EMERYALİZM

Serbest rekabetçi kapitalizmde sermaye ihracı yoktur. O zaman sadece satılacak ürünler ihraç ediliyordu. Oysa emperyalizmde gündeme sermaye gereksinimi girdi. Sermaye ihracı, emperyalist süreçte kullanılan daha etkili bir sömürü biçimidir. Bu biçimde emperyalist ülke, meta üreterek ülkelere satmak yerine sermayesini alan bulduğu ülkeye yatırır ve üretimi de doğrudan kendisi gerçekleştirir. Emperyalistlerin bu yöntemi seçme nedeni, hem daha çok sömürü, hem de kendi ülkelerindeki sermaye fazlasına yeni alan ihtiyaçlarıdır. Burada hareket ettirici güç, kar hırsıdır. Çünkü emperyalist ülkelerde hala yatırım yapılacak alanlar vardır. Örneğin: Tarım alanları sanayi alanlarına göre daha geridirler. Fakat, emperyalizmin doğası budur ve o hiçbir zaman az karlı işlere yatırım yapmaz. Çünkü insanlığa, canlılara ve doğaya düşman bir yıkım sistemidir.

Üretimi arttırmak, ürünlerin maliyetini düşürmek için tekniği geliştirmeye büyük ağırlık veriyorlar, işçileri sömürmeyi de son noktasına kadar zorluyorlardı. Maliyeti düşürmenin sonucu fiyatlar düşüyor, rakiplerden hangisi daha düşük fiyatlı mal sürerse pazar onun eline geçiyordu. Kapitalist işletme dahilindeki sermaye, artı değer birikimi nedeniyle büyüyor, meta üretimi gittikçe çoğalıyordu. Böylece bir yandan sermaye, bir yandan üretim yoğunlaştı, yani büyüdü ve gittikçe az sayıda işletmenin elinde toplanmaya başladı, yani merkezileşti. Böylece, serbest rekabetçi kurallar içinde çekişen işletmelerin yerine kendi aralarında oluşturdukları birlikler yoluyla, serbest rekabeti ortadan kaldıran büyük tekeller oluştu. Serbest rekabetçi kapitalizmin yerini emperyalizm aldı. Tekellerin farklı örgütlenme biçimleri vardır, hepsinin yapısı özünde aynıdır. Kartel, tröst, konzern, anonim şirket en sık rastlanılan biçimleridir. Tekellerin birlikteliği olan holdingler de tekelin farklı bir örgütlenme biçimidir. Devletin giderek yalnızca tekeller çıkarına işlemesi, tekellerin devlet üzerinde oldukça etkili olması, devletle tekellerin bütünleşmesini sağladı. Tekelci burjuvazi, emperyalist devlet üzerinde oldukça etkin olduğu için artık yalnızca tekellerin çıkarına girişimde bulunur. Bu devlete tekelci kapitalist devlet, emperyalist devlet diyoruz. Bundan böyle devletin bütün işleri, tekellerin kararlarını garantileyecek doğrultudadır. Bu bir zorunluluktur. Kapitalizmin emperyalist sürece geçmesi ilk küresel krizin sonucudur. Kriz sonucunda burjuvazinin merkezileşme ve yoğunlaşma süreci yaşandı. Küçük ve orta gelirli şirketler iflas etti. Bu noktada piyasa kontrolü ve devlet ekonomi politikaları, büyük şirketlerin tekeline girdi. Kapitalizm, emperyalist sürece geçerken ortakçılığa dayanan tröst ve kartellerle kendisini yapılandırdı. Bu süreçte banka burjuvazisi ve sanayi burjuvazisi arasında bir bağ oluştu. Büyük tekellerin devlet ihaleleri ve banka kredileriyle büyüdükleri bir sürece girildi. İlk krizle birlikte tekeller, ucuz ham madde ve yeni yatırım alanı arayışına girdiler. Bu arayışlar kapitalizmi küresel üretim biçimine dönüştürdü. Ekonomik olarak güçsüz ülkeler, jeopolitik savaş alanına dönüştü. Ham madde ticareti gelişince, ulaşım sorununu çözmek için büyük yatırımlar başladı. Kapitalist ülkelerdeki büyük tekeller arasındaki ham madde ve pazar arayışındaki rekabet, 1.Paylaşım savaşına neden oldu. Korumacılık ve kolonicilik politikaları rekabeti arttırdı. Bu rekabet sonucunda, silah ve savaş sanayine yatırımlar arttı. Kapitalizm bu krizden kurtulmak için köklü olarak yenilenerek emperyalist sürece geçti. Böylece kapitalizmin en yüksek süreci başladı.

