Caesura109 posted:

On this subject I am more sympathetic to the left communist perspective. To me the description of Arab welfare nationalism as 'socialist' is a serious perversion and dilution of what socialism means. I categorically reject that such a description of the state planning and welfare aspects of Arab nationalist states is anything but one of the most superficial applications of the term 'socialism'.

If Mao was being superficial by claiming that new-democratic states are fundamentally aligned against the imperial-capitalist world system, then you should make an argument to that extent. Maybe you can show that he was wrong, but for the time being I fail to see how he's inconsistently applied materialist principles. We can debate about what word Gowans might have used instead of 'socialism' but I think in terms of content he's on the same page. And I don't think the Lenin quote you've selected makes the point you're claiming.

I struggle to see how the fight in Syria even contributes to the development of Syrian bourgeois democracy, or even self-determination for the nation-state under it's own bourgeoisie considering the subservient and neo-colonial relationship it maintains with Russia.

Again, these are potentially interesting topics, but could you substantiate them? I'm not aware of the extent of the relationship you're describing, but if it's there, it should be demonstrable in the familiar terms, no? (E.g., what's the magnitude of surplus value leaving the country in the form of super-profits to Russia, even in rough estimate? What are the characteristics of the reactionary local elites Russia props up in its alleged neocolony, and how do they interfere with the development of productive forces, revolutionary consciousness, etc?) Let's leave no question begged.

has elements of ethnic and sectarian strife.

Well, yes, on one side for certain.

There is also an argument to be made that there are many loci of global imperialist powers in the globe, and that rather than a struggle between national bourgeoisie and international bourgeoisie, in the large scheme of things it is just different sects among the international bourgeoisie attempting to displace each other as exploiters of working people across the region.

Bear in mind the ontology of the structures in question. "Higher" structures are not just dominant over, but constituted by "lower ones." This is what gives us the entire Marxist theory of the state, for example. The international bourgeoisie is an extremely high-level structure, but we know two things about it right off the bat just from dialectical materialism. The first, as you've already identified, is that it, like all structures, has internal contradictions. But the other thing is that it does not exist in a vacuum, or somehow disconnected from its lower levels, the unit of which would be national bourgeoisies. Among these units, there's no more reason to assume parity than anywhere else; there's clear dominant factions.

I was recently reading a passage of H.W. Edwards's book on the labor aristocracy that stood out to me:

While methods of control create an international bourgeoisie through ensuring the hegemony of one of its sections, hegemony in turns rends the unity by intensifying inner contradictions. An example is the European Common Market. A great deal has been written about it in Marxist publications proving that, while several national capitalisms do come together, they only appear to coalesce: inner rivalries among them become aggravated in "association" with one another.

Former Ghana President Kwame Nkrumah called the Common Market "collective imperialism" and described it as "the dumping ground of international investment dominated by the giant American banking concerns and their British satellites."

...

In a word, in this epoch, the imperialist ruling class has escalated, along with its system, into a more-and-more international phenomenon through the development of huge, world-wide, boundary-scorning consortia which tend to control natural resources, world finance, the supply of labor power, etc.

At the same time, this very internationalization intensifies inner rivalries among national centers through the imperialist world. And, while increasing internationalization prepares the economic groundwork for world socialism. increasing inner contradictions perform the same service in another way: by objectively weakening the whole system.

...

(T)he primary result of bribery in the imperialist economic system is the formation, as Lenin noted, of labor aristocracies in "a handful of very rich countries".

In Lenin's day, his thesis was simply represented by the facts. But as imperialism decays and its network of parasitism spreads, those facts necessarily become more complex – in the ever-integral system. (Baran & Sweezy) take into account this increasing systemic complexity:

The hierarchy of nations which make up the capitalist system is characterized by a complex set of exploitative relations. Those at the top exploit in varying degrees all the lower layers, and similarly those at any given level exploit those below them ... At the same time, each unit at a given level strives to be the sole exploiter of as large a number as possible of units beneath it. Thus we have a network of antagonistic relations pitting exploiters against exploited and rival exploiters against each other.

In somewhat pat terms, the movements that fuck with the "top" level of imperial capital are, ceteris paribus, generally the ones most disruptive to the world system.

Edited by Constantignoble (Jan. 19, 2018 17:39:21)

animedad posted:

to me, it's a question of would you rather have a Puerto Rico or Cuba to continue struggling against the (national or international) bourgeoisie?

remove sanctions and aid to proxies now

the plan is to transform every cuba into a puerto rico, every puerto rico into a haiti, and invent new things to turn haiti into

the "left communist" plan is to watch this and cheer

An @NBCNews exclusive: “We have been treated with respect here.” @lesterholtnbc is just a few hours outside the capital of Pyongyang with a rare look inside North Korea pic.twitter.com/xTZM6QcLEy

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 22, 2018

This new Casanova got me wildn pic.twitter.com/z8WRimZBbA

— Cheeks Lit (@CHICKLET_HF) January 2, 2018

swampman posted:

Every time I think about logging on to Twitter i play Slash'EM instead. Today I learned my super powerful monk with eg. the +5 Crown of Saint Edward was still unable to damage Vecna with martial arts, so while Vecna was teleporting around me casting finger of death and smacking me I had to get out my scrolls of enchant weapon and power up my unicorn horn. By the time I had that all sorted and had started poking Vecna with it my hp was down to 17 and I wasn't confident I would get hit down to an hp range where I could pray (rather than die). So I quaffed the potion of healing I'd left in open inventory, but the potion was milky in appearance, so an enormous ghost leapt out of it and frightened me, stunning me for three turns during which Vecna stabbed me to death. And none of that would have happened if I'd been on Twitter. Download Slash'EM here http://slashem.sourceforge.net/

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