Roger Waters - Comfortably Numb, Bad Empanada - Confident and Dumb

  • Venusta [any]
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    2 years ago

    I literally don't care about Russia, I don't think it's good, and I don't critically support them, I however do not support any western intervention either. I do as far as what the phrase is worth critically support China though lol, I hope they are able to bring about world socialism, but I prefer other factions in the government to Xi personally, and I just don't like the term AES bc it's trying to gatekeep what counts as socialism not that the states are somehow evil.

    • TrashCompact [none/use name]
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      2 years ago

      Russia is not AES. It's part of the anti-imperialist bloc, but that doesn't make it socialist at all and literally no one here would assert that it is. Not caring about Russia but also opposing western intervention is a perfectly fine position. Viewing Putin as a mafioso and Russia as a plutocracy (like all liberal democracies) that is only a member of the new eastern bloc for opportunistic reasons is likewise perfectly compatible.

      AES doesn't gatekeep what counts as socialism any more than reality does. Little anarchist communes are also AES, they are just politically unimportant most of the time (beyond their local communities) by their very nature, though historically there have been important ones and there may be more in the future.

      "AES" is used to distinguish between supporting socialism as a living project and supporting "socialism" as something that "has never been tried" and only exists in the (imagined) future.

      • Venusta [any]
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        2 years ago

        the term literally wasn't though, look into it's original derivation, it was made by the Breznev government (originally called real socialism) to quash criticism in the eastern bloc for people who started wondering whether Mao's system might be a better approach for them who disagreed with self evidently revisionist policies, you may use it that way, but the reason it was invented was to gatekeep definitions of socialism so the only real socialism was the :ussr-cry: specfically after Stalin USSR

        • TrashCompact [none/use name]
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          2 years ago

          Today it is also used to describe SWCC, whatever we might say about that historical usage. If you go look somewhere like GZD, which you identified as aligning with AES spaces, they do use the term for the Mao-era PRC as well as many other places like Cuba and Vietnam.

      • Venusta [any]
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        2 years ago
        CW mildy hostile, I'm sorry

        supporting “socialism” as something that “has never been tried” and only exists in the (imagined) future

        this is literally untrue you just have never looked up the original usage, the textbook definition would not apply to any anarchist commune or maoist insurgency or whatever else

      • Venusta [any]
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        2 years ago

        the traditional marxists (there are different terms for the same thing I'm sure)

          • Venusta [any]
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            2 years ago

            There are no leaders of factions besides Xi publicly, that is the point, multiple people who publicly identified as this were persecuted, so there is a reason there isn't a public leader ...

              • Venusta [any]
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                2 years ago

                people like Bo Xilai, Yue Xin, many other student activists in solidarity of the Jasic workers or otherwise, there's a reason :zizek-preference: boycotts Chinese academia bc of the suppression of Marxists who don't toe party line