noavbazzer posted:
Marxism is useful for understanding how capitalism functions but predicating your.revolutionary action or for some pretense of revolutionary action on the system that basically runs the world being consumed in the flames during which time you can finally apply your ethos to the place in which you live is a little delusional. There is no historical inevitability and capitalism has continually proved more robust than you give it credit for.
stop being a child, nobody is arguing that we need a global revolution before we can begin to organize in our own communities. sakai did not argue that, the mim did not argue that, the llco does not argue that, not even bhpn is arguing that. it's only your ridiculously narrow conception of social activism that lets you think that anyone is
how you can still in the year of our lord 2012 still consider the global hegemonic world-system of liberal capitalism in any way 'robust' is beyond me (and at the same time condemn others for failing to get with the times! what a joke!). do you not see the clandestine reliance on religious authoritarian regimes in the middle east? do you not see emerging neofascist regimes in europe? do you not see the nations of brics gaining increasing and increasing importance on the world stage? do you not see the growing threats of ecological disaster? do you not even see the spectre of global financial collapse everywhere?
there are such dark clouds on the horizon, it is doubtless at this point that our current world-system will be consumed by flames, and if we don't do anything it's going to be replaced by new sinister forms of oppression and exploitation. whether it is movements dedicated to social justice that win or not is not just to be decided somewhere without us, nobody is making that argument except ghosts in your head. it takes dedicated organizing from all of us, and that means so much more than your ridiculous fantasies of magical new theories to come out of white suprematist petit-bourgeois academics
babyfinland posted:
let's look at your own source
The reliance of the Soviet command economy in
Uzbekistan on ‘cotton campaigns’ that mobilized the
population, including school-age children, during
harvest periods is well documented. An integrated
network of institutions, from regional and local
administrations, to schools and collective farms were
involved in securing additional labour at peak times. At
first glance the use of child labour in cotton harvests,
relying on an existing infrastructure of institutions, may
appear as a carry-over from collective agriculture.
However, the evidence points to significant changes
in both the context and the mechanisms of reliance
on child labour in the aftermath of agrarian reforms
starting after the break-up of the Soviet Union and
Uzbekistan’s independence in 1991.
this is the next page after you quoted the ex-soviet ministries stupid nationalist propaganda -- which they picked up from their soviet training as colonial administrators
i did read that? are you aware of the modern distinction in child work in uzbekistan? the fact that, as your own quote says, before the privatization schemes, it was reliant on 'collective agriculture', and now we have a total disconnect from any sort of traditional social fabric?
the obvious reason i cited those sources, was even the soros foundation has to recast modern child labor crudely backwards into the soviet age, tending to focus on its modern institution which is now operating on "no social or economic grounds"
also, on the subject of "ex-soviet ministries": http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/ECAEXT/0,,contentMDK:22901709~pagePK:146736~piPK:146830~theSitePK:258599,00.html
babyfinland posted:
its ok we all make mistakes
i mean, okay, i get it, you dont like russians, that's great. that doesn't have anything to do with the early soviet period, or with the present situation
are you trying to argue that children liked picking cotton because the party organized solidarity groups into kolkhozy
Crow posted:
seriously, no one is arguing in favor of the policy of "being the orchards of the soviet union", but conflating that with the entirety of the soviet union is ludicrous, and frankly crude. you can do much better CIA propaganda than that, i know you can
wot
concurrently, i find the western evidence on forced child labor in the early soviet period a very crude and unsophisticated attack on collectivization. i am not interested in whitewashing any mistakes, grievous errors, or racist crimes, but i am also not interested in dismissing "stupid nationalist propaganda" that can help us alleviate anarchy of production, alienated labor, or faults with collectivization in the future. if you want to kick collectivization, thats your own gig, frankly i dont see any reason to rule it out with the sort of agricultural catastrophes that are looming.
certainly i am not defending any neocolonialist revanchism, but i am suspicious of some 'eurocentric model of the Soviet Union', when every European effort attempted to orientalize the USSR in this period. not to mention, *now* it is actually much more ideological useful to attack from the 'humanitarian angle', but i am not necessarily interested in exploring those sorts of "conspiracies"
Edited by Crow ()
i share your position i/r/t child labor: the point is the colonial exploitation of the nation, and that example was simply the most egregious illustration of the relationship that existed between asian and european sectors of the SU.
