Hey, comrades. I am new to lemmygrad and find it odd that there are so many marxist-leninist defending a war of agression started by an oligarch, possibly the richest man in the world. I get that you want to say that NATO is a source of evil on the global stage, but in this particular case you are defending Putin, a warlord, who has invaded many of his neighbouring countries and has stated plans to continue his campaign for megalomanial reasons.

No war but class war. Enabling an autocrat fascist oligarch does not do anything to counter the bad stuff done by NATO and the community should take a firm stand against the use of war for the sake of satisfying the dreams of a tyrant.

This is not a troll post or anything to that extent. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I think it needed to be said.

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Literally every one of your premises is false. It is not a “war of aggression” and while we obviously do not support Putin, for a variety of reasons, the main ones being that he is an anti-communist, a liberal and he encourages reactionary social tendencies, he is also none of the things you described him as.

    It is hard to believe that this is not a troll post when in the span of a few sentences you managed to regurgitate such a high number of western imperialist propaganda talking points and repeated a half dozen of the silly names they call Putin to demonize him: “oligarch”, “richest man in the world”, “warlord”, “megalomanial” [sic], “autocrat fascist” and “tyrant”. But i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and explain.

    Let’s start from the top: firstly, there are oligarchs in Russia with close ties to the government but Putin himself is not an oligarch. You may want to look up the definition of the term if you are confused. In Russia the oligarchs are primarily those opportunistic capitalists who after the fall of the USSR managed to amass great wealth and economic-political power by gaining ownership over a significant portion of the old state industries. Putin was not among them. Putin was a bureaucrat first and then a career politician.

    Secondly, there is not a single shred of evidence for the liberal media concocted myth that he is “the richest man in the world”. These allegations have never been substantiated by anything factual. They are based solely on the argument that “well, the Russian state owns X property and Putin controls the state, therefore Putin owns all of X”. It is nonsense.

    Further, calling him a “warlord” is just silly, i shouldn’t even have to explain why. He does not lead a military government, he is an elected president and head of state of a civilian government. Whether or not his election was or was not legitimately democratic (by whichever measure we want to judge that) is beside the point. Like all elections in bourgeois democracies Russian elections underrepresent the working class and favor the interests of the bourgeoisie. But he is no less legitimate than any western elected official,

    In fact it could be argued he has more legitimacy than most of his western counterparts as even western conducted polls that are biased against him show that his popularity is genuinely quite high. As communists we understand that this does not change the class character of his bourgeois government but it shows that many people in Russia at least in part associate the recovery that Russia has experienced since the disastrous 1990s with Putin’s governance.

    As for “autocrat” that depends on whether you consider the executive powers of a president inherently autocratic. That would make the US or French presidents also autocrats. However this is an infantile accusation anyway and unbecoming of a socialist because if Putin is an autocrat then so was and is every leader of any socialist state. Liberals accuse any leader they dislike of being an “autocrat”.

    So let’s simplify the discussion and look at the literal definition of “autocrat” as meaning a sole ruler with absolute power. Doing even cursory investigation of how the Russian government works we find it simply does not apply. Putin does not have unchecked autocratic power, he is checked by the Russian parliament and a number of various other governing bodies of the Russian Federation. The decision making is very much collaborative and involves a whole strata of political elites. The problem is that as in all bourgeois democracies these governing bodies and elites represent and advance the interests of the bourgeoisie first and foremost.

    As for whether or not he is a fascist this opens up a whole discussion about what fascism actually is. Is social democracy just social fascism? Many leftists would also argue that the US is and has been fascist since its inception, if not towards everyone to begin with then at least toward black and indigenous people. Where even is the difference between fascism and the regular dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that we have in every capitalist country?

    However if we assume for the sake of this discussion that the western liberal bourgeois democracies are not what we mean when we say fascist then neither is Russia. Russia is not in any qualitative or quantitative way more authoritarian or reactionary than the US, and in many ways it is less so. And no, fascism is not simply when people have reactionary tendencies. Otherwise most of the world would be full of fascists.

    Of course we can never know what someone truly believes but at least overtly Putin himself does not seem to be ideologically fascist. He can be best described as a moderate nationalist liberal. There are people and groups in Russia with legitimately fascist ideology and the centrist Putin government sometimes flirts with them but on the whole it seems to want to keep them marginalized. Russia is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state, if a real fascist, ultra-nationalist political movement was to gain traction Russia would almost certainly devolve into internal chaos. It is not in the interests of the Russian bourgeoisie to allow that.

    And as of late fascist ideology has become even more unpopular in Russia as they are at war with an actually fascist state. A state that openly worships Nazi collaborators as its national heroes, which has adopted fascist slogans and a racist, genocidal, fascist ideology, and whose soldiers are covered in Nazi insignia. A large number of Russian neonazis have gone over to the side of Ukraine and are now fighting against Russia.

    Finally, calling Putin a “tyrant” is just a repeat of the accusation of being an autocrat which is simply not factual. All of these cliche expressions you have used that are lifted straight out of western media’s anti-Russian propaganda are essentially rehashings of the old racist “oriental despotism” trope. As communists must understand our class enemies and to understand what they are and what they are not. And Putin is many things we dislike and oppose but he is not the caricature that the West paints him as.

