Do you know any Communists?

Karl Stein · 25-02-2014 12:52AM

sin_city wrote: »

https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/83521/295864.png

Got to love that narrow definition of what constitutes 'welfare'.

But hey, let's focus on those at the bottom of the ****-heap and look away from the massive corporate welfare programs.

About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.

thinkbynumbers.org

Of course it also ignores spending on the US Department of Welfare-warfare (department of 'Defense'), the spend of the Prison industrial Complex to name some more welfare programs.

This focus on the welfare extended to the poor to direct attention away from the privileges extended to the corporate class and 1% and how so-called 'libertarians' and proponents of the fabled free market parrot this propaganda is why you people are such a joke and are not to be taken seriously. If you're going to cut welfare then focus on where the most welfare goes and let's see how you get on.

It would be funny if it wasn't so damn tragic.

sin_city · 25-02-2014 01:12AM

Charles Rocher wrote: »

Got to love that narrow definition of what constitutes 'welfare'.

But hey, let's focus on those at the bottom of the ****-heap and look away from the massive corporate welfare programs.

Of course it also ignores spending on the US Department of Welfare-warfare (department of 'Defense'), the spend of the Prison industrial Complex to name some more welfare programs.

This focus on the welfare extended to the poor to direct attention away from the privileges extended to the corporate class and 1% and how so-called 'libertarians' and proponents of the fabled free market parrot this propaganda is why you people are such a joke and are not to be taken seriously. If you're going to cut welfare then focus on where the most welfare goes and let's see how you get on.

It would be funny if it wasn't so damn tragic.

Libertarians don't want a large military. Libertarians believe in individual freedom and the non-aggression principle....the tragic part is having an issue with this.

The BIG BAD 1% never stays the same.

sin_city · 25-02-2014 01:15AM

coolemon wrote: »

I have been watching the video. Pretty boring to be frank. Talking about how Marx didn't pay his servant and rode her, how we should focus on the individual if we are understand things. Nonsense like that.

It's pretty exact but you would need to listen to it all.

coolemon · 25-02-2014 01:19AM

sin_city wrote: »

It's pretty exact but you would need to listen to it all.

Well im pretty confident that I have a cohesive and consistent way of understanding society.

If you think there is a particular argument in there that creates some type of evidential or logical fallacy in what I say, let me hear it.

Karl Stein · 25-02-2014 02:17AM

sin_city wrote: »

Libertarians don't want a large military. Libertarians believe in individual freedom and the non-aggression principle....

Those would be 'true Scotsmen' and not the common or garden Scotsman who singles out the poor (those who are suffering most from the economy) while ignoring welfare for the privileged (those who benefit most from the economy) just as you and your fellow travellers do routinely.

tdv123456 · 25-02-2014 02:27AM

Hande hoche! wrote: »

Chairman Meow?

I heard his favorite past time was purrrrrrgin

sin_city · 25-02-2014 02:36AM

Charles Rocher wrote: »

Those would be 'true Scotsmen' and not the common or garden Scotsman who singles out the poor (those who are suffering most from the economy) while ignoring welfare for the privileged (those who benefit most from the economy) just as you and your fellow travellers do routinely.

Mixing up Libertarians with neo conservatives?

KyussBishop · 25-02-2014 10:46AM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

No you explained how it could be implemented. What I would like to know is how you propose to implement it.

Because I don't think it can be implemented.

Note that is operating under the fallacy that debt can't be perpetual. Why can't it be? After a bust we just start borrowing again. Just as we're doing.

Your first sentence, shows that you know the question you ask in your second sentence, is already answered.

Something like 97% of all our money is created alongside an equivalent amount of debt (through bank loans), and this debt carries interest - this means debt grows faster than money, and that you can never pay off debts - they keep growing forever, at an accelerating rate far beyond the proportion of money, until there is a bust.

This permanent growth of debt, is what mandates permanent economic growth - which is going to eventually run-up against hard limits, in what the planet can ecologically sustain, so is completely unsustainable.

