• ElHexo
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    deleted by creator

      • ElHexo
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        deleted by creator

        • TBooneChickens [they/them, she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          That's all fair, but framing the sequence of events as entirely unilateral action by the AfD is just as slanted as the article, and we're better than that.

          • ElHexo
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            deleted by creator

      • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
        ·
        1 year ago

        I mean... It's not like there's not a standing invitation for Germany's current government. Is building diplomatic ties not permissible if the party isn't currently in power?

        Better fucking tell the Republicans to get out of Canadian politics, then.

  • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    Oh great, even more lies from German state media. This AfD group had no official invitation from the Chinese government, nor did they meet with Chinese government officials. DW is really trying their best to push horseshoe theory on us, and it would be laughable if people didn't take it seriously.

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Much more of these cursed alliances will happen in future unless the left and/or socially progressive forces in the west develop a coherent anti imperialist stance. As in anti NATO, anti IMF, anti World Bank. Traditional left wing positions based on global historical materialism.

    Until that happens, the right wing and/or social conservatives, like the AfD here, will steal their lunch from them and form these kind of alliances. The primary contradiction globally is the disparity of living standards and wealth between the west/imperial core/triad, and the third world/global south, orchestrated by modern day imperialism and neocolonialism. Countries in the global south are prepared to work with anyone willing to end that, or at least show some support for ending it.

    In short, the left in the west needs to get it's stuff together, actually practice internationalism, and actually practice anti imperialism instead of selling out to the biggest institutions of modern day imperialism on the planet, such as NATO. If the left does not do this, alliances like this will continue to happen as the right occupies, or pretends to occupy, a space the left should be occupying.

  • Redcat [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Not really surprising that german state media would fall in line when it comes to China reporting. The chinese have a history of playing ball with pretty much anyone from Israel to the EU and beyond. If there's even any basis to the article's thesis, it is the rabidly pro-US faction that rules Germany today which is making the main choice in this matter.

  • Wage_slave@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    Is everything world news on lemmy about China? Like I've seen everything from crap articles saying China has a declining population like its a bad thing, or how the west looks like shit compared.

    Like, it's nothing racist or offensive. Not to me at least. Just lots and lots of it being the primary topic in ways that I'm ain't too familiar with.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Remember that a huge part of the lemmy (and derivatives) userbase just came from Reddit, and Redditors are obsessed with China.

      • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I wonder where they got that obsession from? Could it be their entire view of Geopolitics was shaped by the moderation and administrators of Reddit? Strange how Reddit seems to want people to say the same things that the US state department like to say.

    • ElHexo
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      deleted by creator

    • Maoo [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      They're a target of the US Empire and folks that can't do media criticism gladly take the bait.

      The first rule of propaganda is emphasis, which is what you're astutely picking up on. Why are stories about X and not A, B, C? When they're about X, what context is emphasized, what is fact and what is allusion, who is interviewed and given the opportunity to comment and who is not? "World news" stories are very frequently just stenography of various think tanks, often ones that are more or less in agreement with one another.

      The entirety of China's actions reported in this story are that China (exactly who isn't stated, not even a group) invited an AfD delegation to meet with them. No source is cited, but maybe it's Weidel. From this they create an entire narrative by retelling past articles about AfD's foreign policy statements and ask one person to comment: "political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder from the University of Kassel". They don't mention that he's also an SPD politician and associated with a government-funded research institute with a dodgy past. Maybe his takes are good, but why they asked him and not others isn't stated, of course.

      This is just folks getting easily hoodwinked by a propaganda push. Same as folks were suddenly very concerned about WMDs in Iraq or the political powers in Afghanistan and so on. They weren't, not organically - a network of think tanks, government stooges, etc all rally to provide jobs for these kinds of nerds to write these kinds of articles and have these kinds of takes. Several think tanks in Washington have converted from focusing on Syria or Iraq to focusing on Russia or China, as they know who butters their bread.

      Anyways that's a long ramble in response to a simple question.

    • tintory@lemm.ee
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      China is very active player and driving up events, especially as they may be working with nazi wannabes in the German government

      • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Nazi wannabes with 13% of the vote...

        I mean, it's not like China is only working with AfB. They recently invited School to Beijing.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          AfD holds multiple municipal seats and Hitler never won an election (he got about 36.7% in 1932). The Nazis took over because liberals (specifically Hindenburg and co) appointed Hitler and then Hitler was able to take over when Hindenburg died in part thanks to paramilitary support. Just worth noting for gauging AfD's distance from potential takeover.

