Where do you think social progress comes from? It isn’t purely economic, of course, but what’s critical is that social progress is hampered by imperialism and neocolonialism. When the primary obstacle to global progress, including socially, are these economic systems of brutal plunder, considering countries like the social democracies in the imperial core based purely on their internal policy and not at all on their foreign policy is a grave error.
Again, it’s like you’re pointing to a group of landlords and calling them more progressive than their tenants. It’s a form of Herrenvolk progressivism, progressivism at the expense of the global south and working against global progress.
Well, yeah, all you have to do is look at Iran under Mossadegh to realize that reactionary forces often stem from colonial oppression. What doesn’t make sense is denying that those forces are reactionary. You can understand why something is happening and still call it what it is.
The US is largely at fault for how reactionary Iran is, but Iran is still reactionary. If you never learned to swim because your parents wouldn’t let you near water, it isn’t your fault that you never learned, but you still shouldn’t jump in the deep end.
I am not denying social conservativism as reactionary, I am rejecting the idea that imperialist and neocolonial countries can be considered left of center when they are larger obstacles to forward progress than socially reactionary anti-imperialist countries.
Where do you think social progress comes from? It isn’t purely economic, of course, but what’s critical is that social progress is hampered by imperialism and neocolonialism. When the primary obstacle to global progress, including socially, are these economic systems of brutal plunder, considering countries like the social democracies in the imperial core based purely on their internal policy and not at all on their foreign policy is a grave error.
Again, it’s like you’re pointing to a group of landlords and calling them more progressive than their tenants. It’s a form of Herrenvolk progressivism, progressivism at the expense of the global south and working against global progress.
Well, yeah, all you have to do is look at Iran under Mossadegh to realize that reactionary forces often stem from colonial oppression. What doesn’t make sense is denying that those forces are reactionary. You can understand why something is happening and still call it what it is.
The US is largely at fault for how reactionary Iran is, but Iran is still reactionary. If you never learned to swim because your parents wouldn’t let you near water, it isn’t your fault that you never learned, but you still shouldn’t jump in the deep end.
I am not denying social conservativism as reactionary, I am rejecting the idea that imperialist and neocolonial countries can be considered left of center when they are larger obstacles to forward progress than socially reactionary anti-imperialist countries.