Unironically yes. The pressure of having a communist super power made governments and companies in the capitalist west pretend to care about workers. Once that pressure went off, companies started to keep all the surplus they could.
I'm not so sure. Maybe in Soviet-adjacent governments this was a factor, but the US started its neoliberal turn in the 70s, when people were still operating under the assumption that the USSR would never collapse.
But it was clear by then that it wasn't going to overtake the US economically like was feared earlier. If it was clearly seen that the USSR was beating the US economically it would give lie to the whole system.
This isn't going to happen with China, unless their economy fundamentally changes.
I’ve only ever heard this asserted without evidence, and am becoming suspicious of it. Will China’s current rise really compel the bourgeoisie to cede concessions the proletariat?
No China will not do anything lol. They’re looking to “increase productive forces.” There’s legitimacy to it, of course, but how long will this goal take? Who knows. All we know is that China wants your business regardless of ideology, and it has no desire to impose its ideology on anyone else. A country can go through 500 coups of various ideologies and China will be there and say “there must be respect for sovereignty, peace, and trade cooperation.”
The threat of China is one of business and military. Ideology is just a boogeyman to get people riled up. There is no reason for concessions and there hasn’t been any for decades now. The average American recognizes his suffering, but he tells himself to keep on truckin’ because he believes his treats are cheap and readily accessible and the Asians are still living in rural huts. The only thing that will compel the bourgeoisie to give concessions is if the west decouples from not just China, but a lot of outsourcing, and industry comes back domestically.
The fall of the USSR saw inequality rise globally. That is no coincidence. Perhaps it was already rising, but its collapse sped it up significantly. It’s also not a coincidence that some of the bloodiest labor and civil rights moments occurred when we still produced stuff. Of course other factors were in play, but I’m just saying. We haven’t seen a single Pinkerton shot in a very long time.
USSR gave logistics, financial and military support to leftist groups wherever they need. China would ask those leftist groups to first get into power before sitting on the table with them.
It’s true that China usually sets concrete agenda unlike the liberal vibes based policies in the west. But we haven’t heard too much about Xi’s successors yet. He’s been working hard to put the capitalists back under communist control and emphasizing ML ideology in the government and Chinese society. It’s unlikely that the next person will dismantle everything like the POTUS every 4 years, and China has studied the fall of the USSR extensively and determined the slander of Stalin is one of its causes, but it’s still hard the gauge the aftermath.
The average westerner believes they have a higher quality of life than the average Chinese citizen, but that's slowly changing I think. I think the propaganda is getting more tenuous and more difficult to maintain by western countries. It's becoming blatantly obvious how developed China is.
Also the USSR's threats were things like military defectors and brain drain. I haven't heard of any high profile instances of spies defecting to China or selling state secrets or whatever. If that started happening, I could maybe believe there's enough discontent among western proletariat to do something like demand concessions.
The average westerner believes they have a higher quality of life than the average Chinese citizen, but that's slowly changing I think.
restaurants cost 2x what they did earlier in my lifetime, rent probably 3x. I remember learning about career options in highschool that essentially stopped existing less than a decade later. I'm not that old. How fast is slow suppose to be?
In the gardeners’ minds better off and just better are the same. To admit they’re not doing as well materially as the Chinese would require dismantling white supremacy first.
After days of mounting international backlash, Josep Borrell, the European Union's outspoken foreign policy chief, has apologised for his controversial remarks in which he described Europe as an idyllic "garden" of prosperity and the rest of the world as mostly a "jungle."
"Some have misinterpreted the metaphor as 'colonial Euro-centrism'," Borrell wrote in a blog post on Tuesday evening. "I am sorry if some have felt offended."
But he did not reject the figure of speech and instead doubled down on it, arguing the term jungle is an apt illustration of the lawlessness and disorder that currently rule world politics.
The CIA’s entire network in China was exposed a few years ago and all of their agents were executed or imprisoned. This was done by a supposed mole in the CIA. He confessed to everything, but the CIA had no evidence against him. He was convicted anyway.
Brain drain is slowly happening. After the racist investigations against Chinese/Chinese American professors in the US that found no spies, China has been offering positions at Chinese universities and some people who joined said China offered more staff members and funding for research compared to the US. But again it’s not happening on an alarming scale.
