History Strikes Back or The Revenge of History

At the end of the day this is just a Zionist on Zionist fight. Both sides support the genocidal settler-colonial project. The “liberal” ones just want to do the ethnic cleansing more gradually and make the fascism less obvious.

Because Europe has a history of murdering or forcibly sterilizing disabled and mentally ill people. Because the capitalist state wants to spend as little as possible on welfare. Because just killing people who cannot generate a profit for capitalists is the cheaper option. Because we can see what is already happening with “assisted suicide” in countries like Canada.

In practice it is always going to be abused by the ruling class under capitalism for eugenicist purposes and as a way to get out of having to provide expensive healthcare to those who need it. Far cheaper to psychologically manipulate vulnerable people into “consenting” to being killed.

Something like this can only be ethical under socialism where no one lacks healthcare or the material means to live a comfortable life.

I am especially opposed to it in northern Europe which is exceptionally racist and eugenicist even by the standards of Western societies.

I’m not super big into historical re-enactment or larp but this would be really cool to be a part of.

The Nazi pseudo-countries are growing more rabid by the day. Chihuahua states who fuck around too much are eventually going to find out. NATO isn’t the invincible shield you think it is.

Highlights:

“At first the workers often fail to realise what they are trying to achieve, lacking consciousness of the wherefore of their action;”

“The wages of a worker are determined, as we have seen, by an agreement between the employer and the worker, and if, under these circumstances, the individual worker is completely powerless, it is obvious that workers must fight jointly for their demands”

“[…] the workers feel themselves powerless when they are disunited; they can only offer resistance to the employers jointly, either by striking or threatening to strike”

“When industry prospers, the factory owners make big profits but do not think of sharing them with the workers; but when a crisis breaks out, the factory owners try to push the losses on to the workers.”

“[…] strikes, which arise out of the very nature of capitalist society, signify the beginning of the working-class struggle against that system of society.”

“There is no wealth that can be of benefit to the capitalists if they cannot find workers willing to apply their labour-power to the instruments and materials belonging to the capitalists and produce new wealth.”

“[…] The slaves begin to put forward the demand to become masters, not to work and live as the landlords and capitalists want them to, but as the working people themselves want to. Strikes, therefore, always instil fear into the capitalists, because they begin to undermine their supremacy.”

“When the workers refuse to work, the entire machine threatens to stop. Every strike reminds the capitalists that it is the workers and not they who are the real masters—the workers who are more and more loudly proclaiming their rights. Every strike reminds the workers that their position is not hopeless, that they are not alone.”

“In normal, peaceful times the worker does his job without a murmur, does not contradict the employer, and does not discuss his condition. In times of strikes he states his demands in a loud voice, he reminds the employers of all their abuses, he claims his rights, he does not think of himself and his wages alone, he thinks of all his workmates who have downed tools together with him and who stand up for the workers’ cause, fearing no privations. Every strike means many privations for the working people, terrible privations that can be compared only to the calamities of war—hungry families, loss of wages, often arrests, banishment from the towns where they have their homes and their employment.”

“Despite all these sufferings, brought on by strikes, the workers of neighbouring factories gain renewed courage when they see that their comrades have engaged themselves in struggle.”

“Every strike brings thoughts of socialism very forcibly to the worker’s mind, thoughts of the struggle of the entire working class for emancipation from the oppression of capital. It has often happened that before a big strike the workers of a certain factory or a certain branch of industry or of a certain town knew hardly anything and scarcely ever thought about socialism; but after the strike, study circles and associations become much more widespread among them and more and wore workers become socialists.”

“A strike teaches workers to understand what the strength of the employers and what the strength of the workers consists in; it teaches them not to think of their own employer alone and not of their own immediate workmates alone but of all the employers, the whole class of capitalists and the whole class of workers.”

