That’s why it’s important to read about imperialism and how it functions. An extreme oversimplification is that finance capital allows the country with the largest finance capital to dominate the global south, and push out other countries with hard power. The US is the empire. Russia’s ruling class can’t oppress the global south in the same manner, and is kept out of doing so by NATO. That’s why countries throwing off imperialism like the Sahel states align with Russia and China, since neither participates in unequal exchange. It isn’t because Russia is more moral, it’s because they’re not in position to be imperialist in the first place.

Thanks, comrade! 🫡

I think you’d do very well to study a bit more on how imperialism functions. Eldavi is 100% correct in saying the capitalists in Russia are small potatoes, they don’t have imperial power compared to western capitalists. The very fact that Russian capitalists don’t have global hegemony and instead are largely kept within their own borders is why Russian foreign policy strategically aligns them with the global south and against the west, similar to Iran.

As for states, they exist to protect the ruling class of a given society. It’s why the US is run by imperialists, Russia is run by nationalists, and China is run by the working classes. All 3 have billionaires and capitalists as a class, but the actual results for people both domestically and internationally are dramatically different. The US Empire is horrible for their domestic working classes and international working classes, Russia is generally horrible for their working classes but plays a progressive role internationally, and China is both progressive domestically and internationally.

Reading more on imperialism and the class basis of the state would help a lot with understanding why Marxists take the stances we do.

I live in the empire and want it to burn down. People do become radicalized through their lived experience, and it’s our job to guide these people to correct theory and practice, as people once did for me.

Oh shit you got me

Zelensky is a fascist, Jewish or not, just like Israel is. The articles I linked do show the strong links to Nazism the Kiev regime has, as well as prove the relevance on the ground. Azov is not a “mixed” group, the symbol right on the front is the Wolfsangel, and it was officially added to the Ukrainian millitary. Further, the west couped Yanukovych and put the far-right Banderites in power, which is why Russia got involved in the first place, as a desponse to the growing fascism in Ukraine.

• Ukrainian neo-Nazi C14, known for racist and homophobic attacks, gets public funding for ‘patriotic education’

• Anti-Roma pogroms in Ukraine: on C14 and tolerating terror

• Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev

• On the Influence of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine

• ‘Don’t confuse patriotism and Nazism’: Ukraine’s Azov forces face scrutiny

• Ukrainian Official Changes Tune on ‘Unacceptable’ March Honoring SS Unit

• Ukraine conflict: ‘White power’ warrior from Sweden

• Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict

• Torchlight parade in Kyiv honors Nazi-linked nationalist

• Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History

• Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t

Russia is governed by nationalists, but Kiev is governed by neo-Nazis that uphold Stepan Bandera and have been supporting other neo-Nazi groups like Azov and C14. Had the west not couped Yanukovych and placed the far-right in power, the Russo-Ukrainian war would have never happened.

Again, stop defending neo-Nazis.

Ukraine is run by Banderite neo-Nazis. From davel’s compilation, again:

• BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
• Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
• The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
• The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
• WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
• Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
• The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
• openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
• Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
• Consortium News, 2022: Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev
• Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
• History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

Groups like Azov have been folded in officially. The Kiev regime upholds Stepan Bandera and uses likeness for propaganda. Nazis infest Ukrainian leadership:

The east supported Yanukovych, and that’s why the far-right Banderites couping him kicked off the war.

Stop defending a fascist and the neo-Nazis both of you support.

Need a zoomer translation of State and Revolution.

Blaming Yanukovych for the Maidan Massacre, a false flag committed by the Banderites now in control of Kiev, is exactly why you’re full of shit. The west orchestrated the coup and supported the Banderites for overthrowing Yanukovych, who chose the Russian loan over the IMF loan due to the IMF loan requiring austerity measures.

The Donbass region is where Russians are indigenous. You’re trying to erase that through the guise of “international law,” and again, after being linked proof of ethnic cleansing, you ignore it all. Even when you’re linked pro-western sources, you plug your ears.

The Banderites started the war by massacring civilians, committing ethnic cleansing, and cozying up to the west and NATO, breaking both Minsk agreements. Russia intervening after the Neo-Nazis in Kiev dramatically escalated their onslaught is the fault of the Banderites, not Russia and not the Donbass region.

This is on top of you defending a self-reported fascist, and acting like you’re “dispelling propaganda” while uncritically maintaining that any source, western or not, that disagrees with the neo-Nazis in Kiev is “propaganda.” More sources? Must be “gish-galloping.” You have a thought-terminating orthodoxy to defend fascists and neo-Nazis.

Fair, and the empire became the empire post-WWII.

