The Myth of Late Stage Capitalism - Page 11 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15195236
I guess the point was that the SU, the nation of defence, wanted to gain territorial advantage. How unimperial is that! As did China @ckaihatsu. Not to mention Czechoslovakia which I will bring up again for kicks.
#15195237

The victors were the Soviet Union and the United States (also England, France and Nationalist China, but they were weak). Both these countries now went to work—without swastikas, goose-stepping, or officially declared racism, but under the cover of "socialism" on one side, and "democracy" on the other, to carve out their own empires of influence. They proceeded to share and contest with one another the domination of the world, to build military machines far greater than the Fascist countries had built, to control the destinies of more countries than Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan had been able to do. They also acted to control their own populations, each country with its own techniques-crude in the Soviet Union, sophisticated in the United States—to make their rule secure.

The war not only put the United States in a position to dominate much of the world; it created conditions for effective control at home. The unemployment, the economic distress, and the consequent turmoil that had marked the thirties, only partly relieved by New Deal measures, had been pacified, overcome by the greater turmoil of the war. The war brought higher prices for farmers, higher wages, enough prosperity for enough of the population to assure against the rebellions that so threatened the thirties. As Lawrence Wittner writes, "The war rejuvenated American capitalism." The biggest gains were in corporate profits, which rose from $6.4 billion in 1940 to $10.8 billion in 1944. But enough went to workers and farmers to make them feel the system was doing well for them.

It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control. Charles E. Wilson, the president of General Electric Corporation, was so happy about the wartime situation that he suggested a continuing alliance between business and the military for "a permanent war economy."

That is what happened. When, right after the war, the American public, war-weary, seemed to favor demobilization and disarmament, the Truman administration (Roosevelt had died in April 1945) worked to create an atmosphere of crisis and cold war. True, the rivalry with the Soviet Union was real—that country had come out of the war with its economy wrecked and 20 million people dead, but was making an astounding comeback, rebuilding its industry, regaining military strength. The Truman administration, however, presented the Soviet Union as not just a rival but an immediate threat.

In a series of moves abroad and at home, it established a climate of fear—a hysteria about Communism—which would steeply escalate the military budget and stimulate the economy with war-related orders. This combination of policies would permit more aggressive actions abroad, more repressive actions at home.

Revolutionary movements in Europe and Asia were described to the American public as examples of Soviet expansionism-thus recalling the indignation against Hitler's aggressions.



https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon ... eswar.html
#15195240
B0ycey wrote:
I guess the point was that the SU, the nation of defence, wanted to gain territorial advantage. How unimperial is that! As did China @ckaihatsu. Not to mention Czechoslovakia which I will bring up again for kicks.



Yeah, defense *geopolitically*. U.S. / NATO, Cold-War hegemonic, USSR, Cold-War *defensive*, mostly, geopolitically.

So you got, what, Poland, and then Czechoslovakia later on, and so then what resulted, and what else are you actually on-about / indicating / including -- ?

Got a list for China, too?
#15195243
ckaihatsu wrote:Got a list for China, too?


Depends on how far into history you want to go. I guess you aren't interested in anything pre 1946. So we are left with Tibet. And of course the China Sea. I guess those are defensive too.
#15195244
wat0n wrote:
Jeez, it would be far more honest and decent on your part to just say Soviet imperialism was defensive, just as present-day Russian expansionism is in the Russians' minds (not without reason, by the way).



So-called 'Soviet imperialism' is a misnomer, and goes curiously *unitemized* by you -- how much *finance capital* (for foreign markets, for repatriated profits) went into these so-called 'Soviet imperialist' countries?
#15195246
ckaihatsu wrote:So-called 'Soviet imperialism' is a misnomer, and goes curiously *unitemized* by you -- how much *finance capital* (for foreign markets, for repatriated profits) went into these so-called 'Soviet imperialist' countries?


