yogthos

yogthos, 8 months ago

Nah, the problems are due to capitalist economic relations and systemic pressures these relations create in society.

yogthos, 8 months ago

People of Gaza are so lucky that it’s the lesser of the two evils facilitating their genocide.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Trump would’ve done the exact same thing. You’re not minimizing any damage your regime is facilitating a literal genocide. The fact that you’re keep trying to minimize this fact because it’s your fascist in office shows how utterly morally bankrupt you are.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Biden has continued all the same policies and has also dragged the world into a proxy war against Russia while continuing to escalate tensions with China. Biden is a lunatic whose actions continue to bring the world closer to a world war.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Even Ukrainians are now saying that it was the west that stopped negotiations last March aaronmate.net/…/ukraines-top-negotiator-confirms

Meanwhile, Stoltenberg finally admitted that the reason the war started was because of NATO expansion www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm#:~…

Meanwhile, people who put this all together are the ones running the empire, and as long as Americans keep voting for the lesser evil nothing’s going to change.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Stopping NATO expansion would be an absurd demand if Russia did not have the power to stop do so by force which is what it’s now doing. Russia gave NATO a choice of either stopping expansion to its borders, or resolving the situation by force. NATO chose to resolve the situation by force. The whole narrative that Putin started the war and nobody else is beyond infantile because it just ignores all the history and geopolitical context pretending as if this was some random event that happened out of the blue and for no logical reason.

NATO has maintained a policy of might makes right since the fall of USSR, it has invaded and razed numerous countries over the past few decades, and now it’s run into a country that will no longer tolerate an aggressive military alliance on its borders.

yogthos, 8 months ago

The whole point of a proxy war is that you use somebody else to do the fighting for you. Meanwhile, Ukraine lost its sovereignty back in 2014 when a democratically elected government was overthrown in a western backed coup. Painting this as Ukraine freely choosing to associate with NATO is the height of intellectual dishonesty.

Meanwhile, bleating about justifications is just a distraction from the reality of why the war happened. Pretty hilarious of you to run around calling others deluded while spewing utter nonsense. One thing that’s abundantly clear here is that you don’t care one bit about the actual facts. You’re an ideologue regurgitating propaganda you’ve memorized.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Nordic countries have enjoyed a high standard of living built on the brutal colonial exploitation of the global majority.

yogthos, 8 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The whole western economy runs on cheap labour and resource extraction from the colonized countries. Nordic countries have very little industry and are certainly nowhere close to being self sufficient in any sense.

Scandinavian social democracy only seems to work because of the imperialism they practice on third world countries and the benefits they reaped from European colonialism. It’s just a slightly better distribution of the imperialist plunder from 3rd world nations. They never would have been rich if they didn’t exploit workers and resources in developing nations along with forcing terribly unfair trading terms upon them. Socialism actually seeks to liberate the world from all forms of oppression whereas Scandinavian social democracy merely ships it off to 3rd world countries (which houses 85% of the world’s population). Success of social democracy is not possible without inflicting inhumane suffering and oppression upon people in the global south:

telesurenglish.net/…/Scandinavias-Covert-Role-in-…

scroll.in/…/hitchhiking-imperialism-the-case-of-s…

theguardian.com/…/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countri…

aljazeera.com/…/the-dark-side-of-the-nordic-model

yogthos, 8 months ago

meanwhile in the real world

• telesurenglish.net/…/Scandinavias-Covert-Role-in-…
• scroll.in/…/hitchhiking-imperialism-the-case-of-s…
• theguardian.com/…/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countri…
• aljazeera.com/…/the-dark-side-of-the-nordic-model

yogthos, 8 months ago

explained in more detail here lemmy.ml/comment/6591447

yogthos, 8 months ago

The Nordic model is often thrown out as an alternative to Marxism. The argument is that Nordic countries managed to create a capitalist society without exploitation.

yogthos, 8 months ago

A great deal of western economy runs on exploitation of Latin America and Africa where western companies commit crimes against humanity on the daily basis.

To say the US democratic model or the Middle Eastern monarchy model are predicated on imperialism would be far more accurate.

Scandinavians are part of the US empire, and Scandinavian companies are directly involved in exploitation happening in developing countries. US does provide the military might to back this exploitation to be sure, but the resource and labour extraction is done by all western countries.

The benefit of the Scandinavian model is in how it delivers professional health care and education labor. That’s the primary appeal of the system and it has nothing to do with cheap foreign imports.

Except that it does since Scandinavia is not a closed economy. This the whole point here, much of the labor needed to make Scandinavia run happens in the countries the empire subjugates. You have to look at this in a holistic fashion accounting for all the labor needed to make these economies operate as opposed to just the labor that happens domestically.

