it’s depressing seeing supposed communists supporting the incompetent and corrupt capitalist demsoc governments of the world like the one in my country
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I'm from Nicaragua (hey neighbor!) and yes, I hate how much the online left loves and defends the "socialist" governments that govern our countries. I try to think it comes from a lack of knowledge, but a lot of the time it's them calling you a "useful idiot" just for daring to ask for a socialist party that doesn't criminalize abortion (after it had been legal for almost a hundred years!) just to ingratiate themselves with the Catholic church. The FSLN has made pacts with far-right parties, made concessions to Canadian companies so they can mine gold (and destroy our forests in the process), has had a great relationship with the old and new bourgeoisie, has implemented every IMF recommendation to continue the neoliberal policies of their predecessors, but Ortega makes his yearly speech calling the US an imperialist shithole, and that's enough for them to support him.
Im not educated on Ortega but it should be noted that MLs living in the imperial core offer critical support to worse things than that (Iran) in order to do revolutionary defeatism and hurt imperial hegenomy Doesnt mean we dont think comminusts living in Nicaragua shouldnt oppose him, they should.
But if hes following what the IMF is telling him it doesnt sound like hes doing all that much to oppose the west.
not knowing spanish definitely plays a large part but I think more importantly they don't have to be bothered to live in and experience these places so they're perfectly fine remaining some idealized mental construct. its easy for them to imagine third world countries being full of rabid america haters and the politicians there being diametrically opposed to all cooperation with america rather than imagine that they're the same kind of self-interested assholes you find across the world. if ortega nationalizes some gas station chain its because he hates the west not because he wants to make himself and his family richer. any action can be construed as "socialistic" if you view it through this anti-america lens
The idea that nationalization is about self enrichment is definitly unusual to me. Regardless of Ortegas motives it seems clearly better for the people of a country to have the resources belong to, yaknow, the country. Actual socialist countries nationalize resources too. Is nationalization really bad to you?
its not being owned by the country its being owned by a corrupt bourgeois family. honestly how naive must you be to trust these people while they pander to anti-americans. Ortega is probably the richest person in nicaragua its hard to say with howmany assets he has hidden but he is probably richer than Pellas
I have no idea what to think about Ortega but if thats true its not even "nationalized". If one family is taking the profits then how can you even call that nationalization?
What benefit do they get by "pandering to antiamericans" tho lol. Western MLs are a very small group of people we cannot provide material support.
You're seeing the opinions of the western left, and in our countries our movements have only just been rebounding after decades of very harsh repression and propaganda, so it'll take more time, struggle, and political development for people to see the difference between social democracy and revolutionary society. It is unfortunate, but for now, many will be captivated by the former.
yours is not the only one captivated. mine and many across latin america are so captivated we actually elect these people to power lol. it’s fine anyway since I selfishly want the government in iran to remain in power long enough to kill israel you can selfishly want the anti-american governments to stay in power to oppose your country. also honduras is a western country too lmao
you can selfishly want the anti-american governments to stay in power to oppose your country. also honduras is a western country too lmao
Yes this is exactly the point being made here. Its not even selfish. Its just how Lenininst antiimperalism works. Wanting American hegenomy to be hurt as an American is actually the opposite of selfish?
Also for the last line, yes its in the western hemisphere but its not part of the imperial core. Which is why we carefully use that language instead. The tem "western" is fairly useless for this reason.
lesser of the two evilism has NOTHING to do with Lenin keep his name out of your mouth before actually opening a book for once
Sorry im taking my lead here from every ML ive ever encountered's opinion on geopolitics. If its ignorant i apologize.
Eta: honestly based on your post history i dont see you as someone i have to take particularly seriously lol
you need to reread lenin he never said anything about “imperial core” that’s just stuff made up by wallerstein called world-systems theory and is neither leninist or marxist
Because in their times there were still competing imperial powers. There wasnt unipolarity at the time.
see I’m gonna trust lenin and marx over a yale and colombia professor who only has ties to the british. zero ML countries adhere to world-systems theory and for good reasons
Cuba and the DPRK dont see the United States as an imperial hegemon?
