Image is sourced from this People’s Dispatch article, depicting communists attending the 2023 funeral of Communist Party President Guillermo Teillier, who was tortured for years under Pinochet’s regime and helped rebuild the Communist Party while under a fascist dictatorship.
We had the Six Day War in 1967, we had the Nineteen Day War (Yom Kippur) in 1973, and now we’ve had the Twelve Day War. I wonder how many more very short wars will plague the region until Palestine is freed?
However, moving on from Western Asia from a little while, we have some interesting news from Chile - the former labor minister and communist, Jeannette Jara, has won the primary election for the left-wing bloc in a landslide (~60% of the vote), as the current President, Gabriel Boric, is term-limited. Her achievements include a minimum wage increase and a reduction of the work week to 40 hours.
In November, Jara will face down the contenders from other parties, including José Antonio Kast, who is analogous to Brazil’s Bolsonaro. Unfortunately, Jara is now the lead figure of a party that has been taking quite a few Ls under Boric’s leadership. Ostensibly a Democratic Socialist, he ruled as - you guessed it - a neoliberal, bending the knee to the US and EU. He not only failed to overthrow the Pinochet-era constitution, he actually allowed the right-wing to turn the proposed new constitution into something worse, and had to settle for campaigning against the new one and keeping the old one. And he had very little solidarity with other left-leaning leaders on the continent, like Maduro, Lula, Petro, or Castillo.
With this in mind, I cannot help but look at Argentina’s very recent history and feel a little dread - but if anybody can save Chile at this point, it can only be a communist.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Competition is a market mechanism. How is “excess competition” distorting the market mechanisms? It IS the market mechanisms. External controls to curb this would be the actual distortion of market forces. What they are missing is that is GOOD. Market forces are not sacred or pure or benevolent or pro-social, they should be externally controlled. Why is China so afraid of saying this outright, instead framing their external controls as inherent to market systems? They seem incapable of criticizing the market - it cannot fail only be failed. If the market causes some kind of problem, it actually didn’t do that - it was the distorted fake market! We need to restore the rightful market and all will be right in the heavens!
How is this different than “crony capitalism” shit? It isn’t.
I guess this is what happens when your ideology demands you worship the markets as sacred, but you also are mad the market is causing corporate rate of profit to fall. The contradiction between loving the market itself but hating what the market does. Have these people even read Marx? It doesn’t feel like it. They would be talking about the falling rate of profit and how to transition out of a market economy if they had, instead of ways to band-aid over contradictions to keep the zombie market running.
yeah as much as i hate to say it the past couple of years have kind of vindicated some of my fears about china’s path (i.e. reform and opening up). ive never doubted the huge success it’s had economically but purposefully allowing capital to grow in a market environment even checked by the power of a communist party is a very real danger imo and im very worried they’re not going to stick the landing these days. this is honestly is a perfect opportunity to begin the transition back to a fully planned economy by letting these companies cannibalize each other and themselves then they could swoop in and nationalize and instead they’ve got the people’s daily putting out this garbage. alongside wasting the opportunity for quick dedollarization + the seeming complete capture of chinese economists by western economic woo woo (according to xhs at least), i’m more concerned than ever that the CPC will completely succumb to capital.
tbc not everything is bad news out of china on this front, if it’s true for instance that they’re restricting who is allowed into the CPC based on ideological rigor more than before, but even still any results from that would take decades to bear out. I think whoever succeeds President Xi will be very telling though (gotta be within the next decade or so right? the man’s 72)
If I choose to be optimistic, it seems to me that the CPC is starting to see that the market mechanisms that helped make the country rich over the last 40 years are no longer the right tools going forward. But like any relationship… breaking up is hard. When doing things one way has led to so many benefits, it can be incredibly difficult to just change course (especially for the conservative CPC leadership). Personally I think they will continue to try and bargain with markets until we get to a major crisis. However, I don’t believe that crisis will lead to capitalist restoration. Rather I do think that crisis will be what pushes the CPC to rely less on markets; but I don’t see them acting until that crisis hits.
i certainly hope so too! im just not as confident as i was in the past
Government regulations “distort” market mechanisms if you think that “pure” market mechanisms are those that are fully anarchic in nature.
If you approach things from a keynesian ideology (which is fairly popular in China), then market mechanisms exist to balance supply and demand, while providing incentive for innovation by firms.
In this case then, yes, the market mechanisms are not working properly. So you fix them using government intervention.
You should remember, in keynesian theory, the government and markets are supposed to support each other.