Success of social democracy is not predicated on the success of a consumerist market economy. Cuba is an excellent counterexample. It implements a raft of policies that are comparable to Scandinavian social services and reaps enormous economic benefits despite being entirely cut off from imperialist trade and cheap labor.

Sure, the positive aspects of Scandinavian economies aren’t exclusive to Scandinavia, and Cuba is indeed a far more principled example of socialist policies in action.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Undeniably. But the benefit of this exploitation accrues first and foremost to the ownership class.

Of course, but the conditions of the working class are also improved by imperialism and that’s the reason there is sufficient support for ruling class policies from the working majority in the imperial core.

They’re not importing a bunch of Global South doctors and teachers to get the cost of their socialized programs down.

My point was that many of the stable goods consumed by the people in Scandinavia are either partially or entirely sourced in colonized countries. This eliminates a lot of the hard labor jobs in Scandinavia that would otherwise be necessary.

I’m not arguing that the proletariat are the primary beneficiaries of colonialism, I’m just pointing out that people in western countries enjoy a higher standard of living because of it. And this is a necessary part of the social contract that keeps capitalists in power.

Cuba isn’t “principled”, its “embargoed”. Cubans would be more than happy to get the Scandinavian tier of treats if they were on offer.

Cuba would not exploit other countries if it wasn’t embargoed because exploitation isn’t inherent in Cuban economic system as it is under capitalism.

yogthos, 8 months ago

The problem is that exploitation is largely just exported to the countries that the west subjugate. Plenty of exploitation in places like Africa and Latin America is currently happening in order to produce cheap goods people in Europe consume. This is the kind of stuff that props things up theguardian.com/…/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face…

yogthos, 8 months ago

I think that’s highly debatable. If nothing else, imperialism undermines domestic labor power, as domestic workers are devalued at the industrial level and shuttled off into police/military industries where they are more easily controlled from the top.

Of course, undermining labor power is the point, but in the short term overall standard of living is raised. Eventually, the empire ends up hollowing out its core because the cost of maintaining the colonies starts to outpace the plunder. This is the point we’re reaching now with standard of living starting to crumble in the west. However, people in the west enjoyed a far higher standard of living than people in the countries the west has been subjugating for many decades on end. This fact can’t be understated.

These consumer goods exist within the private market. Imports undermine domestic labor and retail work is almost entirely privatized. There is no notable distinction between a Swedish democratic socialist shopping at ICA and a British constitutional monarchist shopping at Tesco. They both receive the same capitalist-driven benefits. Neither system is predicated on imperially supplied imports.

If you look at the supply chains for practically any goods, such as cell phones, you’ll see that most of the resources needed to produce these goods are extracted in places like Africa using slave labor. Western countries don’t even have this wealth of natural resources to lean on. They are robbing the rest of the world of these resources while subjugating the people of the colonized countries. The life of a Swedish democratic socialist or a British constitutional monarchist would be wildly different without the plunder the empire is doing.

The benefits of imperialism - particularly in the wake of the 21st century - do not appear to accrue to lay residents of these nations.

The empire is indeed starting to hollow itself out today, but we can’t ignore the history of how we got here. There are stages of development of the empire, and in the early stages most people living in imperial core did enjoy the benefits. As we get into later stages of the empire, the benefits are starting to fizzle for the majority.

If you showed up in Havana with a cargo ship full of H&M clothing and electronics produced in a Samsung sweatshop and cosmetics tested on adorable animals and gold jewelry mined out of a West African slave pit, plenty of Cubans would receive them happily. This is commodity fetishism in action. Nobody understands the blood and toil that made these surplus goods appear and relatively few people are able to reconcile the information with how they live their lives.

I’m not talking about individualistic liberal perspective here. I’m talking about how Cuba behaves as a nation and we can also look at how USSR behaved. USSR did not subjugate other nations the way the west does, and when it collapsed the standard of living in places like Cuba, Vietnam, and Korea also collapsed because they had a mutually beneficial relationship with USSR. When US empire collapses, the standard of living in the subjugated countries will rise. That’s the difference.

The Americans were wrong in the 1960s and again in the late 90s when they predicted the embargo would topple the Castro government. You’re wrong now. Democratic Socialism has nothing to do with Imperialist looting and plundering.

Democratic Socialism is just a the sheep’s clothing of imperialism.

yogthos, 8 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

Yet, what you said earlier struck me as incredibly “buzzwordy” so to say. You hinted at the choice being Marxism (we’ll come back to that one) and capitalism with the “Nordic Model” (reductive US-centric naming schemes at work) being sold as a (for you not satisfactory I assume) middle ground.

What I actually said was that the Nordic model is used as an example of a viable alternative to Marxism. Nowhere did I say Marxism was the only possible option, simply that capitalism with the Nordic model is not a viable alternative.