    Enough about Putin, on to the war itself. The claim that it was started solely by Putin for “megalomanial” reasons is simply infantile. Not only is it embarrassing and unserious to engage in this sort of individualizing, psycho-pathologizing of complex geopolitical conflicts, it is evidence of either intent of deception or catastrophic ignorance. Conflicts between nations do not start because one person felt like starting a war. They are the result of complex processes and contradictions, often having built up for a long time.

    This conflict did not start in 2022, it started at least as far back as 2014. I won’t repeat the history, you can read about it elsewhere, but suffice to say there was already a conflict happening way before Russia intervened. And Russia intervened because it was left no other choice. Not only was the expansion of NATO into the now fascist state of Ukraine becoming an existential threat, but the ethnically Russian Donbass region of Ukraine, which in 2014 rebelled against the US orchestrated fascist coup d’etat, had come under serious threat of being attacked and overrun by the spring of 2022. No Russian government could have stood by and allowed this.

    Putin himself in fact was among the most reticent in Russia about taking direct military action to resolve the problem. For many years forces in Russia that sympathized with the Donbass had been pushing the Russian government to do more, to intervene directly. Multiple different diplomatic approaches were tried, none of which led anywhere, not least of all because the West, as has now been admitted, never had any intentions of negotiating in good faith and did everything it could to push Russia toward war in hopes that this would result in the fall of the Putin government and the renewed subjugation of Russia to western imperialism.

    For all intents and purposes this is an act of self-defense by Russia, on behalf of itself and on behalf of the Russians in the Donbass. By the precedent that NATO itself set during the Yugoslav wars Russia recognized the secession of the Donbass republics and invoked the UN article on collective self-defense, making their intervention legal by international law and defensive.

    We support Russia’s anti-fascist intervention not only on moral and legal grounds but more importantly because it is a major blow against US imperialism itself, and we recognize it as a fact that US imperialist hegmony is the biggest obstacle to socialism and socialist states everywhere. A defeat for NATO in this proxy war is a victory for the global proletariat. Anti-imperialist, anti-fascist struggle IS class war. Like the first cold war, this new cold war of the US against Russia and China represents a global dimension of the class war.

    • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      Putin was a bureaucrat first and then a career politician.

      Yes, and since the premise is that Russia is not a socialist state and there are oligarchs with massive amounts of wealth and power, thinking the most successful career politician of the state not to be influenced by and using money as a means to political ends is weird. I do not conflate his person with the state, though after consolidating power they can sometimes be hard to distinguish. The wealth referenced is not what is owned by the state, which was in large part sold out as you said in the 90s, but what is held by him directly and solely.

      There are a lot of wars started by Putin, which is why I call him a warlord. As I wrote in other comments, does the want for control over a sphere of influence justify attacking neighboring states to the extent done by Putin? If the states attacked were flawed, is it still something to cheer for given the state of Russia’s political line today? When capitalist nations go to war, the young and the poor die.

      A large number of Russian neonazis have gone over to the side of Ukraine and are now fighting against Russia.

      Yes, but if a nazi agrees with anyone, does that make that person a nazi guilty by association? I think there are a lot of Ukranians lumped in unfairly as nazis by your statement. It is not a war against nazism, it is a war for power and control, like most are. Even though the US and UK said they went to war against nazism during WWII, they mostly did for power, control and necessity. Is there no due diligence to be taken when considering statements from Putin?

      Russia is not in any qualitative or quantitative way more authoritarian or reactionary than the US, and in many ways it is less so.

      And I think that just like we do not cheer for US invasions of other countries, we should not cheer for Russian invasions either.

      Conflicts between nations do not start because one person felt like starting a war. They are the result of complex processes and contradictions, often having built up for a long time. (…) This conflict did not start in 2022, it started at least as far back as 2014. (…) the West, as has now been admitted, never had any intentions of negotiating in good faith and did everything it could to push Russia toward war (…) the UN article on collective self-defense, making their intervention legal by international law and defensive.

      There is room for a lot more nuance I will admit, that does not mean that it is false that Putin has said that he wants to retake the original borders of the Soviet Union, not for the purpose of restoration of the socialist state, but for the purpose of imperial ambition only. This can not be discarded as a reason for the war. I never stated that the war started in 2022, it started way earlier as you have said. It still escalated to unfathomable proportions in 2022 as a full scale invasion. I do not think the EU was nor is very happy about the war given how damaging economically it is to them. The economic downfall of the EU, and its citizens, due to the war, is damaging them a lot on the global stage when they already had unresolved economical and political issues. If anything, it has been US gain at the expense of the EU, since they have now increased manufacturing costs and the US can import back industry to sovereign lands in an attempt to rival China. Lastly I do not think the war is internationally recognized as just and legal. International law is only the agreement of nations, mostly those of the security council, it does not represent a moral law, actual law and even so the war is not in accordance with it.

      We support Russia’s anti-fascist intervention not only on moral and legal grounds but more importantly because it is a major blow against US imperialism itself, and we recognize it as a fact that US imperialist hegemony is the biggest obstacle to socialism and socialist states everywhere. A defeat for NATO in this proxy war is a victory for the global proletariat. Anti-imperialist, anti-fascist struggle IS class war. Like the first cold war, this new cold war of the US against Russia and China represents a global dimension of the class war.

