I know the Rambo title card is a hoax.
The COTW was chosen in the wake of the aborted sequel to the attempted assassination of Trump being performed by a guy who is VERY enthusiastic about Ukraine, to the point of trying to sneak Afghan soldiers into Ukraine by setting up a house in Pakistan to house them and then further transport them. He also apparently offered to send thousands of Afghan soldiers to Haiti to help them combat gang violence. Whomst among us doesn't have the numbers of thousands of Afghan soldiers on speed-dial. Do you reckon there's a group chat?
Anyway, while there is still no official recognition of the Taliban's government by any country, China has taken a different course than the late USSR and the US - forming economic in-roads, rather than trying their own invasion. This has been a big boon for the struggling country, with various mines and oil and agriculture deals helping keep things barely afloat. A total disintegration of the social fabric of Afghanistan is not in the interest of any of the powers that border it - China, Pakistan, and Iran, with Russia not too far away - so an interesting dynamic of helping-without-official-recognition has been established. I wonder who will be the first country to fully recognize them?
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Afghanistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. 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 think this vastly overestimates the quality of life for working class Americans. Under a hypothetically totally equal distribution of global income, most Americans would still end up making more than they do today. The U.S. is an incredibly unequal society with the lion's share of its "income" captured by the the top 10% of earners. We die younger, work more hours, and have worse quality of life than most other "developed" countries. Under socialism the average American's quality of life genuinely would improve, and that's in addition to things like health care and education.
The people in the top 10% of earners would absolutely see a reduction in quality of life, and maybe even the top 20%. Besides that, though, it's a false sense of class divide if you think the median earner at $38,000 per year is living some luxurious life thanks to imperialism. The tragedy is that more Americans who aren't in the upper echelons of wealth/income don't recognize that and have solidarity with their fellow exploited workers in the global south.
I'm less sold on that narrative. A couple of things to consider:
Much of our domestic industry and labor power currently goes towards production of military industrial equipment and luxury goods/services for the wealthy and high earners. That's basically dead weight as far as productive capacity goes. Redirect that manpower and industry towards more useful endeavors, and a lot could be done very quickly to reindustrialize socially useful sectors.
Finance imperialism does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to sucking out the productivity of foreign nations, no doubt about it, but very little of that ever makes a material improvement in the lives of your average American. If you think the US' ill-gotten imperialist loot is trickling down then you're thinking about the US 50-70 years ago. Reagan and every administration since has made sure more and more of the wealth is protected from redistribution to the dirty poors. Our bridges collapse, 1 in 6 children live in poverty, and our healthcare and education is second rate at best. Don't overestimate the quality of life of the average American.
The US has the natural resources, arable land, and labor power to accomplish a great deal very quickly. It's throttled by neoliberal economic policy focusing on a rentier economy instead of a productive one. Once Wall street becomes Wall street, if you catch my drift, there's nothing in the way of a very quickly repurposing of criminally underutilized potential. Furthermore, were the US to undergo a socialist revolution, so too breaks the intellectual property chains shackling development the world over. You predict prices would rise, but that's only if productive capacity stayed the same. If all of a sudden global South countries are able to develop properly and aren't forking over rents to Western financial firms, or worse yet simply prevented from developing entirely by protectionist patents/trade secrets, we could end up producing a great deal more on the global scale than ever before. There's also presumably more cooperation between nations in the area of production beyond just getting out of each other's way. The sharing of knowledge and technical expertise between nations and previously competing firms would reduce duplicate labor and allow for much more to get done than is today.
Someone posted this on lemmygrad, I'll do my best to paraphrase.
The country is built on stolen land, this isn't up for debate.
The idea that the biggest contradiction could be anything except settler colonialism is one that isn't worth any serious ML's time. In fact this contradiction is so large that you can't even put class on the same level as it, or even remotely close to it.
The country was stolen, how do you nationalize stolen land and resources? This is no different than "labor Zionism" or "socialist Zionism." The contradiction is so deep that any plan for socialism is doomed to fail if the primary contradiction isn't solved.
Decolonization has to occur before socialism can occur in the United States. That's the only way
Has decolonization occurred in countries where the colonized are the minority though?
