Crocs
Failing to have a coherent understanding of how imperialism works. A lot of westerners seem to think they live in developed countries developed purely by their own industry, while not realizing how financial capital continues to plunder the global south.
sometimes not acknowledging it even exists.
Definitely true as well.
Any resource you could recommend for someone who wants a better understanding of this?
Yes, actually! I wrote an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, you can skip straight to the “imperialism” section. It’ll be a bit difficult to jump straight there without the other sections, but it won’t be impossible. If you only read one, it should be Lenin’s Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism | Audiobook, which is by far the most clear and important work on the subject. The only problem is that imperialism has developed quite a lot since Lenin wrote it, and the US Empire is now unquestionably the top dog. For more on that, I recommend Michael Hudson’s Super-Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance.
If you only want a quick overview, though, Prolewiki’s article on imperialism is really good by itself.
Thank you for the quality resource! I realized I already had this saved but haven’t gotten to that section yet o7.
No problem! It’s a fair bit into the list because imperialism is both the number 1 most important contradiction in the world today, and quite an advanced topic when first delving into Marxism. If you already have the list saved, and have the time and willingness, I suggest following it the standard way - it’s much easier to understand when you have the background info!
I knew I had you tagged as Marxist - Leninist Bro for a reason ;P, properly appreciate the effort you’ve put into it. Yes, following the list as outlined is my intent - excited to delve into the imperialist section now, it’s something I’ve not put much intention towards learning beforehand, as such it’s awesome you’ve put together something so comprehensive.
Appreciate the kind words, thanks!
“We need to help African kids!”
These often don’t know a single African country besides “South Africa”
“immigration is why our lives are getting worse”
Very clear indicator that someone has barely attempted to understand how the world works
I mean yeah thats a good indication, but thinking about it, many asian countries also have this same feeling. So is it a westernized thought process or just “people are stupid as fuck” problem. I lean on the latter.
It’s a racism problem, which one might argue is people being stupid as fuck.
It’s a capitalist problem. As long as the billionaire class keeps us fighting a culture war amongst ourselves, we won’t realize that the actual war is a class war against them.
There are only two classes. The billionaires and the rest of us (that they call “labour”). If you can convince the labour class that they are divided by race, religion, etc… they’ll be too busy blaming each other to come burn down your mansion.
Its usually about placing value of life & comfort at top.
- “Everyone have right to life”
- “Death penalty should be banned”
- “Genocide is always bad”
- "Everyone have same value
- “My friends and my heroes have same value”
- “We must give our self grace”
ff you are a terrible person just say that, no need to make a list lmao
I don’t think you have open mind
that’s ok, everybody has a right to an opinion, even if it’s dog shit.
Totally buying the touristy theme park version of whatever other culture. No, the people at the resort don’t actually think you’re great. No, tripping with a self-proclaimed shaman who charges a month’s local wage to resolve your mommy issues is not how the locals do mysticism.
Does the self-proclaimed shaman actually resolve mommy issues though? Asking for a friend.
They’re primary job is to take your money, and make you believe you’ve been initiated into the new-agey secrets of the jungle and enlightened so you recommend them to other aggressively white idiots.
I’d stick with the real mental health professionals.
Someone once tole me only Western hippies believe in alternative medicine
I have some friends in Asia who are obsessed with it as well though.
Because you don’t live in Western bubble
I’m living in the west of Europe though.
In the west - yeah? Obviously third worlders also believe in various miracle healers and televangelist preachers and such, but those countries too have scientific minds and communities and bodies that practice evidence-based, aka “western” modern medicine.
When alternative medicine works, we call it medicine.
Example?
Acupuncture, leech therapy, meditation/yoga are the only ones I can think of. If theres someone reading with an interest in medical history I’d be willing to bet theres a list longer than Ron Jeremy
Thinking China is the same as it was 10-30 years ago and that Chinese products can’t have superior quality.
We’ve reached a point where the US doesn’t even know how to manufacture some of the stuff China can.
