robbo203
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
“World ‘plunging towards societal collapse’ as era of cheap money ends”
“You wouldn’t recognise socialism were it to tear off one of your arms and beat you over the head with it. You denounce all the socialism and socialists who’ve ever actually taken power. It’s why no one takes you seriously.”
_________________________________________________LOL TS You haven’t got a clue what socialism is about, have you, and you have the gall to lecture us on what socialism means. In the Marxist tradition, socialism is a synonym for communism – a moneyless wageless stateless non market society in which we voluntarily give according to our ability and freely take according to our needs. What you call “socialism” is simply state-run capitalism with all the structural features pertaining to capitalism. Of course, we denounce it.
We are socialists after all! You clearly are not.
______________________________________________________________________
“Lol. And capitalist states are just going to spontaneously disappear are they? It’s views like these that tell the world you’re not serious people.”
________________________________________________________________LOL yourself. Idiotic claims like the above demonstrate you clearly have zero understanding of the socialist case. No, we don’t expect capitalist states to just “spontaneously disappear”. Jeez, Spare me this utter drivel….
___________________________________________________________________“No, they were not. Russia tried for eight years to avoid this war. It didn’t want it. It wanted the Minsk Accords 1 and 2 to be respected and worked tirelessly for them to be so. But the Nazis in Ukraine and their handlers in Washington had different ideas. And with that, Robbo’s narrative about Russian imperialism goes up in smoke. Pfft.”
_______________________________________________________________
How on earth do you come to such a dumb conclusion, eh, TS? Let us say for the moment the Putin regime’s motivation was what you claim it was – to get the Ukrainian regime in good faith to comply with the Minsk accords. Even so and despite this, it still embarked on a military invasion of Ukraine, evidently with the intention of capturing Kiev and installing a puppet regime. That’s the actions of imperialist power however you want to dress it up. You might want to say Russian imperialism was driven by good intentions but that does not make any the less the act of an imperialist power.
Of course, useful idiots like yourself take the Putin regime’s propaganda at a face value and loyally regurgitate it on demand. The regime couldn’t care a toss about the plight of Russian speakers in Ukraine. That is only the pretext for its imperialist invasion, not the reason. This is a capitalist war of economic resources and spheres of influence, not lofty ideals. The Ukrainian regime is no different. I find it remarkable that you are defending one of these disgusting authoritarian capitalist regimes against the other when their modus operandi is uncannily similar. They are both corrupt and anti-democratic to their rotten core. If the Ukrainian regime is a nazi regime by your standards then so too is the Russian regime. That doesn’t stop you from tirelessly simping for it. How pathetic can you get TS?
“Capitalism, like it or not, and for all its perceived imperfections, is the only extant and viable game currently in town.”
————————————————————-Yes and, by your very actions and ideas, you and many millions more like you ensure that capitalism remains the “only extant and viable game currently in town”.
The question you should ask yourself is are you happy with this state of affairs? Are you content to leave intact a rapacious socio-economic system that could quite conceivably drive humanity into extinction?
Because, make no mistake Lizzie, by accommodating yourself to capitalism you are in effect supporting it and prolonging its shelf life. You are actively preventing a realistic alternative to capitalism from emerging.
That alternative has no realistic chance of emerging while it remains the outlook of only a small minority. But this has become precisely your excuse for accommodating yourself to capitalism instead of working with socialists to change that minority into a majority. What exactly have you got to lose by doing this?
Please don’t tell me that it is imperative that we should try instead to humanize and tame capitalism. This has been tried for over two centuries or more. Look around you and ask yourself if such an approach has actually worked. Reformism has long attracted mass movements and secured the majority support of the people, unlike revolutionary socialism, and yet it has failed miserably. That should tell you something about the inherent limitations of what it is you are advocating for …
Perhaps the time has finally arrived for a new game in town. Are you willing to play?
It is hard to imagine that anyone can be so utterly gullible and naive as to believe that the likes of Putin and his fellow parasite cronies care a toss about ordinary “Russian speakers” in Ukraine or elsewhere and are rallying to their defense for that reason. After all, he is quite content to send hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russian workers into the meat grinder that is the Ukrainian war in pursuit of his own imperialist dream. The same goes for Zelinsky and his fellow cronies. This war is not about high ideals like democracy versus dictatorship. It is about resources of spheres of interest between rival capitalist blocs. The west and its prostitute media are just as much to blame as the disgusting capitalist regime of Putin.
