fleights
fleights
Toronto
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Somewhere in the deep web, inhabiting the virtual architectural sphere supported by a vast telecommunications and industrial network, two communists get into a shouting match over theory with each other. This is despite the cliche'd expectation that the Left is supposed to be composed of meme lords and cackling hyenas laughing at the latest 'absurdity' which memes cater to. They have realized long ago that the peaceful and harmonious docility that is preached by the New Age on all corners has reduced subjects into hindu cows, staring lovingly at the butcher leveling the stun gun which is to lobotomize them in between their eyes. One of them, seeing the pedagogical value of exposing this dispute to the rest of the digital collective, compiles his response and shares it on this forgotten spin-off of the 'Laissez Faire' forum from Something Awful, a website for losers and failed social miscreants. This abomination of genuine organizational politics, of being accountable and serious for the proletariat cause, is called Rhizzone. It is the modest hopes of the cadre who has written this thread, that they will take time away from their pointless hobbies and realize the deep, deep shit we are in as a species. The threat of nuclear war looms in our future, we are already doomed and capitalism has triumphed. We are faced with two choices, communism or barbarism.
CHARACTERS INVOLVED
L - LENSKY
M - MARLAX
NOTE: Unless stated otherwise, everything in quotes is the reply of the opposite party in the debate.
L: Your reply is the sad summation of the petite-bourgeois retreat from the conditions of the present, an attempt to amend the traumatic wounds of the 21st century by searching for an eternal absolute that can free your mind from the difficulty of critical thought, of approaching your life as it exists, of taking responsibility for your own political and philosophical positions; the typical Master Signifier. We can feel the feeble absence of any dynamism, ossified tradition is enough say the kitsch internet pseudo-left. In a strange irony, this is the figure of Marx and Lenin, who’s theory is apparently infallible and can be applied to every single historical circumstance, when Marx himself wrote in the manifesto;
“In its positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case it is both reactionary and utopian.”
So too we can see that your analysis of communism, your dry and unoriginal re-application of the writings of Marx and Lenin miss the point completely. To call our epoch imperialist is like saying humans are animals because man succeeded from the biology of the ape and possess previous characteristics of his past ancestry. You view the 21st century as a repeat of the 19th, a prehistory of a prehistory which was delineated by the emergence of fascism and new deal corporatism, and what’s more recent; of digital or cybernetic capitalism. There is a discrepancy between the past forms of capitalism and its current form, which as made evident through your analysis, you fail to take account of, because for you, there is no history as such, no development of the mode of production, no revolutions in industry, no deterritorialization and reterritorialization, only vulgar economic determinism that glosses over Marx’s writings about alienation and ideology, which ignores the development in Marxist thought from Lenin onward; Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, Alain Badiou, Zizek, etc. Writings that keep pace with changes and urge the proletarian in its current temporal form onward; the avant-garde philosophical vanguard.
M: To begin with, allow me to assert why I threw Lenin quotes at you. You originally claimed we are entering a period akin to that before the First World War, drawing on the example of the increasing war danger between the United States and Russia/China. I said, however, that this is not comparable because Russia/China do not have any neocolonies.
You respond by asserting that Germany and Austria-Hungary did not have any colonies; and that while there were "certain regions of extreme exploitation" such as the Balkans, these particular countries "had one of the largest and most sophisticated manufacturing economies in the world, in addition to a very well developed agrarian AND primary resource base". I, in turn, rather than responding to you in detail, provided you with quotes from Lenin to illustrate what he believed about World War I. Now let us turn to your actual arguments. “
L: You threw Lenin quotes at me because you are lazy and don’t know or don’t want to explain your ill thought out political economic theory, because you were unwilling to get off your ass and engage in serious thought. It was only by various degrees of harassment and confrontation that I compelled you to formulate this reply and now I must thank you, because with your central intellectual framework laid bare, the reasons behind your practice are demystified.
What’s even more damning, your claim that Russia or China don’t have neocolonies is abjectly false owing to recent developments by the Chinese state, which extend ‘development package’ tendrils westward to central Asia, India, Africa, and south to Oceania. As Beijing finalizes multi-billion dollar investment plans into Syria for the purpose of integrating the middle east into the ambitious Silk Road Project, you are writing that they are in a losing position of un-even trade and capital flow. How the Chinese functionaries and capitalists would shit themselves to death laughing from reading this! As if the West, Europeans and Americans, are the only powers with real historical agency today, and all others are victims.
You make it evident that you do not understand the reasons why America is losing its hegemonic position, the contradictions in the long-standing practice of being world police and exporting capital, i.e, the system of seigniorage that has ripped industry away from America into the global South, and allowed nations like Brazil, China, etc, to stockpile the currency that is fleeing the North. The United States is on the verge of bankruptcy after failing as world policeman to keep backwaters like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in line, the whole world is just waiting for the USD to go under, any minute now, like waiting for an old cow to finally die.
M: Lenin wrote that "this is a war between two groups of predatory Great Powers, and it is being fought for the partitioning of colonies, the enslavement of other nations, and advantages and privileges of the world market". To help make this point understandable, and therefore to explain why the contradiction between the United States and Russia/China does not lend itself towards imperialist world war *as such* (i.e. abstracting from geopolitics -- which would be totally unnecessary for, say, Germany and England), it is necessary to clear up confusion you have as to what drives the imperialist bourgeoisie. You write the following:
“the features of imperialism which Lenin espoused (control of sectors of a national mode of production for the chief purpose of resource extraction, enslavement to lower production costs and dramatically increase profit, to depress wages for the working class by having an army of slaves to employ, and to make profits off the mass introduction of desired commodities such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, etc.) an imperialism which had the distinguishing features of keeping non-capitalist nations, in other words, colonies or feudal states such as China, unable to transform their social relations into unbridled free market capitalism with a bourgeois civil society; representational democracy, etc, etc - that this form of imperialism does NOT exist today!”
First of all, the word 'features' here is vague. By this I mean that it lends itself towards confusing the form and essence of imperialism as analyzed by Lenin. By assuming that the particularities ('features') described by Lenin of early 20th century imperialism no longer hold, you assert that the above quote - about world war being a war for the right to enslave (both metaphorically and literally) oppressed nations - likewise no longer holds. Is it true that the particularities described in Lenin's day no longer hold; no one could seriously deny this. But, while I obviously cannot speak on Lenin's behalf, I would like to demonstrate that it is from the more generalized 'features' of imperialism that Lenin had analyzed, and not from the particularities he described, that he derived his theory of imperialist world war. It is in this sense that you are actually quite justified in assuming I am comparing the imperialism of yesterday with the imperialism of today; I likewise would compare the capitalism of yesterday with the capitalism of today.
L: As has already been demonstrated, your argument fails to de-link the comparison of our geopolitical circumstances to that prior to the first world war through it’s own logic, as China demonstrably does engage in ‘neo-colonial’ activities, latching onto the markets and developments of other nations. Russia also plays an opportunistic role in weakening the ties the U.S has to other countries especially in the Middle East and Europe, with the failure to overthrow Assad or to make progress against Iran. The outcome of the wars in Iraq despite military victories have been to put Iraq squarely in the same camp with Iran, and the puppet governments put in place could not even withstand the assault of the paramilitary group that is ISIS. Through your analysis of the flows of capital, you IGNORE that politics is about more than in what directions money is moving, as America can barely control the House of Saud or Israel from spreading fascist Wahhabism. Of course this is covered up by the petty bourgeois left through their conspiracy theorist friends, of course America must have a coherent master plan for the Middle East, like dominos falling into place, and they haven’t made a fucking mess of the situation to their detriment. When Erdogan and Russia buddy up to put pressure on the Kurds, this must be a brilliant stroke of anti-imperialism, ditto the PKK and HPG.