things were far better for central asians under the soviet union, but there were significant problems as well that need to be accounted for in organizing an effort to (at the very least) return to those levels of social development. the colonial relationship was a weakness of the soviet union and likely contributed to its eventual failure, not something that represented the project as a whole.
the 'propaganda' i was referring to was the minister handwaving away the issue of child labor in his state as being some sort of uzbek tradition. uzbekistan bases its legitimacy entirely on (secular-) conservative nationalist claims
Edited by babyfinland ()
~light a candle for a brother~
noavbazzer posted:
im too much of a amoral lumpenprole to defend anything i say so im gonna go play mapgames now
the real lumpen proletariat is playing dungeon crawl stone soup now.
babyfinland posted:
anyway my original argument was that problems of dogmatism and ideological chauvinism produced oppressive, exploitative conditions that ultimately doomed the soviet union as a whole. there's a clear lesson there.
~light a candle for a brother~
dogmatism, ideological chauvinism and exploitive conditions worked out fine for the United States. i hate these analyses that try to explain institutional failures in moralistic terms.
Edited by babyfinland ()
Lessons was probated until (Feb. 21, 2012 13:47:16) for this post!
but seriously folks, the soviet Empire was predicated on a different moral understanding, of national liberation, communal struggle towards emancipation, creation of a new human civilization based on freedom and equity, and thus when it was corrupted, it dissolved into something more akin to its degradation, a kind of cesspool of Western-style exploitation and late Soviet bureaucratic disjunction. it makes sense that Western exploitation keep on ticking, because that is what it is built on, but the emancipatory 'commune' corrupts and falters into something else, because that is more amenable to the aims of its opportunistic leaders/institutions, at least in my mind.
thus, you have the Uzbek agricultural ministry, though it cannot totally remove any vestige of the previous ethical understanding ("after post-Soviet reforms and the privatization of agriculture in Uzbekistan there were no social or economic grounds for the use of forced child labour in agricultural work", implying there were before, and that this isnt controversial), is coordinating with the World Bank. its degradation is not interested in the previous modes, only in its corrupt vestiges, and immediately the "Western," imperial mode finds itself more useful in the humiliation of the people. this is why bf points out the colonialism of the late soviet union was a weakness, not a strength as one may find in the US (though in the longterm, i think it is also a weakness there too)
aerdil posted:
" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/world/europe/poland-leads-wave-of-communist-era-reckoning-in-europe.html " -baby finland
whats a good book about communist poland
Crow posted:
hahahah BOOM ROASTED.
but seriously folks, the soviet Empire was predicated on a different moral understanding, of national liberation, communal struggle towards emancipation, creation of a new human civilization based on freedom and equity, and thus when it was corrupted, it dissolved into something more akin to its degradation, a kind of cesspool of Western-style exploitation and late Soviet bureaucratic disjunction. it makes sense that Western exploitation keep on ticking, because that is what it is built on, but the emancipatory 'commune' corrupts and falters into something else, because that is more amenable to the aims of its opportunistic leaders/institutions, at least in my mind.
thus, you have the Uzbek agricultural ministry, though it cannot totally remove any vestige of the previous ethical understanding ("after post-Soviet reforms and the privatization of agriculture in Uzbekistan there were no social or economic grounds for the use of forced child labour in agricultural work", implying there were before, and that this isnt controversial), is coordinating with the World Bank. its degradation is not interested in the previous modes, only in its corrupt vestiges, and immediately the "Western," imperial mode finds itself more useful in the humiliation of the people. this is why bf points out the colonialism of the late soviet union was a weakness, not a strength as one may find in the US (though in the longterm, i think it is also a weakness there too)
i don't really understand what your point is, you speak unintelligibly at times, but i'm not specifying "colonialism of the late soviet union"; colonialism of asia was there from the beginning, its a continuous trajectory from tsarist russia through the soviet period into the post-soviet. "western-style exploitation" was built into the structure of the empire from the beginning, and the bolsheviks appropriated that relationship, without what we should now understand as the ethical imperative -- the emancipation of the oppressed nations from imperialism.
