Stop the Gucci and Prada Talk
Chinese and Russian People Want to Live Too!
Andre Vltchek
Pedestrians stand in front of a Prada SpA store in the Wangfujing shopping area of Beijing, China, on Saturday, Jan. 12, 2019. Photographer: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg
I hear this again and again, whenever I speak in the West:
What kind of Communism is that, in China? In all big cities, they have Prada and Gucci in every major department store.”
Western leftists are obsessed with this topic. They do not even realize how ridiculous, how racist their arguments actually are!
China, with some 6,000 years long history, 1.3 billion inhabitants and the second largest economy in the world, has almost eradicated extreme poverty in the cities, and in the countryside. For the first time in modern history, people are moving from the urban centers to the villages. The great Ecological Civilization effort is demonstrating to the world how to save the environment, and the planet. The country is firmly back with its brilliant model of “Communism with the Chinese characteristics”. Its foreign policy is more and more internationalist.
But the more progressive, independent-minded and kind to its people China becomes, the more it is attacked and antagonized by the West. The more is its Communist model scrutinized, under the microscope.
By the Right, by the racists and imperialists naturally, but by the Left?
The problem is that the Western Left subscribes to exceptionalism almost as much as the Right.
It demands purity, great sacrifice and austerity from countries like China and Russia.
As I have already described in many of my essays and books, including Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, there is hardly anything pure left in London or Paris. Hardly anyone is ready to commit to anything ideological, especially to the revolutionary struggle. Sacrifice or austerity is totally foreign to Europeans or North Americans, no matter on what side of the political spectrum they stand.
But the Chinese and Russians are expected to behave like saints.
Actually, the entire planet is supposed to stop consuming, driving expensive cars, wearing designer shoes and bags, and if possible, to stop travelling.
All these privileges are reserved for Westerners, and for the elites in ‘client’ states.
It is never pronounced like this, in one breath. But that is what the Western left-wing intellectuals with their, outdated and rejected by the entire world ‘anarcho-syndicalist logic’, really want to push down the throats of all non-Western people.
And I say: such twisted logic is insulting, even disgusting.
For centuries, the West has been robbing, and looting everything, in all corners of the world.
Designer boots is what the British and French ‘gentlemen’ were kicking ‘un-people’ with, in their crotches and their buttocks. Designer clothes were worn by the first and second generations of those refined European ladies in North America, while the native population was being exterminated, and slaves were laboring and getting raped on the plantations.
I don’t want Westerners to talk about fashion and who has the right to be ‘obsessed with it’. I sincerely believe that Europeans and North Americans have absolutely no right to judge anybody, or to ‘advise’ people anywhere in the world, on how to live, what to wear and consume.
*
Chinese people, as well as Russian people, work extremely hard. They work much harder than most people anywhere in Germany or France. Unlike Westerners, they do not loot. They do not exploit anyone.
If they make money and want to spend it the way they want, it is not the business of Western hypocrites to protest.
No matter what the half-hearted ‘austerity’ measures the Europeans and North Americans take (like turning the lights off in their toilets, or using half a tank to flush their toilets), the plunder that their countries are continuing to perpetrate, and the privileges that their entire societies enjoy, are overwhelming and unprecedented. And yes, Europeans recycle a few sheets of paper, while their multi-nationals grab and privatize entire aquifers in South America.
China and Russia are already doing all they can to save the world and the environment, from the deadly Western imperialism. If they work for it, their citizens have the full right to buy the latest mobile phones or elegant pair of shoes. If they want to travel to Thailand or to Turkey for vacation, that’s perfectly fine. It does not make them more or any less Communist or internationalist.
*
But that is not what they think in the West.
You see, those ‘comrades’ in France or US or UK actually demand that everyone listens to their definitions about what the Left is, and what is not; or what Communist or capitalist is.
The great cultures of China or Russia cannot be trusted to decide how they define themselves. The definition has to be outlined on some couch in London, or in a bar in New York, or at a Euro-centric university. It has to be some ‘traditional Marxist’ or anarcho-syndicalist who is expected to put their stamp of approval on, and tell those ‘savages’ who they really are.
The West may be obsessed with ‘political correctness’, but it is as racist as ever. Racist and fundamentalist, it has to be added.
*
I have a proposal to make: if the West is so concerned about Chinese and Russian citizens wanting to drive decent cars and to wear elegant clothes, why don’t they push for an end to the production of these items in their own end: in France, Italy, the United States. Their countries would lose millions of jobs, but if they are so principled, then, why not? Why don’t they themselves dressed in rags?
But seriously, why don’t they, themselves, build that ‘real and pure’ Communism?
So far, all they, the Western ‘left’, have done was to change colors like chameleons; they betrayed both socialism and Communism, and ended up doing absolutely nothing, instead of fighting, just the constant criticism of others who are actually busy trying to build much better world.
You know, we are tired of being tutored and advised by them. I have had enough of hearing, in those luxury villas in North America and Europe, over expensive drinks and while being comfortably seated in those plush chairs and sofas, how the Chinese, Russians and Vietnamese people should give up aiming for the latest mobile phones and designer clothes. I am sick of those bizarre statements coming from anarcho-syndicalists who are living in luxury marina compounds somewhere in New England, that “China is not really Communist because it has a few billionaires”.
Periodically, I come to the West to speak, to open my films or to launch my books. I get invited to ‘those places of high abstract morality’ in the evenings, inevitably. Places where dogs have better lives than citizens of the neo-colonized African or Asian countries. It is always the same tune.
And this time, I have had enough.
We don’t need advice, thank you. And we are smart enough to know and to define, who we are.
The Western ‘left’ should take care of its own problems. They have lost on their own continents, in their own countries. Presently, they don’t have one single figure that could inspire the world. All they do is to bark at the true revolutionaries, and at the countries where both Communism and socialism are firmly in power. They bark because they have nothing important to say. They bark because they have no guts to fight. They bark because they will never get elected, and they actually have no strength to govern. They bark, because, I believe, they actually don’t like true Communists and socialist at all; those who are facing the real world, real issues, and real enemies.
Communism and socialism have won elsewhere, in several places in Asia and Latin America, even in the Middle East. People there fought bravely. Despite the Western left, not because of it, they won.
We have already determined that the pompous self-centered exceptionalism of the West is similar to religious fanaticism. The Western Left is no exception.
They don’t only want us to be ‘pure’, they want us poor, humiliated and submissive. This way they can pity us, and constantly pretend that they are trying to save us (not for our own sake, but for their own).
Unfortunately for them, we do not need their charity. We are winning. Anyone who is not blind can clearly see that China and Russia are standing tall and marching forward. And other independent-minded countries are winning as well.
We know precisely who we are – no need for advice. And what we are will not be threatened if our women and men wear designer clothes, or drive good cars. In fact, claiming otherwise is appallingly patronizing; it is racist rubbish.
[First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook]
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That’s what these extinction rebellion lunatics are advocating – people in Africa shouldn’t be allowed to have tractors etc., they should be satisfied with the simple life, while the De Caprios and the Gores jet set around the planet to collect their climate change awards.
It is doing the rounds today.
We have medialens dismissing the work of Cory Morningstar as ‘pure conspiracist moonshine’.
No real rebuttal, just the same retributive denunciation that they complain about recieving for their work week in week out.
Has hypocrisy ever been more stunningly on display ?
Reading this from Taiwan, I can only treat it as bad satire.
While I cannot vouch for every single anarcho-syndicalist currently alive, I very much doubt there are many:
“. .. anarcho-syndicalists who are living in luxury marina compounds somewhere in New England…”
In terms of the myriad forms of communism, socialism and anarchism in the West, Andre could have chosen to make his point in the essay, I am really at a loss to understand how Andre has chosen the specific praxis of ‘anarcho-syndicalism’ as a cipher for the lifestyles of the rich and famous synthetic left?
Obviously this comments section is not the place to discuss the historical manifestations of Anarcho-Syndicalism, and while I hesitate to endorse Wikipedia as a paragon of objectivity, it’s article on Anarcho-Syndicalism is an excellent theoretical and historical overview of the term.
On an entirely subjective level, my own personal experience of the UK anarchist mileu back in the eighties and nineties was populated by a number of activists and groups who identified themselves as anarcho-syndicalists and they were some of the most committed and radical activists I have ever met in terms of workers struggles.
