how can low birthrates and immigration both be a problem? it would seem to me that one ought to compensate for the other. if you're worried about the population of your country decreasing then you should be happy that new people are coming in to bolster your numbers. if you are worried about the population being too high, then you should be happy that people aren't having as many babies.
and let's face it, neither of these things are issues that anyone can really do anything about. you can't make millions of people have sex and produce babies more often and you can't stop millions of people from entering a country. human behavior at this scale is basically like the weather, you can't control it or do anything about it and there's no sense in whining about it, all you can really do is just accept it and adapt to it.
Two boring paragraphs that simply boil down to neoliberal 'you cannot do nothing ever' whining. Thanks.
Foreign workers are generally more precarious and their families have lower income requirements, therefore a large influx of migrants may depress wages and otherwise worsen the conditions of local proletarians. Immigration also directly siphons off labor and resources spent in training/education from the global periphery, see for example yuropiss cunts poaching nursing workers from latin america.
https://correctiv.org/en/current/2020/11/25/nurses-for-sale/Politics is like weather, you can't do nufin bout it
I want the total human population to reduce itself.
>>2862761It's a problem for capital because the costs of keeping an aging population alive exceeds the taxable profit that can be extracted from the proletariat.
>>2862761>how can low birthrates and immigration both be a problem?immigrants have unfair advantage on the job market which in turn makes the native working class lives worse which only adds to low birthrates
>you can't stop millions of people from entering a countryyes we can. we can also turn those who already immigrated back home, it's just a matter of time before the reaction to immigration reaches that point
>muh native working class
"workers of the world FUCK OFF, i want to GET THAT BAG." - leftypol
>>2862810newsflash: working class does not see itself as an international rootless mass so you can forget about that slogan
>>2862810you say that but everytime it's the local working class that needs to integrate immigrants in the "unite" part and never the opposite
>>2862836I agree: I repeat now that I no longer know any parties. I know only Germans!
birthrates are negative globally. take out africa and the global population is shrinking. you cannot have capitalism that demands constant growth and a shrinking labor/consumer pool, they're incompatible with each other. immigration worked for a time, but it was always going to be temporary so long as birthrates kept crashing globally
let's be honest here, we all know the real reason people don't like immigration and that it's got nothing to do with economics or demographics or any of that stuff. it's because it breaks the illusion. the nation state is just a great big performance, this 200-year-old harebrained idea that we have been trying desperately to reify, no matter how obvious it is that reality isn't having it. we try to convince ourselves that these imaginary lines drawn on maps are actual physical barriers that separate "us" from "them" and all the resources we pour into futile efforts to stop people from stepping over the imaginary lines are just political theater to make us feel like the barriers are real. it's not about trying to keep them out; it's about keeping us in, keeping us psychologically invested in the fiction of our national identity. but the barriers are not real, millions of people continue to step over the lines illegally year after year after year and they live among us as walking proof that it's all just a performance. and we despise them for it without being able to really say why, because to do so would mean acknowledging that it's all just a performance, that there are no nations and there never was, the lines on the map are just military territorial demarcations that have nothing to do with actual human beings or their culture or language or identity at all.
>>2862901i just think browns are ugly
>>2862901>this 200-year-old harebrained ideayou're repeating a lie
the first history book - history of peloponnesian wars by thucydides starts by author explaining who the greeks are where they came from how did they become greek and what makes them different from everyone else. concept of nation is as old as history itself
>>2862981They all had their own warring city states with specific pedophilia cultural particularisms which in fact makes many many different nations thucidyde was full of shit anyway. The first history book was by herodotus by the way
>>2862981greek city states were not nations in the modern sense, the vast majority of their populations were not citizens for a start. (no women, no foreigners - obviously, no slaves - and there were a lot of those poor bastards, helots, penestai, hektemoroi…) that greece today
is a nation state and not a patchwork of little cities should be enough to make that obvious.
meanwhile: Britain didn't have border controls until 1905, wasn't really a nation state until 1945, and stopped being a nation state circa 1982. (go read David Edgerton's "rise and fall of the British nation" for more. Britain is profoundly weird, 4.75 nations in a trenchcoat half belonging to a dead nation and half belonging to a dead empire.)
>>2862981A nation (e.g. Latin "natio") was a concept to the Ancients, but a nation-state is a modern construct. Many disunited nations, such as Italy and Germany were not even formed as statrs until the late 19th century (since especially in Italy, city-states like Venice had precedent history).
>>2862989>thucidyde was full of shit anywayHow?
Why doesnt the state just fund childcare more, its been found to increase the population by 10%
there are no leftists on leftypol. you're all just a bunch of square conservative dopes, this might as well be reddit.
>>2863276That's not fair, there are a few. Admittedly one of them keeps talking about "high openness" and another on /leftybritpol/ is an unironic neoliberalism sympathising communist, but they're not conservatives
>>2863276the vast majority of /leftypol/ rejects "leftism" and has done so for more than a decade by now
half the "people" here subscribe to a special snowflake version of communism and the other half are just /pol/
>>2863056The actual trick for high birth rates is to make women illiterate and forbid abortion/contraceptives
>>2863296they're not even communism, they very obviously believe in private property as a concept and very obviously value private property more than human lives, they're just textbook conservatives, they're no different from the typical boomer dad on facebook, they're totally emotionally invested in capitalism and white nationalism and they can't even imagine anything else, even when they actually try to. they're not physically capable of being leftists or of engaging in any kind of leftist thought or critique because they're too soft and sheltered from material reality, they have never experienced material suffering and don't even know what it is, they've never been hungry or homeless or got beaten up or thrown in jail or anything like that. they're like infants.
