the_dunk_tank

Australia has gladly sent troops to every imperialist adventure the US has ever done, which is frankly baffling to me

He's a succdem, their political ideology literally came into distinctive being by sending millions people to die in the war for imperialist interests, and nothing changed since.

blows up oil pipeline
makes the ship alternative they forced sound menacingly evil

england bringing back letters of marque to get corsairs to capture russian ships, age of sail 2.0

The primary contradiction globally today is the U.S. (and her coalition’s) repression of any movement around the world that might be liberatory or allow alternative development outside of the U.S. dominated global capitalist financial order.

Russia is itself a capitalist state since the USSR was illegally dissolved at the hands of U.S. puppets like Yeltsin, you’re right about that. But the U.S’s own intransigence in refusing to let Russia into the club and continuing to antagonize and try to cannibalize Russia, they’re forced into a position of opposing the U.S. empire directly.

So it’s not Russia in itself with all of its flaws and repression that we are voicing support for, it’s the role that Russia can and is playing in opposing US global imperialism. If they deal a strategic defeat to the empire, it’s a win for oppressed people around the world.

Russia successfully resisting and damaging US imperialism is a much better result for communists than the US empire further expanding. The russian federation is very much economically liberal, in the exact same way as the west and particularly America, so there is no real reason for us to dislike them more on those grounds. As much as the west paints Putin as an authoritarian dictator, he is actually popular in Russia. He saved the country from economic crisis and massively improved living conditions - not to the level of the USSR, but still in a way very much felt by the public. It is the liberal democracy the west wanted to turn it into, they just don't like that it's a competing liberal democracy rather than a subservient one. Arguably a more successful liberal democracy, as they actually like their leader.

Communism can grow far more easily in a multipolar world, so despite being deeply critical of both sides in general we support the side whose success creates more advantageous conditions for us.

Because the US is the world imperial hegemon and all efforts to end this state of affairs are critically supported. Even as domestic issues in Russia/iran etc may not be ideal, they can never get better while the US exists. Not sure what you mean by fascist economy, even less “much much much closer” than the US.

you're going to hear the term "critical support" in the responses, here's a good background on it

A Marxist understanding of capitalism leads to anti-imperialism. Anti-imperialism is understood by detractors as a simple rhetorical dressing over simplistic heuristics like “reflexive anti-americanism,” “history repeats itself,” and “the military-industrial complex needs contracts,” but all of these are reductive. Marxists understand that human political leadership in the imperial periphery, whether enlightened or tyrannical, will only be antagonized by empire for one single possible reason: it is getting in the way of market penetration. This is phrased succinctly by Kevin Dooley when criticizing Noam Chomsky’s support for a military alliance between the Kurds and the USA in Syria: “The difference between [Chomsky’s] position and a hard-line anti-imperialist position isn’t tactical. What he’s arguing is simply a violation of anti-imperialist principles based on a fundamentally different understanding of what can drive the empire to act in the world.” [16]

The accusation that anti-imperialists are unconcerned with human rights deserves a sharp rebuke. The USA was born of slavery and genocide, dropped atomic bombs as a matter of political brinkmanship, imported Nazi scientists and installed war criminals like Klaus Barbie and Nobusuke Kishi around the world to defend and advance anti-communist positions [17], and enthusiastically supports gruesome butcherers today. Simply put, Capital has destroyed innumerable countries and murdered hundreds of millions directly and indirectly. It is precisely a concern for the rights of humans that should make one immediately skeptical of any humanitarian posturing by Capital. Anti-imperialism not only means support for the important pro-social projects of states like Cuba, Vietnam, and China; it also means critical support for non-socialist states such as Iran and Russia. Critical support acknowledges that, though instituting various indefensible policies, enemies of empire are not being antagonized because of said policies. The only thing that can drive empire to act in the world is capital accumulation.

from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/

Neoliberal US hegemony is the boot on the neck of the global working class, including the working class of the EU. When it comes to geopolitics, the EU ruling class behaves like a vassal of the US.

The US got away with bombing German infrastructure in 2022! This is absolutely humiliating to the EU. The only explanation is that they are satraps, and do not represent the interests local populace. See Starmer's tweet above. The absolute hypocrisy in not prosecuting Tony Blair, but crying about Russian oil... is truly shameless.

Western failure in the Ukraine proxy war could very well mean a change in the status quo in the West, which could possibly mean the end of the neoliberal/neconservative US hegemony, which could open up avenues of progressive change in Europe and elsewhere.