Ok, but even if you adopt this Liberal framework, the Keynesians don’t believe that their regulations and efforts to curb the market are part of the market itself. They know they are doing a non-market intervention. They understand that they are imposing an external force upon the market. The Chinese statement here doesn’t even seem to understand that, thinking instead that their external regulations are PART of the market itself and that the market forces of competition are not (the opposite of reality). They are just straight up wrong inside of every framework - Marxian, Keynesian, Austrian, whatever. Nobody in any of these schools of thought believes that government regulations of the market are the market itself. They all understand they are imposing external forces upon it.
No, the market mechanism are working exactly as everyone knows they will by lowering the rate of profit via competition. They just don’t like the outcome of the market system, so they want the government to step in to subsidize the corporate rate of profit - they just can’t say that outright seemingly due to their worship of the pure market. The statement here isn’t saying that the Chinese government should “fix” the market using government intervention, it’s saying that the government intervention is the market itself and that the market itself is not the market but some “distorted” psuedo-market. It’s a fundamental failure in understanding that is extremely concerning if they actually think like this. They basically are so high on pro-market ideology they are unable to correctly describe the failing of the market, and they are framing non-market solutions as market solutions because they seem to be obsessed with always framing things as pro-capitalist as possible.
This isn’t keynesian theory, or they wouldn’t be talking about competition “distorting the market”. They would be talking about the negative outcomes of the market and how they intend to correct for it via government non-market intervention
This is largely a matter of semantics and it is kind of pointless to keep arguing semantics on translated text.
The market mechanisms do not directly determine the rate of profit. They only regulate the rate of profit around the value predicted by the labor theory of value (attractor point 1), which in turn is determined by the technological composition of the economy. The other attraction point of profit rates is when they are equal across sectors.
The market mechanisms are supposed to regulate the rate of profit near the 2 attraction points in marxist theory. In bourgeois economics, the attractor point of the labor theory of value is ignored.
So in a literal sense, regardless of the theory being used, it most certainly is possible for market mechanisms to stop functioning correctly, just as it is possible for a drawer to get jammed or for a car to break down.
The falling rate of profit in marxist theory does not come from competition (marx predicts decreasing competition as capitalism goes on, because of the formation of monopolies). It comes from marx’s prediction that capitalist economies become more capital intensive over time.
The rest of the statement literally calls for a re-evaluation of government subsidies and tax breaks, saying that they encourage a race to the bottom. Both quotes below are from the article.
Increased prices of industrial goods can lead to higher government revenues and wages in China because of their status as an exporter. It means more overall revenue from sales to the west. On the other hand, low prices allow for the western economies to leech off Chinese production. In material terms, higher prices in Chinese industries means less goods are sent to the west, and thereby more goods available for consumption domestically.
This is a rather large leap of logic taken from a statement that literally calls for government intervention into the market.
Gotta love labor aristokkkrats organizing for a faster entry into the US housing market instead of land reform talking about how the Chinese govt doesn’t know what it’s doing
This is China caving to Trump and American federal reserve demands about “excess production”
Gotta love ultras who side with Trump instead of communism
Oh boy here I go chudjacketing again
Why is the right thing to do always capitulating to America? Why do you defend China doing this repeatedly?
Why do you lower yourself to using the same kinds of scummy debatebro tactics as the ACP dweebs? You’re too adapted to forum turf wars to have a conversation with - and why, because I casually identified a clique of “5 doomers” and you understood exactly what I meant? Wow, sorry for telling you to start a blog fellas. It’s just that I prefer RSS and (some) coherence
what the fuck are you even talking about? I didn’t respond to your “clique” comments you are so up your own ass. YOU are the one trapped inside debatebro hell, locating cliques on an irrelevant forum for you to hold grudges against then hypocritically mocking the very behavior you are engaged in.
I used to be like you, gungho and always pro-AES in all situations regardless of the facts I went to bat to defend their every action (or inaction) like you do. Just trust the plan, have faith. Once you are old enough and experience enough disappointment you’ll get over that. The only reliable socialist nation on Earth is DPRK. The rest are barely clinging to existence or only one step better than the west unfortunately. They consistently make the wrong decisions, which is why socialism is sidelined and marginal instead of a major world force like it would be if more rigorous marxist frameworks were adhered to. None of them except DPRK take American empire as seriously as it requires, all of them keep being lulled into fake senses of security instead of preparing adequately for war. The dollar signs are in their eyes, and their old conservative men are too comfortable.