Capitalism, Marxism and Related Matters

[IdleRich]

"personally i think the great victory of capitalism is on an individual level, its appeal to self interest. on that level it is almost indissolubly powerful. if any of you were among the excluded rather than than beneficiaries i expect you would feel differently."

Maybe, but surely ideological capitalists believe (or claim to believe) that it is the system that maximises the amount of prosperity for humanity as a whole and that it if it working properly the poorest people will still be better off than they would be under communism - that to have smaller share of a much bigger pie is better than the alternative. Hence all the talk of absolute versus relative poverty, trickle down, rising tide lifts all boats etc
Obviously, as much discussed, this is controversial and also as an analysis it ignores factors other than prosperity as a way to measure human success and happiness.

 

[crackerjack]

Maybe, but surely ideological capitalists believe (or claim to believe) that it is the system that maximises the amount of prosperity for humanity as a whole and that it if it working properly the poorest people will still be better off than they would be under communism - that to have smaller share of a much bigger pie is better than the alternative. Hence all the talk of absolute versus relative poverty, trickle down, rising tide lifts all boats etc
Obviously, as much discussed, this is controversial and also as an analysis it ignores factors other than prosperity as a way to measure human success and happiness.

Fascinating piece on Angola here (my bolds)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/31/angola.elections

The parliamentary poll is a crucial test for this south west African country - hitherto associated with conflict and land mines - which is the world's fastest-growing economy. Luanda, remarkably, has overtaken Tokyo as the most expensive capital on the planet. In three years, the former Portuguese colony's oil output will match Kuwait's. Angola is China's single biggest oil supplier. And the supplies are not about to run out.

But for ordinary Angolans - who between 1961 and 2002 endured successive wars - the boom remains elusive, although economic growth last year was estimated at 24 per cent. The population of 12 million languishes in the lower development indicators of life expectancy, education and wealth. The gap between rich and poor is a chasm: while the middle classes pay $20,000 a month rent for an unimpressive one-bedroom flat in central Luanda, millions live in shanty towns around the capital. Aid statistics show two thirds of the population are surviving on less than $2 per day.

Unemployment is high - between 40 and 60 per cent - and infant mortality rates are among the worst in the world, with about a quarter of children dying before the age of five.

 

[droid]

Because it is false? Cambodia or Viet Nam are hardly Neighbours of the Soviet Union. Moreover by fucking with your immediate neighbours, your gain new neighbours and so on

Are you saying that Vietnam and Cambodia were invaded by the Soviet union?

If so, that's a demented cold war fantasy. Even hardline pro Western historians have acknowledged that the Soviet role in Vietnam was extremely limited. And as for Cambodia? I cant think of any serious commentator who has even suggested soviet interference there.

Consider the state departments' opinion:

It is amusing to trace the efforts to establish that Ho Chi Minh was merely a Russian (or Chinese) puppet – as obviously must be the case. The State Department, in July, 1948, could find "no evidence of direct link between Ho and Moscow" (but naturally "assumes it exists").29 State Department intelligence, in the fall, found evidence of "Kremlin-directed conspiracy . . . in virtually all countries except Vietnam." Indochina appeared "an anomaly." How can this be explained? To intelligence, the most likely explanation is that "no rigid directives have been issued by Moscow" or that "a special dispensation for the Vietnam government has been arranged in Moscow" (I, 5, 34). In September, 1948, the State Department noted that "There continues to be no known communication between the USSR and Vietnam, although evidence is accumulating that a radio liaison may have been established through the Tass agency in Shanghai" (DOD, book 8, 148, grasping at straws). American officials in Saigon added that "No evidence has yet turned up that Ho Chi Minh IS receiving current directives either from Moscow, China, or the Soviet Legation in Bangkok." "It may be assumed," they conclude from this, "that Moscow feels that Ho and his lieutenants have had sufficient training and experience and are sufficiently loyal to be trusted to determine their day-to-day policy without supervision" (ibid., 151). By February, 1949, they were relieved to discover that "Moscow publications of fairly recent date are frequently seized by the French," indicating that "satisfactory communications exist," though the channel remains a mystery (ibid., 168; also "there has been surprising[ly] little direct cooperation between local Chinese Communists and the Viet Minh").

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1972----.htm

... Anyway, Marxism is explicitly and openly an imperialist ideology with the goal of establishing a world-wide socialist state. The reason many state communists governments could not carry out their expansionist plans for world domination, is because they were contained in the cold war by the west. Most of the items of aggression in your list would not have happened but for a need to contain the Soviet Union, and China.

Uh-huh. Thats right.

Western acts are always defensive and benign... Communist states are bloodthristy expansionists trying to ensnare the globe with their evil plots, prevented from doing so only because of brave American self sacrifice. that explains why NATO disbanded after the USSR collapsed and why the US and UK decommissioned its nuclear arsenal and stopped invading other countries after the Warsaw pact collapsed.

