Happy International Workers’ Day! Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!

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  • @Shrike502
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    31 year ago

    Well right now, the richest people in the world (AFAIK) are USian. But it doesn’t appear that they have any sort of “patriotism” (for the lack of a better term) towards US as a country specifically. Rather, their loyalty is towards the system that allows their existence. They could move elsewhere, obtain new citizenship, perhaps even make some public statement criticizing the current government to gain some brownie points. After that - it’s back to business as usual, in a new place.

    • I’m sure they’ll try to hang on however they can for as long as possible, including moving to “emerging markets”, but when they can no longer instigate coups, steal resources, and abuse cheap labour, business as usual won’t be a possibility

      • @Shrike502
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        31 year ago

        instigate coups

        These make comprador regimes easier, but there’s plenty of existing compradors to go around

        steal resources

        British empire is still stealing, no?

        abuse cheap labour

        Musk’s father abused labor in South Africa, then moved to USA and now Elon is doing the same there.

        That’s basically what I mean. The “as long as possible” phase will only terminate after the worldwide socialist revolution, until then - does it truly matter which flag the bourgeoisie wave?

        • ☭ 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗘𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 ☭OPMA
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          1 year ago

          existing compradors

          They need some way to materially support them, though. If they don’t have a foothold in a country, they can’t traffic arms, train terrorists, control the domestic media, etc.

          British Empire

          Yes, but it’s barely a threat compared to what it used to be, and it’s becoming less and less influential with time

          Elon Musk

          Yes, but at that time Amerika was the sole superpower, and that isn’t the case anymore. There also hasn’t been a time where a socialist country (China) was “in the lead” before, both in terms of domestic production and foreign policy. Capitalists can try to move to influential non-socialist countries like Russia, but I doubt they’ll be able to take over the government

          Of course, capitalists won’t disappear until capitalism ends, but having a capitalist bloc doesn’t mean that imperialism will be able to continue (and that will hopefully speed up the rise of socialism in those countries as living standards fall). The flag they wave doesn’t really matter, but the dwindling possibility of imperialist exploitation does