It’s not just, but very much an american thing to say. It’s almost every video on youtube.“i bought this power tool for $4 from china and man it’s bad.” All the comments are: hahaha china only makes shit, who could’ve guessed.
You can buy the best literally everything from china. But it’s not gonna be cheap. But then it’s like:“that’s too expensive for something from china.” I’m worried when something is “American made” because it’s an absolute gamble and the chances are really high that they use their weirdo measurements where you need magically sized tools to taje it apart.
I mean paying top dollar for slave labour made products is wild.
Slave labor is illegal in China, and working conditions have continuously been improving year over year for decades. The upper-level comment applies directly to that type of thinking you’re doing here.
Refering mostly to cases like the Ughers treatment in which many of them are sent into forced larbor around the country. The excessive use of state violence against workers organizing for better conditions is still something that is regurlary boasted about to encourage forign investment as well.
No, this is closer to fantasy than reality, you need to turn off Fox News. Regarding the treatment of Uyghurs, read Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation, and there isn’t excessice state violence against workers organizing for better conditions. In fact, the state most often sides with the workers against capitalists.
Is unionzation legal in the majority of China now?
Yes, just not in a way that goes against the socialist system.
They literally own the means of production
“They” just doesnt seem to be the average Chinese citizen.
The large firms and key industries in China are overwhelmingly publicly owned:
State owned to mean public owned depends on the robustness of the democratic pratices of the state to me
China is comprehensively democratic as well, and has high approval rates for it:
They literally own the workers
I’ve recently been getting some stupidly high-quality stuff from China for insanely good prices.
Essentially, I’ve been buying stuff from Walmart that has been marked down over $100. What I think is happening is no-name Chinese companies try to make a high quality product and sell it for a premium, but then nobody buys it because of the reputation no-name Chinese companies have. Then, they still need to sell their inventory so we can get great products at great prices.
These bluetooth headphones from a company I’ve never heard on straight up shit on the Sennheisers I used to have that cost significantly more.
It’s more that China already produces so much of what, say, Statesians consume. US-based companies offshore production and sell domestically at higher prices, but if you go straight to the manufacturers, you can get closer to the prices the US-based companies are already buying them for. These products are often made at the same factories, even, but don’t have the US branding, that’s about it.
I got my glasses from a Chinese company that owns the entire chain of production. Excellent quality, and even lower priced than “cheap” American stores like Walmart that just resell.
I see that clearly when i buy products from Aliexpress or Temu and shops in Poland are full of literally the same items but 3-5 times the price. Hell some of the internet shops openly does the thing that you buys something and only then they order it in China for you but you still pay 3-5 times the price.
Glass shops are the same way.
They order their inventory on DHgate then mark it up at least 100%.
I think some Chinese brands need to own their premium prices. It might be difficult with electronics however.
There are steels that premium Chinese brands can make that are objectively better that nobody else has produced yet and they are VERY expensive.
Romanticising armed revolution.
Pretty common around the world IME
Yeah. Places actually in armed conflict don’t like it. Afterwards, history gets rewritten as mythology.
“They should just protest/go on the street/revolt/start a revolution” when talking about Russia or, to some extend, other countries like China or Noth Korea.
It’s not even that this is a highly brutal military state that will kill you without blinking. Or that they will not just put you in prison but threaten your family if you dare to resist. It’s not even the cover ups, or that no news on easily accessible media would run a story about your case.
I’d argue it is the underestimation of how propaganda gets you. All of you. All of us, me and you. No one is immune. And I’m not just talking about “oh our government and leader is the best”. I’m talking about generations of oppression where you know that this one uncle or neighbor who tried something, who tried to be different, to change something, just brought destruction over himself and his loved ones. It’s the propaganda of “just look away, don’t bother, your actions won’t change anything, just try to live your life as nicely as you can”.
Thinking people who were raised with this mindset, by people who have the same mindset because they in turn were raised by people with a similar mindset, can just “get up and revolt” is so naive.
