I’ve already explained, imperialism is best described as a system of international plunder.
Yeah, but than you personally make the decision what constitutes plunder, so Russia taking land, resources and crops from Ukraine is not plunder because you simp for Putin on some absurd soviet nostalgia. Is there no financial system in Russia? Are oligarchs members of a communist party? How does that work in your head?
Crimea isn’t in the scope of the current war, because it was already annexed for similar reasons.
It’s a land bridge to somewhere? Or did they actually had to build one of the largest bridges to connect it? It was necessary for strategic sunbathing?
I don’t know why you’re bringing it up, unless you’re trying to conjure reasoning for why Russia is going to go beyond the 4 oblasts.
Cuz it’s one of 7 or 8 Ukrainian oblasts Russian military is currently occupying, it’s clearly against the stated nonsensical logic and justification of a land bridge, and clearly, by Putins own statements is a case of historical revisionism. You just support nationalist imperialism.
Need any more?
Yeah, a satellite picture proving the shelling, with 10 years it should look somewhat like the surface of the moon, but somehow none of you propaganda eaters can show any evidence. For comparison you can check something like this or that (first search results, feel free to check any other sources for these locations since you will obviously object these particular sites), now load up Yandex maps and show me something remotely similar around Russian occupied Donbas (yeah I did check already on a bunch of different maps, good luck).
calling the Marxist interpretation of imperialism “anti-semitic.”
Imperialism as Marxists understand it comes from John Hobson
It gets much better at “requir[ing] a repression of the spread of degenerate or unprogressive races”. Nice theory you got there comrade.
You can clearly see the devastation brought by capitalism and the absolute looting and plunder of Eastern Europe by the western powers.
Yeeeeeah, clearly you’ve never been to the region.
During the so called communist period in my country we’d often lack basic resources that were overproduced, as they would be force-exported into the CCCP. No meat, little grain, empty food shelves in shops, but we got money and vouchers allowing us to use them for foodstuffs, only there was very little of these. If that is not plunder, what is? Why is there not enough potatoes in Bealarus at the moment? Is it a CIA plot, or as Lukashenko states market mechanics and it’s a better deal to sell them to Russia?
-Russia is not annexing the 4 oblasts for imperialist super-profits. It’s not exporting capital, it’s not trying to gain access to resources. The purpose of the SMO is to gain the land buffer and demillitarize Ukraine so that it is no longer a threat. There’s no “simping” going on here, the fact that yet again you have to describe my positions in unbacked claims of “simping,” antisemitism, etc rather than engage with the actual points just further proves your own idealism.
-Crimea is strategically located between Ukraine and Russia, yes. I don’t support imperialism in any way.
-There’s zero chance you actually looked at the sources I provided in any real depth. Kiev has been at war with the Donbass region for a decade, this is well-documented as my sources show. There’s not a single person saying that the Donbass region should look like the surface of the moon or that the shelling has been going on 24 hours a day for the last decade, this is just nonsense.
-Hobson’s personal social views on why imperialism happens are entirely distinct from his observations on how finance capital plunders the world. Lenin advanced upon it, removing the racist undertones, and establishing its connection to capitalism. Since Lenin, other theorists like Kwame Nkrumha, Cheng Enfu, and Michael Hudson have advanced upon Lenin. Not a shred of the antisemitism of Hobson remained in Lenin’s analysis, and no antisemitism has existed among the Marxist analysis of imperialism since. You have no actual counter to the Marxist analysis of imperialism, so you attack the liberal Hobson instead, hoping that Marxists somehow adopt the exact same theory as liberals do. More evidence of your absurdism.
-Goods were indeed moved around the soviet union, as it was an expansive system. Overall, everyone was uplifted. The RSFSR was more developed, and thus enjoyed higher quality of life, but there was no export of capital, no domination by a financial oligarchy at play. The planned economy required planned production and distribution at a multi-national scale, and did not have the same profit motive that drives imperialism.
Overall, you have no points. You misframe my own points, and then when I point out how you’ve done it, you ignore the subject entirely. You also resort to ad hominem, trying to claim Marxists follow an anti-semitic definition of imperialism and thus Marxists must be anti-semitic, when neither are true. Again, I really don’t need you to reply, it’s clear that you’re content with lying about and misframing my positions when it’s clear that you don’t actually have a counter. It’s rude and tiring.
It’s annexing 7/8 at the moment, as pointed out, and you seem to ignore.
for imperialist super-profits. It’s not exporting capital, it’s not trying to gain access to resources.
So it exports grain and oil, mines rare earths and coal for… anti-profits? At loss? It would claim to the contrary, so are you wrong or are Russian state media wrong?
