this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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The prolonged sanctions fiasco also did more to end western economic hegemony than it did to hurt Russia.
I think you could argue the sanctions kinda helped Russia in a sense, last I heard their economy is up and they have less dollars dependence, more economic options,
One of the most important changes is in the re-industrialization of Russia.
Before the sanctions, Russia was comfortable with being a resource extraction colony of the West, where low labor-intensive mining and extraction industries enabled an accumulation of wealth which enriched their bourgeois class, but did not lead to the proletarianization of the working class, as value-added goods were simply imported from abroad rather than manufacturing their own.
Now, with all the sanctions, Russia is being forced to develop and relying on its own industries (import substitution) to replace the loss of Western goods. This re-industrialization is significant because it will lead to increasing proletarianization of the working class - the pre-conditions for the growth of socialist movements.
There is a reason why Western countries were so keen on de-industrializing themselves, not only because of the dominance of finance capital, but because they no longer have to deal with labor movements at home. The consequence of this is the fragmentation and dissolution of genuine left wing movements across the advanced Western countries.
Proletarianization is the transformation of members of a society into proletarians. You seem to be implying that you think modern Russia has a substantial portion of its population in the peasantry, which is not my understanding. Urban industrial proletarians are not the only proletarians.
I realize I should have used “re-proletarianization” instead.
Marx defined the proletariat class as uniquely revolutionary because unlike slaves in antiquity whose exploitation was tied to being enslaved by their owners/masters, and serfs in the feudal era where their exploitation was tied to land, the proletariat class that emerged out of industrialization were free wage laborers whose exploitation was tied to production, which is what the capitalist class needed to make their profit.
The industrialization of the society made the price of labor goes up, and directly strengthened the bargaining power of the labor movement. This contradiction is what would lead to the overthrow of the bourgeois class.
Neoliberal economies are different from industrial capitalism in the sense that the exploitation of the working class is now tied to debt, which is why it is often equated as a regression towards neo-feudalism or neo-rentier economy. The finance capitalist class doesn’t care about the improving productive capacity, they only need to pay enough for the workers to service their debt while keeping them in perpetual debt peonage.
This is why the revolutionary potential of the working class in Western neoliberal economies is so low. In Russia’s case, it’s still more industrialized than financialized, but the mining/extraction industry allowed wealth to be accumulated without a strong participation of labor.