          I highly doubt that the PRC wants them in charge or wants to help them get there, though.

      • tuga [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        They'll work with whoever the fuck krauts pick to lead them, simple as.

        From where China is standing, they have no reason to see the AfD as any worse than, say, the "we want to nuke europe into the stone age" Greens

    • silent_water [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      it's the active sort. it prioritizes topics people feel heated about by weighting posts with more comments higher. it also doesn't decay the weight quickly enough with time so those posts stay on the top as long as people are arguing in the comments.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
      ·
      1 year ago

      .ml stands for Marxist-Leninist so for some reason there is generally a lot of praise for China which is closer to fascism than either of those idealogies.

      • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I am once again asking liberals to learn that fascism doesn't mean "a thing I don't like"

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
          ·
          1 year ago

          It's authoritarian with large amounts of state capitalism combined with high amounts of nationalism. That sure as shit is not communist.

          • GaveUp [she/her]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Fascist states famously sold off large amounts of state assets to capitalists. Nazi Germany even inspired a new word for this, called "privatization" because they did it so much

            It's okay to not have opinions on things you don't know. Learn so that you can create informed opinions

            • SeaJ@lemm.ee
              ·
              1 year ago

              Quite the opposite for Nazi Germany for the most part. The corporations became a central part of the state. The alternative name that Mussolini coined for fascism was corporatism for that very reason.

                  • Redcat [he/him]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    Well, they are right. Fascism was very much predicated on state enforced privatization. That's what 'Corporatism' means. A political ideology where society is organized like a body - corpus - and each part is sovereign. Private Companies would thereafter be the lords of their respective sectors. Fascism isn't defined by close relations between the Private and the Public sectors because that's actually true for all forms of industrialized societies. Even and in many ways especially the early adopters of industrialization. British free trade ideology was limited to the United Kingdom, while India was run as a resource and tax farming colony for the benefits of British Capital. The State, with its armies and political supremacy, is no less important there.

                    This is an important distinction to be made because Fascism was invented to enforce social harmony in face of class struggle. It is meant to subsume all political discourse of clashing interests between bosses, employees, landlords, farmers, urban workers, service workers, and so on into the body of the nation. In a fascist society you're not supposed to question the political order, as, for an example, bankers know best about the banking system which is why the State enforces their rights and power over their employees, and ensures that as much economic power is privatly held as possible.

                      • Redcat [he/him]
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        1 year ago

                        It depends on wether you're working with a conception of history or if you're working with present-day definitions of common american political parlance. Corporatism did not straight up mean privatization. Only it was a political project with the aim to promote and secure private sovereignty over each sector of the economy. A society organized as a body - corpus. That is what Corporatism meant. You have the head, you have the arms, and the legs. Each part autonomous, and sovereign over it's sector. Just as the fingers don't tell the brain what to do, the employees must not contest the employer's ownership of their labour. If one knew what to do with finance or production, one was a factory owner or a banker. These last elements were to be empowered and secured by the Fascist state, an entity born entirely to subsume class struggle into nationalist fervour. Hence Corporatism.

                        The reason why Corporatism was not defined by the interdependence of State and Private Corporations is because it couldn't have been. As that would have been no different from Liberal or Socialistic States. All Industrialized economies are predicated on the state, on it's monopoly of violence, on it's ability to enforce property, contracts, to secure the money supply, and to galvanize social economic efforts. This even moreso true in the time period, as all the Liberal states of Europe were predicated on colonialism, just as the United States was predicated on manifest destiny. There's no capitalism or industrialization without state action. Corporatism's innovation - which is really an echo of early modern political thinking - was in ideologically subjugating civil society to the wishes of the private.

                        Nowadays people are too quickly to call any state they dislike 'corporatistic', 'corporativistic', or something along those lines because, ultimately, we live in society that is organized around those ideas. Every country from the liberal west to the post colonial east at one point played along Corporatist rules. Even when those Corporatist states were dismantled - early in the US, after the 80s oil shocks elsewhere - we continued to conceptualize the economy and our roles within it according to what the fascists had in mind. So the word loses all meaning. People will say the US is corporatist now because the State intervenes in the economy. Except it always did, and the hopes that the government would stop caring about social harmony and welfare, and limited itself to enforcing contract and property only, was always there. We merely live in a post Soviet acceleration.

