I don’t think capitalism is as tied directly to imperialism as you’re saying here. The USSR was plenty imperial, and they were (nominally at least) Communist. There are also plenty of capitalist countries in the world that don’t have empires.
I think imperialism is mainly a function of power, and how the human beings who tend to gravitate to power and wield it, tend to operate. That can happen with or without capitalism or a US-style governmental system. I actually think, for all the terrible evils of US capitalism, that the US governmental system does a better than average job of reining it in. I think if it were any other country on earth that had the type of money and military power the US does right now, they’d be doing much much worse things than the (already pretty bad) things the US government and corporate system is doing with them.
Again, that’s not to say I disagree with you on reining in capitalism or American empire. On that part we’re fully on the same page, believe it or not. But I think the best way to do that is actually to preserve the US electoral and governmental system and overall position in the world (maybe with some major reforms e.g. on lobbying, media ownership, and the electoral system). I think simply tearing down the American empire is probably going to be a gateway to something much, much worse, because the whole problem all along wasn’t an “America problem,” it was just a general money and power problem that’s worldwide (or universal, as a function of how people and systems of power operate).
I actually think that if your primary goal is undoing American empire, you should be advocating for Trump, because him fucking things up to the point that the US loses its imperial position is a way more realistic way that might happen than anything that’s realistic as an “on purpose” outcome within American politics (electoral or otherwise).
But I also think that the new reality (both inside and outside the US) if that happened would be much, much worse than Biden or Hillary Clinton or Bush 2 or any of these already very bad outcomes we’ve been seeing so far.
Again, just my take on it, based on what you said.
The USSR was expansionist, but not Imperialist, as I have explained. Expansionism isn’t necessarily a good thing, but what I am referring to is the Imperialism as an end state of Capitalism. Again, this isn’t to say that Expansionism is good, but is a separate concept from what I am referring to as Imperialism, if that makes sense.
Imperialism as I described it is important not just because it is the right thing to do, but because as I demonstrated previously, it is the number one obstacle in enacting Leftist change.
Yes, there are plenty of Capitalist countries that have not yet developed to late stage Capitalism, ie Imperialism. Imperialism is a necessary consequence of highly developed Capitalism.
For your point on the US, it doesn’t need to be expansionist, after all. It’s not that the government does a good job of reigning expansionism in, it’s that the government does a fantastic job of facilitating the type of Imperialism I am describing, and expansionism is largely unnecessary for the US.
As for Trump, what you described is an Accelerationist take, which is fringe among Leftists. I personally am not an Accelerationist, as I believe sabotaging worker movements for the sake of building a larger worker movement off of “punishment” risks far more than necessary. While Trump would indeed weaken the Empire, and would likely result in a more unified left against Trump, the danger to leftists this directly would present is highly risky.
I guess I just don’t see a huge difference in level-of-evil between imperialism and expansionism. I get that they’re not the same thing but I think most of what I said could be applied to one or the other or to both and the point remains pretty much the same.
The difference is clear if you look at cause and effect, rather than the immediate moral consequences.
Imperialism is caused by declining Capitalism, exploits the less fortunate in the global south, creates the path for rising fascism, and prevents the move towards Socialism.
Imperialism is the method by which the US prevents or slows the third world from developing, and deradicalizes the workers of the US against overthrowing the Capitalist order. At the same time, it increases nationalism, which opens the gate for Fascism.
Trump is not a rare example of an exceptionally fascist person, rather, the material conditions within the US have pointed to allowing a fascist candidate to take power.
Are you familiar with Dialectical and Historical Materialist analysis?
The difference is clear if you look at cause and effect, rather than the immediate moral consequences.
Why wouldn’t the immediate moral consequences be the main thing to look at? Like I say, I see the difference. I don’t see that one or the other is, like, harmless, or not a bad thing.
Trump is not a rare example of an exceptionally fascist person, rather, the material conditions within the US have pointed to allowing a fascist candidate to take power.
Absolutely agree. We need to reform the explicitly normal-person-hostile policies that in ways that are honestly too numerous to even list out have created the space where Trump can flourish.
Are you familiar with Dialectical and Historical Materialist analysis?
Why wouldn’t the immediate moral consequences be the main thing to look at?
That’s a fantastic question. I am not being sarcastic at all, it’s legitimately the main question among leftists. This naturally leads to Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
Note: this is a vast simplification.
Materialism is the belief and natural conclusions that come from the idea that matter and environmental conditions are what create thought. Ie, a painter knows blue because they percieve the sky and thus can envision beyond that. People are more products of their environment than anything else.