You seem to reject this middle ground because (and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m reading between the lines here) it will not solve the huge discrepancy in wealth between our richest and our poorest countries in earth.

I’m not really sure what you mean by middle ground here. Either the working class owns the means of production, or you have a capital owning class in charge.

So far, so good. Now: when you talk about “Marxism”, what do you mean by that exactly?

What I mean by that is workers owning the means of production such as factories, schools, farms, and so on. I mean a society where labour is done for collective benefit, and the decisions of what work is done and to what purpose are done democratically.

Isn’t any call for such a thing another manifestation of the same air of superiority we 1sr worlders tend to fall victim to?

Not at all, a call for workers to overthrow the ruling class and be in charge of their own work is in no way a manifestation of 1st world superiority. That’s frankly a bizarre argument to try and make.

Even if we in the west decided that Marxism (again, whatever that means) is the Bee’s Knees right now, isn’t it just the same kind of patronizing if we just assume that the people in poorer countries think the same and expect them to (again) follow our lead into what we tell them is a better future? What if they want capitalism or whatever else?

They wouldn’t be following western lead though would they. They would be following China’s Vietnam’s, Laos’s and Cuba’s lead. These are the existing Marxist states today. The west is not leading anybody here. Furthermore, the original argument here was against western colonialism and subjugation of countries. Countries having sovereignty and the right to self determination is a prerequisite for any sort of liberation.

Now regarding the “Nordic Model” or all other forms of social economy: I think it’s safe to assume that the US and Europe have a comparable amount of “oppression per person” regarding foreign industry, yet the amount of exploitation of domestic workers will vary greatly.

There is no great mystery here. US is simply further along the path to late stage capitalism than Europe is. However, direction of travel is very much the same. Sweden is a great case study for this jacobin.com/…/sweden-1970s-democratic-socialism-o…

So, if there was a way to ease this up while the rest of the world is not up for revolution stuff, why wouldn’t it be worthwhile to take that route?

Where do I argue that if such a route was actually available that it should not be taken? It’s a bit of an fallacious argument to claim that Marxists want to a violent revolution.

The very concept of “revolutionary violence” is a false framing of the situation, since most of the violence comes from those who attempt to prevent reform as opposed to those struggling for reform. Focusing on the violent rebellions of the downtrodden overlooks the much greater repressive force and violence utilized by the ruling oligarchs to maintain the status quo, such as attacks against peaceful demonstrations, mass arrests, torture, destruction of opposition organizations, suppression of dissident publications, death squads, so so on.

Most social revolutions begin peaceably. Why would it be otherwise? Who would not prefer to assemble and demonstrate rather than engage in mortal combat against pitiless forces that enjoy everyadvantage in mobility and firepower? Revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, and El Salvador all began peacefully, with crowds of peasants and workers launching nonviolent protests only to be met with violent oppression from the authorities. Peaceful protest and reform are exactly what the people are denied by the ruling oligarchs. The dissidents who continue to fight back, who try to defend themselves from the oligarchs’ repressive fury, are then called “violent revolutionaries” and “terrorists”.

yogthos, 8 months ago

But we’re no longer in the short term. Scandinavian social democracy has been ongoing since the 60s.

Right, the standard of living is declining all across the empire, including Scandinavia. The difference is that there were stronger social safety nets erected at the peak, so the decline hasn’t hit as hard as other places, such as US, with more shaky safety nets.

This has been less and less true since the 90s, as the western states become heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports.

Not really, the west has continued to dominate the global south, and has a massive military presence across the globe. Western companies are extracting resources from Africa and other places at record pace today.

Scandinavian social democracy has nothing to do with American / East Asian materials extraction patterns.

Of course it does, all the material good such as appliances, phones, laptops, TVs, and so on are produced using resources and labour done predominantly in the global south.

And the whole reason we’re seeing countries increasingly preferring China to the west is precisely because China offers mutually beneficial relations as opposed to exploitative ones the west imposes.

Cuba’s trade practices are strictly regulated by the American Navy and Coast Guard.

You ignored my point that USSR was not under these restrictions and did not behave in the way you suggest. Given that Cuba being modelled on USSR politically, there is every reason to expect that Cuba would not behave in such a way either even if it was not under a blockade.

At which point they had to reorganize and reestablish new trade ties in order to rebuild their living standards. But this had to do with access to developed industrial capital, not the exploitation of labor through imperial expansion.

Again, the point here was that USSR was able to have positive mutually beneficial relations with their partners as opposed to exploitative ones the west imposes on weaker countries.

Implementing public professional services in the domestic market (or not) has no impact on your foreign policy.