This is mind-numbingly simplistic textbook coldwar propaganda.

The threat was not primarily the USSR and China, which were not aggressively expansionist. The threat (as seen by US planners) was from national independent movements and social revolutionaries in 3rd world countries potentially preventing access to the exploitation of 3rd world resources

Try reading the Pentagon papers sometime. Its mostly spelled out there.

One can and should question some of the technique used by the west, especially in supporting dodgy dictators in the 3rd world, but seeing them without acknowledging a need to contain stalinist and maoist states is a gross distortion.

Yes. Question the techniques, but never their motives.

And I agree that an analysis of global politics during the cold war without a distorted and false propagandistic filter would look like a gross distortion to the naive and credulous observer.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Bear in mind how grim Britain was during the Industrial Revolution, as the 'tide had begun to rise.'

'the USSR was not aggressively expansionist' LOL

 

[droid]

'the USSR was not aggressively expansionist' LOL

Indeed. I would LOL at a traditionalist view of the cold war that was discredited as far back as the mid 60s, but unfortunately, you're serious.

In sum, traditionalists portray the Soviet Union as an expansionist, ideologically driven power and the West as primarily reactive; revisionists argue that the Soviets were reactive, and the United States expansionist; post-revisionists, while assigning some responsibility for the Cold War to Soviet expansionist pressures, often place equal or greater blame on the United States; realists portray the Soviets as highly reactive because of the security dilemma, and therefore generally defensive and cautious.

So tell me. As a the most basic of indicators, exactly how many countries did the USSR invade during the cold war?

 

[droid]

Heres an interesting exercise. If the West's unsavoury actions during the cold war were simply an attempt to protect the free world and contain Soviet and Chinese expansion, then there would have been a sea change in policy after the fall of the USSR and the integration of China into the World economy.

Right?

Some random commentator has done the following study comparing US policy in Columbia during and post cold war that touches on the differing views of the cold war:

http://uk.geocities.com/dstokes14/choms.htm

 

[Mr. Tea]

So tell me. As a the most basic of indicators, exactly how many countries did the USSR invade during the cold war?

Quite a few...

In the aftermath of World War II, the Soviet Union extended its political and military influence over Eastern Europe, in a move that was seen by some as a continuation of the older policies of the Russian Empire. Some territories that had been lost by Soviet Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) were annexed by the Soviet Union after WWII: the Baltic States and eastern portions of interwar Poland. The Russian SFSR also gained the northern half of East Prussia (Kaliningrad Oblast) from Germany. The Ukrainian SSR gained Transcarpathia (as Zakarpattia Oblast) from Slovakia, and Ukrainian populated Northern Bukovina (as Chernivtsi Oblast) from Romania. Finally, in the late 1940s, pro−Soviet Communist Parties won the elections in five countries of Central and Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) and subsequently became Stalinist dictatorships. These elections are generally regarded as rigged, and the Western powers did not recognize the elections as legitimate. For the duration of the Cold War, the countries of Eastern Europe became Soviet satellite states — they were "independent" nations, which were one-party Communist States whose General Secretary had to be approved by the Kremlin, and so their governments usually kept their policy in line with the wishes of the Soviet Union, although nationalistic forces and pressures within the satellite states played a part in causing some deviation from strict Soviet rule.

...especially if you include those countries that weren't physically invaded but became de facto Soviet satellite states as a means of survival.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...927–1953)#Soviet_hegemony_over_Eastern_Europe

Then there was the repression of the Hungarian uprising in the '50s, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the '60s and the invasion of Afghanistan in '79 (which may have involved American provocation, but that doesn't alter the fact of Soviet aggression) - to say nothing of war crimes committed against Poland as the Red Army rolled across it after the retreating Nazis.

Edit: you could even include the Russian civil war and subsequent formation of the USSR itself...

 

[crackerjack]

Quite a few...



...especially if you include those countries that weren't physically invaded but became de facto Soviet satellite states as a means of survival.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...927–1953)#Soviet_hegemony_over_Eastern_Europe

Then there was the repression of the Hungarian uprising in the '50s, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the '60s and the invasion of Afghanistan in '79 (which may have involved American provocation, but that doesn't alter the fact of Soviet aggression) - to say nothing of war crimes committed against Poland as the Red Army rolled across it after the retreating Nazis.

Edit: you could even include the Russian civil war and subsequent formation of the USSR itself...

I think Droid's (pedantic) point will be that the Cold War began after WWII, by when the USSR already had its empire on lock. So the answer is the three you've mentioned above: Hungary, Czecholsavakia and Afghanistan.

