Cowbee [he/they]

So sad 😔

Political Economy, ie Marxism.

USAID gone, money printer in short supply… 😔

This is why revolution and working class organization is necessary.

Also funny when people complain about Leftists critiquing the Dems. Pre-electiom you said to wait, now it’s post election and the same complaints arise.

I’m not making anything up, definition or otherwise. I’m following Lenin’s outlining of Imperialism as explained in Imperalism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. However, given that you aren’t going to read Hudson’s Super-Imperialism that outlines the mechanisms by which Imperialist countries exert sovereignty over Imperialized ones, I’ll offer a brief explanation:

Imperialist countries export Capital to Imperialized countries, with “aid” in the form of loans with specific policy stipulations. These stipulations include mechanisms like only going to projects that are directly profitable, meaning these countries are forced into exporting their raw materials like rare earth or cash crops like coffee.

At the same time, agriculture is left underdeveloped, and there is labor flight from the rural to the urban areas in order to produce enough profitable goods to pay back the loans, forcing these countries to import food, usuallly from countries like the US that subsidize their agriculture to undercut developing countries. All of their output goes into Imperialist pocketd, rather than their own, and they pay the same Imperialists for the food they need and can’t develop.

It’s this unequal exchange that leads to political strife and underdevelopment. It is not the fault of the underdeveloped countries, but the Imperalist countries for holding back development and leveraging their financial and industrial Capital to carve out of the Global South.

The Nordics, as willing Imperialists in this equation, could not exist as they do without being ruthless exploiters of the Global South. They directly perpetuate this process because they need to, like all Imperialist countries they are parasitic.

You’re confusing Imperialism as the modern development in Capitalism with older Colonialism. To put it in another way, the lives of citizens in the Nordics are funded through the hyper-exploitation of the Global South.

Imperialist countries absolutely dictate policy of countries they imperialize. “Aid” and other mechanisms come with stipulations surrounding a reduction in economic sovereignty. The goal of Imperialist countries is to extract, they aren’t just taking what’s being offered, but directly stacking the deck in their favor as much as possible, and doing so with vast millitary and financial leverage. That’s the entire purpose of the IMF and WTO.

Michael Hudson’s Super-Imperialism is a good read, even if I don’t agree with everything in it, it does a good job of laying out some of the mechanics of Imperialism.

Yep, seems like they are writing themselves into pretzels with contradictory stances.

This doesn’t make any sense.

The Nordic Model has Private Property as its principle aspect, ie in control of large firms and key industry. As a consequence, Private Capital has a dominant role in the state, and though labor organization slows this process, there has been a steady winding down of Worker Protections, gradually.

More damningly, though, is the fact that the Nordic Countries are reliant upon the same Imperialist machine of extraction from the Global South as the rest of the West. The Nordics enjoy their cushy lifestyles on the backs of brutal labor in the Global South, almost like an employer-employee relationship at an international level.

I think even deeper than that, they just conflate Capitalism with economics. There’s a good bit to what you’re saying too, though. They see anything outside traditional notions of economics as utopian.

That’s like saying HR sets their own salaries, or Payroll. That’s not really accurate in reality.

The reason you’re running into problems is that you lack a consistent definition of Capitalism, you’re basically using it as a catch-all term for “economics.”

It’s a fundamentally different economic system at the principle aspect. For starters, public ownership does not mean production goes straight into the pockets of gov officials, they are paid salaries. Secondly, publicly owned services are usually not for profit, or even at cost, through taxpayer money or otherwise. Finally, Capitalists are a specific type of Capital owner, small handicraftsman, feudal lords, etc aren’t Capitalists but do own Capital. Even further, gov officials aren’t the owners of publicly owned industry, but indirect administrators. Managers and accountants in businesses aren’t the owners.

You’re conflating production with Capitalism, and ignoring that the principle ownership of China’s economy is public, not private. I don’t think you’ve genuinely engaged with Socialism as a concept, you are over-generalizing Capitalism to periods and forms of production it doesn’t apply to.

It is written.

“Federated” like email is. There are different “instances,” you are on Lemmy.world, I am on Lemmy.ml. We can talk to each other because Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml are federated, ie linked, just like Lemmy.world is linked with many other instances. Unlike Lemmy.ml though, Lemmy.world is defederated from instances like Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml, so while I can see them and interact, you cannot. That’s a good thing for some people, and bad for others, the “free speech absolutists” tend to like Lemm.ee or other general purpose instances federated with as many instances as possible.

Each instance has its own rules, communities, and flavors, so each can provide something unique. Lemmy.world is a generalist instance, like Lemmy.ml.