“It often happens that a factory owner does his best to deceive the workers, to pose as a benefactor, and conceal his exploitation of the workers by some petty sops or lying promises. A strike always demolishes this deception at one blow by showing the workers that their “benefactor” is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“A strike, moreover, opens the eyes of the workers to the nature, not only of the capitalists, but of the government and the laws as well. Just as the factory owners try to pose as benefactors of the workers, the government officials and their lackeys try to assure the workers that the tsar and the tsarist government are equally solicitous of both the factory owners and the workers, as justice requires. […] It becomes clear to every worker that the tsarist government is his worst enemy, since it defends the capitalists and binds the workers hand and foot. The workers begin to understand that laws are made in the interests of the rich alone; that government officials protect those interests;”

“The government itself knows full well that strikes open the eyes of the workers and for this reason it has such a fear of strikes and does everything to stop them as quickly as possible. […] “Behind every strike lurks the hydra of revolution.” Every strike strengthens and develops in the workers the understanding that the government is their enemy and that the working class must prepare itself to struggle against the government for the people’s rights.”

“Strikes, therefore, teach the workers to unite; they show them that they can struggle against the capitalists only when they are united; strikes teach the workers to think of the struggle of the whole working class against the whole class of factory owners and against the arbitrary, police government. This is the reason that socialists call strikes “a school of war,” a school in which the workers learn to make war on their enemies for the liberation of the whole people, of all who labour, from the yoke of government officials and from the yoke of capital.”

““A school of war” is, however, not war itself. When strikes are widespread among the workers, some of the workers (including some socialists) begin to believe that the working class can confine itself to strikes, strike funds, or strike associations alone; that by strikes alone the working class can achieve a considerable improvement in its conditions or even its emancipation. […] It is a mistaken idea. Strikes are one of the ways in which the working class struggles for its emancipation, but they are not the only way; and if the workers do not turn their attention to other means of conducting the struggle, they will slow down the growth and the successes of the working class.”

“The workers, therefore, cannot, under any circumstances, confine themselves to strike actions and strike associations. Secondly, strikes can only be successful where workers are sufficiently class-conscious, where they are able to select an opportune moment for striking, where they know how to put forward their demands, and where they have connections with socialists and are able to procure leaflets and pamphlets through them. There are still very few such workers in Russia, and every effort must be exerted to increase their number in order to make the working-class cause known to the masses of workers and to acquaint them with socialism and the working-class struggle.”

“[…] only a socialist workers’ party can carry on this struggle by spreading among the workers a true conception of the government and of the working-class cause.”

“From individual strikes the workers can and must go over, as indeed they are actually doing in all countries, to a struggle of the entire working class for the emancipation of all who labour. When all class-conscious workers become socialists, […] only then will the working class become an integral part of that great movement of the workers of all countries that unites all workers and raises the red banner inscribed with the words: “Workers of all countries, unite!””

“Lenin Is Always With You”

“We Are the Army of the People”

“To Communism The Great Stalin Leads Us”

And as a Romanian i also have to give an honorable mention to this one from the Soviet Republic of Moldova:

“Lenin Brought Us Light”

Just to clarify, this isn’t my research. I am reposting a thread by an excellent Twitter account (link in the post) that focuses on historical research into Nazism in Ukraine.

Yes, as you can see if you read the second and third parts of this analysis (which i had to add here in the comments as it wouldn’t all fit into the main body of the post), you are saying pretty much the exact same thing as the data in this research shows.

If you haven’t read those parts i recommend doing so as they are very informative.

Lend-Lease mainly had an effect post-Stalingrad, and mostly concentrated on the logistics side. There are a few other parts of Lend-Lease that this analysis does not cover as extensively, namely raw materials and food, but the picture is quite similar there too.

The overall conclusion: Lend-Lease helped later in the war and arguably contributed to a faster victory, but was not crucial, and by that point the trajectory of the war was already decided.

100% agree

The fundamental error was taking the western aligned media’s framing of the imprisoned as “political prisoners” for granted. There are no political prisoners in Venezuela. There are prisoners who committed crimes against the Venezuelan law. Certain crimes are eligible for amnesty, others are not. Simple as that.