M: “The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies." Let's divorce what's particular - the export of capital - to note what's general: the transfer of surplus-value from oppressed nations to oppressor nations and the parasitic structure of the metropolitan economy.
Why were the imperialists forced to export their capital? Because they had the process of capital accumulation broke down as they were 1) unable to reconvert commodity-captial back into the form of money-capital (capitalists aren't interested in surplus-value per se, but rather in money; and the markets of the colonies allowed them to realize the surplus-value produced by increased productivity and hence make the money they otherwise couldn't), and, 2) they over-accumulated it. #2 is what we really care about.
Why did they have surplus accumulated capital and thus need to export it? Lenin writes that "he need to export capital arises from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become "overripe" and... capital cannot find a field for "profitable" investment. What is general from this is that surplus accumulated capital ultimately means the profit rate is too low, and there is therefore the need to prevent profitability from sinking. This drive to prevent profitability from sinking through 'imperialism' remains valid even when capital export is no longer the primary 'feature'.“
L: Reducing the historical impact of imperialism to European capitalists exporting their money east due to over-accumulation is why your argument fails. Lenin himself wrote that the stage of imperialism was superior to pre-imperialism, or that capitalism was superior to pre-capitalism. Not in lieu of an eternal standpoint of universal good, but by the ideological standards of the classes in existence, their demands and desires. Capitalism did not fall from the sky, or get pulled out of Adam Smith’s ass, it developed out of the progression of feudalism. Export of capital alone is not why the non-capitalist globe came to be dominated by Europe and suffered atrocities and the historical feature of un-even development, although this was the mechanism behind the unfolding of their economic structuring. This misses the crucial aspect of slavery, opium dealing, enforced farming of select profitable crops, and the cultural and political domination of the societies the imperialists came into contact with, in other words war and genocide. The export of surplus-value from the global South misses the point that capitalists are happy to sell commodities (in fact, necessitated by competition) back to the slaves, peasantry, and proletariat of the exploited nations, only that they lack the money to buy it. What is the real generator of poverty and misery in the Third World which keeps the majority of the world’s population to experience such inexplicable suffering? The flooding of markets with cheap commodities with advanced manufacturing behind them, mainly agricultural, which impoverish the farmer, petty craftsman, or landowner without the capital to develop their means of production by driving prices down, and thus unable to elevate their meagre wealth through the trade of crop, which in addition with the seizure and privatization of communal or state organized lands, eject inhabitants from the country to the city, where they are forced to labor in brutal conditions of existence.
M:Hence the creation of modern supply-chains, with the outsourcing of jobs, i.e. modern globalized imperialism, was a response to the profitability crisis of 1974-1976; and financialization was a response to the change in the international division of labor (banks aren't the only companies who draw a large chunk of their profits from financial markets, this has instead become generalized) -- further INCREASING, not decreasing, the parasitism of the oppressor nations!
Moreover, you seem to implicitly ignore Lenin's law of the uneven development of capitalism even though consciously you're well aware of it. Its operation means that capitalism in the colonies does not develop in the same, linear way as capitalism in the metropole. The internationalization of the wage-labor relation is entirely compatible with some of the most backward elements of feudalism, and, as I show in the article pertaining to oppressed and oppressor nations, allows wage-labor to exist alongside an oppressed bourgeoisie. Note that Lenin writes that "he export of capital is made possible by a number of backward countries having already been drawn into world capitalist intercourse" -- he does not imply that imperialism is PREVENTING these countries from developing capitalist relations (the wage-labor relation is what is foundational to capitalism), but rather that the uneven development of capitalism-imperialism is, in contemporary terms, underdeveloping them.
L: Again, the export of capital alone is not sufficient to explain the brutality which is taken for granted in the global South, entire populations left behind or ignored by their states, forced to engage in various forms of scavenging or criminal activity in order to gather means of subsistence. What is oppressive about investors moving into feudal nations and developing industries which previously did not existed or were at a technologically low and unsophisticated character such as mining, forestry, or agriculture? There is no absence of beggars and landless outcasts in feudalism who found it necessary to sell their labour in order to survive. The growth of manufacturing alone does not explain the scale of violence, the movement of peoples, and destitution which the colonized nations were exposed to, the migrations from open farms into cramped factories or shackles. This analysis misses the extent to which monarchies or authorities were overthrown and lands seized, families boarded onto ships, and traditions desecrated. All that was solid melted into the air for the uncivilized nations which European imperialists came into contact with, un-even development was the result of industry being dominated by the Western bourgeoisie, with any wealthy colonial subjects struck down if they resisted complete economic domination. The transition into an independent capitalist society was made impossible through these relations of domination, and created such misery that Lenin was compelled to write that the proletariat in the peripheries must be the most radical, the most violent, those with the least to lose.
This is the entire reason why we can no longer define our epoch as one of imperialism, wherein nations are still lacking a national bourgeois and feudal relations continue to exist as aristocrats or colonial officials continue to parasitically maintain their position in society at the expense of the domestic bourgeois. Every nation in the globe today is integrated into the capitalist economy and each possess their own bourgeois, banks, financial institutions, and businessmen, which is why the suffering which goes on is utterly irreducible to the form of imperialism which Lenin wrote about. The chief contradiction for the working classes for our contemporary society is one of precarity and unemployment, of being thrown outside the walls and given no purpose for existence, only expected to die if they cannot be exploited further by rentier bloodsuckers or debtors. There is NO feudalism remaining today except in symbolic form or political figureheads of capitalist production, which is why there is no ‘anti-imperialism’. What this word means today is opposition to the Enlightenment tradition and European Universalism; democracy, feminism, human rights, a minimum wage, equality between ethnicities, etc. This is why the petite-bourgeois left is abjectly reactionary when they cheer on the Taliban, or Assad, or Putin, and so on, when these bastards of our ruling order exist AT THE EXPENSE OF A RENEWED LEFT, A NEW COMMUNIST MOVEMENT, NOT ALONGSIDE IT. This is the reason why you see Putin forging ties with European nationalists and the populist right wing in Viktor Orbán, Marine La Penn, Nigel Farage, and so on. These idiot third worldists you see on websites like Rhizzone were cheerleading Putin as standing up to American imperialism, but now when he is growing the neo-fascist right wing, there is a great silence. This is too much for the opportunists, who will not lower themselves to having to rethink their petty and weak theory.
M: Does it matter that German has less colonies than England? Not one bit, Lenin admits that "German imperialists look with envy at the "old" colonial countries which have been particularly "successful" in providing for themselves in this respect". Germany is actually what Lenin had the most information on, so it figures prominently in Chapter 5 of Imperialism in which Lenin describes the penetration of German capital in foreign countries, and Lenin concludes Chapter 7 of Imperialism noting how this surplus accumulated capital, in need of a profitable field of investment (logically shown by the figures in Chapter 5), alongside fewer colonies, INCREASES the threat of war:
"Thanks to her colonies, Great Britain has increased the length of "her" railways by 100,000 kilometres, four times as much as Germany. And yet, it is well known that the development of productive forces in Germany, and especially the development of the coal and iron industries, has been incomparably more rapid during this period than in Britain—not to speak of France and Russia. In 1892, Germany produced 4,900,000 tons of pig-iron and Great Britain produced 6,800,000 tons; in 1912, Germany produced 17,600,000 tons and Great Britain, 9,000,000 tons. Germany, therefore, had an overwhelming superiority over Britain in this respect. The question is: what means other than war could there be under capitalism to overcome the disparity between the development of productive forces and the accumulation of capital on the one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence for finance capital on the other?"
