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Ukraine: Recommended Reading
Sometimes I to read too much to write. Therefore just a few reading recommendations about Ukraine.
The empire is pissed that its puppets in Ukraine fail to fight: One month on, Ukraine military fails to rout rebels
Now the U.S. believes the oligarchs are coming to help its aims: Ukraine’s richest man enters dispute in eastern region
The steelworkers’ patrols seem to mark a turn in the conflict, but Akhmetov’s decision to use his clout may be more significant. […] But with his decision to put his workers on the street, he may be saying enough is enough with the separatist movement in eastern Ukraine.
Idiots. Why should the Ukrainian military fight its own people? Why would Akhmetov, who’s companies for depend on good relations with Russia, work against Putin? Hint: He doesn’t. The National Interest: The Battle for Ukraine: Who Is Winning?
The May 25 election is in Russia’s interests, because it will give Western policy makers their desired short-term victory on the ground, and then American leaders can begin to direct their attention elsewhere. It also saves European leaders from having to make economic sacrifices as part of sanctions nobody genuinely wants to impose on Russia. Vladimir Putin is signaling that Moscow will play along if Ukraine agrees to give it that which it has largely conceded on the ground. Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s most powerful oligarch and largest employer in the Russian-speaking regions, has finally come to the rescue by using his workers to seize control in Mariupol from the separatists. He supports the restoration of order, and constitutional reform to give the regions greater autonomy, but not independence. His forces are a welcome change, but it is the bargain Vladimir Putin has been offering all along, just better wrapped to make it easier for Kyiv to accept.
Most realists in the West would have already taken this deal, and settled in for the long game in Ukraine. The rest will likely come around after realizing that at the moment they are being taken for a ride by Kyiv, Moscow, or both.
But the real “western”, read U.S. target is more than Ukraine. It is full spectrum dominance. Ideological neoliberalism used for U.S. imperial ambitions.
Today’s must-read: Michael Hudson: The New Cold War’s Ukraine Gambit
There is no single paragraph in that long piece to quote. It is a tour de force binding together the historical and economic context of the conquest attempt we are witnessing in Ukraine. Today’s recommended reading.
But Susan, it isn’t a question of lining up empirical examples and just looking at them to see how many suggest one thing and how many the other. It’s a question of using your capacity for abstract logical thinking to explore the idea of a boycott (or of a strike, or as I said, at the limit, a violent revolution), to understand what the thing is, in abstract theoretical terms, then you can predict what the necessary conditions for its success are without even having to look at empirical cases – actually predict, on grounds of pure theory. Now what is it? It’s a confrontation with a state power which possesses:
1. the monopoly of the ‘legitimate’ use of force (as defined by it itself, and its imperial patrons);
2. the support of a set of ‘mainstream, objective mass media’ (again, as defined by it itself and its imperial patrons): first of all the national TV networks, and note they are networks, that is distribution vehicles, they don’t originate very much of the programming, private propaganda agencies do that, and these have to be paid, and paid handsomely;
3. an employer class, which may or may not actually have much employment to offer, but will still regard itself as the owner and benefactor of the country, the provider of ‘jobs’ for which people should be grateful, or the only possible provider of ‘jobs’ in the future, once ‘the economy has had a chance to regenerate itself’, and in this case this is an utter lie, because of;
4. the external investors (and all significant investors are external): these may be mere asset strippers, and increasingly they are just that (think Soros for example). They have no intention of ‘providing employment’ at all. They intend to strip the country of all its industries and also to devastate it environmentally. This is the ultimate weak spot of the whole bourgeois propaganda package, this in the thing to exploit in counter-propaganda : “Ukrainians, they are going to physically destroy your country!”
Can you see how all this is derived from pure theory, and can be applied to multiple countries, and ultimately even to the USA itself? This is the strength of theoretical models, they start from the universal, the necessary dimensions of bourgeois, neo-colonial rule, at the very end of the historical period of capitalism, staring the final world war for resources and the final ‘culling’ of world populations via environmental destruction, right in the face, all predictable from pure theory. I would have liked to have used strings of all caps in parts of this, the visual equivalent of shouting “Wake up!” And this, I repeat, is the necessary structure of all counter-propaganda, and all extrapolable from pure theory alone.
Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | May 19 2014 3:02 utc | 105
@ bevin
“No more thinking please: let’s all barf in unison” is anti-intellectual nonsense”
Serious question, bevin, do you think that there comes a time when you’ve DO NOT NEED TO LEARN ANYMORE about a given situation?
That there’s a time to put away the books because you have a pretty good handle on a given situation, get off the pot and focus on other aspects of a situation’s reality/consequences?
Or do we all just have to keep being led around by TPTB as they dish out “situation/event” over and over again for us to “figure out/analyze” incessantly?