>>2863405stop trying to make virtue out of suffering. generally speaking, suffering makes people worse. you attack textbook conservatism but the number one thing that breeds conservative values is suffering and the number one thing that breeds leftist/liberal values is seeing problems and knowing something better is possible. (this is also why the tocqueville paradox exists: people are very good at suffering horrendous conditions so long as they seem inevitable, if you show them that actually they were avoidable this whole time,
then they revolt.)
the problem with imageboard conservatives is not that they have never suffered, it is that they are conservatives.
>>2863414it's not virtue, it's just awareness. if you're some loser who lives at home with your mom and dad and you've never worked for a living and never had to pay bills and never had to be responsible for your own life and all you've ever done is just sit around masturbating and playing video games and internet trolling all day every day then of course you would have no awareness of what goes on in material reality and what life is like outside of your bedroom.
>>2863419yes but none of that has any explanatory power over whether your political views are conservative or leftist, and in any case sitting at home jerking off all day is as much "material reality" as working in a sweatshop in cambodia. the world contains multitudes.
allow me to be glib: people who were beaten by their parents as a kid are
more likely to grow up to be conservatives. this runs directly contrary to your implication that more suffering, more responsibility, more hard-work, more "awareness of the [real world]" would push people away from private property and white nationalism. meanwhile hippie-dippie egalitarian, "nurturant", parenting styles are correlated with liberal views as an adult.
theoretically we would expect liberal parents to also be more tolerant of sitting home and jerking off all day, but i think that it's most likely a wash (conservatives will grumble more) and that the number of NEETs in both cases is pretty similar though lib/left neets will have gone to college and then come back at higher rates. i would posit education as one mechanism that makes younger people skew more lib in general: again being glib, going to college and meeting people who're shocked that you were beaten by your parents helps you see that all their conservative nonsense was them behaving pathologically, not "just how things are".
>>2862761Because xenophobia. It’s not about how many people, it’s about what kind of people. Don’t fall for stupid right wing propaganda, support open borders.
>>2863055And yet AES “nations” (I don’t think China counts as a nation considering how its state identity has always been imperial, but nvm) wouldn’t even survive without access to capitalist markets that have high immigration.
Granted, the PRC is capitalist since it doesn’t even operate under LTV, but it can’t be denied that not even China, in spite of its size, could survive without stealing American IPs and relying on access to the capitalist markets. And so do Cuba and NK, the former now doing dengism and always reliant on tourism, the latter being dependent on China for its economic sustenance.
As for NK’s recent success story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_North_KoreaOh the irony…
Truly the world is fucked up. Ig it’s true that reality is stranger than fiction.
I mean, I do agree that a coherent communist country wouldn’t liberalise immigration laws until the whole world was communist, but I do think such leftists are unwilling to acknowledge that traditionally the “nations” that had the biggest impact on world culture and history have often been empires like the current American empire, or artificial states like the USSR. In fact, America probably wouldn’t have as much sway in internet culture as it does today if it weren’t for its ethnic, religious and racial diversity, even if all immigrants eventually turn into Americans. In fact, I’ve yet to see FOB Latinos not turning into chicanos or gusanos after a few generations.
>>2863501>I don’t think China counts as a nationwhat do you think mao's cultural revolution was about? read a damn book, fucking hell.
>>2863414>tocqueville paradoxWhat are good examples of this? I don't see how the French Revolution counts considering it happened during crop failures and bread shortages.
>>2862777Who decides who or what is foreign and what isn't? Aren't we all foreigners, and simultaneously the same according to the basic tenets of leftism?
>>2863506france had crop failures and bread shortages before without full blown revolution, revolution happened when the monarchy started to reform and even help out a little (flour war of 1775 had them distribute grain + impose price controls for example). similarly, tsarist russia was kind of locked in a cycle of these: get richer and less oppressive, 1905 revolt, make concessions and get less repressive still, expectations rise further… and then ww1 happens, try to backtrack slightly and boom. South Korea democratising in the 1980s (with massive protests in 1987) as it was getting richer is another example. there's also the collapse of the USSR though that's an odd example because gorbachev managed to increase expectations without really increasing prosperity via increased openness to the west. (possibly one reason it collapsed the way it did, with mostly elite support, is that far more
elites all got to travel to the west for the first time saw just how many treats they were missing out on.) meanwhile Tiananmen Square's pro-democracy element is a sort of "tried and failed" case where economic reform lead some to expect political reform, and they revolted unsuccessfully when they didn't get it, helped by others being unhappy about the economy hiccuping after a period of improvement.
i would qualify the summary of the paradox by saying that the actual flow is usually
things get better > expectations rise > economy stalls/other crisis, meaning expectations no longer match up with reality > revolution.