To summarize: capital had overaccumulated, it was exported to regions of the world where capitalist relations had yet to take root, the world was increasingly divided up among the the imperial powers, and nothing was left to do, in the context of ever-accelerating capital accumulation and falling profit rates, but to fight over them. That Germany had less colonies than England only means capitalism developed late there, and thus the drive for colonies. It was the division of the world among, and the cartel agreements between, the imperialist powers, and their aims, that made it a world war.
L: The point I was making was that the central powers, Germany and Austro-Hungary, were not colonial powers in a way comparable to the U.K and France, there is not much more to say about this, because colonialism and imperialism are lazy reapplications of previous historical circumstances into unique and different contemporary ones. In order to adjust to the changes which have occurred following the second world war, neoliberalism, and now the ascent of Silicon Valley, is to make so many quantitative changes to the meanings of these terms as they were used as to qualitatively alter them. The purpose behind the first world war wasn’t only to decide who would control which colonies and how to be rid of over accumulated commodities, but was also caused by the falling hegemony of the U.K to the rising industry and army of Germany, which had subdued the French and united North and South confederates into a single state. The maneuverings of France to regain Alsace-Lorraine meant alliance with Russia, and the potential to ally with the U.K as both were hostile to the growing dominance of the Germans. Faced with these stifling geopolitical circumstances, the German state found it necessary to ally with the unstable Austro-Hungary, and the rest was a series of cascading events which CANNOT be reduced to economic determinism alone, as we could imagine Franz Ferdinand not driving down those fateful streets, or whatever. This is the laziest application of Marxism I have ever seen, which bastardizes Lenin’s analysis and likely would have put you in the same camp of those socialists calling the Bolshevik Revolution premature, and Russian revolutionaries needing to wait until the developed capitalist nations were ready.
M: Now, we should note that if imperialism remains the same as Lenin's day, this means the drive towards World War remains the same as in Lenin's day. Lenin notes in the preface to his Imperialism that "this summary proves that imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists" . This brings us to Russia and China. You would have to positively demonstrate that Russia and China are imperialist for you suggest that Russia and China occupy a position akin to the imperial powers before World War I. I've already shown you that China is at a net-loser of unequal exchange and the US is a net-recipient of super-profits through unequal exchange; Russia (not to speak of China), meanwhile, is a net-importer of Greenfield foreign direct investment. The value of mergers and acquisitions in Russia are comparable to countries like Argentina . Both countries have extremely weak financial sectors internationally speaking. China has a relatively insignificant military; both countries lack the military projection abilities the US has. Neither country has a labor aristocracy. Both countries are forced to convert their currencies into dollars to trade -- this is hugely important, especially since China is the 2nd largest oil importer in the world and Russia is under US sanctions.
However, it's pretty clear even by 20th century standards that, say, England and Germany are imperialist powers, and now the "United States of Europe" is falling apart because the conditions for unity among the imperialist powers is itself falling apart. That is, the super-profits created by the destruction of so much capital in World War 2 and the enlargement of the world market are drying up (which could be "equitably distributed" among the imperial powers when the rate of profit was higher), and the US World Empire is losing its hegemony and thus its ability to keep its potential rivals in line.
L: There is no comparison to the imperialism of Lenin’s day with the geopolitics and economic quarrels of the 21st century, this has already been established. For this reason, there is NO point to prove that Russia and China are imperialist as you write because capitalism has MOVED ON from the 19th century, there is no longer any need for enslavement or colonial domination because robotics and computing have made basic human labour REDUNDANT. This is why we see the rise of skilled and educated workers in every corner of the globe, a whole class of technocrats and advisors, tech geeks, salaried bourgeois, and global corporations which could possibly become nation-states through their projection of power and influence alone. The labor conditions which exist in China, South Asia, India, and so on, are not a reflection of a nefarious desire to keep the South poor, but need for manufacturing to stay competitive as profits fall. The historical conditions of the global South mean that the weak middle class which does exist, that manage to secure an education that rivals that of the first world, equals their immediate flight from the excluded peripheries to the West. Again, the circumstances are so dramatically different that it is mind numbing to think that China and Russia are victims to the United States and unable to challenge its position as a global hegemon. China is already exporting their version of brutal authoritarian capitalism to the rest of the world as you write that they are a ‘net-loser of unequal exchange’. It is staggering how out of touch you are with the conditions which exist today, the maneuverings of the EU, Brazil, China, and Russia in weakening the economic grip America holds on the rest of the world.
Also to write that China or Russia don’t have labour aristocrats is to contradict your own claims that the worker’s movement for unions has been mobilizing millions in the global South. Even by dogshit Trotskyite standards, the existence of unions alone is enough to imply a union bureaucracy which leads to labor aristocrats. Unless you mean that the global South lacks well paid workers, if we are to consider McDonald’s workers or those struggling to make ends meet in America labor aristocrats. Of course you are referring to office workers, but this misses the point that much of their salary is a reflection of the scarcity of well-educated and English speaking workers globally speaking compared to the third world, and they do indeed produce surplus value as these corporations are making obscene profits today compared to the old industrialists. None of this follows your asinine argument that the Western bourgeois have been consciously ‘bribing’ the first world proletariat to keep them docile and supportive of ‘imperialism’ when we know that the working conditions in the West are the result of the communist scare following the second world war, the powerful labor unions, of which neoliberalism has been progressively rolling back for the past decades.
M: In conclusion to this point, and when I read you write "the reasons for war today are radically different than the ones which Lenin wrote about, owing mainly to the fact that feudal nations do not exist anymore and each state in our global economy possess their own bourgeois", I recall that it was precisely in Lenin's critique of Kautsky's 1914 article "Imperialism" that he attacks Kautsky for focusing on the political particularities of imperialism and thus erasing its essence. Unfortunately, people tend only to remember the "ultra-imperialism" part of that critique. Or maybe it's not so much a problem of memory and that they just haven't read Chapter 7 of Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. That is to say, talking about geopolitics means nothing with regard to World Wars if it is abstracted from economics.
L: World wars in capitalism are primarily caused by the system of market competition and commodity production which currently exist in a particular epoch, but they cannot be reduced to this alone, only in the final instance. If we are to accept that human behaviour is deterministically caused by empiricist material conditions alone, we might as well follow this erroneous logic to its final conclusion, shall we? World war 1 was due to imperialism, which is a feature of humans organized in a society, who's actions are determined by material conditions, which came about from historical development through different economic stages, that reflect their emergent being from nature, of which their physiology has been determined by their genes, and thus the genes of humans determine their behaviour, so we can conclude that some humans possess better genes than others.
If you do not accept the contingency of human behaviour and societies to ideological, linguistic, and social features, how the pope really does believe in God, or that a capitalist actually does want to sacrifice himself for the sake of his company’s success because his desire revolves around it, then you may as well join the fascists who accept that material conditions alone determine human actions. Or you can realize that human consciousness, the flow of thoughts, the passage from the Real to the Symbolic Order is irreducible and acausal, and that humans alone are accountable for their behaviour, humans which are currently divided in a class society. It is the other way around, World wars are caused by economics if you abstract away geopolitical considerations and ideology, reduce humans beings to animals which are executing their genetic code that tells them to be selfish, greedy, and desirous of capital.
M: Additionally, you write as if the majority of value is produced in manufacturing and not from where you yourself say there is extreme exploitation in rural areas. Well, which is it? While you might be correct, you nonetheless seem to have confused what 'exploitation' actually means, because value comes from the exploitation of labor-power, and thus extreme value comes from extremely exploited labor. This is an empirical question, but that point should be made.
