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.
I have been a long time follower of Yu Yongding and I don’t see how he’s saying anything different from what I said.
I have said many times that the slump in consumption is merely a symptom to the real issue of wealth inequality.
I have said many times that China cannot possibly subsidize its away out of this consumption problem without solving the wealth inequality problem.
The difference is in the solution. Instead of investing heavily in and betting for a “technological breakthrough” to achieve “economic transformation”, the country can simply invest in social welfare and raising the living standards of the people. The Soviet Union wasn’t exactly considered as a technology pioneer (compared to say, Japan, of the same period) but its people were living well. I don’t see why China shouldn’t go for the social welfare route (of course, they don’t, because they still believe in the power of the free market).
Michael Roberts unfortunately doesn’t know what he’s talking about on China. He’s ignoring the private debt problem, the local government debt problem and the entire complex array of government finances becoming deeply intertwined with the property market, shadow banks and the financial institutions.
China could have the USSR’s communism today, they’re already far more advanced than the USSR ever dreamed of. If that is your point I would agree 110%. I do not care for Dengist nonsense from 2000-2010s how we’ll build productive forces and then socialism. This was a damn lie, the technology came, the productive forces exist, yet all the Chinese workers are getting is more damn pro-capitalist reforms.
Its been 30+ years, soon 15 years of Xi alone. China is the superpower already, the technological advances are already more than enough to press the communism button today. On that I agree.
But that is not what you’re proposing at all. What we want is communism. Yet the mainstream consensus convinced you and the CPC that change is “necessary”, therefore you’re looking to support Capitalist social welfare.
Capitalist social welfare is just Social Democracy. As I told you before, these economists make appeals so China can trace back to to the same western development path without acknowledging that western social democracy necessitates imperialism.
Now for your own personal reasons perhaps you think the benefit of China and the Chinese people justifies supporting imperialism therefore social democracy is correct and justified, even though it demands imperialism.
I however do not and everyone else who would call themselves socialists also do not. The Chinese idealism of white washing imperialism as if they don’t support it is a facade that will come down eventualy(climate change). BRICS or BRI shit wont save them when the US comes knocking.
On that note it is sort of funny how we socialists are the ones arguing that China should be out there defending their interests while its the Chinese libs who don’t care and push non-interventionism. Yes the capitalist social democracy will just pay for itself is something else.
You`re welcome to link any other actual Marxists and their takes on China which btw I’ve never seen you actually do. This is an ideological battle in China, not just of good vs bad intentions.
You can’t convince me or most other Marxists that the current retreat towards neoliberalism is good, again, you may have good intentions, nevertheless you’re repeating the arguments from people who do not.
If your solution is the same as their solution why am I supposed to care about good or bad intentions?
You misunderstood what Yu Yongding was saying. He was criticizing the neoliberal-centric solution to underconsumption which is to fuel more consumer lending. For example, the Chinese government is loosing restrictions on consumer lending on the grounds that “our household debt level is still not as high as the US and Japan!” as well as loosening the RRR to promote more commercial bank lending.
In fact, this is exactly what Western neoclassical economists want China to do when they say China has a consumption problem, which will only benefit the banking sector.
I am 100% behind investment on high tech economy, but we shouldn’t have to do this by sacrificing the welfare of the people. Can you give a reason why the Chinese working class should suffer from more working hours, higher retirement age, and depressed wages?
More investment isn’t going to solve that problem. The main problem is wealth inequality, and only by raising the wages of the working people can we work toward solving that. An over-supply of goods when the people are too poor to afford isn’t going to work, and will only increase reliance on the export sector because you now simply shift the consumption part to foreigners.
What I am proposing, from a Marx/MMT-centric view, is for the government to directly increase the wages of the working people, so that they have the purchasing power to directly consume the goods produced domestically, and even import from the other developing countries to help grow their economies. More importantly, this actually reduces wealth inequality because the Chinese economy has been structurally primed for the wealth to flow to the top.
This is a completely different model from the US credit-fueled consumption economy.
I have literally posted graphs to explain my arguments lol!
I have also said before that my views are heavily influenced by Zuo Da Pei (左大培) and Jia Genliang (贾根良), who are actual Marxist economists and the latter also has the advantage of understanding MMT and List, which means you not only understand class dynamics (Marx), but also finance (MMT) and international trade (List) covering each other’s blind spots.
Roberts likes to show some graphs about Chinese consumption rising over the years without taking into account the role of debt. This kind of superficial view of the Chinese economy completely fails to capture the complexity of the many moving parts under the hood. This is no different than the Bidenomics people showing how the US GDP has grown so much while failing to address the fact that most of the consumption share in the US was contributed by the top 10%.
Household debt leverage of US vs China vs Japan (debt to disposable income ratio)
US = purple, China = red, Japan = brown
Notice that China’s household debt leverage had exceeded that of US and Japan around 2018-2019.
So, there is nothing unusual about China’s increasing consumption when people can afford to take on more debt i.e. when the economy is going well. However, with exports being stifled by potential tariffs, when over-investments in property market imploding, with local governments saddled with unprecedented debt, it becomes inevitable that consumption becomes the only channel for where the economy must flow (if you’ve been reading anything I’ve written before, you know the drill).
Most importantly, Roberts’s argument that China has no consumption problem cannot explain why there is a deflationary spiral in China. This is a serious issue because many businesses in China that have taken out big loans are getting squashed by the deflation. Roberts completely ignored this part as though there is no debt problem faced by the Chinese business.
While I don’t pretend to be able to fully address all these problems, my model that takes into account many of these moving parts can at least explain the deflation problem, why (over-)investment in industrial capacity has failed to translate into wage growth for the Chinese working class, why the Chinese leadership does not simply stop exporting to the US but to seek a trade truce with Trump, because China cannot afford the inflation to rise in the US.
Isn’t the effectiveness of RRR doubtful even in “scarce reserves” regime like China? Are they doing it because they assume the monetarist loanable funds or because RRR is actually somewhat effective given the public sector nature of China’s banking system. But even then, PBOC has to backstop any system wide reserve shortage.
Their solutions come almost entirely from the neoliberal toolkit. That’s what they know, and they are trying to solve it the neoliberal way.