Maybe if people with your ideology only make things that harm you it’s an opportunity to reflect.
This is really it.
There’s the fascist-owned platforms…most notably truthsocial, but definitely also X and Meta and all their platforms as well. I’d also say spez has absolutely bent the knee…several times. Fuck /u/spez.
And then there’s the communist-operated platforms. Lemmy, and basically the entire fediverse.
I wouldn’t say all instances are communist operated, certainly .ml, but many of them are just liberal, socialist, technohippies. (A term that I just coined now, and would gleefully apply to myself)
Only reddit still gets any of my traffic, and that’s largely out of muscle-memory.
People really don’t care about communists - it’s the authoritarian boot licker we have a problem with.
Some people seem to care quite a bit.
The Americans?
People on Lemmy are extremely annoying and refuse to use block lists to tailor their experiences and instead engage in endless circlejerks. The people who need to police the tankies are the worst of the worst.
The people who believe they should write alternative, compatible software to impose their own secret blocklists on the “tankies”, unbeknownst to their users, are the actual worst of the worst.
The worst of the worst is actually evil commies who deliberately post shit that they know is going to get a tripple rainbow argument going >:D
They’re arguing about quantum gravity or something down there. It’s fucking amazing.
I already have ideas for the next one.
Communists? On my equally shared, federated social media!? No way!
from each according to their memes folder, to each according to their degree of unemployedness
But I have no memes folder, Good Sir. Am I poor, rich in other things, or just a boomer?
Removed by mod
The fact that this Econ 101 slop video has a paid promotion plus ads I forgot to block says plenty. I question its motives, which seems like rehashing cold war propaganda, as well as your smug above it framing. What do you think this video says? Why, in a material sense, do you think socialism is interesting people in imperialist countries today? I think when you talk about a middle ground, you mean between protecting the privileges we both receive from our born-in positions on the world system, and surviving the failure of capitalism to reproduce itself (it shits the bed every decade or so since 1973; we’re both probably from generations that didn’t get what we were promised)
If communism is a failed system, why does the US keep going after communist places? Surely they’re not a threat right? 🤔
What does “the HS” mean here?
Should have been “US” but my phone had other plans.
…must be that dang communism again 🤣
Because there are no communist places. There are places where the ruling class plays pay lip service to the idea, but in reality they aren’t communist. And the US tends to just ignore real implementations of socialism round the world.
Allende, Lumumba, Sankara and Castro would disagree with you.
Allende was president for about 3 years and committed suicide in office. Either it was a Russian style suicide of convenience or he was unfit anyway. So one cannot say if he would have gracefully given up his power or not. But, historically the odds are not so good.
Lumumba was assassinated 3 years into his presidency. So enough people disagreed with him evidently.
And Castro refused to relinquish office until he died of old age. Much like a king wouldn’t you say?
: Person posts something about communism.
: Buncha people in the comments inevitably say the same stale, dumb things about communism.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
B-B-B-But Chai-nyha
China? Russia? US? Where’s that 3 Spiderman pointing meme?
My girlfriend is different from all the other communists. She doesn’t count.
Damn communists! They ruined communism!
As much as the Scotch ruined Scotland. Fair.
I mean yeah, they absolutely did.
Communism is fantastic in theory, but in reality it doesn’t work, and it won’t ever work, because our species just doesn’t work like that.
People are, by and large, greedy, power hungry and prone to corruption, and this is why we can’t have nice things and are destroying the planet.
People are, by and large, greedy,
No, they aren’t
Having to tell cynics that human nature is influenced by people’s conditions of life really gets tiresome, but I guess we’ll be doing it until we croak. The idea that human nature is fixed in the way you’re suggesting is antithetical to freedom of choice, and in a way, also linear time/historical progression.
I see you’re in the solarpunk server. Did you join to tell everyone that saving the ecosystem is hopeless, and we should accept our imminent extinction?
Yes, people can be self interested, so we must reward that self interest and punish any selflessnes. That must be the only way to build a fair and just society.
Tell me you know nothing of human history without telling me you know nothing of human history.
Hear me out, here: We could tell the greedy fucks to fuck off, and we could make sure everyone nice is taken care of. By force, if necessary. (I mean, after we win elections lawfully with the will and mandate of the people and we enact legislation through proper procedure)
Hear me out, here: We could tell the greedy fucks to fuck off, and we could make sure everyone nice is taken care of. By force, if necessary. (I mean, after we win elections lawfully with the will and mandate of the people and we enact legislation through proper procedure)
Oh the irony.
It’s insane how you still believe communism produces leaders who are infallible and uncorruptable, ignoring all the historical mountains of evidence that your side is just as prone to corrupt authoritarian dictatorships as the fascists are.
You lot really are just itching to run your own
concentration campsgulags again, aren’t you?
I think this might be telling on yourself a little bit, because I’m not really greedy or power hungry or prone to corruption, and most of the people I associate with aren’t either
Yes, of course, because when I said ‘most people’ I clearly meant everyone.
And if you, and most of the people you know, are in positions of power and not shitty people, then you’re either a pleasant person with nice friends, or lying. Either way, good for you.
So now you are moving goal post by adding in power, once your argument disappear ?
What are your opinions on piracy? Do you pirate software/media?
What about adblocking?
Yes you are so smart and above it all. Magic human nature is to blame for everything, people are not products of their material reality at all. We should all just be misanthropic dorks and never try to do anything to better anything while spouting off rightwing idealist nonsense that is observably false.
No, I’m just as human as the rest of you. I just don’t believe people are capable of communism. Communism always ends with corrupt, power hungry dictators.
People are not capable of being better, if we were we would have done so by now. Humans have been around for 100,000 years or so, in various forms, so why in all our the known history, have we not been better yet? And why is it at all logical to assume we suddenly could be, despite this?
Communism always ends with corrupt, power hungry dictators.
“Communism is bad because <describes capitalism>” Challenge still ongoing, perfect record.
Brother, you don’t need a specific economic organization to enable authoritarianism. You just need people with determination. You’re literally living through a capitalist dictatorship, doing genocide and robbing value from it’s people right now, almost no matter where in the world you live.
Humans have been around for 100,000 years or so, in various forms, so why in all our the known history, have we not been better yet?
Uhm, for like 95% of that time people have usually been better? There is little opportunity to become a dictator in a small group of hunter and gatherers and anthropological and archiological evidence points to many of these groups having been strongly egalitarian.
100,000 years or so, in various forms
Homosapiens have been around for 300,000 years. Homos (lol) have been around for millions of years. Homo erectus was around for just shy of two million years alone.
And for the vast majority of that time we weren’t engaged on a free market economy.
Thanks for the correction, I really should have looked that up before writing it down.
That ‘free market economy’ wasn’t born of a vacuum with no prior human influence. We made it.
You’re just reiterating your observably false nonsense. Humans have improved from actual barbarians to slavers to civilised groups. Also “if everyone would just…” is not at all a communist position.
Also unsure if you realise this or not but you have the same misanthropic ideology of a mass shooter.
And no offence but ‘civillised groups’? Lmao, you’re going to have to define this too because fuck me does it reek of collonialism.
How are you defining babary? Just so I know exactly how to disprove your statement, please.
Wow uneven development is not something Marxists have ever studied /s
I’m sorry but you don’t even have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about I don’t think we can hold a productive conversation. I hope you can educate yourself and move beyond your edgy teenager mass shooter ideology phase.