The idea of a workers orientated movement like Anarcho-Syndicalism being used as a label to critique the authors perceived concept of a hypocritical decadent western leftism is just bizarre. It makes no sense on any political or philosophical level and if anything, it undermines some of the valid points the author is making as it smacks of a kind of intellectual laziness and radical subjectivity where concepts and terms are somehow irrelevant or unimportant.
In the mainly working class community of Sowerby Bridge here in the UK where I live, Gucci and Prada have little meaning, except as counterfeit goods, whose origin is China itself. I say this to make the point that the ‘real world’ is far more complicated and messy than the discourse we use to describe it!
China is widely believed to be lying about the state of its economy.
The era of fiat currencies and central bank printing presses has desensitized us to massive leverage and its implications. So when it is reported, for instance, that China‘s private sector borrowing has risen to levels that are unprecedented in financial history, this is greeted with a collective yawn.
It shouldn’t be, though, because no society can continue to borrow this kind of money without spinning out of control. Some details:
https://www.dollarcollapse.com/soaring-chinese-debt/
Vitchek’s article is inspired by magical thinking and spoken with a koolaid burp.
The western media are widely believed to be lying about every aspect of life in China.
Oh and they’re widely believed to be lying about the precarious state of their own economies too.
I have no doubt that the Chinese economy may not be as healthy as the CPC presents it. But the forecasts of doom need to be placed in context.
Every year for the past 20 years the “renowned US economic forecaster” Gordon Gecko has been forecasting a Chinese economic collapse that still hasn’t happened. Back in 2007, the “eminent British economic commentator” Will Hutton had the misfortune to produce “The Writing on The Wall”, portentously foreseeing an imminent Chinese economic collapse that hasn’t happened yet, while failing to foresee a Western economic collapse that happened seven months later.
One thing the Chinese will never do – a strength of their authoritarian one-party rule – is allow the parasitic financial economy to hollow out the real economy. And at the end of the day they have a homogeneous state with a population that must be about ten times the world population that sustained the first Industrial Revolution.
I guess that one day Gecko and Hutton will be right. But if the Chinese economy goes down it will take the rest of the world with it, as the rest of the world pretty much depends on China’s economic growth to keep their own afloat. And even if it does go down, people will still need shoes. Where would you rather be then? In a country that has machines for churning out shoes and people who know how to operate them, or in a country that has machines for churning out worthless pieces of electronic paper and people who know how to sell them to each other for millions of dollars?
Excellent as always Stonky. Precise and informative – THANK YOU!.
Why consider the views of liberal commentariat who are consistently shown to be wrong?
Why not listen to those who understand the role of debt in the economy of the world and who have a track record of calling it correctly (Steve Keen for example) ?
I read this as a straw man.
Chinese dissent is much more restricted than in some other parts of the world, so false or manipulative reporting of economic indicators (everywhere) can be challenged whereas Chinese experts are mute. That was the point.
None of this challenges the funadmental points about debt, net energy surpluses, resource depletion, pollution and limits to growth.
Context?
Stonky
It hasn’t happened, so it probably won’t happen. I’m sure there is a name for this fallacy – but fallacy it is. To re-iterate Crank: Steve Keen has written extensively about unrepayable sovereign and foreign debts – and China’s “Minsky Moment”. In other words, China has an existential need to expand: see the Harvey and Engdahl articles I linked to.
Here is a statistic David Harvey uses: China used more cement in three years than America used in the entire 20th century …to build its way out of the last crisis – the GFC. The net effect is that is carrying ALL of its post-Deng debt levels forward. It should be obvious that the rate of internal production levels reached are not sustainable. China is post-peak oil and running out of everything (including water). It can only sustain growth by exporting it and has already started its own ‘offshoring’ and re-importation policies to develop its internal consumer market. But the debt-ridden Zombie cultures in the global market – particularly the US and EU – are stalling; and all that redistributed production has a shrinking market – hence, ‘China dumping’ (selling below the cost of production, undercutting Indias overcapacity). In short, we are making stuff we do not need, and have nowhere to sell …for the sake of it. What does this say for China’s unsustainable overcapacity maintaining long term growth prospects?
China is central to the world economy (see Harvey below). China’s slowdown has a hidden global contagion effect. China helped Australia, much of South America, parts of Africa, and much of Asia Pacific to ride out the GFC. China’s debt and bubble problems are real. Dr Jack Rasmus – in his excellent “Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy” – devotes a whole chapter to ‘China’s Triple Bubble Machine’ of stock market, corporate junk bonds (refinancing bill), and infrastructure bubble (see Engdahl link below). Bubbles that it is firefighting with QE. I won’t go into to net energy effect of global commodity prices – but this has a negative effect on the Chinese economy too.
So, your appraisal of the Chinese economy is overly optimistic. China will face its ongoing debt deflation crisis soon enough. One point I would like to add: contra Andre’s overly optimistic East v West pseudo-construct – the entire BRICS EME model was founded on Euro-America’s QE1 capital – almost entirely by one man, Jim O’Neil. That capital has returned to the imperial heartlands (capital flight), which is much of the reason for the forestalling world economy. Take China’s existential growthism out, and there is not much else going on in the world – except contracting markets. Time, debt and entropy wait for no one. When we reach the point of our AI-redundancy from the market: and are oversaturated with stuff no one can afford or even wants; and we capture all that energy – through massive infrastructure that China specialises in – to produce more unaffordable stuff – what are we going to do? The growth model is limited by its own contradictory anti-human logic. It is a cancer and contagion that has overtaken humanity without serving any purpose. Growth serves growth, and nothing else. And that is sociopathological: cannibilising the fundaments of life itself. For what?
BTW, Stonky:
Having read what yo wrote below: I’m feeling a bit pissed off I wasted my time on this reply. There is nothing in this reply that is hidden by jargon or anything else. I just don’t agree with your rather poorly considered BS. If you want to engage on any of the points I raised, or want links, or want anything other than to make asinine trolling accusations …try engaging your brain. It’s that lump of fat in your head that is atrophying by the moment.
Seamus Padraig – Then we must RISE and stand together to stop this gagging order. And post far and wide the actual truth.
As I said we need an I’m Spartacus movement.
Jewish Terrorism by Taxi
https://platosguns.com/2019/03/17/jewish-terrorism/?fbclid=IwAR1SuVvDdBNXC4OWDRZEJRjrKJUJsKBoUEfPl6r6Ix_D6imJ6BouB5Pc8E8
Mutilators of history and inverters of reality.
Infanticidal, satanic pedophiles of antiquity and of modern times.
Human-organ traders; sex-slave traders; historic slave-traders;
executioners of the unarmed and snipers of the bellies of expectant mothers;
mass murderers and rapists and pornographers and drug pushers;
grave robbers and loan sharks and mafia lords and lords of the ghetto
them ghetto Jew billionaires and their coterie of rabid rabbis.
War pigs obsessed with policing the peaceful.
Death merchants obsessed with the six-million mathematical.
Swindlers and heisters in love with their red heifer.
Pagans in disguise and kabalistic bilkers of the loveless and the bereaved
– shooters and looters of lost souls.
Liars and deceivers and congods of the universe.
Diddlers and bamboozlers of lush towns and cities.
Poisoners of air and water and garden and the body human.
Brainwashers of beautiful minds and saboteurs of sunshine and sunny days.
Terrorists and interlopers and smashers of sacred truths.
Haters and killers of all the prophets of peace.
Lovers of genocide and of mass graves.
Purveyors of the flowers of death
and lawyers for the devil and his army of kidnappers.
Torturers and tormentors of orphans and the handicapped.
Castrators of boys and men in their prime.
Ungloved abortionists with bullet for scalpel.
Blackmailers of the redeemed and the pardoned.
Insatiable brutes and sadists and vain bullies pickled in their pharaohnic complex.
Covetous cowards and relentless conspirators behind the black curtain.
Parasite of parasite. Counterfeiters of piety and victimhood.
Worshipers of blood-diamonds and looted gold and milk and honey.
Inventors of the fucking atom bomb!
Arsonists and burners of babies in their cribs;
muggers and assaulters of the blind in their beds;
backstabbers of heroes and Eros and Gentile friend and foe alike;
architects of intolerance and violent division;
protectors of psychopaths who prey on the praying;
narcissists and polishers of the lunatic hall of mirrors;
landscapers of greed and enablers of destitution;
gluttonous vandals of heaven and of earth;
spitters on harvests and on the bread baskets of the world;
builders of walls and moats and spiky guillotines;
birthers of primordial bigotry and racism and chauvinistic-chosenistic xenophobia;
haters of humanity and justice and exquisite Gentile beauty;
revelers dancing on the crushed bones of the innocent under rubble;
enthusiastic beheaders of facts and science and human napes.
