they may also have to replace China as the source of cheap labor for the West.
Besides the climate catastrophe -- which I'm with you in hoping humanity finds a way to mitigate -- there's also the problem of building India into a modern advanced industrial economy that can replace China. China's industrialization is rightly seen by the rest of the world as a kind of miracle, made possible (though western countries hate to admit it) by the fact of its being a Marxist-Leninist state. Specifically, land reform, political unity, the government's ability to mobilize the masses, and a theoretical framework which understands the role of capitalism in the context of Chinese and world history have been the cornerstones of China's economic success. The west likes to boast about how capitalist investment "raised" China to what it is today, but the fact is that no other government could have done with that investment what China did. Certainly Modi's government does not have the power, ability, or necessary base among the people to achieve what Mao, Deng, and Xi have done.
Again, very interesting, and extremely powerful poetry. Shiva is the personification of death, correct? And moksha means "illusion," as in desire for transitory things? So the divine, by being beyond all opposites, is utterly simple and utterly beyond human comprehension. This is actually really beautiful and profound, if I'm understanding it right.
the earlier Aryans when colonized northern India they put aboriginal people into lower caste due to the fear of race mixing and of losing the priestly status
I've heard that some Hindutva types get around this by denying the Aryan invasions ever happened.
Very interesting (I'm fascinated by world religions/philosophies). The part about rebirth reminds me of Plato, who of course came much later. He has Socrates say in various dialogues that we inhabit a corrupted zone of the earth; those who lead good lives can after death be reborn in the higher, more beautiful regions of earth, while those who practice virtue and devote their lives to wisdom will after death leave their physical bodies and the physical world and go to live with God and the "forms." But those who are vicious in life will be reborn as animals or plants; and if their sins are particularly vile, they will not even be allowed to live on earth, but will be punished in a region of fire at the center of the earth.
I remember coming across the second passage, or something like it, in a biography of Beethoven. He was apparently deeply moved by certain Hindu writings and copied out entire sections in his notebooks.
I hate these dumbass Hindu nationalists. Their weird love for "Israel," their insistence that Europeans and Americans actually care about where they fall in the caste system, their belief that westerners consider them somehow "white" -- everything about them is just delusional. Only Zionists and Ukrainian nazis inhabit a weirder headspace.
it was very easy to rip people off in California; and anti-slavery laws didn’t apply to Indigenous workers who were disregarded as people, so remained a cheap if not free source of labor.
Exactly, it's not a "win" for American workers, except perhaps in the limited sense that Japanese management is maybe a bit less likely to run the company into the ground. But it is a symptom of America's terminal decline as an industrial power.
Also, US Steel is a merger of several companies founded by the 19th century "robber baron" industrialists, who are still held up as more-or-less flawed heroes in the US. If it weren't for the effect on workers, one might feel a certain schadenfreude at this turn of events.
I don't admire the Romans (this isn't some sort of RETVRN posting), but I think you have to recognize they played a certain historical role in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Much of western European culture rests on a Roman substratum. They advanced the productive forces in the empire, and when that historical role was completed, they were conquered by "barbarian" tribes who had developed a higher level of production -- namely, feudalism. Michael Parenti has written on this.
You're absolutely right that Americans do spread culture, and way too much of it, but -- it's a weird sort of cultural export, corresponding to the basically negative essence of capitalism in the historical-dialectical process. For the most part, it's either 1) the basic technology and social structures of modernity, which by historical accident they possessed in the most developed form, or 2) a cultural art-product that is completely corrosive and negative, a sort of "anti-culture," if you will. This latter is the superstructure, not of a social order, but of an anti-social one. Now as regards 1): nothing about it is uniquely "American," and in fact the American version is flawed at its base, due to it being organized according to the profit motive. In the People's Republic of China, productive mechanisms developed in the US are being transformed and superseded, a process of de-Americanization and corresponding Sinicization. For 2): American media/music/etc., being global but only in a capitalist sense, is essentially devoid of content. It is pure formalism, whose only value as a cultural art-product lies in certain purely technical advances: particularly in the art of cinema. As capitalism gives way to socialism, and countries break free of the imperialist yoke, these technical advances will be adopted and used in an art which is no longer "global" and "American," but is rather expressive of the values and desires of the proletariat of a particular socialist society. Particularly as the primary stage of socialism gives way to the stage after it, we will likely see a flowering of proletarian art comparable to any of the great artistic periods of the past.
Americans like to think of themselves as modern Romans. The difference is, the Romans actually spread culture along with war and destruction. One seriously wonders whether, a thousand years from now, average citizens will even remember that the American empire existed.
Sorry to hear that, comrade. Puts my shitposting here in perspective. Hope all is well with you and the SO, and that you're able to get to a safe place soon. This criminal western-backed war can't end soon enough.
Fair enough. But man, are you taking one for the team.