I’m probably twice your age. Over 50 people in my family, that I know of, were killed in the gulags and I grew up hearing about just how great communism was from my Polish family, who lived under communism till 1989.
I too though had a Marxist phase as a teenager and I so strongly believed people were capable of being better if only they would read Marx and follow his ideas.
And then I grew the fuck up and stopped believing in magical opposite world realities suddenly coming into fruition.
Power corrupts and those with power over us will always be corrupted. There is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.
We’re plagued by those that’d rather let the invicible hand help carry the trickle up to the top rungs of the economic ladder.
300,000* years, and a lot of that history is lost, but there’s probably a lot more you just don’t know about. There’s a book called the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity by anthropologist David graeber and archeologist David wengrow that challenges the traditional view of human history. They provide evidence that early societies were much more complex than we’ve been led to believe.
Why do you seem to think a system beginning in the 16th century and developed in the 18th century would be better than something we could come up with today?
That book changed so much in my thinking, and made me realize how programmed I’ve been by post-enlightenment western philosophy. I’d internalized so much of the “progress equals inequality and hierarchies” way of thinking. That book showed me that indeed: “another world is possible”. We are not greedy, selfish and violent by nature, we are just the products of the environment we live in and the education we receive. We can be, and have been throughout human history, far better people than we currently are.
Communism always ends with corrupt, power hungry dictators.
When you confuse capitalism for communism.
If I lived with your level of cynicism and bleak ass outlook every day I would kill myself, but you’ve shown us all today that people are capable of going beyond expectations
That’s the funniest dismissal I’ve ever seen online. Cold!
Wow, what a ray of sunshine you are!
And who knew that lemmy communists were such an intelligent, thoughtful and all together pleasant bunch?
If you don’t like it here, kindly fuck off instead of shitting up the place
Lol I’m not even a communist
Communism always ends with corrupt, power hungry dictators.
What if head government positions in general are attractive to corrupt, power hungry dictators?
The Weimar Republic wasn’t communist, and it got a corrupt, power hungry dictator.
The United States isn’t communist, and it’s dealing with a corrupt, power hungry dictator.
Israel isn’t communist, and it’s dealing with a corrupt, power hungry dictator.
I wonder if maybe there are other factors in play that you aren’t considering.
always
Always? Are you sure? Let’s say there’s a corrupt, power hungry person looking for a government spot. How would communism make it easier for the person to get into power, than in a capitalist system?
Ah, the human nature argument.
More like western elites’ nature.
Because only western people are shitty? Or only the western ‘elites’? Does being ‘elite’ from a non western country automatically absolve somebody from this?
I think I’m also going to need to get you to define ‘western’ and ‘elite’ here too.
Individualism and egotism are what make y’all bad people in general. I dare you to live a year in a country with communitarian values to deprogram.
Good bit, very convincing character
Are you done? Great. Carry on.
Why waste time saying nothing? Please start using your brin
Via current capitalist systems, the only state sanctioned ways for me to Give Back to the community are based in religion or some branch of the military service.
Maybe I’m not looking hard enough. I could be wrong.
yeah but HASAN PIKER!!!
screams in terror
Lemmy has destiny stans now? 🤣
Nothing wrong with communists. I feel so radicalized by capitalism I’m almost there anyway.
It’s the Russian/China apologists that are annoying.
Russia is bad, Chia.na is bad, and the U.S. is bad. All those things can be true. But all the insufferable posts about how great China and Russia are, and all the bad things you have heard about them m are just Western propaganda…
If they were serious about their ideology, then why do they care so much about someone thinks about China or Russia.
If they didn’t brigade those issues so much, straight up ban people, just because they disagree, or hlrefuse to have any real discussion that doesn’t center on just shutting other people down, then maybe people outside their group might take them more seriously.
here’s the neat part: anyone who unironically thinks china or russia are communist is a dumbass and can be ignored or is trolling.
China and russia being communist is an American right wing talking point.
No leftists consider the russian federation communist, and not even the cpc considers china communist. They claim to be attempting to realise communism by first developing socialism to the point that they can.
Whether you believe them or not aside, you’re sort of showing your ignorance. Even the scary tankies on hexbear and ml or whatever don’t think they’re communist. That’s why the term actually existing socialism (aes) is aes and not aec.
No leftists […] even the cpc considers china communist. They claim to be attempting to realise communism by first
tl;dr of my response: China ain’t Socialist, and shouldn’t be emulated in our struggle for socialist revolution worldwide.
Many leftists don’t consider China and the CPC to even be socialist, many socialists around the world see the CPC as a ruling class of another capitalist country, albeit with much higher rates of nationalised industries.
We think you can’t really call yourself socialist when the workers don’t have meaningful democratic control over society. And unless you’re being dishonest or are just misinformed, the workers most certainly don’t have control of society in China. Less so then here (Australia), even.
One only need to talk to people in China to realise this, most people I’ve spoken to in China, even though who support the government, describe a very hierarchical benevolent government.
One simply can’t look a lefty in the eye and say China is socialist, unless those “Chinese Characteristics” suffixed to “Socialism” simply stand for “without democracy”.
There is no meaningful method to agitate for political change (no, being in one of the other parties most certainly doesn’t count), there are no workers unions (strikes are heavily repressed and the only union that exists is controlled by the CPC, though despite that some groups of workers still sometimes bravely strike 💪) no freedom of political association, no democracy in the workplace.
It’s really hard to claim China is socialist, yet people outside of China still do, just because they’re holding the banner of socialism…
I don’t hate China, it’s a pretty nice place, with lovely people, and certainly a nicer place than the shithole of the US. I’ve been to China multiple times, and you wouldn’t catch me dead in the US.
But they just ain’t Socialist, and shouldn’t be emulated in our struggle for revolution worldwide.
I think that’s a bit reductive. While I am a sceptic that they’ll ever really succeed and think they’ve fucked themselves a bit with how much power Chinese tech companies have been allowed to amass, there are true believers among the party and the central committee. I mean they teach Marxism in school (sort of).
In general chinese people describe extremely high satisfaction with their government, and respond more positively to questions like “If I have an issue I can go to my local politician and resolve it”[1] than Westminster derived systems (which I would also not dignify with the word democracy) and it is worth asking why this holds while most so called democracies have hostile and parasitic governments.
If the will of the people is enacted then this is a sort of democracy, while if you vote and then the people you elect serve elites and ignore you this isn’t really democratic.
Structurally some things in China are working vastly better than elsewhere, and it’s worth trying to understand /why/ their government seems to work for the people so much more than other systems.
But I was merely relaying what they claim about themselves to point out even people fully committed to toeing their party line would not call them communist.
No leftists consider the russian federation communist, and not even the cpc considers china communist. They claim to be attempting to realise communism by first developing socialism to the point that they can.
Hexbear and .ml are really this weird, yeah. They don’t even pretend to be socialist yet they just insist it’s AES.
i made no indication i believed them or them to be communist. i was speaking of how trollish those who claim china/russia is communist are. they’re almost always “libertarians” or some form of boomer.
Anarcho communists welcome you. We hate all nation states equally. Unfortunately there aren’t enough of us to brigade anything.
I can understand hating all nation states, but hating them equally? Couldn’t be me.
For anyone who wishes to know more Now And After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism was written to explain anarcho-communism in plain, easily understood, language.
