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.

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.

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.

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.

yes but: “communist party” does not mean “achieved communism.” we all know that. they are working toward a goal, a goal I agree with, but we all know they are still caps. for the time being.

i would not refer to china as communist.

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/...

There's a lot of the world without a "bad part of town"

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.

proper sources

Such as?

In regards to the 2 Michael's who were rightfully arrested for being intelligence operatives with Spavor then successfully suing the Canadian government and Korvig for unknowingly making him an accomplice and winning $6 million. Are not who I would call innocents held hostage.

That shit happens in the US daily with ICE so yeah it's worse over here.

While thats true, I do think people really forget that the actual labor that improves your community is offline, not another sick meme to dunk on the liberals

Its easy for it to end up feeling like performance to fit in with the in-crowd more than actual desire to fix problems. The internet can be helpful but only as a tool in service of actually doing political labor. If its not work you're probably not really accomplishing anything.

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?

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.

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.

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 camps gulags again, aren't you?

Misanthropy is cringe. Humans are wonderful, lots of people remain curious and determined despite massive indoctrination efforts.

<3 humanity. We've got this.

I've been considering it. Thing is, I've never been the type of person who wields the block button lightly and I don't want to make a habit of it. They're really testing my patience though.

Another lib conflates markets and capitalism.

Could you please fucking read a single book about political and economic theories before forming any further opinions. Please?

capitalism and commercialism is not the same thing

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?

You... Don't think nuclear war will bring pinko aliens down to rescue us?

Communism is when the government does stuff

The more stuff the more communist

Obvious troll is obvious.

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.

Yes all Chinese communists are delusional capitalists who get their understanding of theory from YouTube and social media hugboxes. You are very smart.

See my explanation in the sister comment to yours.

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.

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??

We need to bring back feeling ashamed

Unfortunately a lot of them escaped to the usa, explaining considerably many about Florida.

That's the only Buddhist thing burgers know. Was it on the idiotbox or something?

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.

Bakhunin was a marxist too, one of the best.

Or at least they WERE but you assholes are UNWORTHY of being SAVED so never mind!

/s

Go chat to Dessalines or Nutomic about it and see what they have to say about their views.

GL big fella. I hope you never experience serious illness/abusive workplaces/exploitation by the rich/legal quagmire/natural disaster or any of the other myriad things that can have you on the street and destitute in a few months.

I really do mean that.

No matter how far you go you'll always be thousands of times closer to homelessness than our lords and masters we all prostitute ourselves for.

Okey and so ? Great do that. Have a good life.

Communitarianism is an essential part of the human make-up, when individuals are too apart from the flock can't we say they're on the path of a subspecies?