In the decades I have spent observing and analyzing world events it sure seems that there’s a common theme in the majority of the terrible shit that goes on around the planet as of late and it just happens to be the US nearly every single effing time. That’s why I agree with what Hudson says but come to the conclusion “So what?” instead of solemnly bowing my head and intoning: “Great analysis, Professor Mike”.
But, you – directly – and Hudson – indirectly – seem to tell us we need to make super-duper extra sure that we -as a society – are correct in our estimations/analyses because – you just never know! – it might NOT be the US war criminals once again leading the charge of murder and destruction, right?
And that’s what I believe, bevin, your problem is – common to many on the fake left: you’re afraid of being wrong or losing face especially among your own set. That your opinion/belief might not be supported by the facts – even in the face of overwhelming evidence, in this case, US complicity/causation once again – so you keep your head down and nervously scurry about collecting nugget after nugget of insight until the general tenor/storyline is so obvious that it’s finally(!) time to wow the bourgeois crowd with your incisive and hopefully non-ultracrepidarian views.
How many times have you lambasted me and others here for engaging in behavior that could POTENTIALLY lead to unfortunate ends? Don’t get angry, JSorrentine, you’ll be manning a guillotine next year!!! Similarly, how many times does a fake leftie scream Stalin/Lenin when Marx is brought up? Don’t even talk about Marxism …look at Pol Pot!
Afraid to choose. Afraid to act because it MIGHT lead somewhere bad. Better not try it. Let’s just think about it some more, right? Or should I say, “left”? Just think of the effing time that’s been wasted as good fake liberals have commandeered the “conversation” on the “left” and approached each new installment of the America’s war of aggression all dewy-eyed and buying into the government’s story as it goes about about murdering and stealing. Hmmm, after Iraq why wasn’t there a visceral rejection of any further US war crimes by the fake left? Why did it take so long for them to understand that ONCE AGAIN – and this is a pattern going back to the Cold War – the official narrative was just an excuse to continue murdering and stealing in Libya, then Syria, now Ukraine. Each time – you have stated, bevin – that the uptake time for the bourgeois left is getting smaller and smaller and that this is reason for optimism. My thoughts: 1) it’s not happening fast enough due to 2) too much buy-in and trust the fake bourgeois left still has in the system it luke-warmly criticizes but benefits from economically.
Nope, there’s always yet another super-sleuthy situation that needs months and months – if not years – of detailed analyses by crack “minds” before the fake left can feel “comfortable” with their opinion/slant even though those opinions/viewpoints will inevitably once again coalesce and say the same thing: it’s really the US war criminals once again driving the murder bus across the globe.
So, instead of laughably attempting to paint me as an anti-intellectual – the horror! – ranter – and a Marxist to boot, double horror! – why don’t you take the time and understand what I’m saying and that is this:
The topics Hudson/us at MOA are discussing/analyzing are not fictional accounts which should be met with the sophisticated flowery, verbally onanistic nonsense of literary reviews a la NY Review of Books.
We are talking about people needlessly being murdered etc. once again by the US hegemon – gee, funny how your critique of my post didn’t mention any of those aspects of my original post. At least the Marxists I know are invariably concerned with the plight of the workers/common person, what is your excuse? – and, thus, the intelligent/conscientious people here and elsewhere should have the wherewithal to wonder:
Am I engaging in debates about events when debate is no longer needed/superfluous?
Am I analyzing a situation that no longer needs analyzing?
Am I purposefully(?) being led to engage in needless debates and analyses by TPTB?
Am I giving praise to analyses that are not really telling me anything I don’t already know?
Don’t we already have enough accumulated evidence to indict the American war criminals or at least view the past 30? 40? years as one long-continuous war of aggression on the part of said war criminals instead of separate vignettes/incidents?
Wouldn’t the minds/energies of conscientious people – e.g. Hudson and his audience – be better spent figuring out where we go from here instead of regaling us with rehash upon rehash of the events in our all too-familiar world especially as the rehashing on galvanizes the world-view as formulated by and handed down to us by the elite/war criminals?
Yes, having been an online poster/analyzer etc for years I too have been guilty of what I am now railing against but that’s the point: I realized that what I was doing wasn’t really doing anything. That I was invariably coming to the same conclusions – albeit with names/places changed – and that one could just skip all the “discussion/debate” and understand what was going on perfectly well AND have more time to engage in activities that might actually lead somewhere.