L: The most profitable corporations today in terms of input to output are not in agriculture or textiles, but Apple, Exxon, Samsung, Google, The ICBC, China Construction Bank, JP Morgan Chase, General Electric, and so on. The industries which produce the most profit and therefore exchange-value are multinational corporations in data-collection, financing, electronics manufacturing, and ownership over intellectual property. Exploitation today is unable to account for how the emergent neo-feudal relations of rent are parasitically accumulating capital for where the highest profits and thus value are. The most powerful capitalists in the world owe their existence to Wall Street and Silicon valley, these are the power centres for the bourgeois. By dogmatically using 19th century terms, we could argue that Venezuela is the largest exploiter of America today because of oil exports.
M: Another seemingly unrelated point, but necessary to shed light on what the categories of 'oppressed and oppressor nations' mean today, is your confusion in writing the following: "each state in our global economy possess their own bourgeois (in the strict sense of owning means of production in some way and participating in the M - C - M accumulation cycle)". To use a concrete example, the existence of Bangladeshi garment factory owners proves that Bangladesh as a nation is no longer structurally prevented from accumulating capital. The only problem is, does the existence of brown-skinned capitalists axiomatically mean that this is true? You assume so, without actually analyzing the structure of world trade and competition. Here's the truth: according to the UNCTAD, "80 per cent of global trade... is linked to the international production networks of transnational corporations". In order for your point to be true, Apple would have to be competing with Foxconn in the production of iPhones. Instead, the OPPOSITE is the case: there is virtually no competition between Third World capitalists and First World capitalists, little competition between First World capitalists , and INTENSE competition among Third World capitalists. A company like Apple, rather than produce iPhones, designs them and holds onto the intellectual property. Apple then extracts a rent from Foxconn - the producer of the iPhone - and uses the super-profits to gamble in financial markets. If neoliberal organizations of globalization were not enforcing intellectual property laws, Apple would immediately go out of business to competition with Foxconn. Why? Because the cost of reproducing data - which, as you've said, is a produced as generalized commodity and thus subject to the capitalist laws of motion - is ZERO. Apple's profits come entirely from parasitism and only the designers of their tech products are productive in any way. Additionally, if you admit with me that the majority of labor-intensive production occurs in the Third World, then that signals that there's global capital differentials! Hardly a strategy for successful capital accumulation. In The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin writes that "the division of nations into oppressor and oppressed is the essence of imperialism". We can see that this remains true today: there is no net transfer of surplus-value from Europe and North America to Asia, Latin America and Africa, but, as in Lenin's day, the opposite.
L: The conditions of Bangladeshi factory workers are irreducible to the living standards enjoyed in the West, and ignores the historical achievements of the worker’s movement and that of communists. What is absent in this analysis is the way in which the economic existence of the global South was structured through their quick integration into capitalism following the end of colonialism, the flooding of cheap commodities into ‘traditional’ markets, an inability to compete on the markets with the first world and a comparatively low amount of capital, dysfunctional states which fell into debt, the increasing loss of jobs from advances in the mode of production, and most importantly, the failure of the Left to guide the worker’s movement to political victories, the absence or retreat of communists from the seizure of state power in whichever way possible. This void has been filled in by reactionary forces which the third worldists have opportunistically supported or praised such as the Taliban, ignoring the fact that Islamic extremism serves as an ideological counter to the project of modernity and the established order through a reaction, in other words, a form of fascism. These idiots have been grinning at the spread of ISIS and the 9/11 attacks as if this act of ‘anti-imperialism’ opened up a space for the left. The opposite is true, they assume the position along with nationalists, religious extremists, and dark enlightenment shit like MRAs, Kekistan, the Alt-Right, etc. They are enemies of communists and speak mystifications and lies directly into the ears of the proletariat, who are eager to smash the smug ruling elite. They steal the masses out from behind the communist vanguard, which have forgotten how to speak their language through their myopic focus on ossified political theory.
In addition, Western capitalists ARE in fierce competition with each other as even with monopolization, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft are all leading a war to maintain the privatization of intellectual property and stockpile consumer data to sell to investors and advertisement firms. To focus on American imperialism but to ignore the rising Silicon leviathan is a sign of political immaturity, which the Google diversity scandal should have awakened. The new form of digital capitalism requires a stronger state and technocracy to function smoothly, the fracturing of national entities into easier to manage nation-state cities like Hong Kong, and the desolation of politics to cultural issues. Labor intensive production does not ‘concentrate’ in the global South, the entire employed world is accelerating towards longer and longer days for less pay. Oil refinery workers are expected to work ’7 / 18s’ (18 hours, 7 days a week) for months on end, managers regularly clock in 12 hours or more, and so on. The petite-bourgeois is not better off, only the redundant precariat and unemployed are not given enough hours, which they must fill in by working more than one job.
M: For this reason, I find it strange you rhetorically ask "Vietnam is one of the largest exporters of goods to America today, what did their national struggle accomplish, once the Soviet bloc collapsed?" to argue Third Worldism is reactionary because your question carries within it the seeds of what the anti-imperialist strategy actually was (as written by Kim Il-sung): turning the imperialist blockade of sovereign Third World countries into the blockade of imperialist countries. That the socialist camp collapsed and Vietnam has been reduced to an exporter of goods to America proves that Third Worldism is correct, ironically. For this reason, you can't imply "anti-Americanism" is "infantile", because you yourself admit here that American-enforced globalization means blocked national development in Vietnam.
L: You miss the point entirely, what was meant by ‘Vietnam is one of the largest exporters of goods to America today, what did their national struggle accomplish?’ is that in the absence of an international communist movement, which is politically significant and holds power, self-determination struggles can only end in a capitalist victory. The reason why I said this is because in the infantile politics of the third worldists (a particularly American pathology that fits into its general narcissistic self-flaggerization) supporting Brexit, Scottish independence, the fracturing of the EU, Hamas, and countless other examples, form a reactionary resistance to the liberal bourgeois. These events strengthen the right wing and close spaces for class struggle which the left can take advantage of. The space of class antagonism is obfuscated by the Othering of different ethnic, national, or religious groups. Here you expose the weakness of your theory at its most base, that you think the Third World should blockade the First World. What is the conclusion of this, except that now the first world Left is free to play runescape, invest in bitcoins, go out and party and enjoy life, and wait for the revolution to happen in India, in China, etc. At least some of these petite-bourgeois ideologues take matters into their own hands and travel to where suffering is experienced at its worst, like the Kurdish brigades. Meanwhile, the opportunistic liberal left immediately try to dissociate themselves with Syriza and PSuV, no longer treating those struggles as their struggles because they have suffered defeat, while the Beautiful Souls keep their hands clean by tailing behind communist movements and bombarding them with impossible demands.
CHARACTERS INVOLVED
L - LENSKY
M - MARLAX
NOTE: Unless stated otherwise, everything in quotes is the reply of the opposite party in the debate.
L: Your reply is the sad summation of the petite-bourgeois retreat from the conditions of the present, an attempt to amend the traumatic wounds of the 21st century by searching for an eternal absolute that can free your mind from the difficulty of critical thought, of approaching your life as it exists, of taking responsibility for your own political and philosophical positions; the typical Master Signifier. We can feel the feeble absence of any dynamism, ossified tradition is enough say the kitsch internet pseudo-left. In a strange irony, this is the figure of Marx and Lenin, who’s theory is apparently infallible and can be applied to every single historical circumstance, when Marx himself wrote in the manifesto;
“In its positive aims, however, this form of socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case it is both reactionary and utopian.”