The crocodile tears its leaders shed for the lives of ordinary Ukrainian workers are in stark contrast to their complete indifference to what is now going on in the Horn of Africa where the scale of the slaughter is, if anything, even greater. Why? Are not Black Africans, human beings fully deserving of our sympathy and support as much as anyone else? The difference lies in the economic significance of this arbitrary piece of land called Ukraine which the Russian parasite class, headed by Putin, has recognised as well
Interesting article by Michael Roberts on Russian imperialism:
“All this makes a joke of the arguments in the Western media that Putin’s regime is some sort of reversion to the Soviet state. For a start, Putin has often attacked ‘Bolshevism’ and, in particular the views of Lenin that nations like Ukrainians had a right to self-determination. Instead, Putin has turned to the feudal imperialism of Russia’s Peter the Great as his model for the invasion of Ukraine. Putin has eulogized Peter’s conquests in the Great Northern War and praised him for “returning” historically Russian lands. “It seems that it has fallen to us, too, to return (Russian lands),” Putin commented. For him, Ukraine is not a nation but part of Russia, which the nationalist in Kyev and Western powers are tryng to separate.”
Also from the same article – the capitalist motives for the invasion:
“However, there is a problem for Western capital and Ukraine’s oligarchs: it’s Russia. The war has already led to Russian forces gaining control of at least $12.4trn worth of Ukraine’s resources in energy (cola), metals and mineral deposits, apart from agricultural land. If Putin’s forces succeed in annexing Ukrainian land seized during Russia’s invasion, Kyiv would permanently lose almost two-thirds of its deposits. Moscow now controls 63% of Ukraine’s coal deposits, 11% of its oil, 20% of its natural gas, 42% of its metals, and 33% of its rare earths.”
BS. Kiev lost its right to ever again rule over ethnic Russians when it tried to exterminate them.
Knobbo, when you don’t know shit about shit, don’t say shit. Lol
___________________________________________________________________
It seems our resident simp (or should that be pimp?) for Russian capitalism and its imperialist tzar, Vladimir Putin, has been rattled. So much so that in his haste he hasn’t even bothered to read what others write before jumping headfirst into the fray with his customary rant.
Look, as a socialist, I couldn’t care two hoots about the “right of an independent Ukraine” to exist. Or an independent Russia. Or an Independent Britain or United States. I look forward to the day when the toxic institution called the nation-state along with its supporting capitalist ideology of nationalism disappears off the face of the earth.
“True Scotsman” (the name says it all!) understands nothing of this. Sadly he hasn’t got a socialist bone in his body. His pathetic nationalism makes him willing cannon fodder in the cause of some or other capitalist state. Presumably Scotland but also apparently Russia too. What a dilemma our kid must face – I assume he is little more than a precocious teenager judging by his cocky writing style – should his beloved Scotland find itself at war with his beloved Russia.
Anyway, the point is that I simply quoted from an article on “Putin’s imperial ambitions and Ukraine’s three-hundred-year road to statehood” and TS immediately jumps to the conclusion that I support the worldview of the author writing that article. I don’t but that does not mean I dismiss everything that the article said.
TS clearly – and as usual – did not read the article in question. Because very clearly there are sentiments recorded in that article expressed by Putin that affirm his imperialist outlook.
Putin really does see himself as some sort of modern-day version of Peter the Great notwithstanding that he sees himself as being on some sort of moral mission like “denazifying Ukaraine” (he could start with Russia if he was that intent on denazification). In March 2014 he said in a speech “Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities,” and argued that Russia and Ukraine were historically inseparable. “Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other.” A few days later Russia annexed Crimea.
I fail to see how anyone can plausibly deny this is an instance of blatant imperialist annexation. It doesn’t matter what the motives were and no one here is defending the actions of the Ukrainian state vis a vis the Russian minorities in Crimea or the Donbas. But the facts speak for themselves. The actions of the Russian state in sending invading forces into another country were technically those of an imperialist power and there is no getting around this.
That, mind you, as I said is on a pretty narrow definition of imperialism – equating it with military invasion and conquest. We Marxists would take a wider view of imperialism in terms of which it can be seen as the latent or manifest expression of capitalism’s own expansionist dynamic. In short, imperialism is a global phenomenon in the same sense that capitalism is. It is merely the symptom of capitalism and capitalism is global
On the imperialist ambitions of Putin’s capitalist regime….
“He repeatedly denied Ukraine’s right to independent existence – and, at times, that the country exists at all as an independent entity. Instead he appeared to accept the unity of the two countries as historical fact. In doing so, he revealed the structures of an imperial ideology with a chronology and ambition that goes far beyond post-Soviet nostalgia to the mediaeval era.”
It seems to me that imperialism is only the logical expression of nationalist sentiment in the context of modern capitalism with its built-in expansionist dynamic. There is no nation-state anywhere in the world that is not manifestly or latently imperialist. The mistake is to assume imperialism is just military intervention and conquest but there is also an economic aspect to imperialism as well. In every sense of the term, Putin’s Russia is a fully-fledged imperialist capitalist power
Interesting article here on the support base of Putin’s authoritarian and neoliberal capitalist regime
“And just as the 1990s oligarchs were deeply entangled with the state, so the “siloviki” (securocrats) who have replaced them as the arbiters of political power under Putin are embedded in the capitalist system. For all their superficial differences, both groups turned the apparatus of the state into an instrument for individual enrichment. As business and mafia groups were gradually brought under the control of the security services, the state absorbed and internalized their profit-driven ideology and modi operandi.”
https://jacobin.com/2022/08/russia-liberals-scapegoat-working-class-vladimir-putin-war-ukraine
It makes you cringe but I am sure our resident apologist for the Russian capitalist regime will endorse her sentiments!:
“A Russian state TV commentator and longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin is encouraging Russians to die rather than lose to Ukraine and the West. Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT who is not eligible for conscription because she is a woman and media member, said during the most recent broadcast of Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov that the war is worth people dying because the world is at a “dead end” due to lack of values”.