All of these things are too niche for the average American to care about, so it doesn’t have any affect on public perception of china. Yet anyway.
this was due to a completely insecure online network that the CIA was running that was open like swiss cheese.. Iran, Russia, and China were all watching it and marking down operatives and cia human int networks before they rolled them up
It’s a combination of different things. The US admitted that Iran shared info with China and Russia after cracking their websites, but the case with China was much more severe. I think the supposed mole was a patsy, but I don’t think Iran caused it.
The cause of the leak that killed the agents was disputed by investigators, with some believing a mole was responsible, others believed the CIA comms system was hacked.
The CIA and FBI has and always will be racist. They usually suspect non-white agents of being the mole while ignoring white agents lol.
I believe that’s a different situation, or at least it contributed to the CIA’s downfall in China but not entirely. The west reported on Iran helping China after that debacle, but it’s possible that the reporting was limited hangout.
Admit that your spies have died and say because someone snitched or because Iran hacked your websites and helped China, but don’t admit that China had the capabilities to do it themselves or that your agency is compromised to maintain morale.
I think you overestimate the willingness to consume bullshit of the average westerner. Any developments in China are likely to be dismissed as Potemkin villages, A lot of westerners would rather pretend the entire country was faked to trick them rather than admit that they're living better lives than us.
if there's anything I believe about white Anglo westerners, it's how tightly they will grip onto racism as the last thing they'll give up
exhibit a: anglo island wasting resources on pretending that its empire never faded away while its own domestic conditions continue to worsen without end
if there's anything I believe about white Anglo westerners, it's how tightly they will grip onto racism as the last thing they'll give up.
This, Even many libs point out that racism is like the magic trick they need to turn the white proletariat back into their loyal lapdogs. I never really interacted with CHUDs as friends, but do white CHUDs see racism as like a security blanket? Like they're so insecure they're the inferiors so they need the government to help them to even keep them competitive?
I grew up in the south in a deeply racist white area, so I can speak about those types at least. They see racism as an intrinsic, intractable part of reality that governs every interaction. They don't see non-whites as full human beings and don't believe white people can have meaningful interactions with them. I don't think it's an inferiority complex at all, they're fully convinced every non-white is like bacteria and will destroy all of civilization.
But that explains why I get the same reaction about not being racist in the same way vegans get for supporting animal rights.....they literally see us as livestock at best.
with the people I grew up around, they did use the term racist negatively, but they defined as something more like "saying slurs around non-whites." They only see as manners, which is why they'll deny being a racist if you ask them. They'll be polite to non-whites in day to day interactions, but they do not perceive poc as full human beings. They'll smile politely as they endorse genocidal policy.
The white folk from my hometown are the worst racist scum on earth and a big reason for why I believe we'll need widespread re-education.
Much of China’s prosperity is deeply integrated with the global neoliberal free market and China was able to leverage its vast reserve of cheap labor (blessed by the United States wanting to export its own manufacturing base to crush its working class movements at home, back in the 1970s) to bring material gains to its people.
China’s achievement is in its socialist policies that put people at the center, rather than the capitalists or the free market, and this allowed them to lift millions upon millions of people out of poverty and set the nation on a course towards prosperity.
The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a genuine alternative (or at least attempted) to the Western-led capitalist system. The Soviet Union was more or less a self-contained entity and largely self-sufficient, and did not rely on foreign export markets for economic development and growth. The workers in the Soviet Union enjoyed working conditions and social welfare that were on par with Western European social democracy, if not better.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for China today - the working conditions, especially for the 300 million migrant workers in the coastal cities, are still distances behind what the Soviet Union was capable of achieving decades ago.
And this brings me to a central point I have been saying many times on this site: de-dollarization is truly the most important first step, the pre-requisite towards the formation of an alternative system that can challenge the US/Western-dominated neoliberal capitalism. The pervasiveness of the dollar regime throughout the world means that everyone is at risk of losing if the empire crumbles. China cannot just sit back and wait for the US to fail. It needs to pro-actively decouple itself before it is too late.
You have to think that was a time back when people understood the sacrifice made by the Soviet Union during WW2. There’s been nearly 80 years of propaganda since then. As far as with China the west is trying desperately to minimize Chinas successes, which is why it’s important for us to talk about them because like others have said China isn’t really interested in providing a good life for Americans, we have to present the Chinese system as a viable alternative and ask the proletariat why we cannot provide a decent living like China can do for themselves.
The USSR collapsed
Unironically yes. The pressure of having a communist super power made governments and companies in the capitalist west pretend to care about workers. Once that pressure went off, companies started to keep all the surplus they could.
