If people in Russia "support" the war, it is because the bourgeoisie control the flow of information and education in the country and uses it to instill beliefs in the proletariat that benefit their rule. The ruling class of every country in the world disseminates ideas of nationalism using its vast resource to ensure the population consents to being cannon fodder for "national interests". In reality the working class shares no interests with its ruling class or "nation" at all.
Capital in Russia isn't controlled by a bourgeoisie structurally aligned with liberal values as in classic Marxism; it's controlled by an oligarchy descended partly from imperialist Soviet officials (e.g. Mr. Putin of the KGB) and partly from organized crime.
Sooo... what's the difference, again?
Capitalists can compete with one another without being thrown out of windows. Oligarchs can't.
Capitalists are oligarchs - so what's your point?
Mr. Bezos felt free to oppose Mr. Trump in ways that nobody in Russia feels free to oppose Mr. Putin, because they will be poisoned or thrown out a window if they do.
I'm no fan of Mr. Bezos, but this is nonetheless true. Capitalists in the West get away with shit that oligarchs in Russia would get murdered for. That is a distinction worth thinking about, even if they are all buttheads.
Again... capitalists are oligarchs - western media just refers to Russian capitalists as "oligarchs" because they want to (falsely) distance themselves from those "bad" Russian capitalists.
And no... Bezos's (supposed) "opposition" to Trump doesn't mean squat. The US oligarchy doesn't rest on a single strongman - there is no need to push oligarchs out of windows if all the oligarchs will act in the interests of the oligarchy anyway. This is not the case in Russia.
I hope you understand that what you're saying looks like an unfalsifiable conspiracy-theory to someone who doesn't share your specific assumptions.
There is no such thing as a "non-oligarchic" capitalist society - it's a feature of the system and not a flaw.
There are things that are true about "Russian oligarchs" as a group that are not true of "American capitalists".
For example, the former are much more likely to be murdered by their own government.
That's an interesting fact and deserves explanation!
If X is just the same as Y, then X and Y should have all the same attributes. But they don't. Ignoring that observation is frothy madness.
Marxism does not distinguish between capitalism managed by a liberal free market, an oligarchy, or a state. The distinction between them is quite trivial and does not change the analysis.
Your Marxism might not, but actual Marx certainly distinguished between England-style capitalism and what he called the Asiatic mode of production.
What point are you trying to make? That Russia in 2023 constitutes some kind of non-capitalist mode of production? That's beyond stupid if that's what you're getting at. The asiatic mode of production is pre-capitalist
In classic Marxism, the economic conditions of a class generate political ideology as a superstructure.
Liberalism is the political ideology of the Western bourgeoisie, generated by an interest in both private property and social and industrial innovation. The bourgeois capitalist seeks to preserve private ownership of property while securing independence of his investment venture from the disapproval of earlier elite classes; thus the bourgeoisie favors liberal ideas such as "freedom of contract" and "freedom of the press" while scorning both traditional authorities (the church, the aristocracy) and populist or "Digger" radicalism.
The Russian oligarchic elite is not in that sort of socioeconomic situation, and so they don't generate the same sort of ideology.
Russia's history included a violent overthrow of the Czar followed by a subsequent extremely fast and turbulent industrialization process under state capitalism. Yes, this is a different developmental situation from that of the Western bourgeoisie, which evolved much more slowly and continuously from the liberal bourgeoisie revolutions. This could lead to variations in the superstructures (including political ideologies), but this does not imply a different economic base.
Capitalism's laws are independent of the will of individual capitalists. Even when individual bourgeoisie espouse liberal ideas like "freedom of the press", etc, they are ultimately driven by the imperative to accumulate Capital above all else and respond to its inherent crises in such a way that preserves it. This is because Capital is a social, impersonal force, not an individual one.
This is as true in "the west" as it is in Russia. Their actions and their stated ideals do not need to align at all, and can/ must change as a response to social conditions and crisis in production. The Russian oligarchic bourgeoisie is driven to accumulate Capital in the same way, having the same economic base, even if the specific form it takes is different due to different historic conditions. As it is in China, as well.
The bourgeoisie of the world do not want war, but they must, nevertheless, go to war if they want to preserve their class privileges due to the imperatives the laws of Capital places on them.
I hope you've noticed that there's not really any separation between Russian "industrial capital", Russian "government", and Russian "organized crime". That is not the case under bourgeois liberal capitalism; those things are normally at least somewhat separated from one another by rival interests. In modern Russia those interests are united.
This is all really trivial and only really even true during relative peacetime. As the imperial blocs approach general conflict and subsequent intensification of class struggle these appearances will easily melt away and all competing interests are subordinated to the national interest. If the tools at the disposal of liberal democracy are not enough to contain and subordinate the class struggle happening at the time to the national interest, the bourgeoisie will easily abandon all those illusions and resort to fascism. It's really going to depend on the strength of the labor movement to come. The bourgeoisie of the west has enjoyed a weak labor movement since the end of WWII but that's a trend that may change as we approach the third world war.