Euronationalists are frustrating to deal with because they’ll agree that the US Empire is bad while denying their own participation in imperialism, or justifying it.

The Donbass region was added to Ukraine only a century ago, and prior to that was Russian, with Russians living there predominantly and was culturally Russian. Legally Kiev pretends to offer protections, but in reality post 2014 when the west couped Yanukovych and installed Banderite Neo-Nazis, Russians in Ukraine have been the targets of ethnic oppression and slaughter.

From davel’s compilation:

• BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
• Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
• The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
• The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
• WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
• Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
• The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
• openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
• Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
• Consortium News, 2022: Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev
• Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
• History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

Ukraine ethnically cleansing the Donbass region, which popularly supports Russia, is what started the war. The Euromaidan coup is what kicked off the war in 2014, Russia entered in 2022 after the Minsk agreements failed. Had NATO not couped Ukraine, the war would have never happened.

Russia did intervene, correct, after the west couped Ukraine and installed a Neo-Nazi regime.

I don’t understand why concentration onto a single capitalist or a small group should destabilize the system.

A hunter gatherer tribe can live by itself. The world run by a capitalist could as well.

You’re confusing the ability for non-capitalist systems to function without circulation of commodities as their basis with the ability for capitalism to do so. Capitalism functions by this, it’s how capital is valorized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

The single capitalist would still own the means of production.

A “capitalist” system where you have a single person that owns everything is both structurally impossible (similar to anarcho-capitalism) and also not capitalism. You’ve gone beyond the relations of bourgeois and proletarians into a system owned by a single autocrat, which would immediately cease. Capital isn’t circulating, and it isn’t being valorized, and this one person could not possibly get everyone to go along with treating them as god-emperor.

These kinds of hypotheticals will never come to pass, and thus it’s pointless to discuss beyond entertainment value.

The capitalist could buy everything for a penny. But they don’t have to. They own everything and can pay workers the wages for the workers to survive. But then the capitalist sells the goods for them at the stores at the prices that reflect the effort to produce them if the capitalist wants efficency, or any other price depending on the goals.

Market efficiency doesn’t exist here, there isn’t a market for labor. It’s one capitalist. Prices don’t come from thin-air, and the capitalist has no use for money because they own literally everything. Systems of accounting would not work here.

Make it a hundred.

A hundred competing mega-capitalists would still be close to collapse, but could feasibly exist. They would compete and actually be able to valorize their capital, the way capitalists exploit workers today.

In which way? Wiki couldn’t help me.

Simply imagining a society doesn’t mean it can actually exist. Anarcho-capitalism can’t exist because the state is what legitimizes property relations. Same with your example, both would fall apart into something new.

Decay lets some people suffer. Coupled with wars and fascism the system can still be stable. There must be something in humans that makes them want to cooperate. Organized suffering people alone will disperse when the suffering is over.

Humans naturally do cooperate, and we’ve seen workers organize to establish socialism. Further, fascism doesn’t really stabilize anything, and neither does war, it only temporarily buys time while accelerating revolutionary fervor.

Pixelfed is the fedi equivalent, maybe make an account there and mastodon.

So socialism is only stable if the people, and especially those in power are happy.

That’s true of any society, for the most part. Socialist countries do end up doing this much better than peer countries though. Also, in socialism, the working class is in power. Administrative positions exist, but they aren’t unaccountable or anything.

Isn’t that the same concentration of power?

Not at all. Collectivization of production and distribution into one democratically run system does naturally follow from the groundwork paved by late stage capitalism, yes, but this collectivization also brings with it democratization of power.

Only in global communism. The charged workers don’t have to be the same as the producing workers.

I don’t see how this relates to communism, moreover the working class as a whole is the class that produces and consumes. The company towns only worked somewhat because the commodities they produced were sold outside, making everything a company town wouldn’t work.

I know. It could be futile to wait for the collapse.

Still don’t see your point.

There can be circulation. People earn wages and buy commodities. It’s like socialism, just people get less because the capitalist get’s more than everybody else.

Not at all. Buying goods with money earned isn’t the same as circulation of capital. Capital transmogrifies from money to productive commodities to produced commodities back into money in a grand expanding circuit, but without such a system you no longer have capitalism, and prices collapse. This “mega-capitalist” would be overthrown instantly and socialism or barbarism would take its place.

If all resources are available there is no need to sell abroad, or to buy fron there.

There is for profit. You’re trying to create a weird utopian mega-capitalism that would, the instant it existed, collapse into socialism or barbarism.

Why is that inevitable?

A single person can’t actually own the entire economy. They would be ousted instantly. This is the same kind of utopian thinking that powers anarcho-capitalists.