Emperyalizm, kapitalist ülkelerin saldırgan dış politikalarının değil kapitalizmin "eşitsiz bileşik gelişim yasasının" kaçınılmaz ürünüdür. Kapitalizmin tekelleşmeye doğru yönelmesi, ilk başlarda yalnızca belirli bölgeler arasındaki ticareti geliştirdi. Emperyalizm süreci ise, sanayileşmenin büyük boyutlara yükseldiği ve kapitalizmin dünya sistemine dönüştüğü süreçte ticareti de evrenselleştirdi. Önceki dönemlerin tek boyutlu ticari ilişkilerinin yerini, sermaye birikiminde atılımlar yapan tekelci güçlerin iç içe geçmiş ilişkileri aldı. Farklı ülkelere ait finans kapital grupları, diğer egemen ülkelere ait kolonilerin sınırlarını aşmak ve yeni pazarlara sızmak istiyordu. Finans kapital, önündeki engelleri tanımayarak, karlı gördüğü her işe girişmeye başladı. Artık, ekonomik olarak güçsüz bir ülkede yalnızca tek bir egemen yoktu ve kolonyalizm dönemine ait mutlak tekel durumu sarsılıyordu ve ulusal burjuvaziler güç kaybediyordu. Emperyalizm sürecinde, tüm yatırım alanlarında tek bir kapitalist ülkenin tekelini kurması, bir yandan tekeller arasındaki rekabet, diğer yandan finans kapital grupları arasındaki karmaşık ilişkiler nedeniyle mümkün değildi. Emperyalist ilişkiler ağıyla güçlenmeye başlayan kapitalist ülkeler, kendi aralarında avantajlarını zayıflatmaya yönelik ilişkilerde uzmanlaştılar. Örneğin her biri kolonisi üzerinde hak iddia ederken, rakip ülkenin kolonisinde "ulusal bağımsızlık mücadelesini" destekledi. Koloni ülkelerde ulusal mücadeleler işçi mücadelelerine dönüşmediği sürece, bu ataklar birbirleri için doğal karşılanıyordu. Çünkü koloniciler, koloni olmaktan çıkarak ulus devlet kuran ülkenin, sıra ekonominin yapılanmasına geldiğinde, yanlarına varacağına güvenirler.

