Thoughts?
Don’t agree with his assessment at all pretty much, but still interested what yous think about that stance, because really I’ve not seen much theory based discussion on the topic since the early days of the conflict.
I don’t think Putin particularly cares about it, but he’s not all-powerful. I don’t know about the government in general, but they’re certainly helping in the anti-imperialist struggle in many ways (helping Syria, trading with socialist or otherwise anti-imperialist countries, etc.), no matter what their intentions are.
I haven’t watched the video yet, but AFAIK, the creator believes that China is imperialist, so I’m not too sure what to think about him.
Not sure what to think about him either. I’ve watched a couple of his videos at the beginning of the war, a livestream or two with the Deprogram guys and see comrades recommend him quite often, so I thought he was pretty decent. But this video combined with the China takes really brought out the Maoist leanings of his and…yeah, controversial at least.
But imo MLs online really haven’t bothered wrestling with this conflict on a theoretical basis too much. I’ve seen almost no deeper analysis and even the big Youtubers like Hakim have hardly touched on it. Day to day analysis of the events and consequences is almost non-existent too, so I reckon some controversial takes about it ain’t too bad to discuss about honestly.
Yeah, most of the analyses I’ve seen on this war have come from people who aren’t explicitly communists
It’s been a while since my last plug, so I’ll recommend The New Atlas
im scared to comment
But I guess well (thanks for your comments comrades):
Something I don’t seem people talking about is Russian Imperialism. And I mean like for real. (I’m not sure if this is touched on the video, I probably will agree with Paul’s conclusion, but I haven’t watched it yet.) Russia has finance capital in other countries. (Pretty important for imperialism lol.) In places like Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Pridnestrovia (weird right?) and also until recently Ukraine. I feel very firmly Ukraine is thoroughly fascist, and perhaps being in a critical position of Russia, removed their finance capital. Still though the invasion (special operation, whatever you call it) is and Imperialist action in my view. I also do not like Putin playing off the ethnic conflicts in the area, as well as fascism. I support full succession of the Donbass region (maybe not as the different republics (Lugansk and Donetsk) still though.) As well as Crimea, if not a Tatar republic or independent oblast in the RFSSR, (as we know all the states in the conflict are illegal and should be part of the USSR.) as part of Russia. (Brezhnev Gave it to Ukraine for some god damned reason.) The fascism is serious and using for a Imperial war is fucked. Still either way Ukraine should be de-nazified. Feel free to debate though, I’m open to new ideas.
I think the major split between communists around the world when talking about imperialism shows that we need an updated materialist definition of imperialism as it reflects the world today.
If we’re just going off of the export of finance capital that Lenin described then Russia meets that definition, economically. China meets that definition (although others on lemmy have gone into great detail about how even that is not the most accurate to say).
But is Lenin’s definition still enough or does it, by itself, obscure the actual power dynamics at play on the world stage today?
