The Myth of Late Stage Capitalism - Page 9 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15194950
ckaihatsu wrote:
Not lying or "pathetic" -- be less insulting, and more clear about what your point is, that you're trying to make.

*My* point is that the U.S., Britain, and the USSR were practically *collaborationists* with the Nazis, postwar, because of actively fighting to repress the *resistance* movements that had just *put down* the Nazis in Greece, Italy, and France, and the monarchy, earlier, in China.



Then stop screwing up.

Speaking of which, stop changing the subject. I don't mind once or twice, but this is ridiculous. And speaking of ridiculous, your 'point' is exactly that.
#15194952
late wrote:
Then stop screwing up.



*You* stop screwing up. Be more clear and less vague.


Generalizations-Characterizations

Spoiler: show
Image



late wrote:
Speaking of which, stop changing the subject. I don't mind once or twice, but this is ridiculous. And speaking of ridiculous, your 'point' is exactly that.



Nope. My point is that the Western imperialists had *their own* bourgeois revolutions to overthrow their own monarchies, and then militarily *denied* revolutions to *other* countries that were trying to overthrow *their* monarchies or fascist regimes, as in China, Russia, Greece, and Italy.
#15194959
ckaihatsu wrote:
Be more clear and less vague.







The problem here is that you can't challenge your misconceptions.

The world is full of these things called facts, and I am getting awfully tired of you running away from them to hide behind some new piece of BS.
#15194960
late wrote:
The problem here is that you can't challenge your misconceptions.

The world is full of these things called facts, and I am getting awfully tired of you running away from them to hide behind some new piece of BS.



Whatever. You're just being antagonistic now, without addressing anything about politics and/or history.
#15194962
ckaihatsu wrote:
You're just being antagonistic now, without addressing anything about politics and/or history.



I did, you ignored it.

You even pretended you don't know the difference between offense and defense.
#15194965
late wrote:
I did, you ignored it.

You even pretended you don't know the difference between offense and defense.



No, I noted that the U.S. / NATO were *aggressors*, into the Cold War, while the USSR was *defensive*.



Soviet military perspective

The Soviet military was focused on its main mission, the defense of the Soviet Union.[94] From that perspective, the formation of NATO in 1949 was the decisive threat, and became its starting point for the Cold War. Historian David Glantz argues that:

Militarily, the Soviets considered themselves threatened by, first, the United States' atomic monopoly (broken in 1949) and, second, by the emergence of United States dominated military alliances, the most menacing of which was NATO. The Soviet Union responded strategically by preserving a large, expandable peacetime military establishment, keeping large military forces in conquered regions of Eastern Europe, and cloaking these forces within the political guise of an alliance (the Warsaw Pact), Which could contend with NATO on a multilateral basis. The major thrust of Soviet military strategy was to possess a conventional military force whose offensive capabilities could check Western nuclear and conventional military power.[95]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_o ... erspective



Also:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism


And:



Russian Revolution

Main articles: Russian Revolution and Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

In World War I, Britain, France and Russia, who had formed a Triple Entente, comprised the major Allied Powers from the start. The US joined them as a self-styled Associated Power in March 1917. The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November 1917 but German armies advanced rapidly across the borderlands. The Allies responded with an economic blockade against all of Russia.[3] In early March 1918, the Soviets followed through on the wave of popular disgust against the war and accepted harsh German peace terms with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In the eyes of the Allies, Russia now was helping Germany win the war by freeing up a million German soldiers for the Western Front[4] and by "relinquishing much of Russia's food supply, industrial base, fuel supplies, and communications with Western Europe."[5][6] According to historian Spencer Tucker, the Allies felt, "The treaty was the ultimate betrayal of the Allied cause and sowed the seeds for the Cold War. With Brest-Litovsk the spectre of German domination in Eastern Europe threatened to become reality, and the Allies now began to think seriously about military intervention," and proceeded to step up their economic warfare against the Bolsheviks.[7] Some Bolsheviks saw Russia as only the first step, planning to incite revolutions against capitalism in every western country, but the need for peace with Germany led Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin away from this position.[8]

In 1918 Britain sent in money and some troops to support the anti-Bolshevik "White" counter-revolutionaries. This policy was spearheaded by Minister of War Winston Churchill.[9] France, Japan and the United States also sent forces to help decide the Russian Civil War in the Whites’ favor. Lenin made peace overtures to Wilson, and the American leader responded by sending diplomat William Bullitt to Moscow. The Allies ultimately rejected the ceasefire terms which Bullitt negotiated, believing that a White victory was imminent. [10][11]

However, the Bolsheviks, operating a unified command from a central location, defeated all the opposition one by one and took full control of Russia, as well as breakaway provinces such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.[citation needed] Bainbridge Colby, the American Secretary of State, in 1920 announced an American policy of refusing to deal with the new regime.[12]

Soviet Russia found itself isolated in international diplomacy.[13] Lenin stated that the Soviet Union was surrounded by a "hostile capitalist encirclement" and he viewed diplomacy as a weapon to keep Soviet enemies divided. Lenin set up the Comintern, which called for revolutionary upheavals in capitalist countries. Nevertheless Communist revolutions failed in Germany, Bavaria, and Hungary and by the mid-1920s Moscow was no longer fomenting revolution.[14]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_o ... Revolution
#15194967
ckaihatsu wrote:

No, I noted that the U.S. / NATO were *aggressors*, into the Cold War, while the USSR was *defensive*.