How exactly do you believe the countries that have just joined NATO do anything about how the media informs people within Russia? The situation is what it is and all they can do is act to defend themselves, it's up to the people within Russia to inform themselves better and reappraise their support for Putin and the invasion. Until then they have to be treated as a hostile and rogue nation.
it’s up to the people within Russia to inform themselves better
People in the US certainly didn't manage that in 2003.
bUt WhAt ABouT IraQ?
Why move on to an unrelated topic from 20 years ago?
Or perhaps people naturally feel an affinity for the place they grew up and the people they are most culturally and socially related to, and are thus liable to feel patriotic about their homelands without any input from, idk, the illuminati or whoever you think controls society
The national bourgeoisie use those patriotic feelings to manipulate the working class into slaughtering their actual brothers and sisters across borders. The people facing the exact same conditions, the exact same assault on their living conditions, the exact same war imposed on them. To be an internationalist isn't to devalue a connection to the community of fellow workers in your country, it's to extend it across borders.
The national bourgeoisie use those patriotic feelings to manipulate the working class into slaughtering their actual brothers and sisters across borders.
Or perhaps different countries have different geopolitical interests which sometimes drive them to inflict violence upon eachother in pursuit of those interests
The people facing the exact same conditions, the exact same assault on their living conditions, the exact same war imposed on them.
Sweden and Finland have massively better living conditions than Russia and both have governments which were elected by the people. The illuminati you speak of are also either not very strong there or are incredibly benevolent considering how good the social programs are.
Ukraine and Russia were both victimized heavily by socialists, causing their shitty economic system today, but Ukraine is attempting to align itself with the west, geopolitically and economically, so that it can reap the same economic benefits that the rest of their brothers in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Western Europe, North America, and Asia are all reaping from having free market economies and extensive international trade. The oligarchs in control of Russia don't like this, because Ukraine has too many resources, is too close, and is too geographically valuable to lay outside of their empire, so they impose this war upon the Ukrainian and Russian people so that they can secure their interests. And of course, Ukrainians don't like this, and neither does the West, so the Ukrainians fight back and we help them.
To be an internationalist isn't to devalue a connection to the community of fellow workers in your country, it's to extend it across borders.
To be an internationalist is to ignore all of human history and psychology in pursuit of a utopian pipe dream.
Or perhaps different countries have different geopolitical interests
Riiight... because the average Russian is gaining so much by this war? Just like the average USian benefited so much from the US occupation of Afghanistan?
considering how good the social programs are.
Do you mean the social programs they only have because Swedish and Finnish elites feared a Russian-style revolution so much? Those social programs?
causing their shitty economic system today,
Russia's "shitty economic system" was created by the west's rapacious "shock doctrine" of the 90s, dipshit. Get your facts straight.
To be an internationalist is to ignore all of human history and psychology in pursuit of a utopian pipe dream.
Riiiight... because imaginary lines drawn on a map must (somehow) be genetically encoded in humans by some kind of capitalist magic.
Sheesh... bootlickers gonna bootlick, I guess.
Riiight... because the average Russian is gaining so much by this war? Just like the average USian benefited so much from the US occupation of Afghanistan?
The Russian oligarchy, which is the current ruling class of Russia and descends from Soviet bureaucrats and mobsters, did stand to benefit greatly. Russia isn't a democracy, so it's only natural that the government doesn't care about the people.
The occupation of Afghanistan was incredibly popular among the American people when it began largely because Afghanistan was harboring people who, y'know, committed the biggest terror attack in history against the United States. It only became unpopular once it turned into a slog, and the reason we took so long to leave is because our withdrawal from Iraq went terribly and we didn't want a repeat. Nobody gained much from it.
Do you mean the social programs they only have because Swedish and Finnish elites feared a Russian-style revolution so much? Those social programs?
Am I supposed to be defeated by this? Democracy works because of an agreement between the government and the people, wherein the government serves the interests of the people and is run by bureaucrats chosen by the people, and in exchange the people do not rebel against it and allow it to do government stuff. Of course democratic governments implement social programs out of fear of social instability, that's a feature, not a bug.
Russia's "shitty economic system" was created by the west's rapacious "shock doctrine" of the 90s, dipshit. Get your facts straight.
Shock therapy was invented by the former leader of the RSFSR after he overthrew Mikhail Gorbachev, in order to turn the centrally planned Soviet economy into a free market economy. In the process, it ended up creating the oligarchy, made up of former Soviet bureaucrats and organized criminals. Everyone in the Russian upper class today got there because they took advantage of the absolute garbage system used by the USSR.
