We have seen the avatar of the Russian experiment to cede power to Capitalism animated by its own brand of 'Democracy theatre' and Capitalism by deregulating the hitherto black market and putting in the hands of the few- the oligarchs, as well as performing the 'economic miracle' and comprehensive self-transformation almost overnight! But new wealth breeds fears inside and outside such an economy, and whispers of neo-Soviet Trojan horses ready to unleash a terrifying Capitalist global meltdown shouldn't persist, but they do!
Isn't it odd that Russia has escaped the conspiracy of Marxism, its implementation via the conduit of Marxist-Leninism and an absence of official comment about a 'Soviet counter-revolution'? Wouldn't you want to relive the re-birth of Russia and celebrate how the Russian people in concert enabled a peaceful hand-over of power to a new Russia? So what conspiracy is it escaping or what conspiracy is being prepared? All that creeping around from pro Soviets and ex Soviets must make Putin quite uneasy! Or not? The Brits have the oldest Parliament, the US has the oldest democracy, and the Russians have the youngest and most inexperienced market democracy that has been so successful that envious eyes from afar and from under its nose may want to derail its Russian progress. Russian does not want to go backwards and even though Putin's troops have gone too far forward and overextended into the realms of invasion and illegality, Russia and the globe cannot let Russia go to the wall by imploding and regressing to the victimhood and self-harm of Sovietism or a mutation of it!! Russia -do not take a step backwards once you're within your own boundaries and not Ukraine’s! Don't be compelled to act militarily when you are so close to being an international economic role model for those ex-Soviet regimes who have not been as compellingly advanced down the socio-economic and political and entrepreneurial integrative path of post Sovietism! We know that the Russian army is not trying to exorcise its Afghanistan demons in its invasion of Ukraine, it is repeating them! Indeed, Russian absolute overkill in Ukraine is winning the global hearts and minds in resisting oppression and rekindling anti-Sovietism in the region.
Protecting Russia's borders isn't a new concept that is foreign to the rest of the European archipelago, and Brexit in the UK certainly leads to such a dynamic! But the UK hasn't actually invaded anyone but is enforcing its own sovereignty under its own jurisdiction within its own boundaries! Brexit isn't a retreat its making UK complete! Why did so many white-working class northern metropolitan traditionally Labour voters vote for Brexit? Well, they actually voted Brexit twice, (no fluke) in a referendum and a general election for Brexit because Brexit honoured British sovereignty and provided closure on the British Imperial past by an extension of domestic democracy that was very appealing to post Imperial egalitarians! So, when the Russian people vote, which way will they vote? Will they look after their own frontiers and not someone else'....? Don't spread yourself too thinly both ethically and militarily!!
Or is there another narrative here? Cut the Russian's some slack because it's evolving so quickly even if it is in its Capitalist infancy! Don't prejudge Russia? Why? Because inadvertently the Russian invasion of Ukraine has emboldened the pace of Post Sovietism globally! It also plays well that Russia is trying to rectify its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, without success! It was the West's ability to occupy parts of Afghanistan to rid the Afghans of Al Qaeda and Isis and then to be able to entrust that the Taliban would not reverse Western social policy in Afghanistan and to render it conservative like Saudi Arabia! Whereas the Red Army left Afghanistan with their tails between their legs decades before. Why did the allies emphasise Afghan independence? Because the allies honoured their agreement with the Taliban to ensure Afghanistan sovereignty by destroying the Taliban's enemies (Isis and Al Qaeda) no longer entrenched in Afghanistan. The west removes impediments to sovereignty, the Russian's are now trying to destroy it in Ukraine. Why?
