☭ Lily ☭ @ Lilybump @lemmygrad.ml

Posts

7

Comments

11

Joined

3 mo. ago

If you keep talking about him, you are just giving him more reason to keep creating alternative accounts. It is natural for somebody to want to defend themselves.

I have become more and more convinced—and it is only a question of driving this conviction home to the English working class — that it can never do anything decisive here in England until it separates its policy with regard to Ireland most definitely from the policy of the ruling classes, until it not only makes common cause with the Irish but even takes the initiative in dissolving the Union established in 1801 and replacing it by a free federal relationship. And this must be done, not as a matter of sympathy with Ireland but as a demand made in the interests of the English proletariat. If not, the English people will remain tied to the leading-strings of the ruling classes, because it will have to join with them in a common front against Ireland. Every one of its movements in England itself is crippled by the strife with the Irish, who form a very important section of the working class in England. The primary condition of emancipation here—the overthrow of the English landed oligarchy—remains impossible because its position here cannot be stormed so long as it maintains its strongly entrenched outposts in Ireland. But, once affairs are in the hands of the Irish people itself, once it is made its own legislator and ruler, once it becomes autonomous, the abolition there of the landed aristocracy (to a large extent the same persons as the English landlords) will be infinitely easier than here, because in Ireland it is not merely a simple economic question but at the same time a national question, for the landlords there are not, like those in England, the traditional dignitaries and representatives of the nation, but its mortally hated oppressors. And not only does England’s internal social development remain crippled by her present relations with Ireland; but also her foreign policy, and in particular her policy with regard to Russia and the United States of America. —Marx, Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann In Hanover

In other words, for the British workers to liberate themselves, they must fight for the Irish workers and support them in both words and deeds. Marx advocated replacing the U.K. with a voluntary federation of nations, quite akin to the U.S.S.R.

I recommend this excellent video which refutes third-worldist narratives on the labor aristocracy.

Replacing class struggle with national struggle is not going to better our movement. Western workers are still exploited and as proletarians (which is defined by their relations to the means of production, not their income level), their class interests remains in socialism.

I am not being dismissive.

Exactly. Our goal should be world socialist revolution, not capitalist multipolarity.

I feel like this question can only come from someone in the imperial core.

I am trying to understand this question as a Marxist through a Marxist lens. Marxism has the same answers to questions regardless of where you are.

Nobody is suggesting that Russia will become an imperialist power in the course of a day or even a few years. Rather, what is being suggested is that Russia will become one after a difficult series of armed conflicts, annexations, etc. etc. Looking at Nazi Germany, it went from being a defeated imperialist power with practically no sphere of influence to one which conquered nearly all of Europe and waged war in multiple continents in the course of a few years.

Let us no forget that the Russian state was born out of reaction to a similar extent the EU countries were, coming out of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and rise of the new Soviet bourgeoisie, its undemocratic and illegal dissolution, the rapid introduction of neoliberal "shocktherapy" under Yeltsin, the events of 1993, etc. This state is obviously and backwards force with horrible origins and so it becoming imperialist is not far away to say the least.

But isn't having major powers divided going to cause yet another world war which will kill millions or perhaps billions? Wouldn't the end result be Russian unipolarity and thus the same issues you mentioned?

Even if Russia is not an imperialist power currently, the nature of capitalism (constant consolidation into fewer and fewer entities, competing over the division and redivision of resources and land) demands that in the absence of an imperialist power, a new one will form. Marxists hold that the dialectical framework understands things to be in constant movement and change over time.

What is to say that the anti-imperialist Russian Federation will not simply take the place of the United States upon its defeat?

ProtonVPN works very well, even with its free option.