Spoilers and decayers and devastators of delicate, divine life itself.
Shall I go on?
NO Andre … the REAL Story is quite different ! Let me explain it in a SIMPLE MANNER :
I will just state FACTS as they are .. without getting entangled in pointless argumentation .. as FACTS are evident for anyone who cares to Look .
You see… the British Empire never was ” British ” .. it was a JEWISH Empire counting from 1695 were the Jews created and since then have owned Bank of England ,,, They bribed some local ” Elites ” , for ex the Churchill family at whom they threw some left overs from the Spoils and Blenheim Castle was build by JEW bribery Money .. They were not the only ones who took the bait !
The ” British” actions in China .. Hongkong , Opium Wars etc was an EXCLUSIVE JEWISH AFFAIR …Just like the Boer Wars , the Control over East India Company and everywhere were populations were exploited and trampled.
In stead of shouting platitudes ..
Andre .. try and INVESTIGATE all those things You claim ! … I have done so …
Through control of United Kingdom the JEWS finally gained control of the USA , cementing their rule with the creation of The Federal Reserve Bank 1913 which they have owned since its creation .. Assisted by their western JEWISH Banksters the Bolshevik Jews succeeded in taking over Russia for 50 Years post 1917.. ..What a massmurdering HELLHOLE they created ! Most of all .. they neutered Russia from the European Equitation ..
Finally the Russians and East europeans got tired of the Massmurders and Exploitation .. so the JEWS fled ..unfortunately to the West … 3 million Russian Jews left Russia between 1955 and 1980 ..or rather fled from their Massacres and Nomenclatura Lives.
Well arrived in the West they transformed from having been fanatic bolshevik Bureaucrats , KGB staff and Gulag Commandants into USA NEO CONS … and the USA became the same Bossom Buddy to the Jews , the Sovjet Union had been prior to that .
…BUT … Russia was finally FREE to pursue its own Interests …and what a success story it has been ! ..
.
Not so for the West , where the Jews dominate almost everything ..as usual in their History assisted by BRIBED Local Traitors to their own People…..It is the ESTHER Story from ancient Persia … rinse and repeat ..like it has been for 2500 Years …
.
China .. never has been anything else than China .. and still is …. In the hey day of Bolshevism China also was INFECTED by busy body JEWS .. but getting rid of that Poisenous Pill and with Konfutsian Wisdom and Tradition China is about to regain the place in History it always has had and deserves !
In the West ..the people suffer under the Heel of the JEWS .. and just like wherever else Jews have reigned .. Societies are falling apart … because JEWS can only reign through demoralisation and debauchery of the People they dominate …
In my own country , Denmark which internationally is portrayed as a happy “Wellfare State ” . the normal common people are fleeced of approx 80 % of their incomes by the State .. a world record in Usury ….which is the reason behind the fact that approx 70 % of the danish people own nothing but DEBT….
The Big Companies contribute with paltry 8 % of total tax revenue ..if they pay tax at all …. and their owners .. predominantly JEWS get richer day by day
.
But I can assure you the normal danish as well as most other european People TOIL … I am sure just as hard as anyone else on earth including Chineese ..They MUST ..in order to pay the usurious Taxes .
They have a JEWISH BANKSTER WHIP on their backs !
To sum it up : China and Russia can praise themselves FORTUNATE … they dont have a Fifth Column of psychopathic exploitative JEWS to carry .. Keep it that way ..and they will succeed …
In the West it wont get any better .. before the people decide they have had ENOUGH … just like it happened in the former SOVJET….or in post WW1 ruined Germany , where the national Socialists by employing national Socialist Economic principles as devised by Gottfried Feder within 4 years transformed a bancrupt ,ruined country to one of the economicaly most successfull Countries in the World…. And that was achieved by breaking the Power of the International JEWISH BANKING CARTELs. ..and by the sweat and labour of a unified German people.
There You have the REAL reason why Germany was attacked and later destroyed.. as admitted by Mr Churchill himself , ..that scumbag !
All above put forward in the simplest manner possible .. so people UNDERSTAND , also because it would take Libraries to denounce and expose the MASS BRAINWASHING as well as HISTORICAL LIES which have been employed in the Western World in order to enable the perverse EXPLOITATION , GENOCIDES ; DESTRUCTION of common people on a Global scale by those in the driver seat .. a small EVIL ELITE , not exclusively but predominantly consisting of JEWS and their BRIBED VASALS …
Let me post a writing by a POET ..i don’t know his origin , he may be palaestinian ..
It is high class Poetry and SCATHING in its TRUTH .. I will do it in a separate post ..it deserves that distinction …
Olavleivar – EXCELLENT APPRAISAL! written in a manner that All can understand and NONE are excluded.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Would the 4 people down voting this post like to come forward and explain what it is they disagree with and provide PROOF?
So this is the ‘truth’ as you understand it? The penny droppeth.
The Russians and Chinese want to live? By spending illicit capital – and all capital IS illicit and eco-pathological? Then they should appreciate that capitalism, particularly neoliberalism – which both countries are despite Andre’s mis-definition – negates life. There can be no life under capitalism: end of. Life is relentlessly whole: capitalism is relentlessly dualising and dichotomising. The two are mutually exclusive: which is simplicity itself to understand.
Capitalism colonises – and expands like a bacterial pathogen …splitting exponentially – opening a ‘reality gap’ between the real and the unreal. Out of the lateral spread – of colonising neo-statist peer-to-peer and intra-state alienation …state superstructures are assembled to capitalise and monetise the alienation. The state is nothing but a monument to alienation – extremising alienation – which is nothing without the colonised constituent consensual communities of the alienated. And the economic logic of dialectical materialism both share. The state is not a separate entity without this consumerist rational and constituent communities of consent. Both are locked in a deflationary death spiral of dialectical materialism – contradictions over finite material resources made artificially and actually scarce as part of the economic reason.
So long as this is true: there is no economic future for either. The state and the neo-state interpellated subject share the same fate. So, this is saying nothing new. This is standard anti-state logic, anti-capitalist critique, and critical consciousness with a minimum of 150 year history, post-Marx. What I don’t get, is that people don’t get it. Everyone should be onboard with the anti-capitalist critique by now. If not now, when?
In simplistic terms: why does shite like this even get published? Free speech and all that: but America bad – Russia/China good is Neanderthal binary illogical headbanging. I do wish people would have a look around at just how quickly events are overtaking us. Shoot the messenger if you want, but the capitalised solutions for the continued exponential cancerous growthism toward entropic heat death and species extinction are proceeding exponentially. And we are still saying give the Russians and Chinese the chance to spend. Don’t you know the Devil Wears Prada? Corny, but not as corny as the article. By the time the Russians and Chinese reach a similar level per capita of future-foreclosing resource wastage – we’ll all be long dead. Ain’t that a bitch.
We could do something about: just as soon as we abandon the pretence of ersatz-prosperity. So stop the Gucci and Prada talk …both literally cost the earth.
Thanks BigB! Scrolling down, this is the first sensible comment I cam across…..including Andre’s…or maybe especially Andre’s post!
If we don’t accept capitalism here in the west, why apologize for or diminish its effects in the east? The one good thing we can say is that in this 21st century, the Chinese Government is capable of learning from mistakes and making course changes or corrections…unlike out of control capitalism that is devouring the west and most of the world today! China gave up on plans of building hundreds of coal-fired generating stations in the 90’s and is trying to reduce the car population in its cities and encourage residents to re-adopt the former primary transportation – bicycles again.
I’m old enough to remember almost 50 years ago when we first started seeing video of Americans and other western cultural reps and journalists visiting China and showing us cities like Beijing, where streets were filled with unisex Mao jacket-clad bicycle riders filling the streets, with hardly a car or a truck in sight! By the 90’s, when they were “modernizing” unleashing capitalist forces, the bikes are gone and cars are all over the place and guess what! So is toxic air pollution…like every other bustling third world city in the world where cars gridlock the streets!
If Maoism didn’t enable wealth and material comfort on western scales, it at least provided food and shelter and other necessities for ALL of the people..unlike Mr. Vltchek’s implied contention that it’s only been today’s mixed economy in China that is able to feed the people! And most important, China had stabilized and was reducing population growth, had clean cities with clean air, while using traditional sustainable forms of agriculture to feed all of their people. Today, China’s main food-growing regions are suffering the same effects of topsoil loss and depletion that are reducing arable land in every other nation that has bought into the “green revolution” model of maximizing production at all costs…especially long term land use! Today, China is no longer self-supporting in food production anymore than other commodities than any other capitalist nation that’s part of global markets.