So too we can see that your analysis of communism, your dry and unoriginal re-application of the writings of Marx and Lenin miss the point completely. To call our epoch imperialist is like saying humans are animals because man succeeded from the biology of the ape and possess previous characteristics of his past ancestry. You view the 21st century as a repeat of the 19th, a prehistory of a prehistory which was delineated by the emergence of fascism and new deal corporatism, and what’s more recent; of digital or cybernetic capitalism. There is a discrepancy between the past forms of capitalism and its current form, which as made evident through your analysis, you fail to take account of, because for you, there is no history as such, no development of the mode of production, no revolutions in industry, no deterritorialization and reterritorialization, only vulgar economic determinism that glosses over Marx’s writings about alienation and ideology, which ignores the development in Marxist thought from Lenin onward; Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, Alain Badiou, Zizek, etc. Writings that keep pace with changes and urge the proletarian in its current temporal form onward; the avant-garde philosophical vanguard.
M: To begin with, allow me to assert why I threw Lenin quotes at you. You originally claimed we are entering a period akin to that before the First World War, drawing on the example of the increasing war danger between the United States and Russia/China. I said, however, that this is not comparable because Russia/China do not have any neocolonies.
You respond by asserting that Germany and Austria-Hungary did not have any colonies; and that while there were "certain regions of extreme exploitation" such as the Balkans, these particular countries "had one of the largest and most sophisticated manufacturing economies in the world, in addition to a very well developed agrarian AND primary resource base". I, in turn, rather than responding to you in detail, provided you with quotes from Lenin to illustrate what he believed about World War I. Now let us turn to your actual arguments. “
L: You threw Lenin quotes at me because you are lazy and don’t know or don’t want to explain your ill thought out political economic theory, because you were unwilling to get off your ass and engage in serious thought. It was only by various degrees of harassment and confrontation that I compelled you to formulate this reply and now I must thank you, because with your central intellectual framework laid bare, the reasons behind your practice are demystified.
What’s even more damning, your claim that Russia or China don’t have neocolonies is abjectly false owing to recent developments by the Chinese state, which extend ‘development package’ tendrils westward to central Asia, India, Africa, and south to Oceania. As Beijing finalizes multi-billion dollar investment plans into Syria for the purpose of integrating the middle east into the ambitious Silk Road Project, you are writing that they are in a losing position of un-even trade and capital flow. How the Chinese functionaries and capitalists would shit themselves to death laughing from reading this! As if the West, Europeans and Americans, are the only powers with real historical agency today, and all others are victims.
You make it evident that you do not understand the reasons why America is losing its hegemonic position, the contradictions in the long-standing practice of being world police and exporting capital, i.e, the system of seigniorage that has ripped industry away from America into the global South, and allowed nations like Brazil, China, etc, to stockpile the currency that is fleeing the North. The United States is on the verge of bankruptcy after failing as world policeman to keep backwaters like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in line, the whole world is just waiting for the USD to go under, any minute now, like waiting for an old cow to finally die.
M: Lenin wrote that "this is a war between two groups of predatory Great Powers, and it is being fought for the partitioning of colonies, the enslavement of other nations, and advantages and privileges of the world market". To help make this point understandable, and therefore to explain why the contradiction between the United States and Russia/China does not lend itself towards imperialist world war *as such* (i.e. abstracting from geopolitics -- which would be totally unnecessary for, say, Germany and England), it is necessary to clear up confusion you have as to what drives the imperialist bourgeoisie. You write the following:
“the features of imperialism which Lenin espoused (control of sectors of a national mode of production for the chief purpose of resource extraction, enslavement to lower production costs and dramatically increase profit, to depress wages for the working class by having an army of slaves to employ, and to make profits off the mass introduction of desired commodities such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, etc.) an imperialism which had the distinguishing features of keeping non-capitalist nations, in other words, colonies or feudal states such as China, unable to transform their social relations into unbridled free market capitalism with a bourgeois civil society; representational democracy, etc, etc - that this form of imperialism does NOT exist today!”
First of all, the word 'features' here is vague. By this I mean that it lends itself towards confusing the form and essence of imperialism as analyzed by Lenin. By assuming that the particularities ('features') described by Lenin of early 20th century imperialism no longer hold, you assert that the above quote - about world war being a war for the right to enslave (both metaphorically and literally) oppressed nations - likewise no longer holds. Is it true that the particularities described in Lenin's day no longer hold; no one could seriously deny this. But, while I obviously cannot speak on Lenin's behalf, I would like to demonstrate that it is from the more generalized 'features' of imperialism that Lenin had analyzed, and not from the particularities he described, that he derived his theory of imperialist world war. It is in this sense that you are actually quite justified in assuming I am comparing the imperialism of yesterday with the imperialism of today; I likewise would compare the capitalism of yesterday with the capitalism of today.
L: As has already been demonstrated, your argument fails to de-link the comparison of our geopolitical circumstances to that prior to the first world war through it’s own logic, as China demonstrably does engage in ‘neo-colonial’ activities, latching onto the markets and developments of other nations. Russia also plays an opportunistic role in weakening the ties the U.S has to other countries especially in the Middle East and Europe, with the failure to overthrow Assad or to make progress against Iran. The outcome of the wars in Iraq despite military victories have been to put Iraq squarely in the same camp with Iran, and the puppet governments put in place could not even withstand the assault of the paramilitary group that is ISIS. Through your analysis of the flows of capital, you IGNORE that politics is about more than in what directions money is moving, as America can barely control the House of Saud or Israel from spreading fascist Wahhabism. Of course this is covered up by the petty bourgeois left through their conspiracy theorist friends, of course America must have a coherent master plan for the Middle East, like dominos falling into place, and they haven’t made a fucking mess of the situation to their detriment. When Erdogan and Russia buddy up to put pressure on the Kurds, this must be a brilliant stroke of anti-imperialism, ditto the PKK and HPG.
M: “The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies." Let's divorce what's particular - the export of capital - to note what's general: the transfer of surplus-value from oppressed nations to oppressor nations and the parasitic structure of the metropolitan economy.
Why were the imperialists forced to export their capital? Because they had the process of capital accumulation broke down as they were 1) unable to reconvert commodity-captial back into the form of money-capital (capitalists aren't interested in surplus-value per se, but rather in money; and the markets of the colonies allowed them to realize the surplus-value produced by increased productivity and hence make the money they otherwise couldn't), and, 2) they over-accumulated it. #2 is what we really care about.
Why did they have surplus accumulated capital and thus need to export it? Lenin writes that "he need to export capital arises from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become "overripe" and... capital cannot find a field for "profitable" investment. What is general from this is that surplus accumulated capital ultimately means the profit rate is too low, and there is therefore the need to prevent profitability from sinking. This drive to prevent profitability from sinking through 'imperialism' remains valid even when capital export is no longer the primary 'feature'.“
L: Reducing the historical impact of imperialism to European capitalists exporting their money east due to over-accumulation is why your argument fails. Lenin himself wrote that the stage of imperialism was superior to pre-imperialism, or that capitalism was superior to pre-capitalism. Not in lieu of an eternal standpoint of universal good, but by the ideological standards of the classes in existence, their demands and desires. Capitalism did not fall from the sky, or get pulled out of Adam Smith’s ass, it developed out of the progression of feudalism. Export of capital alone is not why the non-capitalist globe came to be dominated by Europe and suffered atrocities and the historical feature of un-even development, although this was the mechanism behind the unfolding of their economic structuring. This misses the crucial aspect of slavery, opium dealing, enforced farming of select profitable crops, and the cultural and political domination of the societies the imperialists came into contact with, in other words war and genocide. The export of surplus-value from the global South misses the point that capitalists are happy to sell commodities (in fact, necessitated by competition) back to the slaves, peasantry, and proletariat of the exploited nations, only that they lack the money to buy it. What is the real generator of poverty and misery in the Third World which keeps the majority of the world’s population to experience such inexplicable suffering? The flooding of markets with cheap commodities with advanced manufacturing behind them, mainly agricultural, which impoverish the farmer, petty craftsman, or landowner without the capital to develop their means of production by driving prices down, and thus unable to elevate their meagre wealth through the trade of crop, which in addition with the seizure and privatization of communal or state organized lands, eject inhabitants from the country to the city, where they are forced to labor in brutal conditions of existence.
M:Hence the creation of modern supply-chains, with the outsourcing of jobs, i.e. modern globalized imperialism, was a response to the profitability crisis of 1974-1976; and financialization was a response to the change in the international division of labor (banks aren't the only companies who draw a large chunk of their profits from financial markets, this has instead become generalized) -- further INCREASING, not decreasing, the parasitism of the oppressor nations!
Moreover, you seem to implicitly ignore Lenin's law of the uneven development of capitalism even though consciously you're well aware of it. Its operation means that capitalism in the colonies does not develop in the same, linear way as capitalism in the metropole. The internationalization of the wage-labor relation is entirely compatible with some of the most backward elements of feudalism, and, as I show in the article pertaining to oppressed and oppressor nations, allows wage-labor to exist alongside an oppressed bourgeoisie. Note that Lenin writes that "he export of capital is made possible by a number of backward countries having already been drawn into world capitalist intercourse" -- he does not imply that imperialism is PREVENTING these countries from developing capitalist relations (the wage-labor relation is what is foundational to capitalism), but rather that the uneven development of capitalism-imperialism is, in contemporary terms, underdeveloping them.
L: Again, the export of capital alone is not sufficient to explain the brutality which is taken for granted in the global South, entire populations left behind or ignored by their states, forced to engage in various forms of scavenging or criminal activity in order to gather means of subsistence. What is oppressive about investors moving into feudal nations and developing industries which previously did not existed or were at a technologically low and unsophisticated character such as mining, forestry, or agriculture? There is no absence of beggars and landless outcasts in feudalism who found it necessary to sell their labour in order to survive. The growth of manufacturing alone does not explain the scale of violence, the movement of peoples, and destitution which the colonized nations were exposed to, the migrations from open farms into cramped factories or shackles. This analysis misses the extent to which monarchies or authorities were overthrown and lands seized, families boarded onto ships, and traditions desecrated. All that was solid melted into the air for the uncivilized nations which European imperialists came into contact with, un-even development was the result of industry being dominated by the Western bourgeoisie, with any wealthy colonial subjects struck down if they resisted complete economic domination. The transition into an independent capitalist society was made impossible through these relations of domination, and created such misery that Lenin was compelled to write that the proletariat in the peripheries must be the most radical, the most violent, those with the least to lose.
This is the entire reason why we can no longer define our epoch as one of imperialism, wherein nations are still lacking a national bourgeois and feudal relations continue to exist as aristocrats or colonial officials continue to parasitically maintain their position in society at the expense of the domestic bourgeois. Every nation in the globe today is integrated into the capitalist economy and each possess their own bourgeois, banks, financial institutions, and businessmen, which is why the suffering which goes on is utterly irreducible to the form of imperialism which Lenin wrote about. The chief contradiction for the working classes for our contemporary society is one of precarity and unemployment, of being thrown outside the walls and given no purpose for existence, only expected to die if they cannot be exploited further by rentier bloodsuckers or debtors. There is NO feudalism remaining today except in symbolic form or political figureheads of capitalist production, which is why there is no ‘anti-imperialism’. What this word means today is opposition to the Enlightenment tradition and European Universalism; democracy, feminism, human rights, a minimum wage, equality between ethnicities, etc. This is why the petite-bourgeois left is abjectly reactionary when they cheer on the Taliban, or Assad, or Putin, and so on, when these bastards of our ruling order exist AT THE EXPENSE OF A RENEWED LEFT, A NEW COMMUNIST MOVEMENT, NOT ALONGSIDE IT. This is the reason why you see Putin forging ties with European nationalists and the populist right wing in Viktor Orbán, Marine La Penn, Nigel Farage, and so on. These idiot third worldists you see on websites like Rhizzone were cheerleading Putin as standing up to American imperialism, but now when he is growing the neo-fascist right wing, there is a great silence. This is too much for the opportunists, who will not lower themselves to having to rethink their petty and weak theory.
M: Does it matter that German has less colonies than England? Not one bit, Lenin admits that "German imperialists look with envy at the "old" colonial countries which have been particularly "successful" in providing for themselves in this respect". Germany is actually what Lenin had the most information on, so it figures prominently in Chapter 5 of Imperialism in which Lenin describes the penetration of German capital in foreign countries, and Lenin concludes Chapter 7 of Imperialism noting how this surplus accumulated capital, in need of a profitable field of investment (logically shown by the figures in Chapter 5), alongside fewer colonies, INCREASES the threat of war:
"Thanks to her colonies, Great Britain has increased the length of "her" railways by 100,000 kilometres, four times as much as Germany. And yet, it is well known that the development of productive forces in Germany, and especially the development of the coal and iron industries, has been incomparably more rapid during this period than in Britain—not to speak of France and Russia. In 1892, Germany produced 4,900,000 tons of pig-iron and Great Britain produced 6,800,000 tons; in 1912, Germany produced 17,600,000 tons and Great Britain, 9,000,000 tons. Germany, therefore, had an overwhelming superiority over Britain in this respect. The question is: what means other than war could there be under capitalism to overcome the disparity between the development of productive forces and the accumulation of capital on the one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence for finance capital on the other?"
To summarize: capital had overaccumulated, it was exported to regions of the world where capitalist relations had yet to take root, the world was increasingly divided up among the the imperial powers, and nothing was left to do, in the context of ever-accelerating capital accumulation and falling profit rates, but to fight over them. That Germany had less colonies than England only means capitalism developed late there, and thus the drive for colonies. It was the division of the world among, and the cartel agreements between, the imperialist powers, and their aims, that made it a world war.
L: The point I was making was that the central powers, Germany and Austro-Hungary, were not colonial powers in a way comparable to the U.K and France, there is not much more to say about this, because colonialism and imperialism are lazy reapplications of previous historical circumstances into unique and different contemporary ones. In order to adjust to the changes which have occurred following the second world war, neoliberalism, and now the ascent of Silicon Valley, is to make so many quantitative changes to the meanings of these terms as they were used as to qualitatively alter them. The purpose behind the first world war wasn’t only to decide who would control which colonies and how to be rid of over accumulated commodities, but was also caused by the falling hegemony of the U.K to the rising industry and army of Germany, which had subdued the French and united North and South confederates into a single state. The maneuverings of France to regain Alsace-Lorraine meant alliance with Russia, and the potential to ally with the U.K as both were hostile to the growing dominance of the Germans. Faced with these stifling geopolitical circumstances, the German state found it necessary to ally with the unstable Austro-Hungary, and the rest was a series of cascading events which CANNOT be reduced to economic determinism alone, as we could imagine Franz Ferdinand not driving down those fateful streets, or whatever. This is the laziest application of Marxism I have ever seen, which bastardizes Lenin’s analysis and likely would have put you in the same camp of those socialists calling the Bolshevik Revolution premature, and Russian revolutionaries needing to wait until the developed capitalist nations were ready.