Dialectical Materialism is a logical method that looks at matter as a trajectory. Everything is not what it was, the river of yesterday is not the river of today. Everything is changing and nothing is static. Within everything is the element of that which it can change to, ie an apple contains within itself the fuel for it to rot.
Historical Materialism is the combination of those ideas with the central idea that just as the environment shapes human thought, so too in turn do humans reshape their environment, which in turn reshapes human thought again! This is the driving force of change in history.
Circling back to Imperialism, we must analyze the following:
Why does Imperialism exist, and did it always exist in the manner it does?
What are the consequences of Imperialism?
What are the consequences of the consequences of Imperialism?
To answer:
Imperialism exists because of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall. This tendency exists as a fundamental for Capitalism. As competition persists, Capitalists seek to gain profit by lowering costs via automation, but as competitors also automate, prices lower. This race to the bottom is held back by worker wages, which must be at subsistence + replacement to persist. After enough time and monopolization, you cannot explpit further, so you must seek new methods to exploit, so Capitalists export Capital and import profits from third world countries, thus super-exploiting for super-profits.
The consequences of this are that Third World Countries experience a drain in value, entire countries function as Capitalists and entire countries function as Workers. It’s a sort of nation-scale Worker-Owner exploitation, if that makes sense. Thus, the Material Conditions within the Third World climb slowly while a sort of Labor Aristocracy appears in the first world, where workers have inflated lifestyles on the backs of third world workers.
The consequences of the consequences of Imperialism is that this form of international Capitalism creates wretched exploitation of third world workers and prevents workers in the third world from rising against their own exploitation. This opens the door for fascism and prevents the door to progress to Socialism from opening. This works against progress. However, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall still exists, and thus exploitation of the third world rises, and revolutions occur against said imperialism. That’s why the US swoops in and stomps this out.
That was a long explanation, and not nearly thorough enough, but should help. Essentially, we must analyze the trajectory of systems and the cause and effect of systems. Expansionism can happen for many reasons, but is often tied to Imperialism, which itself is the natural development of Capitalism to its most brutal and unequal stage.
Dialectical Materialism is a logical method that looks at matter as a trajectory. Everything is not what it was, the river of yesterday is not the river of today. Everything is changing and nothing is static. Within everything is the element of that which it can change to, ie an apple contains within itself the fuel for it to rot.
Building on this cause I like the philosophy, and we’re like fifty comments deep so probably nobody will attack me for it. But this is sort of like. The dialectic, here, is the idea that within everything, is the thing which causes it’s own undoing, or, it’s own opposite. Everything exists in a kind of paradoxical state. If you think about old philosophy, it tries to kind of, conceive of fundamental laws which govern everything, and those laws don’t really deal with change. Like those old timey greek philosophies that are like, water composes everything, because water, water can freeze, become solid, water can become liquid, steam, you look upwards into the sky and you see a kind of vast ocean of blue, all life requires water, etc. So it sees water as like this most fundamental of all elements, this kind of, ultimate truth. You get similar stuff with like, the four elements, right, water, earth, air, fire, states of matter. Naturalist philosophy, these philosophies concerned with fundamental truths. Folk philosophy.
The dialectic is concerned with change. You have the thesis, right, the idea, the truth, that the sky is blue, right. But then within that is the antithesis, the sky is black, right, and I hear you say well no that’s impossible. But then we have the nighttime, the change imposed by time, imposed by the context, sort of. the sky turns from blue to black because of nighttime, and back again in the day. The sky turns red in the evening, the sky turns purple, turns pink, turns green maybe even, and then through that process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or, sky blue, sky black, sky black and blue, we arrive at truth more generally. We integrate these new realities with our previous realities, we integrate these contradictions, and we arrive at truth. It’s sort of like a basis for the scientific process. You postulate a truth, you go out and attempt to contradict yourself, then you come back in, and change the truth you postulated to fit what it is that you’ve found out in the world. Hopefully, maybe you just do p-value hacking or whatever, I dunno.
And then at some point the postmodernists come along and fuck everything up for everybody with schizo language games, but nobody has any time for that and I don’t really understand it even though I probably do, because it’s fucked up eldritch shit, so, I won’t get into it unless I’m maybe pressed a little bit. And then there’s like wittgenstein rolling in on a holy chariot, and then dying after he gets thrown off when a rock hits the wheel or something, I dunno.