I also want that, sure, I also want them to get up and revolt, desperately, but man, you have no idea, do you.
Funny, CIA wants them to revolt too.
People in countries like China don’t revolt because the system works for them and supports them. It’s ironic that you claim propaganda impacts all of us, while then immediately repeating the most bog-standard anti-communist propaganda straight from the US state department. I highly recommend reading False Witnesses, “Brainwashing”, and Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing” in order to better understand how people think, and how propaganda actually works. Propaganda works by providing justification for what people perceive to materially benefit them, not by simply convincing them of fantasy.
Thanks for your comment, it made me realize I mixed two things together. What I referred to is not really propaganda. It is lived experience. If you have not seen one person who successfully changed something and everyone who tried had to bear immense consequences - not just them but their loved ones - your motivation to try approaches zero. You get taught it’s not worth it. You’re powerless, and to be fair, it is rather true.
And yes, life in Russia is, for the most part, decent. You have a job. You have access to education, movies, you can build a family, buy an apartment, start a business. You can have fun. It’s not a free life with endless possibilities, there are suppressions, no free elections, all that jazz. But your everyday life is pretty ok. Why give that up for the pursuit of some higher ideal like freedom. Yeah it sucks that other people die but it’s not you, and if you would so much as go outside with a piece of paper saying “No War”, your life as you know it is fucked, and the people who suffer won’t be any better off either. Solidarity is not worth the price of your sacrificing yourself and your loved ones.
Maybe I would call it self made propaganda, but this is just a gut feeling, not a real term.
All 3 of the countries you bring up are different. Russia is the most likely to have a revolution, while the PRC and DPRK are the least likely, less likely than countries like the US or UK.
Russia is currently in the position its in because capitalism was devastating for them. The west came in and plundered and looted the former productive forces until the nationalists kicked them out (Putin’s faction), running themselves into an even more hostile situation with the west. Communist party membership is rising, soviet nostalgia is rising, and now even the ruling class is paying lip service to Lenin, Stalin, and their soviet heritage.
China is not going to have a revolution because it’s socialist and the system works for the people. It’s plain and simple, the people support their system at a far higher rate than western countries:.
The DPRK is in a situation similar to Cuba. It’s heavily sanctioned, but does fairly well when considering just how devastating both the Korean War and the Arduous March were (in the 90s, when the Soviet Union fell). Its economy is growing around 3.5%-4% per year, and food is relatively secure now too. The people blame the US Empire for the lack of their ability to trade and sell outside, though they now do trade heavily with Russia and China, meaning they are less likely than ever to revolt.
Neither the PRC nor the DPRK are perfect, of course, but they are far from revolution, not because of something like “propaganda” but because their systems don’t work like you think they do.
Maybe more of a US bubble but American software never considers that people might be multi lingual and public transport is always disregarded.
Examples include: Google knows that I speak German and English since I put it in my settings and yet it tries to auto-dub German YouTube content and auto-translates German comments in Maps.
Public transport stops only appear in Google Maps when you zoom in quite a lot despite being some of the most important points of interest when using public transport. Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
Those are just examples, there are many more examples in software where you can notice some 20 year old US tech bro came up with it whose never been to a different country.
I had never noticed public transport stops being missing in maps, but that is probably because there are no public transport stops where I live. I had noticed it always greys out the bus when I ask for directions though.
Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
This reminded me of a few months ago when I went to Milan with a friend. I used Organic Maps for getting around and they used Gmaps. Their phone was always trying to get us to walk as little as possible, using EVERY possible combination of metro, tram and busses for even the shortest trips, it was insane. Change bus here, ride one stop, get on the metro, change to the other line, get back on a bus, take the tram, it never ended. Same trip on organic maps was 3 changes on the metro and a 5 minute walk at the end.
Examples include: Google knows that I speak German and English since I put it in my settings and yet it tries to auto-dub German YouTube content and auto-translates German comments in Maps.