i agree that the west picked up on the worst aspects of soviet society and exploits them, but it's silly to play this game where anything the soviet union did was good because it had the right intention. the west has good intentions as well, one could play this same game and whitewash structural flaws in western imperial society by attributing its errors to corruption.
babyfinland posted:aerdil posted:
" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/world/europe/poland-leads-wave-of-communist-era-reckoning-in-europe.html " -baby finlandwhats a good book about communist poland
i liked class struggle in socialist poland by albert szymanski but the amazon price is way more than what i paid for it a couple months ago
babyfinland posted:
i don't really understand what your point is, you speak unintelligibly at times, but i'm not specifying "colonialism of the late soviet union"; colonialism of asia was there from the beginning, its a continuous trajectory from tsarist russia through the soviet period into the post-soviet. "western-style exploitation" was built into the structure of the empire from the beginning, and the bolsheviks appropriated that relationship, without what we should now understand as the ethical imperative -- the emancipation of the oppressed nations from imperialism.
babyfinland posted:noavbazzer posted:
so basically there is no such thing as a first world communist?
i do agree with you on Marxism but when i was a True Believer no one was really able to sway me unwavering faith in the Science of Dialectical Materialism until i had bashed my head against the problems inherent in it long enough to see that it was fruitless and all about having an identity based on my liberal-trot opinionswell obviously there are first world communists. being goofy doesnt mean you dont exist.
marxian criticism is still extremely valuable, don't get me wrong. and i'm not really concerned with trying to convince people towards this or that ideological position. i'm just saying that this idea of "more theory" or "new theory" as some sort of solution to the failure of communism is pretty definitively been incorporated into that failure already. i mean that's been the idea in the west since like the 60s and it's been utterly fruitless. so whether you are arguing within the parameters of marxist ideology or more objectively criticizing marxist ideology as a whole, "theory" is definitely not going to provide any solutions
that i think theory has to be subsequent to observation and experimentation for it to be useful. the article in the OP is a pretty good example of a cargo-cult approach to materialist analysis where you just assert that something is true because its Scientific imo.
OP article posted:
I’ve always said that we are going to have to cut, shoot and bomb our way out of our current social conditions.
leaving aside for the moment the curious nature of the metaphor (as though capitalism is a jungle full of Capitalists that can be smashed through, out into the nearby Plains of Socialism), the question of whether and how to apply force is a pretty important consideration.
so, what observations have been made? what data has been collected and how was it analysed? we aren't presented with any, just the assertion that obviously Science has determined that violent revolution is a necessary precondition for Actually Existing Socialism. that may well be true if your pool of candidates is 20th century socialist states, but if we consider all egalitarian communal societies i sincerely doubt that violent revolution was a primary mode of securing that existence. how do we know that evasion and escape are not the most successful strategies for establishing a socialist state? when and why do other historical egalitarian societies deploy violence? that might be genuinely useful information, but we are presented with no such analysis here.
the insane thing about the OP is that when challenged, the examples of successfully deployed revolutionary violence proferred are the Oka crisis, the Gustafsen lake incident, and some riot in Florida. this is just really crazy shit. Oka was not successfully deployed revolutionary violence in the service of establishing an egalitarian Mohawk society. it was a non-violent defense (with a threat of violent escalation, to be sure) of what the author describes as their "open air prison".
the author glibly dismisses taiaiake alfred (an ex-marine Mohawk w/ substantial experience w/ militant activism), but fails to see his point.
babyfinland posted:
i think what futurewidow said about building culture gets to an important point too though, that not everything revolutionary is going to come from the pages of das kapital, or communists, or is goign to be something overtly political per se.
related to this point, alfred insists that violence and contention be grounded in an indigineity. how can a smashed culture who live in literal concentration camps (Duncan Campbell Scott described the residential school/reserve system as the "final solution to the Indian problem" in 1910, prefiguring later Nazi rhetoric, so the term is not inappropriate) mount a violent revolution? they struggle to maintain the physical integrity of their own prison- what guerilla war will they prosecute?