>>2863511"Hipocrisy" is a liberal category that imagines a universal standard against which to judge, rather than particular conditions at hand
>>2863540Why is immigration particularly bad for communist countries?
>>2863595
So the reason why North Korea imprisons its population is to gain support from nazis?
>>2863501>>2863511Wrong. The communist position is to fight for the labor rights of all immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, and to prevent any means by which capitalists coerce immigrant workers to intensify capital accumulation. Compensation will be made for each hour not paid to immigrant workers compared to native workers. Compensation will be paid to workers' unions and workers' organizations, and various fines will also be levied without the capitalist being able to appeal for any violations. Unionization of all workers will be mandatory without any limit to the state and capitalists preventing radical unions. Wage equalization with unionized workers will prevent betrayals, along with the radical democratization of unions. The legal right to public defense will be advanced, and the legal and judicial process will be democratized, in addition to the guaranteed public legal right to legal processes for all workers to fight in solidarity together. The Marxist position does not tolerate any repressive power of the bourgeois state in order to prepare for the overthrow of the bourgeois state. This means abolishing the standing armed army, the police, and all means of repression of the bourgeois state; arming the workers organized into popular self-defense militias for the supremacy of the proletariat; disarming and confiscating the enemy classes of all apologists of the bourgeois state who deny the supremacy of the proletariat; and all immigrant workers entering unionized popular councils, receiving full civil rights to vote and defend against capitalists.
Marx, in his text "Value, Price and Profit", already proved false the narrative that increasing workers' wages will increase the price of products because it is the workers who create value with their labor power, not the capitalists. The only thing that will be affected is the profit that the capitalist receives by exploiting the workers, but the economy will be incentivized to produce more when workers have more money simply because workers' wages are already suppressed, and wage increases come from class struggle. Employment is not something scarce created by the capitalist, contrary to the false discourse of reactionaries.
Furthermore, the Bolsheviks ended any laws controlling the movement of minority groups that the Tsarists used to control workers and prevent their freedom of movement in Russia. The Marxist position continues to not tolerate any power being given to the bourgeois state to repress workers and communists; this includes the police, the military, and any organization that impedes revolutionary activity by workers.
If you want to understand the Marxist position, you have to understand that self-determination of nations and economic sovereignty are not the same as nationalism. Communists do not tolerate nationalism in the dictatorship of the proletariat, and nationalists are constantly lackeys of finance capital, serving the bourgeois state against communists and workers attempting to organize to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Let's begin with the text addressing the issue of Irish and English workers at the time:
<I shall give you here only quite briefly the salient points.
<Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of their material wealth; it is their greatest moral strength. They, in fact, represent the domination over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the cardinal means by which the English aristocracy maintain their domination in England itself.
<If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to be withdrawn from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. But the downfall of the English aristocracy in Ireland implies and has as a necessary consequence its downfall in England. And this would provide the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England. The destruction of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland is an infinitely easier operation than in England herself, because in Ireland the land question has been up to now the exclusive form of the social question because it is a question of existence, of life and death, for the immense majority of the Irish people, and because it is at the same time inseparable from the national question. Quite apart from the fact that the Irish character is more passionate and revolutionary than that of the English.
<As for the English bourgeoisie, it has in the first place a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into mere pasture land which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest possible prices. It is likewise interested in reducing the Irish population by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that English capital (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function there with “security”. It has the same interest in clearing the estates of Ireland as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The £6,000-10,000 absentee-landlord and other Irish revenues which at present flow annually to London have also to be taken into account.
<But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class.
<And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.
<This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.
<But the evil does not stop here. It continues across the ocean. The antagonism between Englishmen and Irishmen is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any honest and serious co-operation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It enables the governments of both countries, whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.
<England, the metropolis of capital, the power which has up to now ruled the world market, is at present the most important country for the workers’ revolution, and moreover the only country in which the material conditions for this revolution have reached a certain degree of maturity. It is consequently the most important object of the International Working Men’s Association to hasten the social revolution in England. The sole means of hastening it is to make Ireland independent. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.
<These are roughly the main points of the circular letter, which thus at the same time give the raisons d’étre of the resolutions passed by the Central Council on the Irish amnesty.[…]
<We hit another bird with the same stone, we have forced the Irish leaders, journalists, etc., in Dublin to get into contact with us, which the General Council had been unable to achieve previously!
<You have wide field in America for work along the same lines. A coalition of the German workers with the Irish workers (and of course also with the English and American workers who are prepared to accede to it) is the greatest achievement you could bring about now. This must be done in the name of the International. The social significance of the Irish question must be made clear.
<Letters of Karl Marx 1870, Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt In New Yorkhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htmRemembering that Marx and Engels favored uniting all workers of all nationalities, including immigrants, to fight together for the communist revolution and their shared class interests, separatism was not acceptable to them without some material conditions. Irish separatism was an acceptable alternative due to English chauvinism, which hindered the organization of the English and Irish proletariat. This prejudice stemmed from the intensified subjugation of Irish workers. If the alternative to a joint revolution in Britain is the continuation of this subjugation of the Irish, then Irish independence would be an option for a future socialist federation on more equal terms between the Irish and English.
