gradually shrugged off, and where the American state military is becoming rapidly more impotent and unable to dissuade and defeat even tiny states like Yemen, total imperial dominion of their immediate surrounding territory must be ensured by any means necessary.
The police and the gangs are likely designed to be mutually reinforcing, without even much kayfabe of fighting each other. As an example, once the Kenyan police arrived, they immediately began brutalizing anti-government protestors instead of focussing on gang activity. They were trained by the Zionist entity, after all.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
I can see why they would want to minimise local government involvement, after the debt problems, corruption, and protectionism. It is broadly speaking inefficient for every province to be investing in the same industries. But it seems to me that the problem is in the incentive, not in the local government power itself. I remember in another post you said local officials wanted to pump up GDP numbers in order to get promotions. It seems like they should be reforming the internal party reward structures / targets as a priority.
Overall markets are an efficient way to distribute goods. I don't think there's a huge problem with allowing more internal market forces inherently, as long as the government retains political power over them, continues to control key national industries and services, and reins in financial speculation.
There are legitimate frictions caused by the inter-regional market obstacles right now, because local governments put up protectionist policies to prevent companies from other cities from expanding into their cities.
There are two sides to this: for one, you prevent your domestic industries from being out-competed by the larger companies from the other wealthier cities, but at the same time, it makes the market less efficient and successful companies difficult to gain traction nationally. You have many companies investing in the same thing and end up in a situation where you have to kill off your competitors.
So I think the unified market can boost consumption, but it does so in a way that yields power to the “invisible hand”.
I’d much rather the government runs large deficits to give people the money to spend (such as through a jobs guarantee program that would eliminate unemployment), rather than relying on the wisdom of the private sector. But this would not allow the government to balance the budget, so they are ideologically constrained from doing so.
What do you think the effects on the RMB’s value will be? Do you think they are finally allowing some appreciation?
If allowed to float, the RMB will appreciate to reflect the true scale of China’s economy, as it should be.
A Hexbear quote in 2025. How can anyone believe this? Even at face value by the time you take all the measure necessary for a "fair" market for all participants i.e the population it is no longer a "market" but some sort of BS distribution system with shit incentives and an absurd number of strings attached that only functions out of a sunk cost fallacy because the people in charge don't want to try any other alternative.
This is just a flavor of ultra-marxism, railing against markets as such with no regard for their function. Saying that markets are efficient says nothing about them being the most efficient all the time, but it in a specific context. China still benefits from organizing things using markets because they are efficient in their current stage and due to the relationships they have to hold with their external context (a largely capitalist-run world).
Of course we all understand limitaitons of markets, and Xi likely understands it very well. But it helps nobody to just rail against them generally as if its some principle of marxism that markets are inherently bad
Indeed, an actual Marxist interpretation understands that there are always aspects of the previous economic formation within the emerging formation, especially early in the transition. China is in the very infancy of socialist transition in an otherwise still hyper capitalist world. ultras have a similar view as anarchists, expecting a much more advanced form of communism than the material conditions demand, and anything less than this ideal is an enemy. somehow they end up spending all their energy criticizing the enemies of capitalists on the internet and never really organizing
It is quite silly how people on Hexbear can both claim to be against capitalism, but also to claim that restoring capitalists as a class, and giving them more and more power is actually somehow good, and that everybody who agrees with people like Stalin on economics is an 'ultra' and bad.
I wish people had a better understanding of the effect the presence of the profit motive has an economy, compared to maintaining a planned economy.
Read Losurdo's Class Struggle. And if you don't want to read the whole book, read chapter 3. It's not like I have no ability to see the possibility of harm from markets or a capitalist class or profit motives, it's that I understand class as more complex than vulgar Marxists and Ultras want it to be. And I understand international struggles as class struggles in themselves
Ok, does Losurdo provide any evidence for capitalist restoration somehow being good for the working class, or is that just his raw opinion with no backing there?
This is just obvious cope, frankly, and ad hoc justification for literally just giving up workers' rights to restore capitalists as a class and giving them more and more power.
So far, you don't have anything to show for this supposedly being beneficial to the working class (in a manner that isn't just bounties of colonialism).
So far, since the Sino-Soviet split, the PRC has aided NATO and has not taken action that would make up for that in terms of international anti-colonial liberation.
The PRC is still probably the best bet as a force for making the world better, but the current PRC is a far cry from the USSR and the pre-split PRC.
"raw opinion with no backing" lol being dismissive of an astonishingly well read author in a book with an enormous catalogue of valuable citations building a basic concept of class struggle and showing how it's succeeded in history empirically. Good luck with that.
