I feel optimistic regarding China and Russia in their conflicts against the US, but I'm very concerned and a bit doomer towards Palestine :(

Time is on the side of the Russians in Ukraine and the Chinese on pretty much anything else when it comes to confronting the US empire.

But ever since the ceasefire in Lebanon and the fall of Assad I can't help but feel that the Palestinian cause is getting worse every day. No one is lifting a finger for them except the Yemenis and it only seems that the Zionist fucks are getting closer to their objectives.

Civil war in "Israel" when? True Promise 3 when (lol)?

It doesn't help that some of the loudest voices cheering for Assad's fall where Palestinians and that sectarism is strong against Shia's...

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So imperialism is just a synonym for invasion?
No, the first thing I said was that I was dumbing it all the way down
Was the Soviet Union imperialist when they marched into Berlin?
I'm not sure i understand your thought process here. They were the ones who got invaded.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa
I personally choose to distinguish between the country invading another and the country getting invaded itself but then going on to not lose the war.
Does this distinction seem reasonable?
- Your distinction isn't really reasonable because you're still just saying all invasions are imperialist (now with the qualifier that this is only the case if you didn't get invaded first).
  Was Abe Lincoln being imperialist when invading the Confederate states? China liberating Tibet? What about if China invaded Taiwan right now? I mean, that one actually wouldn't even count as imperialist under your own very broad definition given that there's an international consensus that Taiwan is part of China.
  
  Your distinction isn't really reasonable because you're still just saying all invasions are imperialist (now with the qualifier that this is only the case if you didn't get invaded first).
  Which invasions do you want to praise as "non imperialist"?
  Was Abe Lincoln being imperialist when invading the Confederate states?
  Read up on the Battle of Fort Sumter.
  China liberating Tibet?
  ...yes. China annexing Tibet was absolutely imperialist.
  What about if China invaded Taiwan right now?
  Would China be upsetting the understood international "status quo" by doing so?
  I mean, that one actually wouldn't even count as imperialist under your own very broad definition given that there's an international consensus that Taiwan is...
  I genuinely feel my above answer should've been super obvious but alright.
  Once again, I don't have an overly broad definition. I broke it down to simple terms. I think the problem here might not be with the specific definition but any definition.
  I'm sorry if this is a misread but it really feels like you're trying to just nitpick the definition endlessly as some sort of exhausting rhetorical tactic to keep me constantly backtracking so that we can't actually talk about this blatantly obvious invasion in front of us.
  Like, Russia marched soldiers and parachuted into Kyiv trying to assassinate the president to overthrow it.
  How honestly do you rationalize that as okay behavior for a state power while arguing against imperialism?
  
  I think the problem here might not be with the specific definition but any definition.
  Not really? You haven't addressed the Leninist definition. The reason I've been nitpicking yours is that it makes anti-imperialism non-actionable. It's like if I decide to be a communist and I don't like social classes because class conflict creates violence and oppression, it means I must condemn when socialist states use state organs to oppress capitalists. It's ahistorical and fails to inform a productive course of action.
  The way you readily call the Chinese invasion of Tibet imperialist shows my point. By what means should the serfs have been liberated? Was it incorrect for the new socialist state to liberate them, because there was a "legitimate" Tibetan state that had a justified claim to the land? Are the class relations, the material conditions, all irrelevant to our assessment of the situation because Mao had no "right" to do that?
  I understand that I'm being annoying, and it probably just feels like I'm going out of my way to contradict you when the intuitive definition of imperialism would show that the invasions I'm talking about were indeed imperialist. The point is to get you to see why we like the way Lenin put it, because it is a lot more actionable and gives us a plan to strategize around. The vibes based approach doesn't give us a way to defeat imperialism, only to condemn away.
  
  Not really? You haven't addressed the Leninist definition.
  No one offered me a Leninist definition. You asked me what imperialism was and then I guess tried to Socrates method me into it.
  Feel free to link anything and I'll give it a read.
  The reason I've been nitpicking yours is that it makes anti-imperialism non-actionable.
  I dont understand why you say this definition is non-actionable when it is the reason i say we must act to stop Putin from invading Ukraine.
  It's like if I decide to be a communist and I don't like social classes because class conflict creates violence and oppression, it means I must condemn when socialist states use state organs to oppress capitalists. It's ahistorical and fails to inform a productive course of action.
  There's a lot in here. How are they being oppressed?
  Is the socialist state oppressing them by arresting them without trial and sending them to death camps? Because without due process how do we know these are actually the capitalists they're accused of being?
  If they sent you to a death camp as a "capitalist" without evidence is it okay if I reserve the right to speak out on your behalf?
  I think there are some types of brutality and human rights abuses that are so awful it transcends "team sports" and should just be off limits for everyone. That's sort of where the genocide in Ukraine crosses the mine.
  The way you readily call the Chinese invasion of Tibet imperialist shows my point. By what means should the serfs have been liberated? Was it incorrect for the new socialist state to liberate them, because there was a "legitimate" Tibetan state that had a justified claim to the land? Are the class relations, the material conditions, all irrelevant to our assessment of the situation because Mao had no "right" to do that?
  Honestly? I don't know.
  Was life better for the serfs because of Mao? I regrettably know as much about that part of history so I don't want to talk out of my ass just to win a point.
  What I do know is that when the US liberated France, they gave France back to the French. That sort of sets the ideal for what liberation should look like.
  If Tibet isn't it's own country they didn't really "liberate" Tibet. They just took it. They annexed it.
  I understand that I'm being annoying, and it probably just feels like I'm going out of my way to contradict you when the intuitive definition of imperialism would show that the invasions I'm talking about were indeed imperialist
  When you put it that way i now feel like the annoying one. I appreciate the explanation here cause it does clarify.
  I joined the .ml community completely arbitrarily because I read the devs were on it and as a programmer I like open source software stuff. Bet I've been dropping some painfully lib comments for ya guys.
  I will better inform myself on these perspectives.
  