You don't think alternatives can be implemented, because you are moving towards an industry (finance) that will lose all of its power, if the problem is corrected - if the money/debt creating powers of the banking/financial industry is removed/curtailed; as Upton Sinclair said:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"

KyussBishop · 25-02-2014 11:12AM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

KyussBishop wrote:

Just because some people have a nihilistic view of our future, doesn't mean we should cement that nihilistic view as reality, by being utterly wreckless with what we've got right now - that's just utterly lazy thinking, which deliberately avoids dealing with any of the problems we are facing as a species, and is used as a weak excuse for justifying actions that generate a lot of short-term profit for some people, while offloading long-term cost onto everyone else.

When did I ever argue otherwise?

Right in your post....you were putting forward the excuse of "it's human nature" as an excuse for not trying to change our current broken economic system (a system that, by your own admission, guarantees long-term extinction).
Basically saying "It's human nature, and it's impossible to change our economic system because of human nature" i.e. implying that, somehow, 'human nature' is going to stop necessary reforms from being enacted - how exactly?

Pretty easy to use that as an excuse to not do anything - "lets create laws to stop people stealing from one another" - "nah, it's human nature to be greedy, creating such laws is pointless, lets not bother".

We have alternatives available, and as unpalatable as you (and the industry you're moving towards) finds them, these alternatives can fix capitalism, so that we don't experience long-term extinction, and so we don't have to let the banking/financial industries run rampage, inflating massive economy-destroying asset bubbles - the alternative, in fact involves, removing exactly their power to do that.

KyussBishop · 25-02-2014 11:24AM

KarlMarks wrote: »

The idea that Smith was a libertarian, especially of the Austrian School type is preposterous.

I wish that those of us on the Left would stop 'lasering in' on the typical Wall Street greed, and using it as the only example of the gross largesse of Capitalism. To stop the blinkers coming down there is a need to offer compelling alternatives at a micro level.

I'd also suggest that we need to come up with compelling arguments as to how we don't always practice what we preach. I've a computer that is made almost exclusively from the results of Chinese and Vietnamese labour. The Capitalist will argue that labour always finds its price, and then to get paid €5 a day in a country where that is above the average wage isn't actually a bad thing. We need to acknowledge this, yet point out what the alternative is.

That's why I think people like KyussBishop are actually doing a disservice to the debate. It's soapboxing without insight. It's the pox of modern Socialist thinking.

What exact arguments do you think are soapboxing? It's fairly cheap to throw that out, without actually backing it up with anything - because you know it's a lazy way of making a claim, without opening that up for rebuttal.

Marxists have a lot of useful insight in the sociological/micro problems with economics, and provide a lot of very useful perspective in how to look at economics and show faults in capitalism, but:
Marxists don't have overall solutions - they have a lot of small-scale solutions to ethical problems in economies, which is a very valuable addition, but they do not have a way to reform our macroeconomic system (only unfinished/speculative, or in some cases failed, theories about macroeconomics) - that's what I'm knowledgeable about (and macroeconomic reform is the most important economic change that can be made right now), and that does not detract from the debate, it compliments what Marxists have to add.

KyussBishop · 25-02-2014 11:48AM

KarlMarks wrote: »

This. It's very difficult to explain that not everything has to have an ulterior profit motive from a strictly monetary prospective. Yet, there is an almost dogmatic belief that the ideas of Marxism (I'll use the Capitalisation if you don't mind) somehow signal a return to a feudalistic or barter based society. Until we break that assumption the Left is doomed to failure. Waffling on about water charges and various social justice issues isn't going to work. Socialism is a true alternative. It won't suit everyone. It involves fundamental change. Breaking decades of cognitive biases so pervasive in the media. That needs to be communicated. It's why I have so little time for 'Pinkos' who think that commenting on The Guardian and proclaiming they are a liberal somehow gives them kudos.

Communism is a strong and forceful economic ideology with big ideas. Anything else is fudging the issue.

You don't need Marxism in order to have a powerful left though, concentrating on that is actually harmful to the left - given the alternatives available.
The Post Keynesian economists have all that's needed, to revive the left without Marxism (but that's not to say, that Marxism doesn't have a lot to add - it does, and a lot of Post-Keynesian's take inspiration from Marx).

