this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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That's called social democracy. It is fed by imperialism and shits out a labor aristocracy. The capitalist class uses social democracy in the imperial core to appease the workers and postpone revolution. But it requires exporting suffering to the "developing" (colonized) world.
You see this in the so called "nordic" countries. People will admire the nordic countries without questioning how imperialism keeps them afloat.
Thanks for the response. That second map is really helpful to put into perspective how much my country (the US) is screwing me, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the bottom section.
A few questions if that's okay:
What is the imperial core?
Does this mean things like mining lithium, or exporting labor to other countries because it's cheaper?
Sorry if these questions sound dumb. I'm a liberal with dreams of socialism in my head, but Hexbear makes me feel like maybe I don't understand what those dreams actually mean, so I'm trying to get a better understanding.
You've gotten some good answers so I just want to say thanks for asking these questions and genuinely trying to learn. There's been a lot of stubborn people who won't listen to anything they don't like on here recently but there's also been plenty of open-minded people like you, and it makes me glad to see that
The countries that are the center of (neo)imperial exploitation of the global south, ie the US and its other economically developed allies. So mostly the US, Canada, UK, EU, Australia, New Zeland, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. YMMV a bit on who counts, some EU nations are very poor and exploited by the more powerful ones. So Its probably better to say "Western Europe" than "EU". Its a complicated issue, especially since the two Asian countries I listed are both exploited and exploiting at the same time. But they're both developed and capitalist enough, as well as closely aligned with the west enough, to probably count. (I'm not super well read on this issue and may not be the best person to answer this ,but this is the sense I've gotten from talking to other socialists).
Yes those are good examples! Not the only things, like another example are the general actions that the IMF takes with developing countries, or the way the banana industry tries to run South America, but you pulled two examples that are very good out of your hat even at the level you're at so that's pretty impressive.
ETA: Also thank you for asking these questions with genuine intellectual curiosity.
I said both "EU" and "Western Europe" but I can see how we'd want to like especially stress France.
Just to add a bit of context, there's a quote about how 'fascism is imperialism turned inward'.
It helps to think of the imperial core as like a hierarchy of layers. The US ruling class is at the top of this hierarchy, and the ruling classes of other imperialist nations are next. As the contradictions of capitalism continue to pile up, there is a cannibalization that starts at the furthest periphery. This started with colonization/exploitation of the global south. But over time this has become less effective for various reasons (BRICS being the new big one). There's a lot of mechanisms the core uses to affect it's desires on the periphery (IMF conditioned loans, sanctions, embargoes, currency manipulations, capital flight, etc). As these mechanisms are dulled, the exploitation in the periphery starts to encroach up the layers of the hierarchy over time.
The 2014 coup in Ukraine was a clear step along this path, but it was not the first one by any means. Balkanization was one of the earlier ones, as was Greece. So this is something that will continue as BRICS and other elements of multipolarity increase around the world and particularly in the global south. Capital wants profits via exploitation, and if the profits in the global south become marginal due to the eroding of capital's power, then capital finds new places to exploit. Often that means turning inward.
Like the connectedness of their internet and the ability to share with many others when a company is exploiting resources?
Thanks for the in depth explanation. I had to read it a few times, but I think I understand. It’s so complicated, all the things the wealthy elite can do to change the outcome of things. What you said were strictly institutional, but they can do a lot of things to affect the way the public views these actions and their effects too.
The main reason imperialist exploitation becomes less profitable over time is pretty analogous to why domestic exploitation becomes less profitable over time. We call it the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
Profit always comes from the exploitation of labor and natural resources. Over a given cycle of production, a capitalist exchanges money for capital and labor, then sells resulting commodities for a profit that stems from the difference in what they paid for the labor and natural resources and the value added to the commodities over that cycle of production, i.e. profit. In a domestic scenario, each time a cycle of production happens, the capitalist will earn some profit that they will invest in more advanced means of production for the next cycle of production, cutting down the necessary labor to produce whatever commodities it is they are producing. At first, this gives them an advantage over other capitalists, but soon other capitalists will invest to adopt the same techniques, and what we call the socially necessary labor to produce this commodity will be reduced in accordance to the amount of capital invested. However, as I said earlier, profits always come from exploitation of labor and natural resources; if capitalists reduce the amount of labor that goes into each commodity they will be conducting less exploitation and the rate of profit is reduced.
Lenin described how that process took place in Europe in the turn of the 20th century, the formation of various capitalist cartels stabilized the situation a little bit as capitalists realized that as they competed with one another they were cannibalizing themselves, so they decided to divide up their countries between various cartels which could hold prices artificially high and not suffer as much from the falling rate of profit. However, this only lasted so long, and eventually capital needed to open new frontiers to begin new cycles of production, and facilitated by the advance of finance capital the advanced capitalist countries of Europe began dividing the world between themselves. But over the time same process took place, immense amounts of capital have been invested in imperialist projects which has also led to a falling rate of profit. Capital needs to renew itself continually by finding new ways to increase exploitation. Nowadays that usually means war and financial services (i.e. the type of imperialism Lenin described).
YouTube search: Yellow Parenti
Here's the "Yellow Parenti" speech @[email protected] , originally titled "US Interventionism, the 3rd world, and the USSR".
https://youtu.be/xP8CzlFhc14
A certified banger from 1986, smack dab in the middle of the Reagan years, when the USSR still existed. I relisten to this lecture at least once a year, Parenti is incredible
Holy shit I just wrote up a whole big long comment and accidentally deleted it. I will recreate it later on PC.
Thank you for sharing this, it was really great to listen to. I will respond more later… 😖
Been thinking about what he said about guerilla warfare: “Why do we support the guerillas there” (Ukrain), “and fight against guerillas there?” (Vietnam).
The "first world". Countries which historically industrialized first, were able to colonize less "developed" countries, and thus have a more or less stable economic advantage in terms of dictating an unequal trade regime. This is the true reason wages and cost of living are lower in the "developing" world. These countries were basically opened up to international trade at gunpoint, forced to rapidly industrialize, and forced into being a source of cheap labor and resources for the imperial core.
i recommend this video on the broader subject of imperialism
or this one to a lesser extent
yes
there are no dumb questions