#121
Post rating: +

Constantignoble posted:



Good post. I've been reading Anwar Shaik's Capitalism: Competition, Conflict and Crisis and watching the youtube videos and he goes into why he thinks not only why 'unequal exchange' theories and 'monopoly capital' theories are wrong but how Lenin himself didn't fully integrate Marx's analysis of the falling rate of profit and the laws of competition into his analysis based on Hilferding. I'm only halfway through and I'm bad at economics so I've held off posting about it but I'm curious if you have any thoughts. Shaikh talks about it here:

http://www.anwarshaikhecon.org/sortable/images/docs/publications/international_trade/1980/3-interexch.pdf

in this context is the debate between Michael Roberts and John Smith that's been going on here:

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/03/07/imperialism-and-super-exploitation/
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/03/13/thoughts-on-the-debate-on-imperialism/
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/07/19/getting-off-the-fence-on-modern-imperialism/

The whole thing is interesting but I have to read a lot more to have a real opinion. But based on what I do know about, I fall on the side of Smith since when you stop focusing on Europe and focus on Japanese imperialism in China and Korea integrating super-exploitation into the laws of competition is obvious as Mark Driscoll shows in his book Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan's Imperialism, 1895–1945 at least if ideology is object of analysis. Also obviously Lenin is cool and I'll be on his side 99% of the time.

#122
Post rating: ~

glomper_stomper posted:

recently, i went through the MECW and ripped a bunch of new york daily tribune articles on china, india, and the american civil war. i tried to get as many as i could with what little historical context i had wrt. to marx's column. usually they were plainly titled but some articles on england, for instance, related to conditions that precipitated a revolt in the army in india, the subject of a running series which might not refer back to previous information and analyses.

also, engels wrote a shitload of essays on the american military and volunteer movements during the civil war. connolly used to write critical summaries of historical battles, too, which seems like a lost art in the communist movement.


It was actually discovered in the mid 20th century that social history was more important than military history, and a lot of historians were wasting their time before then.

#123
[account deactivated]
#124
Post rating: +
yeah the idea that wage differentials are the result of different worker reproduction costs or different productivity levels is so far from reality it reflects poorly on the other arguments. it also seems tinged with racism, like the idea chinese workers are willing to work for less because they have simple needs and are disciplined, mule-like workers instead of being the result of extreme oppression enforced by white settler 'socialists.' I'm getting that vibe from some of the people in the comments.

e: oh hey someone just made this exact argument in the comments. was that one of you?
#125
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~

glomper_stomper posted:

used to write critical summaries of historical battles, too, which seems like a lost art in the communist movement.



i started something once on here on the PAVN history of the vietnam war maybe i'll do more. but i have to do a settlers chapter

#126
Occupied Aztlan
Post rating: +
Gimmie a commie war nerd plz
#127
Post rating: +

babyhueypnewton posted:



this is a good essay, thanks. one paragraph in, and shaikh has already thrown a haymaker at gary becker. and this was, what, 1980? love it.

the critique of emmanuel seems on point, but i don't think it detracts from the concept of unequal exchange so much as the conclusions he drew from it. for me, it's easy to separate the two, since i came to understand UE through Zak Cope's Divided World, Divided Class rather than emmanuel's book, so there's none of that "equalize the wages to solve the problem" stuff.

on smith/roberts:

i just glimpsed the debate's various phases. though my grasp of it is incomplete, i think i'm largely coming down on the side of Smith, too; there are clear points where Roberts is bungling the reading and retreating to reciting cant -- perhaps most obviously in his reply to the second of the four propositions in the most recent post you linked. though glomper also makes a good case re: the third.

that said, i'm iffy on smith's argument vs pradella, which appears to hinge on the distinction between "an explanation" and "an extremely fleeting mention." a touch nitpicky for my tastes, since it's clear marx said the thing claimed of him regardless

at any rate, i suspect roberts will come around, though I'm less optimistic about some of his readers