As for nostialgia for the Socialist system, it’s well-documented. Polling is consistently favorable towards the Socialist system, even if we check different polls. There are a number of reasons for this, from simple nostalgia to the old days to simple fondness for youth, but the most consistent answer is economically.

Contrary to your suggestions of mass starvation, outside of the struggles with collectivization in the 1930s and World War II, where the Nazis took Ukraine (the USSR’s breadbasket) at the start of the war, food was secure. The CIA even documented this internally, favorably comparing the nutrition to US nutrition. This is also supported by a doubling of life expectancy from the Tsarist system, gradually increasing over time.

The biggest reason why Soviet nostalgia exists, is because life was easier for the working class. There was comprehensive and free healthcare, education, and childcare, housing was affordable, economic growth was consistently rapid and positive while wealth inequality was low, and there was a general degree of hope throughout. Scientific achivement was celebrated, including the first man and first woman in space, despite being feudal half a century before. Stephen Gowens has a good article titled Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? that goes over the myriad strengths of the Soviet Economy, as well as where it faltered, and partially why the USSR was eventually dissolved.

With the dissolution of the Socialist system came a collapse of the economy. Prostitution, drug abuse, crime, and poverty all skyrocketed. New luxuries were available for those who could afford them, but an estimated 7 million people died from the lack of food security throughout the world due to the economic collapse.

The reasons behind its dissolution included the following problems:

1. Liberal reforms that gave the Bourgeoisie power over key industries (such reforms were actually a major desire of the 1968 Dubcek platform, in even greater quantity, hence why it was shut down by neighboring Warsaw Pact countries)

2. A firm dedication to planning by hand even as the economy grew more complex and computers too slow to be adapted to the planning mechanisms

3. A huge portion of resources were spent on maintaining millitary parity with the US in order to dissuade US invasion

4. 80% of the combat done in World War II was on the Eastern Front, and 20 million Soviets lost their lives, with no real economic support from the West in rebuilding despite taking the largest cost of war

5. An enclosed, heavily sanctioned economy relied on internal resource gathering, closed off from the world market

Countries like the PRC have taken to heart what happened in the USSR. As an example, the PRC shifted to a more classically Marxist economy, focusing on public ownership of only the large firms and key industries, and relying on markets to develop out of private ownership. This keeps them in touch with the global economy without giving the bourgeoisie control of key industries, and thus the bourgeoisie has no power over the economy or the state.

The PRC is where the USSR is really succeeded. It’s an astounding achievement, and proof that Socialism not only works, but excels, and is indisputably the way foward, all the way into Communism. There are also other Actually Existing Socialist states that carry the torch, such as Cuba, the DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, and to a smaller extend Kerala, the Sahel States, Venezuela, Belarus, and more.

To be fair, these kinds of posts normally don’t attract people agreeing with the post to write about why they agree, but people disagreeing and then people countering. This is a very repeatable experience.

Lemmy is federated, Lemmy.world is more of a “liberal echo-chamber” while an instance like Lemmygrad.ml is going to be more Marxist-Leninist. There’s also Hexbear.net, which has Marxists and Anarchists alike in a united anti-Capitalist space. I don’t personally agree with the idea that a Communist echo chamber in the West can exist, all Communists in the West exist in a system that overwhelmingly demonizes us at every turn, we can’t shut out liberal ideas even if we wanted to. Meanwhile, liberal echo chambers can exist, as liberalism is the status quo.

As for Lenin, I admire him greatly, overall. His analysis of Imperialism, contributions to the National Question, and creation of successful revolutionary strategy are critical to the Marxist Canon. Lenin helped create the world’s first Socialist state, itself a tremendously progressive force for its own working class and a liberatory movement globally in areas such as Cuba, Algeria, China, Korea, Angola, Vietnam, Palestine, and more.

He’s also a really funny writer, in that he always manages to shit-talk Kautsky for his opportunism, and the ultimate betrayal of the Working Class by Kautsky’s Second International.

I wouldn’t call Marxists creating our own spaces outside corporate-controlled media like Reddit “wild,” it’s a natural conclusion. If Marxists are demonized in corporate media and censored, we will create our own spaces where we won’t be silenced.

Pundits have been predicting the economic collapse of the PRC for decades, there’s an entire sub-industry dedicated to “China Watching” that makes good revenue from predicting xyz economic collapse, and it exists because the West wants the PRC to open up its markets for foreigners to plunder freely, rather than the current situation where trade in China is heavily controlled and managed.

I’m a working adult, not doxxing my exact age. I live in the US Empire. Neither of those detract from the hard data and historical texts I read regularly as a part of my continued self-study.

As for the devs, yes, they are Marxists. Here is a list of essays and compiled resources from the lead developer of Lemmy. You’ll find FOSS projects in general have many Marxists and Anarchists, and few liberals.