I'm not so sure. Maybe in Soviet-adjacent governments this was a factor, but the US started its neoliberal turn in the 70s, when people were still operating under the assumption that the USSR would never collapse.
They did that due to internal factors though, to break out of stagflation
But it was clear by then that it wasn't going to overtake the US economically like was feared earlier. If it was clearly seen that the USSR was beating the US economically it would give lie to the whole system.
This isn't going to happen with China, unless their economy fundamentally changes.
I’ve only ever heard this asserted without evidence, and am becoming suspicious of it. Will China’s current rise really compel the bourgeoisie to cede concessions the proletariat?
No China will not do anything lol. They’re looking to “increase productive forces.” There’s legitimacy to it, of course, but how long will this goal take? Who knows. All we know is that China wants your business regardless of ideology, and it has no desire to impose its ideology on anyone else. A country can go through 500 coups of various ideologies and China will be there and say “there must be respect for sovereignty, peace, and trade cooperation.”
The threat of China is one of business and military. Ideology is just a boogeyman to get people riled up. There is no reason for concessions and there hasn’t been any for decades now. The average American recognizes his suffering, but he tells himself to keep on truckin’ because he believes his treats are cheap and readily accessible and the Asians are still living in rural huts. The only thing that will compel the bourgeoisie to give concessions is if the west decouples from not just China, but a lot of outsourcing, and industry comes back domestically.
The fall of the USSR saw inequality rise globally. That is no coincidence. Perhaps it was already rising, but its collapse sped it up significantly. It’s also not a coincidence that some of the bloodiest labor and civil rights moments occurred when we still produced stuff. Of course other factors were in play, but I’m just saying. We haven’t seen a single Pinkerton shot in a very long time.
USSR gave logistics, financial and military support to leftist groups wherever they need. China would ask those leftist groups to first get into power before sitting on the table with them.
Silly.
Wdym? Which part is silly?
The goal of increasing the productive forces and moving out of "primary stage socialism" has very clearly been set at 2049/50 (centenary goal).
It’s true that China usually sets concrete agenda unlike the liberal vibes based policies in the west. But we haven’t heard too much about Xi’s successors yet. He’s been working hard to put the capitalists back under communist control and emphasizing ML ideology in the government and Chinese society. It’s unlikely that the next person will dismantle everything like the POTUS every 4 years, and China has studied the fall of the USSR extensively and determined the slander of Stalin is one of its causes, but it’s still hard the gauge the aftermath.
Got it, I misread that as saying the plan was silly.
The average westerner believes they have a higher quality of life than the average Chinese citizen, but that's slowly changing I think. I think the propaganda is getting more tenuous and more difficult to maintain by western countries. It's becoming blatantly obvious how developed China is.
Also the USSR's threats were things like military defectors and brain drain. I haven't heard of any high profile instances of spies defecting to China or selling state secrets or whatever. If that started happening, I could maybe believe there's enough discontent among western proletariat to do something like demand concessions.
restaurants cost 2x what they did earlier in my lifetime, rent probably 3x. I remember learning about career options in highschool that essentially stopped existing less than a decade later. I'm not that old. How fast is slow suppose to be?
Racism is a powerful buffer to prevent anything good happening. Westerners need to go through a lot before admitting they're worse off than non-whites
In the gardeners’ minds better off and just better are the same. To admit they’re not doing as well materially as the Chinese would require dismantling white supremacy first.
I know you probably meant westerners but I want to imagine an evil group of racist gardeners stalking around
Calling them gardeners is referencing this:
Oh I hadn't heard this before, thank you
The CIA’s entire network in China was exposed a few years ago and all of their agents were executed or imprisoned. This was done by a supposed mole in the CIA. He confessed to everything, but the CIA had no evidence against him. He was convicted anyway.
Brain drain is slowly happening. After the racist investigations against Chinese/Chinese American professors in the US that found no spies, China has been offering positions at Chinese universities and some people who joined said China offered more staff members and funding for research compared to the US. But again it’s not happening on an alarming scale.
All of these things are too niche for the average American to care about, so it doesn’t have any affect on public perception of china. Yet anyway.
this was due to a completely insecure online network that the CIA was running that was open like swiss cheese.. Iran, Russia, and China were all watching it and marking down operatives and cia human int networks before they rolled them up
Yeah I was going to say, I thought the spies in China got revealed because Iran gave them a list of names.
It’s a combination of different things. The US admitted that Iran shared info with China and Russia after cracking their websites, but the case with China was much more severe. I think the supposed mole was a patsy, but I don’t think Iran caused it.