                        • commiecapybara [he/him, e/em/eir]
                          ·
                          1 year ago

                          Wasn't fascist corporatism basically inspired by functionalism? I vaguely remember reading about how Durkheim rejected materialism and class conflict in favor of a form of corporatism.

                          • Redcat [he/him]
                            ·
                            1 year ago

                            It's a wide discussion, you can see arguments of all sorts. You can estabilish where it came from, what were it's contemporary philosophical and aesthetic influences, what were the material conditions that led to it, and how far back you wish to place each of them. One can go so far as to say that Corporatism is an echo of pre capitalist Europe, and the guild economies of centuries past.

                  • Gucci_Minh [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Damn you really got him kind gentlesir with this scathing correction, I tip my fedora to you

              • silent_water [she/her]
                ·
                1 year ago

                this is historically illiterate. the term privatization was coined specifically to describe what the Nazis were doing in Germany.

              • commiecapybara [he/him, e/em/eir]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                “In return for business assistance, the Nazis hastened to give evidence of their good will by restoring to private capitalism a number of monopolies held or controlled by the state."

                In other words, the Nazis specifically took certain businesses that were formerly nationalized and then privatized them.

                For further reading:

                • SeaJ@lemm.ee
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Corporatism where the employers play a central role in the running of the state was a foundation of fascism.

                          • commiecapybara [he/him, e/em/eir]
                            ·
                            1 year ago

                            Again, if you have evidence to the contrary, you can contact the author of the research paper, or you can submit your findings to a peer-reviewed academic journal. Here are some further academic sources that also support the claim that the Nazi economy was heavily engaged in privatization, and some relevant quotes:

                            "After the 1931 banking crisis the survival of the four German great banks was safeguarded only by a huge injection of taxpayers’ money. In return, the great banks were partly nationalized and the two worst affected, the Dresdner Bank and the Danat Bank, were merged. Re-privatization was, however, started only a few years later and finalized under Nazi rule in 1937."

                            Source: After the Crisis: Nationalisation and re-privatization of the German great banks 1931–1937

                            "There occurred hardly any nationalizations of private firms during the Third Reich. In addition, there were few enterprises newly created as state-run firms."

                            "The foregoing discussion is clearly corroborated by an analysis of Nazi intentions. Available sources make perfectly clear that the Nazi regime did not want at all a German economy with public ownership of many or all enterprises. Therefore it generally had no intention whatsoever of nationalizing private firms or creating state firms. On the contrary the re-privatization of enterprises was furthered wherever possible."

                            Source: The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry

              • tuga [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                You "study history" off of youtube don't you?

          • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I am once again asking liberals to learn that words in general have meaning beyond synonyms for "good" and "bad".

          • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Good lord you butchered each and every single term you used in this comment.

            Did you ever have a period in your life where you just shut up and listened until you felt you understood what was going on? It doesn't appear to be the case from the outside.

            Now that you're in a community that's liberated from the US-centric echo chamber you just came from no more than a month ago, it's a very good opportunity to start now!

      • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        no it doesn't lol

        .ml is the country code for Mali where the developers are from lmfao

        just lies on lies

        Edit: lmao this may not have been true hol up

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        It is whild how if you don't care what words mean you can out them in any order you like.

  • Fuckass
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      ·
      1 year ago

      They have plenty of hard power, but when it comes to soft power they'll take a handout from anyone that could give it.

      • GaveUp [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Most of the world is friendly with China cope harder

        UN Voting Patterns Compared to China's

        Even more impressive when you consider the economy of China (18 trillion GDP) vs USA + European Union (who are always against China with 41 trillion GDP) and military (China has 2 overseas bases, USA has 800+ all surrounding and missiles pointed at China and Russia)

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yes, that is how you win a revolution. It is not a beautiful thing but if it works, it will have been worth it.

    • FortifiedAttack [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yep, they are.

      There's two major factions in today's right wing, one pro, and one anti NATO. In the USA, they are represented by the Bush-Cheney, and Trump conservatives respectively.

  • Fishroot [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    China's foreign policy was shit since the sino-soviet split and blaming on Deng for shit foreign policy is kind of silly consider that a lot of it started in Mao's time

    Lol this article is a nothing burger. It is mostly an article on AdF than the whatever ''official invitation''(which is probably some private firm in China but apparently every firms in China are controlled by the government) that China sent

  • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears.

    Yes yes, if I didn’t want your opinion I should have stayed on Reddit.

    Yes, yes, you got here first.