I'll post the text where you can read "The Question of the General Council's Resolution on the Irish Amnesty" if you're interested in reading it, which explains this point:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/03/28.htmNow, to answer the question about immigration, I will first cite the general position that differentiates communists from other working-class parties in the manifesto:
<The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
<The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
<The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter II. Proletarians and Communistshttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htmLet's look at practical examples of a political program in an election in a bourgeois democracy, with texts by Marx and Engels that fit what is written:
<(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.
<(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
<Frederick Engels, 1847, The Principles of Communismhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm
<1. One rest day each week or legal ban on employers imposing work more than six days out of seven. - Legal reduction of the working day to eight hours for adults. - A ban on children under fourteen years working in private workshops; and, between fourteen and sixteen years, reduction of the working day from eight to six hours;<2. Protective supervision of apprentices by the workers' organizations;<3. Legal minimum wage, determined each year according to the local price of food, by a workers' statistical commission;<4. Legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at a wage less than that of French workers;[…]
<7. Responsibility of society for the old and the disabled;<8. Prohibition of all interference by employers in the administration of workers' friendly societies, provident societies, etc., which are returned to the exclusive control of the workers;<9. Responsibility of the bosses in the matter of accidents, guaranteed by a security paid by the employer into the workers' funds, and in proportion to the number of workers employed and the danger that the industry presents;<10. Intervention by the workers in the special regulations of the various workshops; an end to the right usurped by the bosses to impose any penalty on their workers in the form of fines or withholding of wages (decree by the Commune of 27 April 1871);
<Karl Marx and Jules Guesde, 1880, The Programme of the Parti Ouvrierhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htmNow let's look at Lenin's quotes for those who pretend the Bolsheviks didn't have workers of various nationalities or refused to organize immigrant workers:
<We can demand popular election of officers, abolition of all military law, equal rights for foreign and native-born workers (a point particularly important for those imperialist states which, like Switzerland, are more and more blatantly exploiting larger numbers of foreign workers, while denying them all rights). Further, we can demand the right of every hundred, say, inhabitants of a given country to form voluntary military-training associations, with free election of instructors paid by the state, etc.
<Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1916, The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution: IIIhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/iii.htm
<6) Freedom of movement and occupation.
<7) Abolition of the social estates; equal rights for all citizens irrespective of sex, creed, race, or nationality.[…]
<12) Replacement of the standing army by the universally armed people.
<12) The police and standing army to be replaced by the universally armed people; workers and other employees to receive regular wages from the capitalists for the time devoted to public service in the people’s militia.[…]
<In the endeavour to achieve its immediate aims, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party supports every oppositional and revolutionary movement directed against the existing social and political set-up in Russia, but at the same time emphatically rejects all reformist projects involving any expansion or consolidation of the guardianship of the police and bureaucracy over the labouring masses.
<V. I. Lenin, 1917, Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Programmehttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/reviprog/ch04.htmFrom here, you can already see that any excuse anyone gives to increase the repressive power of the bourgeois state under any pretext must be opposed by communists. Remember that the proletarian state has the right to use its revolutionary terror to socialize the economy and punish counterrevolutionaries as it pleases, since the state is an instrument of one class to oppress another.
There are many possible actions to be taken with wage equalization, unionization of all workers, the right to radical unionization to organize outside the control of the bourgeoisie or its state, advancement of the legal right to public defense, democratization of the legal and judicial process in addition to the guaranteed public legal right to legal processes for all workers to fight in solidarity together, adding to this with the socialization of needs so that the population has the right to housing, education, health, childcare as a social responsibility of the entire society instead of being at the mercy of all of this that will remain as commodities for profit in the market.
>>2863681>Wrong.>Self-determination isn't the same thing as nationalismYou haven't answered why the USSR closed their borders.
>>2863681True, self-determination isn't merely nationalism, it's ethno-nationalism
>>2863684Like all socialist countries, the Soviet Union welcomed foreign workers to participate in the people's councils at their workplaces, and even accepted foreign communist intellectuals. Socialist countries do not tolerate workers who shirk their social responsibility—specifically, those unwilling to work in a socialist society that requires discipline until global socialist hegemony is achieved. Naturally, there are relations with foreign communists and diplomatic ties, as well as exchanges involving intellectuals to transfer technology and knowledge. Relations between a capitalist country lacking social equality and a socialist country are inevitably limited; furthermore, constant vigilance is required against saboteurs or agents of imperialist capitalism—issues that do not arise between socialist countries.
Despite this, there have always been communists who travel to socialist countries to study, fostering fraternity among nations and helping impoverished countries on the capitalist periphery reduce their dependency. This enables them to industrialize more independently and improve education levels, thereby supporting future revolutionary activity. Socialist countries do not exploit other nations to generate wealth—relying instead on their own workers—and do not operate according to the profit motive; consequently, they do not attract large numbers of immigrants, though those who do come play a useful role for the communist movement in their home countries.
>>2863715Wrong again, all types of nationalists are suppressed by communists in the dictatorship of the proletariat and in the communist revolution.
