That's the struggle session for the day
110% agree. One of the reasons that Blackshirts and Reds is so good is because Parenti understands what critical support is and is not afraid to criticize communist countries.
Its most about being annoyed that they are told to shut up about “authoritarianism” and "totalitarianism
Not reigniting the fire, but this.
There’s a difference between legitimate criticism of socialist states and literally just doing the cias work for them. Like the ccp obviously isn’t genociding ugyhers, but at the same time imprisoning like 13,000 people on suspicion of terrorism is pretty fucking sus. So like half agree
What I love about this is that it's exactly the same argument some factions in the left made at the turn of the 20th century about how the U.S. and Japan challenging the European empires for global supremacy was good because British Imperialism was the greater evil. Replace the U.S. with the UK, replace China with the U.S., and this could have been written by a German communist commenting on the Spanish American War. Spoiler alert: supporting the emerging superpower over the fading ones didn't result in global communism. Fifty years from now, when Chinese capitalists wrest their "fair" share of Nigerian oil fields from Exxon Mobile, will the Nigerian people be better off? Not at all, but people on the 'left' will be making this same argument about how we all have to defend the BJP's India because it's "challenging Chinese imperialism."
I know team Belt and Road prefers hysterical Grayzone stuff, but here's an interesting article on the history of the left viz a viz the Spanish American war if anyone else is curious.
For those under the impression that what China is doing in Africa is just as bad as Western colonialism, I highly recommend checking out this Yale lecture from a Ph.D candidate who spent 10 months conducting field research in Africa: https://youtu.be/wMCF2eu1D0E
tldw:
- how good Chinese investments are for the country vary on a case-to-case basis
- African countries have a lot of bargaining power much more so than with Western investments
- magnitude of 'debt trap' narrative is overstated (see works by Deborah Brautigam)
- countries that negotiate weaker deals for numerous potential reasons fail to take advantage of that bargaining power
I never said it was "as bad." It's bad though. Probably makes me a white rat or revisionist or something, but I'm of the opinion that African workers ought to receive the benefits of African resources (to the extent that any of this stuff should be coming out of the ground in the first place).
Ah okay. Sorry I was under the impression the argument you were making with the Spanish American War analogy hinged on the assumption that China in the future will be just as bad if not worse than US.
African workers ought to receive the benefits of African resources
I mean it's not like China is giving them nothing in exchange for the resources. Btw the Yale lecture I mentioned goes into detail about how the fairness of the deals vary from country to country and how African countries actually have quite a lot of bargaining power. So basically in cases where a country gets weaker deals (e.g. Nigeria, Kenya) it's often due to them failing to take advantage of that bargaining power unlike some other countries (e.g. Ethiopia, Tanzania).
I definitely think China in the future will try to push worse conditions on African coutnries as it gains more power, but it will never be as bad as the U.S., British and French were in the 20th century. Why? Because of that bargaining power you mention. The U.S. and China, to the extent to which they may be entering a cold war, are not nearly as large a part of the global economy as the U.S. and USSR were in 1950. Any competition between these diminished powers will give third parties more negotiating power than they had in the 20th century. The original Cold War was not a two sided conflict either, of course, despite the gross oversimplification we find in, for example, Gkalaitza's surrounding comments or U.S. popular culture. But a new one (if it happens) will be even less binary, giving third party countries even more bargaining power (if they choose to use it). We need international leftist and union alliances to put pressure on the governments on all sides of these deals.
I see. I think at this point we're talking about legit actionable criticism that would be based on the actual terms of specific deals, which is different from the typical low-effort takes that get labeled as "endorsing imperialists" which Gkalaitza and many others in this thread have been arguing against.
Wow, you're super angry. Did you have a bad day at work or something? That sucks, solidarity with whatever struggles you're facing!
A lot of this doesn't really seem to be related to the Spanish American War analogy. I never said China was a worse actor in foreign affairs than the U.S., or that China killed hundreds of millions of people, or that they have done more harm in Africa than the West has, or that we should be supporting Bernie. I do, however, believe we on the left ought not be aligning ourselves with an emerging capitalist superpower (I'm sure you disagree with that characterization, but ya'know, gonna have to agree to disagree on that).
Ask some cubans and Venezuelans and Bolivians and Iranians whose relationship with China and the help they getis the only thing keeping them afloat on how you shouldn’t support either.
Ask some Vietnamese about their relationship with China. Ya'know, the communist country China invaded and fought with for over a decade? I have much respect for the Cuban and Bolivian revolutions, but I don't need to support China to support them.