So what I’m getting at, is not like disagreeing with any of that. I’m just saying that, for example, it’s relevant that the USSR starved millions of people in the territories it expanded into when their agricultural policies failed. So if we’re going to say “We have to fight capitalism!” (which, yes, we do, or at least limit its bad effects) by saying “We need to install communism!”, it’s a relevant question to ask, okay what are the details, how do you plan to prevent that even-worse-than-capitalism outcome from happening again (which, I’m not saying that’s every communist system, just that it’s a relevant example to bring up as why “this isn’t capitalism” isn’t a sufficient or safe reason to switch to any particular other-than-capitalism system as the new answer).
The people in the USSR largely starved during the transition from feudalism to Socialism. It’s worth noting that famine was common and regular before Socialism, and ended after collectivization was completed. Obviously, collectivization was largely botched, however we must also recognize the results. We can learn from their mistakes to prevent such tragedies from repeating.
I say this, because the USSR skipped past Capitalism to Socialism. It wasn’t a “worse than Capitalism” situation, they eliminated the mass starvations that were taken as normal under Feudalism, especially as they were undeveloped.
The US is completely unique in comparison to revolutionary Russia. The modern US produces a mass excess of food, and people still starve. You would have to explain why you think collectivization would lead to starvation in the US, no?
Largely, Marxism has 3 major components.
English Economic theory - Marx built the Law of Value off Ricardo and Smith. His analysis of Capitalism explains how Capitalism is exploitative and cannot last forever.
French Socialism - Marx built his visions of Socialism off of French labor movements towards collective ownership, a what to replace Capitalism with.
German philosophy - Marx distilled Dialectical Materialism from Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism, and looked at History through that vision. This is the why of Communism.
Not completely, no. The more fundamental question I am trying to ask is this: It sounds like you’re saying Biden is bad because we need to convert to communism and he’s capitalist and so you can’t support him regardless. Right? Or no?
And so I’m saying, if you’re saying capitalism is so bad we need to replace it, then what are you wanting to replace it with, that any leader who doesn’t want to replace it with is unworthy of any support? I realize that’s a very very broad question which may not even have a single specific-at-the-outset answer, but I tried to narrow it down by asking, like what country would be the model? Or would we be doing something that was never done before?
It sounds like maybe the answer was the second one, right? Or no? I’m just trying to understand what it is that you’re saying, in concrete terms, at this point. Like would we still have congress, or the electoral college? Would we be able to own private property? Would the economy be centrally managed by the government as in USSR and China? That kind of thing.
This is just my uneducated viewpoint on it:
I don’t think capitalism is as tied directly to imperialism as you’re saying here. The USSR was plenty imperial, and they were (nominally at least) Communist. There are also plenty of capitalist countries in the world that don’t have empires.
I think imperialism is mainly a function of power, and how the human beings who tend to gravitate to power and wield it, tend to operate. That can happen with or without capitalism or a US-style governmental system. I actually think, for all the terrible evils of US capitalism, that the US governmental system does a better than average job of reining it in. I think if it were any other country on earth that had the type of money and military power the US does right now, they’d be doing much much worse things than the (already pretty bad) things the US government and corporate system is doing with them.
Again, that’s not to say I disagree with you on reining in capitalism or American empire. On that part we’re fully on the same page, believe it or not. But I think the best way to do that is actually to preserve the US electoral and governmental system and overall position in the world (maybe with some major reforms e.g. on lobbying, media ownership, and the electoral system). I think simply tearing down the American empire is probably going to be a gateway to something much, much worse, because the whole problem all along wasn’t an “America problem,” it was just a general money and power problem that’s worldwide (or universal, as a function of how people and systems of power operate).
I actually think that if your primary goal is undoing American empire, you should be advocating for Trump, because him fucking things up to the point that the US loses its imperial position is a way more realistic way that might happen than anything that’s realistic as an “on purpose” outcome within American politics (electoral or otherwise).
But I also think that the new reality (both inside and outside the US) if that happened would be much, much worse than Biden or Hillary Clinton or Bush 2 or any of these already very bad outcomes we’ve been seeing so far.
Again, just my take on it, based on what you said.
The USSR was expansionist, but not Imperialist, as I have explained. Expansionism isn’t necessarily a good thing, but what I am referring to is the Imperialism as an end state of Capitalism. Again, this isn’t to say that Expansionism is good, but is a separate concept from what I am referring to as Imperialism, if that makes sense.
Imperialism as I described it is important not just because it is the right thing to do, but because as I demonstrated previously, it is the number one obstacle in enacting Leftist change.