Another reminder to critically examine and question “OSINT” when they do not properly back their claims up with evidence. In particular if they claim to have inside information from the Russian side, it’s unlikely to be true. The Russian military has strict OPSEC.

Some sources that portray themselves as “pro-Russian” do nothing more than regurgitate Ukrainian disinfo with a “doomer” spin.

This applies generally to all ongoing conflicts with a strong information war component.

Great conversation you had there. Don’t know how i stumbled onto this thread, but i learned a lot from your responses.

This one is a great supplement to this piece: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11678118

so far is not true for nuclear weapons and there is nothing on the horizon that looks like it will change it

But that is just not true. Nuclear weapons have to be delivered on to their target by something, whether it’s a plane or a missile or a drone. Air defenses can neutralize most forms of delivery of nuclear weapons.

That’s exactly what the US was working on until the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed (and what they tried to do again in the Unipolar Moment when they left that treaty). Why was that treaty made? Precisely because the very real possibility that a nation could develop an effective counter to another nation’s nuclear arsenal would be devastating and would invite a nuclear first strike from the other side to pre-empt their nuclear deterrence from being lost.

It’s why the stationing of ballistic missile interceptors close to Russia and China’s borders is so dangerous and why Russia pushed back so hard against the possibility of NATO expansion to Ukraine. If enough interceptors are sufficiently forward deployed they could conceivably pose a real danger to the effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent.

Today, a country like the US, Russia or China could most likely defend against a small and less advanced nuclear arsenal if it really came down to it, for instance if the country using them only had a dozen or so of them to shoot. Only by overwhelming defenses with sufficient quantities or with advanced hypersonic missiles like Russia and China now have can you ensure that your nuclear missiles don’t get shot down.

It is possible for technological development to circumvent the drive to war by making it too costly.

That has never historically been the case. Technologies proliferate and eventually every side has them. And nothing is un-counterable.

Drones allow for smaller states or even non-state entities to substantially increase the cost of war.

This is true. So far. Until an effective counter to drones is developed.

No one has come up with a solution that doesn’t cost substantially more than the drones.

Depends. There is always a race between Electronic Warfare and drone shielding/jamming countermeasures. If one side falls behind the other can get an advantage, but this typically doesn’t last long. That’s the dialectics of drone warfare. With fiber-optic drones it’s a little more complicated, but they have other limitations, and even there you can still have counter-drone drones as a possible cost-effective solution.

The realities of projectile interception mean it will always be more expensive to take down a cheap projectile than to launch one.

Again, i would advise being careful with statements that predict anything will always be true. Change is the one true constant.

Once upon a time heavy cavalry had little to no counter on the battlefield. Once upon a time plate armor was impenetrable. Once upon a time machine guns and trenches were supposed to make warfare much more difficult to wage. If you looked at the Western front in 1917 you might have concluded that war in the future would become prohibitively expensive in terms of manpower and that advancing had become virtually impossible. Then tanks enabled mobile warfare again.

Now we’re in another period of history where the defending side has a big advantage and where positionality is favored over mobility.

Is this the end of history? Obviously not. The cycle will continue.

Nice! It’s great to have it all laid out like this in one piece, and everyone should read it. My only criticism of it is that it starts at 1998.

It should have started with 1989 which was the first and biggest wave of color revolutions. An onslaught that caught most governments targeted by it unprepared as it was a very new playbook at that time (though a very early prototype of the playbook was unsuccessfully tested in Hungary and Czechoslovakia a few decades earlier). Romania 1989 in particular was very similar to Ukraine 2014 in the use of false flag violence by the color revolutionists. Only China managed to successfully fend off the 1989 attack, and they are still demonized and hated for it to this day by the West.

Here’s an older article from 2024 that makes a great supplement to this one, highlighting how color revolutions are essentially a modern form of warfare:

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11678118

The western left has thoroughly internalized liberalism and anti-communism.

Lol, what? Have they not looked at your post history? Ridiculous.

This would be considered too radical and pro-Mao today not just for the Economist but for most leftist (socdem & demsoc) publications. Jacobin wouldn’t even publish something like this.

😢