Donetsk and Luhansk are Russian oblasts since 2022
Students around Belgium are starting to occupy campuses this week. Hopefully it goes well
I noticed that several socialist countries took out loans from the IMF (Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania) even though there was an understanding that the IMF is a predatory organisation. I assume it is connected to the wave of liberalisation in the 1980s, but would be interested in a more concrete breakdown of the logic and context behind it, or articles/links on the topic.
Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, defined by the dominance of finance capital (over industrial capital) and its export from the imperial core to the periphery.
Neo-colonialism is a specific case of a relationship between an imperial core country and a periphery country, where the periphery country is nominally independent, and the imperial core country uses indirect means of intimidation (instead of direct colonial rule). I would also note that the terms neo-colonialism and colonialism center the colony/periphery, while imperialism centers the imperialist state. So it is still the same phenomenon, the terms just focus on different parts of the relationship.
For context: Germany is one of the biggest arms suppliers to Israel, accounting for around 30% of the military equipment imported to Israel (the other 70% being USA).
The ICJ begins two days of hearings into Nicaragua’s case accusing Germany of facilitating Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
> The International Court of Justice (ICJ) begins two days of hearings to consider Nicaragua’s request that emergency measures be imposed on Germany over its support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
How does avoiding any diplomatic solution to the conflict and encouraging Ukrainians to sacrifice themselves for "democracy" actually stop Russia from wiping out Ukraine? It seems that the EU has only exacerbated the destruction of Ukraine, no? And no I am not a big fan of Putin.
Maybe some texts on Black Liberation in US? From the BPP or Angela Davis for instance.
Tactical urbanism would be getting together and building benches for those bus stops no cross walks in my neighborhood, we could fix that
Problem is that a lot of the times this is illegal. Those benches could be removed or worse there could be consequences for those who install it. Not saying you shouldn't do this, but just saying that there is usually a lot of resistance even to simple projects like that.
communists tend to be more educated than average, we could be helping people get their GEDs, holding classes funded and organized by the party, this appeals directly to the masses, you help someone get their GED? You’ll have a loyal comrade.
Our party's student wing does that. It's a really good effort.
Also agreed with Grain Eater that I wouldn't call them anarchist tactics.
All the parks really. Muzeon and Gorky are my favs and you could spend a whole day there, lots of places to relax, to see the museums or to have a meal. Vorob'yevy Gory is also really nice, but it's a bit of a hike because of the hills. GES-2 is an excellent museum and has a cool design because its built inside of an old power station.
im not accusing lemmygrad members of this, im just very triggered by westerners travelling to non-imperial core countries, then coming back saying "wow everything is so cheap there :)" without actually considering the material conditions of the local population.
Yeah I feel like a lot of people miss that point. Wages are still low, especially outside major cities. Not to mention the unequal distribution. Also for instance the cost of living in Turkey is also lower than the West, but it doesn't mean that the people living there can actually afford it. It only serves westerners who get to spend a cheap vacation there.
I find it to be my favorite of the fundamentals! Super applicable to modern day
My question would be, why do we want to model supply and demand in the first place? As we see in liberal economics, supply and demand is just used as a justification for pushing deregulation policies. if you want to use the model for other means, the problem is that it's only useful in markets of perfect competition, which are very rare. perfect competition occurs where there are virtually infinite producers (because the barrier to entry is super low) and the products are identical. i like the example of apples or potatoes in a farmers market. producers have to set the 'market price' because otherwise people will buy the other thing that's the same and cheaper (but then you assume that people don't have a favourite stall, all the producers haven't colluded etc etc). most of the time you have a monopoly or oligopoly situation, so supply and demand equilibrium becomes meaningless, because the firms can set any prices they want.
for recommendations, i like unlearning economics I like his debunking of liberal econ (disclaimer that i disagree with his views on market socialism and LTV). check out the 'death of econ 101' video for supply and demand stuff. Doughnut Economics which i mentioned is a pretty good debunking of models that advocate for growth and free markets, it's a light read. it is more focused on sustainability rather than socialism, but i think it's good at suggesting alternative ways at looking at an economy. for instance as a cycle rather than an intersection of lines (Marx did it first but whatever, i like cool graphs). i would also recommend looking into the field of behavioral economics, since it's whole purpose is to debunk the liberal claim that people in a market are 'rational actors'.
i also recommend this course on economics4emancipations website for a brief socialist oriented economics course (not really about debunking though). it has really good readings suggestions as well.
i guess my main point would be just to keep in mind when looking at a model: what does this assume about humans and relations? what is the goal of the person presenting the model? is this model backed up with statistically significant evidence?
sorry for the a bit long reply, it's my area so i have quite some thoughts on it. would love to answer any more specific questions anytime too
essentially yes. you will can only observe the equilibrium price, and the curves are an abstraction of all the possible interactions of producers and consumers in a competitive market. there are ways of deducing these curves, but they are kinda tautological. also like, the curves were made curves only because it looked like newton's graphs, which makes them more scientific by association (pic from Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth).
Antonio Gramsci's work on hegemony could be interesting. These topics are still quite broad, like technology, trends or social media. What information specifically are you looking for? What is your goal?
Changes in supply and demand explain why changes in prices happen (in a perfectly competitive market), not where those prices come from in the first place (see lemmygrabers comment). The issue in liberal economics is applying this model to things that have many more factors (labour, housing). For example saying that minimum wage distorts the market and causes unemployment:
Clearly policymakers are attempting to depoliticise a very political issue by appealing to economics as if it is a natural science. So as marxists we should be aware of how economics is used in class struggle to justify certain actions. The minimum wage thing was disproven quite some time ago now, but the issue still persists because the model is seen as some common sense.
I like reading or arts, talking to people about reading and arts.
A history of the Soviet communication satellite program. From the description:
>The Soviet Union had a big advantage in launch vehicle capability, but, while the US had adapted the Delta to launch small satellites into Geostationary orbits the R7 which had carried spacecraft to the Moon and Venus was not capable of doing the equivalent without significant redesign. Instead, the Soviet Union's scientists came up with their own solution which had some advantages for covering the massive territory of the USSR.
