@PariaSansPortefeuille@jasette.facil.services

Post #1640271

2026-04-11 18:01 UTC

@jemmesedi Yup. I share Emmanuel Todd's low esteem for geopolitics as a "social science." I forget his precise wording but I recall him once saying in a convo w/ Aude Lancelin that he regards geopolitics as a field largely dominated by "grown men who never really got over playing with toy soldiers." We're seeing a *lot* of that now - ppl with playmobil ideations about how the world works.

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@jemmesedi@c.im 2026-04-11 19:09

@PariaSansPortefeuille All this touches on a problem in my own political thinking. My political outlook is rather different from yours; as a UK Labour/soft left type, I'm sure I strike you as regrettably reformist, overly accommodating to liberalism, a wishy washy 2 state liberal zionist, wholly mistaken in my failure to support Corbyn/ LFI/Die Linke etc etc etc ... Nevertheless, I do want to point out that I am not just a left liberal. This shapes my thinking about geopolitical punditry. I'm quite sure you're right in the psychological diagnosis you mention, but the fundamental problem strikes me as the failure of so many IR/geopolitical to grapple with the shaping of international relations by the forces of both domestic and transnational capitalism. My problem lies in my not being sure how to grapple with this myself, either in theoretical terms or in response to the political exigencies of the present time. Just referring back to Hobson/Lenin writings in imperialism from over a century go will not suffice. Nor do I know enough about world systems theory or Marxist/Marxisant theories of national development within a global economy to really make an intelligent critique or application. What I do know as far as the immediate questions of UK politics are concerned is that neither hoping for a revival of liberal Atlanticism nor a "European" approach that simply replaces Exxon with Total, Boeing with BAE/Dassault, US bases in the Gulf petromonarchies with Franco-British outposts and so on is acceptable for a political movement committed to a greater degree of social control of the economy. As always with reformist social democracy, one finds oneself struggling with what this social control means, either from a domestic or transnational perspective, given the failure of the totally planned economy on the one hand and that of Blairish left neoliberalism on the other. My thinking aloud is descending into rambling -- sorry! Any thoughts you have on these matters would be welcome, be they in English or French.

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