Riiiight... because imaginary lines drawn on a map must (somehow) be genetically encoded in humans by some kind of capitalist magic.
Humans are wired to be tribalistic and to view land as their tribal property, and to get violent over resources during times of scarcity so that their tribe survives the winter. If you pay attention in history class, you'll see that humans have done this in some form from the stone age to the modern era. Nationalism is just human tribalism taken to the extreme, kinda like socialism is just envy taken to the extreme.
If people in Russia "support" the war, it is because the bourgeoisie control the flow of information and education in the country and uses it to instill beliefs in the proletariat that benefit their rule. The ruling class of every country in the world disseminates ideas of nationalism using its vast resource to ensure the population consents to being cannon fodder for "national interests". In reality the working class shares no interests with its ruling class or "nation" at all.
Capital in Russia isn't controlled by a bourgeoisie structurally aligned with liberal values as in classic Marxism; it's controlled by an oligarchy descended partly from imperialist Soviet officials (e.g. Mr. Putin of the KGB) and partly from organized crime.
Sooo... what's the difference, again?
Capitalists can compete with one another without being thrown out of windows. Oligarchs can't.
Capitalists are oligarchs - so what's your point?
Mr. Bezos felt free to oppose Mr. Trump in ways that nobody in Russia feels free to oppose Mr. Putin, because they will be poisoned or thrown out a window if they do.
I'm no fan of Mr. Bezos, but this is nonetheless true. Capitalists in the West get away with shit that oligarchs in Russia would get murdered for. That is a distinction worth thinking about, even if they are all buttheads.
Again... capitalists are oligarchs - western media just refers to Russian capitalists as "oligarchs" because they want to (falsely) distance themselves from those "bad" Russian capitalists.
And no... Bezos's (supposed) "opposition" to Trump doesn't mean squat. The US oligarchy doesn't rest on a single strongman - there is no need to push oligarchs out of windows if all the oligarchs will act in the interests of the oligarchy anyway. This is not the case in Russia.
I hope you understand that what you're saying looks like an unfalsifiable conspiracy-theory to someone who doesn't share your specific assumptions.
There is no such thing as a "non-oligarchic" capitalist society - it's a feature of the system and not a flaw.
But you don't have to believe me.
There are things that are true about "Russian oligarchs" as a group that are not true of "American capitalists".
For example, the former are much more likely to be murdered by their own government.
That's an interesting fact and deserves explanation!
If X is just the same as Y, then X and Y should have all the same attributes. But they don't. Ignoring that observation is frothy madness.
Marxism does not distinguish between capitalism managed by a liberal free market, an oligarchy, or a state. The distinction between them is quite trivial and does not change the analysis.
Your Marxism might not, but actual Marx certainly distinguished between England-style capitalism and what he called the Asiatic mode of production.
What point are you trying to make? That Russia in 2023 constitutes some kind of non-capitalist mode of production? That's beyond stupid if that's what you're getting at. The asiatic mode of production is pre-capitalist
In classic Marxism, the economic conditions of a class generate political ideology as a superstructure.
Liberalism is the political ideology of the Western bourgeoisie, generated by an interest in both private property and social and industrial innovation. The bourgeois capitalist seeks to preserve private ownership of property while securing independence of his investment venture from the disapproval of earlier elite classes; thus the bourgeoisie favors liberal ideas such as "freedom of contract" and "freedom of the press" while scorning both traditional authorities (the church, the aristocracy) and populist or "Digger" radicalism.
The Russian oligarchic elite is not in that sort of socioeconomic situation, and so they don't generate the same sort of ideology.
Russia's history included a violent overthrow of the Czar followed by a subsequent extremely fast and turbulent industrialization process under state capitalism. Yes, this is a different developmental situation from that of the Western bourgeoisie, which evolved much more slowly and continuously from the liberal bourgeoisie revolutions. This could lead to variations in the superstructures (including political ideologies), but this does not imply a different economic base.
Capitalism's laws are independent of the will of individual capitalists. Even when individual bourgeoisie espouse liberal ideas like "freedom of the press", etc, they are ultimately driven by the imperative to accumulate Capital above all else and respond to its inherent crises in such a way that preserves it. This is because Capital is a social, impersonal force, not an individual one.
This is as true in "the west" as it is in Russia. Their actions and their stated ideals do not need to align at all, and can/ must change as a response to social conditions and crisis in production. The Russian oligarchic bourgeoisie is driven to accumulate Capital in the same way, having the same economic base, even if the specific form it takes is different due to different historic conditions. As it is in China, as well.
The bourgeoisie of the world do not want war, but they must, nevertheless, go to war if they want to preserve their class privileges due to the imperatives the laws of Capital places on them.
