Putin has done a lot of good, Russia under his leadership may have fundamentally altered world history for the better by choosing to risk their neck and invade Ukraine. Someone had to stand up to the Americans in an immediately tangible and assertive way; Chinese assertion is civil and slow.
That being said, he has plenty to criticize, namely his anticommunism and queerphobia. It’s hard to rationalize away that all as 5D chess, even if I think Putin is an extremely strategic man who has helped both his people and the entire world.
As long as we all agree he is a net good for the world and that Russia was absolutely in the right to invade Ukraine–and not otherwise fall in line with American lies about the Russians–there is no reason good faith ML comrades shouldn’t have room to criticize him a bit.
Nobody is asking you to say “I agree with every single word this man has said” but maybe, just for a moment, reflect on what “criticizing Putin” even means on an English language internet platform dominated by US/EU labor aristocracy and who it benefits generally in the context of the imperialism. This is from a new book by Marxist economist Dr Ali Kadri. You can find it for free online if you know where to look. I don’t always understand everything he says but this is quite relevant. (I had to read it multiple times to understand😅)
“The waste or, sub-categorically, the many years lost from potential longevity are, by extension, a structural genocide carried out by capital in command of history. The quantitative impact of the historically wired genocide may be gauged as a result of imperialistically imposed famine policies (Avramidis 2006). Its impact through underfunded health can also be assessed by extending Sutcliffe’s (2006) measures of unnecessary deaths. The numbers of the victims crushed by the weight of [capital] is in the millions every year. Still, this capital, of which one speaks, is a social class that cannot be sliced like a salami sausage in order to apportion moral condemnation to its various slivers. No class-independent ethical value-comparative judgment can be made about the parts while skipping the decisiveness of the whole. …
What is often intended when the curtailment of civil liberties in a small dependent nation is flaunted by the mainstream media as unethical or contra human rights often develops into an excuse for the sacking of the smaller nation. However, whatever restrictions Libya imposed on political freedoms were in response to an impending assault by the US sixth fleet, or the US sponsored Islamists inside its territory, yet these restrictions were considered as valid reasons for its destruction by NATO in 2011. In hindsight, the fact that the western working class supports such obvious lies does not stem from ignorance, it is rather a personification of a capital-class position. Even in utilitarian ethics, brakes upon Libyan civil liberties by the Qaddafi government were a more humane working-class standpoint than the destruction that followed and the contribution of the collapse of Libya to the power of imperialism. In any case, ethics based on statistics are a calculus of crime. Similarly, it is theoretically salami-like to speak of this or that sub-imperialism as central capital’s undelegated power. History identifying with capital is not a salad whose constituent forces are to be discerned by some probabilistic exercise. …
By means of statistical extrapolation as well, percentage shares of wealth concentration would logically and, albeit absurdly, turn anyone into a sub-imperialist. Any sizeable state in a given region becomes sub-imperialist. It all depends on the class bent in the mode of abstraction, the dynamic laws that relate the abstract state of a concept to its concrete state, and the accounting system with which it is quantified. Contrariwise, capital incarnate in an imperialism, which commands history, is a totality. Since it is hierarchically structured in dominance, its lower suzerainties’ exercise of power is made possible, though not necessarily certain, by the clout of US imperialism. It is specifically the crushing weight of this clout, the weapons of NATO backed by its propaganda apparatuses, which is not qualified as a weapon by Western Marxism; thence, the room that is available for academics to nuance an argument and discuss what the other side in the developing world is doing wrong while it is being butchered by the very dominant thought currents housing nuanced debates. Understanding the historical moment, the assessment of the actual balance of forces, has not been a strong point of Western Marxism (slightly rephrasing of Krupskaya’s in the Lessons of October [1925]). The substance of the power of the ruling class or US-led imperialism is its capacity for ideological production, refortified by its strategic positioning and aggressions across the globe. Dominant thought is the differing currents that gravitate toward the reason of the commodity as self-expanding value.
Putting structure to thought, the global stratum invested in dollars increases its wealth as the US-led class collateralises its dollar debts/ credits with imperialist aggression/control, which is also its ability to recruit labour in bondage conditions and to further waste the future labour of the developing world. The masses act via the agency of the social class and its corresponding state of consciousness. Social humans think for themselves but draw from a dominant ideology whose strength varies with class rule, before embarking on a course of action, whence the uncertainty in historical uncertainty. In parallel, the control of capital over the means of production establishes the objectivity of history. Determinably, historical events, objective and uncertain, lie beyond the reach of probability’s guesswork. Yet this history cloned as capital, the product of organised social agency actualised in cultural and institutional practices, has its own dynamic or laws of development. The law of value, and its ascension into the AGLCA, is the principal mediatory frame by which global society reproduces. Such law allocates resources primarily by the practice of imperialist wars of encroachment. And, as argued so far, imperialist wars are a wage system in themselves and act as back-stoppers of the broader wage system."
Ch 3; The Accumulation of Waste- A political economy of systemic destruction; Dr. Ali Kadri
I feel 3rd world left love Putin, whether it’s Evo Morales, Maduro, Ortega, Kim Jong Un, South Africa, Algeria etc which is completely reverse in the global North left. That’s why there is a greater divide between global south and north and it’s leftist components too.