Emperyalizmden önce bankalar, ödemeler konusunda aracılıktan başka bir işe karışmazdı. Fakat tekelci kapitalizm çağında, sanayi sermayesi artınca, bankalarda da değişiklik oldu. Gelişen sanayinin mali gereksinimlerine bankalar yanıt verdi. Bankada bulunan para şeklinde sermaye, sanayi sermayesi ile bütünleşti. Büyük bankalar, küçüklerini ya kendilerine bağladı ya da yok etti. Büyük sanayideki yatırım alanları, büyük paraları ve kredi olanakları nedeniyle yavaş yavaş bu büyük bankalar tarafından kontrol edilir duruma geldiler. Artık bankalar, banka tekeliydi. Artık tüm kapitalistlerin mali işleri banka tekelindeydi. Şubeleri aracılığıyla sermaye ve gelirleri merkezileştirdiler. Banka müdürleri, sanayiye el attıklarından, artık denetim işi de yapıyordu. Ve işte böylece finans kapital doğdu. Finans kapital, yani mali sermaye, banka sermayesiyle sanayi sermayesinin tekelci süreçte birleşimidir. Finans kapitalin ortaya çıkışı, serbest rekabetçi kapitalizmden emperyalizme geçişin en önemli göstergesidir. Emperyalist baskının işleyişinde borç mekanizması çok önemli yer tutar. Emperyalizm sürecinde güçlülük kolonicilikte değil, ulusal burjuvazinin başka bölgelere etki etmesinde aranır. Emperyalizm sürecinde yükselen kapitalizm, üretici güçlerin uluslararasılaşmasıyla ulusal devlet biçimlenmesi arasındaki çelişkiyi, finans kapitalin yayılmacılığıyla atlatmaya çalışır. Ulus devletlerin de sırtında kambur olan bankalarla büyük sanayi tekelleri arasındaki bu iç içelik, ortaya bir avuç para babası çıkardı. Ben bu para babası tekeline ise yerel (finans oligarşisinin hizmetinde) ve küresel olarak tümleşen "finans oligarşisi" diyorum. Emperyalizmin öncesi kapitalizm döneminde olan kolonyalizm politikaları, bugün de hala emperyalizm olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Emperyalizmi sömürgeci yayılmacılığa indirgemek yanılgıdır. Kolonicilik bir devletin başka ulusları, devletleri, siyasal ve ekonomik olarak ele geçirip yerli halk üzerinde kültürel asimilasyon uygulaması ve kolonileştirdiği toprakların mutlak egemeni olması anlamına gelir. Kolonileştirme, bir ülkenin siyasal, hukuksal, ekonomik tüm var oluş haklarının yok edilmesine dayanmaktadır. Kolonici güçler, koloni kontrolü kaybedene kadar mutlak egemen olmaktaydı. Başka hiçbir güç o koloninin üzerinde söz hakkına sahip olmamaktaydı. Koloniciliğin temel dayanağı egemenliği altına alma üzerinden gelişmekteydi.

Kapitalizm geliştikçe, tekelleşme süreci ilerledikçe bu egemenlik biçimi de baştan aşağıya boyut değiştirme sürecine girdi. Eskinin koloni imparatorlukları yerlerini tekellerin, kartellerin, finans kapitalin çoklu ilişkisi temelinde yerini emperyalizme bırakıyordu. Özet olarak, kolonyalizm siyasal bağımsızlıktan yoksun koloniciliğe dayanırken, emperyalizm ise güçlü finans kapital gruplarının küresel etki alanına dayanır. Emperyalizmi koloniciliğe indirgemek ona karşı mücadeleyi de milliyetçi bir temelde bağımsızlık mücadelesine indirgemeye karşılık gelir. Emperyalizm kapitalizmin dünya sistemine dönüşmesinin adıdır. Bunu bu şekilde kavrayamayıp yayılmacılık ve saldırgan bir dış politika olarak görmek, emperyalizme karşı küresel bir sınıf savaşı yerine küçük burjuva milliyetçisi bir eylemcilik oluşturur. Bunun yerine enternasyonalist bir yurtseverlik örgütlenebilir. Artık kapitalizmin serbest rekabetçi zamanındaki tekellerin olmadığı süreçten söz edemeyiz. Finans oligarşisinin etkisindeki tekeller ekonomide söz sahibidir. Küçük sermaye sahibinin uluslar arası boyutta bir tekelle baş etmesi söz konusu değildir. Serbest rekabet değil, tekellerin egemenliği ve tekeller arası rekabet söz konusudur. Emperyalist kriz gelişirken, onun parçası olan güçler de kapsamlı bir vuruşmaya sürükleniyor. Emperyalizm, farklı devletlerin ilişkisinin, finans oligarşisinin etkisindeki tekellerin etkisiyle, dünya ekonomisinde ortaklığı olarak görülmediği sürece, parça-bütün ilişkisi ele alınmadan, saldırganlık ve savaş eğilimi çözümlenemeyecektir. Ayrıca emperyalist barbarlık, barbarlık noktasını aşmıştır. Milyarlarca işçinin yeryüzünün her yerinde (yaklaşık 4 milyarın üzerinde işçi olduğu, bu nüfusa ek olarak yaklaşık 2 milyar kayıt dışı işçi olduğu ve yaklaşık dünya nüfusunun %75’inin yoksul olduğu hesaplanıyor) temel ihtiyaçları için kölece çalıştığını hatırlamak yeterlidir. Buna modern kölelik demek, haksızlık olmaz. Emperyalizm kapitalizmin son evresidir ve bir toprak ya da fetih isteği değildir. Emperyalizm, birikim sürecinin bir sonucudur. Geriye çevrilemez!