You won't see a revolution (those kind of big fundamental changes) in economic/political thought happen - but you can see an evolution (smaller changes) happen, which involves keeping capitalism for the moment; the place to start this evolution is:
The monetary system; it's pretty easy to fix the major faults in capitalism, starting from there, and to immediately provide better conditions for everyone.

Small steps first, starting from there, and then once you have that small step done, it removes a lot of the ideological power of capitalism - from there you can take further smaller steps, towards other kinds of economies (steady state, Libertarian Socialist perhaps, maybe even Communistic).

Iwasfrozen · 25-02-2014 04:22PM

Kyuss I find it very hard to argue with a man who knows he is right about everything and everyone else who disagrees with him is wrong. I do find your posts interesting but arguing against you is frustrating as you're totally unwavering in your beliefs.

You constantly drag up my profession in an attempt to somehow discredit me and I think if we continue down this conversation things will get very personal very quickly.

KyussBishop · 25-02-2014 05:37PM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Kyuss I find it very hard to argue with a man who knows he is right about everything and everyone else who disagrees with him is wrong. I do find your posts interesting but arguing against you is frustrating as you're totally unwavering in your beliefs.

You constantly drag up my profession in an attempt to somehow discredit me and I think if we continue down this conversation things will get very personal very quickly.

Your profession doesn't discredit you, it puts you in a position where you have an innate conflict of interest - where the power and success of the industry you are moving into, depends upon the beliefs you profess, and where it's not really all too surprising, that you'd (consciously or not) be against policies that greatly reduce that industries power.

It's no coincidence, that a very large proportion (not all) of the people holding the type of free market views you do, you (at some point) learn they work in finance:
There's a reason that kind of attitude is prevalent in finance, and it's again no coincidence, that it happens to be an extremely useful set of views to inculcate in people, if you want to create an entire professional culture of fraud.

That doesn't mean you have cynical reasons for holding these views, but it does put you in a position of conflict of interest. If people want to take offence at that, that's their problem - there's nothing unreasonable about pointing it out, and there's nothing wrong with having (and expressing) a healthy skepticism of people and their motives.

You say my beliefs are unwavering - your beliefs aren't? You admitted earlier on that your beliefs lead to long-term extinction, and you still hold onto them, pretending there is no alternative even when alternatives are put forward to you.

The way I base my views, is I look for the faults in theories first, and discard whatever doesn't fit with how economies work in reality - I'm pretty unwavering about that, and I've yet to come across a single good argument to lay fault on Post-Keynesian views, that isn't itself rebutted (and I've searched a lot on that topic).

All of neoclassical/Austrian/Marxist views I am able to find ready faults with, but the Post Keynesians easily have the most robust macroeconomic views out there.

coolemon · 25-02-2014 06:23PM

KyussBishop wrote: »

It's no coincidence, that a very large proportion (not all) of the people holding the type of free market views you do, you (at some point) learn they work in finance:
There's a reason that kind of attitude is prevalent in finance, and it's again no coincidence, that it happens to be an extremely useful set of views to inculcate in people, if you want to create an entire professional culture of fraud.

That is a very interesting point Kyuss. Out of curiosity where do you get the idea that a large proportion of those with free-market views are held by people who work in finance?

Rubberchikken · 25-02-2014 06:25PM

i would be one if i only had the energy.:P

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 25-02-2014 06:39PM

Rubberchikken wrote: »

i would be one if i only had the energy.:P

Ah, sure they're a bunch of idle lefty crusty pinko liberal wasters - how much energy do you need to lift a pint of weed?! :pac:

KyussBishop · 25-02-2014 07:09PM

coolemon wrote: »

That is a very interesting point Kyuss. Out of curiosity where do you get the idea that a large proportion of those with free-market views are held by people who work in finance?

Just has been my experience particularly on this forum, that the longer I debate with the same people, over the same free-market issues, over time it usually comes to light (often in a passing comment to someone else), that they work in finance (or are moving in that direction).

