I think the implied argument is that if Putin is untrustworthy and if you're implying that means that he can't be trusted to comply with agreements made with Ukraine, then we need to look at historic agreements between Russia and Ukraine. Two recent agreements between them include Minsk I and II. Ukraine, not Russia, violated both.
You're welcome. I'm glad you're taking this in the spirit in which it's intended. When Marxists criticise idealism, the target is the liberal world outlook, not the individual.
By implication, really. Focusing on what people think of Russia's/Putin's trustworthiness rather than on it's record or the factors that would keep it honest, so to speak. It's Ukraine that violated Minsk, apparently prompted by France, Germany, and 'NATO'. Looking at the optics, that seems a little more duplicitous than assassinating someone who attempted a coup (if this was an assassination and if what happened before can be called a coup).
Would I trust a single person, e.g. Putin to uphold an international agreement? It doesn't matter. It's not a one-man show. War is expensive and the longer it goes on for the more expensive it becomes, in support as well as the cost of arms, soldiers, etc.
Nobody has to trust Putin. An agreement would be maintained because material factors require it to be maintained. What westerners think it's by-the-by. (I'm assuming you're not Russian as you were asking about Russian sources—I'm not asking you to confirm or deny as I don't want you to dox yourself; I'm just trying to give an answer that makes sense from the available evidence.)
Marxists, following Lenin, define imperialism as the monopoly of finance capital. Not as a synonym for 'conquest', 'annexation', 'empire' (not that I'm saying all three necessarily apply to Russia in Ukraine—a conclusion on that isn't relevant, here).
When US (Anglo-European) finance capital dominates the world through the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and petrodollar, supported by a network of however many hundreds of military bases, all paid for by it's vassals and enemies due to said dominance, there's little to no room for anyone else to even consider being imperialist.
We can discuss that if you like. I'll likely need others to chip in. I'm not proposing that I have all the answers. It's not something with a clear answer. But we can't have the debate at all unless we agree on common definitions and frames of reference. Otherwise it feels as though liberals simply do not understand what's being said. It's just talking past one another, where one side has a coherent definition and framework and the other side… doesn't.
I'll let you decide whether you can honestly say you have a theoretically sound concept of imperialism depending on how much dedicated literature on imperialism you've read.
I love it when liberals use 'illiberal' as a criticism. Begging the question much? Of course we're illiberal we're anti-capitalists!
Don't whisper it in hushed tones as if we're being shy about it and might be embarrassed. Liberalism is the cause of so much misery in the world I'd be more embarrassed to be called a liberal.
The best of it is that even liberals accept that liberal society is atrocious; they just throw up their hands, claim that it's the only option, and benefit decadently from the system while the world burns as if nothing could or should be done about it. The nerve.
I don't know what you think I'm trying to justify. You said:
When you see people on the hard left screeching about Ukrainian Nazis or advancing absurd peace deals then they’ve been gotten at.
I explained that the 'hard left' has been concerned about Nazis in Ukraine for a long time. You can understand that communists are going to keep a close eye on countries that ban communist parties. Yes other places have a far right problem too. Communists keep an eye on reactionaries elsewhere as well but it's hardly germane to a conversation about the circumstances of a war in Ukraine, is it?
Can't speak for anyone else but I may be able to answer this.
A lib is a liberal, someone who is pro-capital, not an anti-capitalist (very little overlap with how liberal tends to be defined in ordinary language in the US). Optics, relating to how people see the event, is idealism not materialism. Liberalism is idealist, unlike Marxism, which is materialist.
The dig at liberalism and aesthetics is likely a critique of the implication that what this looks like has much to do with the material reality. That's an aesthetic argument. It doesn't matter what this looks like because the optics don't affect the material relations. Someone who elevates the optics at the expense of the material relations is making an idealist, likely a liberal argument.
Hence the comment embodying an aesthetic argument of the kind that liberals often make.
You don’t get to say that US presidents’ actions can only be explained by the hubris of people and systems that want endless growth and control, but Putin’s actions cannot.
This is the start of a cogent argument but it needs to be followed through.
The flip side of the coin is that you don't get to accept that "US presidents’ actions can … be explained by … want[ing] endless growth and control" and reject any notion that it would use Ukraine to secure endless growth for itself. This may not be you. But it follows logically for those who understand that the US/NATO is the greatest threat to world peace.
If profit drives Putin, why Ukraine and not another neighbour who hasn't been courting NATO and accepting western money, weapons, training, etc since at least circa 2014? The answer is because the US chose Ukraine to provoke Russia.
People think Ukraine has a Nazi problem because western media was shouting about it from the rooftops for a decade before the invasion. Then they only whispered it if they mentioned it at all but they kept on posting pictures of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi insignia plastered on their faces or their equipment. Or photos of politicians with a portrait of Bandera on the wall above their desk. The gullible liberal journalists didn't even know what they had to censor out at the start of the war.
Unlike libs, the 'hard' left didn't start looking at Ukraine on the date of the invasion and they didn't wipe their memories clean of the historical context. A conspiracy involving Russian propagandists isn't needed to explain this.
Neither are Russian propagandists needed to explain that racist westerners are going to be racist against immigrants and refugees, wherever they're from.
You should stick around and have a look what it's like when communists argue among themselves. At the moment it seems that you have a preconceived notion of what Marxist discussion looks like. I assume that means you haven't met many Marxists, which is common except in communist countries.
There are many things we have already reached agreement on, such as that something like 99.9999% of westerners are completely clueless about China and communism.
They don't want to know. They don't know what historical or dialectical materialism is, if they've even heard of the terms. They don't care for political economy (even their own liberal version of it). Otherwise they would be willing to look past what they have been taught and objectively weigh and consider new evidence.
Notwithstanding that the evidence isn't new; it just never generally reached the western public. Be confident that your ruling class knows what really happens/ed. There are over 150 years of Marxist literature that you very likely have never encountered or understood as Marxist. We're not just making things up or coming to conclusions based on vibes or predetermined notions of who's right or wrong (morally or otherwise).
Marxism begins with the concrete analysis of concrete conditions. If you have some new concrete evidence for us, by all means share it and we will arrive at fresh conclusions. It better be rigorous evidence, though, or it will be dismissed.
It's up to you whether you want to learn but if all you do is call us drones for accepting conclusions reached after years of research and struggle sessions, you're going to be disappointed.
Two points about AI from a very much non-expert (me):
Current western attempts look impressive but are a bit shit and are probably doomed to fail for as long as they can't filter out liberalism and memes. It's going to be contradictions of capitalism and it's ideology on a speedrun.
China has the data of up to 1.4 or more billion people all under one roof. And as they're Marxists, they can ensure that the developed AI better correlates to reality and it's used productively rather than to cheat on tests (that's going to end up badly) and to sack employees because the computer (incorrectly) said so.
Which is to say the west is doubly fucked and AI won't save it.
It's this kind of accident: https://dailycaller.com/2022/03/21/australia-gym-attack-weight-plate-video/