alfred answers this by asserting that the recovery of a true indigineity answers many of these questions. he points to the Cree in northern Quebec, who maintain a mobile hunting subsistence routine for much of the year, returning to res for only months in a year. this provides much-needed time away from the violence and oppression of the res, an independent source of food and culture, one that is both permitted by and largely illegible to the state.
if we want to talk about how violence might be applied to create space for or defend new kinds of cultural practices outside and illegible to the capitalist framework, i think theres a lot of room for real materialist analysis and i don't think the role of "theory" in that context should be dismissed. if we can eliminate hidebound oil age assumptions about the way that states work and the way capitalism functions and do some serious comparative analysis we can get some important insights into all kinds of shit inshallah
babyfinland posted:
between modship and his recent flurry of pro posting i think its say to safe shennong has been bestowed the mandate of heaven
may the warring posts period finally end
“What do you want?” he would ask, astonished and cross. “Is it possible to act humanely in such an unusually ferocious fight? Is there a place for kindness or magnanimity? We are blockaded by Europe, we are deprived of the help of the European proletariat, counterrevolution is creeping up on us like a bear, and we - what would you have us do? Should we not, have we not, the right to fight, to resist? I am sorry, but we are not a bunch of fools. We know what we want can only be achieved by ourselves. Do you think that I, if I thought that the contrary was true, would be sitting here?”
“What measure do you use for telling which blows are essential and which are superfluous in a fight?” he asked me once after a heated discussion. I could give only a poetic answer to that question. I do not think there was an answer to it.”
noavbazzer posted:
*Qu'ran
just gonna inscribe your name on the stone tablet list of apostates... ok. good to go.
discipline posted:
I have so much to post about this but my internet is broken and posting from my phone is so painful...
settings -> general -> network -> turn Internet tethering on ;-)
Crow posted:babyfinland posted:jools posted:
enslave in the literal sense or the, i guess, balkan sensei donno you tell me what forcing schoolchildren out into cotton fields should be classified as
Existing patterns of child labour in Uzbekistan were explained by the Ministry with reference to ‘recognized family values and traditions of Uzbek society’ which ‘assume and predetermine [the] participation of elder children in creating family well-being’. In brief, the Ministry placed the economic contribution of minors in the category of child work, distinguishing it from child labour. The statement concluded that after post-Soviet reforms and the privatization of agriculture in Uzbekistan there were no social or economic grounds for the use of forced child labour in agricultural work, including cotton-harvesting operations.
...
Unlike the Soviet period, there is no sanitary provision such as hot water and hygiene tents for girls. Children working at the cotton harvest used to be provided with nutritious food, including butter and a hot meal with meat.
http://www.soas.ac.uk/cccac/events/cotton-sector-in-central-asia-2005/file49842.pdf
From the Soros foundation, friend of Soviet peoples:
The use of forced child labor in the harvesting of cotton in Uzbekistan began in the Stalin era when the country was part of the Soviet Union.hmm wonder what also began in the stalin era, world war fweakin two?
lol. yes This. tired of all these lies up in this thread
babyfinland posted:
things were far better for central asians under the soviet union, but there were significant problems as well that need to be accounted for in organizing an effort to (at the very least) return to those levels of social development. the colonial relationship was a weakness of the soviet union and likely contributed to its eventual failure, not something that represented the project as a whole.
what? did you just "Own" yourself? this is a far cry from the original statement you made, and why this argument even exists in the first place
Lessons posted:
i didn't read your other, longer post, but that one's pure moralism. if the West thrived on exploitation why wouldn't the East? they made plenty of ideological and strategic mistakes in that regard but that's hardly an explanation for their institutional failure.
i'm not disagreeing with you here, but as the chinese man once said when asked if the french revolution was a success, "we do not yet have enough information to make a sober assessment"
babyfinland posted:aerdil posted:
" http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/world/europe/poland-leads-wave-of-communist-era-reckoning-in-europe.html " -baby finlandwhats a good book about communist poland
everything jerzy kozinski ever wrote, but keep in mind, they are all snakes' lies
babyfinland posted:Crow posted:
the west has good intentions as well, one could play this same game and whitewash structural flaws in western imperial society by attributing its errors to corruption.the west has good intentions as well? you're shaping up to be a good cia man