It begins by explaining the current capitalist system (now) and then goes on to explain anarchism (after).
It is available to read or download in multiple formats, for free, here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism#toc2
This isn’t terrible, but it’s important to be aware that the class analysis and definition of capitalism in this is nonsense. The capitalist class is not just “rich people” and the working class is not just “poor people.” Capitalism is not defined by…whatever this attempts to define it by. Capital is the power to prioritize the allocation of resources and labor.
Capitalism stands for the idea that the purpose of all value, surplus and base really, of production is to increase the capital of the holders of capital. That is it. It is the worship of allocative power solely for the sake of allocative power. And that’s why it inevitably degenerates into fascism–the worship of power solely for the sake of power.
All class dynamics must oriented themselves within the structure of that allocative power analysis. The capitalist class is not “rich” people, or at least not definitionally, and the working class is not poor people. The capitalist class are those who derive increase to their allocative power primarily from the direction of capital under the capitalist system. On the flip side, working class is anyone who increases their own allocative power primarily through the application of their own labor. The vague vibes based class analysis in this would effectively place servers (like, at a restaurant) as bourgeoisie capitalist-class/adjacent just like doctors, lawyers, programmers, and the like. I think it’s clear why that maybe feels like complete bullshit to most peeps.
Did you read a different book?..
He’s very much aware of what capitalism is and clearly doesn’t just believe it to be “rich people”. What nonsense.
But it is not only the worker and the farmer who are exploited and forced to give up the greater part of their product to the capitalists, to those who have monopolized the land, the railroads, the factories, the machinery, and all natural resources. The entire country, the whole world is made to pay tribute to the kings of finance and industry.
The small business man depends on the wholesaler; the wholesaler on the manufacturer; the manufacturer on the trust magnates of his industry; and all of them on the money lords and banks for their credit. The big bankers and financiers can put any man out of business by just withdrawing their credit from him. They do so whenever they want to squeeze any one out of business. The business man is entirely at their mercy. If he does not play the game as they want it, to suit their interests, then they simply drive him out of the game.
Thus the whole of mankind is dependent upon and enslaved by just a handful of men who have monopolized almost the entire wealth of the world, but who have themselves never created anything.
He literally says the bourgeoisie, namely doctors, lawyers, and the like, are, in their interests, aligned with the capitalist class if not altogether a part of it. And even the parts you quote are hard to parse as they are both focused on the outputs of production rather than the allocative power leading to production but also touch upon the problem of how our overly financialized economies obfuscate the allocative power issue. At the same time, when he says shit like “the business man is entirely at [the big bankers financiers] mercy” it makes me think we are not on the same page here, unless his definition of business man is not the investor class–absolutely capitalist class–business man I use.
It’s almost as if anarcho communism isn’t based upon Marxist definitions…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_ideologies#Anarchist_communism
there are dozens of us!
I feel like things would get awkward after the revolution.
I’m fine with someone having a negative opinion of China so long as they don’t use that as a purity test and demand everyone else denounce China, calling people “fascists” or “tankies” and refusing to work with them otherwise.
Obviously, the vast majority of people on here don’t live in China, and we generally have bigger fish to fry domestically to worry about meddling in their affairs. I would turn the question around and ask why people are so invested in making sure everyone sufficiently condemns China instead of working together to address the more pressing matter of class conflict.
If they didn’t brigade those issues so much, straight up ban people, just because they disagree, or hlrefuse to have any real discussion that doesn’t center on just shutting other people down, then maybe people outside their group might take them more seriously.
This is exactly how I feel about a lot of anti-China spaces. It’s difficult to have a real discussion about almost any topic related to China because if you suggest that anything about them isn’t the worst thing ever you get accused of being a fascist and dismissed, if not banned. If .ml goes too far in the other direction, then it is at least somewhat unique in doing so, and it’s worthwhile to have a space where non-mainstream perspectives can be discussed.
Those people are called tankies
Some of us are just tired of western people not wanting to get a little nuance about none western countries. And the instance you admit that ofcourse no place is perfect you get hit with. “See x is bad, communism can’t work in reality.” It is tiresome and eventually I end up defaulting to standard answers or blocking people if they are rude.
On top of that I do think it is amazing how for instance India, China and Vietnam has improved the lives of billions, but every single time it hit western news it is followed by “but at what price”.
And finally I have realized that things are not always as they seem and the propaganda machine makes it hard to discern the reality of many things. This goes for everything. I have no clue if it actually is dangerous to go USA or it just seem that way.
The US is indeed very dangerous. If the police don’t harass you out of boredom, the drugged up homeless man will chase you down the street screaming.
Literally happened to me a few days ago, fucking hate it here.
I have no clue if it actually is dangerous to go USA or it just seem that way.
USian here. It’s not dangerous as long as you’re not even vaguely latino.
It kinda is though. You have to worry about scammers/pickpockets/hustlers/gangs in a couple or spots (although they mostly stick to murdering each other).
Plus basal violence is extremely high. Like even by intentional homicides it’s in the top third https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
There’s a lot of the world without a “bad part of town”
Pickpocketing is not a thing in America. Too subtle. We are a mugging people. However, I will say that your chances of encountering gang violence as a tourist/traveler are quite low. The main danger when visiting here is the government/police.
I want to say “how much of that is gang violence” but I don’t want to take one in the neck.
It’s a lot of you count ICE as a gang.
Based on this thread I think I will stay my horses. No fun in that kind worry for what would have been a once in a life time experience.
Also I find it interesting I get 7 downvotes for answering OP in good faith. Lemmy is not Reddit and I am happy for it, but there are a lot of trenches here
I haven’t seen any posts about how great Russia is
Well then what’s your opinion on Russia and the Soviet Union?
The Soviet Union collapsed because it essentially was an end game capitalistic system. With very few owners, one could argue one owner. It’s the aspiring goal of unchecked capitalism.
Russia then replaced it, with an umbrella of oligarchs and most Western countries. Most notably the US. Has copied a similar system, it’s rotten to the core.
We’re not going to see an improvement of our current system, before an elite class in one society is removed. Personally I think the US, UK or China will see the first uprising.
We need to either tax capital higher than base yields or tax death/inheritance to a degree generational wealth can’t occur.
Everything points to capitalism being the best system we know of, but we need to counter the problems that arises from it.
Just like checking but what economic system drove the worst era of colonialism and slavery ever seen, the worst wars and arms proliferation in human history, ecocide on a big-rocks-from-space scale, pollution emissions on a earth-is-volcanoes-now scale, the worst industrial accidents ever, the worst deliberate adulteration of goods ever, and has required constant warfare to sustain it?
Just curious.
I see countless posts about how Russia is the brave defender against American imperialism and their invasion of Ukraine is a good thing to support.
Citation needed
> opens account
No no they don’t do that but will do it the moment you say Russia isn’t socialist at all.
They’re very smart like that. They say don’t do that as they do it.
Russia isn’t socialist at all
I once got at least 10 comments telling me how good russia and china are and how bad USA is and that i am a USA sucker, welp kinda my fault for making a comment in the wrong instance
I’m sure you’ve had this explained before, how a unipolar world is worse than a detente.
In the same way an oligarchy is preferable to an absolute monopoly, sure
Yeah sure. And the way in how peace is preferable to endless imperialist proxy wars.