(soviet war crimes dring WWII weren;t confined to Poland - Stalin indulged in mindboggling population shifts. In fact, the little local difficulty Georgia's been having might be the consequence of one of them - I'm gonna check)

 

[droid]

Quite a few...

..especially if you include those countries that weren't physically invaded but became de facto Soviet satellite states as a means of survival.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...927–1953)#Soviet_hegemony_over_Eastern_Europe

So, it becomes 'quite a few' if you include those countries that weren't actually invaded during the cold war ? :slanted:

Then there was the repression of the Hungarian uprising in the '50s, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in the '60s and the invasion of Afghanistan in '79 (which may have involved American provocation, but that doesn't alter the fact of Soviet aggression) - to say nothing of war crimes committed against Poland as the Red Army rolled across it after the retreating Nazis.

So we're taking wartime acts into consideration now as well? My atomic bombing of Japan trumps your wartime atrocities in Poland so. :slanted::slanted:

FYI, the cold war is traditionally believed to have started with the Truman doctrine in 48 and the Berlin blockade. It was known as far back as Yalta that the soviets would attempt to absorb former territory and form a buffer zone against countries in Western Europe that had tried time and again to destroy them...

If you're at all serious in discussion about expansion, you really have to look at the postwar period after the intial aftermath of the war, from 48 on, and apart from Korea (maybe) and Afghanistan (both arguably reactive actions), (Czechoslovakia and Hungary could technically be seen as internal actions, but it makes no difference) there simply are no major soviet armed interventions - and this is a period in which soviet intervention is cited as being ubiquitous. Espionage and dirty tricks? Sure, but nothing at all like the scale and frequency of Western actions which continued through the 60s, 70s and 80s, as I have illustrated...

BTW Tea, are you going to continue responding to my points whilst ignoring the refutations I make to your responses?

EDIT - Spot on Crackerjack!

 

[droid]

Edit: you could even include the Russian civil war and subsequent formation of the USSR itself...

bzzkk... logic and history units overloading...

KABOOM!

:slanted:

 

[crackerjack]

(soviet war crimes dring WWII weren;t confined to Poland - Stalin indulged in mindboggling population shifts. In fact, the little local difficulty Georgia's been having might be the consequence of one of them - I'm gonna check)

It wasn't.

Stalin drew the borders of the Soviet republics to ensure Georgia contained autonomous ethnic entities, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Adzharia, through which Moscow could keep Georgia in order.

 

[Mr. Tea]

If you're at all serious in discussion about expansion, you really have to look at the postwar period after the intial aftermath of the war, from 48 on, and apart from Korea (maybe) and Afghanistan (both arguably reactive actions), (Czechoslovakia and Hungary could technically be seen as internal actions, but it makes no difference) there simply are no major soviet armed interventions...

What do you mean, "technically seen as internal actions"? Internal, because those countries were at that time under effective Soviet control anyway, so they weren't technically aggressive acts against foreign countries? Sorry, but I'm failing to see how this shores up your "USSR not imperialist" argument.

BTW Tea, are you going to continue responding to my points whilst ignoring the refutations I make to your responses?

If it looks that way it's because this is a rather asymmetrical argument. I don't think I've claimed, at any point in this thread, that capitalist countries post-WWII haven't launched unjustified wars and other actions abroad to further their own agendas; I'm just saying that communist countries have too, so harping on about Vietnam or the Suez crisis is not in itself much of a defense of communist foreign policies.
I'm not denying capitalist imperialism; you seem to be denying, or at least severely downplaying, communist imperialism.

And as for:

bzzkk... logic and history units overloading...

I'm not too sure all those peasants in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and so on were given a nice democratic referendum on whether they wanted to be part of the USSR, are you? My point is that the USSR was effectively an empire since its inception, long before it started gobbling up eastern Europe. OK, so that was before the Cold War - not sure why this is such an important distinction, it still happened.

 

[crackerjack]

in no sense did Margaret Thatcher leave office peacefully, she was pushed out by her own party

In the sense that no one was killed during her overthrow then she most certainly did leave peacefully (but I won't reach for my dictionary again, as I know how much some people round here dislike definitions that can't be reinterpreted on the hoof )

 

[droid]

What do you mean, "technically seen as internal actions"? Internal, because those countries were at that time under effective Soviet control anyway, so they weren't technically aggressive acts against foreign countries? Sorry, but I'm failing to see how this shores up your "USSR not imperialist" argument.

I never made that argument, I claimed that they were not aggressively expansionist. When I say internal actions I mean actions against areas that were already under USSR control, which I then follow with the statement 'not that it makes any difference' because even with those countries included, the thesis does not stand up...

Get it?