    Yes, yes, I’m a brainwashed liberal.

    Yes, yes, you’re actually one of the oldest Lemmy communities but you’ve only recently started federating.

    Yes, yes, you’re seeing the light and can see through the western media’s bias and the rest of us are just mindless sheep.

    Yes, yes, China is great, Russia is fantastic, Ukraine should pursue for peace and roll over.

    Yes, yes, you never allowed downvoting so you’re used to just comment and that’s why there’s so many hexbears in here. And you’re definitely not Russian or CCP farmed trolls.

    Yes, yes, all those things are true.

    I’m sure I’m missing a few, but I’m pretty close to a hexbear “Bingo!” I think.

    • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      We used to allow downvoting, we just got rid of it to stop trolls from making multiple accounts to downvote every comment from people they disliked (specifically trans users were getting their comments brigaded like this) and it turned out to be a great choice because it encouraged discussion if you disagreed with someone.

      Also we're definitely not "Russian or CCP farmed trolls" why would they have paid people to talk amongst themselves for three years? I mean I could really use the supplemental income so I wish, been putting off car repairs for months due to finances.

          • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I don’t think all of you are farmed trolls. My apologies if that’s how it was heard.

            I think many of you are farmed trolls, some of you are “useful idiots” to the troll farms, some of you have removedd into a brigade of memes and a few of you are real people who genuinely hold idealistic opinions that couldn’t work in the real world. I doubt many of you belong in the last category.

            • DankXiaobong [comrade/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              I think many of you are farmed trolls, some of you are “useful idiots” to the troll farms, some of you have removedd into a brigade of memes and a few of you are real people who genuinely hold idealistic opinions that couldn’t work in the real world. I doubt many of you belong in the last category.

              Is this copy-pasta or are you always this condescending? What if I told you that's how we feel about libs like you?

              • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                I’m hardly ever this condescending. I’ve made a special exception to hexbear users who’ve been brigading almost all posts about China and Russia since you federated again.

                You’ve been telling everyone how you feel about libs since you federated, so I’m sure you will continue with or without me.

                I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself for three years, you should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.

                • DankXiaobong [comrade/them]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  I’ve made a special exception to hexbear users who’ve been brigading almost all post last about China and Russia since you federated again.

                  1. Would you not agree that China and Russia are highly political topics?
                  2. We seem to have different understandings of federation and brigading. Can you pls define what you mean exactly and how these concepts differentiate from each other? I can tell you from our perspective this thread is on our front-page. Like you (@lemmy.one) as us (@hexbear.net) are federated to @lemmy.ml and we each see the same post. We are both "guests" to that instance. Also since China and Russia are highly political topics why wouldn't be commenting on here?

                  You’ve been telling everyone how you feel about libs since you federated, so I’m sure you will continue with or without me.

                  That was not the point I was making. I was telling you that you can litterally take that paragraph you wrote and paste it into any polarizing subreddit and get a bunch of upvotes in each ingroup... Reread what you wrote from our perspective.. Don't you see how we'd say it fits on you too? (If you're having trouble: imagine you're us and roleplay it, see if it fits then). You created copy pasta..

                  I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself. You should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.

                • Gay_Tomato [they/them, it/its]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I know it’s tough to face the light and meet the wider world, but outside the basement you’ve been keeping yourself for three years, you should expect that people giggle at your idiocy, at best.

                  Im so glad you got through that. I hope your doing well for yourself. 👍

                • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I am once again asking liberals to either learn how federation works, or go back to reddit.

                • Krause [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  It's not brigading when I see a dumb post on my front page and decide to comment on it.

                  Reddit is a Liberal echo chamber that actively censors things that aren't the US state department line, go back to it if federation is such a problem.

            • macabrett
              ·
              1 year ago

              not very nice to call me stupid

    • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don't think any state qualifies as "great," or "fantastic", however aside from that zero lies detected and Ukraine should have accepted peace terms a year ago instead of listening to :loser:

    • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yes, yes, you’re seeing the light and can see through the western media’s bias and the rest of us are just mindless sheep.

      I mean people are invited every time to argue we aren't right about this but they never do for some reason, idk why that is.

    • WhatWouldKarlDo@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      Now you have some idea of how we feel on Reddit. The difference here is that karma doesn't matter. And hexbearers can't even downvote your comments anyway. You're just complaining that you have to listen to another point of view.

          • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            It's closer to a nationalist oligarcy with the trappings a formal, liberal democracy. Ofc, at the end of the day the U$A is no more democratic in any deepy, normative or radical sense. But the state itself is ideologically more nationalist and has been pushing back against liberal social and economic views. You can see this in the conflicts recently between the executive and the central bank, as the latter has been one of the last convinced bastions of neoliberal economic orthodoxy.

            This also has to do with the fact that Russia's ruling bourgeois class's interests are more national in nature, as a result of their economic development since 1991, aggressive geopolitics from NATO, and the fact that they were forced by the state into emphasizing national interests once the Putin era began.

            Ofc it remains a capitalist shithole.

            • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              That is what modern liberal democratic governments become. You analysis is good, I think you are just giving all parties involved too much of the benefit of thr doubt here

              • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Sure. As a matter of historicaly development, we know, as Marxists, that liberal capitalist societies, whether they have the formal institutions of representative democracy or not, tend to develop due to the tendencies of economic development the social consequences of the later and the political conjunctures, into fascistic or fascist political regimes and societies. But these are tendencies, they aren't metaphysical or mathematical necessities. Even if we always saw every liberal democracy transform into outright into fascism, this doesn't make them the same thing. If you were actually under a fascist government you would quickly realise the difference.

                Fascism is partly characterized by it's ideological and other superstructural features, but this is only a partial understanding. A fuller understanding notes that such states have only emerged in contexts of capitalist decay and crisis and act as a safety valve through which the capitalist class reestablishes political supremacy over the workings classes. However, I would point out that while capitalists are generally key parts of an any fascist state, the relationship between a powerful fascist state and individual enterprises (such as in Nazi Germany) does tip more and more towards the arbitrary power of the central executive government, to the point where they are more eager than capitalists to jeopardize profits for political objectives.

                I'm obviously not saying that liberals have not engaged in extreme racism, colonialism, and genocide. Actually, from a historical point of view, they have been the best at it. It also isn't wrong to say that in many respects fascism is also charaterized by the turning inward, the domestic usage, of the coercive, violent means of political repression which are innovated and developed in colonies. As Aimé Cesaire pointed out, fascism is like imperialism turned inwards. Modern America often treats many people internally in a fascistic way, embodied by the prison-industrial complex, especially if you are a very active, radical activist, or were or are in the past or present a member of a revolutionary group like the Black Panthers, or more generally a poor immigrant, a racial minority interacting with cops, or many other scenarios. The American state, like the British and French states, their political and economic elites, have already partly fascicized, are undergoing the process. But I really don't think we're passed the point of the nature of the political regime changing sufficiently to call them all fully fascist states. After Ukraine, the USA is the closest.

                This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they're the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with. Take the Italian government. It is filled with realy, ideologically convinced fascists. But it does not find itself in a situation where, even as a unified coalition of Mussolini fans, they cannot actually find any means to exert fully fascist politics in defiance of the EU's neoliberal economic agenda, nor NATO's political agenda. Meloni does actually use the classic fascist technique of appealing to leftist sounding points. She recently went on Italian television and shit all over Macron and the French for enganging in neocolonialism against Françafrique, explaining the monetary system on tv and how most gold a child will mine in the period will end up in the French central bank. The difference with the Ukrainian government is that the material conditions of Ukraine allow, actually force, the government to fascicize beyond the confines of it's own ideology and extend this to society more broadly and more radically. There is not even the pretence of liberal democracy in Ukraine amongst actual Ukrainians, let alone the Russophone Ukrainians or Russians of the east.

                We have different words for a reason: to refer to different things. In this case, different types of political regimes. A liberal political regime is different to fascist political regime. The transition might be gradual or appear relatively continuous, but so was the emergence of feudalism and capitalism.

                • Sickos [they/them, it/its]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they're the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with.

                  Would you prefer "liberal democracy nearly inevitably leads to fascism"? Stage 1 cancer and stage 4 cancer are both cancer.

                      • Gsus4@feddit.nl
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        1 year ago

                        Being an engineer and a prodigious philosopher does not prevent anyone from making emotional mistakes when you just want to make a message say what you want.

                        What was said was (and I assume you also understood by your cancer stage examples): all liberal democracies die and turn fascist eventually. This is a very good point.

                        Going from there to saying they are the same is disingenuous and I couldn't help but point that out after seeing how you butchered it.

                        But I'm gone, apologies if I bothered you with my brash quip.

                  • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Except that that is a completely logically confused example. By this reasoning feudalism is the same thing as capitalism. Nonsense.