And the way how reality is preferable to fantasy. How woke is preferable to asleep. Like acknowledging that the CIA funded the coup by far right elements in Ukraine. Like they did plenty of times before all over the word! But facts are only selected among alternative facts if they serve politics in this post truth world. Nothing can be true that could lead to diplomacy and acknowledging “this is partially our fault”.
Because if we acknowledged the historical facts and that Russia just might genuinely feel threatened by NATO we could move forward with diplomacy to end this war.
All I see when I look at “leftists” today is the image of nazis endlessly screaming YES! YES! WE WANT THE TOTAL WAR! YES! YES! WAR!
How sanity is preferable to insanity. Although I am slightly envious of your blissfully empty minds just flowing along with the majority opinion towards the end of history.
You know if you were even a little bit sane, you’d think about how bad this war is for climate change and you’d let Russia have a little Crimea. God forbid a burgeoning empire have a little Ukraine. Like even if the evil caricature of Russia was true, in a utilitarian perspective it would be better to let them take half of Ukraine because of the insane amounts of greenhouse gases this war produces. Less people would be dead too. But you can only think in childish principles and scold anyone who doesn’t want Ukraine fighting to the last man. Surrender was always a shitty option.
Basically it’s better in every way to not support an endless and pointless war.
Anyway, lets agree to disagree.
Russia’s whole economy relies on green house gas production, so much for the climate. It’s really easy to say you should capitulate to a foreign military invasion when you aren’t the one being sacrificed. Russia wanted control of Ukraine, and every place they lost when the USSR collapsed. Making it clear his goals are to annex land from other nations he sees as part of their lost empire. If you don’t believe me Putin keeps saying things like how annexing lost land isn’t invasion, it’s reclamation, then uses the Peter the Great’s similar justification for expanding their empire into Sweden centuries ago, how it’s just reclaiming their god given lands, like on the 350th anniversary of the event, in a speech defending his invasion of Ukraine, which undermines the veracity of how threatened they felt in this situation, or how that was why they invaded Ukraine. He rambles on about it so much he even went on an tangent about it in a meeting with an organization of young Russia entrepreneurs who were still in university. NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead. So there has been a proxy war between them, in Ukraine, and guess what? Russia lost. So, unwilling to accept a cold defeat, and going with the concept that they have a god given right to Ukraine, they fired up the military again, and went in for a full invasion this time, with a bunch of BS excuses, like de-nazification, as they sent in a PMC ran by nazis, to accomplish this task.
Neither actor in this is operating for some sort of altruistic reason, Ukrainian oligarchs are pursuing who they think they can use to enrich themselves the most with, and the Ukrainian people are stuck between two forces they are much smaller than, who are fighting over their homeland. You give favor to one empire in this situation (and you acknowledge that is what they are, and what they are doing), the one who has used it’s military to slaughter 150 thousand, or more, innocent people, because you believe it will be the best option for you. You are both acting in self interest on top of the lives lost, because “just giving” Russia Ukraine is just that, sacrificing the lives of those who’s home they are invading, and falling for the falsehood that trying to appease imperialists will make them stop waging wars, taking land, and slaughtering people in the process, thus supporting endless war by giving the empirical power what they want, more empire, thus justifying use of military force, because it results in more empire. You are doing is with the thin veneer of an excuse that is b-b-but the environment, ignoring how, by your own ideas of a utilitarian perspective, that it’s actually best to allow Ukraine to align more with the west, because it was Russia that sent the military killing machine in, while NATO was sticking to routes far, far, less damaging to the environment, and human life.
And you call me insane?
Russia wanted control of Ukraine, and every place they lost when the USSR collapsed.
So your argument boils down to that the CIA operation to regime change the democratically elected government of Ukraine is a preemptive strike to…
NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead.
uh, gain control of Ukraine. And Russia should just concede that they lost.
I mean fine, I think that is what the people who planned this brinkmanship thought too. All is fair in love and war and so on. With “people” I mean Obama and Biden btw.
The problem is this was dangerous warmongering and we KNEW how Russia would most likely react. Even during the Maidan “protests” when senior US politicians visited Ukraine as support there were articles in western newspapers warning of this.
Because the exact same thing happened when the CIA interfered in Georgia with the “Rose Revolution” and talk of EU and NATO led to Russia invading. And yes there is hard evidence for CIA/NED interference in Georgia as well.
So: if you know that action A leads to consequence B, and you do action A anyway, you are accepting the consequence as the price for your actions.
So the moral question becomes - is it justified to start a war in order to bleed the dangerous
OrcRussian empire?If your answer is yes, then that puts the onus of providing hard evidence that the alternative would have been likely to occur and to be worse.
And even then it doesn’t justify fucking shitting on everybody who points out the historical facts and that this war was partially provoked? Why continue demanding unwavering support for the US, NATO and EU imperialism? Why deny reality? Why pretend that the western mainstream media is somehow reporting the objective truth and everything else is “Russian propaganda”?
The answer is that ONLY if you deny all historical evidence can you build consensus to endlessly continue the proxy war and make it sound like diplomacy is impossible.
Anyway, yeah Putin talks a lot of shit, he’s known to do that. He’s a sociopath who rules Russia by means of propaganda. But he hasn’t started any wars except in response to US imperialist aggression (or maybe one, don’t know about the Chechen war). So I don’t think he would actually invade neighbors unprovoked. Ukraine could have stayed neutral and be… well not perfectly fine. But better than it is now.
What Russia did do is pretty much the same as what the US does - interfere through propaganda and other means in the democracy of other countries. This would justify harsh sanctions in my opinion, but does not justify war because moderating social media like facebook and twitter to filter propaganda would not even be that expensive. But that is not something you’d hear from a neoliberal.
It all boils down to this: This war was provoked, the evidence for interference and regime change is indisputable (they admitted it), there are actual nazi sympathizers holding power in Ukraine’s military today. Would Ukraine be better off without a CIA plot and still neutral under Yanukovych’s successor?
BTW this does not excuse Russia’s invasion or make me pro Russia. And neither is this argument invalidated by any war crimes committed since the coup, or excuse these war crimes.
On a personal note I have to say that well at least the EU would be whole fucking lot better off without this imperialist bullshit. Without this insane wealth transfer to the military industrial complex. Without rearmament. Without the left completely turning off their brain and drinking the fucking NATO cool aid.
You give favor to one empire in this situation (and you acknowledge that is what they are, and what they are doing)
I did not, do not misrepresent what I wrote! I called them a burgeoning empire, an itty bitty little cute empireling! (/s in case you missed it again)
But yeah I think objectively Russia is the lesser of two evils by far.