OK, so you don't know the difference, my bad.

Russia was plenty aggressive, and the whole idea behind the Cold War was a defense against that that did not involve war with Russia.

As I already said, it's the Great Game, the struggle of empires.

The idea that Russia was purely defensive is the result of ignorance, incompetence, or insanity.

Take yer pick.
#15194968
ckaihatsu wrote:
No, I noted that the U.S. / NATO were *aggressors*, into the Cold War, while the USSR was *defensive*.



late wrote:
OK, so you don't know the difference, my bad.

Russia was plenty aggressive, and the whole idea behind the Cold War was a defense against that that did not involve war with Russia.

As I already said, it's the Great Game, the struggle of empires.

The idea that Russia was purely defensive is the result of ignorance, incompetence, or insanity.

Take yer pick.



Nope, sorry, but they-started-it:


ckaihatsu wrote:



Decision-making lay with four permanent Security Council members264—Britain, the US, France and Russia—and between them these dominated, oppressed and exploited the rest of the world.

They were already falling out behind the scenes by the time of San Francisco [United Nations, May 1945]. Churchill discussed drawing up plans for the ‘elimination of Russia’, arming defeated German troops for a surprise attack ‘to impose on Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire’265—a suggestion which, it seems, his own generals would not take seriously. The US did more than just talk: its decision to use the nuclear bomb against Japan in August 1945 was clearly motivated, at least in part, by a desire to show Stalin the enormity of the destructive power at its disposal.

Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 543



viewtopic.php?p=15194886#p15194886
#15194971
ckaihatsu wrote:
Nope, sorry, but they-started-it



It started before the war ended. Both sides wound up in a race to grab as much territory as they could.

I could go back over the crap Russia pulled, like the Berlin Airlift, but you will just ignore it again.
#15194972
late wrote:
It started before the war ended. Both sides wound up in a race to grab as much territory as they could.

I could go back over the crap Russia pulled, like the Berlin Airlift, but you will just ignore it again.



*What* started before the war ended? What are you grudgingly acknowledging? (grin)

You're continuing to try to make it sound like it was all some grand pandemic masking-up on all sides, which is *far* too innocuous a portrayal of the Cold War to be anywhere-*near* historically-accurate. Remember that the Vietnam War was part of the Cold War, and was wholly unnecessary and unjustifiable.



Latin America

During World War II, the United States military operations had widespread support across Latin America, except for Argentina. After 1947, with the Cold War emerging in Europe, Washington made repeated efforts to encourage all the Latin American countries to take a Cold War anti-Communist position. They were reluctant to do so – for example, only Colombia sent soldiers to the United Nations contingent in the Korean War. The Soviet Union was quite weak across Latin America. Not until the late 1950s did Moscow achieve diplomatic or commercial relationships with most Latin American countries.,[98] Before then it had only two trade agreements (with Argentina and Mexico.) The communist movements that had existed in Brazil and elsewhere in the 1930s had been disbanded or outlawed.[99] Washington exaggerated the dangers, and decided on a preemptive attack against a possible communist threat.[100] It sought anti-communist resolutions at the annual meetings of the Pan American Union (renamed the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948) and paid special attention to the growth of left-wing forces in Guatemala.[101] A compromise was reached whereby the Latin American states agreed on vague statements of support for the American Cold War position, and the United States provided expanded financial grants and loans to stimulate economic growth. In 1954, at the 10th Inter-American Conference in Caracas, Washington demanded a resolution that the establishment of a communist government in any American state was a threat to the peace of the hemisphere. Guatemala cast the only negative vote. Guatemala's military, with CIA encouragement, overthrew its left-wing government later that year.[102] Fidel Castro engineered his revolutionary takeover of Cuba in 1957–58 with very little Soviet support. The United States and the smaller Latin countries, outvoted the larger powers by the required two-thirds majority in 1962 to identify Cuba as a communist regime and suspend it from the OAS.[103][104]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_o ... in_America
#15194976
ckaihatsu wrote:
edited for lack of anything worth repeating



You are babbling.

Stalin wasn't bright. He was also paranoid, very paranoid.