You mean from the USSR to those countries? Quite a bit, actually, as they had their own Marshall Plan.
#15195247
B0ycey wrote:
Depends on how far into history you want to go. I guess you aren't interested in anything pre 1946. So we are left with Tibet. And of course the China Sea. I guess those are defensive too.



Yeah, the sheer force of your invective is blowing me over.

You know why your politics limits you to mere superficial *labeling*, with nothing underneath -- ?

Because it's the politics of (nationalist) *opportunism*, which you may know by the business term of 'co-opting', or 'acquiring'. Transparent.
#15195250
ckaihatsu wrote:You know why your politics limits you to mere superficial *labeling*, with nothing underneath -- ?


Actually, it is your ideology that limits you. I don't have a dog in this fight. America, China, Russia, they are all the same and they are all different. But one thing they are definitely similar on is self interest and acting on that interest. Russia didn't act in defence, it acted in haste. When the war was won, it was who came in first that took the spoils. Eastern Europe didn't choose to be occupied by the SU. If they didn’t choose than then that is imperialism at work. I don't know why you struggle to understand this. Perhaps it is you being obtuse. Or perhaps it doesn't fit into your narrative so you choose to ignore it. But whether you accept this inconvenient truth or not, it doesn't change the truth.
Last edited by B0ycey on 21 Oct 2021 22:19, edited 1 time in total.
#15195252
ckaihatsu wrote:Annnnnd -- ?

Am I supposed to make your arguments for you?


Care to explain how wasn't that imperialism? A rather friendly, even good, form of it, FWIW.

Invasions like those of Hungary and Czechoslovakia were a far less friendly form.
#15195253
B0ycey wrote:
Actually, it is your ideology that limits you. I don't have a dog in this fight. America, China, Russia, they are all the same and they are all different. But one thing they are definitely similar on is self interest and acting in that interest. Russia didn't act in defence, it acted in haste. When the war was won, it was who came in first that took the spoils. Eastern Europe didn't choose to be occupied by the SU. If they didn’t choose than then that is imperialism at work.



You make it sound like the alternative was for the USSR to just sit on its hands, or play Sudoku, or something.

The superpower Cold War was on. I appreciate your brief lunge at neutrality, but somehow, in your world-space, we should feel the need to first take 'Russia' to task. Why is your spotlight so Russia-philic -- ? You're so content to ignore the larger Cold War, as a backdrop, and of its own topic. And maybe, if everyone sticks around long-enough, we'll just-maybe daringly slip-in a *mention* of *U.S.* imperialism during this period.


B0ycey wrote:
I don't know why you struggle to understand this. Perhaps it is you being obtuse. Or perhaps it doesn't fit into your narrative so you choose to ignore it. But whether you accept this inconvenient truth or not, it doesn't change the truth.



I'm not ignoring it -- I said previously, to late, that I acknowledge the Stalinist Iron Curtain. Now we're freed-up to talk about the *weather*, or something, instead.
#15195255
ckaihatsu wrote:I'm not ignoring it -- I said previously, to late, that I acknowledge the Stalinist Iron Curtain. Now we're freed-up to talk about the *weather*, or something, instead.


Well if you acknowledge that the SU was indeed imperial then the rest of the ten pages have been pointless. Nobody said that America didn't act to preserve its status or to counter Communism in Europe. Only that Russia didn't act solely defensive and did indeed act in aggression also. Everything it did was a calculation of self interest.
#15195257
B0ycey wrote:
Well if you acknowledge that the SU was indeed imperial then the rest of the ten pages have been pointless. Nobody said that America didn't act to preserve its status or to counter Communism in Europe. Only that Russia didn't act solely defensive and did indeed act in aggression also. Everything it did was a calculation of self interest.



Okay, what we're down to now is 'imperial' / imperialist.

This again:


ckaihatsu wrote:
how much *finance capital* (for foreign markets, for repatriated profits) went into these so-called 'Soviet imperialist' countries?



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