I can recreate his arguments if I mist, but you're just arguing at a different level. What does "restoration" mean in a context where political and economic power are delineated?
"Cope". Well buzz off and read the book. You're responding to something you entirely misunderstand. You act like me offering you a book to read was an argument in itself. What colonialism is China benefitting from?
Your view of international class struggle is also very limited to current obvious contradictions and entirely missing the context of a history leading to this, a huge set of systems which undergird the relationships, and the real ways things change. I'd say that summarizes your mistake with regards to class struggle in China too tbh
I should say I'm also sad that China isn't doing more directly right now for Gaza in a direct way. I also understand simultaneously how a long term strategy to prevent the coming genocides can be regarded as more achievable given China's relationships to the situation beforehand and now. I'm skeptical of China for that reason, but the argument you've made are just swings and misses, entirely missing why it's Happening
Yeah, overall markets are not efficient, and allowing the free movement of labor between provinces creates problems.
With free movement of labor, people are going to migrate from low wage regions to high wage regions, creating labor oversupply in some places and undersupply in others.
And obviously markets, oof. We don't need to pretend as if dengists are 100% correct about everything. Economic planning is provably superior to markets. This has been a known result since at least the 1930s with kantorovitch and leontieff.
A market mechanism is like a stochastic gradient descent through commodity space, while economic planning simply computes the commodity space in advance and aims towards the optimal point.
There is actually a meme in China about high-speed rails, which goes something like how those high speed rails have connected small provincial towns that should have stimulated their growth, but instead it became a one-way ticket for the rural youth to easily flee to the big cities.
We have a lot of beautiful provincial towns and villages, nice infrastructure development, with high speed rail stations (some even have two!!) but… they have no economy. As a result, the youth simply left for the large cities for job opportunities, which adds to the churn of the already intense competition in the urban regions. It’s sad to see but that’s already a reality for many small towns.
So, it’s already happening over the past few years.
Sad to see. It's similar to the hollowing out of rural regions in developed countries too. If you treat people as a mere input for the process of labor and accumulation, then you lose community in the long run. China may very well be at the point where it could very seriously impose limits to work hours similar to Western Nations and begin distributing labor more equitably among the population. I don't know the internal state of development in China as well as those living there, but maybe even Jason Hickle and Kohei Saito's ideas about Degrowth should begin guiding policy in some areas.
Limiting work hours is good and very necessary - but it has to be compensated in wages and ensure that the income level of the working class does not fall. Otherwise you’re introducing more problems to the system. But yes, agree with your ideas.
That's what I mean. Definition of the work week as 40 hours maximum. Other over-developed areas are flirting with the idea of even less, as low as 25. Guaranteeing that a full time job entails a full-time wage and benefits would be part of this new arrangement. It's the sort of thing that was discussed pragmatically as part of The New Deal in America and FDR's Economic Bill of Rights. Of course we might be able to see such protections are temporary in the long-term as Capital will try to claw back concessions to sustain the rate of profit, but perhaps such a transition could be managed better by a committed communist party still firmly in control of the levers of power. We joke about the communism button, but after such an extended period of marketization China will surely have to transition over time to a more planned endeavor, and part of that means making sure that economic benefits are spread among the population more evenly.
But it’s not like socialism precludes the existence of markets until the end stage. China isn’t really close to the point at which it can transition to abolishing markets, but the state does at least have control of key industries and public services. As for the labour market, of course it would be better for the government to guarantee employment as xhs says. But in the absence of that, millions of Chinese people already migrate to seek work in higher wage areas, hukou system or no. This seems like they are trying to formalise and regulate the market that already exists.
I agree that more market forces are inherently counterproductive in the long run. I just see this as more of an attempt by the state to correct the inefficiencies that have sprung up under current conditions. Maybe it’s a bad move to open up this can of worms, maybe they really are trapped in a neoliberal mind prison and don’t see an alternative.
There is a difference between commodity production and capitalism that is frequently missing from these discussions.
Commodity production is production for exchange. This implies the existence of money, and a market.
However, capitalism requires the existence of capital, a type of force that seeks profits, thereby distorting a country's investments, prices and economic development.
Just because a country has markets doesn't mean that it needs to do so in a capitalistic manner. The more that commodity production is performed in a capitalistic form, the worse off the country's development is.
This separation is the reason why controlled markets work better than free markets.
Not to mention, nationalisation of urban industry is something that can be done safely at any stage of socialism.