      I have issues with this point as well, mainly that advancing Russian imperialism is not going to stifle NATO and US imperialism by anything. Military, the only one that may compete for hegemony is China at this point, and that is still some time off. Calling anything related to this war a a victory for the proletariat makes me a little sick. The proletariat in Russia and Ukraine are dying right now and the west have issued massive investments in their military production. Across the whole of EU, with Germany at the forefront, we see plans to make their military capabilities an order of magnitude stronger. This will not bring peace, not an end to western military hegemony and not victory for the proletariat.

      All this being said, I really do thank you for your response and giving the benefit of the doubt.

  • FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I’m amazed that embarrassing shit like this gets any amount of upvotes here on lemmygrad. Anyone who opposes Russia for “suddenly invading a peaceful, sovereign Nation” and unironically calls Putin a Warlord, Oligarch, Richest Man, etc. is not a Marxist and definitely not a Comrade but a reactionary who parrots arguments from western media. I smell wrecker.

    • Lemmy_Mouse@lemmygrad.ml
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      Admittedly it did not seem that way, but reading their replies I’m inclined to agree. One looking to learn is open and objective. One looking to spread propaganda and institute narrative change does so. This behavior unfortunately will be seen again due to this Reddit fiasco.

      • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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        I am most definitely trying to learn and understand here. That being said really can not understand how calling out Putin is in any way me not being a comrade. I sincerely hope you do not think Putin should get a free pass and support for opposing the US. If that is sufficient and necessary for your support, then I don’t think you are as much comrades as anti US. There are so many cases of the US being in the wrong and doing terrible stuff, yet instead of talking about those issues they are neglected and only used to support a regime that is in no capacity any better than the capitalist terror regime of the US.

        • Lemmy_Mouse@lemmygrad.ml
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          “I sincerely hope you do not think Putin should get a free pass and support for opposing the US.”

          Not at all. He is useful for our interests solely in this scenario and in general he is another enemy of our class.

  • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I think c/leftistinfighting would’ve been a better place for this.

    I do admit that the whole Ukraine discourse gets rather tiring as somebody who should not by any means be affected by it (but is because of shitty global economy). I am generally not concerned about gringos dying due to dumb gringo shit, so all that matters to me is whether the capitalist class will become weaker from this war, which doesn’t seem to be the case to me (please correct me though).

    I wish we talked more about other conflicts and struggles going on around the world rather than hyperfocusing on the one the eurolibs are so obsessed with. This war has been a huge distraction for politics worldwide, which is why any electoral party and corporation can just shore up support by putting a blue-yellow somewhere in their branding.

    As a very mild example, the WGA writers, y’know the guys who write most of our USA propaganda movies, have been on strike for 40 days now and are being boycotted by the same corporate news that can’t shut up about Disney. Additionally Sinn Féin on NI just became the largest NI party, which was also boycotted in favour of Charles 3 and how hot he is. Recently Brazil’s supposed socialist president adopted the anti-Cuban trend and reinstated the “Mais Médicos” program but focusing instead on paying fat salaries to Brazilian physicians, rather than providing actual care to rural areas. Those are not huge things by any means, but are way closer to home to those who speak Anglo than yet another imperial war in Eastern Europe. Yeah killing Nazis is fun, but there’s other fun stuff out there.

    • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      I wholeheartedly agree that the news of the war in Ukraine is taking the attention away from a lot of important issues. However, denying the fault of Putin invading Ukraine does not help anyone anywhere. If anything, the war in Ukraine should be a reminder for the west of the suffering caused by conflict and the need for peaceful resolutions, cooperation and solidarity.

      I do not think the capitalist class will get weaker from this, most definitely not the arms manufacturers. Pretending the war is good and just however is great for the capitalist overlords in Russia.

      • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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        Oh, I sure don’t deny (or affirm for that matter) the fault of Putin in it. If I were to go full conspiracy theorist, I’d say that the capitalist classes of Russia and NATO are actually working in tandem to draw out and prolong this war, if not the governmental administration of Russia/NATO/Ukraine. Neither Biden, Zelensky or Putin are gonna die from this war, no matter how much they like to cosplay in camo. I think a lot of the users here are reacting at how extreme and reactionary the narrative over this war has been in liberal circles. The overall NATO fanclub has been blindly dreaming about a prospect of an unlikely massive Ukranian victory, which is a really good way to sell arms and entrench foreign capital in Ukraine.

        If I were to care at all about this war, it would be from the perspective of using all this training, equipment and personnel towards an actual communist front in the war (correct me if there actually is one). Or if we were to take the centrist route, the third world could just collectively close its ports for resources used in the war, like steel, or just food, and let the gringos starve until they sort it out. Less people will die that way. None of the solutions to this war proposed by liberals, like increasing military funding and donating tanks, do anything but increase the human death toll of the war.

        I may be an odd duck here on this forum as I don’t really care much about whether Russia wins or loses (and definitely am not holding out for a Soviet revival coming from East Europe), and am somewhat amenable to the ceasefire proposals from socdems all over, but those will just get shouted down as “pro-Russia” whenever they pop up. Putin is the least of our problems down south, and we should be wary of getting baited into the European’s wars just because white people died on it.

