BRICS wants to expand

[Joij21]

In fact Duke comes from dux, general in the late Roman empire, while Count comed from comites, province governor.

Marquis and Baron otoh are medieval terms afaik.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess

The word marquess entered the English language from the Old French marchis ("ruler of a border area") in the late 13th or early 14th century. The French word was derived from marche ("frontier"), itself descended from the Middle Latin marca ("frontier"), from which the modern English word march also descends. The distinction between governors of frontier territories and interior territories was made as early as the founding of the Roman Empire when some provinces were set aside for administration by the senate and more unpacified or vulnerable provinces were administered by the emperor. The titles "duke" and "count" were similarly distinguished as ranks in the Byzantine Empire, with dux (literally, "leader") being used for a provincial military governor and the rank of comes (literally "companion," that is, of the Emperor) given to the leader of an active army along the frontier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron

The word baron comes from the Old French baron, from a Late Latin barō "man; servant, soldier, mercenary" (so used in Salic law; Alemannic law has barus in the same sense). The scholar Isidore of Seville in the 7th century thought the word was from Greek βᾰρῠ́ς "heavy" (because of the "heavy work" done by mercenaries), but the word is presumably of Old Frankish origin, cognate with Old English beorn meaning "warrior, nobleman". Cornutus in the first century already reports a word barones which he took to be of Gaulish origin. He glosses it as meaning servos militum and explains it as meaning "stupid", by reference to classical Latin bārō "simpleton, dunce";[2] because of this early reference, the word has also been suggested to derive from an otherwise unknown Celtic *bar, but the Oxford English Dictionary takes this to be "a figment".[3]

Both actually do come from Latin as well and seem to reference a border/frontier commander role as in marquis, and a more direct reference to being a mercenary or "Foederati" in the case of baron.

What this essentially means is that the royalty and nobility of medieval Europe are actually the descendants of the emergent Foederati class having risen up and supplanting the old Roman Imperator supporting aristocrat class and becoming the new ruling class in the territories in what used to be Western Rome.

This "class conflict" arose precisely because of the creation of said Foederati and their subsequent natural competition of interests with the ruling Latin Aristocracy. Their creation was necessitated by a series of events stemming all the way back from the original decision to compensate Rome's legions with land tithes as retirement but which was abused by generals to gain certain loyalty and obedience which overthrew the Republic kick starting such events.

Now the decision to start such methods of compensation was in fact part of the Marion Reforms which in turn was a result of another class conflict that had arisen from the mode of current production at the time, slavery. More precisely the abundance of slaves stemming from victorious battles on the Italian peninsula lead to their use in rich estates owned by the aristocratic Patricians known as Latifundia which would outcompete the production of local smallhold farms owned by commoner Plebians.

This overproduction resulted in lower prices for grain, which forced such smallholders who couldn't afford many slaves to lose market share. The subsequent loss of profitability of their estates, and having no choice but to sell their land to the rich Patricians, led to increasing the size of their Latifundia further and increasing production further further compounding the ability for any Plebian to compete.

Eventually class conflict would arise between Patrician and Plebian with the later being over time increasingly delanded and urbanized into the cities. A dangerous precedent then began to arise for most in the army at the time required land to be able to serve, however with the majority now without land say for the Patricians, the army became increasingly small and worry from the ruling class began to emerge of their ability to maintain order with all the Plebians overpopulated within the dense urban nodes of political control. Also the increasing amounts of slaves of the slave class now plopped ever more in the wealthy estates led to a dangerous possibility of a catastrophic uprising with so few legions. Not to mention fear of imminent foreign invasion.

Thus the Marian Reforms were created by the reactionary Patricians as a means to diffuse the situation. The land requirement was removed, increasing the legions back to a stable system maintaining amount, and the methods of land compensation were also created.

Additionally it was thought that by giving generals the ability to give veterans land based compensation away in little countryside villa houses (similar to the modern suburbs) it would create a veterancy of loyal soldiers isolated from the urbanite and riotous culture emerging in the cities among the plebians, therefore removing any sort of solidarity they may otherwise have with the rest of plebian society, and ensuring loyalty to the Patricians in putting down urban pleb riots. Furthermore it would also make them fear for the safety of their wives and children should a slave revolt emerge from one of the nearby Latifundia now that their villas were located nearby in the countryside, thereby willing to induce such protective fire and fury in such soldiers to ruthlessly dispatch such disobedient slaves.