No, that wasn’t my argument. The US and Russia have been having a cold war over trade, and defense, with ex-soviets countries since the soviet union fell. Both have been exercising various amounts of power over Ukiraine against each other. For instancem, Poroshenko was involved in very Trump like corrupt business deals with Russia. He was also playing cards of possibly siding with the EU to get more favorable outcomes from Russia, and vice versa. People in Ukraine had valid reasons to sour on him. I am not saying the CIA didn’t act on this momentum, but you paint the CIA as a total control mechanism of Ukraine, and Ukrainians without, or very greatly reduced, agency over their own actions. This is something the “non-western” imperial apologists have a tendency to do. The CIA is credited with so much they are like some sort of near politically omnipotent entity, and the people in the countries they operate in are little more than easily controlled, witless, puppets. This is not true. Outside of situations where the military was totally willing to be pocketed by the US, the CIA has only the ability to give fuel towards already existing political momentum. Put their hand on the scale, so-to-speak. They also ignore the same proxy war crap Russia does, because it makes their narrative cleaner when they are only pointing to one provocateur. Yanukovich was corrupt, and his position within Ukraine was deeply soured by his own actions. Did the CIA play a hand in euromaiden? Of course they did. However they did not create the backlash to his presidency, nor was euroomaiden something the CIA fabricated whole cloth. In the end Yanukovich was deeply corrupt, had lost most of his favor with the people, and Oligarchs that would better profit from the deal with the EU, that he killed, likely false flagged some protestors, as an icing on the cake measure towards someone already in free-fall. Poroshenko was not assassinated, the military, and other security organs did not oust him, there was no massive public backlash, ala euromaiden. He lost an election to Zelenskyy, who won by a large margin for a national election. Zelenskyy was popular for a number of reasons, he was relatively popular as a comedian, he was charasmatic, and found it easy to defend himself with words, probably aided by his occupation. Also he garnered a LOT of popularity being that he was just some comedian, and Poroshenko was just another corrupt politician in Ukraine. So this was not some situation where Russia was just trying to be Ukraine’s BFF, and giving them the best possible diplomatic outcomes. They had FSB on the ground, they were buying people, they were reaching deeper into Ukrainian trade interests, etc. They lost. Guess what? Neither group is the good guy here. You seem to take my stance that Russia is complete shit, and held back by NATO being a barrier of a, currently, greater imperial power, as me supporting the US/NATO. I see them both the same, just that NATO has a lot more wealth, so they are currently the ones exercising that power most broadly. If Russia could, they would, and Putin, when addressing his own people, even in private events, makes speeches about how that is exactly his intent. Nationalistic fervor is hugely popular in Russia. The point being, Russia is not JUST innocently defending themselves, they are vying for power projection as they can.
This same two way interference went on with Georgia as well. Difference is I don’t turn a blind eye to Russia’s empire expansion, or the “west’s”. They are both knowing players in a political campaign that predates the USSR.
"So your argument boils down to that the CIA operation to regime change the democratically elected government of Ukraine is a preemptive strike to…
NATO and the EU, also acting in their self interest, wanted Ukraine to favor trade, and defense pacts with them instead.uh, gain control of Ukraine. And Russia should just concede that they lost."
Correct, I have modeled it after your argument of just surrendering Ukraine to Russia. If it’s an acceptable outcome for Russia, it should be acceptable the other way around too. Both are just empires maneuvering for control of spheres of influence, and strategic resources.
“So: if you know that action A leads to consequence B, and you do action A anyway, you are accepting the consequence as the price for your actions.” - in relationship to seeing expansion of western sphere of influence into Ukraine as something that will trigger war.
This cuts both ways, there has always been two players, at least, vying for Ukraine. Whoever lost the cold war either has to choose to cut their losses, or turn their military power on Ukraine, and invade. There is no morally upright outcome to this. Neither side was going to just give up. Well, at least I believe the US probably would have invaded, in case of loss, but that’s not how it played out, so I may be wrong, but I am pretty certain I am not. I have no doubts it would have been an incredible tragedy for the Ukrainian people either way, and that is what I am concerned with. People who defend non-western empires so often call for nuance, but what they want is for only information painting their opposing camp in the worst light, and apologia when the corruptions, FSB manipulation, etc. of Russia is brought up. Always playing Russia as merely defending its self, and never just suffering the consequences of participating empire building proxy wars. This is the outcome when you are capitalists, you compete for trade, and influence, and you do whatever to achieve your goals. This inevitably leads to wars.
“But yeah I think objectively Russia is the lesser of two evils by far”
As do I, but only because they are the poorer empire, by far. They walk like a duck, and quack like a duck, so they are a duck, and loss of western control of these spheres of influence will only open a vacuum Russia will do everything in it’s power to fill, as long as they are physically able to do so.
Well great we agree on the basic facts then.
And yeah the CIA put their hands on the scale, but they funded and trained the main organizer behind Euromaidan who created a kind of alternative news channel. And the NED had funded 65 projects in Ukraine totaling over $20 million. So sure what the CIA/NED does doesn’t always work out, but controlling about 5% witless puppets is often enough. If you continue to do it at least some of your seeds will bear fruit. Subversion of democracy in another country is a crime in itself. But we just ignore it when the US does it.
You can’t just say “well whatever, both do it, we won, it’s just what we do”. The US and the EU and the liberals are responsible for ignoring it, censoring it, covering for this despicable criminal behavior. And fundamental to morality is that we are responsible for OUR behavior or what we can influence. We can condemn Russia, but it’s outside of our control.
You literally cannot have a free press and a democratic government if a major superpower is spending millions to subvert you. And if some country takes action they are called authoritarian or corrupt by the west.
The point being, Russia is not JUST innocently defending themselves, they are vying for power projection as they can.
Yeah definitely. But that does not mean we should dismiss their legitimate security concerns. Like if China somehow did a regime change in Mexico (put their hand on the scale) the US would immediately react. And then if Mexico were to plan a military alliance with China, the US would invade. This is how superpowers who have actual enemies react. And Ukraine is like 400 miles away from Moscow, that is nothing so Russia does have a legitimate security problem with Nato and the US building bases there.
And THAT problem gets censored or shouted down at least outside of socialist subs. And in real life, it easily can get you fired, like loosing your job. The EU literally passed regulation to ban people from seeing any other viewpoint (even though RT is a legitimate propaganda outlet).
And the problem with this is that any diplomatic solution towards peace CANNOT go forward if all people see is “Russia evil empire attacked Ukraine for no reason”.
And all this leads to an endless proxy war, down to the last Ukrainian.
It’s the Russian/China apologists that are annoying.
This is what I was responding to. Being called apologists and insulted and then they clutch their pearls when they get banned out of communities when they want to spew their lies and insults everywhere. This is what is insane.
The only thing I’ve ever seen here labelled “extremist” and I’ve never really looked into it, is the claim that the Tiananmen Square Massacre was instigated by the CIA. Agian, I have never looked into it, but that’s the only thing I’ve ever seen ruffle people’s feathers.
I really think we all have a lot in common here, and maybe it’s just boredom, but we shouldn’t be at each other’s throats.
I’m a strong believer in facts (wow can’t believe I have to say that) but if someone compiled a large list of grievances with sources, that would be great. I always see lemmings labeld as “tankies” coming in with troves of links and sources, but never anyone else.
Anyone that comes in with proper sources is immediately banned and their comments removed, that’s why you never see them.
proper sources
Such as?
There’s no argument here to defend. But posting a blog from someone in China and calling it a proper source is never going to be correct. They also think that the UN is “western imperialism” and so sources from them will be deleted (even though those sources are from every nation state in the UN).
There’s no argument here to defend.
Not trying to argue just that different people have different standards of what constitutes a proper source. Personally I wouldn’t consider Wikipedia or RadioFreeAsia as proper sources for instance.
They also think that the UN is “western imperialism” and so sources from them will be deleted
I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to point out that much of those with sway within the UN come from within the US sphere of influence (look at the UN intervention on the side of the US in their war of exterminaton against the DPRK for example) and thus treat it as such however with that being said I also haven’t really seen UN sources being deleted before unless the comment containing it breaks rules such as being chauvinist for example (as tends to unfortunately happen).
even though those sources are from every nation state in the UN
Not entirely true, not every paper etc published by the UN is signed off on by every member (hence the back and forth between the un commission and Chinese government on Xinjiang).