        • Raphael
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          If I were to go full conspiracy theorist, I’d say that the capitalist classes of Russia and NATO are actually working in tandem to draw out and prolong this war

          Why would Russia prolong the war? They’re only embarrassing and impoverishing themselves the longer this takes.

          • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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            I mean, I’m obviously not very educated on the war, so would welcome any and all corrections. However from my limited perspective I’d be more surprised of NATO-aligned capitalists supporting it than Russian ones. Sure, the life of the average Russian may have gotten worse, and the sanctions may have given an economic shock, but removing foreign capital from local markets is a great way to empower local companies in those same niches.

            Even the liberals are now infighting because apparently their sanctions are not ruining Russia enough. Capitalists as a class tend to thrive under instability and inequality, and being cut off from the global market means that their buyers and workers don’t have anywhere to go. Just look at how much the local Mir and other local fintechs have only grown since Visa and Mastercard left. Sure, it hurts terribly if you’re a small country like Cuba or DPRK to receive sactions, but Russia is big and economically powerful enough to be relatively self-suficient, which is actually a Latinamerican dream that has been denied to us ever since 1804 (or long before if you count the colonies). By the very reporting done by “Western” libs, the sanctions applied are actually quite useless. “oh no, how will Russians live without Pepsi and McDonald’s while drowning in gold?” But the foreign capitalists also have a lot to gain with an unlikely full Ukrainian victory, and one needs only look at how liberal outlets are already normalising the concept of a NATO occupation of Russia similar to that of West Germany.

            I think it may be important to note that capitalists do not actually have a nationality and will throw proles of any country on the meat grinder if they think that’ll benefit them, no matter how much they pretend otherwise. Sure a lot of Russians may be dying on the war and it’s a shitstorm to all those on the ground, but to the capitalist, this is just venture capital with blood as investment.

            I welcome any and all criticism of my analysis, though, as post-soviet Ukraine/Russia is far out of my sphere of interest.

  • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.

    You are moralizing like a liberal. You are tone policing. And you are attempting to apply a veneer of principles (“No war but class war”) that belies your liberal history. That you “think it needed to be said” is more evidence of this. Hopefully by participating here, you will develop out of this infantile disorder.

    You said you “find it odd that there are so many marxist-leninist [sic] defending a war”. You then proceed to develop a strawman based entirely on subjective characterizations, Western propagandist claims, and even add moral components like “source of evil” and “megalomanial” [sic]. Here’s what’s actually happening.

    The global white supremacist capitalist hegemon continues it’s decades long process of encircling Russia and China with advanced nuclear capabilities in order to end the dynamic of MAD and make it possible for the US to use nuclear war as a viable threat again.

    The hegemon’s latest move was to establish the legal superstructure required to place advanced nuclear capabilities on the border between Russia and Ukraine - the same border that was used to invade Russia twice, the most recent being by the Third Reich.

    Russia decided, based on its military intelligence and strategic analysis, that if this deployment by the hegemon were to occur, it would be nearly unrecoverable without global conflagration. Were they right? We can never know. They get to decide, not us. We are not the ones being encircled, they are. We are not the ones with the intelligence briefings, they are. They made the decisions to stop the deployment and that meant engaging the proxy.

    This is a somewhat historically new proxy war formation in that the hegemon did not establish a proxy to launch an attack but rather established a proxy to engage in encirclement using the international rules-based order. Russia is fighting against public perception that hasn’t yet understood this as a proxy war, despite everyone knowing it’s a proxy war. Russia is fighting the US, there’s no question about that. Russia invaded Ukraine to fight the US. Ukraine is the proxy of the US.

    Anyone who has analyzed the world systems at play here understands that nuclear encirclement must be stopped and unilateral embargo must be stopped. These two things necessarily means the emergence of a multipolar world order. No one is cheering for the death of Ukrainians (unless they’re wearing Nazi symbols). No one is cheering for the destruction of civilian infrastructure. No one is cheering for millions displaced, for generational trauma, for brutality. No one is cheering for Putin to feel good about himself, or for Russians to satisfy an imagined bloodlust, or whatever delusions you hold.

    We are cheering for the evidence that supports the hypothesis that the hegemon is not as powerful as we previously believed. We are cheering for the evidence that the hegemon is not succeeding. We are cheering for the potential of the emergence of the multipolar world order.

    Pay attention. Cut the liberal cop out of your brain. Actually read and do analysis. Stop believing delusions even if they make you feel good.

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    One more addendum to my earlier comment:

    The claim that Putin’s Russia has a history of invading countries around it is simply false. The example typically given to support this assertion is the brief Russo-Georgian war of 2008, however this is a bare faced lie. Even a EU commission investigation into that conflict found that it was in fact Georgia which started it (much like Ukraine did with this one) by attacking the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia which were under Russian protection. Of course they did this at the behest and with the encouragement of the US which led them to believe that the Russians would not fight back, and if they did that the US would have Georgia’s back.

    The parallels of that conflict to the one with Ukraine are actually quite impressive. In both cases the conflict was preceded by the US carrying out a color revolution to install a fanatically anti-Russian proxy puppet regime into power in those countries. Then the carrot of EU and NATO membership was dangled in front of these states under the condition that they allow themselves to be used as a battering ram against Russia. The plan was to provoke Russia into a conflict by threatening its vital interests right on its border, portraying Russia’s reaction as aggression and use this to justify imposing sanctions that were supposed to devastate Russia.