#128
[account deactivated]
#129
Post rating: +
roseweird you're not wrong, this is clearly part of the richness of 'reproduction cost of labor' as a concept which allows us to abstract it away for the sake of analysis and then come back with history, sociology, etc to inform our concrete understanding. what I mean is that in the here and now the idea that Chinese people can survive on 1/10th the wages of American workers is absurd. officially China is about half as expensive to live in as America (the 'big mac index') but if you actually go many things are less expensive while some things are actually more expensive. but it is definitely not 1/10th as cheap to live, and remember that 1/10th figure is for official statistics and not the large majority of the workforce who are in the informal sector and make a fraction of the wages of foxconn workers.

this doesn't mean chinese people are dying on the streets, in fact this concept allows us to bring non-capitalist reproduction into capitalism such as the non-wage work chinese women do to support their husbands and slave labor either on a mass scale under fascism or normalized as debt bondage under liberal capitalism. but I think it's essential to understand that the extreme form of super exploitation under capitalism in which workers are literally worked to death to be replaced by new slave labor is not far from the norm, it is simply a different expression of the same production process.
#130
Post rating: ~

babyhueypnewton posted:

watching the youtube videos


link?

#131
Post rating: +

c_man posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

watching the youtube videos

link?



http://www.hgsss.org/anwar-m-shaikh-capitalism-competition-conflict-and-crises/

#132
Post rating: ~
hekc yes
#133
Post rating: +
guyovich in goontown, a pictorial journey:



(etc.)







epilogue:

Edited by Constantignoble ()

#134
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
they blame LF for wrecking the forums but LF was the last time those forums were or will ever be relevant. at its height LF was the third most popular subforum and it spun off at least six people i can think of who write on politics for a living. the sniveling limpdick warmongers had splurged for the report button though and here we are
#135
Post rating: +
interestingly, if you stretch out the field all the way you can pretty much date the downward trend to the benghazi consulate attack:



(assuming it didn't start further back, obv)
#136
Post rating: +

Constantignoble posted:




subtle forums metaphor

#137
Post rating: +

Constantignoble posted:


lmao

it's amazing how "i understand why these things happened and the circumstances in which they took place" turns into "everything these countries did was good and correct" with those morons

incidentally i was prepping a big post about the ddr using the 1984 cia world factbook (ddr's per-capita gnp was higher than the uk's) and a super kickass book, socialism with a german face.

i might post it when i'm off probation but i might also just say fuck it and close the thread before more nonsense stews

#138
Post rating: +
the guy who repeatedly called me a "cunt" got 1 day, for comparison's sake

#139
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +

Guyovich posted:

incidentally i was prepping a big post about the ddr using the 1984 cia world factbook (ddr's per-capita gnp was higher than the uk's) and a super kickass book, socialism with a german face.

i might post it when i'm off probation but i might also just say fuck it and close the thread before more nonsense stews

How about you just post it here

#140
Post rating: +
i`ve been saving all of my good posts for the rhizzone.
#141
Post rating: +

swampman posted:

How about you just post it here


that goes without question. it's saved as a draft at home, i'll post it when i get back from work

#142
Post rating: +
while we're waiting, congrats to peoples korea on their gold medal

#143
Post rating: +
"anti-emigrant rhetoric" lmao

the thread in d&d for republican supporters must just be one long ban-me huh i'm sure that's consistent
#144
Post rating: ~

Guyovich posted:

i might also just say fuck it and close the thread before more nonsense stews



i think this one

it's at the point where the mod is hopped up on his own self-righteous farts and has discarded even the pretense of neutrality. he's now probated like three others in your wake, while the gibbering psychopaths are posting with impunity about how you and the other "stalinists" are "human garbage" or "deserv(e) to die"

alhazred is stupid enough ordinarily but once he's convinced himself you've done something like "'say the n-word' but for tankies" he's just gonna level his horns at every fleck of red in his vision and charge in between drooling brays

see also the chart above

#145
chickeon
Post rating: ~
this is really funny and completely insane to publish
www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html?ref=world
#146
Post rating: +
The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said,


lol we're gonna need a word for this trope
#147
Post rating: +
im glad that the NYT continues a grand and noble tradition of publishing almost word for word NATO reports as journalism.