Why rely on it instead of building a ‘we’ on its own?

We don’t, we rely on organizing. Capitalism’s decay speeds up that process.

Top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is self actualization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs

Per wikipedia the link you gave: Although widely used and researched, the hierarchy of needs has been criticized for its lack of conclusive supporting evidence and its validity remains contested. There is no innate human desire for power, just improving our lives. Power doesn’t foster a thirst for power.

How should they settle wages?

In a socialist economy, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy. Wages are more strongly controlled via the administration, but until we get to a point where we can distribute according to need, we will distribute according to work, including variance for skill, danger, and intensity. See how socialist countries already settle wages.

UBI in a democracy could be possible.

Democracy and capitalism are incompatible. Any social reforms gained by the working classes in the context of an economy dominated by capitalists will inevitably be limited in factor to how the capitalists wish. Democracy is only compatible with socialism and communism, for the most part.

That’s a definition thing. They still have to trade and network.

They don’t even need to do that, they pay people to do this. No value is created via ownership.

Which means the worker could be paid their full value while the profit comes from the buyer.

Workers are the buyers, except for luxury goods which are targeting capitalists, as well as industrial equipment, etc. Workers cannot be paid the full value of their labor and still have the capitalists profit. Your argument is that you can pay people more and charge more, but this is self-defeating again. Value isn’t created by ownership, nor by charging monopoly prices.

If it does, the owners can still remain in power and continue the processes without external valorization.

This doesn’t follow from capitalism being contradictory and unsustainable in the long run.

Give some people a nice distinctive hat and there is one.

Administration is not a distinct class, you’re trying to conjure an economy with no circulation of capital yet where everyone will accept the ruler. This is just anarcho-capitalism with extra steps, in that it would collapse immediately.

Why is the context important if one owns everything?

Because capitalists over company towns essentially had semi-slave labor while selling their commodities abroad, to better paid workers and other capitalists, as well as purchasing goods from outside of the company town. Company towns weren’t selling purely to their own workers.

Do the owners care if their control is not called capitalism anymore? Whatever it is, it doesn’t have to collapse.

It has to collapse if it is to remain capitalism, because the idea of a system where a single mega-capitalist owns everything in a closed system is one that has no opportunity for profit or gain, and so would immediately collapse into a socialist revolution.

Unless it is reset by war. Capitalists know how to keep workers occupied. There will never be so much pressure that the workers organize. To change things, workers must want it without suffering.

Workers have already successfully established socialism for billions of people, and as capitalism decays the suffering comes with it. Imperialism is collapsing and the rate of profit is falling.

Wouldn’t surprise me

Yep, I agree! Thought it was a new article.

Venezuelan tankers are now escorted by the Venezuelan navy, so siezure would likely have meant open war instead of normal crimes against humaniity.

I included links to valid sites, as well as to entirely western sources. It sounds like, more than anything, you’re upset with the facts at hand and how they are presented. A key example from yourself:

01/07/2021 The Verkhonva Rada adopted the law “On the indigenous peoples of Ukraine”, Russians were not included in the indigenous peoples

IT’S PROPAGANDA, BECAUSE: Russians are not classified as an indigenous people because they have an existing nation-state (the russian federation). This means that they are considered a national minority, the same as hungarians or romanians, and not an indigenous people. This is standard international practice.

Russians are the ones native to the Donbass region, which was added to Ukraine only a century ago. The fact that the Russian Federation exists does not mean that ethnic Russians aren’t indigenous to the Donbass region, and as such deserve special protections, and certainly not the ethnic cleansing they are subject to.

Same with phrasing Ukraine’s language laws as a ban. It isn’t a lie, you’re just more upset with those that take issue with Kiev cracking down on Russian speakers and are getting caught up in the phrasing. Ukraine is cracking down on Russians, and Russians were obviously upset. You’re doing the same thing people who try to claim there’s no systemic racism in the US because the laws don’t explicitly target people of color.

As for the person you’re defending, they admitted to being a Euronationalist:

A racist:

A dehumanizer of slavic people:

And defended their homophobia by saying I need to learn more about my own pansexuality:

You’re defending an anti-communist, Euronationalist, homphobic racist. In other words, the archetypical fascist, who is in this case trying their best to minimize the crimes against humanity of a far-right neo-Nazi regime that is ethnically cleansing their territory of Russians.

I encourage everyone to be vigilant against propaganda, and to avoid falling into the gish gallop trap that is commonly used. Take a short amount of quality time to pick one lie or one distortion of the truth apart, then call the poster/commenter out on it to ensure it isn’t left unchallenged, then move on with your life.

I just did this for you, thanks for the advice!