So, can today’s mixed economy of managed capitalism solve China’s ecological problems in the long term? I don’t see how, when even western countries using controlled capitalism can’t stop the degrading effects of expanding energy, resource consumption and increases in wastes. It may not destroy environments as fast as unbridled capitalism, but it’s not sustainable in the long term either!
Thanks for the reply. Rather than focus on conspicuous consumption: if anyone wants a serious conversation about China’s centrality to the world economy – International World Capitalism – a better approach is to ask “what sort of capitalism do we want: if any”. Luckily, David Harvey already has asked this question:
https://www.democracyatwork.info/acc_the_significance_of_china_in_the_global_economy
https://www.globalresearch.ca/debt-chinas-achilles-heel/5668125
So what is all the techno-theological progress for? If entropy allows its development: what are we going to do with all the redundant labour? And if entropy and debt conspire against capitalist progress: what the fuck are we going to do? Who are we and where are we going to? Nobody seems to have a clue. But in the cuthroat cyber-suburbs of China: we are racing to get there as quick as we can. It is not a specific Chinese problem: but one that affects us all.
And if China fails economically; we all go under.
So, to all intents and purposes, it looks as though we are making ourselves economically redundant and cannibalising the material world ecologically to do it. Genius plan, humanity. Genius plan. I could live with it, but I do not see why we have to celebrate our demise. Or legitimate the right to conspicuous consumption that costs the earth.
We are out of control, and in a dialectical materialised AI-techno-dystopic race to the bottom of an entropic black hole. And we have no idea why or what we are doing it for – following the relentless coercive illogic of capital accumulation.
A little application of emotional intelligence could harness this potential toward negentropic harmonisation with nature ..with applied appropriate technology. If the capitalists can release $100tn to decarbonise the economy – which is an anti-solution …we can direct that $100 tn toward a truly ecological civilisation. There are capitalisable solutions for decarbonisation. There are NO capitalisable solutions to entropy. We need a totally new system, and a totally new way of living. If we can get smarter, discover who we really are, and decide where we want to go – toward neo-negentropic appropriate tech human scale living – they can hardly say there is no money for that. We just need to get smarter, and not be led on an AI-techno goose chase to oblivion.
[:Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goeth
I can’t read this. My heart sank as soon as I read this pseudo-sentence: “The great Ecological Civilization effort is demonstrating to the world how to save the environment, and the planet.” An economic critique of Chinese ‘neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics’, as the esteemed Marxist geographer David Harvey more accurately depicts, is well overdue. There is plenty to critique.
The Dynamic Systems Ecology (DSE) overview of International World Capitalism (IWC) – of which China plays a leading part (if not THE leading part – remove Chinese growth and the world system is deep in economic recession) …and forms NO alternative to – is simple. IWC is omnicidal and exponentially hyper-destructive, cannibalising even the life commons – a fatal contradiction that will not only nihilate IWC itself …but may well nihilate life on earth. At the very least, it will make surviving the 21st century challenging. A challenge we will bequeath to generations to come.
Now I realise that people have a hard time coming to terms with this – they think they are being gamed. They are. The fact that people cannot distinguish between astroturf XR ‘climate rebellions’ and the accumulation-paedophilia child abuse of children – such as Greta Thurnberg – is part of the aporia. As Cory Morningstar said, in effect (I can’t find the actual quote) – the fact that concerned individuals cannot distinguish real threats and real solutions from the false capitalised for-profit-and-growth anti-solutions puts us in a vulnerable place to begin with. A place that can only elicit paranoia and fear-first responses, which will be no defence at all.
We are on the cusp of the biggest emotional and behavioural change experiment ever. And we are ill-prepared for it – or to be able to identify and resist it. And resist it we must. IWC is already mobilising the youth of tomorrow against itself (a manipulation nothing short of necrophiliac child abuse), and preparing to unlock over $100 trillion – to kill us in the name of climate mitigation …for profit. So knowing what an “Ecological Civilisation” is becomes an existential necessity. Any conspicuous consumption is an imperialism over an unseen depersoned Unlife. It is that simple.
Capitalised solutions, privatising nature, and financialising exponential, unfettered, cancerous, Wetiko materialist growthism is to engage in a debt-deflationary death spiral. There is only one outcome – and it will not be an Ecological Civilisation – but a dead planet.
Oil is the major factor in capitalisation. I have already outlined the hidden dynamics of DSE. Exponential debts spiralling way beyond the ability to ever repay – let alone maintain the interest upkeep of (leading to the rollover, compounding exponential interest, and Ponzification of debt with ‘free’ money – catalysing economic failure; foreclosing the future). Exponential entropy will make all resources – including nominally sustainable ones – have higher marginal cost (extraction, refinement, transport – the ‘energy cost of energy’: EROI), and lower social utility value (decreasing ‘exergy’; and EROIsoc – determining trends toward austerity and decreased socialisation, healthcare, arts, education – to maintain falling rates of profit and compensate for rising EROI). The hidden externalised costs of entropy can be forestalled temporarily by internalising and monetising them with exponential debt funding – but fiat currency can never produce energy. Well, a little – by burning it. Which, for all the value it has, may become economic soon enough.
A third major factor is state repression. The above factors will enter the State and its automatic subjects into a debt-deflationary dialectical materialist contradiction. A severe and possibly fatal contradiction for human rights and freedoms. Whereby, the tendency will be for the state to maintain its share of the deflating materialist economy; committing to distributive injustice; illegitimacy of reward (lower wages to counteract falling rates of profit; probable higher taxation (to maintain state functionality); money-printing; etc); resulting in consensus-authoritarianism …coupled with socio-economic overproduction; overconsumption; existential expansionism. The other tendency will be toward militarisation and imperialism-over: to maintain growth, falling profit, overcapacity, stalling markets, and increasing EROI. Evidence to all of this can already be found: to those who do not wear crypto-capitalist blinkers.
The world – IWC – is hooked on oil. That is because IWC – in no meaningless way – is oil. Capital is the capitalisation of hydrocarbons: hydrocarbons that can only be burnt once – leading to higher entropy. Hydrocarbons that are subject to depletion, are already an economic drag, and can only become a greater entropic economic drag as they are continually burnt and debt-subsidised. Capitalised solutions – massive capital investment, financialising and privatising nature; mythical hydrocarbon extension schema – BECCS, CCS, EOR – which may or may not fail at scale …and are already uneconomic compared to renewables; renewable-fantasia – the decarbonisation and business-as-usual of IWC: and the biggest emotional-psycho-torture and behavioural ‘ersatz-eco-social-Skinnerian’ operant conditioning experiment ever conducted – all mean that the definition of an Ecological Civilisation is an existential must. Not knowing will meaning signing up to, or being manipulated toward, or fear-paralysis against – favouring the status quo ante …legitimating our own heat death. Andre’s definition is not even on the right planet.
If the problem is over-dependence on debt and oil: true ecological solutions are manifest by not being dependent on oil. Simples. I have not mentioned the social aporia that capitalism nihilates humanism as its core functionality. It does: realising this and post-carbon-capitalist Universal Humanist solutions abound. As soon as we can disentangle from the techno-theology of ersatz prosperity and pseudo-progress which are now foreclosed by hydrocarbon addiction and negated by entropy – we may avoid the heavily capitalised state repression headed our way. Then we can begin a dialogue to define ‘Ecological Civilisation’. If, in the meantime, our fear-first paranoiac-activism-deficit-gap has not allowed IWC to define and actualise its death visionary autarchical anti-solution first.
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-04-18/climate-change-mitigation-is-it-a-good-idea-to-sweep-the-carbon-under-the-carpet/
FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!
Does ”anyone” read the crap that BigB spews and UNDERSTAND the verbal diahrea…. without balking and reaching for the ‘rusty penknife.’
He (BigB) is a major part of WHY people can’t get their heads round what is happening in the world, by continuing to blind people with their pseudo intelligence…
Andre Vlchek’s article is FANTASTIC and explains succinctly what the problem is with the WEST’s obsession with the EAST. and why we should get off the West’s head spinning merry-go-round (narrative and lies) and begin seeing and thinking for ourselves.
Well done ‘again’ Andre.