So we can see how slave class tension resulted in the turning of a series of events that finally led to a degenerate death spiral eventually resulting in overreliance of a foreign barbarian Foederati mercenary class, the imposition of a proto-fuedalism which in turn became true feudalism once the Foederati class succeeded in pushing the dialectic forward by finally overthrowing the old reactionary Patrician aristocracy and becoming Europe's new reactionary monarchist & landed nobility class.

Therefore reaffirming and adding more context to Karl Marx's original analysis of the transition from the slave based mode of production to the feudalist based mode of production.

 

[Takhisis]

Hum, but this thing about BRICS, uhm…?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Moderator Action: Yes, back to BRICS please.

 

[Birdjaguar]

WSJ opinion piece on BRICs expansion

Bigger Brics Won’t Make a Stable Building

Last week’s announcement that Brics—an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—will induct six new members has renewed chatter about China eclipsing the West. The new members— Ira n , Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina—supposedly give Brics the heft to rival the industrialized democracies in the Group of Seven and reshape global geopolitics. In reality, expansion will make the already incoherent group less coherent. Nothing binds the 11 nations except their self-identification as non-Western and their failure to become prosperous liberal democracies. China, the group’s putative leader, is in a protracted standoff with India, its most populous nation and second- largest economy. Adding more countries of varied interests makes it more likely that the group will remain “a formless sack of potatoes,” in the words of the Indian strategic thinker C. Raja Mohan.

The case for taking an expanded Brics seriously relies on crude tabulations of collective economic heft. The 11 Brics nations account for 46% of the world’s population and 37% of global gross domestic product (in purchasing power parity terms). This exceeds the G-7’s 30% share of GDP, though at market exchange rates the G-7 remains larger. Brics also now includes six of the world’s 10 largest oil producers and five of its top 10 oil consumers. It contains 75% of the world’s manganese reserves, 72% of rare earths and 50% of graphite.

These impressive-sounding stats feed faulty analysis. According to Julian Borger of the Guardian, Brics expansion represents “an attempt to reshape the global world order and provide a counterweight to the U.S. and its allies.” The Indian journalist Suhasini Haidar says it makes Brics “a more representative coalition of the Global South” and a “better vehicle” for global governance. But a group that can’t even rally behind a common vision can hardly expect to rise above photo-ops and empty summitry. It certainly won’t rival the G-7, which represents nations united by both liberal democracy and economic achievement. All G-7 members share principles—none would jail someone for likening a leader to Winnie the Pooh—and the common goal of upholding a U.S.-led international order. Every G-7 state is a longstanding treaty ally of Washington’s and has figured out how to harness free enterprise to generate wealth. Japan, the least wealthy G-7 member, has a higher per capita income than any Brics country except the oil-rich U.A.E.

Brics is a weird mix of democracies (India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa), autocracies (China, Russia, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia), and monarchies (Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.). The poorest Brics member (Ethiopia) has a per capita income only 3% that of the richest (U.A.E.). South Africa has trouble keeping the lights on. Iran’s thuggish clerics beat up women for baring their heads. Argentina can’t keep a lid on inflation—currently over 100%. Ethiopia just ended a brutal civil war against the rebellious Tigray region.

Already riven with a Sino-Indian rivalry, the group will become even less coherent by expanding.

Sino-Indian rivalry made Brics unviable from the get-go. Three years after clashes on their disputed 2,200-mile boundary killed 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese, the two nations remain at odds. Earlier this week, China released a map that showed land claimed by both nations, including the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, as Chinese. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar retorted: “Making absurd claims doesn’t make other people’s territory yours.” In a phone interview, Gautam Bambawale, a former Indian ambassador to China, says Beijing has willfully alienated India by violating a slew of border agreements. “The Chinese are so self-centered that they don’t understand the sensitivities of others,” he says. “And even if they do, they are so steeped in realpolitik that they think India should just lump whatever they do because China is a much bigger economy.”

Unfortunately for Beijing, India sees no reason to act like a vassal state. Surging Indian nationalism may not make sense to China, but it’s very real to Indians. During last week’s Brics summit in Johannes-burg, India became the first nation to land a craft on the south pole of the moon and the fourth to land on the moon at all. This month Indians celebrated as 18-year-old chess prodigy R. Praggnanandhaa advanced to the finals of the world championship, and an Indian army noncommissioned officer, Neeraj Chopra, won India’s first gold medal (in javelin) at the World Athletics Championships.

China will also struggle to turn Brics in an explicitly anti-Western direction despite the addition of Iran. Brazil and Argentina are culturally Western. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. depend on the U.S. for security. And India needs U.S. help to modernize its economy and narrow the large technological gap with China. “There is no way that India will allow Brics to become anti-Western,” Mr. Bambawale says. Nobody can deny that China has emerged as a formidable rival to the U.S. But Brics seems destined to remain more a punch line than a harbinger of a new global order.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Haven't logged in to here in a while but I'll just give a general response to everyone responding to my statements on the matter.

