Russia's Gazprom Oil Wars. Why does the left let them trade blood for oil?

[WildCat]

All right, I will bite, and try to tie it all back in to the point of the thread.

Genuine Communism and Capitalism only exists on paper. They are both impossible to implement in the real world without an essential Socialism structure to base their systems on.

For Communism, the common ownership, State control, and semi functionality in the deeply flawed Communist structure requires a Socialist system. For Capitalism, All of the roads, police, military, schools, and other essential components needed for trade to occur are Socialist structures. You could never have a Capitalist, Communist, or any other economic system that would ever function without a Socialist backbone.

We are all just different shades of Socialists.

None of those things you listed are means of production, therefore it's not Socialism. Those things are infrastructure.

 

[HoverBoarder]

None of those things you listed are means of production, therefore it's not Socialism. Those things are infrastructure.

I never thought of the Police or military as infrastructure, but even so, I still think that all countries are technically economically classified as different shades of Socialism, but I will save that for another thread.



Back to the topic, at hand, did you read the part in the article I posted at how corruption in Russia, largely from Putin's corrupt cronies, accounted for $300 billion per year?
Putin Corruption Network Revealed

While the more high profile civil rights proponents are jailed for raising the issue, I am surprised that more Russians are not more vocally protesting at the serious damage and outright theft from Putin against their country.

Russia Just Jailed The Brother Of Its Biggest Critic To Make A Point

 

[bit_pattern]

I am surprised that more Russians are not more vocally protesting at the serious damage and outright theft from Putin against their country.

Clearly they're American hating leftists.

 

[HoverBoarder]

Clearly they're American hating leftists.

State controlled media is powerful, but not absolute.

 

[The Don]

None of those things you listed are means of production, therefore it's not Socialism. Those things are infrastructure.

There are or course different definitions about what comprises infrastructure.

For much or Europe (and for much of the last century in the U.K.) the definition of infrastructure included public transport and utilities. In the U.S. and now in the U.K. they are excluded.

An argument could also be made for government ownership of certain strategically important things like military production (or parts thereof), nuclear energy (or parts thereof) and strategically important raw materials.

I'm not 100% why state funding of roads (with the exception of a few toll roads) is accepted in the U.K. but state funding of railways isn't.

 

[WildCat]

I never thought of the Police or military as infrastructure, but even so, I still think that all countries are technically economically classified as different shades of Socialism, but I will save that for another thread.

Police and military are infrastructure:

"hard" infrastructure refers to the large physical networks necessary for the functioning of a modern industrial nation, whereas "soft" infrastructure refers to all the institutions which are required to maintain the economic, health, and cultural and social standards of a country, such as the financial system, the education system, the health care system, the system of government, and law enforcement, as well as emergency services.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure

Back to the topic, at hand, did you read the part in the article I posted at how corruption in Russia, largely from Putin's corrupt cronies, accounted for $300 billion per year?
Putin Corruption Network Revealed

While the more high profile civil rights proponents are jailed for raising the issue, I am surprised that more Russians are not more vocally protesting at the serious damage and outright theft from Putin against their country.

Russia Just Jailed The Brother Of Its Biggest Critic To Make A Point

You answered your own question with the last link.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I'm not 100% why state funding of roads (with the exception of a few toll roads) is accepted in the U.K. but state funding of railways isn't.

The biggest issue amongst the UK voting public, after keeping the NHS public, is rail renationalisation, with over 70% wanting it for years, but it is not an issue for any of the main parties because they've all swallowed the fundamentalist free market kool-aid that private ownership of infrastructure is the only way to make the trains run on time.

Oh, and the rails and most of the rolling stock themselves are under public ownership. The UK government were finally forced to bring Network Rail back under direct departmental control after they admitted they had only structured it to look like a private company to keep its borrowings off the state books. The private companies only drive the trains, rent out the rolling stock and grab the guaranteed high profits (if they don't profit the state pays them compensation).

 

[McHrozni]

1. The two situations are nowhere near analogous. Putin seized a relatively small piece territory on Russia's border that has historically been Russian anyway. The US/UK went half way around the world and completely smashed another nation-state to bits, destabilised the Middle East, cost anything up to 600,000 lives etc etc etc

Not only is your logic fatally flawed, you have your facts right. Let's start from the top:

1. Crimea isn't on Russian border. It shares a sea border with Russia, but no land border.
2. Crimea is substantially less historically Russian than Gibraltar is historically British. It's mainly ethnically Russian solely due to a genocide committed by Russia, starting in 1945.
3. It's not small. It's larger than about 50 countries - about the size of Albania, slightly bigger than Macedonia and slightly smaller than Belgium. It has over 2 million people, more than several member states of the EU. Lichtenstein is small. Belgium is not.

And don't get me started on "gone halfway around the world" moral equivalency BS

McHrozni

 

[HoverBoarder]

You answered your own question with the last link.

I think there's more to it than just being scarred into submission.