http://www.stratcomcoe.org/next-phase-russian-information-warfare-keir-giles

#148
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
it's truly pathetic of nyt to keep stealing jokes from this forum despite being so hated here
#149
Post rating: +
from the authour that brought you "Reviled by Many Russians, Mikhail Gorbachev Still Has Lots to Say",
#150
Post rating: ~
i just noticed that that article is in the front page of the print edition today lmao
#151
Post rating: +

SparksBandung posted:

cars posted:

ecuador also reps the bolivarian revolution & the economist expects correa to be gone by year's end

Yea, probably Zimbabwe too then?


welp,

shoutout to all the western outlets running profiles of the mugabe era like obituaries, as though a coup was confirmed and complete, which it is neither
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/15/robert-mugabe-legacy-ruthless-tyrant-presided-bloodshed-persecution/

#152
Post rating: ~
i dont really know anything about zimbabwes internal politics, whats that miltary guy talking about in his statement? are there really deteriorating 'social, economic etc' factors in the country or is that likely to be just a pretext? where are the defence forces positioned politically relative to mugabe or to other factions in the party?
#153
Post rating: ~
http://www.thezimbabwemail.com/politics/emmerson-mnangagwa-next-president-zimbabwe/

Denying that the action was a military takeover, Moyo said “as soon as we have accomplished our mission we expect the situation to return to normalcy.”

But in the past week the country’s war veterans and its white farmers have come together as unlikely allies in a new battle: to unseat President Robert Mugabe (93) and curb the ambitions of his wife, Grace.

Together with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) — led by the recently sacked vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa — and with what is thought to be the backing of the armed forces, the farmers and war vets have vowed to form a transitional government whose aim will be to return Zimbabwe to its past glory.


??????

ominous events, anyway

#154
Post rating: ~
fourth chimurenga when?
#155
Post rating: +
Man this sucks. Serious setback for all of Southern Africa. With Northern Africa messed up a few years ago, Central Africa under the thumb of imperialism for decades, and now Southern Africa facing a significant defeat, imperialism is turning seriously to Africa as the future labor pool. Probably the last one on earth of that size that is still excluded from formal subsumption and maybe the final chapter in the history of capitalism once it is written. But it will be a bloody chapter.
#156
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
CNN works overtime to whitewash the coup with the help of some quotable "Harare residents", but the photo evidence refutes their story:

Another Harare resident, who watched a cricket match Wednesday evening outside the old presidential house, also wrote on WhatsApp that the city was placid. "(The) Army has been polite and getting on with the people," he said.

People were dropping off food and drink for the soldiers, he said.

"Sure, there is an element of anxiety but we hoping for the best."

...
A resident, who wished not to be named for security reasons, told CNN the city as "very quiet," though shops were open and buses and taxis appeared to be running normally.

"Many people have just stayed home," she said.

She added there was a sense of "excitement in the air" and that social media was humming over what might be happening.

But there were signs of nervousness: Photos showed long lines at ATMs and at banks.



long lines at all the ATMs, "excitement in the air", it's like Christmas Eve!

note that "[p]hotos showed" evidence refuting CNN's version of events, even though those clearly unaltered photos provide reliable enough proof to state outright that panicked bank runs were happening, without qualifiers... while the majority of the "reporting" in the "what's happening on the streets" section of the article instead relies solely on claims in cherry-picked posts on the Internet

#157
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
bump until we have a Zimbabwe thread
#158
Post rating: ~
whats up with some people claiming that the 'coup' was backed by china or whatever
#159
Post rating: ~

lo posted:

whats up with some people claiming that the 'coup' was backed by china or whatever


rumours (coming from britain?) that ZDF commander chiwenga visited beijing just before the coup and that china either approved or at least didn't oppose what happened. whatever the truth of it, seems like a storm in a teacup, anything that can be used to bolster scaremongering about china's 'imperialism' in africa gets blown up like this

#160
Black Belt
Post rating: +
china says they didnt have shit to do with it and NUMSA is denouncing it.