ComradeRat

Same here in Canada re: military budget and military recruitment ads (targeted too e.g. at natives)

This but unironically

This but unironically. Jack's basically channeling Lenin's ghost lol

What_is_to_be_done.txt

This is fairly obvious and not something hidden at all.

Never said it was hidden.

The CPC has no desire to inflame tensions on the world stage or to close off the economy, and they say this openly.

Exactly the point I made.

On the other hand, de-dollarisation I'd an explicitly stated goal. There have been multiple tests of moves that could lead to de-dollarisation. The infrastructure for it is already being built and used.

They literally torpedoed Brazil and Russia's attempt at that lol. They dont wanna make their reserves of USD less valuable. They wont even use the USD they have to smash 3rd world debt. They want to maintain the stable international order.

The question of growth vs degrowth as a method for climate transition is tactical and defining the "green growth" strategy as "not socialism by definition" is presumptuous.

Economies focussed on growth for its own sake are capitalist economies. Marx explicitly says in the manifesto that a) communism is possible now (i.e. with 1848 productive forces) and b) that a defining characteristic of bourgeois society is the constant growth. In Capital, he laid out why it is capital demands constant growth. In his drafts to Zasulich, he says communism will recreate the stability of the primitive communes (no internal drive to growth) on a higher level.

The only reason for any marxist post 1848 to call for growing the productive forces is the need to develop military capabilities to defend against the imperialist cancer hellbent on destroying every ecosystem. Stalin and Deng understood this—Khrushchev and his ilk do not.

Besides the theoretical piece, on a practical level we are beyond fucked if we keep failing to decrease absolute emissions. We are already at 1.5C. There is no room tactically or theoretically for green growth. It is, at best a piece of tape put on a crumbling building to reassure everyone that everything's fine so there's no need to fundamentally change anything. And CO2 emissions are merely one of the ecocatastrophes.

Every solar panel and EV that China exports is a little bit less carbon dioxide released from what would have been fossil fuels.

Only if you restrict your analysis to "gas car vs electric car" in a vaccuum that ignores: what was used to mine the lithium, steel, aluminium, gold, copper, etc (fossil fuels); what was used to smelt, weld, etcetc it all (fossil fuels!); what was used to transport all the parts and finished products (fossil fuels!) and so forth. Dont take my word for it, here's a paper by a marxist you can read that goes pretty exhaustively into how ungreen "green" tech is: https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/alternautas/article/view/1451/1205

And if that transportation/energy wouldn't have been produced otherwise (such as in the global south), it is still a gain if improvements in the quality of life are achieved.

Improvements in the quality of life of who? Certainly not the people forced at gunpoint off their land by "leftist" governments to make way for mines using 760,000 litres of groundwater per second and dumping the toxic waste into their lands, waters and airs? The citydwelling labour aristocrats with legal status and formal employment see (marginal) improvements in QoL; the costs are literally dumped on the heads of the slumdwelling proletariat.

The focus on "build productive forces to improve quality of life and increase our consumerism to western levels to show the superiority of socialism" was Khrushchev's thing, btw.

The tariff war isn't even over

No one said it was; just that evidently China isnt interested in taking the opportunity to do anything besides angle for a bigger slice of the imperial pie.

I have not looked into this specifically, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was technological work in china towards gradually reducing such damage.

Lol. To quote Marx, "ignorance has not yet helped anyone." As someone who does look into this: no, they seem to be poisoned by the same unquestioned faith in "innovation" as you are.

It was a typo. No need to be obtuse and accuse me of "great Russian chauvinism".

I accused you of participating in it intentionally or otherwise by referring to the whole soviet population as russian (or by forgetting nonrussians existed). This is objectively a reflection of the "rah go russia" stance stalin took post-1930 and esp post-1941. If i made a typo and accidentally said something chauvinistic, i'd say "thanks for the correction comrade" rather than complaining about being accused of chauvinism.

There are few people here who would tell you that rapid industrialisation doesn't have ecological and social consequences. What appears tenous as best is your assertion that rapid industrialisation paved the way for reaction to take root in the USSR, while ignoring the losses incurred by the party during WW2.

No one (besides you) is denying both played a role. Mindless copying of western industry sowed the seeds; ww2 paved over and allowed only the corniest of weeds to come up.

Now it certainly may be the case that some of the reaction in the latter years come from the "fordist" practices of the USSR during its early years, but this is the case with literally all societies.

Lol fordism and taylorism were imported to the USSR by the state (including western managerial experts!) only after the revolution. Go read lenin and krupskaya's praise of Taylorism. These practices were only expanded and built upon, even after the west abandoned them as too pro-worker.

The economic situation of earlier generations creates specific mentalities within them that they carry on until they die. Thereby creating inertia in thinking.

By that logic, the USSR should have been more feudal and less taylor-fordist. The weight of all dead generations weighs on the minds of the living—but material conditions, the actual economic relations, are far more influential.

Your proposed mechanism does not explain why the CPSU couldn't adapt to changing times.

And your proposed mechanism gives primacy to ideas and fails to explain social change at all. "My" (rly Molotov's) proposed mechanism does explain these things, tho i didnt make it explicit bc failure to course correct wsnt the topic of the discussion. I wrote:

Khrushchevs and Brezhnevs were the fruits of reaction, and they didnt plant themselves. This planting occurres at all levels of the Union over those two decades as party members needed to be good at fulfilling the economic growth quotas without asking too many questions about social harms and/or whether fordism is socialism.