In scientific socialism, any violence by a subjugated population without even bourgeois rights under imperialist capitalism is acceptable in order to acquire economic sovereignty. You can see this with Marx accepting the separation of Ireland from England if the alternative is the continuation of the subjugation and exploitation of Irish workers. As long as it is not possible to organize English and Irish workers because of English chauvinism that deceives workers into not acquiring solidarity, then separation is an acceptable alternative so that in the future a socialist federation can be formed with more equal relations between Irish and English, but remembering that the ideal would be to organize English and Irish workers together for a socialist revolution acting together. This already helps to understand Lenin's position defending the self-determination of nations.
Since you have an interest in the issue of national self-determination, let's look at some quotes from Lenin discussing the subject.
<But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:
<(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
<Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916, VII. Imperialism as a Special Stage of capitalism.https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htmNow let's look at his position on the types of countries as examples at the time Lenin wrote about the self-determination of nations and capitalist imperialism:
<6. Three Types of Countries in Relation to Self-Determination of Nations<In this respect, countries must be divided into three main types:
<First, the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and the United States of America. In these countries the bourgeois, progressive, national movements came to an end long ago. Every one of these “great” nations oppresses other nations in the colonies and within its own country. The tasks of the proletariat of these ruling nations are the same as those of the proletariat in England in the nineteenth century in relation to Ireland.
<Secondly, Eastern Europe: Austria, the Balkans and particularly Russia. Here it was the twentieth century that particularly developed the bourgeois-democratic national movements and intensified the national struggle. The tasks of the proletariat in these countries—in regard to the consummation of their bourgeois-democratic reformation, as well as in regard to assisting the socialist revolution in other countries—cannot be achieved unless it champions the right of nations to self-determination. In this connection the most difficult but most important task is to merge the class struggle of the workers in the oppressing nations with the class struggle of the workers in the oppressed nations.
<Thirdly, the semi-colonial countries, like China, Persia, Turkey, and all the colonies, which have a combined population amounting to a billion. In these countries the bourgeois-democratic movements have either hardly begun, or are far from having been completed. Socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation—and this demand in its political expression signifies nothing more nor less than the recognition of the right to self-determination—but must render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bourgeois-democratic movements for national liberation in these countries and assist their rebellion—and if need be, their revolutionary war—against the imperialist powers that oppress them.
<V. I. Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1916https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x01.htmNow regarding the issue of wars and the opportunists who obscure the truth by trying to defend imperialist capitalist finance capital that maintains dependency to intensify exploitation. I'm only posting this to avoid confusion if someone is reading what I wrote trying to equate the war of a puppet of imperialist capitalism that uses chauvinism against the Russian population with the right of Palestinians to use violence against Israel to acquire economic sovereignty:
<In short: a war between imperialist Great Powers (i.e., powers that oppress a whole number of nations and enmesh them in dependence on finance capital, etc.), or in alliance with the Great Powers, is an imperialist war. Such is the war of 1914–16. And in this war “defence of the fatherland” is a deception, an attempt to justify the war.
<A war against imperialist, i.e., oppressing, powers by oppressed (for example, colonial) nations is a genuine national war. It is possible today too. “Defence of the fatherland” in a war waged by an oppressed nation against a foreign oppressor is not a deception. Socialists are not opposed to “defence of the fatherland” in such a war.
<V. I. Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, 1. The Marxist Attitude Towards War and “Defence of the Fatherland"https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/carimarx/1.htmNow a text against those opportunists who equate every war as if it were "inter-imperialist" to defend US hegemony:
<Advanced European (and American) capitalism has entered a new era of imperialism. Does it follow from that that only imperialist wars are now possible? Any such contention would be absurd. It would reveal inability to distinguish a given concrete phenomenon from the sum total of variegated phenomena possible in a given era.
<V. I. Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, 2. “Our Understanding of the New Era”https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/carimarx/2.htmRemember. Workers in the imperialist core must cut off and sabotage all funding that maintains the dominance of imperialist capitalism abroad by capitalists and their agents who profit from this type of relationship. This is non-negotiable in order to avoid declining into opportunistic social chauvinism and to show solidarity with the workers of the world. This means that the sale of arms and loans that support the collaborators of imperialist capitalism, who maintain dependence to intensify capitalist exploitation, is not tolerated. All this means that the workers' party must take this position no matter how much it is hated for it, and if a party that pretends to be leftist is in favor of reconciling with capitalist imperialism in the imperialist core under the pretext of saving "democracy" and "freedom" abroad, then this party must be destroyed for serving imperialist capitalism.
>>2863723>Socialist countries do not exploit other nations to generate wealth—relying instead on their own workersSo you think that mass immigration is exploitation and should be stopped?
>>2863723>their own workers"their own"
lol
The socialist position on dealing with immigration and ethnic minority populations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_expulsion_of_Turks_from_Bulgaria>>2862761there's basically a bunch of red chuds here who don't want people with different skin colors and languages near them and they say it's because of "rootless cosmopolitanism" and "immigrants driving down wages" but the fact that they think the solution is "strong borders" under capitalism instead of international socialist revolution reveals everything. They want third worlders to stay in the open air prisons where the bombs fall and the sanctions starve. they are willing to give trillions to armed chuds under capitalism to make sure that happens.