“From Venezuela, all our support for President Vladimir Putin, Venezuela’s brother,”
President of Cuba Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez:
Thank you very much, dear President Putin.
…
We appreciate all efforts of the Russian Federation and your role in orienting the world towards multi-polarity, in encouraging it to move in this direction. In this sense, you have a very strong leadership role. I would also like to exchange views on this.
… I was very interested in your speech on the reunification of a group of regions with Russia. You made a very meticulous, clear-cut analysis of the events since the Soviet Union’s disintegration, denouncing the role that the imperialist powers tried to play. You made a very thorough analysis of what is happening in the world. You made it clear that the world should come to its senses and described those who are imposing their rules on us. You explained why they impose these rules on us and why they violate them later.
I think this is very structured thinking and analysis, and it is worth sharing with the world. I was happy to listen to this speech. We have identical approaches and views on global issues."
We salute the great Russian people, you, your government, and the families of all Russia, in these moments of great challenges… to you, comrade President Vladimir Putin, our affection, in revolutionary brotherhood.
“Russia has risen for a sacred fight to protect its national sovereignty and safety against hegemonic forces,” Kim said ahead of negotiations on Wednesday. “We will always stand together [with Russia] against imperialism.”
Xi, for his part, praised Putin, saying: “Under your strong leadership, Russia has made great strides in its prosperous development.”
Beijing and Moscow are friendly neighbors and reliable partners, Xi Jinping said upon his arrival in the Russian capital on a state visit.
“It gives me great pleasure to once again set foot on the soil of Russia, our friendly neighbor, and pay a state visit to the Russian Federation at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin,” the Chinese leader said.
“On behalf of the Chinese government and people, I wish to extend warm greetings and best wishes to the Russian government and people,” he added. “China and Russia are friendly neighbors and reliable partners connected by shared mountains and rivers,” Xi Jinping stressed.
“Ten years ago, I paid my first state visit to Russia as Chinese President, and together with President Putin, opened a new chapter in the all-round development of China-Russia relations,” the president said.
Do they really love him though? My sense was mainly that this was an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” type of situation. Russia’s breakaway from western economies is an opportunity for countries in the global south. As such it makes sense that the left in those countries would aim to foster positive relations with Putin and the Russian government. That’s regardless of what they privately think about the guy.
nsh
Putin has done a lot of good, Russia under his leadership may have fundamentally altered world history for the better by choosing to risk their neck and invade Ukraine. Someone had to stand up to the Americans in an immediately tangible and assertive way; Chinese assertion is civil and slow.
That being said, he has plenty to criticize, namely his anticommunism and queerphobia. It’s hard to rationalize away that all as 5D chess, even if I think Putin is an extremely strategic man who has helped both his people and the entire world.
As long as we all agree he is a net good for the world and that Russia was absolutely in the right to invade Ukraine–and not otherwise fall in line with American lies about the Russians–there is no reason good faith ML comrades shouldn’t have room to criticize him a bit.
Nobody is asking you to say “I agree with every single word this man has said” but maybe, just for a moment, reflect on what “criticizing Putin” even means on an English language internet platform dominated by US/EU labor aristocracy and who it benefits generally in the context of the imperialism. This is from a new book by Marxist economist Dr Ali Kadri. You can find it for free online if you know where to look. I don’t always understand everything he says but this is quite relevant. (I had to read it multiple times to understand😅)
“The waste or, sub-categorically, the many years lost from potential longevity are, by extension, a structural genocide carried out by capital in command of history. The quantitative impact of the historically wired genocide may be gauged as a result of imperialistically imposed famine policies (Avramidis 2006). Its impact through underfunded health can also be assessed by extending Sutcliffe’s (2006) measures of unnecessary deaths. The numbers of the victims crushed by the weight of [capital] is in the millions every year. Still, this capital, of which one speaks, is a social class that cannot be sliced like a salami sausage in order to apportion moral condemnation to its various slivers. No class-independent ethical value-comparative judgment can be made about the parts while skipping the decisiveness of the whole. …
What is often intended when the curtailment of civil liberties in a small dependent nation is flaunted by the mainstream media as unethical or contra human rights often develops into an excuse for the sacking of the smaller nation. However, whatever restrictions Libya imposed on political freedoms were in response to an impending assault by the US sixth fleet, or the US sponsored Islamists inside its territory, yet these restrictions were considered as valid reasons for its destruction by NATO in 2011. In hindsight, the fact that the western working class supports such obvious lies does not stem from ignorance, it is rather a personification of a capital-class position. Even in utilitarian ethics, brakes upon Libyan civil liberties by the Qaddafi government were a more humane working-class standpoint than the destruction that followed and the contribution of the collapse of Libya to the power of imperialism. In any case, ethics based on statistics are a calculus of crime. Similarly, it is theoretically salami-like to speak of this or that sub-imperialism as central capital’s undelegated power. History identifying with capital is not a salad whose constituent forces are to be discerned by some probabilistic exercise. …
By means of statistical extrapolation as well, percentage shares of wealth concentration would logically and, albeit absurdly, turn anyone into a sub-imperialist. Any sizeable state in a given region becomes sub-imperialist. It all depends on the class bent in the mode of abstraction, the dynamic laws that relate the abstract state of a concept to its concrete state, and the accounting system with which it is quantified. Contrariwise, capital incarnate in an imperialism, which commands history, is a totality. Since it is hierarchically structured in dominance, its lower suzerainties’ exercise of power is made possible, though not necessarily certain, by the clout of US imperialism. It is specifically the crushing weight of this clout, the weapons of NATO backed by its propaganda apparatuses, which is not qualified as a weapon by Western Marxism; thence, the room that is available for academics to nuance an argument and discuss what the other side in the developing world is doing wrong while it is being butchered by the very dominant thought currents housing nuanced debates. Understanding the historical moment, the assessment of the actual balance of forces, has not been a strong point of Western Marxism (slightly rephrasing of Krupskaya’s in the Lessons of October [1925]). The substance of the power of the ruling class or US-led imperialism is its capacity for ideological production, refortified by its strategic positioning and aggressions across the globe. Dominant thought is the differing currents that gravitate toward the reason of the commodity as self-expanding value.