Many people who buy the whole "aristocracies/monarchies/etc are outmoded powerless figureheads that don't have a political role in western countries" thing conceptualize a "modern" secular political role analogous to king to be a president or prime minister. But the thing is that the idea of, like, "The Crown" as an entity is actually precisely analogous to the concept of "The State" as an entity, as they are both constructs used to justify, essentially, ownership of an area of land and a group of people

Anyway.

¶

Although the industrial revolution employed the labor of working-class women in factories and mills, it also produced the middle-class lady of leisure with her staff of household servants and her strictly defined feminine sphere, a sphere whose parameters were motherhood, social and moral refinement, and gracious adornment of her husband’s life and home. Throughout the nineteenth century, hoops, crinolines, bustles and trains might come and go, taste in color might veer and shift, the width of the skirt, the swell of the sleeve, the location of the waist and the shape of the bust might vary with considerable imagination from season to season, but the woman of fashion remained a perishable confection, a wedding-cake vision of conspicuous consumption whose impractical clothes reflected the aristocratic values of centuries past. And she had no followers more attentive or more eager to become the Perfect Lady than the idle wives and daughters of the newly moneyed bourgeoisie with their newly acquired aspirations and pretensions, and their newly acquired laundresses and lady’s maids.

In material terms—ill-paid laborers in the mills, including children, worked day and night to spin out the yardage; sewing machines were introduced to automate the stitching—this meant the piling on of ruffles, ribbons, flounces, piping, fringes, tassels, lace, beads and bows, and numerous starched petticoats to bedeck and adorn a sedate and artificially molded figure. Perhaps one season a crinoline cage might replace the petticoats, or perhaps a hobble skirt might replace the hoop, to be replaced in turn by a bustle or train. Whatever the innovation, the latest feminine mode was usually expressed through the fashion language of a period revival.

-Susan Brownmiller, Femininity

For male leftists under 50, material reality ends where their dick begins

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Something that Lenin will NEVER let you forget when you're reading Imperialism is that he only uses sources and quotes from bourgeois scholars and economics. Every quote its like he looks at you, smirks, and says, "and btw, even these bozos have to admit its getting bad but get this: these fools can't come up with a solution because they are liberals!" Indeed they were all right! Imperialism was fucking shit up! Yes, there really WAS a lot of industrial accumulation and all of it IS headed by finance capital in monopolistic banks!

A similar case is happening now with bourgeois scholars and investigating the effects of neoliberalism and the history of socialism. Bourgeois scholars consistently find that neoliberal policies continue to harm everything under the sun. At the same time, interviews, archive searches, statistical analyses, etc. on socialist countries continue to return positive conclusions. But these facts do not actually matter to those in charge. The crux of the entire matter is simple: to change from neoloiberalism to something else is to give up the domination of profits. The very act of considering moving away from profit is of the highest form of heresy to the bourgeoisie.

oh wow! that annoying popular pro-china blogger is also pro-ai "art"!!! why do i keep seeing her on my dash again

“If the citizens of Gaza were white there’d be more outrage and this would be stopped!!!” This is NOT just rooted in racism! Just like in the 1400s, the Western bourgeoisie saw profit in the dehumanization of POC! Not to say there isn’t racism and Islamophobia that heavily plays into this, but writing it off as ONLY racism ignores that this is fundamentally a problem brought on by capitalistic greed. Those children are primarily being murdered because the West and IsraHell sees profit in the ethnic cleansing of an entire country. They see profit in selling weapons of mass destruction and draining the land of its resources.

On top of that, they’re using this to set an example and see how much they can get away with before people snap and recreate the French Revolution. Fuck peaceful protests. There’s nothing peaceful about the ethnic cleansing of an entire nation. In the first place, peaceful protests just means the protesters aren’t being violent! The reason it ever worked in the past was because outsiders saw the government and industries enact violence on the protesters! Even Dr. King aligned with Malcolm X!