You mention Marx and his work and in what you probably considered your rhetorical coup de grace actually you perfectly epitomize the analytical short-sightedness that I find so typical nowadays. Because Marx DID do all of that critical thinking and analysis 150+ years ago which you mention, myself and fellow Marxists can look at what is going on in today’s capitalistic nightmare societies and say, “Yup, it’s exactly as Marx said it would be more or less.” 99% of what is wrong with the capitalistic economies of today was completely predicted by Marx. However, you wouldn’t know that from the scores and scores of fake left – and bourgeois capitalistic – economics blogs and their day-in, day-out detailed rehashing of sub-systemic analyses they provide as to just what is really wrong with capitalism. Note: they all believe the capitalistic system can be “saved/reformed”. Hmmm, funny that, huh? Gee, who’s REALLY “barfing” in unison, bev? Oh I get it, it’s not “barfing” if one is sufficiently clever, well-paid, establishment/non-threatening and echoed/mimicked enough. Newsflash for the fake left: it’s still puke – and even more nauseating – when served in a Martha Stewart Designer Ramekin.
Continuing, do I – and other 21st century denizens – need to do all of Marx’s work over? Why should I need to analyze from scratch the failure of capitalism when Marx’s descriptive/predictive approximations hold perfectly well? Shouldn’t the greatest respect for a critical mind and its intellectual output – i.e., Marx – be that one shouldn’t feel the need to needlessly start ab ovo especially when looking at events that have a similar and well-documented history – cf. the US post-WWII war of aggression. Shouldn’t we be trying to agree to a basic set of reality tested principles and THEN begin our debate/discussion instead of being led into manufactured debates by our masters who invariably say that “this time is different” and thus any debate/discussion entails the consideration of this or that or this strategy of the very murderous criminals who are our oppressors before we can even begin to formulate ideas about how to rid ourselves of them?
Do you see where I’m going with this? Hint: and it’s not that Hudson is providing a theoretical scope of understanding on the magnitude of Marx, so I’ll just nip that one in the bud. 😉
All of us having witnessed/debated/analyzed the events of current history know what the score is, so why is that society – but significantly the bourgeois fake left – seems so dependent upon analysis/debate to tell us what is going on ESPECIALLY as it involves the real-time murder/rape/maiming/displacement etc. of innocent people and is not some arcane salon topic?
Certainly it’s good to be aware of current events/developments but similarly to Marxists/Marxism in the year 2014 every new “data point” that corroborates an accurate school of thought/POV shouldn’t need be enthusiastically regarded as the long-lost holy grail/Rosetta stone needed for a truer understanding of reality but rather just another mundane addition towards the proof/support of said theory. Marxists see the current deplorable economic situation to be part and parcel of the capitalist system and that the common person’s life will not change for the better until people start understanding the larger picture i.e., it’s capitalism itself that’s the problem . Likewise, it is my belief that the common person of today – world-over – will not see their lives get appreciably better until they inherently realize that much of the death and destruction as of late is a direct result of the decades-long US war of aggression. In either case, it can be interesting at times to notice/observe how individual details of real-world events fit into a larger POV – i.e., Marxism, US War of Aggression (obviously, one could easily combine the two) – but there does come a point when the analyses I believe – especially on the fake left – become a thing unto themselves and which most definitely have a decreasing rate of return especially when 1) said online “debating/analyzing” practices only further increase people’s terrible dependency on the virtual – not the real – world and their glimmerpads and 2) it – again – allows everyone to feel that they are doing something when in point of fact all that they are doing is ignoring the fact that something real really needs be done.
Lastly, again sorry for the length, my point is also that the common peon should be more confident in what they already intuitively understand – e.g., capitalism only works for the rich, the US is a force of evil on this planet, etc – and dispense with the esteem given to those who call into question or overly-complexify – and get celebrity, notoriety and wealth for doing so (e.g., Hudson et al) – such common intuitive understandings as those bourgeois scribes aren’t doing anyone a bit of good anymore in the larger sense no matter how much the bourgeois crowd would have us believe that are helping bring us so very close to gleaning the secrets of “How The World Works”. Hint: it’s complicated, peons! Translation: You still need us bourgeois professors to figure things out for you.
Hmmm, wasn’t that one of your criticism of Trotskyism? That it was inherently/necessarily led by an intellectual/movement vanguard that thought it was better/smarter than the common person? Oh well.
Posted by: JSorrentine | May 20 2014 2:11 utc | 124
Regarding the dispute over Hudson, some observations.
Re JSorrentine
1. Most common ‘peons’ are either vaguely leftwing, but are distrustful of everyone, or self-confident and somewhat rightwing, even if vaguely anti-imperial, in my experience. Because the imperial states have destroyed the leftwing movements, we have atomised left-wing sympathetic individuals. I’m not aware of any organizations that try to get leftwing individuals together in a capacity for novel investigation, learning/practising skills relevant to meaningful oppositional activity (as opposed to eg demonstrations), etc.
2. Most leftwing sympathetic individuals (myself included) tend to rely on e.g. Hudson (and others who are not to be mentioned) for such information. Generally, one’s world view is formed by a few such individuals, and whether the initial individuals are respected or not may determine one’s political sympathies, connections to reality etc. Few people will investigate the source materials, so such political connections often rely on one’s continued trust of e.g. Hudson. Thus the tactic by various anti-leftists to suggest evil conduct by such individuals.
