You're viewing a single thread.
Idealist rubbish. Culture, all superstructure, follows the basis. The USian culture is "psychotic" because the basis is capitalist. Would you say Chinese culture before the revolution was "psychotic", what with the foot binding and the treatment of peasants? No, you would not. Would you say Russian culture is "psychotic", given everything the Russian Empire had done? Then why would you slap a label on 300 million people?
the basis is capitalist
And also settler-colonial, which is a very important factor when it comes to culture in this sense.
Imperial Russia was also "settler". Everything east of Gorky was conquered from the natives and settled. In fact, conquest of Ural and siberia coincided with the European colonisation of Americas.
Yet from this basis the USSR came to be.
I'm not sure what point you're making here. Russian colonialism doesn't change the importance of settler-colonialism in general and specifically in the US. The USSR was built on a basis of national liberation, and not on the "Great Russian" identity which would be analogous to the US identity here.
Another difference is that the US is entirely settler colonial, a whole country founded solely by settlers, while the Russian empire's colonies were all still tied to the metropolitan core in western Russia. The US was created through a revolt of the most reactionary settlers that wanted autonomy from Britain. The path forward for North America is strictly decolonial.
While you say this I will add some points, Russian Tsars maintained a quasi federal attitude, large parts of central Asia remained Muslim and large parts of siberia had buddhists community. Though some ethnic cleansing had happened in the Caucasus. Dagestan had Muslim population for many centuries under Tsar . They also sided against the Ottoman empire . Tsar also didn't have racist ideological perversion as their backbone. Alexander Pushkin was a great Russian poet and he came from a black lineage. Tsar had no problem raising black persons from Africa as their own in the royal courts. Meanwhile Americans.... Ufff...
Your comment here is way too favorable to the tzar. There was plenty of racism against the non-Russian peoples in the empire. Plenty of pogroms and other horrors committed. The "Great Russians" were very chauvinistic in their attitude towards the other nationalities, and were very privileged in what positions they could occupy, for example. An important part of Bolshevik propaganda was fighting against racism and "Great Russian" chauvinism.
From Walter Rodney's 'The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World':
There was a group of people known as Russians, who ruled over Finns, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Mongolians, and Turks, to name just a few. The Russians monopolized political power and sent their governors and settlers into the countries of these other peoples. As in all colonial states, there was a legal distinction between the citizen (Russian) and the colonial subject. The constitution of Tsarist Russia explicitly based discriminatory measures on the racial or national origin or religion of those affected. It was in some ways like the distinctions made under Portuguese and Belgian colonialism, and under South African and Rhodesian apartheid. In other words, Russian colonial rule hardly differed from that of the Western European powers. The British sent warships; the Russians sent the Cossacks. When its colonial subjects revolted, as Georgian workers and peasants had during the 1905 Revolution, the tsar, as we’ve seen, agreed to a few minor reforms but ultimately crushed the uprising and reverted to the old system of colonialism.
Every colonial relationship in history has involved cultural domination, namely the imposition of language, religion and way of life on the subjugated peoples. In the Russian Empire, there were numerous other religions apart from the Russian Orthodox church. None of these were respected. The Catholics in Polish Russia were persecuted. The Jews were hounded wherever they were found, especially in the Ukraine. The Muslims were treated as enemies of Christian civilization. And those elements of the population who believed in their own family gods and traditional religion were the most despised of all, in the same way that European missionaries came to Africa and denounced African religion as devil worship and black magic. […] When faced with a more technologically advanced culture, such groups were victims of genocidal policies.
Pushkin's ancestor was a curiosity gifted to Peter the Great.
Sort of a house slave treated well due to his rareness.
Russian servants would be treated worse due to there being a bigger supply of them (some would, though, instead of peasants become soldiers of his toy regiments and sometimes more).
Then at some point, yes, Peter, consistently with his other hobbies, decided to free him, make him an officer, put him in uniform etc, ultimately marrying him to a girl of noble descent and making him a noble himself, of course.
That's not quite the same as not being racist.
Though some ethnic cleansing had happened in the Caucasus.
That's usually called genocide.
okay you are all right about it !
I think there is room for both processes if we're to give Chomsky some leeway no? The capitalist basis, and the power relations which follow, is of course the "driver" of this but there are still differences between the US, which has essentially destroyed the world many times over, and capitalist countries like modern day Germany or Norway. Can it be explained solely, and deterministically, by the power expansion of the capitalist base? Or are there other processes, call them culture, or ideation, which exhacerbate the psycotic nature of the base? I believe so, but I don't know if the word culture is best to describe and lump such processes together, but does that matter?
It is of course an idealist interpretation but I believe these can help in materialist investigation, or in the construction of a critical theory.
Nah, I feel general American leaders and intellectuals to be psychotic. Full of Jesus is coming on the next war Armageddon , so let's bomb Russia crazy 😌 , Russian empire was just benign when compares to US imperialism in 20 to 21st century or it's genocidal campaign against the native Americans and land grab of Mexico. Uff.. Just beyond fucked up... People are not allowed to dig up the past there I feel.
Just to nitpick, someone who is "psychotic" is just someone with psychosis, a mental illness, and they aren't dangerous for that. The common use of the word to mean "sick, twisted and dangerous" isn't really fair to people who are suffering and not dangerous at all. It's like the word "schizo" or similar, using mental illness and "craziness" as a synonym for "dangerous and violent."
This is a good point. I've been careful to scare quote the word when I've used it because I think it's problematic. However I do think the author has a point. There's something uniquely brutal about American culture.
Then why doesn't every other culture in capitalist states exhibit even remotely the same degree of social psychosis?
The school shootings, the murder rate, the mass imprisonments, the death count around the world is around 5 million people in the past two decades.
You need to explain why the US is quantitatively off the charts compared to other capitalist states.
Aside, I'm noticing a lot of knee jerk defensiveness lately on this comm when the US is criticised. It's really weird.
Because it was the center of the capitalist class. That's about it. Every other capitalist state has issues you've described. I'm in Russia, and we get school shootings, stabbings and more nowadays. Despite having significantly more strict gun control laws.
Think dialectically. USSR began to have issues with gang violence in its later days, as the society was entering a crisis and the leadership was slowly, but surely abandoning socialist principles.
Aside, I’m noticing a lot of knee jerk defensiveness lately on this comm when the US is criticised
Point an instance of my comment "defending the USA".
19 Countries with the Most School Shootings (total incidents Jan 2009-May 2018 - CNN):
United States — 288
Mexico — 8
South Africa — 6
Nigeria & Pakistan — 4
Afghanistan — 3
Brazil, Canada, France — 2
Azerbaijan, China, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Kenya, Russia, & Turkey — 1
(https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country)
One country seems a bit higher than the others 🤔
Now look up stabbings in Russia. There were multiple in 2018 alone
the center of the capitalist class.
What does this even mean? It's different because it's the centre but it's the same anyway?
The claim was that the "psychosis" of the US was because it was capitalist and that everywhere else was therefore the same. I've pointed out that there is nowhere quantitatively similar in a variety of areas. To that you say, well it's because it's the centre.
It seems to be that I'm the only one thinking dialectically here. It we want to think dialectically, we need to know what things like "the centre of the capitalist class" is. If England for example was once it, then why didn't it exhibit the same behaviour?
USSR began to have issues with gang violence in its later days
And therefore...?
Denying the unique "psychosis" (not my word) of the US and equivalising it with every other capitalist states can be seen as defending it.