VIOLENCE ENACTS CHANGE! IT IS YOUR CHOICE WHETHER THE ONE FACING THAT VIOLENCE IS YOU AND YOUR FAMILY OR THE CAPITALIST SCUM PROFITING OFF OF GENOCIDE!

Intellectual property is the currency of the modern age. If you’ve got a brand, a mascot, a cute little doodle you did one day while you were bored at work, it is completely essential that your rights as a creator must be protected. Unfortunately, the way that those rights are protected is that you have to sell it to a giant corporation, which jealously hoards it for centuries after your death. Are you gonna get paid, at least? If you’re lucky, I guess.

If you have a regular job, like zookeeper or assassin, it’s unlikely that the bourgeoisie will continue to exploit you after your death. A dead zookeeper is only good for at most one more tiger feeding, for instance. Corporate artists are going to be admired, emulated, and profiteered from until the sun burns out or future executives figure out that they were weirdly and specifically hyper-racist after all.

Ever since there has been a creative industry, there have been rich people milling around the artists, trying to turn the droppings of their diseased minds into trading cards that can be offered to the shadowy beast that is global commerce. Back in medieval times, this was almost a friendly relationship: a rich person would come by, and pay you to make some shit out of marble. Chances are, they’d stop paying you and then have you murdered as you approached completion of the project, which is why artists evolved the ability to procrastinate, but that’s a whole other story.

Nowadays, making copies of something is a lot easier than going out and hiring a bunch of teenagers who can carve a replica of a marble statue. And that’s got the rich-person class in a tizzy. What does it mean to own some cool shit, if the person who made it can just make a bunch of copies of it and give it away for free to whoever asks for it? How can they be expected to derive some genuine, authentic joy from what is basically a selfless act of creative expression, without getting to charge money for it in all perpetuity? These are the questions of our age, but only because the rich people also control the machine that makes all the questions.

What’s the moral of the story, if you are a creative person selling your efforts to an enormous corporation? You have a duty to be super weird. Whatever is wrong with your brain is not wrong with the profiteers’, according to society, which means you have to be a little more creative in your subversive acts. The ideal goal is to render the thing unusable, like a General Motors product, after at most one generation of humanity. Not only are you getting revenge, but you’re helping future generations: they won’t have to write a sequel to your hit franchise, and can instead make weird shit of their own.

What are your criticisms of Chavismo and Maduro just out of curiosity?

now i'd like to preface this with a disclaimer that any opposition ghoul would do nothing but sell the country out to the USA and UK every which way in a heartbeat--maduro is better than any alternative, whether that's guaidó or whichever neoliberal puppet they prop up to replace him.

anyway, there were two key problems with chavismo. firstly, it's fundamentally a national-bourgeois led social democratic movement. obviously in an imperialized country like venezuela this made it profoundly progressive, and the achievments of the bolivarian revolution were incredible--chávez cut malnutrition in half, cut unemployment in half, sent millions of children to school and gave millions of elderly people pensions. however, this project of wealth distribution ultimately had to accomodate the national bourgeoisie. which of course on one hand you can argue was completely necessary, but on the other hand allowed the parasitic classes to entrench themselves firmly within elements of the state apparatus and made chavismo as a project entirely incapable of confronting the national bourgeoisie or corruption.

these of course are the realities of 'democratic socialism', of sweeping a socialist into office in a bourgeoise democracy. through some extremely clever political structures, such as the new constitution, communes, and bolicarian circles--he was able to move much more radically than most in his position. but ultimately, he could not escape the fundamental limits of the source and constraints of his power.

the second is that--and this is a very tawdry and obvious piece of analysis--while it is of course admirable and correct that he seized the nation's oil wealth and enriched the country with it--the way he did it was obviously shortsighted. without a sovereign wealth fund, worker's democratic control of the oil industry, or a solid and far-ranging investment plan, he laid the groundwork for some of the current crisis on the assumption that oil prices would stay high forever.