Yes, there are plenty of Capitalist countries that have not yet developed to late stage Capitalism, ie Imperialism. Imperialism is a necessary consequence of highly developed Capitalism.
For your point on the US, it doesn’t need to be expansionist, after all. It’s not that the government does a good job of reigning expansionism in, it’s that the government does a fantastic job of facilitating the type of Imperialism I am describing, and expansionism is largely unnecessary for the US.
As for Trump, what you described is an Accelerationist take, which is fringe among Leftists. I personally am not an Accelerationist, as I believe sabotaging worker movements for the sake of building a larger worker movement off of “punishment” risks far more than necessary. While Trump would indeed weaken the Empire, and would likely result in a more unified left against Trump, the danger to leftists this directly would present is highly risky.
I guess I just don’t see a huge difference in level-of-evil between imperialism and expansionism. I get that they’re not the same thing but I think most of what I said could be applied to one or the other or to both and the point remains pretty much the same.
The difference is clear if you look at cause and effect, rather than the immediate moral consequences.
Imperialism is caused by declining Capitalism, exploits the less fortunate in the global south, creates the path for rising fascism, and prevents the move towards Socialism.
Imperialism is the method by which the US prevents or slows the third world from developing, and deradicalizes the workers of the US against overthrowing the Capitalist order. At the same time, it increases nationalism, which opens the gate for Fascism.
Trump is not a rare example of an exceptionally fascist person, rather, the material conditions within the US have pointed to allowing a fascist candidate to take power.
Are you familiar with Dialectical and Historical Materialist analysis?
Why wouldn’t the immediate moral consequences be the main thing to look at? Like I say, I see the difference. I don’t see that one or the other is, like, harmless, or not a bad thing.
Absolutely agree. We need to reform the explicitly normal-person-hostile policies that in ways that are honestly too numerous to even list out have created the space where Trump can flourish.
Not even slightly.
That’s a fantastic question. I am not being sarcastic at all, it’s legitimately the main question among leftists. This naturally leads to Dialectical and Historical Materialism.
Note: this is a vast simplification.
Materialism is the belief and natural conclusions that come from the idea that matter and environmental conditions are what create thought. Ie, a painter knows blue because they percieve the sky and thus can envision beyond that. People are more products of their environment than anything else.
Dialectical Materialism is a logical method that looks at matter as a trajectory. Everything is not what it was, the river of yesterday is not the river of today. Everything is changing and nothing is static. Within everything is the element of that which it can change to, ie an apple contains within itself the fuel for it to rot.
Historical Materialism is the combination of those ideas with the central idea that just as the environment shapes human thought, so too in turn do humans reshape their environment, which in turn reshapes human thought again! This is the driving force of change in history.
Circling back to Imperialism, we must analyze the following:
Why does Imperialism exist, and did it always exist in the manner it does?
What are the consequences of Imperialism?
What are the consequences of the consequences of Imperialism?
To answer:
Imperialism exists because of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall. This tendency exists as a fundamental for Capitalism. As competition persists, Capitalists seek to gain profit by lowering costs via automation, but as competitors also automate, prices lower. This race to the bottom is held back by worker wages, which must be at subsistence + replacement to persist. After enough time and monopolization, you cannot explpit further, so you must seek new methods to exploit, so Capitalists export Capital and import profits from third world countries, thus super-exploiting for super-profits.
The consequences of this are that Third World Countries experience a drain in value, entire countries function as Capitalists and entire countries function as Workers. It’s a sort of nation-scale Worker-Owner exploitation, if that makes sense. Thus, the Material Conditions within the Third World climb slowly while a sort of Labor Aristocracy appears in the first world, where workers have inflated lifestyles on the backs of third world workers.
The consequences of the consequences of Imperialism is that this form of international Capitalism creates wretched exploitation of third world workers and prevents workers in the third world from rising against their own exploitation. This opens the door for fascism and prevents the door to progress to Socialism from opening. This works against progress. However, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall still exists, and thus exploitation of the third world rises, and revolutions occur against said imperialism. That’s why the US swoops in and stomps this out.
That was a long explanation, and not nearly thorough enough, but should help. Essentially, we must analyze the trajectory of systems and the cause and effect of systems. Expansionism can happen for many reasons, but is often tied to Imperialism, which itself is the natural development of Capitalism to its most brutal and unequal stage.
Building on this cause I like the philosophy, and we’re like fifty comments deep so probably nobody will attack me for it. But this is sort of like. The dialectic, here, is the idea that within everything, is the thing which causes it’s own undoing, or, it’s own opposite. Everything exists in a kind of paradoxical state. If you think about old philosophy, it tries to kind of, conceive of fundamental laws which govern everything, and those laws don’t really deal with change. Like those old timey greek philosophies that are like, water composes everything, because water, water can freeze, become solid, water can become liquid, steam, you look upwards into the sky and you see a kind of vast ocean of blue, all life requires water, etc. So it sees water as like this most fundamental of all elements, this kind of, ultimate truth. You get similar stuff with like, the four elements, right, water, earth, air, fire, states of matter. Naturalist philosophy, these philosophies concerned with fundamental truths. Folk philosophy.
The dialectic is concerned with change. You have the thesis, right, the idea, the truth, that the sky is blue, right. But then within that is the antithesis, the sky is black, right, and I hear you say well no that’s impossible. But then we have the nighttime, the change imposed by time, imposed by the context, sort of. the sky turns from blue to black because of nighttime, and back again in the day. The sky turns red in the evening, the sky turns purple, turns pink, turns green maybe even, and then through that process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or, sky blue, sky black, sky black and blue, we arrive at truth more generally. We integrate these new realities with our previous realities, we integrate these contradictions, and we arrive at truth. It’s sort of like a basis for the scientific process. You postulate a truth, you go out and attempt to contradict yourself, then you come back in, and change the truth you postulated to fit what it is that you’ve found out in the world. Hopefully, maybe you just do p-value hacking or whatever, I dunno.
And then at some point the postmodernists come along and fuck everything up for everybody with schizo language games, but nobody has any time for that and I don’t really understand it even though I probably do, because it’s fucked up eldritch shit, so, I won’t get into it unless I’m maybe pressed a little bit. And then there’s like wittgenstein rolling in on a holy chariot, and then dying after he gets thrown off when a rock hits the wheel or something, I dunno.
Yeah, all makes sense.
So what I’m getting at, is not like disagreeing with any of that. I’m just saying that, for example, it’s relevant that the USSR starved millions of people in the territories it expanded into when their agricultural policies failed. So if we’re going to say “We have to fight capitalism!” (which, yes, we do, or at least limit its bad effects) by saying “We need to install communism!”, it’s a relevant question to ask, okay what are the details, how do you plan to prevent that even-worse-than-capitalism outcome from happening again (which, I’m not saying that’s every communist system, just that it’s a relevant example to bring up as why “this isn’t capitalism” isn’t a sufficient or safe reason to switch to any particular other-than-capitalism system as the new answer).
Surely that makes sense? Or no?
The people in the USSR largely starved during the transition from feudalism to Socialism. It’s worth noting that famine was common and regular before Socialism, and ended after collectivization was completed. Obviously, collectivization was largely botched, however we must also recognize the results. We can learn from their mistakes to prevent such tragedies from repeating.
I say this, because the USSR skipped past Capitalism to Socialism. It wasn’t a “worse than Capitalism” situation, they eliminated the mass starvations that were taken as normal under Feudalism, especially as they were undeveloped.
The US is completely unique in comparison to revolutionary Russia. The modern US produces a mass excess of food, and people still starve. You would have to explain why you think collectivization would lead to starvation in the US, no?
Largely, Marxism has 3 major components.
English Economic theory - Marx built the Law of Value off Ricardo and Smith. His analysis of Capitalism explains how Capitalism is exploitative and cannot last forever.
French Socialism - Marx built his visions of Socialism off of French labor movements towards collective ownership, a what to replace Capitalism with.
German philosophy - Marx distilled Dialectical Materialism from Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism, and looked at History through that vision. This is the why of Communism.
All 3 elements are inseperable and united.
Does that answer your question?
Not completely, no. The more fundamental question I am trying to ask is this: It sounds like you’re saying Biden is bad because we need to convert to communism and he’s capitalist and so you can’t support him regardless. Right? Or no?
And so I’m saying, if you’re saying capitalism is so bad we need to replace it, then what are you wanting to replace it with, that any leader who doesn’t want to replace it with is unworthy of any support? I realize that’s a very very broad question which may not even have a single specific-at-the-outset answer, but I tried to narrow it down by asking, like what country would be the model? Or would we be doing something that was never done before?
It sounds like maybe the answer was the second one, right? Or no? I’m just trying to understand what it is that you’re saying, in concrete terms, at this point. Like would we still have congress, or the electoral college? Would we be able to own private property? Would the economy be centrally managed by the government as in USSR and China? That kind of thing.