Countries are defined by their history, culture, economic and material development and progress.
China was a smaller country focused around the east coast, until the Qing dynasty invaded its weaker neighbors and established (roughly) the country's current borders. In fact, there are some fascinating western-style literary works from the Qing dynasty that fit very well with American cowboy tropes about "civilized" easterners bringing "light" to the western frontier. Sounds a lot like... the U.S. Your whole "the Chinese are historically/culturally incapable of imperialism" thing is super weird.
Dude, I really don't get where you're coming from here. You make a lot of wild guesses about what I think or what I believe, but I haven't really made many affirmative claims in our conversation, so I don't know where this shit is coming from. I have to say, you're really not disproving my comment below about the Jack Ma defense squad mostly jousting with strawmen.
I guess the lesson here is, if you want people to engage you in a good faith debate over your novella-length posts, don't reply to them by calling them "insanely dumb" "a hypocrite" and "disgusting" pulling "dumb opinions" "straight out [their] ass." Would've thought that's something you'd have learned as a kid, but I guess not. Still, it's good to get this stuff out of one's system online, before attempting to engage in real-world activism.
🤣 I'm picturing you tabling on the street somewhere, and someone walks by and makes an obscure analogy to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 or the Battle of Lissa or something, and you get on a table and start yelling about how they are a grotesque capitalist running dog. Wouldn't end in a victory for the immortal science, I think. 🤣
First of all terrible comparison. A more apt one would be living in Trumps house and being an active member of his household, receiving information from Trump that forms your perception of Biden then dunking on Biden.
If you criticise a socialist or anti-imperialist country whilst you live in the beating heart of imperialism what are you trying to accomplish?
Most socialists in the West acknowledge they are heavily propagandised. Everyone knows Corbyn wasn't a Czech spy or an antisemite.
Everyone knows they tried to tarnish the anti-semitic label on Bernie too.
Everyone knows that Antifa are not going to rise up for a revolution any day now like the right wing press bleat about.
Why do people then feel they are receiving good information on a country they know nothing about... like Dprk or China or Iran or whatever?
Communists criticise actually existing socialism all the time
Here's two of the best ML journals compiling resources on critiques of AES where you can find articles and entire books criticising the nature and aspects of Actually Existing Socialism
https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/
https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/index.htm
For just a brief look behind the curtain at who is feeding information back to you regarding China lets take the New York Times
Now NYT are more respectable. They're not the tabloid shitmongery that you see declaring Princess Diana an alien
Yet take a look at what the NYT reporter for Hong Kong does
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1277597562233450497
An NY Times reporter in HK has as his background photo the anglo-french navies amassing in the bay of Hong Kong before sailing up to destroy Beijing and start Chinas century of humiliation
2nd one whilst I started typing
A "faceless commentator on Hong Kong protests" called Kong Tsung-gan turned out to be a white rat called Brian Kern. Yet he was the darling of Western media and was even photographed talking to the chief editor of AP news
Western media's favorite 'Hong Kong activist' is US regime-changer in yellowface
These are the "respectable" journalists giving you news on China
Wild.
Like a give a shit about that guy. As far as I can tell he didn't like the fact that I called Anarchists useless for supporting the neoliberal/fascist revolutionaries in a thread documenting the neolib/fascist character of the Belarus protests
He messaged me the next day and I literally said "you having nothing good to say about proletarian heros who moved mountains and I only have insults for you. Have a nice day and all the best"
Then I get pinged with that.
Imagine thinking about an internet conversation from 3 days ago and accusing me of creating alts and talking to him on discord when I've never used discord because i hate instant chatrooms.
Just fuck off cracker - we obviously have nothing nice to say to each other.
Oh yeah, I've had the pleasure of talking to them, but what can I say, I AM a CIA op trying to infiltrate the left.
No but for real, they told me the MLPD were revisionist (they are the only party defending Stalin and Mao in Germany) lol
I AM a CIA op trying to infiltrate the left
When people say that Ironically I just choose to believe it anyway.
Imagine how cool it would be if the CIA actually monitored this site and we wasted their time with struggle session on veganism and bunny cops
Are you trying to get this thread moderated? Because this extends beyond struggle session and slap fights into petty nastyness. If you make the thread your personal vessel for attacking one user it will end up removed.
Hey guy, that weren't me. I've got better things to do than make alts to message some white guy on a message board
Our last conversation happened because you chose to message me to which I responded we have nothing good to say to each other so have a nice day.