It’s not possible to have any meaningful democracy when the means of production are owned privately. And foreign policy is very obviously influenced by this fact. To give you a concrete example, let’s say you have a factory that’s owned privately by a capitalist. The owner wants to reduce operating costs and increase profits. They have an incentive to move production to a cheaper labour market where they can exploit the workers more than they can at home. This creates a direct incentive for capitalists to colonize other countries and exploit them. On the other hand, let’s say the same factory is cooperatively owned by the workers. They would have no incentive to move the factory to a cheaper labour market because they’d lose their jobs at that point. The incentive for imperialism is directly related to the economic system.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Which were rooted in domestic industry and professional services, not extractionary practices targeting populations abroad.

The reality is that it’s both.

Western state control of the Global South has eroded with the outsourcing of US domestic industry abroad - particularly in the wake of the 1980s, when industry transplanted itself to the South Pacific.

That’s just a false narrative.

But even outside of this fact, the Scandinavian states are nearly non-existent in western foreign policy.

Scandinavian states participate in the plunder just like every other western bloc country. My cat can’t doesn’t get much say in how my house is run either, but it does benefit none the less.

The US actively embargoed Soviet States starting with the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1951.

USSR had an entire bloc around it and plenty of non aligned countries to trade with. US embargoes clearly didn’t prevent USSR from being able to trade and to exploit countries if it chose to. The relations USSR developed with its partners were of a profoundly different kind than the ones western imperial powers have with the countries they subjugate today. The whole discussion here is regarding the exploitative nature of the relationship between the west and the global majority.

Social democracy creates public institutions that control the means of production within their fields. But the public institutions tend to be confined to education, health care, transport and other civil services. They don’t extend out to the industrial wing of the economy.

Social democracy can have a slight short term impact in these domains, the benefits however are never permanent and end up being rolled back in times of regular capitalist crises.

So if you want meaningful democracy, you’re going to be doing some social democracy at some point in your transition.

Social democracy isn’t part of any transition, it’s a mechanism that props up current capitalist relations.

Freaking out at people who organize towards publicly financed colleges and hospitals and calling them evil imperialists will do nothing to advance the cause of public ownership in the industrial sector.

Not sure what that’s referring to even.

yogthos, 8 months ago

That is not the reality, unless you’re going to explain how public education and biotech are extractionary. And if that’s your game, you’re going to have to explain Cuba.

I’ve explained what I mean here repeatedly in this thread. I don’t know how much more clear I can make it. I’m not talking about things Nordic countries are producing. I’m talking about the basic necessities of life Nordic countries import that are produced by effective slave labour using resources extracted from the global south. This is what allows people living in these countries to focus on doing things like biotech.

The US system of empire is failing, from the industrial bedrock of the Chinese cities to the farmlands of Ukraine to the mountains of Bolivia. Maybe Blinken (or the next guy) will turn things around, but we’ve been losing traction since the end of the Bush Era pretty much globally.

Again, nowhere am I arguing with the fact that the empire is entering the stages of collapse.

The Scandinavian state services responsible for education, health care, and transportation had no discernible role in the occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, the bulk fabrication of arms and armor in Ukraine, the string of failed coups in Latin America, or the ongoing occupation of Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines in the Mid-Atlantic. They weren’t even NATO members until very recently.

This has dick-all with the point I’m making. Perhaps I’m not articulating it clearly enough?

These countries piggy back on US imperialism, they’re getting the benefits of imperialism by being members of the system. Scandinavian companies get to plunder the global south along with the rest of the west, Scandinavians enjoy commodities extracted from the global south by the empire.

The benefits are only rolled back when the democracies themselves are curtailed, as the states are bombarded with fascist propaganda via foreign media. A compelling argument for a Scandinavian Firewall, but a piss poor criticism of the democratic institutions themselves.

The case of Sweden shows that the democracies are curtailed by the domestic capitalists jacobin.com/…/sweden-1970s-democratic-socialism-o…

Capital relations are degraded through the imposition of social democratic reforms. And as residents rely on these reforms to sustain themselves, they become intractable. Only by unleashing fascist media, shock doctrine economics, and foreign coercion on a country do you curb the transitionary process. That’s exactly what western political strategy has been for the last 60 years.

And it will continue to be western political strategy as long as the capital owning class remains in power.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Obviously, the vast majority of plunder goes to the capitalist class, but the working class unarguably enjoys better conditions than vast majority of the world which is how the ruling class buys the support of domestic workers for imperialist policies.

yogthos, 8 months ago

That’s fair, people aren’t consciously participating in the exploitation, it’s just not visible to them.

yogthos, 8 months ago

Exactly, every time we have a technological advancement that can be used to exploit people further, that’s inevitably how it ends up being used.