Yea the Russian Empire, Lenin's "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination" talks about the importance of the self determination of the oppressed nations
I mean Palestine is undergoing decolonization.
And you're never really a minority, other colonized people will have your back
That's not even really true 100% of the time anymore; look at the misleader-assed Black Capitalists
its why i have little hope for organizing in america, since most of the movements fail to address this contradiction and are inherently reactionary. Settler colonialism is the largest contradiction in these lands, as well as systemic racism, and of course both go hand in hand.
Any 'socialism' on stolen land is exactly what you say, labor zionism in essence. Americans who debate this fact have no right to be near any socialist space as they are reactionaries.
America does not deserve socialism because america is a false and unholy construct that must be undone
Yup. I know the Gaza genocide has really poured cold water on many people's hearts for organizing in the states. That one Palestinian lady who said that Chicago was ready for Harris on twitter got harassed by yt Blue MAGA who proceeded to, true to their name, proceeded to hurl the most anti-arab islamophobic insults and threats against her life. In the end, the FBI paid her a visit.
You know who started that whole mini pogrom? A black woman on twitter who felt that her post was "threatening."
The Palestinian woman who was beaten so badly she had a concussion at the DNC.
The Arab professor that was getting hit on the head with "we love Biden" signs.
There's so many examples of this. You can't trust Americans to stand up for one another. They'll just end up reporting you to the feds while claiming to be "leftist progressives."
Sorry if I don't want to be arrested for organizing, because with "comrades" like these, who needs enemies?
dude, fucking delete this right now or im having you banned for spewing settler colonialist talking points
Said the fucking worthless settler.
Since we're going to play the % game, what about black Americans?
They were forced to be here, they're absolutely not immigrants nor are they settlers and they make up 14.4% of the population.
What about Mexican Americans? Didn't you know that the entirety of the southwestern US was stolen from Mexico? Mexican Americans make up 10.7% of the population.
So now we're at 29.1% of America is either indigenous or black.
New award for Worst Shit I've Seen In The Modlog Lately
How dare you besmirch the name of Balthier with this settler garbage.
Bygones will never be bygones you settler fuck; I will spit on you and your name until one of your pigs guns me down
Inshallah you will gun them down first
It definitely wont happen exactly because there is a reason capitalists moved to the global south in the first place. Industry in the north is not profitable. This will never change unless the north population goes through either some massive economic shock doctrine akin to a WW2/3 scenario or probably massive climate change catastrophe.
Its like every single time we forget history, the only reason why the US industry grew in the first place, the only reason the west managed to industrialize in the first place, the obvious consequences for Germany when they were put on the dead end of industrialization(e.g entirely dependent on imported energy).
If we consider these things the US is far more likely to collapse and balkanize. I expect chuds shooting liberals well before chuds and liberals hands together working in a factory for $5 an hour which is necessary for industrial profitability nowadays.
If by "East" you mean China yeah maybe if we consider the richest cities, otherwise you need some reality checks on what the average work and life condition in Japan and South Korea is like.
I think you've shifted the goalposts in this discussion. You started with a question of "how many americans just want the plunders of imperialism shared more evenly with the working class" while predicting substantial reduction in quality of life for Americans post imperialism. I contend that most Americans do not have an improved quality of life even with the imperialism: that value and wealth is retained by the PMC and bourgeoisie. Sure, "the Global North" is taking a massively disproportionate share of global GDP via ownership, financialization, and rent seeking in general, but the vast majority of that is captured and retained by the top income earners in the US. Lumping in your median global North worker with his/her boss is absurd.
"About 50.7 percent of the household income of private households in the U.S. were earned by the highest quintile in 2022, which are the upper 20 percent of the workers."
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203247/shares-of-household-income-of-quintiles-in-the-us/#:~:text=About%2050.7%20percent%20of%20the,earned%20by%20the%20lowest%20quintile.
The top two quintiles account for nearly 75% of total US income. If we got more granular, I think we'd easily find income drops off very quickly as you move down the second quintile too. No matter how you cut the numbers presented, though, my point I think stands. You may disagree for other reasons, but for the sake of argument if you were to grant that most Americans don't benefit from imperialism, then it doesn't seem to follow that their quality of life will go down when it ends. I think you're creating false division between workers in the imperial core and periphery. It was more true even just 20 years ago than today, but neoliberalization has been eating away at earlier concessions to the working class for decades now.
