Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication
I think this really needs to be stressed. Venezuela is a country building Socialism. Maduro and the PSUV is in power because of a genuinely incredible mass movement of communes, neighborhood committees, and other organs of grassroots democracy. This is qualitatively different from say, any of the Gulf oil monarchies
Marxist does not get to exclusively define what imperialism is
Marxism isn't the only analytical lens out there, no. But the people you're arguing with are working with that definition, which is why I took the time to clarify. Thank you for appreciating my effort post though lol
The Marxist definition of imperialism is more specific than just "big country invade small country".
In, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin lays out five aspects of what makes Imperialism:
the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;
the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and
the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
The question of "Is Russia Imperialist" isn't a moral one, it's a technical one. So if Russia were do to something that we all agree is morally reprehensible, that's a separate concern from whether Russia is imperialist.
The technicality revolves around whether Russia has developed an oligarchy of Financial Capital, such that its invasion of Ukraine or other flexes of its influence, perpetuates the export of Russian finance capital around the world.
As it stands now, I don't think that's currently the case, but with Marxism being a dialectal philosophy, I do wonder if this war will accelerate that merging of Bank and industrial capital that Lenin discusses. It's a Bourgeois states, and there's financial capital in there somewhere that absolutely has an interest in forming a Russian imperialism.
So when people say "Russia isn't Imperialist", this is what's being referred to. You can take it or leave it, but it's worth getting into the weeds a bit, so we aren't all talking passed each other
The largest civil conflict in the United States, since the Civil War, were the Coal Wars in Appalachia, and those Socialist coal miners were pretty fucking rad
I saw the title, and hoped someone was summoning Demons from the Key of Solomon or some shit. Like they were worried about their dog getting possessed.
But yeah, "am I hurting my dog's brain with a card trick" is pretty funny too
Ok, so I looked at the more recent data you're pointing people towards, and according to that, the US is #11 in per capita emissions, and China is #29.
So a bigger spread than the data on Wikipedia, that I cited earlier
First of all, why are you talking about me in third person, like I'm not here? Your comment literally appeared in my inbox.
Secondly, if you have more up to date data, then by all means, feel free to post it. I cited Wikipedia because it was easy to find and reference, but anyone who has ever done research onows primary sources are better.
I'm not here to brigade or pull the wool over your eyes, I'm just having a conversation on a tiny, inconsequential, internet forum
I don't think that's true. I made the prediction, after that healthcare CEO got shot, that Stochastic Political Assassinations would be the hip new thing, and I think this past year has proven me right.
It's a proxy server that works kind of like an Advanced version of the Wayback Machine. So old PCs like this, can connect to something like what the internet would've been like when they were first made.
I have the Protoweb browser on my Linux mint machine, running through wine. It's fun to poke around at, and great for internet archaeology
As an ML, I'm quite fond of other leftists, thank you very much.
While we might have our disagreements, some of them quite stark, I still get along with my Trotskyist or Anarchist friends, and their struggles are also my struggle. I might disagree with how they're going about it, but that's what critical support is for.
That's because the west exported all of its manufacturing there.
China is among the highest in raw carbon emissions, but has an extremely low per-capita emissions rate. Compared to the US, who's per-capita emissions rate is among the highest in the world.
Plus, China is making a sharp pivot towards the development of renewable energy, electric vehicles, and transit oriented development.
And the global supply chain its been building, whatever one might think of the Belt and Road initiative, allows them to cheaply sell things like solar panels and rail infrastructure back to the countries supplying them with raw materials. Allowing those countries to electrify in such a way as to skip over more carbon heavy forms of power generation.
There's context here, and saying "But China burns so much coal!" doesn't tell the whole story. They're not burning it in a vacuum, for funsies.
I think this really needs to be stressed. Venezuela is a country building Socialism. Maduro and the PSUV is in power because of a genuinely incredible mass movement of communes, neighborhood committees, and other organs of grassroots democracy. This is qualitatively different from say, any of the Gulf oil monarchies
I highly recommend the books Building The Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, and Commune or Nothing: Venezuela's Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project, for a look at these aspects of Venezuelan politics, because it's often papered over in discussions about the country.