A week ago, the Bolivian left-wing party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), currently led by Luis Arce, decisively lost the round of elections against the right-wing. This comes after a prolonged period of "infighting" between Arce, and Morales, who previously led the MAS prior to the 2019 coup which briefly installed Jeanine Anez.
I put infighting in quotes because despite the nominal similarities between Arce and Morales, it is clear that this is not merely a counterproductive battle between two men - instead, the Bolivian left has arrived at a time of unavoidable conflict between two competing strategies. The electoral strategy is represented by Arce, who has aligned himself with a more middle-class-oriented campaign that is more economically liberal, whereas Morales represents a more working-class-oriented campaign that seeks to go further than tepid reform.
Such a conflict between electoralism and revolutionary action is inevitable in any and every developing country that 1) possesses a functioning left-wing party or organization, and 2) is under internal and/or external pressure by capitalists. This crisis must be resolved eventually - and this electoral failure is how such a crisis is manifesting right now. So while the Bolivian left has indeed lost the election, it is not yet defeated. The revolutionary campaign can, if it is willing, still ultimately stand triumphant. But what must be done is a real movement towards socialism, which goes beyond technocrats reforming from above, and instead transforms the state into a full political project of the working class, in which their movements, organizations, and protests are genuinely empowered. Such a project will involve repression by the forces of reaction, not least by the United States, but it is the only road left to take.
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Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
ding ding ding
We need to evolve our understanding of color revolutions beyond "America made this happen!" to "America is constantly in position to intervene in genuine revolutionary movements and wield its resources to control the leadership of those revolutions, and has the capacity to withdraw the critical support of existing comprador regimes in order to facilitate a successful revolution when the pieces are in place".
Only a Leninist party or its organizational equivalent in discipline and analysis can counteract the power of the US state in a revolutionary circumstance. Without that ingredient, every revolution is a counterrevolution. This has been the case since the collapse of the socialist bloc, with only Yemen, Venezuela, and now the Alliance of Sahel States as counterexamples. During the cold war, revolutions almost always lead to the weakening of imperialism and colonialism because the counterpower of the USSR blocked hegemonic US influence over revolutions. With the USSR gone, that hegemonic control is able to sway the vast majority of revolutions in its favor.
That period of counterrevolution is, I think, coming to an end specifically because China has undermined the US's economic hegemony, which is necessary for the conditions before and after the revolution to play in the US's favor. The USSR blocked military and political hegemony, but economics is the base, and so China's strategy may be the more successful one in the long run.
You are correct that economic power is a very potent force to be wielded, but that is also precisely why China is constrained, because of its neoliberal ideology.
We just discussed this the other day on another thread. The prime example is that even China - what many here will gladly call a socialist superpower - simply failed to stop the genocide from happening.
People on this site like to pretend that this socialist superpower is simply not interested in intervening in international affairs (accusation of national socialism), that this great socialist power on the verge of overtaking the US empire is simply too weak to do anything about a genocide (too strong and too weak at the same time), or the worse I’ve seen, that China cannot intervene to stop a genocide because it is “playing the long game” based on some ancient wisdom so it’s actually fine and in fact, good that a great economic power should just let the genocide happen (Oriental mysticism).
The simple answer here is that China’s socialism is not the traditionally defined socialism. Its model is market socialism aka Socialism with Chinese characteristics. It is a project to achieve socialism through adhering to the market principles of neoliberal ideology. This is why it cannot do what the USSR once did, because it is economically constrained by its ideology.
China already has the economic, financial, political and even military power to bring to heel the world’s economy to stop a genocide - if it wants to, but it cannot because of this belief system. If you look at China’s foreign policy before the 1970s reform and opening up era and compare to those afterwards, it’s night and day. China was far far far weaker and yet fought the Americans in Korea and then in Vietnam. What happened in the 1970s then? Because of the adoption of the neoliberal ideology, and you even have China invading communist Vietnam to appease the Americans (Deng’s own words, not mine).
Since the Ukraine war started in 2022, I had hoped that Russia could lead the Global South in demonstrating that it is in fact, possible to transform its economy by abandoning neoliberalism due to the war economy. Unfortunately this has not transpired, and unlikely to happen any time soon. And this is also why we call BRICS a “multipolar neoliberalism” at best, because all of the BRICS countries still adhere to the neoliberal market principles.
And the worst of all? It is America that has realized that neoliberalism is at the end of its shelf life and already taking all the initiatives to transform itself into a new form of fascist state, while the rest of the world still wishes that this is a mere aberration and that the status quo will somehow be restored after Trump. Failure to adapt to a new historical circumstance will prove fatal.
This is just a gut feeling but I'd guess that modern china's stance on non-intervention is based more on its interpretation of anti-colonialism than is is on its interpretation of chinese socialism, insofar as those things can be separated even.
That doesn't sound right because Deng sent Carter a letter telling him china was gonna invade and Carter straight up told him he shouldn't do it but america wouldn't make a fuss. Probably just happened completely as a function of the sino-soviet split and wanting to give a soviet ally a bloody nose to prevent it from expanding soviet influence in southeast asia.
china intervening against Israel would directly lead to world war 3 and nukes being fired. im really not sure what's so difficult to understand
China literally just withheld rare earth exports and the US folded. No nukes were launched.
