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It's like people don't understand how their wages impact the price of the goods they are producing. The problem is domestic producers can't compete against the
by motohagiography 6y ago
It's like people don't understand how their wages impact the price of the goods they are producing.
The problem is domestic producers can't compete against the actual terrible jobs with poverty wages that foreign producers pay. The trade off is binary. Either you put tariffs on cheaper foreign goods and protect your economy from predatory countries, or you tolerate downward wage pressure. There is no middle ground. It's such a simple and established reliable dynamic that even politicians can understand it.
Our democracies have chosen cheap stuff and downward wage pressure, with the spoils going to the people who manage the capital flows. It's not a right/left thing either, as both sides cynically advocate and exploit globalization to inflate those capital flows.
- lucian1900 6y agoYou’re describing the effects of imperialism on the working class of the imperialist countries, a point we communists make all the time. It absolutely is a left/right thing, it’s just that the imperialist countries have largely managed to exclude politics left of centre.
- motohagiography 6y agoImperialism is bunk and an artifact of a movement predicated on deception, so, there's that. I think the whole critical theory basically lets itself out on reasonable discourse.
- lucian1900 6y agoLenin’s work more than a century ago is very much still relevant today. If you haven’t read it, give it a try https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
- parineum 6y agoWould a communist United States not trade with China?
- lucian1900 6y agoCurrently, US capitalists exploit workers both in the US and in poorer countries, with the later being super-exploited. Under this arrangement, the vast majority of the value created by both groups of workers is captured by a handful of capitalists. A socialist US would cease exploiting other countries (including China) and instead pursue mutually beneficial trade (much like China does). This would likely include some amount of reparations and re-building of local industry, easily funded with the vast amount of value no longer stolen from all workers.
- IdiocyInAction 6y agoExploitation that ultimately helped lift a billion people out of poverty in China. A socialist US would probably, like most prior countries that called themselves socialist, be a poor, oppressive hellhole.
- lucian1900 6y agoPoverty has decreased in China in spite of US imperialism, not because of it. Most notably, poor capitalist countries have had poverty increase in the past several decades instead. All countries that have had a successful socialist revolution so far were oppressed impoverished ones. They all then went on to develop very quickly, in spite of constant attack from the imperialist countries. An already-developed former imperialist country would face no such challenges.
- parineum 6y agoChina lifted itself out of poverty when it became a capitalist, dictatorial oligarchy.
- lucian1900 6y agoNo. It was only allowed to develop after making deep concessions to imperialism, including special economic areas where capitalism is allowed. Thankfully the working class is still in control of the state, as we’ve seen the limits on capitalism tightened recently, especially during covid.