It's definitely not all of them now, but I do think that it's a very high proportion

(enough to, in my view, call it a definite trend)

sarkozy · 25-02-2014 10:55PM

Which is a very important point because even Marx recognised that knowledge or worldviews is the product of having certain kinds of interests grounded in human beings' material conditions, their very personal experience of everyday life as an individual tied to their community.

Marx developed a methodology which led him to define this varience in worldviews based in interested knowledge as 'class', the observation being that, as with feudalism with its different forms of power, ownership, commerce and production, divided humans into kings, vassals, peasants, etc., industrial capitalism also divided humans into different levels and, looking around and seeing that this was truly the case, he sought to explain why this happened.

The place you occupied on the pecking order, therefore, impacted on how you saw and made sense of the world - this he called 'class consciousness' - and how you got others to believe this - he called this 'false consciousness'.

Antonio Gramsci, an extremely influential theorist who did his best work in prison, then asked himself why, if the conditions for a communist takeover in Italy were right in the years following WWI, why the country lurched into fascism instead. He theorised that culture, as a product of an ideological system rooted in capitalist production, played a key role in the balance of power across certain social classes - the theory of 'hegemony' - whereby the system functioned whereby the dominant classes co-opt middle- and upper-working-classes to do the dirty work of containing and repressing, where necessary, the large working classes.

I think we have the same situation in Ireland today.

Last week on Question Time on BBC, discussing the British welfare system, as politicians on left, right and middle were spouting banal (and therefore dangerous) 'truisms', one audience member got to the nub of the issue. I'm paraphrasing, but he said: "A banker, a politician and an ordinary citizen sit around a table for a cup of tea. They share a pack of 12 biscuits; the banker and politician take 11 between them and the citizen takes what's left, looking at the other two suspiciously; the politician turns to the banker and says: 'I'd be careful if I were you, that man wants to take your biscuits."

Then he said: "The truth of the situation now is what's always happened, the rich take what they like and force the majority to accept lower living standards for their own good and then get the middle classes to turn on the poorest and most vulnerable and blame them for all the country's problems".

As he finished speaking, the studio erupted in applause.

The same is happening here.

The same is happening in the the African countries I worked in as an aid worker.

When you actually stand back from the emotional arguments for or against capitalism or communism, when you look at it from a philosophical, ethical or political point of view, the fact that capitalism has never solved our economic or environmental problems, that it's never found a way to avoid systemic economic crises like this one (which will probably get worse, by the way), that capitalism has never managed to actually deliver what people claim by ensuring everyone has what they need and want all the time, that global poverty and inequality persists and is getting worse, you have to ask yourself what then can be the alternative?

I won't say it, but I bet all my money in the world (which isn't much) that nobody will be able to propose an alternative that isn't in some way one of the aforementioned.

coolemon · 25-02-2014 11:46PM

sarkozy wrote: »

Which is a very important point because even Marx recognised that knowledge or worldviews is the product of having certain kinds of interests grounded in human beings' material conditions, their very personal experience of everyday life as an individual tied to their community.

Marx developed a methodology which led him to define this varience in worldviews based in interested knowledge as 'class', the observation being that, as with feudalism with its different forms of power, ownership, commerce and production, divided humans into kings, vassals, peasants, etc., industrial capitalism also divided humans into different levels and, looking around and seeing that this was truly the case, he sought to explain why this happened.

The place you occupied on the pecking order, therefore, impacted on how you saw and made sense of the world - this he called 'class consciousness' - and how you got others to believe this - he called this 'false consciousness'.

Antonio Gramsci, an extremely influential theorist who did his best work in prison, then asked himself why, if the conditions for a communist takeover in Italy were right in the years following WWI, why the country lurched into fascism instead. He theorised that culture, as a product of an ideological system rooted in capitalist production, played a key role in the balance of power across certain social classes - the theory of 'hegemony' - whereby the system functioned whereby the dominant classes co-opt middle- and upper-working-classes to do the dirty work of containing and repressing, where necessary, the large working classes.

I think we have the same situation in Ireland today.