I understand and agree with BigB on these points, and commend the way he goes to the trouble of substantiating his arguments with the appropriate links for further reading.
Some of the language is overly dense I would say, but its making a fairly well established point : industrial capitalism is fundamentally reliant on fossil fuel economies. China is too, to the extent of its entanglement in the global capitalist system. China is an intrinsic part of the system which is killing life on Earth.
If you disagree with this then argue the point, not the man, why don’t you?
Well that would be putting it mildly…
That is the point. That’s all he’s saying. It’s a perfectly simple argument. So why the eff dos he have to devote several hundred words of unintelligible jargon and bullshit to making his simple point? Why can’t he just state it in simple terms as you have just done?
She is arguing a point. She’s not the only one that is starting to get a bit tired of BigG cluttering up every thread on OffG with his screeds of drivelling jargon, instead of just stating his argument in plain English. It dowsn’t affect me any more, as I simply ignore his posts, but it could very easily put off new readers on this site if they think that BigB is what it’s all about, which would be a great shame.
Thank you Stonky.
I was beginning to think I needed to go and learn this genre of the English language, because it bears no resemblance to anything I have ever learned or read in my life before. And I can assure you I am extremely well read.. Initially I tried to pick out the words that made sense and arrange them into some sort of understandable sentence or phrase, but I have given up.
I don’t want to ignore or be rude to anyone if I can help it. Everyone who comes to OffG, comes for a purpose.. to read the truth the MSM is forbidden to tell us, and learn.
It isn’t as if I haven’t appealed to him before, to simplify.. but he doesn’t know the meaning of that word.
As you say BigB will be putting hoards of people off with his incessant verbiage..
I have reached the conclusion that this could well be his purpose???
I really hate to see this kind of accusation thrown around – it reminds me too much of the Putintroll! Putinbots! that are constantly being chucked around by commenters on paragons of progressive thinking like the Gruaniad and The Indepeachment.
But to be honest, in the case of BigB I am starting to wonder the same as you.
Stonky; Maggie:
The last thing I want to indulge in is a flame war: but I am inclined toward saying fuck you. Not least because I have ignored your negative rhetoric before and attempted to engage with both of you on a personal level on several separate occasions. I have just finished an considerate reply to you, Stonky, above. Then I read this.
And Maggie: I have written long explanations, in plain language, to you on several occasions. I even apologised to you below. So would my arguments be more persuasive or even acceptable to you if I made more accusations against the Jews? Fair enough question given your likes above. I stand against all forms of racism wherever they appear. If “written in a manner that All can understand and NONE are excluded” implies crypto-racism – then I do not seek or want your approval.
When people enter into accusations of trolling – which demeans both of you more than it does me – effectively, they have nothing to say. So say nothing.
I come here for dialogue, whether you accept that or not. Or whether you want me to or not. Andre’s article is way off, naive to the point of being concealing. His East/West dualism is a pseudo-construct that shows zero insight and an indulgence of personal fantasy. There is an enormous body of research that shows capital is a globalised hierarchical tributary system – one that is inimical to life – not least Immanuel Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory. I feel entirely justified in producing a reasoned critique of Andre’s notional Ecological Civilisation. And proposing of an understanding as to what it might mean …and why that is an existentially necessary understanding right now.
An ecological civilisation that has the right to wear Gucci and Prada? It’s fucking insane. Such moronic definitions will kill us all. Plain enough English for you?
If you want to engage on any point with reasoned critique, instead of anti-thought accusations of trolling …well I tried that before. With Maggie at least, I can see why a Zen peace and tolerance POV would be such an existential challenge.
What part of capitalism is killing us is so hard to understand? Capitalism is not hemispheric – but globally distributed. How is that so difficult to contemplate? What part of Chinese neoliberalism is so hard to grapple with? Calling it ‘communist’ does not change its characteristics, it merely creates a false impression of doing so. David Harvey is a far better categoriser of neoliberalism than Andre. What part of massively overexpansionist, overconsuming, debt-ridden, planet-destroying, anti-ecological super-predator gets to qualify as an Ecological Civilisation? Because someone who cannot even contemplate what that term might mean says so? So you can maybe feel safe in your own pretension a little longer?
And what gives you the right to judge me? Or condemn me for trying to contribute to an awareness beyond the pseudo-descriptions of crypto-capitalist dreamers? Not least because I have invested a fair bit of time explaining my position to you – for you to ignore and throw back at me. Entropy is real. Debts are real. Both of these nihilate what Andre is saying. It is really simple. We cannot have the future we feign to want. People who are saying we can are deceiving us. Wittingly or unwittingly. We will only live to have a future at all if we can discern the real from the false. It is that simple. I’m sorry you think I am trying to deceive you. If you research entropy, EROI, and debt – you will see I am not.
Maggie
I apologise if my tone is somewhat erratic today. I’m suffering from viral bronchitis: and not at all enjoying the Easter break as I should. I’ve also read so much shite this week, endorsing ‘Boaty McBoarface’s’ propaganda piece to camera this week. And, since when does an authentic grassroots ‘rebellion’ get to advertise its intervention on the six and nine o’clock news the night before? It doesn’t. However ‘pseudo-intellectual’ it may seem to you, what I am saying is sincere. If we cannot discern the right from the wrong kind of green (to appropriate one of Cory’s phrases): we’re stuffed. And I did post a six part series to back up what I said. And …I’m sorry. Old age and bronchitis are making me cranky.
Yes & Yes, Maggie and it’s not crap, I assure you: within half a second of reading the line that BigB highlights, I already knew instinctively without checking, that BigB would be responding to that, (on my behalf as well, LOL
😉 ) as I continued to read further…
In fact, I was so 100% sure that BigB would be pouncing on Vitchek’s choice of words, I started to laugh at myself too and had to consciously re-focus on the content & points of André, which are also valid points in many many ways, however, Vitchek’s “Fantastic” article can be considered at best, Social Science & perceptions post IWC propaganda, but nothing to do with the Physics & Chemistry of a sustainable Biosphere & future existence.
Apparently, Dr. David Kelly did himself in with a rusty pen knife . . . 😉
now that beggars belief and gets me all Balky 🙂
In order to consider & create constructive scientific solutions, many varied talents will be required in real time, including to communicate & compound said solutions in a comprehensible fashion & correct the catastrophe of Corporate Capitalism’s chronic excesses, which labour upon & weigh heavily on the quality of future life & habitat: and for those of us who’ve been living lifelong with these notions, scientifically burrowing into the future design of viable sustainable societal values, where Tech. supply & demand will lead to, it is not easy to always find the words & hit the nail on the head, succinctly in one blow, unsure of levels of comprehension & wind direction, which is variable on a day to day basis and often engineered for corporate control, against sovereign wishes, by various Departments of Defence, including the British, in these 21st century ‘Opium Wars’, for the opiate of the masses, whilst providing equitably >>>
Energy return on investment is key to equitable futures: like it or not, or we’ll all have to fight quite literally, tooth & nail for survival, with exponential War as our only weapon of greed & self-interest & exponential egotism, leading to narcissism : an ever decreasing circle, a corkscrew spiralling down, like HRC lying, lik’n Bi**H under sniper fire, whilst having a quick chat with some kid on the runway, as a propaganda stunt 😉
Please note the mask, that the lady is wearing (above) in Beijing, today: my brother has lived in China for 35 years plus, speaks Chinese and was also there during Tiananmen Sq. >>> he’s thinking of selling his flat in Beijing, now. It is worth mentioning that at least the Chinese were honest about engineering the WEATHER, with the purpose of achieving clean air for the Beijing Olympics, after installing 500 installations on the Himalayas: unlike NATO & ALL Western Nations, whose corporations engineer the weather as strategic weapon, including on commodity & financial markets, like Enron, the SEC investigation of which was in WTC 7 … personally I can do without Prada, Gucci & Louis Vuitton and Vitchek has not chosen a “Fantastic” way of making his VALID point, imho: consumerism is but half of the problem, admittedly, and BigB is not immune to matters of the soul collective evolution of consciousness & Taoism. Patience is a virtue found seldom in a woman and never in a man inebriated by the exuberance of his own stunning verbosity, that leaves us mere mortals, searching the meaning & consequences of intent: so be content & think ahead on the damage that 1.3 billion Chinese could reek & deliver to our biosphere, were we not to work collectively with their science & philosophy, inclusive Taoism,
preferably without Gunpowder plots of mutually assured destruction.
The Chinese have been more patient than any other nation or empire on earth, to date . . .
“You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one’s whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognisable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons
(Rather like Gunpowder plots & EROEI)
“All my life I did not want it to be only words. This is why I lived, because I kept not wanting it. And now, too, every day I want it not to be just words.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons
(For our children)
“Mankind can still continue to live without the Englishman, can continue without Germany, can continue all too well without the Russian, can continue without science, can continue without bread — it is only without beauty that we cannot continue, for there will be nothing at all to do in the world! That’s where the whole secret lies, that’s where the whole of history LIES ! Science itself would not last a minute without beauty —”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons
Beauty lays in the eye of the beholder, freed from any compulsion.
Open Source intelligence & engineering in real time, scientifically
and you’ll find somebody who can express & compound upon what BigB has been saying, in perhaps a less dogmatic and more beautifully appealing manner & FASHION . . . for you and your coming generation.
But know this:-
We need far more than some so called societal paradigm shift, globally:
See the ‘Beauty’ of our Biosphere, balancing our biology & Soul, simultaneously signalling the stars, instead of smothering them & ourselves with poisonous noxious gasses, with added particulates ! ?
Back in the 80’s, when still over 900 million farmers, the Chinese were way above western Societies, inc. Israel, in terms of IQ. I found this fact scientifically re-assuring, along with the fact that the Chinese are industrious fast disciplined learners and the less we pollute minds with Prada, Gucci & LouisV. , the better, imo. >>>
coz’ if thur’s nobody about standing in judgement, I just love jumping in the clean river of natural free energy, naked, as the day i was born . . .
that beautiful feeling 🙂
***********************
The Alarm Clock.
Dusk draws in upon the rising Moon,
Stars smother the vault of Heaven.
Forest rustles, swayed by rising Wind,
the Balkan HAARPS the Rebels Hymn.
(Botev. circa 1876),
(a personal translation of pressing matters, then & now)
Cory tweets a suspicion that I share : that the XR occupation is more ‘spectacle’ than ‘protest’.
The police behave quite differently in other public order situations as we all know. The Met ‘ask for re-inforcements’ through the BBC, strange.
The rebels themselves seem mostly naive liberals, quite right (in my opinion) about the problem, but ignorant and deluded about what they are really demanding in terms of solutions. Are they, and we all, being herded into an orchestrated ‘crisis point’ where Mark Carney or some such capitalist missionary will step forward with ‘a solution’. ? So it seems.
I went up to London for a few hours earlier this week. I have mixed emotions about the whole thing. First impression: there were a whole bunch of young people …and a whole bunch of old people (57++) and sweet FA in between. OK, it was workday, but I was expecting more of an even demographic spread.
So I spoke to some folk – genuine as hell. I voiced my ‘astroturf’ concerns and a few agreed. But so what: governments really are in the capitalised business of doing nothing.
So here is another contradiction: If Soros or someone is behind this, and the Open Society and George Monbiot backing is a big clue – not everyone is the “wrong shade of green”? Some are most definitely the right shade of green (and black), and more militant than I ever was. Could it swing the right way? I don’t know, but it would be hell of a funny if the capitalists secretly funded the end of capitalism!
Capitalism will always recuperate and ‘axiomatise’ (define and render safe) any potential dissensus – BEFORE it becomes an evolutionary dissensus and social attractor. Any activism will attract capitalisation of its own authentic logic. I strongly suspect XR is a situationist spectacle – but worms can turn. That is why real solutions need to be forthcoming. If nothing else, I got a few more contacts to rattle my ideas with. And if Soros wants to give me some money to develop them … 😀
I’ve been a fan of Cory Morningstar for a long time now…ever since I realized there was something wrong in the message or the strategies of popular eco-warriors like Bill McKibben, who with his 350.org marches and gatherings were just exercises in doing nothing! I started suspecting that he was just being paid to waste our time while Exxon and the other harvesters of this world work their magic and make profits!
Even so called “green” energy solutions aren’t green if we consider the amounts of rare earth minerals and other energy-intensive inputs needed to produce “green” products! The uncompromising and ignored Australian ecologist – Ozzie Zehner was the first critic I noticed who presented the message that there was no way to make capitalism eco-friendly…even with nice new solar panels and windmills. http://www.greenillusions.org/
But, right now, the main obstruction to transitioning away from oil is because oil companies, developers and investors don’t want to leave trillions of dollars of ‘stranded’ assets in the ground…extinction be damned! So, once again, no future for anyone if capitalism is allowed to keep running this world!
R2L
Right now, the biggest obstacle to evolutionary paradigmatic transition is the human mind …locked as it it into collectively hallucinated mirages of techno-theological progress and prosperity. Dreams that have accumulated in the Petroleum Interval that keep the illusion patent – despite the growing evidence to the contrary. There will be a techno-fix – negative emissions tech or direct air capture and sequestration – that will make oil burnable …forever. In no insignificant way – modern man is effectively “oleum ergo sum” – a paleo-fossilised artefact of cheap oil.
The fact that oil is depletable is ignored. The fact that oil is entropic – as quantifiable with EROI – is ignored. Let’s burn, baby, burn!
The effect of burning oil on the economy, is NEVER discussed. You might have missed the Bardi paper I linked to. The cost of all those future techno-fixes – which may fail at scale – is greater than the cost of current renewables. And with market forces, the cost of renewables is set to tumble further. BUT – and it is a mighty big BUT – only the techno-dreamers believe that we can decarbonise economies, switch to electric cars, AND electric commercial flight – and just carry on. Not only carry on, but grow exponentially, year on year. This is insanity, for no other reason than: why? There is a body of evidence that increased technological and material wealth DO NOT increase wellbeing, or even health, beyond a certain developed status. It is referred to as the ‘asymptotic relationship between wealth and energy’. Increased wealth makes us miserable: so why are we doing it?
As I alluded to above: we have no idea and are clueless about what all this techno-progress is even for. And one of the main effects will be human redundancy. Humanity is on auto-pilot – unconsciously following a set of inimical coercive behaviours that are inimical even to our future wellbeing. A few people – the most affected and unluckiest – get to choose Gucci and Prada. Not a celebratory fact, when the net of all such behaviour is extinction.
I maintain that normative solutions are easy, and rapidly achievable. If and when we stop dreaming of some vague notions of progress leading to the whole world wearing Prada. We can live comfortably, well within our eco-footprint, indefinitely by closely copying the neo-negentropic dynamic life systems of the natural world. Life begins AFTER capitalism. What is not to want? It is only our delusions of failing grandeur that are stopping us.
In my own country – the UK – I see the population walking around gazing into their ‘smart’ phones. Dumb phones might be a better description. I often wonder what they are looking at or listening to. They always remind me of the semi-comatose creatures in Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ or H.G.Wells’ hopeless Elois in the ‘Time Machine’. Apparently these silly little gadgets are what we in the West aspire to and apparently now what the Eurasian civilization now thinks worthy of pursuit. Consumption is the new religion and is based on the notion that economic growth can continue forever. It is a global ponzi scheme, quite simply because infinite growth is not possible in a world of finite resources; flat fact I am afraid.
But I suppose that’s China’s business. I would add that the Gini coefficient of the US, China and Russia is about the same. The Gini is a measure of the level of wealth and income equality in individual states and is calculated in % terms. Anything in the high thirties is a characteristic of highly skewed levels of income/wealth distribution. The three nations mentioned are all in the low 40s.
But the internal affairs and policies of sovereign states is not a matter is not a matter that should concern other states. The crucial questions should be 1. does China/ Russia pose a threat to the west’s security? Answer No! 2.Does China have a right to a sphere of influence. Answer yes. 3. Does the United States, EU and NATO have a right to rule the world and threaten bomb and intimidate sovereign states. Answer a resounding yes.
3. Does the United States, EU and NATO have a right to rule the world and threaten bomb and intimidate sovereign states. Answer a resounding yes.
Whoops. I meant a resounding NO!
Exactly, as you say, we are hurtling into the realms of ”Brave New World” It used to be Homosexuality, but now Kids are positively being encouraged to become Transgender, and in doing so will become sterile…
Within 20 years the sperm of the ”elite” will have been harvested, Ai will be in control, and the deal will be done.
Thank God I will not be around to see it.
Have a nice day, the sun is shining and life is so good. Make the most of it….