I live in a happy place and I feel fine.

This world is just one big movie and I get my news from places most would consider unnatural.



My goal however is to encourage you all to observe the world for yourself and not trust in narratives, agendas, and 'ganda put out by those who want you to be docile intellectually.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Haven't logged in to here in a while but I'll just give a general response to everyone responding to my statements on the matter.

I live in a happy place and I feel fine.

This world is just one big movie and I get my news from places most would consider unnatural.

Your statements on the matter are merely predictions (and so are many of those by other posters-yours are optimistic about BRICS, other posters are pessimistic about BRICS). I guess we will see.

My goal however is to encourage you all to observe the world for yourself and not trust in narratives, agendas, and 'ganda put out by those who want you to be docile intellectually.

Ah....the often repeated sentence (in various forms/variations) of conspiracy theorists and vatniks worldwide.

While it is important to use a variety of sources, be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole that 'western main-stream media' is 100% lies.

Ask yourself if maybe YOUR sources might have an agenda. 'Independant journalist' is a cheap gimmick, they are often grifters, and they are in it for the $$$ too.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I get my news from places most would consider unnatural.

Please share those sources with us.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

WSJ opinion piece on BRICs expansion

Bigger Brics Won’t Make a Stable Building

Last week’s announcement that Brics—an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—will induct six new members has renewed chatter about China eclipsing the West. The new members— Ira n , Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina—supposedly give Brics the heft to rival the industrialized democracies in the Group of Seven and reshape global geopolitics. In reality, expansion will make the already incoherent group less coherent. Nothing binds the 11 nations except their self-identification as non-Western and their failure to become prosperous liberal democracies. China, the group’s putative leader, is in a protracted standoff with India, its most populous nation and second- largest economy. Adding more countries of varied interests makes it more likely that the group will remain “a formless sack of potatoes,” in the words of the Indian strategic thinker C. Raja Mohan.

The case for taking an expanded Brics seriously relies on crude tabulations of collective economic heft. The 11 Brics nations account for 46% of the world’s population and 37% of global gross domestic product (in purchasing power parity terms). This exceeds the G-7’s 30% share of GDP, though at market exchange rates the G-7 remains larger. Brics also now includes six of the world’s 10 largest oil producers and five of its top 10 oil consumers. It contains 75% of the world’s manganese reserves, 72% of rare earths and 50% of graphite.

These impressive-sounding stats feed faulty analysis. According to Julian Borger of the Guardian, Brics expansion represents “an attempt to reshape the global world order and provide a counterweight to the U.S. and its allies.” The Indian journalist Suhasini Haidar says it makes Brics “a more representative coalition of the Global South” and a “better vehicle” for global governance. But a group that can’t even rally behind a common vision can hardly expect to rise above photo-ops and empty summitry. It certainly won’t rival the G-7, which represents nations united by both liberal democracy and economic achievement. All G-7 members share principles—none would jail someone for likening a leader to Winnie the Pooh—and the common goal of upholding a U.S.-led international order. Every G-7 state is a longstanding treaty ally of Washington’s and has figured out how to harness free enterprise to generate wealth. Japan, the least wealthy G-7 member, has a higher per capita income than any Brics country except the oil-rich U.A.E.

Brics is a weird mix of democracies (India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa), autocracies (China, Russia, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia), and monarchies (Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.). The poorest Brics member (Ethiopia) has a per capita income only 3% that of the richest (U.A.E.). South Africa has trouble keeping the lights on. Iran’s thuggish clerics beat up women for baring their heads. Argentina can’t keep a lid on inflation—currently over 100%. Ethiopia just ended a brutal civil war against the rebellious Tigray region.

Already riven with a Sino-Indian rivalry, the group will become even less coherent by expanding.

Sino-Indian rivalry made Brics unviable from the get-go. Three years after clashes on their disputed 2,200-mile boundary killed 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese, the two nations remain at odds. Earlier this week, China released a map that showed land claimed by both nations, including the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, as Chinese. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar retorted: “Making absurd claims doesn’t make other people’s territory yours.” In a phone interview, Gautam Bambawale, a former Indian ambassador to China, says Beijing has willfully alienated India by violating a slew of border agreements. “The Chinese are so self-centered that they don’t understand the sensitivities of others,” he says. “And even if they do, they are so steeped in realpolitik that they think India should just lump whatever they do because China is a much bigger economy.”

