c_man posted:

cars posted:

the roman catholic church purports to be a universal organization that predates capitalism and sits in judgment over it. you only have to look at the world to see how true this is in practice but the zealous anti-Communism that once ruled Rome was long treated as a corollary to the Chuch's anti-liberalism. there's only a very short period in history where that wasn't true. the Church considers it heresy to believe that capitalism is divinely ordained or blessed and the catechism more or less says that you can't break a few eggs to make an omelet in terms of right and wrong, i.e., greed is a sin so a system based on greed is a sinful system, period.

so, it is not a shock that in the decades following the end of the U.S.S.R., during a Church demographic shift to the global South, the spyglass would swing the other way and capitalism would be subject to the same harsh scrutiny. the difference between popes on such issues is largely one of emphasis and style. but i'm glad people are paying attention now every time the pope says something about the importance of organizing the workers.

to listen to you clowns one could even get the impression that the catholic church wasn't anticommunist for literally as long as it was possible to be anticommunist. "look at the propaganda" isn't the same as a concrete material analysis but i guess they don't teach you that when you're in catechism. the chuch takes every opportunity to throw leftists under the bus when the death squads start creeping around and you're letting them off the hook because they said that greed is bad in their pamphlets.

To listen to you, one would get the impression that the USSR had not fallen. That Lin Bao, not Deng, succeeded Mao. That Castro, Morales, and Maduro are presently waging a war of extermination against the Church instead of negotiating with it. Or that Catholics do not have their own myriads of dead to remember and vindicate.

c_man posted:

RedMaistre posted:

You are talking as if economic autarky or avoiding the "social division of labor" (a precondition for complex societies of any sort), is or ever was, the goal of socialism in practice

no, i specifically said that it will divide social labor away from self-sufficiency. increased trade with the US for cuba is very different than the case of china because cuba doesn't have the scale of natural or social resources to become a low-cost manufacturer in the same way that china has. china was able to develop in the way that it did because it was large enough to have access to lots of natural resources and raw materials and was able to build its economy by situating itself as a large scale, low cost manufacturer. that is, china developed as a mass producer of general goods. this option is not open to cuba because they dont have the same sorts of natural resources to build a large scale industrial base on, as indicated by the shock after the fall of the USSR of not being able to receive the petroleum necessary for their contemporary agricultural infrastructure. that is to say, cuba is in much greater relative need of the basics of industrial production than potential markets for industrial goods already produced (as was the case in china). the US and international capital have much stronger control over these, and developing an industrial capacity that assumes access to these involves a much greater concession.

All of this seems to assume that Cuba is just now opening up to foreign investment from Europe and the United States, when it has been doing so since the 1990s, and it hasn't collapsed yet:

"The reforms of the 1990s did yield some important results as Cuba opened select sectors to foreign investment and commerce. In 2012, in partnerships with foreign hotel investors,managers, and tour operators, Cuba will host some 3 million tourists yielding well over $2 billion in gross receipts. A Canadian nickel mining and smelter company, Sherritt International, is generating
the largest single source of foreign exchange earnings, surpassing sugar. Other JVs with major European multinationals are successfully distributing premium Cuban rum and tobacco in international markets. Without these foreign partnerships, it is likely that Cubans would have continued
to suffer the near starvation-level caloric intakes experienced during the dark days of the “Special Period” of the early 1990s."

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/12/cuba-economy-feinberg/cuba-economy-feinberg-9.pdf

The report also is interesting because it explains, from the pov of a Washington think tank, how the Cuban government has maintained an irritating amount of control over foreign capital flow and penetration--including the use of 'anti-corruption' campaigns' as a tool against Europeon businesses as well as against domestic would be oligarchs.

And while cuba doesn't have the option of being a provider of mass cheap labor the way china does, but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality:

"ts current principal source of revenue is the export of healthcare services by means of sending physicians, nurses, and healthcare technicians to countries like Venezuela and Brazil—an item that it has yet to record in its published official statistics. Cuba’s main resource to engage in the world is no longer sugar cane. It has tourism—beach and sun and one of the communist world’s last Jurassic political systems—but the real asset is the brains of its people. It could be an ideal location for healthcare organizations, but also for those in applied sciences, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals."

https://hbr.org/2015/08/what-you-might-not-know-about-the-cuban-economy

It doesn't need to seek to out-compete South-East Asia in low cost manufacturing when it can focus on finding its niche in scientific, medical, as well as agricultural, specialization.

Edited by RedMaistre (Sept. 25, 2015 23:27:52)

HenryKrinkle posted:

i highly doubt the native americans protesting the canonization are acting out of some sort of internalized Anglo chauvinist/anti-Spanish sentiment.

There were Native Americans and Latinos participating in the Mass as well.

i mean, i'm not denying that anti-Spanish sentiment is hypocritical for the US to engage in but, uh, how many steps are we from saying "Christopher Columbus' voyage was actually good" (and yes i know he was italian but he acted on behalf of spain).

