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/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

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File: 1622844213997.jpeg (41.93 KB, 742x560, 8e6.jpeg)

 No.296564[View All]

Dump all the seemingly pointless, dubious, and frivolous questions that don't deserve their own shitty threads.

Got a question that's probably been asked a million times before? You're in the right landfill, buddy. Post it here.

Threads that otherwise might go in here will eventually find themselves become merged to this thread.
450 posts and 78 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

 No.1608279

File: 1695681736044.jpg (259 KB, 1080x1431, twt.jpg)

Is there any merit behind this? Or is it just pure nonsense? I saw lots of pushback but most of it was from right wingers so y'know… not very credible.

 No.1608293

>>1608279
I mean yes, the west's wealth is obviously built on slavery and the exploitation of the third world in general (among other things).

 No.1608301

>>1608279
>twitter screencap
There’s over a 50% chance that this is fake, fuck you OP for not posting a direct link to the source

 No.1608310

File: 1695684687005.jpg (102.88 KB, 976x549, _120663581_nanaatun.jpg)

>>1608301
It's real and from Akufo-Addo's speech at the U.N., this is a summary from the U.N. on the speech:

>Recognizing that African countries do not seek to shirk the responsibility for the problems they face — that are of their own making — he also said that the world should not pretend that the continent’s present day economic and social conditions are not connected with historical injustices. “It is time to acknowledge openly that much of Europe and the United States have been built from the vast wealth harvested from the sweat, tears, blood and horrors of the transatlantic slave trade,” he emphasized, stating that it is time to bring the subject of reparations to the fore. While no amount of money will ever make up for the horrors, it would make the point that millions of “productive” Africans were put to work in the Americas and the Caribbean without compensation for their labour. Moreover, when slavery was abolished, slave owners were compensated for the loss of slaves — labelled as “property” and deemed to be “commodities” — he recalled, announcing that Ghana will hold a global conference on this matter in November.


>He also reported that African States are annually losing more than $88 billion through illicit financial flows, adding: “Yes, those monies too must be returned to the continent.” It is difficult to understand why the recipient countries are comfortable retaining such funds, while labelling those countries, from which the money is taken as corrupt, he asserted. To this end, he suggested that a joint taskforce of the African Union Commission and the OECD secretariat be charged to find ways of stopping those outflows. Noting that only 12 per cent of the Sustainable Development Goals targets are on track to be achieved, he emphasized: “It is within our capacity to turn things around.”


The part about stopping illicit financial flows is concrete, but I see some of this as more rhetorical than substantial, since he says that no amount of money can make up for slavery, but talking about reparations makes a "point." The slave trade was also a complex business in the colonial era, you can't sum it up a sentence. There was slave capture, slave transportation and slave trading – not all of which included white people, but also indigenous African tribes and kingdoms who engaged in most of the slave capturing, and the descendants of those accomplices are in Africa.

It was basically more cost effective to trade with chiefs who ruled African slave societies, and those chiefs didn't have a modern consciousness of a nation-state where the citizens are your fellow compatriots. So when asking for reparations, it can be, like… did white people not pay your ancestors enough for the slaves? You sold them too cheap? On the other hand, white people did occupy a dominant position in the supply chain and the power dynamics were very large, but using the slave trade is not necessarily the best entry point for criticizing the West for plundering the world's resources.

It does have a rhetorical effect, though, where Akufo-Addo says African problems are of their own making, but the Western countries have a responsibility too, and should treat them as equals in the world and not just a resource to exploit or take advantage of.

 No.1608315

>>1608279
Learn to use /QTDDTOT/ you massive retard.

 No.1608433

Have the claims of The Sword and The Shield ever been verified or debunked? I made an /edu/ thread on the book and got no replies.