So despite us sending him massive amounts of aid, he simply got a ton of things wrong. He had wanted us to invade France years before we could. Any such attempt would have been suicidal. If Germany's command hadn't been so screwed up by D Day, we would have been slaughtered even then. He thought that was a deliberate slowdown. It wasn't.

Stalin didn't want allies, he turned Eastern Europe into vassal states, occupied by Russian soldiers for decades after the war.

Stalin did a bunch of things that were aggressive, like the Berlin Airlift.

He built an empire, and you don't get an empire by being defensive.

So pull your head out of wherever it is lodged, and take a long look at the obvious.

Or start reading history, by which I mean the real thing..
#15194978
late wrote:
You are babbling.

Stalin wasn't bright. He was also paranoid, very paranoid.

So despite us sending him massive amounts of aid, he simply got a ton of things wrong. He had wanted us to invade France years before we could. Any such attempt would have been suicidal. If Germany's command hadn't been so screwed up by D Day, we would have been slaughtered even then. He thought that was a deliberate slowdown. It wasn't.

Stalin didn't want allies, he turned Eastern Europe into vassal states, occupied by Russian soldiers for decades after the war.

Stalin did a bunch of things that were aggressive, like the Berlin Airlift.

He built an empire, and you don't get an empire by being defensive.

So pull your head out of wherever it is lodged, and take a long look at the obvious.

Or start reading history, by which I mean the real thing..



Okay, we'll play in *your* sandbox for awhile....



In Eastern Europe it suited Stalin that the states occupied by Russian troops should be run by coalition governments involving figures from the pre-war right, centre and social democratic parties.



---


Now then:



The Marshall Plan, the scheme to revive the economies of Europe under US hegemony, soon followed. It was presented as an offer of aid to all of Europe, including those areas under Russian occupation. But W W Rostow, an economist who worked on implementing it—and who later played a key role in the US’s war against Vietnam—reveals that the plan was part of an ‘offensive’ which aimed ‘to strengthen the area still outside Stalin’s grasp’.266



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 544
#15194980
Okay, let's just cut the shit, now, shall we -- ? (grin)



Officials in the Truman administration placed responsibility for postwar tensions on the Soviets, claiming that Stalin had violated promises made at Yalta, pursued a policy of expansionism in Eastern Europe, and conspired to spread communism throughout the world.[128] Historians associated with the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic history such as Williams, however, placed responsibility for the breakdown of postwar peace mostly on the U.S., citing a range of U.S. efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II. According to Williams and later writers influenced by his work—such as LaFeber, author of the popular survey text America, Russia, and the Cold War (published in ten editions between 1967 and 2006)—U.S. policymakers shared an overarching concern with maintaining capitalism domestically. In order to ensure this goal, they pursued a policy of ensuring an "Open Door" to foreign markets for U.S. business and agriculture across the world. From this perspective, a growing economy domestically went hand-in-hand with the consolidation of U.S. power internationally.[126]

Williams and LaFeber also dismissed the assumption that Soviet leaders were committed to postwar "expansionism." They cited evidence that Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern Europe had a defensive rationale, and Soviet leaders saw themselves as attempting to avoid encirclement by the United States and its allies.[130] From this view, the Soviet Union was so weak and devastated after the end of the Second World War as to be unable to pose any serious threat to the U.S., which emerged after 1945 as the sole world power not economically devastated by the war, and also as the sole possessor of the atomic bomb until 1949.[128]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_o ... e_Cold_War
#15195007
ckaihatsu wrote:

Okay, we'll play in *your* sandbox for awhile....





Any Soviet puppet state that didn't toe the line could expect trouble, sometimes in the form of tanks. It was an empire, you aren't an empire if you're just playing defense. It's that simple.

You've also been arguing that the West was aggressive, as if I hadn't said a couple times that both sides were aggressive. They were empires, with all that implies.

Rostow, an economist, was using exaggerated language to describe the economic side of Cold War policy. Actually, it started as a largely economic idea. George F Kennan worked in the embassy in Russia. He was quite aware that Stalin saw the West as an enemy. Limiting what Russia could do through economic means was his idea. He saw the Cold War as primarily economic, but both sides kept making mistakes resulting in a regrettable series of escalations.

But I am getting ahead of myself, as Germany was collapsing, both sides misapprehended the other. But the thing about Stalin is he thought anything he couldn't control was a threat. He wanted to spread Soviet style government as much as he could.
#15195050
late wrote:
It was an empire, you aren't an empire if you're just playing defense. It's that simple.

You've also been arguing that the West was aggressive, as if I hadn't said a couple times that both sides were aggressive. They were empires, with all that implies.



Sometimes I get the sense that the *entire board* of PoFo revolves around this geopolitical issue -- was the USSR an 'empire', or not -- ?