You already know that I am strongly opposed to both Neo-Confederate nostalgia and the facile liberal demonization of the American South-- you can thus infer my feelings about Columbus and the Iberian New World Empires in general.

Both "Christopher Columbus' voyage was actually good" and its negation are shallow attempts to sum up human history and entire societies with SJW/Anti-SJWs tumblr post one liners, if they are taken seriously as final judgments, and not as merely rhetorical ways of bending the stick against this or that opinion.

RedMaistre posted:

"Junipero Serra professed love for the Indians; understood their customs and manners; and defended their interests on such issues as the rightful payment for labor, proper punishments (if any), and the sharing of supplies. This involved him in conflict with the Spanish military authorities, one of whom, Don Felipe de Neva, military commander of Alta California, found him ‘arrogant’ and 'obstinate.’

im sure kipling thought he "loved" the nonwhite people when he wrote about the white man's burden to raise them from their savagery

RedMaistre posted:

To listen to you, one would get the impression that the USSR had not fallen. That Lin Bao, not Deng, succeeded Mao. That Castro, Morales, and Maduro are presently waging a war of extermination against the Church instead of negotiating with it. Or that Catholics do not have their own myriads of dead to remember and vindicate.

its hard to wage a war of extermination when you're ever more isolated and pressured by fascist coups by the increasingly hegemonic presence of international capital gunning (literally) for your destruction. if you're saying that rapprochement with the catholic church is the like the fall of the USSR, a non-decision made during the culmination of decades of extreme external duress, designed to bring the state further under US influence, then i probably agree.

c_man posted:

RedMaistre posted:

To listen to you, one would get the impression that the USSR had not fallen. That Lin Bao, not Deng, succeeded Mao. That Castro, Morales, and Maduro are presently waging a war of extermination against the Church instead of negotiating with it. Or that Catholics do not have their own myriads of dead to remember and vindicate.

its hard to wage a war of extermination when you're ever more isolated and pressured by fascist coups by the increasingly hegemonic presence of international capital gunning (literally) for your destruction. if you're saying that rapprochement with the catholic church is the like the fall of the USSR, a non-decision made during the culmination of decades of extreme external duress, designed to bring the state further under US influence, then i probably agree.

1. I don't see why it has to be a war of extermination--the recurring crises of the capitalist mode production, climate change, and the specter of a world war without borders are threats to people of all nations, races, and creeds. It is the general threat that these contradictions pose that creates the necessity for the increased socialization of the means of production on a planetary scale, not so much whether people as a whole identify themselves with the cause of Marx or not. From shared needs comes alliances between different beliefs, not the other way around (otherwise, the Sino-Soviet split et al would not have happened).

Further I am not sure who you expect to wage that particular holy war for you if neither the Castro Brothers, the pink wave in Latin America, or even the still officially atheist PRC are eager to pursue that course.

2. Not sure what you mean by 'non-decision'-- both the fall of the USSR and the rapprochement between Fidel and Rome was accompanied by definite and conscious policy decisions among political actors.

Edited by RedMaistre (Sept. 26, 2015 15:07:32)

shriekingviolet posted:

RedMaistre posted:

HenryKrinkle posted:

i highly doubt the native americans protesting the canonization are acting out of some sort of internalized Anglo chauvinist/anti-Spanish sentiment.

There were Native Americans and Latinos participating in the Mass as well.

i mean, i'm not denying that anti-Spanish sentiment is hypocritical for the US to engage in but, uh, how many steps are we from saying "Christopher Columbus' voyage was actually good" (and yes i know he was italian but he acted on behalf of spain).



You already know that I am strongly opposed to both Neo-Confederate nostalgia and the facile liberal demonization of the American South-- you can thus infer my feelings about Columbus and the Iberian New World Empires in general.

Both "Christopher Columbus' voyage was actually good" and its negation are shallow attempts to sum up human history and entire societies with SJW/Anti-SJWs tumblr post one liners, if they are taken seriously as final judgments, and not as merely rhetorical ways of bending the stick against this or that opinion.

The point that you're consistently missing here is that you and other catholic apologists are ignoring the voices of oppressed peoples of the world, victims of catholic-complicit imperialism, continuing to pat yourselves on the back for propaganda actions like canonizing one of the less-bad catholic missionaries without giving an answer to the ruinous toll of the enthusiastic participation of the church in the imperialist project.

The presence of people of colour at a propaganda event does not let you dismiss the grievances of their brothers and sisters. The presence of people of colour in catholic congregations (but not in the leadership!) does not erase a history of unapologetic complicity with genocide, or grant legitimacy to contemporary wishful thinking painting the church as a champion of anti-imperialist resistance.

What would be an acceptable answer, in your view?

tpaine posted:

Read Marx, nardo.

You mean this Marx?

"England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.

Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling of an ancient world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history, to exclaim with Goethe:

'Should this torture then torment us
Since it brings us greater pleasure?
Were not through the rule of Timur
Souls devoured without measure?'

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm