Urist

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Firstly, "we" are not friends with any of the capitalist states, at best circumstantial allies. Secondly, I agree on NATO's importance for the US, it is an interdependency after all.

The capitalists are not under political control, we both know it's the other way around, so why would we expect them to subject their private wealth to financial discipline based on the strategic ambitions? They are not about to abolish capitalism, but strategically reposition themselves to maintain it.

We are also talking about different groups within the capitalist class and different time frames. The military dependency will take more than a decade to change. The investment in US stocks is record high right now due to the current financial bubble, working as intended of course, vacuuming the world for surplus value.

The contradiction remains unsolved and will increase when the bubble bursts, fascism rises yet even more and the US gets absolutely demolished by China due to the difference in long term planning and industrialisation.

And I say you're simply wrong

I have no problem with that. Disagreeing about the analysis is okay. The reductionist dismissal that I was doing a moral argument, I could do without.

I will not reject the possibility of your conjectured outcome either. However, I do find your analysis lacking on the part of Europe having no enemies. The nightmare scenario for the European elite is not solely Russian aggression, but getting tag teamed by both Russia and the US.

The crux of the issue is this: The US is threatening explicit subjugation if we do not play ball, and increasing vassalization if we do. The contradiction/compromise of NATO is shifting. The US needs and demands more from its vassals, I agree, but the vassals are eyeing an opportunity to reposition themselves in the emerging new world order.

We are going towards a multipolar world order and Europe knows it. There is no going back and this is not just theatrics. The "defense spending" in reality is buying independence from US vassalization. They are purposefully not buying American and laying the groundwork for another alliance where they are not subjugated.

Since I am not really getting anything for free here: No, this is still not a moral argument. The argument is that the capitalists of Europe will seek return on this investment. Trump going away, and who is to say he is, is not going to change this materially.

Where did I say anything about morality? I said the material support has fallen, which is a drastic shift for the lackeys of the empire. They absolutely had the cowardly option, like they always has, to let the US use their bases, defend their actions diplomatically and provide military and logistical support after the initial invasion.

The support is not there (comparatively to before). The old NATO is dead and its not just an unspoken truth anymore. The European countries are preparing to split with the US, mostly because they fear to be abandoned, but the material steps already taken will ensure that ultimately they will renegotiate the compromise NATO always was for them.

Which is why we should pay attention to how defiant (read on a toothless European scale) the rest of NATO has been post the Greenland crisis. This will increase as the material dependency on the US as a security guarantee falters further.

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To be fair, many of the imperialist wars in the middle east have been joint military operations of certain NATO members. They have not really been sanctioned NATO operations though, with quite a few in NATO in opposition to the wars.

That being said, the distinction may seem meaningless when NATO resources are used by the imperialists anyway. However, the level of material support for the US agression towards Iran has been less than before, maybe even remarkably so.

The point is to be historically precise so that we can identify the development of the fracture of US domination within the imperial core.

The fucking bullshit is US imperialism. You have been bankrolling Israel for your benefit, i.e. to be able to militarily coerce the gulf states into upholding the petrodollar system. You have not been "nice and naive", you have literally been complicit in genocide for monetary gain.

The read a book part was probably overly dismissive, but was a pointer to marxist theory that is materialist and not idealist.

Im saying every society that i am aware of, no matter the title, had a ruling class leaching off the working class.

This is why workers need their own revolution. Capitalism and most western states, particularly the US, came to be through bourgeoise revolutions. Causality wise, this followed due to technological advancements improving the productionary forces.

We as humans have yet to develop that classless society despite 100 years of people drooling and killing over communist theory.

No state has yet made it past the intermediary stage of this development. That does not mean they were not on the right track. The killing part is horrible, but follows from the armed resistance of capital. Violence is a part of every political system, it is just happening in ways not usually recognized.

What you refer to as true capitalism, I am arguing is an idealist view. Idealist in this sense means not part of nor representing material reality. Marxists will claim the ideal form to not only not be present right now, but impossible to achieve due to the mechanics of capitalism itself.

We look at the process of capital accumulation through extraction of surplus labour power as self reinforcing. That means also that the contradictions within the system will reinforce unil reaching a break point.

As an example one could look at how capital consolidation leads to monopolies, how workers are impoverished to the point of not being able to buy the product of their own labour, or how the development of productionary forces lead to the developers, i.e. labourers, manufacture their own replacements.

These are the internal byproducts of capitalist mode of production itself. I have not even touched on the external contradictions happening through imperialism.

To make an analogy: If anyone were to claim that a drug was not actually medicine because it had negative side effects, we might both agree they were wrong. In my view, in the case of your idealist and my materialist view of capitalism, we disagree on the cause and effect in a similar manner.

This is an idealist understanding of what capitalism ought to be, not what it is. This different view is the reason for the contention between us. Most leftists will see capitalism for what it is, not the pipe dream sold to the masses to justify the exploitation of them.

In marxist terms, the lack of oversight and competition is an inherent trait, a contradiction, within capitalism. The solutions anyone can present are faulty remedies that do not solve the underlying issue at play, which is the property relations with regard to labour.

But that’s because it’s intentionally hard to tell if it’s feudalism in a capitalist hat or capitalism in a feudalism hat. That’s what oligarchy is.

No, (modern) oligarchy is a term we may use for the political structure that is supported by capitalism, which is the mode of production. In feudal society, oligarchs were nobles with landed power. In capitalist society, they are just a small subset of the capitalists.

It is not feudalism because the economic surplus is not extracted (primarily) through land ownership and tribute, but through the property relations of wage labour.

Yes, we can see neo-feudal structures within a late stage capitalist economy.

No, that does not preclude capitalism as the mode of production enabling those structures.