 No.1608797

>>1599742
Average living standards were the highest in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, followed by the richer SSRs (Baltics, European Russia, industrialised regions of Ukraine)

 No.1609996

>>1608279
I mean, the overwhelming majority of the descendants of people who were enslaved are not in Africa and never will return to Africa, probably. The Africans in Africa today are mostly descendants of the Africans who were not taken away and enslaved and most of them look down with contempt on the Africans who were enslaved, as if it was their fault. There probably should be "reparations" on account of other things like European colonial natural resource extraction and all the other violence and immiseration imposed upon them, but not for slavery. Reparations for slavery should be for the African people in the countries where the slaves were taken and forced to work. Also reparations should ideally take the form of internationalist solidarity not just a fucking huge money transfer to their own ruthless capitalist ruling classes.

 No.1610282

File: 1695783916089.jpeg (234.59 KB, 1400x840, Landback.jpeg)

Is landback actually feasible? Like, is there any merit behind it? Or is it just a waste of time?

 No.1610283

>>1610282
No it's just an empty political slogan. It's not a call to any sort of real action. It's just a way for people within a particular subculture to signal group affiliation. Ignore it.

 No.1610284

>>1610282
it's bad for porky so good for us

 No.1610285

It's good because it will distract the US from triggering WW3 in south china sea

 No.1610286

idk
i have a soft spot in my heart for natives and their "primitive communism" and like to know more about the pre-columbian history of where i live

 No.1610287

>>1610283
As crappy as politics is, calling "land back" a political slogan is I think an insult to politics. It's like poetry. When I say: "Your momma so fat that blahblahblah" do you actually take it literally and then investigate the physical plausibility. No. You would be degrading yourself if you did that. Likewise with giving "land back" serious thought when the people who shout it give zero fucks about it.

>>1610286
Really doesn't make sense to me to have a soft spot for "the natives". Some tribes held things in common, some owned slaves.

 No.1610288

I don't think natives and others who say that mean that native americans should get the entire US. Instead, it's rather that the US government already agreed and also signed a contract to leave certain parts of the land to the natives, which they eventually took away from them thereby violating their agreement. Natives are still legally entitled to that land.

 No.1610289

>>1610288
this is the real reason it's a foolish idea. It's reformism. You aren't going to get the genocidal bourgeois american government to honor its land agreements with indigenous first nations because they never have before. In fact, previous agreements were blatantly broken over and over which is how the first nations were continually pushed westward and genocided during manifest destiny. We're talking about a government that helped force Haiti to pay reparations to France for the crime of ending slavery.
>>1610286
>soft spot
idealism
>>1610287
>Really doesn't make sense to me to have a soft spot for "the natives". Some tribes held things in common, some owned slaves.
This isn't said often enough because it sounds cruel, but it's true. Treating first nations as a monolithic group when championing their struggle against settler colonialism is all too common, as is erasing their pasts and differences. Also reminds me of the revisionist trope that "Two Spirit" is the same as contemporary transgender identity.

 No.1610290

Yes. It is very much feasible. Anyone who says otherwise simply cannot imagine a world beyond capitalism and property relations.

 No.1610291

>>453820
It's a form of 'national liberation' a means to an end, also weakens imperialism.

 No.1610292

>>453820
how exactly? explain, mr communism knower.

 No.1610293

>>1610282
Anything that benefits BIPOC to the detriment of wh*te "people" is good in my eyes.

 No.1610294

I’ll believe it’s feasible when there is a huge push to give Texas and half of California back to the mestizos.

 No.1610295

>>1610291
nations are impotent under neoliberalism

 No.1610296


 No.1610297

>>1610289
>You aren't going to get the genocidal bourgeois american government to honor its land agreements
Sure, I just wanted to correct a possible misunderstanding here. The demands of these groups are usually not as crazy as returning the entire land back to natives and whites fucking off back to Europe or whatever.

 No.1610298

Yes, you just give the land back

 No.1610299

There are 7.2 million Jews in Israel. They control the vast majority of industry and hold an unfathomable amount of PhDs. Is landback in Palestine feasible?