Like i said before, I don't care about white peoples opinions
Have a good day and stop trying to bring me into whatever nonsense this is, ty
lmao I literally dont use discord
I think its a shitty app reminiscent of 90s chat rooms
As I said - I don't care about white peoples opinions. So all the best with whoeer your feuding with
Oh, my sweet summer child. I don't want to ping them, but the username is JoeySteel
Edit: Fuck it, let's have some fun @JoeySteel
Eh, he's not that bad. I know some of the stuff he posted, especially on the old site, definitely opened my eyes on some stuff regarding ML thinking
I still stubbornly call myself an ancom, but I'm a lot more sympathetic to MLs now
Also, this is the most I've ever said on any iteration of chapo about tendencies, I usually always just keep that shit to myself and lurk in these kinds of threads lol
It's not about endorsing imperialist states. Criticism is of course fine, as long as it is making some useful point. But it rarely is.
Let's take an example of the Uyghur camps. When the imperialist states criticize them, there are clear goals: creating an international casus belli against china to advance western imperialist goals, creating a common foreign enemy for the population to 'unite' against, making reasons to keep feeding the war machine, etc.
When a western leftist criticizes the camps, what goal are they achieving? Is it stregnthening the ideology, helping it realize that... there should not be camps? Is it showing who our real allies are? Is it proving a tendency wrong? No, I don't think it is doing any of these. Then, all it is doing is helping the messages useful to imperialist states spread.
The need to 'criticize' is rooted in a 'sports fan' mentality to leftism. It literally should not matter to a westwen leftist (at least in this stage of developement of radical orgs) whether China is good or bad.
If you think Trump's gonna send the nukes to China because of the China struggle sessions on the hexbear site and all the others, or that online/irl leftists opinion will ever be considered in any of these situations.
The people they want to send the messages across to about Uyghur camps don't give a fuck about leftist spaces. Belarus was never ever mentioned neither here nor on any other leftist space before and they still went there to stir shit.
Of course I don't think it will directly cause war. That is why criticism is good when it has some actually important points, even if it at the same time agrees with imperialist propaganda. But if no point beyond the useless "China bad" is made, then all the criticism does is contribute to online anti-China rhetoric and make the ideology of the (hopefully) growing leftist organizations a bit more imperialist. I think the effect is non-zero, people will change their ways of thinking based on what they read online.
But if no point beyond the useless “China bad” is made, then all the criticism does is contribute to online anti-China rhetoric and make the ideology of the (hopefully) growing leftist organizations a bit more imperialist. I think the effect is non-zero, people will change their ways of thinking based on what they read online.
There are usually points behind China bad takes, a lot more than MLs here play it out to be, and also leftists can't be imperialist, that's just another ploy to get the discourse towards "well if you say that Lukashenko is bad, you're supporting fascists/you're an imperialist" (happening right in this thread btw), which literally no one does here, it's just dishonest to assume that.
And again, the stuff in Belarus, the intervention in Venezuela, the coup in Bolivia, they all happened independently from whatever the online leftist discourse was, Venezuela was criticised a lot, but the coup still failed, The one in Belarus will too, not because of our solidarity or antiimperialism or whatever.
When a western leftist criticizes the camps, what goal are they achieving? Is it stregnthening the ideology, helping it realize that… there should not be camps? Is it showing who our real allies are? Is it proving a tendency wrong? No, I don’t think it is doing any of these. Then, all it is doing is helping the messages useful to imperialist states spread.
If you completely avoid any criticism whatsoever no matter how reasonable, and no matter how bad something said states may have done, you invalidate your opinion to a public that for the most part doesn't really understand the concept you are explaining and doesn't really care that much, plus you end up with lots of leftists ending up with a completely ass backwards judgement, the extreme example of this being the very weird antisocial online leftist who goes around shouting at people they deserve to be nuked and awaits for Xi to liberate them.
I understand the point you are making but there has to be a balance.
I absolutely agree that there should be a balance and that people uncritically (and unironically) supporting China are just trying to have their activism done abroad. I think the correct opinion is to be ambivalent towards China, but extremely critical of anti-Chinese propagnada.
Also they're not the same and it's very easy to prove.
Mainstream media is split between Biden/Trump. Plenty love Trump, plenty also hate. Maybe 50:50, or even 60:40 in Biden's favor.
The same media absolutely loathes China. Maybe 98:2 against.