maduro inherited these faults and added far more of his own. during the crisis that began in earnest in 2016, the other shoe dropped wrt oil prices at the same time as the US tightened their murderous sanctions regime. faced with economic crisis, maduro has broadly chosen to move from chávez' strategy of accomodation with the national bourgeoisie to a full on alliance. social programs have been slashed, pensions cut, wages have plummeted, and worst of all, maduro has sold off countless state enterprises in the hope that oft-prayed to benevolent deity, "foreign capital" would miraculously heal the economy. in the course of this he made an enemy of many early chavistas, as well as the leftmost wing of chávez' coalition -- he has mobilized the full force of the bourgeois state against the country's communist party and other genuinely revolutionary movements, most gallingly the marxist-leninist movimiento tupamaro.

so, tldr: chavismo was genuinely radical compared to even your average third-world social democracy--however it remained fundamentally constrained in what it could accomplish by the lack of an actual proletarian state, was unable to rid itself of reliance on the national bourgeoisie for that same reason, and made some very avoidable mistakes in the handling of the nation's oil wealth--maduro inherited those flaws but has been much more accomodating to both national and international capitalists to the detriment of the people of venezuela.

there are plenty of things harmful to individual sections of the bourgeoisie that aren't harmful to the bourgeoisie as a class (and are often a net benefit to the bourgeoisie as a class), generally consisting of infighting between these 'hostile brothers'

the proliferation of a new type of car that runs on hamburgers would be very beneficial to mcdonalds, to the beef industry, monoculture agribusiness by extension, and whatever, while being harmful to the oil industry, car manufacturers needing to retool, etc - and would be strongly fought against by the oil industry (and the lobbies and parties representing them). just because the oil industry opposes it doesn't mean that it's a threat to capitalism on a wider scale, just to these specific capitalists. further, the competition between capitalists can be an overall boon for their class, such as in the case of war. in times of plenty, capitalists divide the spoils, and in desperate times, they apportion losses - wars between empires with no land left to colonise, no profit left to extract, are fought *between* capitalists, but fought *with* the blood of the workers, all in pursuit of regaining profitability. your boss outcompeting a market rival doesn't mean you're getting paid any better, and, in fact, you'll probably be paid less, now that you're competing for your job with a large number of suddenly laid-off workers from that 'rival'.

now, to the point: a lot of people will chastise those who outline the ineffectualness of voting by saying 'well, if voting didn't do anything, why do the right try so hard to stop you from voting?' - as we can probably understand by now, this is a moot point. the right *do* want people to vote, they just want people to vote *for them*. just because one or the other section of the bourgeoisie will be harmed by something doesn't mean it actually harms bourgeois rule as a whole, and can in fact strengthen it. surely the armies of WW1 also attempted to inspire desertion in the enemy ranks, but nobody now could try to claim that this was because fighting for Germany or France was doing something to defeat colonialism - quite the opposite, in fact. they could probably also recognise that, however much as was claimed at the time, fighting for either side of that conflict led to absolutely no difference, just more death and impoverishment for the working people (while the rich gained massively). similarly, in the lower-intensity conflicts between the bourgeoisie of the same nation, both sides represent functionally the exact same interests, save for which capitalists exactly stand to profit - and, as before, participation in their conflict on one side or the other only aids their class as a whole.

the idea that in any conflict, there always exists a 'lesser evil' who should be supported is incorrect, because the conflict itself may be what needs to be fought against. when the police play 'good cop bad cop', there is no side you can take that will lead to any difference to you, and partaking in it at all is precisely what dooms you.

So I finally got around to That Hideous Strength

The other day I was thinking about how the problem with being a Marxist historian is that nobody reads Marxist historians except for other Marxist historians, so liberals can just make crap up about it and ppl just go with it; one of the classics courses I've been auditing included the absolutely bazonkers assertion that "Marxist historians say the Roman empire fell because the bourgeoisie oppressed the workers," which....no tf they don't? For one thing, it would be a hell of a neat trick for a pre-industrial society to even have an industrial bourgeoisie. But you can just say whatever because nobody who isn't a communist is reading Engels so who's gonna know.