But first, let's play Devil's advocate: Was the end of the Cold War an experiment to embrace and espouse a new era of Communist non-violence by the success of the Velvet Revolution within the ex-Warsaw Pact nations, and not the collapse of the Soviet system? Didn't this event actually 'wither away totalitarianism' and not the state, and was conducted without military interference to an original Communism by popular national consent? Nothing became her like the leaving of it. Now that's a bit of a stretch coupled with a paradox compounded with a Soviet self-sacrifice that thought that self-sacrifice was a 'narcissistic bourgeois' act of Western Capitalist degenerate egotism? I think many in the West would think that quite a compliment from a senile exhausted failure of a Soviet regime- it worked didn’t it, and it was so successful that Mandela ditched Apartheid and the Arab Spring used it as an inspiration!!?!! Could only Soviet failure ‘wither away' to be replaced by Capitalism and individual human rights set in a Democracy, and certainly not the other way round?!!
Or was this Marxist Leninist failure? Why proffer the end of 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat to the invisible hand of global Capitalism, why concede defeat and then give way to Western theoretical extrapolation of 'Soviet amorality' and lead the West into thinking it had killed-off Marxism, unless there was another play? Was that agenda actually not capitulating but nurturing more than a 'Rainbow coalition' of ivory ex=Soviet relativists whose 'Marxist relativism' could meekly call a dispensing of Marxist certainty of Dialectical Materialism as an interventionist pro-Capitalist episode only to be spurned once the foreign currency could re-float the Russian coffers. But what they didn't say was that 19th century Marxism could be upgraded by force of will and by Nietzschean nihilism and the eternal return to reclaim a post-Soviet Russia that does not need to put itself in the mercy of history and science of inevitability when it could enforce prejudice, greed, malice, and gain vengeance against the West, whilst moonlighting as a Capitalist democracy!!?! Marxists may well be more orthodox than such an outcome, and feel that this 'Russian heresy' may have replaced the Marxist 'checks and balances' of Marxist paradigms and chronology of socio-economic conditions suitable for a 'Bolshevik Revolution' with a more fanatical Communism that doesn't need to self-regulate but appears to be a transition from Oligarchy to state dictatorship and not the guardian of Marxist orthodoxy, substituting the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' for the 'superior model' ready for the 21st century.
Indeed, why does Russia fixate at being the first, not just a characteristic after the Cold War but excessively competitive in its ruthless need to realise personal ambition over responsibility to the state during the Cold War? Doesn't this quality make it ripe for Capitalism in the 'Wild East’ meets the Wild West. Is the connector actually a cross-over of a capacity for hard-nosed confrontation as well as conspiracy? Russia actually embraced superpower confrontation because it thought it was better than 'degenerate Westernism', just like it believed in materialistic fact that it was the first in space, the first to experience mass naval mutiny, the first to impose Bolshevik Revolution and the first to advance the case for continental rejection of Sovietism to Capitalism and yet enjoy its own Parliamentary Democracy; so why wouldn't it be inclined to lead Russia into a further socio-economic restoration but with a more 'contemporary version streamlined by cutting opportunistically 'Marxist fundamentals that 'got in the way of progress'(?) and get the bragging-rights of hood-winking the West 'once again !'?!
But why poison China or expose Chinese tactics over capitalism too? Its Patriotic predatorial Marxist survivalism and self-determination will not like a Russian flip-flop too prematurely. Its 2 systems have invested heavily and may dispute Russia's hypothetical self-transformation because it has its own style of cultural cardiac arrest delivery system that 'refreshes' China generationally and could prefer Russia to remain part of the global Capitalist network in order to 'network and rework.' It also may feel that the Russian Soviet failure by the 1990s actually still provides aftershocks that China may feel Russia has not taken responsibility for, and may even feel has not been fully compensated for?
The question of the 'shape-shifting' Marxism or ideological 'make-over' is one thing, but the damage to the global markets and globalization could be unprecedented. To destabilise global Capitalism and separate it from liberal democracy could be even more traumatic and could impact on the very new wealth that a revisionist Marxist regime unreconciled and divorced from its Capitalist past?!? It could flip-flop but also be a victim of the very global economic breakdown that it might want to inflict on the West?! Would the Russians actually prefer global collapse and incriminate itself rather than choose the progressive continuation of its nascent democracy and its actual skill set and predilection to Capitalism? Of course!