 No.1610300

i'm not especially for or against it, i just don't see the practicality. at this point, the indigenous people of america have already been genocided, at least in canada and the us. you can't really just chase the crakkkers away because the indigenous communities of those countries are very small. sure, you could bring forward initiatives towards reviving indigenous culture and material restitution in the form of ending poverty and the exploitation of what little land they have left by capital in native american communities, but at this point, the damage has been done. you can't just unkill them or bring america back to the pre-columbus era

 No.1610301

>>1610299
A lot of the dispossessed Palestinians are still alive.

 No.1610302

>>1610301
What evidence is there they'll all return?

 No.1610303

Support Palestinian land being returned to the Palestinians, no one bats an eye
Support Indigenous land being returned to the Indigenous peoples, society loses its mind…

Welcome to my dark, fucked up, twisted world, crakkker….

 No.1610304

>>1610282
its more a sentiment than a practical political project

 No.1610305

>>1610303
If Israel was a Christian country they’d all be anti-Palestinian.

 No.1610306

>>1610304
So? What’s Palestine then? Is their struggle merely a moral statement too?

 No.1610307

>>1610293
Anything that truly benefits "bipoc" benefits white folks in the long run too you divisive numbskull.

 No.1610308

>Is it feasible?
Why wouldn't it be? Please give concrete examples.

>Like, is there any merit behind it?

Yes. Like with reparations it represents a recognition of the impact that the manner in which modern settler colonial states were founded directly resulted in current racial and class inequities. From that aspect, Landback is morally right. I don't think anyone here would argue otherwise.

However as others here have pointed out, a government that has so many times in the past broken it's treaties and deals with indigenous peoples cannot and should not be trusted. Even though some Landback affiliated groups have succeeded in raising money to buy large swaths of ancestral land for indigenous collective ownership (which itself is fucked up, because these people should not have to buy the land), over a long enough period of time (my estimate is 10 to 20 years), corporations will view the lack of development of this land and the refusal to sell from the rightful owners as offensive and obstructionist. And we all know the rest, through lobbying that view will become mainstream in politics, and through manufacturing consent it will become popular among the public. All this will be exacerbated by coming natural resource scarcity crises. And then the land will just be taken by force. Again.

Might does not make right, but it does make.

 No.1610309

File: 1695851936278.jpg (51.25 KB, 787x784, IMG_20230720_112117.jpg)

thx mods

 No.1610342

Any recommended sources about the roles of USA federal intelligence agencies in manufacturing or exacerbating drug crises?

 No.1610775

Anyone know what's going on in Haiti?

 No.1610932

Does having a mortgage or an IRA make one petty bourgeois?
Technically, you could say it's a form of capital investment. However IRAs generally replace union pension funds, and Paul Cockshott had a video in which he mentioned that mortgages are not genuine capital but a disguised form of rent (I think it was in his critique of the basic income).

 No.1610934

>>1610303
Almost all communist parties support a two-state solution. Any Marxist worth their salt understands the absurdity of trying to go backwards.

 No.1611273

File: 1695940515702.gif (1.91 MB, 500x500, 1695881276459996.gif)

BOOKS ON THE ASIATIC MoP?

 No.1611424

>>1610934
>go backwards
>>1610303
>>1610282
There was a somewhat eye-opening discussion about this recently: yes, this is very much feasible
https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/424617
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/693142
>the American nation “owns” 98% of the land but occupies around a quarter of it. This land is owned only for the purpose of extraction which allows Americans to live far beyond their means. This territory, the majority of territory in the US and Canada, will be taken from them.

 No.1611554

>>1610297
>The demands of these groups are usually not as crazy as returning the entire land back to natives and whites fucking off back to Europe or whatever.
Good because I don't think I could support committing what would undoubtedly turn into one of the greatest crimes against humanity just to own the crackers.