But you've switched gears and are talking about post revolutionary war and degrading of industrial capacity from conflict. That's just an entirely separate can of worms. I genuinely contend that the US and world in general would be substantially more productive if you ended things like intellectual property, redundant labor due to inefficient competition instead of collaboration, and squandering of productive capacity on non-socially useful endeavors like the MIC and conspicuous consumption. Those are good organizing points for bringing more people around to an anti-imperialist mindset. Plenty of Western leftists can and do accept socialism on anti-imperialist grounds precisely because we recognize we're in the same class as workers elsewhere in the world. If you're asking how many American "Socialists" are actually just Vaushites/dem-sucs, I guess I'd answer most of them? But like, they're not actually educated on political matters. They think the Nordic model is socialism. But that's not really related to the rest of your claims that I think are out of line with the reality of quality of living and distribution of income.
we're gonna end up with some Treaty of Versailles shit. the American Hitler figure who takes power after the post-defeat resentment of America to try and revitalize the country and crush all working class organizations is currently a 10 year old laughing at skibidi toilet memes
I think it is self evident that the lion's share of value is retained by the bourgeoisie, another much smaller share is afforded to the PMC and that the vast majority of americans benefit much less than they would had they any political sense. Americans, by and large, are exploited by a series of monopolies and rentier schemes.
At the same time, however unequal the US is compared to France there is still a difference between being an exploited worker in the US and an exploited worker in Brazil. To put it simply: americans are now complaining that their treats (say, eating fast food) are becoming unaffordable. Going to McDonalds is now something that you do once in a while, for a birthday or another special event. That has always been the case in the global south. Anecdotal to be sure, but I'm upper middle class in Brazil and that was always the case for me.
To give you numbers, the average credit card interest charged in the US seems to be around 20 to 30 percent. In Brazil its above 400%.
The american elites might have given people crumbs in the form of, say, fuel and food subsidies and whatnot. They are still crumbs, and yet those crumbs would be 'unaffordable' if the US was a normal, unequal nation like those in the global south.
Broke: Buying dinars because they'll become valuable
Woke: Buying dinars because the US dollar will stop being valuable
That’s the thing. You don’t need to believe someone on a $38,000 salary is living luxuriously. Only that person needs to believe it, or at least believe they can reach luxury. Things are bad in the US, but most people chug along because “things could be worse” and they don’t want to jeopardize that security
Yeah, I don't deny that. But feeding into the misconception that socialism necessarily results in a lower quality of life for those in the imperial core is just reinforcing capitalist propaganda. No reason for us to be repeating capitalist myths for them.
I agree with your broad points throughout this thread although I think that when it gets to this stage, the US will simply balkanize. You make the fair point that state separatism (Texan separatism) is nonviable now because the US can simply sanction the breakaway state and completely destroy that state's economy. But this relies on dollar hegemony. Without dollar hegemony, the US will internally collapse due to unresolved internal contradictions and the stresses of climate change.
The US isn't China with 5000 years of history with tradition and institutions that are more than a millennia old and a populace that recognizes its place in that 5000 year old history. The US is an illegitimate settler-colony that's less than 3 centuries old, less than most major Chinese dynasties. And people might laugh at how Zionists have no ability to handle adversity whatsoever, but if there's any populace that's even less likely to handle adversity and even more pampered, it's Burgerlanders. Can you imagine Burgerlanders eating war rations or having to obey a national curfew when they throw a temper tantrum over wearing a fucking face mask?
National unity only exists because they live high off of hegemony thanks to the dollar. And when that hegemony is taken away, national unity will evaporate overnight. The US is a nation of thieves and when the going gets tough, the thieves will turn on each other.
The Joker's thesis regarding Gotham; except this time I actually believe it
I think with socialism, countries can reindustrialize fairly quickly though, can't they? The USSR and China shot up without even having the luxury of the US's industrialist past, huge wealth they could invest in such efforts, or modern automation techniques.
I think even with a massive re-evaluation of the dollar, that living standards could still increase for a lot of Americans. A large part of the domestic economy is based around the financialization of critical needs, like healthcare and housing, with prices grossly inflated.