I don’t think either call it hegemonism that’s a chinese thing and even then there’s a big leap going from hegemonism to imperial core
I don’t think either call it hegemonism that’s a chinese thing
wrong
dprk: http://www.kcna.kp/en/article/q/90dfd7983762c4e09ba086c93f6c58b7.kcmsf
there's a ton of material released by the WPK and the PCC that talks about american hegemony
So what is the view of imperialism in ML countries and how does it contradicr?
depends country to country at different points in time. obviously first i’d have to ask who’s side you were on in the sino-soviet split just as a baseline. or to go further, whether or not you support stalin’s decision to recognize and send aid to israel when it declared independence
Im not sure where i stand on those things need to read more. Just want to know where those countries stand today and how it contradicts the concept of an "imperial core"
the countries don’t exactly deliver press releases saying what imperialism is usually they just say “down with yankee imperialism”. do you want something like a curriculum on how the subject is taught in school? how these countries actually act?
Well you said they dont world systems theory so i assumed you had evidence of that. Saying "down with yankee imperialism" is hardly contradictory. They might not literally read Wallerstein but if youre going to deny his development of theory and its applicability to modern conditions (that Marx and Lenin never observed) based on what you think the DPRK and Cuba think about it i would assume youd have something more solid.
Che said that the United States is the belly of the beast. That certainly seems in line.
the onus is not on my proving they don’t follow some esoteric sociological theory of a foreign professor but on you to prove that they do. and no che using poetic license is not proof of a communist country following a hundreds of page long dissertation. next you’ll say iran follows it too since it says israel little satan and america big satan
I literally said that they may not read Wallerstein. The point is that the broad strokes are not contradictory to the concept of an imperial core existing. I was looking for ideas that actually materially contradict here. Honestly, i dont think you need to follow all of Wallerstein to use the term imperial core. If its useful for describing the current geopolitical situation, which i think it is, then its useful.
Honestly this all just seems like a nitpick to throw me off base. None of it contradicts my core points.
marxism isn’t about what feels useful and isn’t about what’s geopolitically common sense from your perspective. if you oppose communists overthrowing the government in my country and support the demsocs who want to continue capitalist relations and exploitation I don’t consider you a comrade in the same struggle, to put it as simply as possible
When did i say anything about opposing communists overthrowing them lol? I support them against the west, not against communists. Youre reading things in that arent there, perhaps because of prior experiance?
Well I'm making you the epistemological black hole through which I perceive your country, congratulations.
well my country is currently ran by the wife of a former president in a sort of bill clinton- hillary clinton political dynasty situation. her supporters are basically pampered college grad white collar people, amerisceptic national bourgeois, anti-corruption people, college progressives, and I guess now anti-crime hardliners. notably she has stopped paying large amounts of people in the public sector and I don’t want to say hires scabs against all the people protesting this because they’re not paid either they just want the possibility of being paid in the future
Well without even touching any of that you gotta remember can strongly support a politician's geopolitical moves without even having formed an opinion on how capable they are at home, that's how I feel. I was expecting Brazil, I have some criticism of Lula loaded up now darn.
communism is internationalist. it’s about supporting the proletarians of the world not supporting some in some countries and supporting capitalists in others. this is the basic amount of solidarity to be expected from comrades
communism is internationalist
Which is exactly why we critically support things that work against the hegenomy of the imperial core?
the united states arrested our former president letting the democratic socialist take power lmao. you’re naive if you think demsocs actually oppose this “hegemony of the imperial core” whatever that would look like in practice
Hondorus sounds like an usual situation. Everywhere else in Latam demsocs like Evo get opposition because they take resources away from the imperial core by nationalizing them.
the resources are taken away from the individual owners ownership wise which sucks for those individual capitalists but aren’t taken away from the world market. the commodity relationship remains intact making it not against the west
So why was Evo couped?
I don’t have access to their correspondence but I’m gonna assume Áñez wanted power and opposed Evos reforms, the OAS didn’t want to see reduced exports and political power entrenchment, and Exxon probably donated a fair amount of money to allow economic liberalization to take place. I hope you realize people in our own countries have their own thoughts and motivations and aren’t just automatons that do what the CIA says. the coup in my own country was done by military generals upset over having their airbases turned over to civilian use as an example
How about Pedro Castillo? Does it upset you that online leftists reacted negatively to the lawfare coup against him, despite having already marked him as a kind of centrist milquetoast?
Nobody I can recall framed his actions as based anticolonialism, besides the fact he didn't really get to do anything, they just observed the financial, legal, and military pressures the core places on the periphery.
I’m not upset seeing people opposed to america meddling in other countries affairs. I think america meddling in other countries affairs is both bad for other countries short term and bad for america long term. I’m opposed to assuming that because a country appears to have a government nominally opposed to the united states it’s for the working class movement. this ideology has its roots in american trotskyist parties in the 60s like the worker’s world party and it’s global class war line. I consider my own government or the pedro castillo government to be better than the opposition by a large margin but I don’t consider either to be good