The CIA and FBI has and always will be racist. They usually suspect non-white agents of being the mole while ignoring white agents lol.
I believe that’s a different situation, or at least it contributed to the CIA’s downfall in China but not entirely. The west reported on Iran helping China after that debacle, but it’s possible that the reporting was limited hangout.
Admit that your spies have died and say because someone snitched or because Iran hacked your websites and helped China, but don’t admit that China had the capabilities to do it themselves or that your agency is compromised to maintain morale.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/politics/jerry-lee-china-spying.html
I’m leaning on the limited hangout theory because they had no evidence on the supposed mole even though he “admitted” to everything.
Non-paywalled link if anyone is still reading the thread...
https://archive.is/9dZhF
You know his name?
I did it
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/politics/jerry-lee-china-spying.html
Jerry Chun Shing Lee. Handsome devil
I think you overestimate the willingness to consume bullshit of the average westerner. Any developments in China are likely to be dismissed as Potemkin villages, A lot of westerners would rather pretend the entire country was faked to trick them rather than admit that they're living better lives than us.
if there's anything I believe about white Anglo westerners, it's how tightly they will grip onto racism as the last thing they'll give up.
exhibit a: anglo island wasting resources on pretending that its empire never faded away while its own domestic conditions continue to worsen without end
I hate how right you are about this, it's so true and I see it all the time
This, Even many libs point out that racism is like the magic trick they need to turn the white proletariat back into their loyal lapdogs. I never really interacted with CHUDs as friends, but do white CHUDs see racism as like a security blanket? Like they're so insecure they're the inferiors so they need the government to help them to even keep them competitive?
I grew up in the south in a deeply racist white area, so I can speak about those types at least. They see racism as an intrinsic, intractable part of reality that governs every interaction. They don't see non-whites as full human beings and don't believe white people can have meaningful interactions with them. I don't think it's an inferiority complex at all, they're fully convinced every non-white is like bacteria and will destroy all of civilization.
That's...kind of what I feared.
But that explains why I get the same reaction about not being racist in the same way vegans get for supporting animal rights.....they literally see us as livestock at best.
with the people I grew up around, they did use the term racist negatively, but they defined as something more like "saying slurs around non-whites." They only see as manners, which is why they'll deny being a racist if you ask them. They'll be polite to non-whites in day to day interactions, but they do not perceive poc as full human beings. They'll smile politely as they endorse genocidal policy.
The white folk from my hometown are the worst racist scum on earth and a big reason for why I believe we'll need widespread re-education.
China is not the same as the Soviet Union.
Much of China’s prosperity is deeply integrated with the global neoliberal free market and China was able to leverage its vast reserve of cheap labor (blessed by the United States wanting to export its own manufacturing base to crush its working class movements at home, back in the 1970s) to bring material gains to its people.
China’s achievement is in its socialist policies that put people at the center, rather than the capitalists or the free market, and this allowed them to lift millions upon millions of people out of poverty and set the nation on a course towards prosperity.
The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a genuine alternative (or at least attempted) to the Western-led capitalist system. The Soviet Union was more or less a self-contained entity and largely self-sufficient, and did not rely on foreign export markets for economic development and growth. The workers in the Soviet Union enjoyed working conditions and social welfare that were on par with Western European social democracy, if not better.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for China today - the working conditions, especially for the 300 million migrant workers in the coastal cities, are still distances behind what the Soviet Union was capable of achieving decades ago.
And this brings me to a central point I have been saying many times on this site: de-dollarization is truly the most important first step, the pre-requisite towards the formation of an alternative system that can challenge the US/Western-dominated neoliberal capitalism. The pervasiveness of the dollar regime throughout the world means that everyone is at risk of losing if the empire crumbles. China cannot just sit back and wait for the US to fail. It needs to pro-actively decouple itself before it is too late.
You have to think that was a time back when people understood the sacrifice made by the Soviet Union during WW2. There’s been nearly 80 years of propaganda since then. As far as with China the west is trying desperately to minimize Chinas successes, which is why it’s important for us to talk about them because like others have said China isn’t really interested in providing a good life for Americans, we have to present the Chinese system as a viable alternative and ask the proletariat why we cannot provide a decent living like China can do for themselves.
Not if the propaganda machine keeps being effective.
Maybe if there was such an intense cold war again (probably preceded by another hot one). We do live in materially different times.
Have an entire article about it
https://redsails.org/concessions/ has some good quotes and sources