Those back and forths happen with every nation in the UN, especially when those nations are trying to avoid blame. It’s like claiming that the US and Israel aren’t committing a genocide because they didn’t sign off on the papers the UN released saying they did. The exact same thing is true of all the sources saying China and Russia are doing the same. And yet if you post those sources, immediate ban and comments removed.
I don’t think you really understood what I’m saying. You claimed every UN source is from every member nation this isn’t true, the UN has many members under the US umbrella this is true. Being skeptical is thus reasonable given these 2 facts.
Also the UN report on Xinjiang explicitly did not call it a genocide but that there were abuses which is true, during the ETIM crackdowns there definitely were abuses genocide however is another story the only “source” for which is a German evangelical on a mission from god to destroy china who speaks neither Uyghur nor mandarin and works for the victims of communism memorial foundation (I really should have to explain why that would cast doubt in this case I hope).
Im not communist but China is not that bad, people have a lot more freedom in China than in the US.
Is it really freedom if you can’t stand outside a school with a battle rifle?
"I mean yeah, they absolutely did.
Communism is fantastic in theory, but in reality it doesn’t work, and it won’t ever work, because our species just doesn’t work like that.
People are, by and large, greedy, power hungry and prone to corruption, and this is why we can’t have nice things and are destroying the planet."
OryxAndCake, please enlighten me. From your perspective the need for communism must become immediate. If humans are myopic and selfish the enshrining of an economic system that rewards the most base characteristics of humanity–capitalism–must be opposed now. Safeguards–systemic regulations–must be created to guard against the worst characteristics of mankind. These characteristics are immutable. The need is undeniably apparent. These systems should be democratic, with all citizens being participants exactly to diminish the baser flaws of our nature. That is exactly what communism aspires to do!
Capitalism is contradictory in theory and barbaric in reality. Your dimwitted snark doesn’t make sense. From such a position the capitalist that adulterates their product should be shielded from any consequences. There should be no regulatory decrees or no body polities at all, because those are naive things. The capitalist that adulterates a commodity and employs men in slave-like conditions should be applauded and congratulated for embracing his better nature! Such an individual should be virulently rewarded!
No courts or magistrates! Of course this makes sense: humanity is trash! Because of this eternal truth let’s dismantle every polity that attempts to bring justice and enforce laws. Burn it all down, because why would anyone ever do anything altruistically?
Don’t you know: people are awful. This is an unchanging constant. The fact nations even have any benign or positive institutes is contradictory and is not real, because people are awful: they wouldn’t even attempt such a feat in the first place! They wouldn’t exist, yet they did and they do. Your premise is maddening because it’s not a premise at all. It’s pure infantile snark. Its only purpose is to highlight the need for regulation and the participation of those being governed.
It’s a banal quip about totalitarianism, not communism. It’s misplaced.
you uh, replied to the post but I think you meant to reply to that silly sausage who is insisting communism is childish.
I guess TLTR summary could be added here
I don’t see any communists here, officer…
Yeah seriously what’s this post on about? There are no communists on Lemmy; but there’s plenty of bootlickers on here cosplaying as such.
Some of these comments are far too long.
it’s the american way. lol
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
Ninth-century Chinese Buddhist monk Linji Yixuan.
That’s the only Buddhist thing burgers know. Was it on the idiotbox or something?
The what? I read it in a book.
I somehow don’t believe you’re as old as you claim lmfao.
How old have I apparently claimed to be?
Well, they are written by communists what can you expect.
On pair with the literacy expected from the average marxist.
On pair with the literacy expected from the average marxist.
Don’t know if you’re joking, and I usually wouldn’t do this, but it’s on (a) par with (not pair) and AFAIK Marxist is usually capitalised.
I don’t know if it’s technically a mistake, but I would also have used expected of (not from).
English isn’t my first language, so caveat lector.
gotcha, that’s kinda dialectical even. And useful. I won’t ever get the western abhorrence at getting instructed by someone or at showing minor imperfections.
You can read this as insulting everyone
Bakhunin was a marxist too, one of the best.
I think he is more known for his certain words on Jews
Wouldn’t be surprised if new users actually complain about them, pretty much all the ‘communists’ here are obnoxious nationalist larpers
everyone is doing it wrong except you.
Log off and start a 5th international but correct this time.
You don’t even know what communism is but just larp on lemmy full time about it, I can tell. Maybe append your comment with “China give me money” or whatever other AES nation of choice you’re doing unpaid PR work for next time
Communism is when the government does stuff
The more stuff the more communist
Communism is stateless, so not quite.
Wrong:
Oh ok, sarcasm lol.
Someone wouldn’t just be stupid online to rile annoying people up.
Wrong, the only communist country is Israel https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NMOjz7Z4DNQ
I only expose myself to information that was penned in self-published newspapers by Europeans between 1818 and 1991.
Youtube is considered an extreme infohazard
no u
Obvious troll is obvious.
Everyone is doing it right except them.
Log off and revive the 4th international because it worked so well.
You… Don’t think nuclear war will bring pinko aliens down to rescue us?
When did I say that?
You’ve slandered lemmy.ml! The party is dissapointed.
-9000 .ml credit
Testicular torsion. (obligatory: /s)
Except only piefed had credit so that’s meaningless even with the ‘/s’
What even is Communist anymore? The US and China both seem to be converging to the same system of government.
It’s anarchist theory that yes, auth communism is just state capitalism instead of private capitalism. None of the “alienation” markers Marx associated with capitalism are done away with. They only pinky promise to do so one things are safe enough and the govt magically dissolves to hand the reigns to workers. Sure.
govt magically dissolves
You seem to have a serious misunderstanding of what communists are actually advocating for. Communists don’t advocate for the dissolution of the government but the dissolution of the state, which are 2 distinct things. The government serves a vital purpose of administration and organisation. The state is the arm of the government that enforces one classes rule over the others. If there is only one class (the proletariat) the state dissolves not out of some virtue but because it simply stops serving a purpose.
The point is whether that time and place would ever come into being. Will the gracious leaders a hundred years from now actually do that deed. Hope and a dream, which can just end up always being conveniently around the bend. What mechanism is in place to actually make it occurr? Who decides when the time/place is sufficient? In the meantime, people are in power alienating the workers just like everywhere else, and have no end in sight or real incentive to give it up. Theres a bridge to be sold if you think they’ll willingly and voluntarily give the power up after centuries out of the goodness and purity of their hearts.
You continue to misunderstand the communist position. You are projecting liberal idealism onto a framework based on historical materialism. You still seem to think we expect the state to be abolished by decree or that its existence relies on the graciousness of future leaders. This is entirely backward. The state is not a moral entity held together by the goodwill or greed of individuals. It is an instrument of class suppression dictated by economic relations.
Once class division becomes a thing of the past, which is structurally inevitable following the comprehensive collectivization of the means of production, the state simply ceases to have a material purpose. When an institution loses its underlying economic justification, it does not need to be ceremoniously abolished. It withers away as obsolete waste. If a prison has no one in it, it is only a matter of time before it is repurposed for something useful to the community. You do not need a committee of wardens to vote on dismantling an empty prison. The guard force naturally dissolves because maintaining it defies basic logic.
