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weighing BRICS
(lemmy.ml)
the latest BRICS summit recently completed
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this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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Political Economy is complex. What GDP aims to measure is overall production, it's an explanation of wealth, however it paints a very uneven picture as it overvalues financial transactions and undervalues raw productive capacity. As a consequence, imperialist countries are overvalued (like the US), while production-focused countries are under-represented.
GDP is often pushed by liberal, western countries as it makes them look good. A more honest look, however, is multi-faceted and takes into account other metrics like social services, which often run into negative "profitability" or break even, as they aren't producing for profit. There's also the fact that the US doesn't outproduce in non-physical goods either. The US certainly has popular media and software, but it doesn't have overwhelming productive capacity in these areas.
The point of focusing on BRICS is because if you remove the financialized, almost ficticious look at capital as displayed by GDP, BRICS is more economically strong and significant, and this better reflects the real world, not just US-based self-perception.
I think that is also a very one-sided view on this issue. The truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle. Germany for example has a lot of social services (universal healthcare, unemployment securities, etc.) and is still doing exceptionally well.
Germany is also imperialist. The countries that rely on imperialism have higher metrics by plundering the global south. It's kinda like looking at life expectancy of the rich vs the poor in any one country, the better metrics of the top come at the expense of the bottom.
Well, thank god China and Russia don't do this.
They don't, really. Russia has like 6 of the world's top 500 companies, it couldn't rely on the same financial expropriation even if it wanted to simply because it utterly lacks the financial capital to do so. China is a production-focused economy, and the large firms and key industries are state owned. Even if we took the ideological aspects of Marxism-Leninism completely out of the picture, China is more economically incentivized to build up multilateralism so it can sell its products to the global south, and not rely so much on the US to offload its production to, as the US is constantly unreliable due to it wanting more capital penetration into Chinese markets (which the state rejects).
And this is the point where any further discussion makes no sense. Goodbye.
Can you explain why? I think I made a pretty clear-cut case, is there something you take issue with?
Fundamentally disagreeing on facts.
What facts did I disagree with? Are you operating with a different concept of what imperialism means, ie a semantical difference but not a logical one? Or am I wrong about Russia having relatively small financial capital and thus lacking the capacity to practice imperialism in the same way western countries do? Or am I wrong about China's large and key industries being state owned, and their economy incentivizing multilateralism in order to sell more?
The first would be a semantical difference, not a disagreement with facts, the latter 2 would be if you could provide evidence to the contrary sufficient to outweigh what I said.
This is just going to result in me pulling up a source that you don't deem reputable, only for you to pull up a source that I don't deem reputable.
Maybe, but that would be better than just saying I "disagree with facts" while being cagey about what those "facts" are. That's just ad hominem (and I mean that genuinely, you're trying to discredit me through insult, not just insult me).
Either way, ultimately, this topic has shifted entirely from the base of the conversation, which is trying to find a good measure of economic productivity, and how focusing on financialized capital masked by GDP obscures actual productivity. It's why imperialist countries are declining, and why the PRC is rising. I don't think we disagree that western countries are going downhill and that the PRC is improving, so identifying why is productive.
I think we have come to some kind of a conclusion that neither of us is willing to part from. Maybe I am the idiot and wrong, but I'm good on this for now. Maybe I'll have some more energy another day.
Fair enough. I recommend reading the ProleWiki page on imperialism I linked, it's much shorter than reading Lenin (though you absolutely should) and can help get you to look at the problems (presumably) we both experience in decaying western countries, and how we can chart a course for a better world. You can't find solutions without proper analysis of the underlying problems.
Seems like a very unbiased encyclopedia. If a methodology of analysis is skewed towards presenting what the author intended it is pretty much useless. I haven't read it yet, this is just a gut feeling, maybe I'll check it out tomorrow.
It's openly biased towards communism, it's a Marxist-Leninist encyclopedia. Wikipedia is also biased towards a western, liberal viewpoint. Truth is underlying and independent of interpretation, but how truth is presented is where bias shines through, and shine it does no matter where you find your source, as every source is biased. ProleWiki is nice because it includes its sources, even though it's a work in progress, and more importantly the article on imperialism is an explanation of the concept and how it exists in reality from the Marxist-Leninist point of view.
If someone has a different definition of imperialism, you can still read the ProleWiki article and appreciate it, just substitute "imperialism" with "Leninist imperialism," and read the article with that in mind. Saying a country does or doesn't meet the Leninist definition of imperialism doesn't mean it necessarily fits or doesn't fit other definitions of imperialism. The Leninist interpretation is widespread, however, because it's useful, and as such serves as an excellent explanation for how capitalism in developed countries functions and why it's simultaneously wealthy and declining rapidly.
i like how you use the incel mascot; never seen a freudian slip as a comment before.
You are confidently wrong, pepe the frog is originally from a stoner comic. Besides, I am married, so the whole incel thing doesn't exactly check out.
Edit: Very revealing how absolutely everything I post is downvoted by default, despite this comment being irrefutable fact.
i'm referring to its notoriety, not its origin.
so much for centrism being about nuance and critically questioning everything, huh?
What do you respond to "Fuck X" , if thats what you're talking about? Otherwise I have stated my reasoning. If one side isn't willing to give up anything, it isn't really a discussion
Centrism is a religion
Centrism is rejection of political extremes. It is nuance and critically questioning everything. It means criticizing your own side. Contrary to popular belief It is the opposite of being a coward, because everyone will hate you.
Rejecting political extremes on the basis of being extreme, and not the merits of the positions (or lack thereof), is the opposite of nuance. It's substituting critical thought for a rejection of the idea that one can both differ from the median viewpoint and be correct, which is logically absurd.
No, centrism is the uncritical acceptance of the political extreme that is currently in power. It rejects nuance on and critical questioning, because that might lead to believes other than the current status quo.
It is the certainly not the opposite to being a coward, and it is synonymous with being intellectually lazy; like relying on thought terminating cliches such as "the truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle"