There were no major shortages prior to Perestroika. There was slower economic growth as a result of the oil crisis of the 1970s, but otherwise the economy of the socialist bloc was doing fine pretty much until the USSR decided to liberalize. They did this primarily for ideological reasons, not material ones. Then everything became severely fucked up and this had downstream effects on other socialist countries, where you had the dual shock of losing the strong economic anchor of the USSR coupled with their own liberalization reforms inspired by the ideological movement for liberal reform that was emanating from the USSR, which then destroyed the basis of their socialist economies. Even countries such as Romania, which did not liberalize and which was doing very well up until the 1980s with some pretty incredible growth, had the rug pulled out from under them when the USSR started wrecking its own economy and abandoning its allies, and this forced Romania to go into austerity to repay IMF loans which in turn created the shortages.

Not too long ago some CDU people were gleefully bragging about how they “pulled the rug out from under the AfD” by - get this - adopting all of the AfD’s migration policies. And yet the AfD’s popularity keeps rising. What a shock, becoming the discount fascists hasn’t made the fascists less popular…

The idea of “cheap Chinese labor” is fast becoming an anachronistic myth. Wages in China have gone up massively over the past couple of decades. When adjusted to local costs of living, Chinese factory workers actually end up with more relative spending power than American service industry workers. Additionally, if we want to use liberal lingo, China now has the biggest “middle class” in the world. The reason why China is still the preferred location for manufacturing is because it has all the integrated supply chains, the infrastructure, the automation, and the educated+trained workforce to optimize production and make it more profitable than even places with cheaper labor costs can.

What I really appreciate about this experience is that I was not silenced or ignored, though some degree of that would have been warranted

It’s never warranted to silence or ignore someone who has shown an honest willingness to learn. We understand that someone who is new to these subjects will come in with views and ways of expressing themselves that are shaped and prejudiced by the capitalist and imperialist propaganda which surrounds most of us on a daily basis in Western and Western-influenced countries.

To add to the already very good answers that you have received here, I would strongly recommend that you read the following:

“Through Pluripolarity to Socialism: A Manifesto” written by the International Manifesto Group, an international socialist and anti-imperialist group formed during the Covid pandemic.

And:

“The global struggle against imperialism, for multipolarity, for peace and for socialism” published on the socialist platform Friends of Socialist China.

These two pieces expand on the excellent remark made in the above comment, that:

The efforts to build a multi-polar system can only help our efforts to build socialist projects. Especially if one of those poles is China.

There’s no need to apologize. Not knowing things is not a sin. We were all at one time where you are now. If you grew up in a western country it’s almost impossible not to have been indoctrinated with liberal dogma. What’s important is that you are willing to learn and to understand that the framing which you have been exposed to so far when it comes to these topics is one that our imperialist ruling class deliberately cultivates - including in leftists - such that we do not pose a threat to their status quo.

Their messaging apparatus is very powerful as it includes not just the media and educational institutions, but even co-opts progressive groups and causes, and uses leftist sounding rhetoric to prevent the formation of anti-imperialist consciousness and solidarity. There are immense social (often even legal) pressures against actually dangerous dissent, and one of the main ways this pressure is applied is by accusing those who stand with the enemies of imperialism of “supporting authoritarian regimes”.

What is most sinister is that in order to have your tacit consent they don’t have to get you to outright support their imperialist aggression, it is enough to get you to be afraid to side with the target of their aggression by making it seem like you will be morally tainted by association if you defend the other side (e.g. if you support armed resistance to the Palestinian genocide). This is why you hear all of these buzzwords thrown around like “authoritarian”.

What i want you to understand first and foremost is that this notion of moral taint by association is counter-productive. As materialists we must look at how something helps or hinders the cause of socialism and anti-imperialism, how it helps or hinders liberation in the context of the broader struggle. You also need to understand that this struggle is a global one because the world now is so interconnected, so we cannot look at individual actors and actions in isolation; they are part of an interconnected system.

You have used the word “authoritarian” three times in the one paragraph you wrote in your post. I want you to take some time to think about why this word so important to you. What exactly do you think it means?

Edit: Some additional food for thought: do you really think that it applies only to some countries and not others, and is it really a word that is helpful in understanding the world from a materialist socialist perspective, or is it just a thought terminating moralistic cliché?

I would tend to agree with you on that, but i also agree that it’s beside the point, at least for the time being. Maybe if his backers decide he needs to go then that will become relevant.

Just like all of Europe scrambled to organize the Minsk agreements after the disasters at Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo, now the US is begging the Russians to agree to a ceasefire. That is how you know Ukraine is in real trouble…

They are losing their minds

The problem is that what we see as horrific tragedy, our enemies see as a great victory

And people who should be friends, neighbours, colleagues, are turned into enemies who blindly hate and kill each other.

Another way of phrasing that is: people who in another time would have fought together against the West (and might do so again one day) are now killing each other instead. From the perspective of the West, this is a dream come true.

Lots of people like that in the Ukraine military these days. It’s very plausible this was some poor guy they kidnapped off the street and forced to the front line with a gun at his back. From what i have read they were in the process of replacing the better trained professional assault units that first went into Kursk with lower quality, forcefully mobilized troops for a while now.

They already had a shortage of trained and motivated manpower before, and they spent a lot of them in Kursk which further compounded the problem. Now apparently the remaining elite troops were sent back to the Donbass to try and plug the gaps and halt the collapse that is in the process of happening there, which is a big part of why things went to shit so fast in Sumy-Kursk. They’ve reached a point where plugging a leak in one place just opens up a bigger one somewhere else.

But i also wouldn’t immediately take what someone who was captured is saying at face value. They have a vested interest in downplaying their enthusiasm and potential involvement in war crimes. After the Azov Nazis in Mariupol were captured every one of them claimed to be a cook or a driver.

That’s what the one guy they interviewed about this is saying. Could be true; crazier things have happened in wars.

Although you’d think they’d want to keep the details of the execution secret in case they want to try doing something similar in the future.

In cases like this i would assume it’s not uncommon to mix in some lies with the truth in order to obfuscate how it was really done. Like for instance, if they did it in two days, say it was done in four. Admit what you can’t hide and change in small, plausible ways the details that the enemy is still in the dark about, such that they will be operating on faulty intelligence next time.

Of course they’d need the soldiers who were involved to go along with this and not get angry that their story is being told wrong…

Or maybe they really are telling us exactly how it happened because they figure this stuff will leak out eventually anyway. For me this is the simplest and most likely explanation, because it is very hard nowadays to keep things secret for long when the other side has a sophisticated intelligence network.

In any case this whole thing makes for a great story for the domestic Russian media. I expect that at some point in the not too distant future we will see Putin handing out some Hero of Russia medals to the people involved. And why not? If the story is true they deserve it.

I remember the Ghost of Kiev and the grannies with pickle jars taking down Russian jets too.

No, but on a more serious note, you just have to wait a while on these sorts of things until the fog of war has lifted before you can understand what actually happened. Especially when there is so much propaganda and cope from the Ukrainian side, while the Russians (and here i don’t mean the Telegram rumor mills) typically like to stay silent until after an operation is completed.

There are always a lot of poorly substantiated rumors and misinformation right at the moment when something is happening. I think we’re not really going to have a clear picture of some of the things that have been happening in this conflict until long after it’s over, and historians as well as the soldiers involved start writing books about it.

Until then we are very much dealing with incomplete information. But in this case there are some facts on the ground that appear to be fairly indisputable, and one of those is that the entire Kursk pocket is rapidly collapsing. We can’t be sure on the details but the broad picture is more or less confirmed by both sides.

As for what i personally think happened, and this is just my opinion, i think that if the whole operation had been a complete fiasco then the Ukrainians would have posted non stop videos and pictures of dead and captured Russians. What we instead saw was that there was suddenly a rapid collapse of Ukrainian positions in the northern Kursk pocket, which may or may not have had something to do with this operation. That would be something that you’d expect to happen if they suddenly discovered that they had an entire Russian unit unexpectedly appear behind them. Logically it checks out, but of course this is still just conjecture.

First of all Ukraine doesn’t have anywhere near that amount or the capacity to produce anywhere near enough every year to fulfil an obligation of that magnitude for decades. So this was a pipe dream from the very beginning. This is Ukraine bargaining with cards it doesn’t have.

Secondly, Trump doesn’t see this as a deal for further additional aid, let alone a military commitment. He sees it as demanding back some of the money that the US has already invested. And Zelensky has absolutely no leverage whatsoever to demand anything.

And finally, who is going to deploy soldiers to Ukraine? It would be political suicide for a US president to do it, at the moment that is completely out of the question. And Europe? They are a joke. Even if they had anyone to send, no one in Europe wants to do that, especially not if the US refuses to get involved.

The article was published this month. When it was drafted, i don’t know.

The Moscow terrorist attacks certainly fit into the framework of the plan that the article exposes. They’re exactly the kind of operation the people who write these strategy papers like to fantasize about and think will score some kind of “psychological victory”. And we know that the CIA and MI6 have essentially been running the SBU (at this point indistinguishable from a terrorist organization) since 2014.

Pathetic. Subservient. Irrelevant. Europe.

(Should be the EU’s new slogan)

And now they are replicating this same kind of operation in Kursk… Throwing battalion after battalion of their best troops into a literal fire bag for purely political optics, and the Russians are once again happy to let them do it for as long as they want. How their own soldiers that they are so pointlessly sending to their deaths haven’t turned on them yet i still struggle to understand.

I said this all the way back when the SMO started, what Russia did when they took that decision in 2022 was truly historic in the best possible way. For the first time in a long time someone dared to actually strike back at the empire. This kind of bold, decisive action is exactly what needs to happen more from the anti-imperialist camp. Take the fight to the imperialists, put them on the back foot for a change - enough timidity and caution!

Even what happened in Syria was not because of any kind of brilliant military victory of the empire or its proxies, but simply a regime losing faith in themselves and choosing to roll over and give up. The empire’s only real power lies in its propaganda, its ability to convince you that it is all powerful and undefeatable, but in reality as Mao said, it is a paper tiger. Ukraine losing in spite of the collective efforts of all of NATO proves this. The Zionist failure on the ground against Hezbollah and Hamas proves this. Iran’s missiles punching through the Cope Dome like tissue paper proves this.

It is telling that they only dared launch an all out assault on Syria once it left itself defenseless. As long as Assad was still there they did not dare step foot in Syria. They can only bully the weak. They can only plot from the shadows, assassinations, sadistic torture, genocide of the defenseless and other cowardly terrorist actions. They cannot win in a stand up fight.

I’m honestly disappointed seeing some comrades here on Hexbear fall for the defeatism psyop. In a war you will sometimes lose some battles, that is just a fact. You have to be able to emotionally handle this and maintain a view of the bigger picture. You have to have some discipline about what you say and when. Otherwise you become just another tool of the imperialists demoralizing your own struggle.

I for one am optimistic because i know the trajectory of history is on our side. So steel yourself and don’t lose heart. Death to fascism! Glory to the revolution! Venceremos!

There are 100,000 people working for the mobilization office in Ukraine, it’s an army in and of itself. Fun fact: this is the most sought after job in Ukraine right now as it guarantees you won’t be sent to the front, and you get legal impunity to do pretty much whatever you want to people including extorting a massive amount of bribes from them to avoid mobilization.