    Other examples that are sometimes used to portray Russia as an inherently aggressive state are callbacks to certain actions of the Soviet Union, all of which are grotesquely misrepresented and the real history of which is systematically twisted and falsified. And in any case the Russia is not the USSR, so none of that has any bearing on discussions of the behavior if Russia as it exists today unless you subscribe to the racist belief that there is just something in Russian genes that is somehow inherently aggressive.

    • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      Most definitely USSR and Russia are wildly different and continuity broke long ago. The characterization of anti Russian sentiments is not racist and not propagating american propaganda: First off, the Russian people are wonderful people who right now gets the bad end of the stick due to their leader not acting in their interest, which is no surprise he is not part of their class and has shown he only cares for power and money like ANY capitalist would.

      Second, there is something to be said about how we cannot let accusations that a counter movement to a regime is backed by the US have us default to opposition to the movement. The ideals of the movement can be true and fair and deserve support, even if the accusation is true or false. You are talking about Russia’s border and their right to intervene as if it was their sovereign territory. It is not, and this faulty logic is the same as used by the US to justify atrocities in middle and south America.

  • Lemmy_Mouse@lemmygrad.ml
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    1. An oligarch did not start this war, a group of them did. Bourgeois are a class, not kings who act alone.

    2. Putin is not an oligarch, he is a labor aristocrat as all politicians are.

    3. Putin is far from the richest man in the world. As far as free capital (PPP) goes, I believe it has been continuously fluctuating between Musk and Bezos. As far as value of total assets goes, this by far goes to the US bourgeoisie as they effectively own and control the entire west and command servitude from much of the developing nations, defacto owning those as well. (basically not literally)

    4. Typically warlords participate in battles, no? If this is the case, then I do not believe Putin is to be classified as a warlord.

    5. Putin has invaded many nations around him, yes, but not due to megalomania, this is an anarchist/radlib belief which is injected to fill the void left by lack of understanding. NATO has couped the governments of the pette bourgeois nations surrounding Russia in attempts to make them as how we see Ukraine today in an attempt to invade, defeat, and ultimately seize the assets of Russia to fulfill the necessity of profit, to counteract the falling rate of profit, and to eliminate a major global competitor thus reinforcing and magnifying their own monopoly in preparation towards going on to attack China for the same reasons. Russia was defending it’s national security by invading, as they are doing so in Ukraine. As well, they are defending AES nations such as China and Cuba from US imperialism. They are like batman; not the hero we want, but the hero we need have.

    6. Yes no war but class war, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Pragmatically speaking, anyone and I mean anyone fighting imperial capital which currently holds a practical worldwide monopoly is essential to creating open spaces for revolutions to flourish. As well, we must reject trotskyism which asserts that a world revolution lead by the west seeking it’s own unimpeded interests is the way towards communism.

    7. Thank you for voicing your opinion maturely and respectfully, it helps legitimate conversion on matters to be had.

    • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      1. Good point, I should have made the distinction. I still feel it does not change the sentiment much as Putin very much represents his group and class.
      2. I tried to make the point that he has transitioned from a labor aristocrat to an oligarch through his rise to power. I do not think it is delusional to think that money and power are two sides of the same coin in Russia as well as any other capitalist society.
      3. Musk and Bezos have both been the richest person in the world, though. The numbers are shaky, but the ballpark as the top of the top economical elite is right. I think that calculation of value of assets is hard, but it suffices to say that Putin is part of an economic class above most others.
      4. Technically, I think you are correct. Taking basis in the definition “a military leader who controls a country or, more often, an area within a country” it might be inaccurate since Putin is a president and not say a general. Though I am admittedly unsure of the official status of the president of the Russian federation with regards to the military in the case of war and in my country, the head of state (which is a ceremonial role), is in fact also the official head of military in case of war. Either way, I think it is clear that Putin has much control in his group of oligarchs and aristocrats, which include people leading the armed forces, making him a defacto leader of the military as well.
      5. I do not think these points are mutually exclusive. I do think Putin is a megalomanial leader who also happens to do a lot of the stuff you have said. That still does not excuse what I perceive to be his imperial ambitions and consequently does not garner my support. Ultimately I do not think the regime is a force for good as a whole and I think the issues with it are downplayed and the inadvertent upsides exaggerated. This is maybe the core of my disagreement with some of the other assessments and I am open to me being ignorant on some of the parts of this argument.
      6. I am pretty conflicted on idealism vs pragmatism, usually resorting to idealism though I admit that might be because it is easier for me to swallow. However, I do think we need to be clear that enemy of my enemy being a friend does not mean two wrongs always makes a right. Sometimes it does, but as I have written many places I do not think the war benefits the proletariat in any tangible way.
      7. Thank you for not dismissing me and for trying to answer me in a clear and respectful manner. I am equally grateful for your effort as well as your politeness.
      • Lemmy_Mouse@lemmygrad.ml
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        “Good point, I should have made the distinction. I still feel it does not change the sentiment much as Putin very much represents his group and class. I tried to make the point that he has transitioned from a labor aristocrat to an oligarch through his rise to power. I do not think it is delusional to think that money and power are two sides of the same coin in Russia as well as any other capitalist society.”