It should be fairly obvious that when all levels of the union are staffed by Khrushchevites further falls into reactionaryism and revisionism are difficult to impossible to prevent. Not bc ideas have inertia, but bc many party bosses (including the top boss cornman) had bad takes and could just deny people with good takes (like molotov) entry to the party.

Stalin's attempts to unplant these seeds were (sadly) too little and too late and so the rot progressed.

Certain factions in the CPC have this view, but there was an ideological struggle in the CPC a little bit before Xi became president precisely around this issue, and Xi's victorious faction has made significant efforts in curbing liberalism.

Comrade, Xi was the right winger in the struggle vs Bo Xilai. Bo Xilai was no more Marxist than Lasalle. Xi is no more Marxist than Lasalle. Both are social democrats (derogatory). Xi's "leftism" has been "more equitable distribution of wealth within China" not "restructure the economy for decoupling and greater tensions with the Yanks."

Their actions are no longer consistent with a Marxist party doing an NEP style programme. Frankly I think they fell into social democracy with Hu, going from "productive forces to beat imperialism" to "productive forces that will eventually inevitably mechanically transform into communism when we outproduce the yanks"—if anyone post-Deng even held the former view (i would say Jiang did, but it was under him that China stopped being self-sufficient wrt rice so, lol, he wasnt planning on conflict either).

Molotov's memoirs have some very good examinations of how this mindset took hold in the soviet leadership; China today is subject to even more pressures in that direction than the soviets were.

This isnt even mentioning their consistent advocacy of so-called green growth instead of, y'know, not producing so much shit for the west and/or pushing for more mining, more water usage, etc, to produce """green""" cars with materials plundered from around the world. Oh hey, the tarriffs woulda been excellent for reducing useless production of dollarstore trash. Oh well. At the moment, at least China isnt the one keeping conditions ripe for extraction and exploitation in other global south countries but their corporations take full advantage and neither the government or party seems to care about the ecological and social harms inherent to industrial mining.

I think it's kinda crazy to accuse the Stalin administration of being concerned solely with enacting some "capitalism action plan".

I dont think it's "crazy" at all, both because calling things you disagree with "crazy" is ableist as fuck and bc its a correct take.

And while the USSR during this time was certainly very focused on increasing economic growth as rapidly as possible, this was absolutely necessary to ensure the survival of the Russian revolution (and the Russian people).

You mean "soviet peoples" right? Or are you (un)intentionally participating in the Great Russian chauvinism that Stalin began embracing post-1930? Otherwise I 100% agree with you that the growth was necessary. But "the growth wasnt necessary" isnt what Samotsvety said so you're arguing with the choir and/or a strawcomrade.

The real seed of reaction was sown by Krushchev and the failure of the CPSU during that era of filling the loss of high quality and young party cadres in the aftermath of WW2.

Khrushchevs and Brezhnevs were the fruits of reaction, and they didnt plant themselves. This planting occurres at all levels of the Union over those two decades as party members needed to be good at fulfilling the economic growth quotas without asking too many questions about social harms and/or whether fordism is socialism. If you opposed rapid pace industrialisation, you were kicked out of the party for violating demcent. People who were halfhearted about it all were replaced with true believers in growth who could make growth happen faster, people who were fine with the deaths that always result from industrialisation.

Which, again so you dont misunderstand me, was a necessary tactic but one that had unexpected and negative consequences that marxism demands we not ignore just bc it makes us sad.

The result: people in the party throughout the union began to believe in the tactics of economic growth, fordism, etc, as principles in and of themselves rather than temporary tactical necessities—these people didnt spontaneously appear and take high seats of power when Khrushchev took over: they were put there (again, understandably) by Stalin's government (which included Khrushchev).

It's absolutely amazing, especially for the first 3 seasons. It starts tapering off in quality from s4 bc of exec meddling though. Still GOOD, but doesn't quite reach the heights of the earlier seasons (s5 is the worst of 'em)

Lies and slander! Turtles are wokists, at least in 2003.

In the 2003 version of TMNT, the Turtles' only human friends besides April and Casey are

spoiler

the homeless people who live in the dump and are "led" by an old black man only referred to as "the doctor." Casey is ambiguously brown and his mother wears (somewhat stereotypical) nativecoded clothes. April is the most oppressed minority (Irish)

spoiler

There's an entire ep focused on the turtles catching and beating "the trash man" who kidnaps homeless folks and forces them into slavery in his trash mine. (The cops refuse to help!) Besides April and Casey, the homeless people and black superman are the only humans invited to their christmas party in s2.

There's also another episode

spoiler

where raph gives a fuckton of money he stole from the big crime gang to an old, blind woman who's about to be evicted by the bank after her husband died.

In another episode, the gang

spoiler

prevents local far right militia H.A.T.E (Humans Against The Extraterrestials) from detonating a nuke

Less related to the turtles politics, but there's also an ep of 2003 turtles where

spoiler

the gang find out theres an eldritch abomination underneath wallstreet that makes it the centre of all evil and takes over people's minds

Tolkien agrees with you!

(as a (shockingly anticolonial) bit, but still!)

History proved Stalin right here, as is often the case. The regional governments fucked over the USSR MASSIVELY throughout its existence largely out of individual self interest and corruption

It should be mentioned that such local identities werent (and have never, to my knowledge) been abandoned without force either directly, like France's eradication of local languages and dialects; liberal educations' destruction of the lower class cultures or indirectly like by threatening people with the "natural" processes of eviction and/or starvation if they refuse to leave their home areas; by forcing kids into education, often away from home developed by global north thinktanks only applicable to (very limited) specialist jobs in the cities