                    What is common between historically existing fascism and liberalism as political regimes, is the capitalist economic structure that they have existed upon. But this does not uniquely determine the form of the society or the political regime, even if it restricts the range of political regimes which are possible or likely. Otherwise we are engaging in economism and economic determinism and fatalism, which are not Marxist. The difference consists in the real differences in how those political regimes govern, how they organize the economic surplus, how they conduct social policy, how they legislate, and what kind of power relations the executive, legislature and judiciary have to each other. Republican Rome and modern America are both dictatorships of certain classes, but they still had a type of internal hierarchy within the socio-economic and political elite that aimed ensured certain balances of power within their class. Put it this way for example: Israel is highly fascicized society. It is deeply socially and culturally conservative and reactionary. It has been taking steps away from the internal domestic remnants of liberal political structures in order to allow the executive to take control over the legislature. This is a further step towards even more full on fascism.

                    What is common between 1st and 4th stage cancer is the cancer. What is common between liberal capitalism and historically existing fascism is capitalism (private property, wage labor, commodity production, attendant social relations, etc.), the existence of a state, nationalism, colonialism, imperialism. In the sense fascism continues and intensifies this, but this does not make them the same. It's honestly insane to me that this point has to be made: different things are not the same, same things are not different. We use the term fascist to distinguish changes The Third Reich's governance was different in a variety of ways to the Weimar's Republic's.

                    I'd agree that in, say, neoliberalism, there is a particularly strong pull towards fascism, and that you already see these tendencies emerging strongly in neoliberal societies' politics and social relations, ideology and foreign policy. But saying that because the tendencies that lead to a future society are present in an earlier type of society, makes them the same, would again reduce capitalism to feudalism.

                    Otherwise this is just obfuscation and mystification that gets in the way of properly analyzing things politically and makes Marxists look ridiculous.

                    • Sickos [they/them, it/its]
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      meow-anarchist that's a lot of text for someone who's wrong. neoliberal governments worship their leaders, capitalism captures the state apparatus, and minorities are violently suppressed. Fascism. same-picture

                      • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        1 year ago

                        Like. Just no. Interesting you didn't actually response to anything tho. If all you can critique in is the time and effort put into some analysis and then make an immature, incoherent and confused comment then kindly don't interact with me until that changes.

                        You're also just using a couple of the superstructural features of fascism. No-one is saying those don't characterize (partially) fascism. But by this analysis England was fascist by the 18th century, which is obviously absurb. Capitalism has already captured the state in liberalism. Sure. Obviously. This is trivial. But the state itself starts to take on new and, to a point, autonomous power distinct from its dependence on the bourgeoisie, because the fascist state starts to engage in hardcore forms of state capitalism which it directs. The later you go, the less the Nazis gave a fuck about what the German bourgeoisie thought. They were themselves there, in the eyes of the Nazis, to exploit the workers to maximize national production and output. But the Nazis did not govern as the liberal bourgeoisie does based on some amount of consensus and compromise amongst the bourgeois. They did not pursue or decide or craft policy based first and foremost on whether their bourgeois backers would allow them to run for posts again. They were concerned with national power and production, not profit first and foremost. Just as nationalization does not equal socialism, privatization does not equal liberalism, though it does imply a movement closer to pure capitalism. Fascism is both the highest state of imperialism, thus neoliberalism, thus capitalism, as the final solution to its crises, and also its death-knell, because it produces a self-destructive contradiction within itself between the bourgeois class and their interests at large on the one hand, and the fascist state on the other. Every single example of unambiguous fascism confirms this. Just look at Ukraine.