Fancis
A Gini Coefficient, and Human Development Index that can be linked to entropy – measured as EROI – to give a ‘Lambert Energy Index’. This – along with EROIsoc – is an indication of deflationary standards. And to me, a prime indicator of the how the state – aligned with IWC as an inverted totalitarianism – will reflexively react. Not well. Now there never be open fascism on the streets – but that is due to the consciousness of sheep – accepting the fascism of the mind, identity theft, and state colonisation of society. A sort of capitalised Thatcherite Invasion of the Body Snatchers B-movie Britain. 40 years in the making: but only now becoming apparent.
That apparency is being met, unrealistically – by demands for distributive justice; legitimacy of reward; a return to the general Will; and return to socialisation. In other words: the general populace want to maintain their share of a globally eco-pathological and an imperialistically, militaristically, hierarchically globally unjust system of hyper-exploitation and ultra-violence. In order to sustain their socio-ecological imperialist existence and Gini Coefficient. I cannot say I am overly impressed.
I’m calling it pseudosocialist Primate Protest Politics. Who would settle for cucumber, when others are getting grapes. Well, in the mud of there own soil lies a child who is getting nothing but cholera and famine as their legitimacy of reward. And that is why climate protests are astroturfed, and children abused – to maintain profit and autarchical self-preservation of dehumanising ersatz prosperous Coefficients of living. A cost of living that is someone elses dying. If not a person, a species or resource. More than likely, all three.
So, we enter a moral dilemma when it comes to envisaging the egalitarian Economic Civilisation. Particularly when the current definition of the standards of living afforded by civilisation are the core problem – not the solution.
Does the ‘West’ have the right to the militaristic autarchical defence of living standards: No.
Does the ‘East’ have the right to the militaristic autarchical defence of living standards: No.
Does anyone have the right to the militaristic autarchical defence of living standards: No.
Can we sustain our eco-pathological way of life? Only if we want to commit economic omnicide.
Civilisation – in its current form – is killing us with an exponential certainty. Russia, China, America, UK, EU, etc together pose an internecine threat to each other …but also a larger combined threat to humanity, the future, and the earth. The projection of the current civilisational modernity is death. Intra-capitalist; inter-capitalist; and extra-capitalist omnicidal death. The internal affairs and policies of sovereign states is not a matter that should concern other states – but it should be scaring the Bejesus out of all of humanity who are automatically subject to statist insanity. They are socio-pathologically mad – and getting madder. Until we realise that: we are caught in a debt-deflationary dialectical materialist death spiral between state and interpellated neo-state-subject.
I do not want to be the automatic subject of a dying statist Empire. One that has no East or West as a false dichotomy. Global Governance of statist colonisation of atomised uncivil society is a death march no one wants. Humanity has a minute chance of survival if we can somehow find an alternative to break free of statism. Not easy. A lot harder if we look at the state-model for affordances, deontic permissions, and economic guidance. Pretty soon there will be none. And the Gini will be 0. And it will not matter what country we are in. The system is inimical to all life. There is no hiding from the system in a false hemispheric imaginary of security.
I have a friend, he still is a friend although I haven’t seen him for years. Years ago we had a discussion. I didn’t know then about the white man’s burden, also had not read Twain’s To the person sitting in darkness.
We were talking about out future job, didn’t know what to do a the time, and my friend said that he wanted to be a missionary in Africa: teaching the Africans what to do. My friend meant will, but was quite angry with me when I said that that was comparable with colonialism: why should Africans be helped by us? What makes us so good.
I don’t know how that discussion ended, I forgot, but we did not come to an agreement.
Years later I am very happy that I already had the wisdom that the author of this article is expressing here
If you have not read Twain’s to the person sitting in darkness: please read it. It is only 7 pages and excellent satire against imperialism
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/sitting.html
With apologies for the typos..
No apologies required: sometimes the odd deliberate mistake is even a useful written ‘tool’, as trappings, to capture the pointless pedant’s attention: along the lines of, gotta’ give a dog a bone and enough rope to hang themselves.
Good comment by the way, Willem: certainly not double Dutch, which (I’m speculating) would seem to be your mother tongue: please correct me if i’m wrong.
I thought we’d moved beyond ‘my rival’s rival is my friend’.
There is plenty about China that is grounds for valid criticism. Exploding inequality, political repression, increasing militarism, pollution and the inescapable destruction of nature that comes with an over-industrialised society.
Western imperialism should remain the critical focus, but take off the rose tinted spectacles when looking around the world.
The author has a point: why should anyone in the post-capitalist societies live at levels lower than in capitalist countries. Marxists, as opposed to pseudo- or new-leftists, pseudo-Marxists or chardonnay socialists or other ‘moral superiors’, Greens, etc, have always advocated levelling upwards not downward. In short, genuine Marxists say: ‘nothing is too good for the working class’.
A sign that socialism has been reached is that labour productivity and standards of living exceed those in the most advanced capitalist country by a wide margin. While on this ground socialism hasn’t been achieved in any post-capitalist society, the advantages of a socialised economy subject to at least some level of planning nonetheless are plain enough: on most socioeconomic indicators China outstrips India, Cuba most Caribbean countries, Viet Nam Myanmar or Indonesia, and so on. These countries also show that socialism can’t be built in just one country, that it requires an international division of labour and the overthrow of capitalism in the most advanced countries — the US, Europe, Japan especially. In the modern world autarky is impossible.
A lot of leftists have especial difficulty understanding China. Superficiality and impressionism leads many of them to pronounce China as ‘capitalist’. After all, it’s likely the first trillionaire will be Chinese. And as any tourist to Viet Nam can attest, Viet Nam looks like a giant collection of sweatshops and jumble sales. Yet one only has to ask a simple question: when was the counterrevolution in China or Viet Nam? When did the wholesale handing over of the economy, including the financial system, the land, natural resources, industry and infrastructure back to private capital occur? When were their governments replaced and when were these countries surrendered to the diktats of the World Bank and IMF? Crickets.
Compare the existing workers states (China, Viet Nam, Laos, North Korea and Cuba) with what happened in Russia (and Eastern Europe). The USSR was the first and only successful workers revolution. After the Stalinist degeneration and consequent bureaucratic misrule in the name of ‘socialism in one country’, after decades of isolation, capitalist encirclement, attempted invasion in WWII and subsequent nuclear war threats, capitalism was successfully restored there in 1991-92. The Soviet economy was privatised through a giant fire sale of state assets and resources, mostly to corrupt Stalinist bureaucrats and their supporters who now form the so-called ‘Russian oligarchy’. Putin has granted some concessions to the Russian population, first to revive the economy after the devastation of the Yeltsin and IMF/World Bank years of a capitalist Russia with no capital, and second because to some extent he knows Russians likely wouldn’t endure for long the unfettered capitalism that the US population historically has been forced to accept as ‘life’.
In contrast to Russia, China has allowed significant capitalist investment whose rapacity nevertheless will always endanger the socialised property forms that remain at the core of the Chinese economy. It’s like an extended version of NEP (the New Economic Policy that Lenin and the Bolsheviks resorted to in the early 1920s in order to restore some semblance of productivity to the Soviet economy ruined by civil war). Yet China remains a worker’s state and capitalist encirclement and inroads keeps it in a dangerous contradiction that the Stalinist bureaucracy likes to label as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. The bureaucracy sits atop a restive population and socialised property forms but feels and accedes to capitalism’s drive to undermine the latter.
Market forces have been used to discipline the Chinese working class as a substitute for workers democracy there. The Chinese Stalinist rulers understand the social tightrope they’re walking on to an extent, but the growing capitalist class more so. The latter will jump at the first opportunity to restore capitalism in China, and only then might the ‘chardonnay socialists’ come to understand what a capitalist China really means. It won’t be pretty.
Come to the US and take some time to talk with our “surplus population,” those who aren’t of current use to employers, and have therefore been stripped of the basic human rights (UN’s UDHR) to food and shelter. These are the people who see America without its mask on. They are the canaries in the capitalist coalmine. This is the issue that defines today’s US. You won’t find mention of them in our liberal media.
But China is a horrible authoritarian place where you get locked up for speaking your mind while unwanted infants float freely down the Yangtze. Who cares that they are wasting money on ridiculous shoes.
That is an absurd description of China. Do you really think there aren’t many ‘unwanted infants’ in so-called non-‘authoritarian’ places like France, England or the USA? Those may not end up floating down the Yangtze, but are aborted in the hospitals and discreetly disposed of. You mention getting locked for ‘speaking your mind’, but if someone tries denying the Holocaust in western countries, they can also locked up for that. There are all kinds of proscribed behavior in every country, not just in China!