M: Now, we should note that if imperialism remains the same as Lenin's day, this means the drive towards World War remains the same as in Lenin's day. Lenin notes in the preface to his Imperialism that "this summary proves that imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists" . This brings us to Russia and China. You would have to positively demonstrate that Russia and China are imperialist for you suggest that Russia and China occupy a position akin to the imperial powers before World War I. I've already shown you that China is at a net-loser of unequal exchange and the US is a net-recipient of super-profits through unequal exchange; Russia (not to speak of China), meanwhile, is a net-importer of Greenfield foreign direct investment. The value of mergers and acquisitions in Russia are comparable to countries like Argentina . Both countries have extremely weak financial sectors internationally speaking. China has a relatively insignificant military; both countries lack the military projection abilities the US has. Neither country has a labor aristocracy. Both countries are forced to convert their currencies into dollars to trade -- this is hugely important, especially since China is the 2nd largest oil importer in the world and Russia is under US sanctions.
However, it's pretty clear even by 20th century standards that, say, England and Germany are imperialist powers, and now the "United States of Europe" is falling apart because the conditions for unity among the imperialist powers is itself falling apart. That is, the super-profits created by the destruction of so much capital in World War 2 and the enlargement of the world market are drying up (which could be "equitably distributed" among the imperial powers when the rate of profit was higher), and the US World Empire is losing its hegemony and thus its ability to keep its potential rivals in line.
L: There is no comparison to the imperialism of Lenin’s day with the geopolitics and economic quarrels of the 21st century, this has already been established. For this reason, there is NO point to prove that Russia and China are imperialist as you write because capitalism has MOVED ON from the 19th century, there is no longer any need for enslavement or colonial domination because robotics and computing have made basic human labour REDUNDANT. This is why we see the rise of skilled and educated workers in every corner of the globe, a whole class of technocrats and advisors, tech geeks, salaried bourgeois, and global corporations which could possibly become nation-states through their projection of power and influence alone. The labor conditions which exist in China, South Asia, India, and so on, are not a reflection of a nefarious desire to keep the South poor, but need for manufacturing to stay competitive as profits fall. The historical conditions of the global South mean that the weak middle class which does exist, that manage to secure an education that rivals that of the first world, equals their immediate flight from the excluded peripheries to the West. Again, the circumstances are so dramatically different that it is mind numbing to think that China and Russia are victims to the United States and unable to challenge its position as a global hegemon. China is already exporting their version of brutal authoritarian capitalism to the rest of the world as you write that they are a ‘net-loser of unequal exchange’. It is staggering how out of touch you are with the conditions which exist today, the maneuverings of the EU, Brazil, China, and Russia in weakening the economic grip America holds on the rest of the world.
Also to write that China or Russia don’t have labour aristocrats is to contradict your own claims that the worker’s movement for unions has been mobilizing millions in the global South. Even by dogshit Trotskyite standards, the existence of unions alone is enough to imply a union bureaucracy which leads to labor aristocrats. Unless you mean that the global South lacks well paid workers, if we are to consider McDonald’s workers or those struggling to make ends meet in America labor aristocrats. Of course you are referring to office workers, but this misses the point that much of their salary is a reflection of the scarcity of well-educated and English speaking workers globally speaking compared to the third world, and they do indeed produce surplus value as these corporations are making obscene profits today compared to the old industrialists. None of this follows your asinine argument that the Western bourgeois have been consciously ‘bribing’ the first world proletariat to keep them docile and supportive of ‘imperialism’ when we know that the working conditions in the West are the result of the communist scare following the second world war, the powerful labor unions, of which neoliberalism has been progressively rolling back for the past decades.
M: In conclusion to this point, and when I read you write "the reasons for war today are radically different than the ones which Lenin wrote about, owing mainly to the fact that feudal nations do not exist anymore and each state in our global economy possess their own bourgeois", I recall that it was precisely in Lenin's critique of Kautsky's 1914 article "Imperialism" that he attacks Kautsky for focusing on the political particularities of imperialism and thus erasing its essence. Unfortunately, people tend only to remember the "ultra-imperialism" part of that critique. Or maybe it's not so much a problem of memory and that they just haven't read Chapter 7 of Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. That is to say, talking about geopolitics means nothing with regard to World Wars if it is abstracted from economics.
L: World wars in capitalism are primarily caused by the system of market competition and commodity production which currently exist in a particular epoch, but they cannot be reduced to this alone, only in the final instance. If we are to accept that human behaviour is deterministically caused by empiricist material conditions alone, we might as well follow this erroneous logic to its final conclusion, shall we? World war 1 was due to imperialism, which is a feature of humans organized in a society, who's actions are determined by material conditions, which came about from historical development through different economic stages, that reflect their emergent being from nature, of which their physiology has been determined by their genes, and thus the genes of humans determine their behaviour, so we can conclude that some humans possess better genes than others.
If you do not accept the contingency of human behaviour and societies to ideological, linguistic, and social features, how the pope really does believe in God, or that a capitalist actually does want to sacrifice himself for the sake of his company’s success because his desire revolves around it, then you may as well join the fascists who accept that material conditions alone determine human actions. Or you can realize that human consciousness, the flow of thoughts, the passage from the Real to the Symbolic Order is irreducible and acausal, and that humans alone are accountable for their behaviour, humans which are currently divided in a class society. It is the other way around, World wars are caused by economics if you abstract away geopolitical considerations and ideology, reduce humans beings to animals which are executing their genetic code that tells them to be selfish, greedy, and desirous of capital.
M: Additionally, you write as if the majority of value is produced in manufacturing and not from where you yourself say there is extreme exploitation in rural areas. Well, which is it? While you might be correct, you nonetheless seem to have confused what 'exploitation' actually means, because value comes from the exploitation of labor-power, and thus extreme value comes from extremely exploited labor. This is an empirical question, but that point should be made.
L: The most profitable corporations today in terms of input to output are not in agriculture or textiles, but Apple, Exxon, Samsung, Google, The ICBC, China Construction Bank, JP Morgan Chase, General Electric, and so on. The industries which produce the most profit and therefore exchange-value are multinational corporations in data-collection, financing, electronics manufacturing, and ownership over intellectual property. Exploitation today is unable to account for how the emergent neo-feudal relations of rent are parasitically accumulating capital for where the highest profits and thus value are. The most powerful capitalists in the world owe their existence to Wall Street and Silicon valley, these are the power centres for the bourgeois. By dogmatically using 19th century terms, we could argue that Venezuela is the largest exploiter of America today because of oil exports.
M: Another seemingly unrelated point, but necessary to shed light on what the categories of 'oppressed and oppressor nations' mean today, is your confusion in writing the following: "each state in our global economy possess their own bourgeois (in the strict sense of owning means of production in some way and participating in the M - C - M accumulation cycle)". To use a concrete example, the existence of Bangladeshi garment factory owners proves that Bangladesh as a nation is no longer structurally prevented from accumulating capital. The only problem is, does the existence of brown-skinned capitalists axiomatically mean that this is true? You assume so, without actually analyzing the structure of world trade and competition. Here's the truth: according to the UNCTAD, "80 per cent of global trade... is linked to the international production networks of transnational corporations". In order for your point to be true, Apple would have to be competing with Foxconn in the production of iPhones. Instead, the OPPOSITE is the case: there is virtually no competition between Third World capitalists and First World capitalists, little competition between First World capitalists , and INTENSE competition among Third World capitalists. A company like Apple, rather than produce iPhones, designs them and holds onto the intellectual property. Apple then extracts a rent from Foxconn - the producer of the iPhone - and uses the super-profits to gamble in financial markets. If neoliberal organizations of globalization were not enforcing intellectual property laws, Apple would immediately go out of business to competition with Foxconn. Why? Because the cost of reproducing data - which, as you've said, is a produced as generalized commodity and thus subject to the capitalist laws of motion - is ZERO. Apple's profits come entirely from parasitism and only the designers of their tech products are productive in any way. Additionally, if you admit with me that the majority of labor-intensive production occurs in the Third World, then that signals that there's global capital differentials! Hardly a strategy for successful capital accumulation. In The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin writes that "the division of nations into oppressor and oppressed is the essence of imperialism". We can see that this remains true today: there is no net transfer of surplus-value from Europe and North America to Asia, Latin America and Africa, but, as in Lenin's day, the opposite.