3. Such individuals as e.g. Hudson are useful for recruiting, e.g. giving people a set of facts that confirm their suspicions.
4. Continued investigation is rather useful—how else is one to discover a new tactic? If you have recruited people to your cause, how do you get them to be effective agents, without getting them into continuing investigation, i.e. trusting their own observations?
5. After people trust their own observations and suspicions, people gather the confidence to experiment with actions. Thus the destructive dynamism of ruling classes—they have the confidence to experiment and observe, and trust their own observations, but with marginal external limits.
6. Upon reading Bevin’s comment, I fail to see your case that Bevin is opposing the practical question.
Re Rowan:
We don’t know that they will commit group suicide, only that they are sufficiently stupid and selfish to do so. When I lived near a violent neighbourhood (children being murdered execution style by gangsters, etc) that I often visited, I came to make peace with my death. Knowing that I’m at risk of death, while being at peace with the possibility, allows me to focus on practical matters such as paying attention to my surroundings, preparing to defend myself against potential attackers, etc. The secret is to admit that you may die, but you also may not. Surviving a nuclear war would be unpleasant, but it would be a reality, assuming that things come to that.
Similarly with Russia’s future conduct—tomorrow Russia might disappear as a state opposing the US. If that’s the end of your world, you’ve made unfortunate emotional investments and other decisions. I’m pleased with some of Russia’s conduct to date against the US state, but I don’t see Putin as a permanent substitute activist.
Re Situation and What to do
Some of our givens are as follows:
All states are to various degrees subsidiary to the US, whether by the will or stupidity of their administrators, or by brute fact of historical lack of technology, natural resources and/or security relationships with other states.
Most of the most exploited societies are internally at strife. Africa in particular comes to mind. Gross brain damage in these populations due to infant lead and mercury poisoning reduces the capacity for intelligent opposition, and leads to greater infighting. Most poor states tried to ‘modernise’ by popularising cheap motor vehicles, using often very lead rich fuel (banned in most African states in 2006), so the oldest non-fuel-lead-damaged generation is 8 years old, while the average age of an administrator is around 50. Lead paint and mercury based skin-whitening creams remain legal or available where illegal—this is before the IQ effects of malnutrition and malaria and the like get factored in. The only (temporary) silver lining (of sorts) in this is that the US administrator class is also lead poisoned, and the improvement from the fuel ban isn’t due for another decade. And the common lead poisoning leads to security (street crime) being a dominant political issue, rather than economics and imperialism.
Most of the oppositional population in the imperial countries is demoralised. In part this demoralisation is due to a culture of quick fixes. We demonstrate, and stop the Iraq war. Or not.
Each of these problems are ‘status variable’ problems. In coupled systems problems (e.g. Resistor/Capacitor/Inductor networks), one changes a status variable with continued effort (stimulus), and thus the (status) variable changes gradually over time in response to the effort. Derivative variables can change instantly in response to a change in stimulus, e.g. the time derivative of a status variable, but are thus usually ephemeral and insignificant, except to the extent to which they are the stimulus affecting a different status variable.
And each of the attacks on the status variables can easily be made into a popular demand:
1. Popular nationalist attacks on imperial subservient politicians can backfire, but popular adoption of technology for the purpose of experimentation creates new strengths from which to operate. In the 30s, many social movements encouraged this, e.g. making cheap gliders in that era, which is relevant still for e.g. much of Africa—a society with many skilled individuals can put up more of a fight.
2. Lead poisoning is a made to order political issue, and the current US liberal population could easily be recruited. Sections of the US administrative class could go for it as a feel-good issue (uncomfortable questions regarding black IQs and crime rates, etc). They’ve already done that to some extent—see e.g. Kevin Drum’s article, and realise what his politics are (he drew my attention to the lead problem initially). And note that because the approach is wrong (they ignore the biological half-life of lead in the blood) they grossly underestimate the consequences of lead paint—every effort to measure blood lead where paint is the main source finds a distribution inversely proportional to blood lead, thus leading to nonsense that only a small portion of the population is affected, despite that being the expected blood lead distribution. And US conservative states are often ahead in cleaning up lead paint (e.g Mississippi).
3. Changing social behavioral patterns e.g. instant gratification can be done by self improvement initially, to make it a fad. Start with getting people to do relatively trivial observation and recording. Most neo-liberal attacks on existing infrastructure start with a new set of top-level administrators kicking out non-complacent underlings and destroying their careers. Get potential activists to interview current and former lower level personnel of such institutions—universities, public schools, factories, government scientific bodies, etc. See what the issues of disaffection are. Build relationships with people who have access to less available information and experience.
Posted by: Johan Meyer | May 20 2014 5:13 utc | 127
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