So no, it logically follows that you should be far far more "forgiving" of China, than of Joe Biden (because the former will have ~100x propaganda against them, and no balancing voice to counter)
The same capitalist media also loved Deng Xiaopings reforms (as they did with Gorbatchew)
As always when this shit comes up, I wonder why it even matters if I want to say China Bad. Xi and China have their stuff on lock. My opinion and your opinion means nothing to China and has no effect on China. Nobody on here is going to suddenly agree with me if I want to say China Bad. It's not like our weird niche tribalistic leftist infighting actually moves the discourse in any particular direction.
What we should really care about is instilling an ethos of minding our own goddamn business. What other countries do in their own borders has nothing to do with us and it's wrong to try and intervene with their affairs. You're not going to kill American or European imperialism by magically causing an epiphany in the heads of every chud that actually they've been wrong all along and other communist countries own. You win by convincing folks that we should only worry about what's going on at home and respect other nations' sovereignty. Once that's the framework, every argument over China Good/China Bad has even lower stakes than it currently does.
It's the world police premise that we have the ability and the mandate to fuck with other countries that's the problem, not criticism.
So, socialism in one country? Didn't work out very well the first time around. Global capitalism can't be defeated by "only worrying about what's going on at home"--beyond the Soviet example, the Swedish Social Democrats learned that the hard way in the 70s and 80s, when they compromised on the EU to get the Meidner plan. That gave capital the tools they needed to move factories to Italy when Swedish workers tried to exercise their new rights.
The U.S. government shouldn't be doing jack shit, but we on the left need to be supporting our comrades in other countries and crafting foreign policy that pressures other countries to give workers more rights. The media has essentially succeeded in convincing people not to worry about what's going on "over there", and it hasn't resulted in respect for sovereignty or less drone strikes. We need to trust that people can get to the point where they can say "country XYZ did a bad thing, but U.S. military intervention/sanctions would be worse." If you don't have faith in people's ability to grasp that level of complexity, then a radically democratic ideology like ours is probably not a good fit.
We shouldn't be crafting any kind of foreign policy that involves interfering with the political situation in other countries one way or the other. Assuming we have a mandate to weigh in or influence what's going on in other nations is part of what got us here in the first place. Even a private movement that was completely decoupled from governmental influence would be unacceptable.
I completely trust in people's ability to say country X did a bad thing but that we still shouldn't get involved. I have faith that we can criticize the decisions of other nations and use those criticisms to improve our own political systems, which is fully compatible with an understanding that it is not our place to try and dictate policy from afar.
It’s not like our weird niche tribalistic leftist infighting actually moves the discourse in any particular direction.
When I see takes like this, I just remember, the CIA’s spent an awful lot of money to keep us infighting.
If it doesn’t matter, why bother?
Liked for the absolutely dumbness of the take. Keep em coming
"Actually, saying privatizing healthcare in China is bad is actually quoting Adrian Zenz on Uyghurs and the Nazis on the Holodomor. Typical anarkiddie posting CIA propaganda and not understanding the necessity of the material conditions to no longer have free healthcare" ☭ 🇨🇳 🇰🇵 🇸🇾
Counterpoint: if you're in the imperialist core, none of your opinions matter. Doesn't matter the insight you think you will give, you're immediately invalidated.
Edit: oh you like coffee more than tea? You're wrong. Strawberries are your favourite fruit? Lmao, no.
Edit 2: I'm not even being that ironic. F.
I can't believe there are people that are actually responding to OP. I'm suffering. More than 100 comments, f.
Like what business you got as a western leftist in the imperial core telling nominally or whole-ass socialist countries how to run their affairs?
Excuse Mr. Chinese Man, sir, you are not doing socialism with Chinese characteristics correctly, you are only the second most powerful economy with a better standard of living than the U.S.
Excuse Mr. Chinese Man, those hong kong protest "leaders" that take whole trips and meet with every powerful and well known member of the bourgeois ruling class in America, shouldn't be put down like a dog of empire. That's so mwean".
It is a bourgeois notion that your own individual thoughts matter. It is the collective approach of the class as a whole that matters. Individual commies don't fix nothing, it is the active rebellion of an entire group that forces change. Principled communism is the putting of the working class in power, and resolving the contradictions of holding on to power and reshaping society with workers at the top. Any interpretation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its expression as bourgeois dictatorship rule, or "state capitalism" needs a thorough investigation before it is considered worthy of any value. Even the fucking devil can cite scripture.