Last week on Question Time on BBC, discussing the British welfare system, as politicians on left, right and middle were spouting banal (and therefore dangerous) 'truisms', one audience member got to the nub of the issue. I'm paraphrasing, but he said: "A banker, a politician and an ordinary citizen sit around a table for a cup of tea. They share a pack of 12 biscuits; the banker and politician take 11 between them and the citizen takes what's left, looking at the other two suspiciously; the politician turns to the banker and says: 'I'd be careful if I were you, that man wants to take your biscuits."

Then he said: "The truth of the situation now is what's always happened, the rich take what they like and force the majority to accept lower living standards for their own good and then get the middle classes to turn on the poorest and most vulnerable and blame them for all the country's problems".

As he finished speaking, the studio erupted in applause.

The same is happening here.

The same is happening in the the African countries I worked in as an aid worker.

When you actually stand back from the emotional arguments for or against capitalism or communism, when you look at it from a philosophical, ethical or political point of view, the fact that capitalism has never solved our economic or environmental problems, that it's never found a way to avoid systemic economic crises like this one (which will probably get worse, by the way), that capitalism has never managed to actually deliver what people claim by ensuring everyone has what they need and want all the time, that global poverty and inequality persists and is getting worse, you have to ask yourself what then can be the alternative?

I won't say it, but I bet all my money in the world (which isn't much) that nobody will be able to propose an alternative that isn't in some way one of the aforementioned.

The failure of a proletarian class consciousness to come into fruition as Marx believed would happen is probably, in my view, the biggest failure/weakness of Marxist theory to date. It has led to the likes of Leninism which, in the absence of proletarian class consciousness, warps the concept to being one in which a self-proclaimed 'Vanguard' can assume a leadership position on the pretence of having "advanced class consciousness". Funnily enough these people were often middle class lawyers, and while engaging as "professional revolutionaries", were detached from the very relations to the means of production from which Marx supposed class consciousness emerges. That is, the social ideas and consciousness from which a new and transformative system is possible.

And we know what 'Leninism' led to. Or indeed, we can see the historical materialist 'function' of Leninist ideology -> the establishment of a social class configuration in which modern production methods and technology were compatible -> of a type of capitalism, state capitalism.

As Marx stated: "Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production."

That is, it does not matter what Lenin, Mao, Castro or god knows who thought they were doing (creating "socialism"). What they were doing, rather, must be explained in a historical materialist way - through an analysis of the forces and means of production.

But saying that, the economic class antagonisms that Marx identified still exist and are inherent to capitalism. In fact, they are the very building blocks of the existing economic order. Marx's belief of the emergence of 'class consciousness' cannot be wrote off just yet. Thus far people, at least in contemporary times, are not identifying themselves in accordance with the inherent economic antagonisms, but rather, with other cultural notions of class.

As Marx wrote on the first page of the Communist Manifesto -

"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."

That is, at points in time the class relationships - and consequently the aligned consciousness - are not always apparent or emergent.

Just look at the Celtic Tiger. The common belief was that 'it could not end', 'it can only get better'. But the economic contradictions created recession, and thus 'revealed' an economic reality built on sand. "All that is solid melts in to air".

sin_city · 25-02-2014 11:50PM

coolemon wrote: »

That is a very interesting point Kyuss. Out of curiosity where do you get the idea that a large proportion of those with free-market views are held by people who work in finance?

I'd also like to see some stats on this.

sin_city · 25-02-2014 11:51PM

KyussBishop wrote: »

Just has been my experience particularly on this forum, that the longer I debate with the same people, over the same free-market issues, over time it usually comes to light (often in a passing comment to someone else), that they work in finance (or are moving in that direction).

It's definitely not all of them now, but I do think that it's a very high proportion (enough to, in my view, call it a definite trend)

So there are no stats on this?

:rolleyes:

sarkozy · 26-02-2014 12:15AM

coolemon: I'm pretty sure Marx is not responsible for the strategies developed by others to bring about their revolutions. I wasn't even making a point about strategy but, rather, the value of the insights in Marx's writings as related to the post I responded to.