The purpose of the SMO is to gain the land buffer and demillitarize Ukraine so that it is no longer a threat.
Even if that were the stated objective (and not the strategic ambiguity that has been going on since 2014); Ukraine only became a threat after it was invaded, after a comically corrupt pro-Russian leader was ejected. And what has since the SMO achieved? Ukraine is more militarized and more in favour of NATO than ever before. 2 states bordering Russia joined NATO. NATO gained access to first hand experience against Russian army and a testing ground against it weapons and tactics. There’s also catastrophic losses, numbers of which you will dispute, but I encourage you read up ru mil-bloggers, and do read between the lines as is the eastern tradition. So it’s a complete failure, and even if it wasn’t… What would be the difference?
NATO’s power is high tech long range weapons, not mass tank armies that need Ukrainian steppes. And even if any one attempted there would be a nuclear response, so why would any one try that? This makes absolutely no sense, no matter how many times you repeat the line.
Crimea is strategically located between Ukraine and Russia, yes.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was strategically located inside of Ukraine, wasn’t it? And than someone decided to occupy it, even tho in no way what so ever it could be a land bridge, which is your claimed rationale? How was it strategical against Russia?
There’s zero chance you actually looked at the sources I provided in any real depth.
You guys use the same examples over and over, and I had a few of these discussions already.
Kiev has been at war with the Donbass region for a decade,
No one is questioning that. Only you ignore that is because Russia occupied that region with the exact same scenario as they used against Georgia before.
There’s not a single person saying that the Donbass region should look like the surface of the moon or that the shelling has been going on 24 hours a day for the last decade, this is just nonsense.
Weird, maybe I somehow misread your statement of
bellicose neighbor that was shelling ethnic Russians in Donbass for a decade.
Because we both know you’re referring to a manufactured propaganda item used as casus belli, that could not be proved outside of Russian/aligned media. You could compare pictures of any Ukrainian front line city with these of Donbas and would be faced with a rather radical discrepancy.
You have no actual counter to the Marxist analysis of imperialism, so you attack the liberal Hobson instead
I’m addressing it since that is a theory you initially claimed to subscribe to, check your own comments. And as stated; even if you would follow the Leninist reinterpretation there’s no point in me addressing it, since you then ignore the facts of Russia’s exploitative economy and the fact it is a capitalist state like any other with concentration of wealth not much different from USA. In fact oddly enough most “western” capitalist countries seem to have a more egalitarian wealth division than Russia.
Overall, everyone was uplifted.
Obviously not everyone, but the masses, yes - I’m not questioning that.
The planned economy required planned production and distribution at a multi-national scale, and did not have the same profit motive that drives imperialism.
Yeah, I could kinda agree with that. Also it didn’t work out, obviously. But let’s make it funnier and fit Afghanistan into your lovely fairly-tale. That was clearly in favour of the local population? Or just to secure the crucial supply of poppy seed to the population of RSFSR as it became aware of the fact that the central planning brought the economy of a system spanning two continents and a European bread basket to a point where it could not feed it’s own population reliably?
See, the thing is; I’m very much not a fan of market economy, I see some positives of the communist regime in my country. But I also see it’s murderous failures and what seems to differentiate our positions is that I can remember the fall of Soviet Union and seen it in Moscow itself before the fall of the RSFSR and in my country before that. What you read about in glorifying brochures I’ve seen. It was a failure, and that any honest person who lived though it will tell you. It collapsed from day to day, and suddenly there’s no food. It was not a resilient system, it was not an effective system, the waste was astronomical and the lack of rationality made entire nations starve. It collapsed the economy and alienated the people beyond the conditions that brought it to be. In it’s ruined social hellscape it gave birth to a new kleptocratic oligarchic state that you for some deeply absurd reason seem to support, even tho there is clearly no interest with marxism-leninism on it’s part.
I don’t support imperialism in any way.
The only rational explanation for your support of this war would be if you’re a Russian nationalist. This I could understand. Detest, but consider it rational in it’s crooked way.
You misframe my own points
Half of your points is claiming things are the way you imagine them, because you do. I’m not going after every fallacy you believe in (like the tiny thing of ownership in Chinese economy). I’m just hoping you’ll actually question some of the stuff you try to push on to others that’s ostensibly false or misguided.
-Selling commodities is not imperialism. I said export of capital. Commodities can function as capital, but in selling them through export these are not exported as capital.
-The IMF wanted Ukraine to destroy its safety nets for loans, Ukraine’s ousted president went with the Russian loan that didn’t. It’s as simple as that.