        It isn’t about close enough or kind of like, it’s a matter of scientific classification. It matters because it changes how we understand his actions and his role in all of this.

        “it suffices to say that Putin is part of an economic class above most others.”

        Agreed, he’s certainly not a toiling prol. His interests are tied to capital.

        “usually resorting to idealism though I admit that might be because it is easier for me to swallow.”

        This is natural as we were all first taught idealism as it is the ideological MO of capitalism. I will say it takes education to be able to say and understand the phrase dialectical materialism alone without taking into account the teachings of this philosophy.

        “However, I do think we need to be clear that enemy of my enemy being a friend does not mean two wrongs always makes a right. Sometimes it does, but as I have written many places I do not think the war benefits the proletariat in any tangible way.”

        I agree. I would say where idealism and pragmatism depart ways in today’s conditions is at the point of hyper morality which sacrifices continuity. When one must be in the right to such a degree that it prevents the person from acting to uphold the values they hold dear and consequently watch them fall as a result of this. For example a father who is so determined to be civil that he watches a person kill his child in front of him after failing to persuade the person to not do this with words alone. A particularly dangerous aspect of this is the predictable changes which occur within one when this occurs - the indulgence in the dialectic of his previous position, casting aside all previous values with oversensitivities with them. Later he will see the failures of this method and equilibrium will be found, the dialectic process of development (the clashing of opposites based on their contradictions to forge a new future determined by the “most fit” characteristics of each) will forge a new man but only after such heartache.

        We all know stories like this. Many of us have had major developments like this in our own lives.

  • Mintopia System@lemmygrad.ml
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    I agree that there is a great deal of magical thinking and rationalization at play. This war has been a catastrophe all-around. It has led to countless civilian deaths, the revitalization/expansion of NATO and a significant depletion of the forces and materiel of the Russian Federation.

  • CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml
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    defending a war of agression

    See: The Donbas from 2014-2022

    started by an oligarch

    Their evil oligarchs, our billionaires (they are all bourgeois). But really, Putin is less characterized by owning the means of production than by treading water among a host of competing bourgeois interests.

    possibly the richest man in the world

    lmfao

    I get that you want to say that NATO is a source of evil on the global stage,

    Is it not?

    but in this particular case you are defending Putin

    Where? For doing what?

    a warlord

    Google, what is a warlord?

    who has invaded many of his neighbouring countries

    Putin is just a (weird) dude. He doesn’t do any invading. The Russian Federation has seized territory from 2 neighbors in recent history, and both have their origins in response to NATO aggressions. The idea that this is all just one dude who wants more land or fighting is ridiculous.

    and has stated plans to continue his campaign for megalomanial reasons.

    Who cares what he says (though I don’t even know what you’re referring to)? Unless you’re living in Russia his rhetoric doesn’t really affect you and, as a liberal politician, it’s not going to match the actions or motivations of the ruling class.

    No war but class war.

    I agree with the sentiment but in this particular framing it’s letting The West off the hook.

    In the context of Ukraine, does that mean you support the status quo in The Donbas up to 2022? That’s an ethnic cleansing led by neo-Nazis and other fascists, particularly neo-Bandyerites, and with resistance gets oversimplified as a civil war. Minsk and Minsk II, i.e. the diplomatic paths, were never followed by The West, they just turned up the violence and funded and supplied those fascists.

    Invasion by Russia was the intent of The West. They got what they wanted - a harder split between Russia and EU countries. And they were continuing to push across red lines to do it until something gave. What do you think Russia should have done?

    Enabling an autocrat fascist oligarch does not do anything to counter the bad stuff done by NATO

    Enabling how?

    and the community should take a firm stand against the use of war for the sake of satisfying the dreams of a tyrant.

    Liberal Great Man theory from a non-material perspective. If leaders of capitalist countries go against the wishes of the ruling class, they get isolated and, if necessary, murdered. This war happened with the input and strategy of many sober experts in the liberal order of Russusn Federation leadership. This is a country, not a fantasy novel.

    This community does take an anti-war stance, but if you don’t understand the basic history and reasons why the war is happening you won’t be able to dole out blame or understand what outcomes are on the table right now.

    This is not a troll post or anything to that extent. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I think it needed to be said.

    Why did it need to be said? It is okay to not share opinions about something you haven’t spent much time learning about. We all have things we don’t know very well. I understand that there is a social normalization of having and sharing opinions before attaining knowledge, and socialists are hardly exempt from this, but it makes us, our discourse, and our ability to organize better if we can try to recognize snd combat that tendency.

    • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      Their evil oligarchs, our billionaires (they are all bourgeois). But really, Putin is less characterized by owning the means of production than by treading water among a host of competing bourgeois interests.

      Started by Putin or his group of bourgeois thugs is not important. It is done in their interest at the expense of the proletariat.

      get that you want to say that NATO is a source of evil on the global stage,

      Is it not?

      Yes it is.

      Who cares what he says (though I don’t even know what you’re referring to)? Unless you’re living in Russia his rhetoric doesn’t really affect you and, as a liberal politician, it’s not going to match the actions or motivations of the ruling class.