All that is to say that the political landscape presented here by my friend Mr. Clive Staples Lewis is such a phantasmagorical fever dream that I have to assume neither he nor his target audience had much experience speaking to or interacting with human beings who weren't Oxford dons. He posits a unified coalition of people who in real life not only cannot work together but are known to make a habit of murdering one another. But conservative-minded folk who don't spend an outsized amount of their time actually dealing with the issues the book brings up on the ground prolly wouldn't even think about that.

Makes no damn sense. Compels me, though.

Hi. A question in relation to your response a few asks ago. As a leftist foreigner, I have always thought Catalonia and its independence movement have a cemented leftist core, but is that just me simply being an essentialist and simplifying the dynamics since the war? Of course, I understand that most Catalans, like most people, are just normal people living their lives and wanting health and happiness and not hard-core extremists either way. I'm half Palestinian and boy, am I tired of people painting us as inherently political when all we want to do is, you know, stay alive. But, I've always just imagined Catalonia as a stronghold for socialist and anarchist vibes. Is that off? And if it's not off, how come one Spanish narrative is that Catalans are bourgeois and capitalist has been so prominent? Like, what are they basing that on? The fact that Catalonia is a somewhat wealthy region? And how do leftists respond to that? Sorry for sensitive questions I'm just really intrigued by this. Sending all the love from one occupied people to another.

First of all, my most sincere best wishes for liberation and solidarity to you and all the Palestinian people 🇵🇸❤️

You are right, Catalonia is a stronghold of leftism. It can be seen easily in maps of election results every time there are Spanish elections, or polls, etc. Catalonia and Euskadi always stand out. This is so prominent that there's even a Twitter account called The F*ck*ing Same Map Again making fun of this, lol. And within the independence movement even more so, too. Historically, the Catalan independence movement has been very linked to communism, with presence of social democrats as well. Since around 2010, many more social democrats and liberals have joined, too. This is not to say that no other profile exists, as you pointed out you can't expect a whole country to have the same ideology, but it's overwhelmingly the case.

The reason why the Spanish left likes to stereotype Catalans as bourgeois (at the same time as, when it's more convenient to them, they also stereotype Catalan people and language as a poor rural farmers' language) comes from the fact that Catalonia (and to a lesser extent also the Basque Country) were the only places of the state of Spain that were industrialized during the Industrial Revolution and for most of the 20th century. This created a very prominent Catalan working class —for your ask, I assume you know about the CNT, the collectivizations, etc. To give an overview, in 1919 about ⅕ of ALL of Catalonia's population was affiliated to the CNT anarchist union, that is not counting people in the rural areas affiliated to unions for rural workers like Unió de Rabassaires that also sympatized with CNT in many matters but was more focused on agricultural workers. More than ⅕ of the whole country's population being a paying member of the anarchist union!— But, of course, industrialization also produced a muuuuuuuch smaller amount of bourgeoisie. While most Southern and Central Spain was still ruled by the aristocracy that owned most of the land and hired agricultural workers on a daily basis (jornaleros), in Catalonia there were bourgeois factory owners.

In the 1920s, many people came from rural areas of Spain to Barcelona and other urban areas of Catalonia (the population of Catalonia tripled with their arrival), and in the 1960s again the same (this migration tripled again Catalonia's population). In many places, the people who were arriving lived side by side with the people who were already there, usually learned Catalan and mixed with the population. But in some places around Barcelona, because there wasn't enough housing in the city for all the huge amount of people who were arriving, the regime (this was still under Franco's dictatorship) built "dormitory suburbs" where previously there was no town nor suburb. Areas that used to be fields suddenly were all built into cheap housing for the arriving Spanish workers, often with very bad conditions when it comes to public services. Thus, there were pockets of the newly-arrived population that lived in areas only created for them and only inhabited by people who had arrived at the same time as them. The result is that these workers only ever knew other Spanish immigrants, and the only Catalan people they ever met would be at their jobs when they commuted out of their dormitory suburbs into Barcelona's centre. This way, in these pockets of the population (which, of course, did not come free of Catalanophobia) the idea that everyday people spoke Spanish and the bosses and managers spoke Catalan was cemented.