-Russia is achieving its goals with respect to the SMO. Crimea was in Ukraine, but voted to join Russia.
-Ukraine has been at war with the Donbass region for a decade. This is fact.
-I’ve never said Russia was socialist, or a model to emulate. I’m aware of the wealth disparity.
-The USSR had stable food supply. It was a remarkably effective system, and capitalism has been devastating for it.
-I don’t support imperialism. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, and my opinions are in line with that.
All in all, none of your points are worth responding to in any greater depth than that. They’re all coated in doublespeak and anecdote.
The only definition of imperialism you accept contradicts every common dictionary definition and servers the one country where it was mostly developed. Ok, no point in discussing that further. Just one final question then.
Let’s theoretically accept “SMO” is to defend against NATO and only about the 4 oblasts and you claim “land bridge”. According to recent demands they are Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, yes? So; why? Land bridge to what?
It’s 630 km from Moscow to Luhansk, 730 to Donetsk, 860 to Zaporizhzhia, 980 to Kherson.
It’s 500 km from Chernichiv oblast, 450 km from Sumy oblast to downtown Moscow. About half an hour of flight for a subsonic Tomahawk, few minutes for a hypersonic rocket. Russia occupied that area but retreated, mostly even before Ukrainian counter attacks. If you have a look at a map access to Russia proper is broadly open from the “pro-NATO regime” terrain. Moscow is also closer then the 4 oblasts from Latvia, and marginally more distant from Estonia and Finland, so 3 NATO states together some 8% of Russias border? There’s 8 Ukrainian oblasts Russia is not making any claims against closer to Moscow then Zaporizhzhia.
Why are only resource rich regions of east on southern Ukraine occupied and not the ones closest to key industrial and administrative region of Russia? And if you’re about to claim that there’s anything so important in the south - Turkey, the second biggest NATO army is 200km from Russian border to the south or less then the Moscow-Donbas distance if they wanted to hit most of Russian south over the sea. Is there some “materialist” reading of the map I’m not understanding?
No, the definition of imperialism as a system of international extraction is consistent and is the most widely used. The west is not the world.
Secondly, it’s not about absolute proximity, but the terrain and capability of moving troops and materiel through. You keep relying on metrics that don’t actually matter nearly as much, you did it earlier too when you thought socialism was a ratio thing.
Im not from the west, you yourself confirmed russia is engaged in extraction and is a capitalist country, and ML definition is not used outside of specialised discourse. You’re just going “well akshuly…”
It’s not about absolute proximity, but the terrain and capability of moving troops and materiel through.
Did you even look at a topo map before spewing this nonsense?
Doing a few hundred km detour to bypass the mighty peaks of 400 m over sea level while requireing many more river passages is something you think any one would consider? Why?
Historically every key invasion from the west (Polish, French, German) rolled pretty much straight on to Moscow. The only notable exception being the Crimean one, coming from the south and closer to the route you seem to be picturing. Unless NATO is quietly assembling a cavalry force in place of it’s 5th generation fighter and global reach drone force this might not be a serious concern for anyone since 15th century.
Yeah, but than you personally make the decision what constitutes plunder, so Russia taking land, resources and crops from Ukraine is not plunder because you simp for Putin on some absurd soviet nostalgia. Is there no financial system in Russia? Are oligarchs members of a communist party? How does that work in your head?
It’s a land bridge to somewhere? Or did they actually had to build one of the largest bridges to connect it? It was necessary for strategic sunbathing?
Cuz it’s one of 7 or 8 Ukrainian oblasts Russian military is currently occupying, it’s clearly against the stated nonsensical logic and justification of a land bridge, and clearly, by Putins own statements is a case of historical revisionism. You just support nationalist imperialism.
Yeah, a satellite picture proving the shelling, with 10 years it should look somewhat like the surface of the moon, but somehow none of you propaganda eaters can show any evidence. For comparison you can check something like this or that (first search results, feel free to check any other sources for these locations since you will obviously object these particular sites), now load up Yandex maps and show me something remotely similar around Russian occupied Donbas (yeah I did check already on a bunch of different maps, good luck).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism_(Hobson_book)#"Jewish_financiers"_and_racism
It gets much better at “requir[ing] a repression of the spread of degenerate or unprogressive races”. Nice theory you got there comrade.
Yeeeeeah, clearly you’ve never been to the region.
During the so called communist period in my country we’d often lack basic resources that were overproduced, as they would be force-exported into the CCCP. No meat, little grain, empty food shelves in shops, but we got money and vouchers allowing us to use them for foodstuffs, only there was very little of these. If that is not plunder, what is? Why is there not enough potatoes in Bealarus at the moment? Is it a CIA plot, or as Lukashenko states market mechanics and it’s a better deal to sell them to Russia?