 No.1611876

>>1611424
Thanks for this info comrade

 No.1612135

In short, what do each of the three volumes of Capital focus on? I understand that Capital Volume 1 discusses the trade of commodities ergo money and how it functions as capital, the concept of labor inherently creating surplus value even if paid for at its full exchange-value, centralization and accumulation of capital causing the capitalist to grain far more than the worker even at the best of times, even if the workers' share of income is growing on an absolute basis(again, optimistic case here) and how the increase of constant capital which initially(if applied in industries that produce necessities or the materials for them) decrease the value of labor-power and therefore increase profit, along with pushing any individual firm's goods below the socially necessary labor time, will eventually destroy the ability to create profit at all and lead to crisis.

Volume II starts(as far as I got before I decided I didn't understand what I read in I on the first go) with expanding on the circle of trade of commodities, revisiting the concept of productive capital that was only brushed on in the first volume in more detail, and I didn't get farther than that.

What is Volume III about? I know it discusses fictitious capital(things like stocks and bonds) but my knowledge ends there.

 No.1612137

>Hence, we see that behind all attempts to represent the circulation of commodities as a source of surplus-value, there lurks a quid pro quo, a mixing up of use-value and exchange-value.

I think that this is a beautiful quote from Chapter 5 just for the fact that Marx BTFO'd the Austrian School four years before they were even born.

 No.1612179

“The
commodity owner can, by his labour, create value, but not self-expanding value.
He can increase the value of his commodity, by adding fresh labour, and
therefore more value to the value in hand, by making, for instance, leather
into boots. The same material has now more value, because it contains a greater
quantity of labour. The boots have therefore more value than the leather, but
the value of the leather remains what it was; it has not expanded itself, has
not, during the making of the boots, annexed surplus-value.”

I don't fully understand this passage. Why is the labor of the commodity owner any different from the labor of the proletariat?

 No.1613268

File: 1696136283606.png (5.48 KB, 340x78, hither.png)

Where were you when you realized Marx loved both capitalism and feudalism? picrel

 No.1613274

>>1610932
For all intents and purposes, it's mandatory to have superannuation in Australia. So, if it were true, I don't know how useful that classification would be.
I don't think home ownership (even if it were outright and not partial through mortgage) is capital, at least if you're not renting out the property or using it for producing commercial goods and services.


>does [x] make one petty booj?

It's things like that which make broad, uncritical classification dangerous to take at face value and make sweeping assumptions with. And the worst part of that is when people react with a coping mechanism and make up some bullshit theory to workaround the contradiction, instead of reanalysing the basic assumption.

 No.1613285

>>1612179
Marx is trying to explain the difference between the labor process and the valorization process.
<The labor process is the activity of producing use-values, or useful things that satisfy human needs. The valorization process is the activity of producing exchange-values, or commodities that can be sold for money. Marx argues that the capitalist mode of production is based on the valorization process, not the labor process. The capitalist is not interested in the use-value of the commodity, but only in its exchange-value, or how much money it can bring in the market.
<The labor of the commodity owner, or the independent producer, is different from the labor of the proletariat, or the wage worker, because the former owns the means of production (such as tools, materials, land, etc.) and the product of his labor, while the latter does not. The commodity owner can sell his product for more than it cost him to produce it, and thus make a profit. However, this profit is not surplus-value, because it is not based on exploiting the labor of others. The commodity owner can only increase the value of his product by adding more labor to it, or by improving the quality or quantity of his product. He cannot create self-expanding value, or value that grows by itself without any additional labor.
<The labor of the proletariat, on the other hand, is exploited by the capitalist, who pays him less than the value he creates by his labor. The capitalist appropriates the difference between the value of the labor-power (the wage) and the value of the product (the commodity) as surplus-value. This surplus-value is the source of profit for the capitalist, and it is also what drives capital accumulation and economic growth. The capitalist can create self-expanding value by investing his surplus-value in more means of production and more labor-power, and thus increasing his production and his profits. The capitalist does not care about the use-value of his commodities, but only about their exchange-value, or how much surplus-value they can generate.


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