Simply, Marx's original writings are out of date but still contain very important and relevant analytical observations about the nature of our social world. For example, we don't have the same simple class structures Marx described and, while he was writing in very internationalised times, we're in the era of globalisation. Financial structures, governance structures, social relations (e.g. arising from Web 2.0) are changing.

That requires new research, new analysis, new theorisation. But the left tradition is always also one of action, but the dilemma on the left, which even radicals like Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek say, is to have a revolution without spilling blood.

Or, to put it another way, to work collectively to transform political economy and society in a dynamic and democratic way.

This can only be something that emerges spontaneously through action, on one hand, and deep thought, with both thought and action openly feeding each other in response to a changing world.

That's been the idea for over 100 years. It's the Russians and Chinese who kind of ruined it for everyone (and the US for entering into a nearly-post-WWII pact with them to perpetuate this silly ideological cold war).

sin_city · 26-02-2014 12:31AM

coolemon wrote: »

Just look at the Celtic Tiger. The common belief was that 'it could not end', 'it can only get better'. But the economic contradictions created recession, and thus 'revealed' an economic reality built on sand. "All that is solid melts in to air".

Common belief by whom?

Most Austrian economists warned of the global collapse of 2008 of which our Celtic Tiger was part of.

The boom and bust cycles are created by central banks inflating and deflating the currency supply.

coolemon · 26-02-2014 12:35AM

sarkozy wrote: »

coolemon: I'm pretty sure Marx is not responsible for the strategies developed by others to bring about their revolutions.

Never said he was.

For example, we don't have the same simple class structures Marx described

I completely disagree. While we have developed other very useful class paradigms to analyse different social phenomenon, Marx's class system is as relevant now as it ever was. Very little has changed. In fact, many of the trends identified by Marx are only now (at least in Ireland) coming into being, such as the decimation of much of the petty bourgeoisie and, as you mention, an intensified globalisation.

We do, in fact, have the same 'simple' class structure.

Of the inherent antagonisms between capital and labour.

and, while he was writing in very internationalised times, we're in the era of globalisation. Financial structures, governance structures, social relations (e.g. arising from Web 2.0) are changing.

Of course the social relations are changing. They constantly change.
There is nothing new about that.

"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify." - https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

Or, to put it another way, to work collectively to transform political economy and society in a dynamic and democratic way.

Those are ideas born of a particular set of circumstances. Tell that to the Ukrainians ripping Kiev up.

coolemon · 26-02-2014 12:37AM

sin_city wrote: »

Common belief by whom?

Ordinary people.

Sure, yeah, I didn't think it would last either. But my political/social consciousness is less than ordinary.

coolemon · 26-02-2014 12:48AM

sin_city wrote: »

The boom and bust cycles are created by central banks inflating and deflating the currency supply.

And why are they doing that?

branie · 26-02-2014 01:05AM

No, comrade

sin_city · 26-02-2014 01:19AM

coolemon wrote: »

And why are they doing that?

To gain and consolidate power I guess.

There used to be many banks but they were all bought up by the larger ones years ago during down times. 10,000 banks in the US went out of business during the depression. Around one-half of all banks either closed or merged with other banks.

Whoever is running the big banks today are the people with real power.

There is no proof but there are some suggestions that Jacob Schiff financed the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

coolemon · 26-02-2014 01:28AM

sin_city wrote: »

To gain and consolidate power I guess.

So then the boom and bust cycles are not actually caused by banks inflating and deflating the currency supply - but rather - from other social processes.

Can you explain why they want to gain and consolidate power? And what are the limits on their potential to consolidate power completely?

sin_city · 26-02-2014 01:47AM

coolemon wrote: »

So then the boom and bust cycles are not actually caused by banks inflating and deflating the currency supply - but rather - from other social processes.

Where did you get that from what I said?

coolemon wrote: »

Can you explain why they want to gain and consolidate power? And what are the limits on their potential to consolidate power completely?

Well, who knows....why did the US invest $5billion recently in the Ukraine??? Where did that money come from?

Do they want to impose US hegemony globally?

Do you know any Communists?

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