Where has anyone been locked up for saying the Holocaust didn’t happen? There are people why appear on television insisting that the moon landing was a hoax, that the Mafia controlled the Kennedy administration, and that Elvis is alive and lounging beside a pool in Las Vegas.
There is this person, he is called Julian Assange: he spoke truth to power. Showed them that they are war criminals and frauds. Now he is locked up. Then there is also Chelsea Manning, etc, so there is your freedom of speech in the free world.
In France and Germany for a start.
Time we all stood up and identified with Sparticus to dispel the lies.
Germany, before World War II, had a Jewish population of somewhere around 50,000 people, which begs the question why, in a nation of 60+million people, Germans would have been so fixated on this fabricated Jewish threat.
”Many Jews from Eastern Europe were the first emigrees to Israel before and after the war.”
It was the American Jews who declared war on Germany, resulting in crippling sanctions, which resulted in dire consequences for everyone… the German population, Jews and Soldiers alike were all starving.
The Haavara Agreement -The German government reacted to appease them by encouraging prominent Jews to emigrate to Palestine …The agreement offered a way to leave an increasingly hostile environment in Germany and enabled wealthier Jews fleeing persecution under the new Nazi regime to transfer some portion of their assets to British Mandatory Palestine. Emigrants sold their assets in Germany to pay for essential goods (manufactured in Germany) to be shipped to Mandatory Palestine… then sent the Hasidic and poor to actual LABOUR camps where they were set to work producing things for the war effort.
Many workers died as a result of their living conditions – mistreatment, malnutrition, typhoid and torture were the main causes of death. At its peak the forced labourers comprised 20% of the German work force. Counting deaths and turnover, about 15 MILLION men and women were forced labourers at one point during the war.
The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 freed approximately 11 MILLION foreigners (categorized as “displaced persons”), most of whom were forced labourers and POWs. In wartime, the German forces had brought into the Reich 6.5 million civilians in addition to Soviet POWs for ‘unfree labour’ in factories.
which would indicate that 4 MILLION people were dead and missing. Political prisoners, long-term unemployed people, sex offenders and vagrants as well as ‘social misfits’ Russians, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally impaired,for opponents (real and imaginary) of the Nazi régime: Communists, Social Democrats, left-leaning liberal politicians, trade union leaders, and the Jews (who, remember had declared war on Germany?)
After Hitler’s war had been lost, millions of ethnic Germans in regions that are today part of Eastern Europe were expelled — often under horrendous circumstances. It has been proven that at least 473,000 people died as they fled or were expelled. The Nazis’ crimes had been far worse, but the suffering of ethnic Germans was immense.
14MILLION Germans were expelled from their homes in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and other Eastern European countries after the war. Only 12 MILLION were able to get to Germany alive. The tragedy of the expulsion of the German civilian population is hardly widely known except amongst Germans and historians.
The expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe was accompanied by large-scale organized violence, including the confiscation of property, placement in concentration camps and deportation – despite the fact that in August 1945, the Statute of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared deportation of peoples crime against humanity.
“According to a very painstaking calculation of the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden, the German civilian population lost 2,280,000 members to flight, expulsion and deportation. These people were shot or beaten to death or died of hunger and exhaustion in the labour camps of the deportation process in the East.”
“The number of victims of the expulsion never impacted on public awareness in the East or West. Even in Germany only a small minority is aware of it. It has not become a topic for journalism and the mass media like the victims of Fascism and the persecution of the Jews have.”
The statistics and documentation of these monstrosities have remained unknown. Official German authorities do not mention or publicize them even when Eastern or South-eastern countries make demands for restitution.
It would be easy to say that the events in the East and Southeast were a just and fair response to the previous National Socialist misdeeds. But were the people in Prague, Warsaw and Belgrade called to avenge the Jewish fate on innocent Germans? Was it right to speak of “liberation” and then to eradicate entire population groups? To expel 15 MILLION people from their homes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II
Where is the actual proof of Extermination camps, all I ever saw was de lousing chambers, which were sadly needed because the inmates were riddled with lice because of the appalling and unsanitary living conditions, hence the typhoid epidemic which killed them in droves. There is proof of Crematoriums which were working beyond capacity because the people were dying like flies with typhus, hence many of the bodies were buried in lime pits to avoid disease spreading further..
Why did Concentration camps have Hospitals and showers if they were so intent on killing people?
Why did any Jew survive, if the order was to annhialate them?
The fact is that the whole of Germany was crippled by Sanctions. Starvation and diseases in the end.
The world should have learned from this catastrophe… but did they hell?
Omitted to post the links:
Jews declared war on Germany.
https://redice.tv/news/6-million-lies
6 million fairy tales;
https://6millionfairytale.wordpress.com/tag/6-million-lies/
Locked up for Holocaust denial – I don’t know. But apparently in many states within the US (even as Congress itself debates a Bill on the same) it is necessary to sign in essence a Loyalty Oath to Israel in order to obtain work, certainly for state agencies, perhaps also for private companies.
So frequently one hears (I only listen to the radio: BBC World Service & NPR – both state media and shills for their respective governments and establishment-corporate-capitalist-imperialist overlords) about the iniquities, the horrors of Chinese, Russian and Iranian oppression, repression and imprisonment. Nary a word about, for example only: the horrors of US imprisonment (the psychological torture of solitary confinement, the accompanying brutality of the prison workers, the forced labor [slavery] within the prison walls for multi-million corporations), Guantanamo (no longer on their horizons), US detention without trial (the recent case, for instance, of Marziah Hashemi); the UK’s Belmarsh Prison – a sort of Guantanamo, the UK’s (May herself directly involved while Home Secretary) deliberate removal of the rights of residency and citizenship of the “Windrush Generation,” the grotesque and illegal (international law – but when did the US-UK ever bow before that?) removal of the Chagossians from their island (Diego Garcia) so that the US could build and keep a huge military base there – apparently the Americans referred to this forced removal of all the Chagossians as a “sanitizing.” And none of this gets to the CIA, torture, renditions and so on and on.
Yes, indeed there are many people throughout the western world who are homeless, impoverished, barely able to make it, if at all. (I come from the poorer end of the working class so know first hand how true it is to live one wage packet from pauperdom.)
And frankly I do not believe that we can solve the world’s ecological destruction – well on the way – by producing more and more capital goods, by people anywhere in the world believing that their lives revolve around buying and wearing the latest fashion items, filling their homes with the latest electronic and whatnot goodies. For one thing those boots that the young women in the photograph are wearing: where and how were the animal skins used to make them tanned? What environmental damage did that tanning cause to which (likely poor) country and people?
And while we in the west need very much to completely alter our capitalist-imperialist construct into co-operative local ones, so too do China and Russia also need to reconsider their reliance on both using, and in the case of Russia, selling oil and LNG, let alone coal. And we need to bother very much not only about fossil fuels and their CO2 production, but even more so about the expanding growth of methane in the atmosphere from both ever increasing numbers of cattle, pig and likely sheep being raised for our (not mine) consumption. And that doesn’t even come close to the effects of the methane which will probably be released as the Arctic ice and the permafrost disappears. Methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2 – which it eventually develops into, anyway.
Moreover, a nation that still considers shark fins, Pangolin scales and flesh and elephant tusks as prized commodities no matter how those items are got, what is done to the poor and shrinking number of these animals to get the scales, fins and ivory – is hardly one to be admired. One can deplore and loathe what one’s own culture has done historically and continues to do to the world at the same time as recognizing that China has serious cultural flaws, too. Of course one must not forget that both Japan AND Norway continue to hint for whales, the latter never signing up to the international accord to stop whaling because – hey – that’s their cultural heritage!
Frankly there’s nothing to admire anywhere on the horizon. Zero.
Sorry that I went off track a bit in response to your message DHFabian.
Where? In Europe. There several people have been jailed/imprisoned for the crime of ‘holocaust denial’. A partial list would include: Ursula Haverbeck, Monika Schäffer, David Irving, Ernst Zündel. To be sure, their preferred technique is to ‘deplatform’ holocaust-deniers instead, normally by contriving to get them fired from their jobs, etc. But there are indeed several countries in the EU that actually have statutes on their books authorizing incarceration for denial.
And as commenter ‘AnneR’ pointed out, there are now several US states that force people seeking government jobs to sign a loyalty oath foreswearing their First Amendment right to advocate BDS as a condition of employment.