“Just like a hand grenade will never be a vacuum cleaner, the Guardian will never be a “news” paper. The role of the Guardian is not to act as a venue for the expression of free ideas it is an apparatus for manufacturing consent.”
______________________________________________________________LOL TS. You are as ever, endlessly amusing. Granted, the Guardian is a capitalist newspaper that will frame the news from a capitalist perspective. But do you seriously imagine the trashy far-right capitalist organs like the racist “Russia-Insider” and others you draw your “facts” from are any different?? They pump out the pro-capitalist propaganda of the obnoxious Putin regime you simp for and you buy it all, lock stock, and barrel, without question and without demur.
Don’t forget – you were the one that started this daft line of argument that just because the Guardian is a liberal capitalist organ we can safely reject anything it says as false. Facts are to be judged not by their connection with reality but by the political acceptability of the source revealing them according to you. Now that that argument has boomeranged back on you are trying desperately to backtrack.
I thought you said he was a gajillionaire “richer” than Elon Musk? Do try and get your story straight. But anyways yes, dismiss what the Guardian says out if hand because it’s a lie. I’ve already explained why it’s a lie and provided evidence in support of my position.
____________________________________________
I never said that and you have done nothing of the sort.
According to you anything that the Guardian writes must ipso facto be nonsense because the Guardian is a trashy liberal paper. However, you feel quite free to quote and endorse trashy far-right commentators like “Russia-Insider” and others. Yet you feel offended when socialists point out the utter hypocrisy of you doing precisely that while arguing that just because they are far-right commentators does not mean what they say is not true. Well, by the same token just because The Guardian is a liberal bourgeoisie paper (we agree on that) does not mean that what it says is not at times correct, does it now?
And then you wonder why all your reformist efforts come to nothing.”
Oh, the irony. Remind me, how long has your little band of ‘brothers’ been pushing your “well-meaning” pipe dream? 🙂
___________________________________________________________Lizzie, it will remain a pipe dream unless and until people like you come round to sharing it and seeking to realise it. It’s not just our loss that it has not been realised; it is yours as well!
This is the point. The precondition for establishing socialism – the mass understanding and support it needs – has not even remotely been reached. The vast majority of the population is not socialist. We know this very well and it is precisely for this reason that socialism has not yet been tried.
However, capitalism has been tried and the reformist attempt to run capitalism in the interests of the workers – like running the abattoir in the interests of the cattle inside – has demonstrably failed. The same old problems keep cropping up again and again. We perceive them as problems from our personal perspective but from the impersonal perspective of the capitalist machine they are just a sign that the system is working perfectly normally
Capitalism has failed us yet you persist in supporting a system that cannot logically operate in our interests. You don’t see the problem in its wider context. Tiny reformist victories such as the abolition of the poll tax are held up as examples that sustain the illusion that the system is amenable to progressive improvement and perfection. You don’t see that, like water finding its own level, what the system gives with one hand it takes with another.
Yet you continue to support this system. It is the fact that you and millions like you continue to support this system that makes socialism appear to be a “pipe dream”. That is the only reason why it appears to be that
“His views on Trump and vaccines are irrelevant to the topic of Russia/Ukraine. Edward Snowden and Scott Ritter are also conservatives. Does that disqualify them as sources of information? Or what about Newton, who believed in alchemy, or Darwin who was a racist? As far as physics and biology are concerned their views stand the test of time.”
___________________________________________________
How amusing. So TS, having criticized socialists for using sources like the Guardian (even though he has used western sources like Reuters!), now defends his use of comments made by right-wing trumpites and the like, on the grounds that their politics are irrelevant to the “facts” they report on. So if the Guardian reports that Putin has a personal fortune of 1 billion are we to dismiss this out of hand because it is just…er… the Guardian, a liberal bourgeoise rag, TS?
“Christ, you people are mind-crushingly tedious. No wonder your Party has such an infinitesimally small membership.”
_________________________________________________________________Lizzie, why do you say that? You do the SPGB and its members a great disservice by imagining some abstruse topic like finance capital or “money creationism” is all that interests them. Like many other members, I have a wide range of interests, many of which go way beyond the field of economics…
At the same time, it’s silly denigrating attempts to get to grip with these topics as “mind-crushingly tedious”. Well-meaning reformists like yourself are forever trying to rush in to solve this or that problem capitalism throws up without really bothering to understand how these problems arise. And then you wonder why all your reformist efforts come to nothing. Impatience is not a virtue