-Russia is not annexing the 4 oblasts for imperialist super-profits. It’s not exporting capital, it’s not trying to gain access to resources. The purpose of the SMO is to gain the land buffer and demillitarize Ukraine so that it is no longer a threat. There’s no “simping” going on here, the fact that yet again you have to describe my positions in unbacked claims of “simping,” antisemitism, etc rather than engage with the actual points just further proves your own idealism.
-Crimea is strategically located between Ukraine and Russia, yes. I don’t support imperialism in any way.
-There’s zero chance you actually looked at the sources I provided in any real depth. Kiev has been at war with the Donbass region for a decade, this is well-documented as my sources show. There’s not a single person saying that the Donbass region should look like the surface of the moon or that the shelling has been going on 24 hours a day for the last decade, this is just nonsense.
-Hobson’s personal social views on why imperialism happens are entirely distinct from his observations on how finance capital plunders the world. Lenin advanced upon it, removing the racist undertones, and establishing its connection to capitalism. Since Lenin, other theorists like Kwame Nkrumha, Cheng Enfu, and Michael Hudson have advanced upon Lenin. Not a shred of the antisemitism of Hobson remained in Lenin’s analysis, and no antisemitism has existed among the Marxist analysis of imperialism since. You have no actual counter to the Marxist analysis of imperialism, so you attack the liberal Hobson instead, hoping that Marxists somehow adopt the exact same theory as liberals do. More evidence of your absurdism.
-Goods were indeed moved around the soviet union, as it was an expansive system. Overall, everyone was uplifted. The RSFSR was more developed, and thus enjoyed higher quality of life, but there was no export of capital, no domination by a financial oligarchy at play. The planned economy required planned production and distribution at a multi-national scale, and did not have the same profit motive that drives imperialism.
Overall, you have no points. You misframe my own points, and then when I point out how you’ve done it, you ignore the subject entirely. You also resort to ad hominem, trying to claim Marxists follow an anti-semitic definition of imperialism and thus Marxists must be anti-semitic, when neither are true. Again, I really don’t need you to reply, it’s clear that you’re content with lying about and misframing my positions when it’s clear that you don’t actually have a counter. It’s rude and tiring.
It’s annexing 7/8 at the moment, as pointed out, and you seem to ignore.
So it exports grain and oil, mines rare earths and coal for… anti-profits? At loss? It would claim to the contrary, so are you wrong or are Russian state media wrong?
Even if that were the stated objective (and not the strategic ambiguity that has been going on since 2014); Ukraine only became a threat after it was invaded, after a comically corrupt pro-Russian leader was ejected. And what has since the SMO achieved? Ukraine is more militarized and more in favour of NATO than ever before. 2 states bordering Russia joined NATO. NATO gained access to first hand experience against Russian army and a testing ground against it weapons and tactics. There’s also catastrophic losses, numbers of which you will dispute, but I encourage you read up ru mil-bloggers, and do read between the lines as is the eastern tradition. So it’s a complete failure, and even if it wasn’t… What would be the difference?
NATO’s power is high tech long range weapons, not mass tank armies that need Ukrainian steppes. And even if any one attempted there would be a nuclear response, so why would any one try that? This makes absolutely no sense, no matter how many times you repeat the line.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was strategically located inside of Ukraine, wasn’t it? And than someone decided to occupy it, even tho in no way what so ever it could be a land bridge, which is your claimed rationale? How was it strategical against Russia?
You guys use the same examples over and over, and I had a few of these discussions already.
No one is questioning that. Only you ignore that is because Russia occupied that region with the exact same scenario as they used against Georgia before.
Weird, maybe I somehow misread your statement of
Because we both know you’re referring to a manufactured propaganda item used as casus belli, that could not be proved outside of Russian/aligned media. You could compare pictures of any Ukrainian front line city with these of Donbas and would be faced with a rather radical discrepancy.
I’m addressing it since that is a theory you initially claimed to subscribe to, check your own comments. And as stated; even if you would follow the Leninist reinterpretation there’s no point in me addressing it, since you then ignore the facts of Russia’s exploitative economy and the fact it is a capitalist state like any other with concentration of wealth not much different from USA. In fact oddly enough most “western” capitalist countries seem to have a more egalitarian wealth division than Russia.
Obviously not everyone, but the masses, yes - I’m not questioning that.
Yeah, I could kinda agree with that. Also it didn’t work out, obviously. But let’s make it funnier and fit Afghanistan into your lovely fairly-tale. That was clearly in favour of the local population? Or just to secure the crucial supply of poppy seed to the population of RSFSR as it became aware of the fact that the central planning brought the economy of a system spanning two continents and a European bread basket to a point where it could not feed it’s own population reliably?