L: The conditions of Bangladeshi factory workers are irreducible to the living standards enjoyed in the West, and ignores the historical achievements of the worker’s movement and that of communists. What is absent in this analysis is the way in which the economic existence of the global South was structured through their quick integration into capitalism following the end of colonialism, the flooding of cheap commodities into ‘traditional’ markets, an inability to compete on the markets with the first world and a comparatively low amount of capital, dysfunctional states which fell into debt, the increasing loss of jobs from advances in the mode of production, and most importantly, the failure of the Left to guide the worker’s movement to political victories, the absence or retreat of communists from the seizure of state power in whichever way possible. This void has been filled in by reactionary forces which the third worldists have opportunistically supported or praised such as the Taliban, ignoring the fact that Islamic extremism serves as an ideological counter to the project of modernity and the established order through a reaction, in other words, a form of fascism. These idiots have been grinning at the spread of ISIS and the 9/11 attacks as if this act of ‘anti-imperialism’ opened up a space for the left. The opposite is true, they assume the position along with nationalists, religious extremists, and dark enlightenment shit like MRAs, Kekistan, the Alt-Right, etc. They are enemies of communists and speak mystifications and lies directly into the ears of the proletariat, who are eager to smash the smug ruling elite. They steal the masses out from behind the communist vanguard, which have forgotten how to speak their language through their myopic focus on ossified political theory.
In addition, Western capitalists ARE in fierce competition with each other as even with monopolization, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft are all leading a war to maintain the privatization of intellectual property and stockpile consumer data to sell to investors and advertisement firms. To focus on American imperialism but to ignore the rising Silicon leviathan is a sign of political immaturity, which the Google diversity scandal should have awakened. The new form of digital capitalism requires a stronger state and technocracy to function smoothly, the fracturing of national entities into easier to manage nation-state cities like Hong Kong, and the desolation of politics to cultural issues. Labor intensive production does not ‘concentrate’ in the global South, the entire employed world is accelerating towards longer and longer days for less pay. Oil refinery workers are expected to work ’7 / 18s’ (18 hours, 7 days a week) for months on end, managers regularly clock in 12 hours or more, and so on. The petite-bourgeois is not better off, only the redundant precariat and unemployed are not given enough hours, which they must fill in by working more than one job.
M: For this reason, I find it strange you rhetorically ask "Vietnam is one of the largest exporters of goods to America today, what did their national struggle accomplish, once the Soviet bloc collapsed?" to argue Third Worldism is reactionary because your question carries within it the seeds of what the anti-imperialist strategy actually was (as written by Kim Il-sung): turning the imperialist blockade of sovereign Third World countries into the blockade of imperialist countries. That the socialist camp collapsed and Vietnam has been reduced to an exporter of goods to America proves that Third Worldism is correct, ironically. For this reason, you can't imply "anti-Americanism" is "infantile", because you yourself admit here that American-enforced globalization means blocked national development in Vietnam.
L: You miss the point entirely, what was meant by ‘Vietnam is one of the largest exporters of goods to America today, what did their national struggle accomplish?’ is that in the absence of an international communist movement, which is politically significant and holds power, self-determination struggles can only end in a capitalist victory. The reason why I said this is because in the infantile politics of the third worldists (a particularly American pathology that fits into its general narcissistic self-flaggerization) supporting Brexit, Scottish independence, the fracturing of the EU, Hamas, and countless other examples, form a reactionary resistance to the liberal bourgeois. These events strengthen the right wing and close spaces for class struggle which the left can take advantage of. The space of class antagonism is obfuscated by the Othering of different ethnic, national, or religious groups. Here you expose the weakness of your theory at its most base, that you think the Third World should blockade the First World. What is the conclusion of this, except that now the first world Left is free to play runescape, invest in bitcoins, go out and party and enjoy life, and wait for the revolution to happen in India, in China, etc. At least some of these petite-bourgeois ideologues take matters into their own hands and travel to where suffering is experienced at its worst, like the Kurdish brigades. Meanwhile, the opportunistic liberal left immediately try to dissociate themselves with Syriza and PSuV, no longer treating those struggles as their struggles because they have suffered defeat, while the Beautiful Souls keep their hands clean by tailing behind communist movements and bombarding them with impossible demands.
tentativelurkeraccount
tentativelurkeraccount
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gas
marlax78
marlax78
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it's not very fair to structure this as if i'm replying to points you've made when what appears under my name was a single post
Belphegor
Belphegor
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What is this in response to? ur wild fleights
Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia
Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia
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an explicit fight club ref in the intro is a great way to guarantee i wont even try to read your wall of text
[account deactivated]
tears
tears
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belgend
belgend
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op you seem to be confused you wanted to post this here
fleights
fleights
Toronto
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Belphegor posted:What is this in response to? ur wild fleights
An article I wrote on STEAM which Marlax gave me some criticisms to; http://steamcommunity.com/groups/NewCommunism#announcements/detail/1434812919024946531
marlax78 posted:it's not very fair to structure this as if i'm replying to points you've made when what appears under my name was a single post
This is the typical format you find on forums where a big post is dissected into individual talking points, to be fair, I did not cut out your paragraphs further into sentences taken out of context which you see lazy shit-eaters doing on other forums, and hopefully I've addressed most of what you stated.
Edited by fleights ()
hey
hey
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i thought this was going to be a conversation between conrads. disappointed
belgend
belgend
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fleights posted:An article I wrote on STEAM
Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia
Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia
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in all seriousness though fleights, is this a gimmick or do you normally write like a total prat
tears
tears
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fleights posted:which ignores the development in Marxist thought from Lenin onward; Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, Alain Badiou, Zizek, etc. Writings that keep pace with changes and urge the proletarian in its current temporal form onward; the avant-garde philosophical vanguard.
this is peak post *kissing fingers*
e: wait, y ou didnt put china meiville on that list, now that would have been peak pos t
Edited by tears ()
tears
tears
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which ignores the development in Marxist thought from Lenin onward; China Meiville, Bernie Sanders, Slavoj Zizek, Brandon Sanderson, Tony Cliff, David Graeber, George R. R. Martin, the marvel cinematic universe, etc. Writings that keep pace with changes and urge the proletarian in its current temporal form onward; the avant-garde philosophical vanguard.
shriekingviolet
shriekingviolet
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karphead
karphead
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how dare you fleights. how. dare. you.
Gibbonstrength
Gibbonstrength
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my communist steam community plays Goat SImulator every Saturday night, but only to revere the goat
[account deactivated]
blinkandwheeze
blinkandwheeze
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glomper_stomper posted:xbox huge lmao
lol
Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia
Flying_horse_in_saudi_arabia
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tears posted:
fucken sick av m8
Gibbonstrength
Gibbonstrength
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next rhizzone poster to have a psychotic meltdown a la jeffrey, now taking bets
swampman
swampman
Dont Mess With Sucess
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Gibbonstrength posted:next rhizzone poster to have a psychotic meltdown a la jeffrey, now taking bets
i'm already 2/3rd the way through mine... nice situational awareness kiddo