126
Posadas [he/him, they/them]
ChapotraphouseI feel like "direct material interests" doesn't explain what's going on for the imperialist side as well as the theory of the Blob does.
Sun Tzu: The Art of
He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.
Over 80% of the world's solar panels, wind turbines AND batteries.* And over 70% of the world's EVs.
China is quite literally starting to power the whole world. I think we're already at the point where no country could possibly afford to go to war with them.
Are they ever going to turn their power outwards and export revolution? Are they biding their time to be officially crowned kings of the world? Or is the plan to just sit there quietly and win so hard that they eventually buy up the whole world's private equity?
The latter would be pretty funny, because the Chinese goverment is the world's largest foreign capital owner, and has the greatest debt to its own average citizens (average household saves ~60% of their income in the state bank). If China bought up all the world's private equity, we'd all ultimately be owned by average Chinese citizens, not even the government.
The proletariat
Are they ever going to turn their power outwards and export revolution?
No. China's position in the world today is progressive and historically necessary, but the material conditions of their state structure virtually guarantees that they will continue doing the most conservative version of socialism possible. If there is a world revolution, they would represent the right wing of the revolutionary movement, assuming they don't outright oppose it (their national wealth is built upon global capitalism, after all). Critical support to China of course, but I fully expect to be disappointed by them at some point
Material conditions and such
Jokes aside, I wouldn't be so pessimistic about China's position in a world revolution. In a revolutionary junction, material conditions can change rapidly, and thus allegiances and state incentives. Thought China's wealth is currently built upon global capitalism, this global capitalism is being undermined by the capitalist powers (who keep attempting wars and protectionism) while China's own industry switches over to an entirely new mode of energy extraction and transformation.
I've seen it with my own eyes, China's transformation has been truly rapid, and this cannot come without the Chinese state being forced to adopt new positions further down the line. Who knows, their hands might be forced by the simple act of the US deciding randomly to invade Taiwan.
In a revolutionary junction, material conditions can change rapidly, and thus allegiances and state incentives.
Yes, but they can change in any direction. I hope China would not follow the path of right SRs.
As a former China hater, the one nation that consistently made me apologise for underestimating them has been China.
I think pessimisn on the Chinese role in geopolitics at this stage in history might be unfounded or without meaning, especially since the economic trend has been pushing China closer with the global south.
I was never a China hater, but I don't think China is going to do much to help socialism. Still, current Chinese foreign policy is a massive improvement compared to how horrible it was in 1970-80s.
The US can't help but destroy itself at this point. There's no going back. It would require a shift in thinking and priority that is completely impossible for the powers that control the country. They would rather destroy the country or even the world and cash out than pause and spend some time fixing the problems.
The wild thing is the problems are fixable even for fascists but they just won't. They refuse to work together. They refuse to pause or slow their escalating short term profits long enough to accomplish anything that would protect their long term potential gains.
And why should they? If they destroy the world tomorrow, they're all going to be fine. The powers that be have zero reason to care about the fate of anyone but themselves.
There is no long term plan for the US. It exists solely as an entity to project the power the capitalists require to make as much money as possible as fast as possible. As long as it's accomplishing that goal nothing else matters to them. And if they destroy the US in the process they have no reason to care
We have to make them care.
the epstein emails show that they have a global support network that enables them to not care and not even notice nor understand why they don't have to care.
Fine relatively, but it seems to me that climate change is coming for us all. Nuclear war would come for us all. Less nutrients in the soil is an us problem. Extinct species mean the future isn't as comfortable. Every Einstein in a sweatshop and McDonald's instead of a local place makes enjoying endless wealth less enjoyable. The wealth is infinite and it's able to be spent on less and less luxury with every passing day.
Free Cascadia. Critical support to the California National Party. This is a matter of survival at this point for some of the least shitty places in burgerland.
can't wait for greater idaho to go to war against separatist cascadia prompting canada to intervene and a shitload of libs suddenly understand we were right about ukraine
and The American Century of Humiliation is just getting started
Imperial collapse and the warlord era happened like halfway into the century of humiliation. I think we're gonna get those in the first decade.
Maybe we'll learn from the chinese and it will only be a half century of humiliation.
No that just implies the century of humiliation already started. The neoliberal era is the start of the humiliation. So from the 1973 oil crisis.
Think about it.
Large cabal of other nations producing an important commodity band together to monopolise said commodity?
The only politically viable (by your mode of production) option is to start running massive trade deficits and destroy the domestic economy?
This gives rise to political dynasties of the most splendid fools raised under jaw dropping privilege?
A second ~~opium war~~ oil war/crisis?
A nation where central power is relatively weak while local power is stronger (constant back and forth between feds and states) that has trouble organising at the national level?
Only thing different this is that the US is in a much stronger position than Qing China was (no shit ig) and suffered way less
With the century of humiliation, it wasn't just the common people who were humiliated, it was everyone. It was a total national failure. But neoliberalism has been the dominant economic force in the world for decades. China was never like that between the opium wars and 1949
Well, to be fair. Most of the global south also got colonised during that time, so "humiliation" was the dominant global state of affairs at the time.
Still, this is mostly just a humorous observation. I wouldn't say that the Chinese century of humiliation lines up with the decline of the American empire. Just that there are some similarities (which is the basis of scientific investigation)
Imperial collapse and the warlord era happened like halfway into the century of humiliation. I think we're gonna get those in the first decade.
Behold, the unparalleled efficiency of capitalism
One concern I've heard is that sulfur comes from sour crude oil and is needed for production of copper and cobalt.
edit: appearantly very little, main use is fertilizer, again
yes, sulphur is what makes sour crude sour. sulphur is stripped off the hydrocarbons during processing. sulphuric acid is a common ingredient in all kinds of chemical processing, including copper. the consumption of sulphuric acid to copper is about 2-4:1 by mass and sulphuric acid is about 50-100x less expensive than copper by mass ($12000/t for copper, about $200/t for acid). Cobalt is worth about 5x more than copper and its production consumes a similar amount of sulphuric acid. acid is important in metal production but it is a smaller fraction of the cost of the commodity than acid is in fertilizer. metals get used in higher value add products also, so price sensitivity is lower than food commodities. the impact of a sulphur shortage on the metal markets will be to generally increase prices, but I believe the real pinch will be on food products.
Sulfuric acid is fairly easy to make so it is not such a huge problem.
https://www.mapsofworld.com/amp/minerals/world-sulphur-producers.html
Assuming this map is correct, sulphur is diversified (except obviously China is in the lead)
Yeah, it’s ‘funny’ if you only care about China