                        Again, all you are saying is that there is capitalism. But again, capitalism can have several different types of political regimes. You can look at their differences in 2 seconds. End of. At a certain point this is a not a real substantive debate, but a purely semantic one over how the words should be used. But the word fascism was introduced to refer to a set of superstructural characteristics, notably of the political regime, which a new, fuller development of capitalist societies tends to produce in crisis. They are responses to crises of capitalist societies to keep producing sufficient profit to sustain themselves. There is a change in the political structure when this happens, and this substantially intenfies (no matter how present already) the nationalism, racism, xenophobia, active mass state repression, oppression and exploitation. But the difference here can be seen to partly reside in the fact that it allows for this intensification which is not as possible under liberal governments. If you think that a liberal government is identical to a fascist one, then go to Ukraine. The US government, nor the Italian government for instance, are mass jailing and death-pitting anyone and everyone who is a communist, socialist, leftist, anarchist etc, where as this happened in every historical case of fascism, precisely because of the nature of the new structure of governance. They are repressing us, they are jailing us, and they are happy to engage in limited bouts of extrajudicial killing and murder. But this is limited and is also a reason I'm also not saying that the transition from liberalism to fascism may not see fairly continuous. But there are unlimited phenomena where that happens but there is still obviously a transition between two different states. There is continuity between colors but green is not blue or yellow. And, again, on this logic feudalism would be identical to capitalism and fascism, because the transitions might have been continuous. Just like feudalism can contain elements characteristic of capitalism and liberalism at the same time, yet it's feudalism because it's what dominants. That's at the base-level. But the base-level does not fully characterize uniquely a society. Marxism proper have never done this kind of reductionism. At the superstructural level, we need to look in part at the dominant mode of governance. The fascist one is different to the liberal one.

                        If you read memoirs of what people experienced when Germany when Nazi, when Italy went Fascist, when Japan went fascist, when Spain went fascist, when Chile fell to Pinochet, you realize very quickly that there is a difference.

                        Macron, Liz Trus, Scholtz, Abe, Gordon Brown... I would go one. None of these people were worshiped. Like no politicians in the UK are worshiped lmao. Although more depraved conservatives still cream themselves over Thatcher. Again, it could possibly happen, but none of these cases have ever amounted to the Hitlerian cult of personality. You're citing certain similarities and saying that therefore they are the same. But the whole point of having different words to to refer to different concepts because there are differences between the real things in the world we are talking about. The burden is on you to establish that these differences do not exist between the cases which we're comparing, which you can't because it's obviously impossible.

                        • Gsus4@feddit.nl
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          1 year ago

                          Do you have an interpretation of the potential counterexamples to your thesis, like Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Greece, that went from Fascism back to liberal democracy? (all around the same time, too)

                          • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            1 year ago

                            Those are not strictly speaking counterexamples. I didn't claim they couldn't transition back. Capitalist systems have tendencies which lead to socio-economic and political crisis. These, pushed far enough, and without a socialist revolution, tend to culminate in something like fascism in the modern era. But these are just tendencies. Nothing says that these tendencies must absolutely always, in every circumstance, proceed to completion. That's determines by the other casual factors, the other objective and subjective material conditions. In this case, it was the geopolitical and global economic context.

                            As a matter of time I'm going to focus on Spain and Portugal in my answer.

                            The original fascist states also all went back to liberal democracy at the end of WWII. They were crushed by the liberal capitalist states (and ofc by the Soviet Union) which correctly perceived them as geopolitical rivals of the first importance by the mid-late 30s. The other fascist states were also pressured into transition back into the liberal imperialst orbit of the Cold War. In both cases, they were reintegrated as they proved unable to fully complete a world fascist counter-revolution. You are right to bring these up as very interesting cases because they are examples of how you can transition back to liberal capitalist bourgeois democracies. But this does alter the fact that there were serious changes in the political structures of both Portugal and Spain and that the supposed continuity of these transitions are often overstated.

                            The transition of Spain between the death of Franco in 1975 and 1978 was not as smooth or non-violent as it's popularly imagined. It was a very violent period. Fascist regimes are inherently inefficient in the long-run from the POV of socio-economic and cultural development. Further, Franco had started to distance himself from a more aggressive fascism once it was clear by 1943 that the fascists would lose WWII into order to transition back, at least in appearance, into a traditionalist, Catholic, authoritarian one-party state. It was still fascistic, but to a lesser degree and I think it had also lost it's dynamism. This was also reflected in the internal balance of power of the Spanish political regime. The more radical fascists lost influence and the Military and Church gained more influence. Instead of radical fascist mass mobilization and constant radicalizing of the populace, Franco betted on a gradual, partial de-fascicization in which the emphasis would be on technocratic governance and in which the population would be more depoliticized and deradicalized through economic growth and benefits. It remained fascistic in relation to ethnic and national minorities and especially towards the revolutionary left. But in general terms, and notably those of economic governance, it returned to a more conservative and liberal position, rather than outright radical fascist, were the latter implies a far more total, complete level of intervention in all aspects of society. Spain became heavily integrated into the Western European and Atlantic economy. It became an ultra-conservative client state of NATO in everything but name (it was not allowed to become a member). The Partido Popular are the continuation of this more liberalizing-trad-conservative wing of Falangists, wereas Vox are representative of the more radical fascist elements. It is not for nothing that they have been forming coalitions recently. But even if Vox came to power by itself, it is not clear that they would find themselves in a different situation to the Fratelli d'Italia at present, were many reactionary aspects of the country would certainly intensify, notably towards immigrants, Muslims, racial minorities and LGBT folks, but it would be limited because a fascist government, while not immediately inconsistent with fascism, does tend to contravene the liberal principles, as liberals are only one group of pro-capitalists, and there are many political positions which emphasize different forms of capitalism, notably through different governance structures over the economy, firms, capitalists, etc.