Even if things generally get more expensive, so much would be improved for so many people with just guaranteed housing and the ability to go to a doctor. I don’t think the impact of that can be overstated.
Yeah. I don’t disagree that the transition would be rough, that there would be a reactionary tide against it. I just also think that there’s a very real underclass in a precarious position, regardless of the larger income compared to worldwide averages, simply because the base costs of living are also inflated.
This is exactly what happened/ is happening right now with the pro-palestine movement. It's wild hearing other minorities throw Palestinians under the bus bc things might get worse for them.
Those stupid trolley memes showing Democrats only running over the Palestinians, while the Republicans are running over other stuff too.
A hypothetical reduction in their standard of living or a hypothetical loss or gain of rights outweighs the current actually occuring genocide that they're fucking funding.
38,000 a year is one illness away from bankruptcy within 3 months.
Answer: nearly everyone especially if they're white, straight, cis, and male.
Source: read Settlers
Edit: I want to elaborate. I'm not talking out my ass, the question you're asking already has been answered by similar situations in the past.
" The French slave colonies had a very different social structure from the slave states of the American South. The white population in the largest colony, Saint Domingue, numbered only 30,000 in 1789. In the United States, non-whites were almost always put in the same class as black slaves, but in the French colonies, many whites had emancipated their mixed-race children, creating a class of “free coloreds” that numbered 28,000 by 1789. The free coloreds were often well educated and prosperous; members of this group owned about 1/3 of the slaves in the colony. They also made up most of the island’s militia, responsible for keeping the slaves under control."
Source: https://www.uky.edu/~popkin/Haitian%20Revolution%20Lecture.htm#:~:text=Slaves%20outnumbered%20whites%20in%20Saint,mixed%2Drace%20population%20against%20them.
I'm absolutely not reducing this just to race, class meant everything. Mixed race Haitians were not treated well either, but their treatment was nowhere near as awful as the slaves.
In the end, their class kinda determined where they stood with regards to emancipation.
Americans are to mixed race Haitians what the global south are to slave Haitians.
That's why the global south shouldn't consider how the global north might feel about their freedom. The global north would never side with them.
from an infographic I remember seeing here on hexbear, I think the average US worker's wealth would double under an equal distribution
99% of them. And I’m being generous because 1% of americans is like 3 million people, and I’m not even sure if even that much would be willing to give up the plunder.
You don't have to look too far. It's exactly what proponents of that "wunderwaffe economic miracle drug" MMT, unknowingly or otherwise, is advocating whenever it's brought up here.
As I’ve seen it articulated, the problem with MMT is precisely that it’s the modern equivalent of 19th century takes like “This is how you can make the British Empire work to help you!”. It’s the contemporary “FDR New Deal” faustian bargain meant to co-opt the Western left and even the PatSoc chauvinists towards pursuing not any economic alternatives like socialism but an ever more perfect capitalism. There was a struggle session a while back when Roderic Day dunked on the Deprogram co-host JT for a pro-MMT video, which got the latter’s subscribers very upset. I’d actually recommend that JT video for a model representation of how MMT sells itself to the Western left. It’s “rational” and “logical.” All upswing and couched in enough Keynesian economic jargon that the only comprehensible issue with it to the general viewer seems to be just that “the greedy Western political leadership simply don’t want to share the pie,” thus blocking its enactment.
What goes unsaid is that the entire substructure which MMT rests upon is that of American dollar hegemony. The policies of MMT can only function in a jurisdiction where the imposition of such autarkic currency sovereignty can effectively ignore counter-threats of credit ratings downgrade, sanctions, divestment, IMF and World Bank condemnation and all consequential fallout with impunity. The only jurisdiction capable of that, perhaps even in the entire West, is the US alone, through the half century of work it’s done in solidifying its financial hegemony.
When non-imperial core (or wannabe imperial core) countries try to enact it, like Greece under Varoufakis era of the early 2010s, it was condemned by the ECB and the rest of the EU Troika. Greece succumbed to those political pressures, reversed its tracks and instead embarked on typical IMF-proscribed austerity SAPs. The standard of living has subsequently never recovered with current GDP per capita only approaching early 2000s levels.
