Is there hope?
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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chapotraphouse
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There are very few kinds of labor that don't need some kind of material input to function. That material input comes from other labor that is mostly elsewhere. You can't assemble a transmission without steel and someone needs to make the steel, which necessitates the extraction of iron ore. Even an economy of e-mail jobs still needs computers to function. Even if labor doesn't need direct material inputs (like say a vocalists), the laborer still need food, clothing and shelter.
I think non-imperialism doesn't necessarily mean production autarky, that's more of a mercantilist/localist perspective, which isn't necessary for a Marxist economy to flourish.
Trade can, and I could argue should exist between socialist projects, in order to make the working class conditions better everywhere in the world. The biggest question there, is how to do trade differently than the way it's been for the past 300 years, that is, how it can be set up such that it's not an unequal exchange of material and embodied labor.
And most importantly (to me), how does this kind of trade it not perpetuate colonialist tendencies that even other AES states have demonstrated in the past, taking local communities' free and informed consent seriously, even if we "need" the resources in their land, as is the case with many indigenous peoples and small communities, and renewables.