Reply To: Russian Tensions
BD “As to the Leninist concept of imperialism, which Johnny Mercer correctly analyses as follows “It almost requires a kind of conspiracy theory to suppose that capitalists give their workers more than their labour power in order to bribe them.”
TN And I’m sure that when a parent gives their child food, a warm bed and protects them from harm that is merely a bribe to get them to do their homework.
BD “When asked about how this bribe occurs and what the mechanism is by which the surplus value of third world workers is exploited by one capitalist enterprise (capitalist A) and a portion of it is consciously identified to be redistributed by western workers and then consciously distributed by other capitalist enterprises (capitalist B), Leninist supporters of this theory tend to fall silent.”
TN My, you are a bore. No one is arguing that parts of the Russian economy are not capitalist. With the betrayal of the USSR the capitalists had a field day. But since then they’ve been put in their place. The oligarchs no longer exercise singular control over the ship of state. Imperialism is not the Russian state’s reason for being.
BD “Similarly when asked why on earth Capitalist A would give up part of their profits to support capitalist B, they either remain silent or try to explain that the invisible cabal that run the system want to ensure that western workers are getting a more wealth than they produce in order to keep them from turning revolutionary!”
TN The issue is imperialism not the existence of capitalist enterprises in Russia.”
Dear TN, you really are as thick as a monk’s foreskin, aren’t you.
Let’s just try and pull this apart for you in simple terms so you can understand.
1st Point (which the guy you cited actually explains in his video) is that he is talking about Lenin’s theory of Imperialism. This is not the same thing as imperialism in its normal everyday usage (i.e. the process and expansion of creating empires). Therefore (as I have tried to explain to you before), in the way that Lenin described imperialism it does not references classical empires, medieval empires, or even Darth Vader and his intergalactic empire.
You have quoted and sourced information from writers and commentators who specifically discuss the Leninist concept of imperialism, therefore when you talk about imperialism (which you do frequently) we must assume that you are talking about Imperialism in the Leninist sense.
Moving on to your comments, you begin by making an analogy between capitalists allegedly bribing workers to remain acquiescent and parents giving warm food, a bed, etc. What the fuck are you talking about???
Are you attempting to say that capitalists are involved in some kind of nurturing relationship which the workers?? Apart from the clear nonsense of that analogy, what has that got to do with Lenin’s view which was that super exploitation of workers in the developing world creates super profits part of which are used to “overpay” western workers in order to keep them passive. This view is completely contrary to Marx’s view which states that exploitation and production of surplus value takes place “at the point of production”
Moving on to your view that “the oligarchs exercise singular control over the ship of state”, even if that was the case, so what. The crucial issue is the issue of property relationships. The capitalists (including oligarchs, capitalists and the state) own and control the means of production, the workers do not own anything other than the ability to labour and to produce wealth through their labour. Going back to what Engels stated “The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship isn’t abolished; it is rather pushed to the extreme.”
State ownership does not mean that exploitation has been abolished it means, generally, it has been merely streamlined.
Your final comment about a “Marxist State” shows just how little you know of Marx’s work and his view of the state. Engels stated that “The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.”
Hence the rest of the quote from Engels, which by your own comment have demonstrated you don’t understand.
“But at this extreme it is transformed into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution.”
What he was saying is that state ownership (i.e. nationalisation, etc.) does not resolve the situation, but is rather part of the process of consolidation of large scale capitalist enterprises, in the same way that multinational and huge corporations increase the concentration of capital, reducing the ownership of the means of production into the hands of smaller and smaller numbers of property owners and thus increases not only the tension between labour and capital but creates the large scale enterprises and productive forces necessary to transform from a society of ownership of the means of production by the few (Capitalists, state capitalists, oligarchs or whatever way you describe them) working in the interests of the few, to a society based on Common Ownership (not state ownership) which works on the basis of from each according to their ability to each according to their need.
You say that “the issue is not imperialism not the existence of capitalist enterprises in Russia.”
In that is exactly where you are wrong, even if it was possible to have capitalism without imperialism (which is completely impossible because of the nature of capitalism) the fundamental issue at the basis of the class struggle the struggle between labour and capital, would continue, regardless of whether capital was help in the form of state ownership, private ownership or some hybrid of each.