As such, not only is MMT agnostic of its own basis on the bedrocks of American financial imperialism but it further advocates for the preservation of the current status quo of dollar hegemony through its proposal to trickle down some dividends of that system to the (exclusively American) working class. Therefore, its aim seems to be reeling in those of the tendency in the Western left that drifts towards the “socialism is the best way for gains to be distributed for me personally” in-it-for-myself sentiment rather than those of the anti-imperialist or socio-political bend of Western leftists.
I'd say this sort of ouroboros-esque argumentation that MMT proponents throw out arguing that people who disagree simply "don't get it" and need to "read MMT theory" to "enlighten" themselves on the "logical" nature of it is certainly one aspect that propels me to the skeptic position towards the pitch. I have indeed read Hudson and actually I went out of my way to search for his ex cathedra comments about it. He seems personally supportive, from what I gather, and if so, you could ring that up as a right-hand constituent of his 70%/30%. Given his anti-Stalinist asides, I'm satisfied with having some disagreements with him.
His assessment of the global subsidization of US dollar hegemony shows that no currency is an island and this is something maintained by geopolitical coercion. This is the primary contradiction that makes a Gordian knot of any US currency sovereigntist schemes like MMT and the overall condition of US dollar hegemony. As it turns out, dollar hegemony is turning out to be a two way street turned single-way only by the traffic cop's gun, and the implementation of domestic MMT-derived monetary policies will press upon further necessity for the US state to preserve the external status quo and coerce its involuntary creditors to further subsidize the American "monetary sovereignty." To assert otherwise, that one can print as much as they want for the domestic market without external spillover is rather laughable as it maintains idealism over the materialist outlook, as this scheme under other names has taken place before. Reaganomics at home to rescue the domestic economy was ultimately paid by those economies abroad, to disastrous consequence for the likes of Japan.
However, the technical feasibility of MMT is secondary to my rejection of the pitch. It is, in plain terms, it is a new FDR style New Deal. Appetizing for your progressive liberals and your social democrats, but something entirely objectionable as a ML. It is to put a lipstick on a pig and to, once again, claim that an ever more perfect capitalism is preferable than socialism, suppressing the latter through material financial appeasement. This is why MMT proponents range from Trots like Hudson all the way to mainstream US economists like Kelton. The etiological base of support for an economic policy, the people that proponents stand beside and their fellow travelers says rather a lot. As for Marxists, I recommend reading "Modern Monetary Theory: A Marxist Critique."
How MMT compares contra to neoclassical slop is something I care not for, as to that end, why not go one more step and compare how superior MMT is to feudal monetary economics or the currency price controls of Diocletian in the 4th century? How non-Marxist economics incestuously iterates upon itself to spit out its newest take is immaterial and in that sense, MMT is plainly the new rendition of Keynesianism, meant to plagiarize socialist theory to plaster onto a model of a "reformed, more humane and egalitarian" capitalism. Socialism is the alternative to which MMT must be compared to and in such a comparison, it's the two century old Proudhon argument dusted off and brought out from the museum display: that the only real problem with capitalism is the monetary dynamics.
One thing I will concede is that I have no doubt that if exigent pressures, similar to that during the post-Depression era, were to resurface, this MMT would absolutely be very likely enacted as a concession to curb the winds of support for socialism. It would follow in those footsteps of FDR just as the New Deal followed that of Wilson's "every American a homeowner" concession to sabotage the SPA of Eugene Debs.
That's the american arm, and it says more about
then MMT, whether to appear palatable or as a serious belief. I do not recognize those views on the much more western critical co-creator Bill Mitchell, who emphasizes it is a lens that cannot replace sociology, psychology, ecology, and all the rest of it as neoliberalism pretends, with degrowth and decolonization as frequent topics on his blog.
Before you replace money, if ever, whatever replaces this system is going to need to keep operating the machines of modern society, but even more essential, if it wants society to be viable, it needs to know how to "pay" for not burning the planet.
the person you're replying to (капля) is the only person I've seen that consistently keeps bringing up mmt
removed
Fun fact: socialism during ww1 was imperialist. What I mean by that is socialism isn't necessarily Marxist. Most socialists in the US aren't Marxist. Red fascism etc