Putting structure to thought, the global stratum invested in dollars increases its wealth as the US-led class collateralises its dollar debts/ credits with imperialist aggression/control, which is also its ability to recruit labour in bondage conditions and to further waste the future labour of the developing world. The masses act via the agency of the social class and its corresponding state of consciousness. Social humans think for themselves but draw from a dominant ideology whose strength varies with class rule, before embarking on a course of action, whence the uncertainty in historical uncertainty. In parallel, the control of capital over the means of production establishes the objectivity of history. Determinably, historical events, objective and uncertain, lie beyond the reach of probability’s guesswork. Yet this history cloned as capital, the product of organised social agency actualised in cultural and institutional practices, has its own dynamic or laws of development. The law of value, and its ascension into the AGLCA, is the principal mediatory frame by which global society reproduces. Such law allocates resources primarily by the practice of imperialist wars of encroachment. And, as argued so far, imperialist wars are a wage system in themselves and act as back-stoppers of the broader wage system."
Ch 3; The Accumulation of Waste- A political economy of systemic destruction; Dr. Ali Kadri
I feel 3rd world left love Putin, whether it’s Evo Morales, Maduro, Ortega, Kim Jong Un, South Africa, Algeria etc which is completely reverse in the global North left. That’s why there is a greater divide between global south and north and it’s leftist components too.
Nicholas Maduro President of the Bolivian Republic of Venezuela
“From Venezuela, all our support for President Vladimir Putin, Venezuela’s brother,”
President of Cuba Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez: Thank you very much, dear President Putin. … We appreciate all efforts of the Russian Federation and your role in orienting the world towards multi-polarity, in encouraging it to move in this direction. In this sense, you have a very strong leadership role. I would also like to exchange views on this.
… I was very interested in your speech on the reunification of a group of regions with Russia. You made a very meticulous, clear-cut analysis of the events since the Soviet Union’s disintegration, denouncing the role that the imperialist powers tried to play. You made a very thorough analysis of what is happening in the world. You made it clear that the world should come to its senses and described those who are imposing their rules on us. You explained why they impose these rules on us and why they violate them later.
I think this is very structured thinking and analysis, and it is worth sharing with the world. I was happy to listen to this speech. We have identical approaches and views on global issues."
Daniel Ortega Saavedra, Nicaraguan President
We salute the great Russian people, you, your government, and the families of all Russia, in these moments of great challenges… to you, comrade President Vladimir Putin, our affection, in revolutionary brotherhood.
Kim Jong Un president of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea
“Russia has risen for a sacred fight to protect its national sovereignty and safety against hegemonic forces,” Kim said ahead of negotiations on Wednesday. “We will always stand together [with Russia] against imperialism.”
Xi Jinping President of the Peoples Republic of China
Xi, for his part, praised Putin, saying: “Under your strong leadership, Russia has made great strides in its prosperous development.”
Beijing and Moscow are friendly neighbors and reliable partners, Xi Jinping said upon his arrival in the Russian capital on a state visit.
“It gives me great pleasure to once again set foot on the soil of Russia, our friendly neighbor, and pay a state visit to the Russian Federation at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin,” the Chinese leader said.
“On behalf of the Chinese government and people, I wish to extend warm greetings and best wishes to the Russian government and people,” he added. “China and Russia are friendly neighbors and reliable partners connected by shared mountains and rivers,” Xi Jinping stressed.
“Ten years ago, I paid my first state visit to Russia as Chinese President, and together with President Putin, opened a new chapter in the all-round development of China-Russia relations,” the president said.
Do they really love him though? My sense was mainly that this was an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” type of situation. Russia’s breakaway from western economies is an opportunity for countries in the global south. As such it makes sense that the left in those countries would aim to foster positive relations with Putin and the Russian government. That’s regardless of what they privately think about the guy.
It looks like Putin’s just paying his respects in the photo
lmao no way