  Feel free to link anything and I'll give it a read.
  https://redsails.org/why-marxism/
  https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
  https://taiyangyu.medium.com/productive-forces-b24877d0110c
  https://taiyangyu.medium.com/no-you-cannot-be-an-anarchist-and-a-marxist-4d196640c5d7
  suuuuuuure you will
  
  Thanks for the sources and then no thanks for unnecessarily poisoning the well with sarcasm.
  Its nice of you to take the time to give me some helpful recommendations in the most obnoxious way you could possibly come up with.
  Real duality of man stuff.
  
  Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.
  —Carlo Cafiero, Summary of Marx's Capital (1879)
  
  You also entered this discussion misgendering one of our comrades. You don't really have a civility/politeness leg to stand on, and you're lucky you didn't have your comments removed for that.
  
  I didn't gender anyone in this discussion. I may have used colloquial figures of speech that are common here in Canada.
  In American English, "man" as an exclamation ("Man, that's awesome!") functions as a figure of speech primarily as an interjection or a vocative, similar to "dude" or "hey." It's used for emphasis, to express surprise, or to show agreement, without necessarily being directed at a specific person.
  In Canadian slang, "man" can refer to a male, but it's also used in a broader sense, particularly in Toronto slang, where "mans" can be a plural pronoun, meaning "I," "me," "you," or "we,"
  I wasn't calling anyone a "man" in the same way that when I say "God, I'm hungry" I'm not calling you god.
  That being said, if my usage of "man" or "dude" bothers a person let me know and I will apologize and correct it.
  If Babs feels misgendered I would apologize to them but they didn't signal they had any issue with it and you've been the only one offended on their behalf.
  If my use of a vocative was misunderstood, then I need to apologize to them, not you.
  
  Feel free to link anything and I'll give it a read.
  Oh I'm sorry, I thought you would have seen it elsewhere in the thread. Miz wrote a nice short summary.
  I dont understand why you say this definition is non-actionable when it is the reason i say we must act to stop Putin from invading Ukraine.
  The reason I am so ardently opposed to that position is that in practice it translates into supporting European militarization and the expansion of the American Military-Industrial-Complex. Is there a world where Ukraine defends itself without strengthening western imperialists? That's the whole reason NATO supports the war.
  So either you have an actionable definition of imperialism that tells you that you need to join a revolutionary organization and focus your efforts on countering American hegemony, or you have a non-actionable definition that would have you in a picket line together with union machinists from Lockheed Martin.
  Is the socialist state oppressing them by arresting them without trial and sending them to death camps? Because without due process how do we know these are actually the capitalists they're accused of being?
  If they sent you to a death camp as a "capitalist" without evidence is it okay if I reserve the right to speak out on your behalf?
  I think there are some types of brutality and human rights abuses that are so awful it transcends "team sports" and should just be off limits for everyone. That's sort of where the genocide in Ukraine crosses the mine.
  This is an absurd jump. I don't think there is a genocide in Ukraine, although there have been many civilian casualties and that has included events in which Russia targeted civilian areas. That's a very, very far cry from death camps.
  What I mean more specifically is something like when China sentences a billionaire to death because of corruption. I'm morally opposed to the death penalty, but I recognize why China is using it against people who took decisions that cost lives and livelihoods in a massive scale. The fact that they are a proletarian state and are advancing the interests of the working class means that I don't think it's productive to condemn China for using the death penalty. That's what I mean.
  Was life better for the serfs because of Mao? I regrettably know as much about that part of history so I don't want to talk out of my ass just to win a point.
  What I do know is that when the US liberated France, they gave France back to the French. That sort of sets the ideal for what liberation should look like.
  If Tibet isn't it's own country they didn't really "liberate" Tibet. They just took it. They annexed it.
  I think if you annex a country and make it an autonomous province with vastly superior social conditions compared to the previous order of things, that's liberation. I'd recommend Michael Parenti's Friendly Feudalism as a source here.
  I appreciate your willingness to learn!

123 comments