I don't want Putin to succeed, I want the West to fail: and the Western brinkmanship gotten so bad, that even a ceasefire with the current frontlines frozen would be a Western failure at this point. (Remember they were visioning the complete collapse of Russia by the end of 2022...)

I want the killing to stop: no more poor Ukrainians sent to the meat grinder - and crazily enough this would be failure in the eyes of the Western power elite.

Frankly, China. A defeated, balkanized Russia cut up into smaller liberal democracies which can be manipulated by the western hegemony results in a China surrounded on all sides by hostile forces aligned with the west. As far as the modern Russian state is concerned, uh, fuckem, Putin sucks, but I still would rather they remained whole and friendly with China, the actual Communist project I have some alignment with, than split up into anti-China NATO puppets.

At the start of the SMO, I personally took the line that the DSA IC, Communist Party of Australia, and others took: this invasion is a hostile act and an escalation. But this is also a civil war that has been going on for 8 years now, and the origin is steeped in US/EU/NATO meddling. We would have never gotten to this point without western powers doing their standard imperialist thing and trying to bring Ukraine into their orbit just as a way to encircle Russia, which of course Russia is going to respond to. It’s just thinking dialectically. guess you could say I was a lot more neutral back then? I don’t know I wasn’t really for or against any one side, I just felt that this was the natural consequence of Western actions for 8 years.

But then over time, NATO has inserted themselves much more actively and has turned this into a de facto NATO versus Russia war. I see NATO as the much bigger threat to the world and frankly more evil, at least in terms of fucking with other countries. I want to see NATO eat shit.

But also pragmatically, Ukraine will not win this war. There is NO path to victory outside of starting WW3. I do not want one more Ukrainian or Russian to die in this. If you think NATO actually cares about Ukrainian lives then you are mistaken. If you think NATO even cares about an Ukraine win then you are also mistaken. NATO is only involved because they think they can weaken Russia geopolitically and militarily by continuing the fight. NATO is more than happy to fight this thing to the last Ukrainian.

Ukraine will lose the territory Russia occupies and will have to give guarantees about not aligning militarily with the west in the future. You may not like that outcome but that is reality.

This is a great question to ask on lemmygrad.ml/c/genzhou , or a few other places. There's also already a lot of good threads on that already too.

As a super-short answer: Not all capitalist countries are equal: in fact, most of them are poor, and being exploited by the imperial-core capitalist countries, namely those who use their favorable position in the world market as monopsonies to dictate labor conditions, wages, and policy to the poorer, surplus-value producing nations of the global south.

Russia, like most capitalist countries, is not part of that elite minority that use finance capital to exploit other nations. Like Syria, Venezuela, Bolivia, and many other countries, they're exerting some intolerable independent behavior, and found themselves in military opposition to the imperialist bloc.

Here's a good article going over the question: Is Russia Imperialist?

Not sure what you mean by "a fascist economy" (capitalism?).

It's not support for Russia, but opposition to Western warmongering. Most of us on here live in and are citizens of the US or Europe. Of course our political positions are in regard to our own nations' policies. Liberals act like Russia's aim is to take over all of Europe and then the world. This is the point of the endless Nazi comparisons. Once you realize this is ridiculous, that Russia has neither the desire nor the capacity for world domination, the constant brinksmanship by NATO appears irresponsible and unacceptable. Russia is undemocratic and dominated by political reaction because it was pillaged in the 90s by global capital. After that, the way to turn it into a liberal democracy would have been to allow it to enter NATO when Putin asked and make it an equal partner in the world economy.

So the question isn't "why are communists supporters of a right wing capitalist state" so much as "why do the capitalists so fervently oppose a right wing capitalist state?" The answer from communists is that they've gotta have a war to keep the gears of the economy turning, and Russia is happy to play the heel for now.

Critical support I guess. The Russian Federation is a horrible country, but their actions oppose US hegemony. We can support their actions without endorsing them.

What is "a fascist economy" and how does it differ from America's economy

I don't like Russia, I just hate Ukraine more than Russia because I am really not into Neo-Nazis.

Hey, rather than add to the pile of explanations you've gotten so far, I just want to say it's very cool of you to ask. Most people just decide they already know the reasons and then accuse us of lying when what we say is different from what they hear second or third-hand. You actually took the time to investigate for yourself, and that's such a life-changing (often life-saving) habit, especially if you live in highly propagandized capitalist countries like most of us do.