this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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sino
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I think this article misses the mark tbh. China is a problem because it threatens the US hegemony. It's especially a problem because it's a non white country threatening the US hegemony (compare with the Brits passing the torch to the Yanks). The points outlined I this article are simply downstream of this. And the main point is imho (reduced capital profits due to higher wages) actually less of an issue to the capitalists, that can relocate their production to a large degree, than the issue of China's increasingly rapid technological advancement (discussed as a secondary cause of western hostility). As a non white person I always find it hilarious to come across these blind spots in clearly intelligent people's analysis. Even with Israel a lot of intellectuals were shocked at how far the US was willing to go for Israel. Like really? For them it's brown savages vs civilized white people. It's not even a debate who they'll side (on top of all the other motivations/incentives).
The author afaik is a degrowth type that seems to be slowly moving leftwards, but I'd say that he is a socdem still and definitely not anti-imperialist enough. Also values modern monetary theory and his solution to fixing problems was essentially "print more money" in a podcast I just listened to.
Western academia never calls it what it is, but this guy still seems one of the better commentators. I base this on the way he has over the years actually followed the science on climate change mitigation and now pretty firmly seems pro-China for that as a result. That at least is sort of intellectually honest. The bar with Western academia isn't high though.
Yeah Jason Hickel has been moving much further towards principled socialism. Connecting racism to anti-imperialism and the related economic base aspects is what he's currently improving on. I started following him like a decade ago when I got sent an article about degrowth from him, and was totally unimpressed. Then Max Ajl critiqued his degrowth but pointed out its value like 5 years ago and I came back to him, and he had improved and it was very clear that he went from socdem to democratic socialist. Still not good but the right direction, with clear shifts in analysis that could only lead to Marxism. I think he's very much there now, but still growing out of some small western brainworms and trying to avoid the key words all too much and work empirically as opposed to ideologically/philosophically. His new website is pretty nice for talking to non-commies https://globalinequality.org/
Yeah currently reading his Inequality book, because it's something I can cite in my uni essays without anyone batting an eye and it allows me to inject the type of stuff I want to inject into my writing.
Yes, but it is the economic hegemony that is threatened, not the military one. So it's important to explain how exactly. In addition to wages, there is another factor: unequal exchange through the equalization of profits. Because of that, countries with more labor and less constant capital sell commodities below their value and countries with a lot of confusion capital (like what the US is and China is becoming) sell above the true value on the international market.
This paper looks at unequal exchange independent of cause (like wages or profit equalization).
Look how much embodied labor the countries outside the imperial core are losing(bottom right). China is the largest contribution, but they are getting out of this. US wants to stop that and keep the flow going. Other countries can't replace this. They are already paying tribute themselves. Once it's over, it's over.
So the way I see it is that the economic hegemony is threatened. This is not a problem because they see China as communist but because the economic hegemony will shift to a non western country. The economic hegemony moving from one economic center to another is not an issue for capitalists that can move their capital to the new center (assuming as I said they do not see China as communist threat, which again I don't believe they do). This makes me think that a big part of the western hysteria is racism driven. I don't think the falling profit margins at this time are enough to initiate the level of disruption a conflict with China would result in.
I also think the military hegemony isn't threatened right now but the US can no longer exert it's will entirely as it pleases. It sees the window of opportunity for it to reassert economic hegemony through its military rapidly closing.
Anyway that's a lot to type out to respond to one sentence but I'd need to read that paper before I can comment on the rest of what you said.
It's fine, I appreciate this conversation a lot.
I agree that racism plays an important part, but I think it's as usual the ideological superstructure to a mixture of material causes. Yes, China being non western is key, because of the global system of exploitation that's threatened. Not all capital can quickly be moved to a new center, because for a new center to emerge, capital already has to be concentrated there and many capitalist interests are tied up with the state and military of the empire.
Though I think you're right to doubt that the whole drive towards a conflict with China is just an effort to keep things as they are. Rather, it would be impossible to keep going, even without China, but the drive to conflict temporarily helps keep the system going. New economic center or not, there are contradictions within the West, that have gotten to a critical point. Preparing war is a typical way to attempted to shift the consequences of contradictions somewhere else. Currently a lot of the US made problems are being shifted to Europe, for example.
As for what kind of contradictions, it's not just the low profit rate, but the sheer amount of capital that's been accumulated and can't find profitable investment any more. War enables huge transfer of wealth from the people to private companies, without the negative side effect of building up anything that might cut into profits elsewhere. Funding housing would cut into landlords profits for example. Funding weapons transfers a lot of wealth, but just destroys all that accumulated value and helps to keep the profit cycle going a bit longer.
It's all good. I just needed to read that to understand your points here
Which I agree with. I just think that starting a war with China to reverse this trend is kind of insane right. And with other countries not being able to replace this its almost like the west would want China to willingly be the modern India to the British empire.
Your points about moving capital not being a simple thing and was functioning as a profit generator are true. No argument from me there. But there are so many factors at plwy and I can't prove it but I think the deciding factor is racism and the need for white western countries to maintain white privilege. There is a deep paranoia there and nothing is clearer than the treatment of African Americans by the fucking Americans. Like I know you know as much or more about slavery than me. But imagine that the current discourse in mainstream politics is not even about reparations but actually further emiseration of African Americans. This is a deeply racist and sick society. Europe too with their Arab migrants. Destroy the middle east and villify the people fleeing their homes because of your actions. Maybe im doing an Occam's razor meme here but I do think that western countries would rather die trying to maintain their superiority than being equals in a new system. And controlling the population seems way too easy for right wingers (eg hate migrants/LGBTQ as opposed to your landlord enslaving you). So even if the population of these countries is not that racist they can easily be made racist due to dog whistles and the emiseration caused by the ruling clas themselves. Anyway I'm starting to ramble. But this got me thinking
that had some amount of cultural continuity with the former colony, and they fought a couple wars over it anyway, and it didn't really wrap up until the destruction of world war 2 and the Marshall scam.
be a cold day in hell before white capital gives in.