I hope you've noticed that there's not really any separation between Russian "industrial capital", Russian "government", and Russian "organized crime". That is not the case under bourgeois liberal capitalism; those things are normally at least somewhat separated from one another by rival interests. In modern Russia those interests are united.
This is all really trivial and only really even true during relative peacetime. As the imperial blocs approach general conflict and subsequent intensification of class struggle these appearances will easily melt away and all competing interests are subordinated to the national interest. If the tools at the disposal of liberal democracy are not enough to contain and subordinate the class struggle happening at the time to the national interest, the bourgeoisie will easily abandon all those illusions and resort to fascism. It's really going to depend on the strength of the labor movement to come. The bourgeoisie of the west has enjoyed a weak labor movement since the end of WWII but that's a trend that may change as we approach the third world war.
How exactly do you believe the countries that have just joined NATO do anything about how the media informs people within Russia? The situation is what it is and all they can do is act to defend themselves, it's up to the people within Russia to inform themselves better and reappraise their support for Putin and the invasion. Until then they have to be treated as a hostile and rogue nation.
People in the US certainly didn't manage that in 2003.
Why move on to an unrelated topic from 20 years ago?
Or perhaps people naturally feel an affinity for the place they grew up and the people they are most culturally and socially related to, and are thus liable to feel patriotic about their homelands without any input from, idk, the illuminati or whoever you think controls society
The national bourgeoisie use those patriotic feelings to manipulate the working class into slaughtering their actual brothers and sisters across borders. The people facing the exact same conditions, the exact same assault on their living conditions, the exact same war imposed on them. To be an internationalist isn't to devalue a connection to the community of fellow workers in your country, it's to extend it across borders.
Or perhaps different countries have different geopolitical interests which sometimes drive them to inflict violence upon eachother in pursuit of those interests
Sweden and Finland have massively better living conditions than Russia and both have governments which were elected by the people. The illuminati you speak of are also either not very strong there or are incredibly benevolent considering how good the social programs are.
Ukraine and Russia were both victimized heavily by socialists, causing their shitty economic system today, but Ukraine is attempting to align itself with the west, geopolitically and economically, so that it can reap the same economic benefits that the rest of their brothers in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Western Europe, North America, and Asia are all reaping from having free market economies and extensive international trade. The oligarchs in control of Russia don't like this, because Ukraine has too many resources, is too close, and is too geographically valuable to lay outside of their empire, so they impose this war upon the Ukrainian and Russian people so that they can secure their interests. And of course, Ukrainians don't like this, and neither does the West, so the Ukrainians fight back and we help them.
To be an internationalist is to ignore all of human history and psychology in pursuit of a utopian pipe dream.
Riiight... because the average Russian is gaining so much by this war? Just like the average USian benefited so much from the US occupation of Afghanistan?
Do you mean the social programs they only have because Swedish and Finnish elites feared a Russian-style revolution so much? Those social programs?
Russia's "shitty economic system" was created by the west's rapacious "shock doctrine" of the 90s, dipshit. Get your facts straight.
Riiiight... because imaginary lines drawn on a map must (somehow) be genetically encoded in humans by some kind of capitalist magic.
Sheesh... bootlickers gonna bootlick, I guess.
The Russian oligarchy, which is the current ruling class of Russia and descends from Soviet bureaucrats and mobsters, did stand to benefit greatly. Russia isn't a democracy, so it's only natural that the government doesn't care about the people.
The occupation of Afghanistan was incredibly popular among the American people when it began largely because Afghanistan was harboring people who, y'know, committed the biggest terror attack in history against the United States. It only became unpopular once it turned into a slog, and the reason we took so long to leave is because our withdrawal from Iraq went terribly and we didn't want a repeat. Nobody gained much from it.
Am I supposed to be defeated by this? Democracy works because of an agreement between the government and the people, wherein the government serves the interests of the people and is run by bureaucrats chosen by the people, and in exchange the people do not rebel against it and allow it to do government stuff. Of course democratic governments implement social programs out of fear of social instability, that's a feature, not a bug.
Shock therapy was invented by the former leader of the RSFSR after he overthrew Mikhail Gorbachev, in order to turn the centrally planned Soviet economy into a free market economy. In the process, it ended up creating the oligarchy, made up of former Soviet bureaucrats and organized criminals. Everyone in the Russian upper class today got there because they took advantage of the absolute garbage system used by the USSR.
Humans are wired to be tribalistic and to view land as their tribal property, and to get violent over resources during times of scarcity so that their tribe survives the winter. If you pay attention in history class, you'll see that humans have done this in some form from the stone age to the modern era. Nationalism is just human tribalism taken to the extreme, kinda like socialism is just envy taken to the extreme.
Cry about it, I guess.