(Obviously, I don't mean to say that everyone in those neighborhoods thought this, only that it was an idea that developed and spread to many people there. There were also people who did not see all the Catalan people as enemies and kept a good class analysis and allied with the Catalan working class and the Catalan people as an oppressed group. A famous example is the writer Paco Candel who lived in one of these new working class neighbourhoods and was an activist for the working class and also for Catalan language, cultural and political rights. I don't think it's been translated to English, but if anyone reading this wants to get a very good view of what the situation was like, the must-read is Paco Candel's 1964 book Els altres catalans).

The idea that "people like us" speak Spanish and bosses speak Catalan is, of course, objectively false. Since in every place capitalism needs more workers than bosses, the first proletariat of the state of Spain was Catalan, and the overwhelming majority of Catalans were and are working class. And the poorest areas of Catalonia are also the ones where Catalan is most spoken and Spanish is rarely heard (all of them in Terres de l'Ebre, a largely agricultural area). At the same time, Spanish has always remained the language of power, the only one spoken by the police, the army, the government, the public administration, etc and the one that rich people want to be heard speaking for prestige reasons. Even more so back then, when Catalan was prohibited and legally persecuted in many sectors. But despite being an overall false picture, it was the experience of these people day after day. The mix of already-present Catalanophobia with the "confirmation" of Catalan people being their enemies in the workplace created this very weird and very out-of-touch mentality of Catalan people being bourgeois in a small part of the Spanish speaking people, while for the vast majority the idea of still that speaking Catalan is for extremist antifascists and that it was a thread for the fascist state and for the very existence of Spain and thus needed to be erradicated. With time, after the dictatorship ended and the democracy period started (1978), the Spanish left was legalized (Catalan independentist parties would take a while yet, because it was said that "Catalan separatists are more dangerous than the communists", but in some time ended up legalized as well, except for some Basque parties that have been illegal until the 21st century) and a part of the Spanish left instrumentalized Catalanophobia to gain votes in some circles, so they used this rhetoric and it spread more, because it gave them a justification that used the right words to sound vaguely leftist and they don't have to question their beliefs nor prejudices.

I hope this answers your question. Thank you very much for your interest and your solidarity, it's greatly appreciated.

What are your thoughts on republic city? If you could change anything about it, what would you change (if you'd like for it to exist in the verse)

oooh okay. so this is a complicated question. obviously the first problem here that needs addressing is the dumpster fire that is the comics. while i do think that the neocolonial tensions aren’t necessarily unrealistic, i obviously don’t buy that any member of the gaang would advocate for that. i actually see it as something they would continue to attempt to dismantle, not begrudgingly accept, even if it is out of their hands. and i know that people have argued that it’s very unimaginative for lok to simply suggest that capitalism is the inevitable telos of all societies, but i do think that atla set that neoliberalism and industrialization in motion in a way that does make lok’s capitalist society feel like a logical extension of atla. they simply do not explore how the fire nation, specifically, stands to benefit from that mode, despite the fact that the fire nation controlled the industries, land, and economy over the past century.

but fundamentally, i like a big city. i think a setting that actually provided a backdrop to explore the issues prevalent in a large capitalist metropolis could have been really fascinating. obviously we do see class hierarchization in large cities in atla, but they’re very rigidly stratified in a more old fashioned way (ba sing se is even sectioned off with the aristocrats in the center, bourgeoisie in the middle, and working class/agrarian workers on the outer edges. although obviously there would be as many if not more servants than nobles in the upper rings, but we never actually see them. but i digress). the class hierarchy in lok is more modern, made invisible under the capitalist illusion of equality. street rats commingle with heiresses (i mean, technically mako was a professional athlete by the time he met asami, but you get my point. upward mobility or something).

i think if lok had introduced these concepts in a way where they were actually prepared to tackle its implications instead of getting bogged down in all their overwrought set dressing and pathetic attempts at moral ambiguity despite not fully understanding any of the ideologies they were critiquing, republic city could’ve been a really cool environment to explore those neocolonial and/or class tensions, as well as further develop the world of atla in a way that feels modern and authentic. of course they did none of those things. but as i always say, the potential was there.