>>2863726All workers in a capitalist system will inevitably be exploited. The Marxist position tolerates no granting of power to the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state—there are no exceptions to this, including regarding the defense of immigrant workers' labor rights. Mass immigration is a separate issue entirely. Communists—including Marx, Engels, and Lenin—have always organized workers of all nationalities without exception, and none of them would countenance granting repressive powers to the bourgeois state, which must be overthrown to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The fact that workers may be less motivated to move to a socialist country than to a capitalist one does not alter the scientific socialist stance: one must fight for the rights of all workers to prevent capitalists from intensifying the exploitation of any worker. This applies equally to peripheral regions—such as the case of *boias-frias* (migrant day laborers in agriculture) who are manipulated into conditions akin to slavery; the solution is to fight for rights by punishing the capitalists and securing compensation for the victims, unions, and other worker organizations, thereby preventing capitalists from normalizing such exploitation for profit.
You forgot that the red guard of workers' self-defense committees, present in all successful revolutions, will abolish all institutions of bourgeois state repression, such as the police and the standing army, in order to initiate the dictatorship of the proletariat and spread revolutionary terror against all those who deny the new ruling class, which will be the proletariat, to abolish private property, anarchy of production, and social classes.
Therefore, mass immigration will not be halted, and any attempt to grant repressive power to the bourgeois state will be opposed by communists; those who advocate for granting such power to the bourgeois state will be punished as counter-revolutionaries. Immigration will decrease when social equality exists within a socialist state characterized by the fraternity of workers of all nationalities—a state that can only be achieved through solidarity with all workers, including immigrant workers.
>>2863790Wrong. You are citing a Wikipedia article from the period that saw the end of socialism in Bulgaria. The actions you fantasize about merely restore capitalism, and you are defending capitalism like a useful idiot.
>>2863856>Immigration will decrease when social equality existsBut why..? In a borderless world, how would would people become even more territorialised? And furthermore, why under capitalist conditions of global competition do communist states enforce immigration restrictions, except as a means to boost the revenue of the state itself? If communism is attractive, there would surely be a greater demand for it in terms of global labour.
>>2863863Immigration will decrease simply because there will be less incentive for it, given the existence of social equality and the absence of the exploitative dependency relationships that capitalists use to exploit workers; however, immigration will still occur, and that is of no consequence to me. A socialist state requires a dictatorship of the proletariat and the abolition of private property, the anarchy of production (replaced by economic planning), and social classes—specifically by eliminating the class of owners. The only issue that must be addressed is that of agents of capitalist imperialism entering the country to commit sabotage or recruit collaborators to oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat.
No socialist country has faced a problem with immigration, as it is not a problem, but rather with the emigration of skilled workers; these workers are more competitive in the labor market of capitalist countries simply because they received an education in a socialist state—an education that is either expensive or scarce in capitalist countries, which lack a system of socialized education.
>>2863884>LOL for spouting idealist metaphysics. How does pixel “re victimises” people? Via voodoo hex or what?
>At that point, you might as well believe that picrels of stabbing survivors constitute “re-victimising” them by virtue of merely being in possession of said picrel.As in that they can't have closure. They have every right to not have their abuse archived on the internet and it is a terrible experience to have so.
>Absolutely retarded take. Most kiddie pr0n is shared for free across the web, much like most porn is anyway, and there’s no evidence that it’s inherently harmful or that causes kiddie fiddling anymore than gay porn leads to gay rape. Yes it does cause child exploitation because you need to exploit a child on order to make it. IT doesn't just magically appear out of nowhere.
>Should be mentioned that most kiddie porn is either AI-generated, Lolicon stuff, or self-produced by kids themselves.First of all children are not at an age where they can produce porn of themselves and therefore shouldn't be allowed to.. My point still stands that the existence of any CSAM, including self-produced material, creates a market that drives demand. Abusers use this content to groom future victims, extort the original victim (a practice known as "sextortion," where abusers threaten to release the images if the child does not provide more), or share it with other offenders. By criminalizing the production, possession, and distribution of this material, the law aims to disrupt this cycle and remove the incentive for exploitation. Self produced CSAM is additionally a result of coercion and grooming in some shape or form. Be it EPI or other methods. It is to our moral duty to protect children from self-sexualisation.
Virtual CSAM can also be used in the grooming of children, reducing the inhibitions of children, and normalizing and desensitizing the sexual demands (Cohen-Almagor, 2013), particularly if the VCSAM was to depict the victim’s favorite cartoon character engaged in the sexual activity in a conceding and happy way (Christensen et al., 2021).
from the study "The Characteristics of Virtual Child Sexual Abuse Material Offenders and the Harms of Offending: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Print Media"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-023-10091-1This research is a peer-reviewed study published in the academic journal Sexuality & Culture, which is indexed in Scopus and managed by the publisher Springer.
https://research.usc.edu.au/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/The-Characteristics-of-Virtual-Child-Sexual/99730498902621here is the full document
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371175039_The_Characteristics_of_Virtual_Child_Sexual_Abuse_Material_Offenders_and_the_Harms_of_Offending_A_Qualitative_Content_Analysis_of_Print_Media>>2863549I think it's better to "honestly" restrict immigration if yoyr ecenomy can't accommodate it, than it is to have your economy rely on underpaid migrant labor but also make it wink wink illegal so the state can brutalize them
>>2864079So mass immigration is in itself a bad thing and should be stopped?
