>I'm gathering that people here see Vladimir Putin's Russia as some
>kind of counterweight to Capital.
This is completely wrong. Putin is part of capital, and everyone here who favors Russia in the conflict knows it. The people siding with Russia -- except for Chris Doss, who has said he doesn't care about differences between capitalism and communism -- are choosing development-state (good) capitalism over neoliberal (bad) capitalism.
Doug:
>The only virtue to a resurgent Russia - aside from the fact that
>it's made most Russians better off than they were during the 1990s,
>when they were run by Clinton, Harvard, and the IMF via Yeltsin - is
>that it offers a counterweight to U.S. imperial power. The U.S. had
>it easy in the 1990s. Now with Russia - not to mention China - it
>can't have its way anymore. Which is, on balance, a good thing.
Well, this is pretty dismal. You could make an opposite claim, though: the conflicts between U.S., China, and Russia only encourage nationalist sentiments in those countries (and elsewhere, apparently), which help to erase intrastate class divisions and antagonisms, and so act as lubricants for the countries' insertion into the worldwide capitalist market (this metaphor's for you, shag!). In this sense, having a lone figurehead of neoliberal capitalism provides more analytical and moral clarity and balances any "good" that may come from the checks provided by Russia and China. I wouldn't make this argument. But it doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out with a pencil any more or less than yours.