I actually have the opposite problem. Sometimes when googling something I get auto translated results (mostly reddit posts tho), and a week ago the YouTube app on my phone decided to auto translate English video titles.
No, I DON’T want your shitty Dutch auto translation. Give me the original English. I am not English illiterate and you 100% know it, Google.
Even worse. Recently I was watching a video in Dutch, and it decided to automatically translate the sound to English. AI generated. That was just…it sounded so fucked up.
And why does YouTube think it needs to do that? If I want that, I’ll so it myself.
What the fuck, I’m glad that hasn’t happened to me yet
Public transport stops only appear in Google Maps when you zoom in quite a lot despite being some of the most important points of interest when using public transport. Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
Maybe its a personal experience or a US problem, but when I was in Japan Google Maps was a godsend for navigating the subway and railway system. I learned quickly to trust that system because they had rail cars coming and going constantly. Ignoring the system caused me to get onto the right train, but that train was a full service train saand stopped at each individual station. Had I waited 2 minutes as directed I would have gotten on the limited service train and arrived at my destination many minutes faster.
An LGBT group that advocates for a country that executes LGBT people, or even just people suspected of being queer. It was a very depressing double take.
That was years ago. Now, little surprises me. Humans are idiots and are extremely shortsighted when it comes to climate change and politics. It will be interesting to see if we can salvage things before there is a large scale ecosystem collapse.
Unlike Interstellar, there’s no portal that’s going to give us access to other earth-like worlds.
Which LGBT group and which country are you talking about?
The best outcome for queer Palestinians is the dissolution of the fascist Zionist state killing far more of them than any resistance group. After being free from genocide, social progress happens far faster. Israel completing its genocide means no more queer Palestinians.
True, that really took off in Iran after they kicked the west out decades ago.
Iran is under intense sanctions and is targeted heavily by fascist warmongering, which also stunts social progress. They’d be set back if they fell to western imperialism. You could just as easily point to Cuba, whose family code is now among the most progressive in the world. Meanwhile, you’re advocating for the genocide of Palestinians and siding with fascists. Do some major self-crit, you’re indistinguishable from fascists.
Israel kills far more Palestinian gays than Palestine does
I would like to submit, for the question in the post, “thinking opposing the literal extermination of an entire country means uncritically supporting every single policy of the country’s government”
Can’t be gay when you’re blown to pieces by Israeli missiles can you?
Israel has executed at least three orders of magnitude more LGBT people than Palestine ever did.
anything that implies they’ve only learned European and US history (e.g. discounting the global technological contributions of Asia and Africa)
Okay I’ll bite. So the asian-african industrial revolution?
The Haya in Tanzania were making steel 2000-2300 years ago
Cool. Seriously!
But if it didn’t change history (did they even genocide??! /s ) then we won’t learn it in base school I guess.
I don’t really understand either of your questions. Is there something you are trying to ask?
Valmond is legitimately curious and reinforces the issue with westernized learning, the only history taught is very basic colonization and your home countries history. The problem is worldwide, if it isnt related to your country or white history in general, you need to perform extracurricular learning to get an understanding of actual history.
You taught them something they didnt know
I explained why we don’t learn that in school. Don’t you understand what I’m saying? I’m not a native English speaker.
I have one for this!
I once asked someone “In school, who were you taught invented vaccination?”
I thought she’d say Edward Jenner. In fact it was well-known in West Africa and the Ottoman Empire a century before Jenner (PDF)
She said George Washington!
In France we only know Louis Pasteur, first time i’m hearing about Edward Jenner
Same here in the UK, but Alexander Fleming
Variolation isn’t vaccination though. AFAIK Jenner did invent vaccination.
In the original sense of exposing people to vaccina (cowpox virus), it is not. In the modern sense, it’s an attenuated vaccine.
Even I didn’t know about that! That’s really cool ty for sharing
“Nambia”
measuring food in cups