But why be Perseus holding the head of the gorgon and then try and put it back on its severed torso? Why launder Marxism? Relativist Marxism, restorative Marxism, revisionist Marxism? Shouldn't we be fearful of Russian oligarchy rather than yesterday's tired mid-19th century who've transformed the Russian economy from Oligarchs to Russian mafia foot soldiers?
Remember, the West would recover from an international economic breakdown quicker than its Cold War adversary. How? Since the end of WW2, dozens of 'Capitalism in crises have provided the experience to side-step bear markets that actually have been the building block of Western Capitalism. It is not the bull markets that drive western capitalism but the natural occurrence of economic cycles that can be massaged and or can be fully self-regulatory. And its wingman of prudent reliable short-term precautionary policy (to you and me 'managed protectionism) or economic conservatism. 'Capitalism in crisis' is not just a Marxist gleeful but largely a failed term, it is part of a chain-reaction that defines 'economic recovery'!!This re-boot is momentum plus choice plus risk rather than a Capitalist dictatorship or 'Capitalist distortion' or 'Capitalist mutation'!! It is essential that the global markets who need stability to create confidence are not subverted by a Russia that may be unable to grasp how to move Russia to the next stage of Capitalism and Democracy, still fearful of the future yet traumatized by its past. But Putin has over-committed his hand by military means but may have relied upon his Capitalist influence in the region and should never impose itself on its neighbours.
Even Putin's Russian Ukrainians who may rely on their loyalty to Russia are convinced as themselves in an independent Ukraine without Russian interference. Perhaps under different circumstances they may have voted for a change in the Kremlin? 'Demonstrative Democracy' or extra-parliamentary democracy by protest is still almost artificial and staged like street theatre, but little actually reforms and progresses!
Will the Russian people treat Putin as badly as the British Labour party treated Blair? I don't think so! The invasion of Ukraine has united the media in Russia to close ranks and silence any disapproval of State Russian policy under the control of 'war-time' domestic conditions -it's almost as if ironically Putin believes it is Russia and not Ukraine that is being invaded and its sovereignty in peril!!? War doesn't require guilt, it requires falsehood! But make no mistake, there will be those who are jockeying for position in case ‘Putin's war' doesn't survive the post-war fallout! Many of the 'Atrocities' could have been avoided no doubt, but what is alarming is that most of modern war-machines like Russian’s are so advanced and exacting that 'human error' of over-shooting or the opposite that may have had terrible collateral damage not by human error but by tactical intimidation and calculated propaganda! But modern warfare is not without corruption and criminality? Ironically, we still blame Blair for Iraq 2 rather than George W Bush? What? Labour knows better. Labour soon ditched their 3-election winning strategy for the moral courage that led to being unable to defend their record and service on child-poverty reductions and the foreshortening of hospital waiting times because they were no longer in Power! Drop your moral high and mighty attitude labour! So why didn't Labour admit to being lied to by civil servants just as George W did!??? Because war and its detritus are messy? Or because some Labour people preferred war against Blair rather than war against each other (War in Iraq became just a sideshow into how and whom Labour wanted to scapegoat!) ............... or was it the performance of our military leadership that was too successful? You can't really say the same about Russia's generals in Ukraine, can you?!!!! But will the Russian people and the court of global opinion treat Putin as badly as Labour treated Blair? Surely that question is so offensive to Supporters of Blair....................that issue shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence or in the same ballpark?? If I were Labour, I'd try to avoid the Iraq 2 issue, because things turned-out alright for everyday Iraqi's............Blair wasn't right but the consequences for Iraq were! Took less than 2 decades...too long for the 'fascist' name slingers at the time? ....and avoided another Iraq/Iranian series of wars too! But it was Putin who started the 'fascist' name slinging at Ukraine and then he invaded??? He never will do mea culpe will he! Whereas Blair at least tried to!
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