since i couldn’t remember a thing from what i read in that “Lenin - Imperialism..” i just started rereading it and i am actually retaining some information this time. like the buzzword in it is “finance capital” which i now understand is funds that a big bank puts forth to fund a manufacturer for a monopoly

Anecdotally speaking as a Latino person myself, I find a lot of Latinos I know to be quite hardline on illegal immigration.

Lenin had his Inshallah moment

Mashallah

inflation like 7.7% here and my work is raising the price of shoes by 20 dollars. evil

US businesses/businesses w/ us branches are making crazy profit rn not just because of inflation being an excuse to jack up prices but also because of DXY strength vs EUR & GBP (and others) meaning conversion rates are like record highs for USD-led international trade or covering foreign pay/contractors. also prime rates are great right now for things like credit due to the fed trying to combat inflation

how does the prime rate being good rn work

Glenn Greenwald hates dems so much he caping for Bolsonaro now

basically the prime rate isnt determined by the fed, its determined by banks, but its based on the federal funds rate which is set by the fed. there's not really a clear answer on where the prime rate comes from because even the Fed themselves admits like "yeah we have no idea tbh". most of the time the prime rate has more to do with liquidity than interest itself - it's almost like banks betting on the chances of them getting a return and/or the chances of the loan being "profitable" over an extended period.
while no one really knows why the prime rate is good (literally), it's likely because the bet is that the liquidity presented by credit would outweigh inflation; so if inflation introduces more money into the market, then high credited amounts are not worth as much over a long period of time vs their inception, so a lower interest rate can be afforded since in order to be profitable by the end of the loan term the loan is already worth less to the borrower than the lender and the risk is absorbed by outside inflation. while this may seem backwards since you might ask "but doesn't that mean the lender is losing money from inflation indirectly?" - the answer is no because the assumption is the bank is lending and the inflation will be returned not through the lending itself but rather through the profits the company makes using the credit (further abetted by inflation), of which go back to the bank through checkings/savings/CDs/etc, so they can afford to give prime rates to borrowers at little risk

edit: this is also why prime rates are usually only offered to people/businesses which are already well off

man dropped any pretense of being anything other than a partisan hack

sad trajectory, the anti-bolsonaro was like the last thing he had to cling onto to claim to still have any sort of pragmatism

Sad way to go out

I was like yeah his politrix f***ed but at least he was doing good work exposing Bolsonaro but i guess he just had a joker moment

Talking about Bolsonaro getting censored like that mf wouldn't have had his ass assassinated if he could get away with it

Twitter related CTE

Some thoughts on nationalism

Its well intentioned but I hate when western leftists go "nationalism is bad but it's okay from the third world", thats way too reductive. In anti-colonial struggles you have to compromise with it because it's sort of inevitable and the other option is being pro-imperialist, and you cant be pro-imperialism without being a first world nationalist yourself anyways. Its a cancer on leftist movements everywhere on earth and the primary vehicle for all forms of reactionary politics. It's like a weapon you eventually need to get rid of or a hunting dog that you need to monitor before they start eating your hunting equipment (terrible a***ogies I know). How exactly is that done who knows, most communist parties struggle/struggled with this to some success and some failures. And at the end of the day without an international revolution of course there's gonna be limits on the reins you can put on nationalism, since you have literally become a nation state.

You’re right it’s definitely not that simple as “nationalism is good in the third world” but I think it’s far more common for western leftists to be hostile to revolutionary nationalism due to how big of an influence anarchism here has. I’ve dead ass had anarchists irl say they supported the US against Vietnam because “the Vietcong was nationalist and nationalism bad”. Have had another one tell me the same thing in regards to the Irish struggle against the UK lol. Nationalism = always bad is a very common sentiment on the left

I agree that nationalism eventually needs to be cast aside in favor of internationalism and that class should always come first, I just feel there’s a bigger problem currently with western leftists being unwilling to support just national struggles than the other way around.

That's true but they're not actually opposing all nationalism, it's what they tell themselves, but at the end of the day when you defend American intervention in Vietnam or British control of Ireland what are you doing other than supporting American British nationalists? Imperial core leftists, liberals, conservatives, and rightists all have their own way of articulating that chauvinist impulse in ways that sound contrary but at the end of the day its all a riff on "my country rocks and its empire is cool with me"

I think the idea of national unity is good in that it is the primary tool to combat imperialism

and a good tool for Imperialist nation to conduct imperialism

the unity of opposites

dialectics

nerd

*edit i got it now thanks krishna

got the manifesto

some of the language is annoying but whatever

Lenin’s a much easier read if you’re still interested

will peep after