      I care about his rhetoric because many of the things he has said he would do, he has also done, some of which has been a tragedy for those bordering Russia. My post called supporting the war unsolidaric, and I still think it is. I think we should have solidarity for all people of the world, inside Russia, bordering Russia and everywhere else. The problem is people are dying unnecessarily for his groups capital gains and we should not be in support of that.

      Liberal Great Man theory

      No, I think this is reductionist rhetoric from you. Putin is the head of government and no one ever rules alone, that goes without saying. Being head of government makes him an immediate symbol of the government he represents, that is kind of the point of being the head of anything. As such it is disingenuous to say that I talk about “great man” theory when I am indeed talking about the specific actions committed by a regime with him at the forefront. That being said, there is no way one can look at the politics of Russia and say that Putin is a weak leader. He holds much power and has much responsibility for what is going on.

      Why did it need to be said?

      I was not wrong when I considered this might be a controversial opinion here and I simply do not think it should be.

  • KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.ml
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    Enabling an autocrat fascist oligarch does not do anything to counter the bad stuff done by NATO and the community should take a firm stand against the use of war for the sake of satisfying the dreams of a tyrant.

    I’m sorry, but this reeks of major main character syndrom. What some randoms post on a niche ML community on the interwebs has literally no material impact on this conflict. Whether we condemn, cheer on, ridicule or whatever either side of this conflict is entirely immaterial. A protracted, armed conflict is neither started, nor enabled, nor stopped because of shitposters anywhere. 99% of people on this board and a least 95% of people of the internet are totally divorced from this war and at the most are cheerleaders on the sidelines. This isn’t ‘enabling’, it’s inconsequential.

    No war but class war

    I agree and in actual praxis this should be any communist organizations maxim. lemmygrad isn’t one though.

    • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      A protracted, armed conflict is neither started, nor enabled, nor stopped because of shitposters anywhere. 99% of people on this board and a least 95% of people of the internet are totally divorced from this war and at the most are cheerleaders on the sidelines.

      The problem is not the importance of posts on the internet, it is the sentiment they represent. This sentiment can and should be of importance if you are serious about socialism and actually making changes to society. As an example, the leftist parties in my country did have a problem with how to react to the war with many taking similar points that I have seen here. That is consequential to the support of their movements and also if they are to actually be successful consequential at large.

      • KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.ml
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        Yes, but lemmygrad is not a party, it is not an organization and what individuals cheer for online is immaterial to the collective positions of actually existing revolutionary parties. It isn’t support either, because it isn’t material.

        As an example, the leftist parties in my country did have a problem with how to react to the war with many taking similar points that I have seen here.

        Of course they’ve had problems and rightfully so, but again, we are not parties and what we can say and how we behave is not comparable to a revolutionary collective. We can post Stalin and Assad memes all day, actual organizations obviously can’t. Us doing so does not influence actual praxis. They’re two entirely different spaces that function differently and so can we as individuals in those spaces.

  • Raphael
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    It’s a simple 1-2-3 process.

    • I hate nazis more than anything, I’ll bash Ukraine but I won’t defend Putler.
    • However, should Russia fall, the United States would be even more powerful.
    • I hate the US more than I hate Putin and for this reason I’m rooting for Russia even though I wish Putler died.

    And Russia needs to stay alive and relevant, someone over there will eventually revive the Soviet Union.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      Please don’t use those silly liberal nicknames for Putin. Comparing him to Hitler is tantamount to Nazi apologia. You can find ways of expressing your dislike of Putin without the use of language steeped in anti-Russian propaganda tropes. The same people who use that language to refer to Putin also call Russians “orcs” and other dehumanizing epithets.

    • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      • Do you really think that the millions of displaced and I do not dare guess how many killed were all nazis? The reason socialists in general oppose war is that it is a tool for the bourgeoisie to continue and extend their oppression of the masses. How many innocents need be sacrificed for one nazi in your opininion? I think zero.

      • Russia is in decline and has been since the fall of the Soviet Union. The power of the US on the global stage is mainly checked by China, and if anything there are other developing countries in far better positions to challenge US hegemony than Russia. Root for someone else worth rooting for.

      • Countries fighting for global hegemony will always be at the expense of the working class and even more so for those in the smaller countries in their spheres of influence. If you think there is something to be gained from this I think you should reconsider.

      I do not think the Soviet Union will be revived and surely not by Putin winning his wars. Creation is done through peace not conquest. Socialism is done by and for the many, not the few.

      • Black AOC@lemmygrad.ml
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        Do you really think that the millions of displaced and I do not dare guess how many killed were all nazis?

        When one nazi sits at a table with nine others, and they don’t either get up or stomp that motherfucker out, then the table has ten nazis. Simple as.

        • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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          I’m no Ukraine/NATO supporter by any means, but I wouldn’t completely fault random civilians for the rise of Nazis in Ukraine. Even actual Nazi Germany had a bunch of non-nazi people in it (who either fled or were promptly imprisoned/killed, but you get my point). To use your analogy, it’s more like the Nazis are in the city, own the government and are a big part of the military and are pervasive in society, rather than physically at every table and not every person will have the opportunity or capability to stomp them out. I sure wouldn’t enjoy getting killed by enemies of my government over here, even though I would fully support it ending. Of course, I don’t think we should hold this same leniency towards the actual military personnel.

        • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          I think a characteristic property of nazism is that it is intolerant and does not allow for opposition, hence the silent opposition has to be careful and smart in how to actually voice or act their opposition given that the nazists are empowered. That does not mean they are supporting them or in any way guilty themselves. They are victims like everyone else. By extension of this logic, everyone living in a capitalist society too impoverished to fight it are capitalists themselves, which is blatantly false.

          • Black AOC@lemmygrad.ml
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            I said Nazi, not capitalist. That thing you tried to do in your last line is blatantly fallacious, because we’re all born and forced into capitalism, and have been for decades. No one, not a single motherfucker, is born or forced into Naziism. Amerika brought it to them, they chose it, they don’t fight it, ergo I hold the same contempt for them that I hold for the Amerikans who allow klansmen to walk around unmolested.

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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        Russia is not in decline, at the moment it is on a trajectory toward regaining its former status as a superpower. The economic war launched by the West against it has backfired and has only made Russia stronger, as a result of sanctions Russia has reoriented its economy and strengthened its domestic capacities.

        The kinetic war which was launched by NATO against Russia through the use of the Ukraine proxy has led to a reboot of much of Russia’s dormant military industrial capacities, an expansion of the Russian military, and is giving Russia invaluable experience in what it means to fight a war with modern technology.

        This is a fight against the unchecked global hegemony of the US empire. It is no coincidence that the global south has overwhelmingly aligned with Russia. Russia and China are the leaders of a global anti-hegemonic coalition that is growing by the day. Neither of the two for the time being shows any intentions of replacing the US. Both are heavily pushing multipolarity.

        And if any one fact more than anything else should tell you that you should support Russia in this conflict it is that the DPRK does so. Throughout its entire history the DPRK’s track record on global conflicts has been spotless. Do you really thing you know better than the world’s most successful communist parties, the CPC and the WPK, not to mention Russia’s own KPRF?

        • WageSlave@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          Russia is in decline though, economically and demographically speaking. Their economy is for the most part based on export of resources, largely gas and oil. Although they are making great profits due to OPEC and the war inflating the oil prices, they have not many options to transition their economy when oil and gas becomes obsolete, which will happen at some point in the future. As for right now, their population pyramid is not suggesting some major economic boom incoming, rather a multitude of problems which we always observe in capitalist societies with declining populations.

          EDIT: Also, I do not align my views blindly after DPRK nor anyone else. Having read, and agreed with, so many socialists stating the need to educate and think for ourselves, I find this point odd. It is just a tautological statement to say that DPRK is always right.

          • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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            The Russian economy has proven to be far more robust and resilient than the West assumed, who thought that the all out sanctions assault would be enough to collapse it. It has withstood this assault better than almost anyone expected, including many Russians and the Russian government itself. This points to the Russian economy having been severely misunderstood and underestimated. It is clear that the simplistic caricature of the Russian economy being a hollow one based primarily on raw material export has proven to be false.

            Russia has a significant and growing industrial base and this is what has enabled them to prosecute the current conflict on both the economic and military fronts so effectively. Russia’s real industrial economy by some estimates actually surpasses that of any European country and rivals that of the US despite a nominally far lower GDP. This is because most of the West has lost its manufacturing base and turned into hyper financialized economies.

            There is good indication that in conjunction with its BRICS partners the Russian economy is only going to accelerate its growth in coming years now that it has freed itself (thanks to the ill advised sanctions imposed by West) from the albatross around its neck which was its dependence on the West preventing Russia from developing its own domestic alternatives. The growth of multipolarity which this conflict has accelerated has enabled the entire global south to be able to start doing the same.

            As for demographic issues, this is not unique to Russia, the West’s demographics are no different, and in fact this is a phenomenon observed in all sufficiently advanced economies. We hear the same fearmongering about demographic doom when it comes to China as well. For sure this is something that needs to be taken into account but it is not as catastrophic as it is often made out to be.

            Of course China and Russia are different in that one is a socialist state and the other is not, so we can expect that China will be better able to respond to the challenges that this presents, but i don’t see any predictions of demographic collapse of Europe (except from fascists who fearmonger about white replacement) so why should we apply a double standard when it comes to Russia?

      • Lemmy_Mouse@lemmygrad.ml
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        Friend, how do you think nazis are opposed if not in war? I realize in the US one can simply cross the street when fascists demonstrate in Florida, snap a pic and make a snarky comment on Insta and be done with it, but in Ukraine workers have been beaten to death and burned alive simply for being Russian. They do not have the luxury of saying no to a fight to the death, their choices are fight back or die.

        You contradict yourself; You say Putin is the richest man in the world and paint him as a capable warlord, yet you say Russia has been in decline since 91’. Understanding a capitalist’s might comes from his capitalist empire, this makes no sense. It’s fascist propaganda/US doublespeak.

        Believing socialism was created through peace but not war is a troubling sign you have not read much theory or history of socialist revolutions. The reality is, socialism was created through war in the pursuit of peace.

      • Raphael
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        You should look up left communist, you’ll find a lot in common with them. :):):):)