*5th

The yanks got there first with the 4th one.

That could be a big factor.

Statista suggests 22.7million people, or 9% are millionaires: https://www.statista.com/topics/3467/millionaires-in-the-united-states/#topicOverview

I wonder how this accounts for family wealth, as well.

I doubt it’s acurate. I find it hard to believe only 1% of the rest of the population are millionaires.

The signs were there but they’re not obvious to everyone maybe. Especially if they don’t want to see them. Now it’s hard to pretend otherwise. (Although some are still managing it!)

Colloquially, common sense:

1 Reason and knowledge as opposed to sense perception.
2 The rational part of the individual human soul.
3 The principle of the cosmic mind or soul responsible for the rational order of the cosmos.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

But the tools of aerial terror campaign are only good for aerial terror campaigns, not conventional war.

This is Mearsheimer without any of the nous.

“We tried turning off the lights on tall pylons and buildings, knowing which way the Russians flew and hoping they would fly into these static structures but the pilots saw through the ruse. They are a lot more adaptable than we thought.”

I suspect the number of Indian immigrant doctors abroad is due to brain drain rather than an abundance of doctors/lack of need in India.

This is so the Brits can send their new conscripts over to fight Russia to protect their heritage rather than because NATO is getting directly involved.

And you think this has what to do with modern China? This is like criticising the USSR for Tsarism. You realise the CPC overthrew the previous system? And when it did, it had the cultural revolution to overcome the trappings of that system, for which it is regularly criticised?

I’ve been told that, but I haven’t seen any kind of evidence supporting the theory.

The example you’re discussing is the evidence. Reorientation does not mean fully reoriented. It means things are changing. An example that shows a changing relationship is evidence that relationships are changing. This remains true even if you don’t like the type of change or if things go back to the way they were.

At the moment we are still witnessing quantitative changes. Enough of those and we will see qualitative changes. The fact of quantitative change does not discount the fact of change i.e. reorientation.

Georgia is not in the EU.

The article still manages to paint China as the bad guy and gets in a few shots at Russia. Look at this:

Beijing didn’t limit its global influence efforts to propaganda. It announced an ambitious COVID assistance program, which included sending masks, ventilators and its own vaccines – still being tested at the time – to struggling countries. In May 2020, Xi announced that the vaccine China was developing would be made available as a “global public good,” and would ensure “vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries.” Sinovac was the primary vaccine available in the Philippines for about a year until U.S.-made vaccines became more widely available there in early 2022.

Xi you sneaky mf. Propaganda of the deed with Chinese characteristics.

Fr, though, the US is run by truly, truly despicable people. The US could’ve chosen not to limit its global influence efforts to propaganda or straightforward coercion but instead it doubled down. Not content with murdering 1 million of it’s own, it killed countless others in the shadows. For anyone wondering whether the US ruling class would rather destroy the planet with nukes than change it’s ways or give up power, there’s your answer.

deleted by creator

Could you clarify what you mean when you say you are ‘not looking for historical content’?

If it’s not an historical example, won’t it necessarily be speculative?

Marxists aren’t utopian. To paraphrase, communism is the real movement of the abolition of the current state of the world. Marxists obviously have an idea of what might come next. But Marx and Engels didn’t really flesh that out. It’s impossible to predict the specifics. It’s hard to even imagine what socialism will look like.

All we can really say is that socialism will come out of and resolve the contradictions of capitalism. Communism will come out of and resolve the contradictions of socialism.

That said, all history is the history of class struggle. Socialism involves a dictatorship of the proletariat. The class that is currently exploited will become the ruling class. There will still be exploitation for a while. Perhaps for a long while. But the intention will be to create the conditions to end exploitation. Socialism, and thus communism, will be whatever the working class wants it to be, collectively.

Examples from the USSR, China, Cuba, the DPRK, Laos, Vietnam, and depending on the definition, Ghana, Chile under Allende, and a host of other states will show you what communists try to achieve when they get into power. They struggle because they get attacked (literally invaded, carpet bombed, sanctioned, and/or couped). Due to that, the legacy of the previous system, and material limits to what’s possible, actual examples (AES) are all flawed. Still, they tend to manage to: abolish illiteracy, massively increase industrial output, and abolish homelessness. They build roads, hospitals, schools, houses. And they keep going until they are defeated, which ranges from a few months to several decades to not yet.

TBF if they want to move their wealth to a tax haven in the Caribbean and pay to relocate me as a customer, I wouldn’t object too much.

Me too and I’m kinda looking forward to it.

Let them go. They’ll struggle to leave with their telecommunication lines and their football clubs and their factories and their farmlands. Rich people leaving doesn’t have to mean wealth leaving.

Just an FYI.

Liberalism is the ideology of capitalism. When you are called a liberal, here, it does not mean that people think you support the democrats or whatever ‘progressive’ wing/party of US electoral politics. The republicans are liberals, too. Any party that gets close to power in the US will almost certainly be liberal. The greens included (or whatever their official name). [Edit: so the next US president is going to be a liberal whatever happens.]

When you criticise the US for being run by corporations and oppose socialism/communism, you are not challenging capitalism i.e. liberalism. The same for when you argue that things will never be better, as if capitalism/liberalism is all that can exist. That’s called the ‘end of history thesis’ and it functions to support capitalism. Hence people calling you liberal.

Unfortunately US political discourse has distorted certain words beyond all meaning. This makes it harder to have rigorous conversations about political economy, which is why they do it.