Unfortunately for Beijing, India sees no reason to act like a vassal state. Surging Indian nationalism may not make sense to China, but it’s very real to Indians. During last week’s Brics summit in Johannes-burg, India became the first nation to land a craft on the south pole of the moon and the fourth to land on the moon at all. This month Indians celebrated as 18-year-old chess prodigy R. Praggnanandhaa advanced to the finals of the world championship, and an Indian army noncommissioned officer, Neeraj Chopra, won India’s first gold medal (in javelin) at the World Athletics Championships.

China will also struggle to turn Brics in an explicitly anti-Western direction despite the addition of Iran. Brazil and Argentina are culturally Western. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. depend on the U.S. for security. And India needs U.S. help to modernize its economy and narrow the large technological gap with China. “There is no way that India will allow Brics to become anti-Western,” Mr. Bambawale says. Nobody can deny that China has emerged as a formidable rival to the U.S. But Brics seems destined to remain more a punch line than a harbinger of a new global order.

This is such a terrible article and a reminder of why I never bother to click on a WSJ headline. Paradoxically, it makes me feel more confident in BRICS. If the only criticism a full-throatedly pro-US publication can offer of a rival economic power is incoherent babbling about its member's internal politics or bizarrely tangential observations (Indian moon landing and chess prodigy bode ill for Indo-Sino relations???) then it stands to reason that there is nothing substantial to swipe at.

"The stats may make BRICS seem like an able competitor. But don't be fooled, its members are not liberal democracies!"

 

[Remorseless1]

So...China and India? How's that working out?

So...Saudi Arabia and the UAE don't depend on the West in the slightest for military equipment (nobody wants the junk Russia produces)? And Iran and Saudi Arabia, buddies for life, right?

So...Ethiopia and South Africa, robust economies there?

BRICS+ doesn't have a putative leader,the People's Republic of China is the leader and is trying to set up a counterweight to the West's economies. Wonder what the Uyghur think about that?

 

[Hygro]

This is such a terrible article and a reminder of why I never bother to click on a WSJ headline. Paradoxically, it makes me feel more confident in BRICS. If the only criticism a full-throatedly pro-US publication can offer of a rival economic power is incoherent babbling about its member's internal politics or bizarrely tangential observations (Indian moon landing and chess prodigy bode ill for Indo-Sino relations???) then it stands to reason that there is nothing substantial to swipe at.

"The stats may make BRICS seem like an able competitor. But don't be fooled, its members are not liberal democracies!"

I get what you mean but I think much of their ability to coordinate meaningfully does indeed come down to both their internal politics and external differences.

But it also kind of just doesn't matter. Having a large trade bloc outside the USA-centric one will almost certainly help small countries have more options with their domestic policies (and not have to kowtow to say the IMF to export their products) but the USA itself doesn't profit off other nations being held back that way, nor does another bloc threaten us. People will want to sell to us and buy our things regardless, and we stay in a privileged economic position.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

So...China and India? How's that working out?

So...Saudi Arabia and the UAE don't depend on the West in the slightest for military equipment (nobody wants the junk Russia produces)? And Iran and Saudi Arabia, buddies for life, right?

So...Ethiopia and South Africa, robust economies there?

I was referring to the article and saying that if its aim was to undermine the reader's confidence in BRICS it ends up having the opposite effect.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I get what you mean but I think much of their ability to coordinate meaningfully does indeed come down to both their internal politics and external differences.

Now this is the sort of criticism I can get behind. If a body wants to make an argument against a multi-nation organisation they better get up something better than 'ew, no liberal democracy!' and referring to the World Athletics Championship

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

And Iran and Saudi Arabia, buddies for life, right?

There are no buddies for life in politics. And the opposite holds true as well

 

[Hygro]

Now this is the sort of criticism I can get behind. If a body wants to make an argument against a multi-nation organisation they better get up something better than 'ew, no liberal democracy!' and referring to the World Athletics Championship

A lot of us implicitly understand that the more autocratic your government, the more vulnerable it is to sudden change, so it's baked into the charge. Liberal democracy is nice and predictable.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

BRICS+ doesn't have a putative leader

the People's Republic of China is the leader

I can declare I don't know what 'putative' means

Wonder what the Uyghur think about that?