See, the thing is; I’m very much not a fan of market economy, I see some positives of the communist regime in my country. But I also see it’s murderous failures and what seems to differentiate our positions is that I can remember the fall of Soviet Union and seen it in Moscow itself before the fall of the RSFSR and in my country before that. What you read about in glorifying brochures I’ve seen. It was a failure, and that any honest person who lived though it will tell you. It collapsed from day to day, and suddenly there’s no food. It was not a resilient system, it was not an effective system, the waste was astronomical and the lack of rationality made entire nations starve. It collapsed the economy and alienated the people beyond the conditions that brought it to be. In it’s ruined social hellscape it gave birth to a new kleptocratic oligarchic state that you for some deeply absurd reason seem to support, even tho there is clearly no interest with marxism-leninism on it’s part.
The only rational explanation for your support of this war would be if you’re a Russian nationalist. This I could understand. Detest, but consider it rational in it’s crooked way.
Half of your points is claiming things are the way you imagine them, because you do. I’m not going after every fallacy you believe in (like the tiny thing of ownership in Chinese economy). I’m just hoping you’ll actually question some of the stuff you try to push on to others that’s ostensibly false or misguided.
-Selling commodities is not imperialism. I said export of capital. Commodities can function as capital, but in selling them through export these are not exported as capital.
-The IMF wanted Ukraine to destroy its safety nets for loans, Ukraine’s ousted president went with the Russian loan that didn’t. It’s as simple as that.
-Russia is achieving its goals with respect to the SMO. Crimea was in Ukraine, but voted to join Russia.
-Ukraine has been at war with the Donbass region for a decade. This is fact.
-I’ve never said Russia was socialist, or a model to emulate. I’m aware of the wealth disparity.
-The USSR had stable food supply. It was a remarkably effective system, and capitalism has been devastating for it.
-I don’t support imperialism. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, and my opinions are in line with that.
All in all, none of your points are worth responding to in any greater depth than that. They’re all coated in doublespeak and anecdote.
The only definition of imperialism you accept contradicts every common dictionary definition and servers the one country where it was mostly developed. Ok, no point in discussing that further. Just one final question then.
Let’s theoretically accept “SMO” is to defend against NATO and only about the 4 oblasts and you claim “land bridge”. According to recent demands they are Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, yes? So; why? Land bridge to what?
It’s 630 km from Moscow to Luhansk, 730 to Donetsk, 860 to Zaporizhzhia, 980 to Kherson.
It’s 500 km from Chernichiv oblast, 450 km from Sumy oblast to downtown Moscow. About half an hour of flight for a subsonic Tomahawk, few minutes for a hypersonic rocket. Russia occupied that area but retreated, mostly even before Ukrainian counter attacks. If you have a look at a map access to Russia proper is broadly open from the “pro-NATO regime” terrain. Moscow is also closer then the 4 oblasts from Latvia, and marginally more distant from Estonia and Finland, so 3 NATO states together some 8% of Russias border? There’s 8 Ukrainian oblasts Russia is not making any claims against closer to Moscow then Zaporizhzhia.
Why are only resource rich regions of east on southern Ukraine occupied and not the ones closest to key industrial and administrative region of Russia? And if you’re about to claim that there’s anything so important in the south - Turkey, the second biggest NATO army is 200km from Russian border to the south or less then the Moscow-Donbas distance if they wanted to hit most of Russian south over the sea. Is there some “materialist” reading of the map I’m not understanding?
No, the definition of imperialism as a system of international extraction is consistent and is the most widely used. The west is not the world.
Secondly, it’s not about absolute proximity, but the terrain and capability of moving troops and materiel through. You keep relying on metrics that don’t actually matter nearly as much, you did it earlier too when you thought socialism was a ratio thing.
Im not from the west, you yourself confirmed russia is engaged in extraction and is a capitalist country, and ML definition is not used outside of specialised discourse. You’re just going “well akshuly…”
Did you even look at a topo map before spewing this nonsense?
Doing a few hundred km detour to bypass the mighty peaks of 400 m over sea level while requireing many more river passages is something you think any one would consider? Why?
Historically every key invasion from the west (Polish, French, German) rolled pretty much straight on to Moscow. The only notable exception being the Crimean one, coming from the south and closer to the route you seem to be picturing. Unless NATO is quietly assembling a cavalry force in place of it’s 5th generation fighter and global reach drone force this might not be a serious concern for anyone since 15th century.
What?