I think it's best to start with the side that definitely *was* an empire, incontrovertibly / indisputably, which was the U.S., of course.



placed responsibility for the breakdown of postwar peace mostly on the U.S.



"Open Door" to foreign markets for U.S. business and agriculture across the world.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_o ... e_Cold_War



So the issue here is about *emphasis* -- any 'even-handed' kind of approach is really inappropriate, since the economic pressures for *empire* were nowhere *near* equivalent, or comparable, U.S. vs. USSR.

The most damning piece of evidence against the USSR being an 'empire' is that it never exported finance capital:



In order for capitalism to generate greater profits than the home market can yield, the merging of banks and industrial cartels produces finance capitalism and the exportation and investment of capital to countries with underdeveloped economies is required. In turn, such financial behaviour leads to the division of the world among monopolist business companies and the great powers. Moreover, in the course of colonizing undeveloped countries, business and government eventually will engage in geopolitical conflict over the economic exploitation of large portions of the geographic world and its populaces. Therefore, imperialism is the highest (advanced) stage of capitalism, requiring monopolies (of labour and natural-resource exploitation) and the exportation of finance capital (rather than goods) to sustain colonialism, which is an integral function of said economic model.[4][5] Furthermore, in the capitalist homeland, the super-profits yielded by the colonial exploitation of a people and their economy permit businessmen to bribe native politicians, labour leaders and the labour aristocracy (upper stratum of the working class) to politically thwart worker revolt (labour strike) and placate the working class.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperiali ... Capitalism
#15195057
ckaihatsu wrote:
Sometimes I get the sense that the *entire board* of PoFo revolves around this geopolitical issue -- was the USSR an 'empire', or not -- ?

I think it's best to start with the side that definitely *was* an empire, incontrovertibly / indisputably, which was the U.S., of course.



So the issue here is about *emphasis* -- any 'even-handed' kind of approach is really inappropriate, since the economic pressures for *empire* were nowhere *near* equivalent, or comparable, U.S. vs. USSR.

The most damning piece of evidence against the USSR being an 'empire' is that it never exported finance capital:



From your own source:

"Gaddis, however, argues that the conflict was less the lone fault of one side or the other and more the result of a plethora of conflicting interests and misperceptions between the two superpowers, propelled by domestic politics and bureaucratic inertia. While Gaddis does not hold either side as entirely responsible for the onset of the conflict, he argues that the Soviets should be held at least slightly more accountable for the problems. According to Gaddis, Stalin was in a much better position to compromise than his Western counterparts, given his much broader power within his own regime than Truman, who had to contend with Congress and was often undermined by vociferous political opposition at home. Asking if it were possible to predict if the wartime alliance would fall apart within a matter of months, leaving in its place nearly a half century of cold war, Gaddis wrote in a 1997 essay, "Geography, demography, and tradition contributed to this outcome but did not determine it. It took men, responding unpredictably to circumstances, to forge the chain of causation; and it took [Stalin] in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place."

From Wiki's Historiography of the Cold War:

"Since the 2000s, benefiting largely from the opening of Cold War-era archives in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the world, Cold War historians have begun to move on from questions of blame and inevitability to consider the Cold War in the longue durée of the 20th century, alongside questions of culture, technology and ideology.[28][29] Historians have also begun to consider the Cold War from a variety of international perspectives (non-American and non-Soviet) and most especially have stressed the importance of what was then called the "Third World" in the latter half of the Cold War.[29] As Odd Arne Westad, co-editor of the Cambridge History of the Cold War (2010) has written:

"Very few of our contributors believe that a "definitive" history of the Cold War is possible (or indeed that it should be possible). But a heterogeneous approach creates a strong need for contextualization.... First and foremost we need to situate the Cold War within the wider history of the twentieth century in a global perspective. We need to indicate how Cold War conflicts connect to broader trends in social, economic, and intellectual history as well as to the political and military developments of the longer term of which it forms a part."
#15195095
late wrote:



It took men, responding unpredictably to circumstances, to forge the chain of causation; and it took [Stalin] in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place."



Extending the-benefit-of-the-doubt / this-as-a-hypothesis, your ongoing line has been the Berlin Blockade, right -- ?



[T]he Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade



So, according to you, *this* is what kicked-off the rest of the Cold War, correct -- ?
#15195096
ckaihatsu wrote:


So, according to you, *this* is what kicked-off the rest of the Cold War, correct -- ?




I have come to the conclusion you gave up some time ago, and now are trolling.
#15195098
ckaihatsu wrote:
So, according to you, *this* is what kicked-off the rest of the Cold War, correct -- ?



late wrote:
I have come to the conclusion you gave up some time ago, and now are trolling.



Overall it was the 'Great Game', right -- ? I'm trying to be *accurate* here.
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