If it looks that way it's because this is a rather asymmetrical argument. I don't think I've claimed, at any point in this thread, that capitalist countries post-WWII haven't launched unjustified wars and other actions abroad to further their own agendas; I'm just saying that communist countries have too, so harping on about Vietnam or the Suez crisis is not in itself much of a defense of communist foreign policies.

And I never said it was. I made those points in response to arguments that capitalist countries are peaceful and, following that, that capitalist aggression was a response to soviet expansion. People (like yourself have responded with ridiculous statements like 'what about Vietnam', which I have replied to, and those replies have been ignored.

I'm not denying capitalist imperialism; you seem to be denying, or at least severely downplaying, communist imperialism.

Im sorry, but thats just pathetic.

Apart from the fact that I have repeatedly stating that I am not denying communist aggression and have even pointed out communist crimes you have missed in your rigorous analysis, surely you are the one 'severely' downplaying Western aggression?

Theres a list of what? 50 or so countries there (and thats not all of them) which have been victims of Western interference and aggression during and since the cold war, and all you can do is maintain that the communists were the real bad guys based on the fact that they invaded 6 or 7 states during a 40 year period.

m not too sure all those peasants in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and so on were given a nice democratic referendum on whether they wanted to be part of the USSR, are you? My point is that the USSR was effectively an empire since its inception, long before it started gobbling up eastern Europe. OK, so that was before the Cold War - not sure why this is such an important distinction, it still happened.

For the love of god. The current point is 'was the soviet union aggressively expansionist during the cold war?. - and you respond with something about the formation of the USSR and the Russian 'civil' war???

It beggars belief.. but OK, lets look at that:

These are the numbers of the foreign soldiers who occupied the indicated regions of Russia:

* 50,000 Czechoslovaks (along the Trans-Siberian railway) [5]
* 28,000 Japanese, later increased to 70,000 (all in the Vladivostok region) [6]
* 24,000 Greeks (in Crimea)[7]
* 13,000 Americans (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
* 12,000 Poles (mostly in Crimea and the Ukraine)
* 4,000 Canadians (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
* 4,000 Serbs (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
* 4,000 Romanians (in the Arkhangelsk region)
* 2,000 Italians (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
* 2,000 Chinese (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
* 1,600 British (in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
* 1,200 French and French colonial (mostly in the Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok regions)
* 560 Australians (mostly in the Arkhangelsk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

As I said in an earlier post 'many communist states were attacked from the moment of conception'...

And why stop there? Lets go back a bit further.. I hear that Britain was once 'an empire'. And I don't remember an referendums in the wild west when the natives were being slaughtered... :slanted:

 

[fokse vektaire xeven]

In the sense that no one was killed during her overthrow then she most certainly did leave peacefully (but I won't reach for my dictionary again, as I know how much some people round here dislike definitions that can't be reinterpreted on the hoof )

Reaching for the dictionary is something my old man used to do around the family dinner table. Constant appeals to a higher authority. It happens here a lot too.

I assume you're fucking around, but i'm not sure what the joke is.

 

[Slothrop]

Reaching for the dictionary is something my old man used to do around the family dinner table. Constant appeals to a higher authority. It happens here a lot too.

If you're thinking of the racism thread, it's not an attempt to appeal to authority to prove yourself right, it's an attempt to get people to either use words in a commonly used sense or to acknowledge that they're being used nonstandardly. Otherwise we might argue based on "aha it's no means yes day so I win."

 

[fokse vektaire xeven]

And i was using the word "peace" in a standard way. anyway- cj was fucking about....

If you're thinking of the racism thread, it's not an attempt to appeal to authority to prove yourself right, it's an attempt to get people to either use words in a commonly used sense or to acknowledge that they're being used nonstandardly. Otherwise we might argue based on "aha it's no means yes day so I win."

i wasn't, so i'm not sure if we're on the same page. i will say this over familiar discursive tactic that aims to define people into a strict, rigorous position in order to cite formal argumentative exceptions is utterly pointless, though i realise the education we receive in this country encourages us to think that way.

 

[droid]

And i was using the word "peace" in a standard way. anyway- cj was fucking about....



i wasn't, so i'm not sure if we're on the same page. i will say this over familiar discursive tactic that aims to define people into a strict, rigorous position in order to cite formal argumentative exceptions is utterly pointless, though i realise the education we receive in this country encourages us to think that way.

But of course, if you cant even define terms of reference or the meaning of words, it makes it almost impossible to have any kind of reasoned discussion and everything becomes meaningless, and god knows, its difficult enough as it is...

 

[Mr. Tea]

But of course, if you cant even define terms of reference or the meaning of words, it makes it almost impossible to have any kind of reasoned discussion and everything becomes meaningless, and god knows, its difficult enough as it is...

I'm with comrade droid on this one.

 

[fokse vektaire xeven]

ok, carry on exchanging wikipedia entries.