>>2863893>No socialist country has faced a problem with immigrationNo communist country has allowed immigration and emigration as freely as capitalist countries. You still haven't answered why. Why do communist countries have hard national borders?
>>2864122Because "communist" countries are just capitalist countries that adopt somewhat different political economy and governance structure than standard White Western countries. If you look at countries like Japan, SK, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, these countries also do not have the "open the country to millions of Africans, Middle easterns, Subcontinetals" policy that only White Western countries seem to have.
Mass Immigration seems to be an almost entirely Westoid solution designed to ensure that the Westoid proletariat wages are suppressed and they have an easy (and correct) scapegoat to fight against, rather than the ruling class.
While other countries are more focused on class collaboration and societal peace rather than "distraction through chaos" strategy of Western countries.
However, now with the "rightward turn", Westoid countries are also reducing illegal and legal immigration slowly as they are also pivoting towards some level of class-collaboration in order to garner mass support for the eventual WW3
>>2864152So white people are evil for letting black people into their countries?
>>2864152>easy (and correct) scapegoatkill yourself as soon as possible
>>2864122>So mass immigration is in itself a bad thing and should be stopped?Any migration is undesirable, you sjould live and die where you are born and improve your home town, instead of fleeing to a more urbanized place leaving the countryside to rot
See: kolhoz, hukous
So socialists aren't hyp9crites in that regard
>>2864178How do you think the "proletariat" came into being anon?
>>2864178>Any migration is undesirableHumanity is a nomadic species.
How do you think we got to where we were in the first place?
Let’s face it though: The reason westoids are obsessed with immigration has absolutely doodly to do with the fact that we’re all broke AF. If we weren’t broke, we wouldn’t be talking about this 24/7 in the first place!
>>2864179Socialism is about qbolishing the proletariat
>>2864180Pursuing species being is for after full communism
>>2864192So until this magical point in time when "full communism" is implemented, it should be illegal to step foot outside of the place of your birth?
>>2864178idiotic view. the entire history of civilisation is the history of urbanisation and it is entirely natural that some areas will wax and wane as people's needs change. if you don't like where you live, leave!
the idea that people should stay living in garbutt (a town founded on a gypsum mine which has no appealing qualities other than a now-empty gypsum mine) on the basis they happened to be born there (their parents or their parents parents weren't! it sprung up because of a mine!) is asinine.
the only thing i can credit you for is for being intellectually consistent and opposing all movement, rather than engaging in the stupid hypocrisies of thinking that a man moving from manchester to london is okay, a man moving from england to scotland is okay (despite them being different nations, because they're both part of the same state), but a man moving from poland to england (or, as the economy is now going, england to poland…) is unacceptable.
>>2864082>Like I said before, by your logic, we would have to ban and criminalise even the simple possession of the pics of Abu Ghraib tortured prisoners on the account that said prisoners will be “re-victimised” if someone jerks off to pictures of it. And yet it’s only in the case of kiddie porn that such illogic is taken seriously.You are comparing apples to oranges here. The law distinguishes between the possession of CSAM and the possession of images depicting torture.
In the digital age, an image or video created today can be archived, altered, and redistributed for decades. The harm identified by psychologists is not just the act of taking the photo but the inability of the victim to ever fully move past the event because the evidence of their exploitation is always accessible to strangers.
Law is inherently reliant on bright-line rules. Because children are biologically and cognitively developing, the law establishes the age of consent to create a clear, enforceable boundary that removes the need to subjectively assess a child’s maturity in every individual case.
>There’s no viable market for it on the account of it being strictly illegal plus any production being self-incriminating (like the mythical snuff films moralfags used to cry about to support the pigs). Most porn is shared freely, and the subject matter is no exception.Law enforcement and researchers define the "market" not necessarily as a monetary exchange, but as a demand-driven ecosystem. The existence and circulation of these images create a feedback loop that encourages the creation of new material, regardless of whether money changes hands.
>There’s no evidence that most kids in kiddie pr0n are coerced, and “grooming” is just a thought-terminating cliche since you don’t view children as peopleResearch from agencies like the FBI, INTERPOL, and organisations dedicated to child protection consistently shows that grooming is a documented behavioural pattern used by offenders to lower a child’s defences, establish dependency, and facilitate the production of sexual material.
>Your citations are flawed as they don’t prove that virtual ‘p is inherently harmful, but take it as a given and are nothing more than moralistic advocacy pieces as opposed to actual research, like this: >https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15248380221147564>>http://web.archive.org/web/20080522200538/http://www.xuk.biz/UKLR/Landslide/library/05/dissertation.htm>>http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1999-pornography-rape-sex-crimes-japan.html>>Yikes, can’t believe you’re such a theist.You provided links to challenge the consensus on the harm of this material. The field of research on pornography and its societal impacts is broad and often contradictory. However, the legal and public policy consensus generally rests on the "precautionary principle": even in the absence of a total, universally accepted scientific consensus, the potential for catastrophic, life-altering harm to a child necessitates strict prohibition.