There are many ways that China can play this game, to stop a genocide from happening on the international stage, as a global superpower. You are underestimating the economic and military prowess of China and its hold on the global economies.
Besides, if “starting world war 3” is the excuse for non-intervention here, then you are conceding literally NOTHING can possibly be done. Funny that some people accuse me of being a doomer lol.
I don't think China intervening economically against Israel would be treated the same as doing it against the US.
The SU did not stop the Holocaust until the Nazis invaded the SU. Or for that matter, the SU was neutral towards Japan while the IJA was ethnically cleansing Chinese people. Why are you holding the current PRC under Xi at a higher standard than the SU under Stalin?
Not a remotely accurate comparison. Nazi Germany had 1/3 the population of the SU, a significantly larger military-industrial base, a shared border, and a stated intention of eradicating communism/Bolshevism. Also the SU provided material and technical support to the KMT and CP to resist Japanese aggression since the early 30s.
Meanwhile, the PRC is 2 orders of magnitude larger than the zionist entity and is the penultimate world power. It should be held to a higher standard because it is in an infinitely stronger position to act.
My friend, the USSR did not become a global superpower until the Cold War.
Also, China is in an extremely powerful position for being integrated into the global economy - an advantage that the USSR did not have. It can literally stop world trade and force countries to come to the negotiating table if it really wants to assert its role as a world leader.
Again, you are underestimating how much dependent the Western powers are to China’s industrial capacity.
EDIT: In case I’m not being clear, China restricting its exports would force Western economies to fold or at least be willing to negotiate. This is why the rare earth export restriction was so effective. However, China cannot do that on a greater scale because its economy is heavily dependent on exports… a key feature of its neoliberalized economy. It believes that giving up the export revenues would mean the balance sheet cannot be balanced, and the workers will lose their jobs unless the government pumps the deficit up. Higher deficit would violate the IMF rules though… so it’s not an option.
There's plenty of genocides that the Soviet Union didn't intervene in during the Cold War. Case in point was the genocide against Chinese Indonesians after Suharto seized power. Suharto liquidated the third largest communist party at that time, and the SU didn't even suspend diplomatic relations with Indonesia.
People need to stop having this alt-history of the SU in their head. The SU didn't go around invading random anti-communist countries. The SU arguably didn't even invade Nazi Germany, but merely finished a fight that the fascists started. At best, the SU funded various communist parties and supplied various Soviet-sympathetic militants with weapons with occasional deployment of Soviet military personnel like Soviet pilots during the Korean War. There's nothing wrong with what the SU did. The CPSU was more than willing to provide military material support and ideological training to orgs who were receptive to their aid, but the ultimate responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the anti-imperialist orgs and militants.
Fundamentally, I don't think the Chinese political class cares enough about Palestine to make any serious geopolitical moves. And I don't think their geopolitical calculus would seriously change even if every single neoliberal economist gets Hudson-pilled. They probably care about Palestine as much as the DRC or Sudan, which are also suffering from US proxies (Rwanda and the UAE). Why do you think the PRC was far more willing to sell Pakistan weapons than Iran? It has nothing to do with the CPC embracing neoliberalism and everything to do with geopolitics. Iran is an unreliable partner due to reformists fuckery while Pakistan has a much longer working relationship with China on top of being a very reliable check against China's geopolitical rival India. Is it China's fault for not giving Iran preferential treatment for the sake of counter-hegemony or is it Iran's fault for having factions within their political class that are borderline traitorous sellouts to the West? Whatever the answer may be, at the end of the day, Pakistan brought more to the table than Iran and was treated accordingly.
Ideological constraints, as I said. Economics determined by neoliberal ideology, which then dictates (or constrains) their geopolitical stances.
Again, you only have to look at the difference in foreign policy before and after the reform and opening up. Two very different forms of economic systems that yielded diverging foreign policies.
Finally, you are still underestimating how deeply the Chinese economy has integrated itself into the world. The USSR was nowhere near that. To put it another way, the USSR had a robust self-contained economy that, for the most parts but not always, shielded itself from the fluctuations in the Western capitalist economies, and its means of channeling its geopolitical dominance is through its military force that rivaled those of the US.
But China is a completely different beast. It has 31% of the global manufacturing capacity. I repeat - one-third of the world’s productive forces that are fully integrated into the globalized economy. The leverage that China has on the world today simply did not exist in the USSR.
i love being drawn in to a discussion of baseless assertions
I mean, you’re the one that says that China intervening would cause nukes to fly, as though China doesn’t have the diplomatic expertise to deal with the West and possess a series of tools (backed by its strong economic base) that can be weaponized and leveraged to ramp up the pressure to force an outcome.
The implicit assumption here is that the Chinese leadership is too stupid to deal with the Israelis / collective West and that their intervention will be so tactless that it immediately triggers world war 3. Once again, you’re underestimating China’s capability.
The only baseless assertion is that "china intervening against Israel would directly lead to world war 3 and nukes being fired."