You ask what mechanism decides when the time is sufficient. The mechanism is the material development of the productive forces and the conscious reorganization of the relations of production. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, state power is held collectively by the working class to suppress the former ruling class and organize socialist construction. As class antagonisms disappear, the coercive apparatus of the state naturally recedes into mere public administration. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of technical processes.
Also, you fundamentally conflate two distinct theoretical concepts. Marx’s theory of alienation and his definition of capital are not the same thing. Capital is a very specific social relation characterized by the extraction of surplus value from wage labor to generate profit. When the means of production are collectively owned and production is planned for social need rather than market accumulation, capital simply ceases to exist. Alienation is the broader estrangement of humans from the products of their labor, the act of production, and their own human potential.
Marx describes alienation as the effects that capitalism has on workers. So what explains the alienation workers experience in China? It’s capitalism, just via the state’s direction. With a nice mix of private capital in there too still, just for fun.
following the comprehensive collectivization of the means of production, the state simply ceases to have a material purpose.
That’s the hope and assumption im claiming is false. Collectivising all the means of production doesnt make the state useless. To those currently in power at that time, it’s still very useful: keeping them in their extra perks and standards of living they currently enjoy. Unless youre suggesting the leaders of the CCP have the same standard of living as the workers? Unless they’re 100% selfless (the blind hope) they’ll try to retain that power when push comes to shove. When the means of production are completely centralized, the worker will still have to pry it from the leaders’ cold dead hands
You claim that Marx described alienation as the effect of capitalism on workers (when in reality it is the effect of private property and wage labour continuing to exist), completely ignoring the fundamental material reality that China is still in the primary stage of socialism. The alienation currently experienced by Chinese workers is precisely because private ownership and wage labor still objectively exist at this stage. However, this is by no means the state-led capitalism you claim, but rather a necessary material compromise during the transition period. Your remark about retaining private capital for fun completely exposes your superficial, vibes based analysis, devoid of any serious political economy. Retaining and developing the non-public sector is for the rapid development of productive forces. If you have even a basic understanding of history, you will know that the Soviet Union’s absolute egalitarianism and complete nationalization, even eliminating all private small and micro-enterprises, resulted in a massive black market small/micro firms. It was these black markets and underground economies, detached from the interests of the masses, that were easily exploited in the 1990s, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and widespread suffering. China allows the existence of private capital to avoid repeating the Soviet Union’s mistakes; it is about utilizing capital while simultaneously controlling it, not surrendering to it.
As for your second paragraph, it’s utter nonsense, rife with baseless conspiracy theories and Western-centric arrogance. You conjure up a group of leaders who crave privilege and cling desperately to power, a complete misinterpretation of the behavior of Western bourgeois politicians and corrupt oligarchs and their application to China. You lack even the most basic common sense, consistently using the abbreviation “CCP,” a common Western media term, while refusing to use the official English abbreviation “CPC.” This directly exposes that you haven’t conducted even the most basic research on China; your understanding is entirely based on secondhand information fed by American anti-communist media.
The Chinese Communist Party has over 100 million members, the vast majority of whom are farmers, workers, frontline laborers, and professional technicians. This is a true vanguard representing the broad masses of working people, not the gang of a few greedy elites you imagine. Your claim that those in power enjoy extra privileges is utterly untenable in the face of the vast grassroots Party organization. The vast majority of government and Party cadres are at the grassroots and county levels; frankly, their living standards are exactly the same as ordinary workers, and sometimes even worse due to the heavy workload at the grassroots level. As for provincial-level and above cadres, the vast majority enjoy a standard of living comparable to ordinary workers, far inferior to that of Western politicians or genuine capitalists.
Your assumption that once the means of production are completely centralized, workers must wrest power from the cold hands of leaders is an anarchistic paranoia that completely ignores democratic centralism and the mass line. The source and maintenance of power do not rely on the selflessness or morality of leaders, but on strict organizational discipline, continuous party rectification, and direct supervision by the people. Attributing the demise of the state apparatus to whether leaders are willing to relinquish privileges is using vulgar personal interests to deconstruct the grand process of historical materialism. When class differences truly disappear on the basis of highly developed material conditions, the public power governing society will naturally lose its nature of political oppression. This requires no one’s benevolence; it is an inevitable objective law arising from the development of productive forces to a certain stage.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Not really a response to anything I said.
It won’t simply stop serving a purpose.
The purpose of a system is what it does, the fundamental attribute of the state is that of a special coercive organ of one class oppressing another. With the realization of full collectivisation of the means of production, the material basis for the emergence and existence of classes is completely eradicated, and the demise of class differences becomes an irreversible historical inevitability. When there are no longer any hostile classes to be suppressed or ruling classes to maintain their privileges in society, the political function of the state as an instrument of class rule completely loses its material premise for existence. This is not because the state apparatus subjectively chooses to cease operation, but because with the elimination of class antagonism, this special violent machine of the state naturally loses its original function.
Communist kinda means nothing without a working class movement, which there aren’t any as of this moment. In both online spaces and irl though the identifier has become dominated by Marxist-Leninist types who get their entire worldview and “theory” through YouTube or social media hugboxes.
What this results in is, in short, complete misrepresentation of what communism and marxist theory actually are, extreme nationalist campism and straight delusion like claiming that China compared to other capitalists countries are fundamentally any different (most importantly in an economic sense, it’s also similar politically but that stems from the economic base, look up base and superstructure).
Yes all Chinese communists are delusional capitalists who get their understanding of theory from YouTube and social media hugboxes. You are very smart.
Delusional capitalist who gets their understanding of theory from YouTube and social media hugboxes spotted
So you do genuinely believe that all of us Chinese communists are delusional? Interesting. Might I ask where your movement or contribution to theory is? To set us delusional “untermench” right.
Commonalities I see. (Reflecting both how the US is now, and how I could see it evolving on its current path.):
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Mass surveillance with access to careers and positions of power dependent on living and thinking according to the party line. Wrongthink on social media results in real world consequence. (See political criticism in general in China, the reactions to the killing of Charlie Kirk in the US.)
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Mass tracking of citizens. Every movement of every citizen is tracked and recorded 24/7. Every action they take with a computer of any kind is recorded. Every corner of every city is monitoring 24/7 by camera networks and surveillance drones. All these records are constantly trawled by AI for patterns of dissent. The invasive surveillance state the Uyghurs are subject to is the future our leaders want for all of us.)
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Heavy police intervention in everyday life. (Checkpoints and showing your papers is the norm. Heavy integration between national and local law enforcement. Local law enforcement co-opted for political enforcement. Compare how China requires visiting foreigners to regularly check in at local police stations to the American ICE.)
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Economic system consisting of market economies with heavy state intervention in key national industries. (Both are taking outright ownership stakes in companies in certain key sectors.)
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Massive military spending for a military used to project power beyond national borders. (US more like Iraq or Iran wars. China more getting into wars you could call either revanchist or expansionist depending on how charitable you’re feeling. Think Taiwan or some of China’s land border disputes. Though admittedly the US is currently the far more interventionist of the two. But at the very least, both still maintain massive military-industrial complexes as major pieces of their national economies. China either has or will soon have the world’s largest navy. They currently want to use it to take Taiwan, but when you build a tool like that, an expeditionary Navy has all sorts of uses as a tool of national policy. Once you’re paying for the world’s largest Navy, the leadership of that Navy will constantly be pitching uses for it. No Navy admiral wants to see the size of the Navy cut. It will always be tempting to deal with a meddlesome trade dispute by dropping some bombs on people far away.)