I am more interested in knowing what a minority ethnic group's opinion on an international organisation affects matters to any significant degree.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This is such a terrible article and a reminder of why I never bother to click on a WSJ headline. Paradoxically, it makes me feel more confident in BRICS. If the only criticism a full-throatedly pro-US publication can offer of a rival economic power is incoherent babbling about its member's internal politics or bizarrely tangential observations (Indian moon landing and chess prodigy bode ill for Indo-Sino relations???) then it stands to reason that there is nothing substantial to swipe at.

"The stats may make BRICS seem like an able competitor. But don't be fooled, its members are not liberal democracies!"

So what did you find in the article that you disagree with or think is wrong? I do understand that it is a WSJ article and that their editorial pages are mostly terrible. But this is an opinion piece by Sadanand Dhume of the AEI.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

So what did you find in the article that you disagree with or think is wrong? I do understand that it is a WSJ article and that their editorial pages are mostly terrible. But this is an opinion piece by Sadanand Dhume of the AEI.

It has some good points, and it would be a good article if it focused on just those, but instead sprawls onto a lot of weak takes, so ends up sounding like a childishly petulant complaint

 

[Crezth]

So...China and India? How's that working out?

So...Saudi Arabia and the UAE don't depend on the West in the slightest for military equipment (nobody wants the junk Russia produces)? And Iran and Saudi Arabia, buddies for life, right?

So...Ethiopia and South Africa, robust economies there?

BRICS+ doesn't have a putative leader,the People's Republic of China is the leader and is trying to set up a counterweight to the West's economies. Wonder what the Uyghur think about that?

I want this framed and hung up on my wall with the title "western chauvinism" because it's really just absolute solid gold.

All the coping and whining western elitists want to do about how the nations with lower Democracy Freedom Scores and Friedman McDonald's Index-o-meter Rankings are really just nations with some amount of economic clout and political independence from the monolithic forces of western capital, who are generally in a global sense like dragons with a hoard they've pillaged from the world over, now, centuries. However, the rise of Asia's economic clout has seriously screwed with that. Not just China, although it's important to keep in mind that what makes China such an economic superpower is not whether westerners feel like they can do without Chinese goods, but how much the largest consumer economies and trade relationships are kept afloat and pressurized by those relationships. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan - all ostensibly American satellites, and indeed hold U.S. bonds for their trouble, but all do business with China on scales that would have been baffling to imagine even in 1991. Japan-China today is the largest trade relationship in the world by volume and is the epicenter of the Asian industrial development that now has spread to South Asia and Southeast Asia with concomitant eating of Chinese lunches, vis-a-vis Malaysian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Filipino, Indian, and, of course, Singaporean industry.

And as for Russia, you say nobody wants their junk, but the numbers don't lie and the numbers show they pull down billions for exporting shells in the millions. They had a total equivalent export value of 8000 about 10 years ago and it has generally hovered around those numbers since then (USA by comparison is usually between 10,000 and 13,000 - with much higher margin stuff; France is usually around 3rd at 2000ish), dropping significantly since the start of the Ukraine war (as they obviously divert that production instead to their war). In 2019 the value of those exports was $19 billion, most of it rifles, ammunition, shells, and helicopters. They have routinely outfitted the entire world with arms basically for the last 100 years but especially since the privatization of that industry, with judicious and delirious expansion.

In terms of that, BRICS is clearly a strategic partnership designed to get Chinese capital and Russian guns. It makes a lot of sense if you don't completely trust the west. Why not hedge your bets in two places? It just makes sense.

As for robust economies, first worlders get paid six figures to answer four emails a day and argue about prestige TV during their sixth coffee break. The only value that can possibly provide is if they're a middle class pig you need to protect you from the legions of oppressed masses by convincing them nonsense like "But the economy is doing really good right now" and "Violence never solves anything."

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Please share those sources with us.

I'd be happy to share even though I know probably all of these sources will be dismissed. Below is just a sample, I have quite a few more, but you can get an idea where I'm being informed. Note that I compare and contrast these sources with MSM and then draw my own conclusions.

https://marfooglenews.com/ [this guy is pretty good and does a nightly live stream on YouTube]

https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/ [very controversial website]

https://jacobisrael.com/ [a recent discovery of mine. many here might consider this guy a whack job but not me]

https://warnews247.gr/ [Greek website but you can use either google translate or a browser extension to convert to english]

I'm actually interested in hearing the opinions of my fellow CFC'ers. You won't hurt my feelings if you rip these apart.

 

[amadeus]

This is such a terrible article and a reminder of why I never bother to click on a WSJ headline.

I thought it was a very good article that pointed out how BRICS is not a cohesive unit like the G7, NATO, or even Japan-Korea with all its quibbling. It is not cohesive in its goals nor even really moving towards integration, so adding more members is just a joke.