The legal stance is not that children are not "people", but that they lack the full capacity for long-term risk assessment, especially when interacting with adults who use psychological manipulation. The law prioritises a protective stance because the long-term psychological impact of sexualisation on a developing brain is a well-documented area of concern in child psychology.
>>2864200You can travel or even reside for work if it is included in the economic plan, but you can't just gentrify someone's condo in an urban center and start lumpenprole hustling your way up the labor market
because if everyone did that, the town-country contradiction would intensify (labor from the periphery moving to the metropole and spontaneously generating a reserve army of labor), which is the opposite of what we want
we want the REDUCE the reserve army of labor, while the bourgeois immigration policy wants to maintain it (relying on immigrant label while denying them legal right to keep their labor power cheap)
>>2864474delusional wishful thinking. if you have workers in the countryside who could be more profitably deployed in the city, they are an underemployed reserve army of labour
whether or not you make use of them. if you have workers in a foreign country who could be more profitably deployed in this country, they are an underemployed reserve army of labour
whether or not you make use of them. at any time, that policy could be changed. at any time, the law can be broken. you cannot get away from a global structural problem of the entire mode of production by drawing a line and going "haha, the spreadsheet says you're no longer a factor"
>>2862901This sounded nicer in your head than it does on the page. You should have left it alone.
Yes it has to do with economics and demographics, are you joking? Why do you think there's such disproportionate reactions to different types of immigrants? Why Trump is importing white South Africans while clamping down on actual refugees? Why there's so much anti-Polish sentiment in Europe? Why Asians are called the "model minority"? It's not simply about being "illegal" or not, or disrupting the idea of the nation state, it's about the types of people coming in. Yes it's economic scapegoating and yes it's racism.
>>2864483well wouldn't the goal of rationally planned society and central planning be to resolve the contradictions of capitalism and not tail the law of value?
the idea is to intentionally develop the countryside/periphery by restricting overdevelopment of the urban center by investing urban surplus back into the countryside
you can't really do that if all your labor is living in shanty towns in the metropole, climbing over each others' heads competing for the benefits of urban development that is undercapacity for the supply of labor
>>2864565you cannot blithely wave your hand to confabulate the countryside (which is mostly empty for good reason) and the periphery (which is actually underdeveloped and ideally would one day join the metropole), and basically no benefit flows from robbing the city to pay for the countryside (if people are living in shanties in the city, urban resources should be dedicated to
further urban development, e.g. build some fucking apartments.) they wouldn't be in the city if there wasn't a reason for that!
inherent to the countryside,
by virtue of being countryside, is a lifestyle that appeals to a relatively small number of people. human relationships also benefit from agglomeration benefits. (e.g. in the city it is quite easy to find people with shared interests, even niche ones, because there are more people to pick from. in the countryside, however, it is quite possible the nearest person with the same interest is hundreds of miles away.) as i have said already:
the history of civilisation is the history of urbanisation. having lots of people close together so that they can share infrastructure, ideas, culture, social circles, and so on is an almost unlimited boon. Kupreanof is empty for a reason.
the purpose of planning is to meet human needs and desires, and the revealed desire of the vast bulk of humanity regardless of economic system (the USSR for example went from 18% urban in 1926 to 66% by 1990) has been to drift to the city. even most western "rural" areas (which i still consider backwaters) are urbanised by historical standards.
i don't think there is much of a connection between marxism/communism and nationalism as people ITT are making it out to be, nationalism was sweeping over the entire world in the late 19th century to the early 20th century regardless of whether the states were officially capitalist or communist or fascist or whatever. i imagine a lot of you are americans and you probably aren't conscious of how nationalist your own country is, all the american exceptionalism and flag waving and pledge of allegiance stuff is very normalized to you, you don't realize there are some pretty strong parallels between your country and other countries that you've been indoctrinated to think of as polar-opposite mortal enemies such as communist china.
for example, china had their cultural revolution which was this tremendous effort to iron out and eradicate all of the traditional ethnolinguistic distinctions between all of the local regions and cities of the chinese mainland and rewrite history to make it seem like china has always been one nation of one people of one culture and one language - the united states did something very similar to this, the us began to beat it into the people's heads that america is one culture with one language and one way of life which is industrial capitalism, the rural agrarian way of life is low and degrading and backwards, the people who live that way are ignorant and uncivilized, the public education system began teaching kids to stop communicating in their traditional regional english dialects and tell them that these ways of speaking/writing are not "proper english" and make you sound stupid and uneducated, etc.
>>2864621But doesn't the problem remain that you need to feed the population, and urban growth itself is dependent on 1) agricultural output 2) might not outpace m8gration
It seems to me not an "ought" question, but a question of practical necessity: preventing labor drain and overal decay in the co7ntryside because they all moved to the urban center shantytowns and became lumpenized
Sure mechanized farming helps, but it seems to me a chicken and egg problem: you need the countryside to feed the metropole to develop machines and industry in the first place, etc.
Why let this process be a chaotic, uneven process (labor thrown to and fro, overdevelopment and emptying of metropole simultaneous with decay and rebuilding of countryside) instead of a gradual, controlled one?
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