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Leadership chosen by performative but ultimately rigged and pointless elections.
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One party political control. (Communist Party, Republican Party.)
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The top leader is surrounded by a cult of personality. (Not sure to what extent Xi has done this. My impression is a lot less than Mao, but a lot more than other recent Chinese leaders. The Trump personality cult is more obvious. But at the least, both countries now have a clear precedent of the top leaders using cults of personality to maintain power.)
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Nonexistent or co-opted labor unions
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Birth rates maintained through state coercion. (I am not aware of any punitive measures implemented by China to raise birth rates. In the US, this looks like banning abortion and birth control. I think China is currently taking the carrot rather than the stick approach, but China has a clear precedent of using overwhelming state power to forcibly control the birth rate. See the One Child Policy. If they could justify that to lower the birth rate, coercive methods to raise the birth rate are also likely. Maybe tie access to careers to having children.)
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Lead by a group of leaders seeking to cement permanent control through mass automation and artificial intelligence.
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Close personal connections between the corporate and government leadership class. Through the Chinese lens, it looks like party members owning the big companies. Through the American lens, it looks like billionaire presidents and cabinet secretaries. The Venn diagram of the corporate leadership class and the government leadership class is a circle.
The US and China really seem to be converging to the same form of government. I suppose as both countries are heavily influenced by a class of billionaires with more loyalty to each other than to their respective nations, this shouldn’t be a surprise. There’s a reason Trump cozies up to dictators. These people are all copying each other’s homework.
On paper, China will remain nominally Communist and the US nominally capitalist. But both are converging towards what is probably better called techno-fascism.
I felt it could be helpful for others if I provided a more in depth response.
China certainly has political limits, but criticism and complaints are not remotely absent from the system. Local Party and government offices, petitioning channels, public consultations, and the 12345 hotline exist entirely to receive complaints about officials, services, and governance. That is very different from the fantasy that ordinary criticism automatically destroys your career.
China does have surveillance (as every modern state does), but the idea that every citizen’s movement and every computer action are constantly recorded and AI-scanned for dissent are complete fantasy. Xinjiang did experience much heavier security measures, but that policy arose after a real period of (US backed) terrorism and jihadist recruitment. On that note, compared with the Western response to terrorism, which involved invading, bombing, occupying, and destabilizing Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, China’s emphasis on domestic security, education, policing and deradicalization was hardly monstrous.
Foreign visitors are also not required to repeatedly report to police stations. Their accommodation has to be registered, generally once at each place they stay, and hotels normally do it automatically. Nor is coordination between national and local police somehow inherently sinister. A coherent national legal system is preferable to fragmented local authorities acting as semi-independent fiefdoms.
The economic comparison is plainly ridiculous as it completely ignores class character. Both China and the US contain markets, corporations and state intervention because those are forms that can exist under very different systems. The real questions are who controls finance and strategic industry, whether private capital commands the state or is subordinate to it, where investment is directed, and what the system actually produces.
China directs credit and investment through planning, retains public control over strategic industries, and regularly disciplines private capital when it conflicts with public priorities. Billionaires exist because private property exists, but they do not exercise anything like the structural political power American billionaires do. In the US, capital openly dominates through ownership, lobbying, campaign finance, media power and the revolving door between business and government.
The military comparison is especially unserious because it compares America’s documented history with speculation about what China might someday do. The US has actually invaded, bombed, occupied, sanctioned and destabilized countries across the world. The China side of the argument is basically that China has a large navy, might fight over Taiwan, and therefore perhaps one day its admirals will invent overseas wars. One side is historical fact while the other is fan fiction.
It also ignores why China has expanded its military. China is surrounded by an American military architecture running through Japan, South Korea, Guam, the Philippines and the wider first island chain, while the United States spends vastly more on its military and maintains hundreds of overseas bases. Chinese military modernization does not occur in a vacuum.
Calling Chinese elections “performative and meaningless” is something only someone who knows nothing could say. That description does however fit the United States, where elections are enormous media spectacles financed by billionaires, corporations, PACs and lobbying networks, while vast amounts of real political and economic power remain in the hands of unelected owners of capital. Chinese elections are deliberately far less theatrical. Candidates are not expected to raise fortunes, buy national advertising campaigns or turn politics into celebrity competition. Deputies at the county and township levels are directly elected, with higher people’s congresses elected through the congress system, and these bodies form part of the actual machinery of state power.
China is also not literally a one-party state in the sense implied here. The CPC holds the leading role, but eight other recognized political parties participate through the united front and consultative system. They are not opposition parties competing to remove the CPC, but comparing that structure to the Republican Party controlling the United States is absurd.
The personality-cult comparison is similarly shallow. Xi has unquestionably overseen greater political centralization and has a much more prominent ideological role than some recent Chinese leaders. But Mao-era mass politics, Xi’s position within a Leninist party-state, and Trump’s highly personalized electoral movement are very different phenomena. Calling all three a personality cult obscures more than it explains.
Chinese unions are not nonexistent. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions has hundreds of millions of members and operates throughout Chinese workplaces. There are valid criticisms about bureaucratism, insufficient worker initiative, and how effectively particular unions confront management, but that is very different from saying labor organization has been abolished or reduced to nothing.
The birth-rate claim is almost entirely speculation. China’s present policy is based overwhelmingly on subsidies, childcare support, tax relief and reducing the cost of raising children. The One Child Policy can and should be criticized for coercive implementation in earlier decades (even still said criticism must be situated in the context of the material reality of the time famine, underdevelopment etc.), but saying that because China once restricted fertility it will probably someday force women to have children is not evidence but once again more fan fiction.
The same applies to AI. China and the US invest heavily in artificial intelligence because it matters for industry, science, logistics, medicine, military capability and productivity. Claiming that both leaderships are secretly building AI in order to establish permanent political control is simply mind-reading unless evidence is provided.
The idea that the Chinese corporate and political leadership classes are basically identical is also false. Party membership among businesspeople does not mean that private companies somehow own the Party. The relevant issue is political supremacy. In the US, wealthy capitalists possess enormous independent power through ownership of production, finance, media and political funding. In China, private capital exists inside a system where strategic assets remain publicly controlled and where the state can regulate, discipline and redirect capital according to national priorities.
That is the central error throughout the whole argument. It sees police, cameras, corporations, markets, political parties, warships, leaders and AI in both countries and concludes that the systems must be converging. By that method almost every modern industrial state is the same.
A serious comparison has to examine property relations, class power, ownership, planning, political institutions, historical development, foreign policy and actual social outcomes. This argument largely avoids all of that.
Thank you for your efforts here.
Economic system consisting of market economies with heavy state intervention in key national industries. (Both are taking outright ownership stakes in companies in certain key sectors.)
What? Exactly which industries is the US in the business of nationalizing??
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This must go so hard if you have absolutely 0 idea what you’re talking about
See my explanation in the sister comment to yours.
I read it. It’s a nothing burger of vibes based nonsense which again must go really hard if you have no idea about the reality of the material conditions class character and actual workings of China.
They aren’t, I am here and FUCK GERMANY FOREVER. Technically not a communist but I think this counts for anarchists too and in the end we are brothers until after the revolution.
Entschuldigung?!
