I don’t hate him. To be generous, you could say his stance wrt the Soviet Union rhetorically useful. I do think there are other historians sympathetic to the Soviet Union that are more rigorous than him, Moshe Lewin or Domenico Losurdo for instance.

In my amateur political opinion, unless Die Linke seriously purges the reformist and squishier elements represented by the likes of Klaus Lederer I think they’ll be perennially unpopular, caught between what should be their radical roots and the nascent liberalism infiltrating the party.

I skimmed their party program and the biggest impression I get is that it’s soft and non explicit in their goal to eliminate capitalism, much reformist talk and none of revolution or workers’ democracy. Let’s be clear : at this current political moment, this rhetoric sucks ass and does nothing to galvanise workers. It’s unfortunate that Wagenknecht is sorta beating them to the punch on this kind of transformation albeit I don’t think she is a radical, maybe more chauvinist from what I’ve heard.

As an aside, personally I’ve always hated the branding of “democratic” socialism. I understand why socialists thought they had to use it but to me socialism is already the democratic choice, it brings democracy to the site of production not just government elections. To use democratic socialism seems redundant at best and cowardly at worst.

I like Michael Roberts the most in that he’s probably the one I’ve read the most of lately. The book he wrote with Carchedi was quite good i thought especially the parts touching on “AI” and automation.

At what point in the history of the roman empire did the Praetorian guard fall apart?

Notable previous employment: she worked for a lawfirm hired by Chevron in the Donzinger case.

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Shadow employs dialectics

It is, Rosetta Stone is a pen name of his.

It was definitely initiated from the top down I would say. But at the end of the day, whatever mass strikes, work actions, and army mutinies occured were not enough to stop Yeltsin and the west from dissolving the SU into what it is now.

I don’t want to mean this as blaming the average Soviet citizen but the fact is; whether from apathy with the old system, or naive hope that westernising would bring prosperity, or fear of retribution from Yeltsins military, they and their organisations were sadly unable to defend the Soviet republics. All communists need to take sober lessons here. If it is the first task of the workers’ party to instill a revolutionary spirit in the working class, the second and even harder one must be to convert that spirit into a mass commitment to the socialist project.

You could try using the UNRWA reports or aid tracking to help find out, better than using israels info.

They were anti religious without being anti capitalist. So they were farcical Voltaire esque liberals at best

We can and should be disgusted at what’s happening in the middle east. Using chud language and mindsets but instead trying to do so in some kind of left way is not the way to express it imo

or the time a metallurgist falsified test results for steel being used in US submarines

can you see how admitting that reaganite endorsements = a surefire strategy is an indictment of the entire american political system, and leaves the only sane choice of dismantling the american state-machine before it does even more genocide

Do employers pay into pension schemes in China? How much do they have to put in?

Why appreciate Merkel, what did she do but let the shitshow of 2010s austerity to lay the groundwork for the current shitshow of the 2020s.

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Folding comments suck ass and down votes suck ass for similar reasons, I remember that’s why we got rid of them and made commenting the clearest way to disagree.

Michael Roberts- Germany: the end of EU hegemony?

What all this shows is that even German capitalism, the most successful advanced capitalist economy in Europe, cannot escape the divisive forces of the Long Depression. But it is also shows that the German coalition government’s slavish following of the interests of US imperialism in the name of ‘Western democracy’ over Ukraine and Israel is destroying the hegemony of German capital and the living standards of its poorest citizens. No wonder the voices of nationalism and reaction are gaining traction.

I don’t think it’s a secret that cobalt mining, or any mining really is exploitative of labour beyond normal wage relations. Plus the environmental cost is substantial as well. That is true enough, although like most real injustices this critique is ,for political reasons, aimed at former colonies rather than the more powerful governments that have the (stolen) wealth to actually create some kind of real solution.

As for the coup attempt by Christian Malanga, to me it’s hard to tell how serious of an attempt at regime change that was by the US/UK simply because of how bad the attempt was. The impression I got was that the alphabet boys did not send their best, if they even bothered to get involved. Malanga and his group were quickly suppressed, Malanga himself was killed and his son imprisoned. As far as I know the only support he had was either among diaspora or western NGOs. So a total failure there. Malanga had ties to all sorts of western entities so it seems plausible he had at least a green light from some western backer to go ahead with the coup attempt with an implicit promise to be recognised upon success.

My guess is that this was an incompetent or just plain lazy attempt at regime change symptomatic of a decline in state power compared to the 50s/60s. As for the online boycott campaign, without knowing more I would venture that’s maybe a 60/40 split between being created by naive libs vs from a suit filled board room somewhere.