                            Another reason the transition was possible is because there was a recognized incentive to compromise in order to avoid another civil war, the terror of which was still very present in everyone's minds, and this was made possible because, as noted above, the more radical elements of the falangists had been somewhat sidelined and Franco had also begun a process of deradicalizing his fascist government. Apartheid South Africa was similar in many respects, in terms of reasons for liberal transition, despite the context being extremely different in many ways, most obviously when it comes to the racial dynamics. Interestingly, it's difficult to imagine Israeli doing that kind of liberal transition at this point. Imo Israel's future may well be an extremely bloody one..

                            It's also worth pointing out that the 70s was a far more radical time than today. There was a lot more pressure from the social-democrat European left that shaped the debates and ideological struggle in 70s Spain, again emphazing a need to transition. Also, Carter moved away somewhat from Nixon's more active support of these regimes (the US supported their military by being their main weapon's providers).

                            The Estado Novo was as strange type of fascism. It was not as aggressive in its foreign policy as fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, which attempted to recreate mystical conceptions of their ancient empires in a way that directly conflicted with the interests of the other western imperialist powers. It was also pulled back into the orbit. Neither Franco nor Salazar were idiots when it came to how they needed to geopolitically and economically pivot in order to ensure their survival. Salazar did something very similar to Franco, as described above.

                            These other fascist states, which were tolerated because they did not pose as serious a threat to the imperial interests of the US, Britain and France, and because they were willing to accommodate these other powers' interests and cooperate. However they were also undermined by their own inefficiencies, economic and political, and pressure from the external climate of a dynamic post-war trans-Atlantic economy to reintegrate themselves, at least economically, with the liberal powers.

                            We know that the socio-economic base transforms itself in such a way as to overcome disequilibrating forces that emerge in their social relations, especially once the latter are no longer sufficient to further developing the means of production, especially in a system of like capitalism whose basic functioning is premised on the fact of continued production of profit to incentivize production. But what about the transformations of the superstructure? My point is that as the base structure develops in this manner, it not only does so in conjunction with the the superstructure, but not only transforms the superstructure in order to reach new points of temporary stability. It is not only the base structure that evolves, moving gradually, continually and something revolutionarily into different overall dominant modes of production, but also the superstructure, in particular the political regime, which develops, and not only between base-level modes of production, but also within the same overall type of mode of production. In some cases liberal capitalism becomes fascist capitalism. In some case fascist capitalism can transition to liberal capitalism. In some cases fascist capitalism turns into outright mass-slave economies.

                • Gsus4@feddit.nl
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Which framework is that analysis based on, Frankfurt school or something later?

      • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        If you didn’t want to be ridiculed for your insane opinions, you shouldn’t haven’t federated with the real world.

        • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Our opinions are correct so we feel no challenge from you. It’s simple as that.

          You will perpetually be stuck falling for the next WMDs in Iraq, forever.

          It’s sad

          • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            LOL. I definitely did not believe Iraq had WMDs. It was insane what the US and its partners did in Iraq. It solved nothing. It probably made things worse in the Middle East, at least for 20 years, and it cost a lot of lives.

            But let’s not use that fact to say everything the West is doing is wrong. Just like a few of the good things China doesn’t make everything China does correct.

            • YuccaMan [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              If you payed closer attention you'd notice that we have a range of opinions on China, and we don't all think everything they do is correct. That's what the term critical support means. It's a recognition that even socialist states are imperfect, as the nation state as an institution is fundamentally imperfect and will always and everywhere undermine freedom to some degree. But a state which is undergoing the transition to socialism, particularly one that's putting themselves in a position to undermine US imperial hegemony like China is, is well worth supporting, even as we acknowledge its flaws and contradictions.

              What none of us will ever tolerate are accusations of genocide with one discredited religious fanatic as the source, or racist insults being hurled at their head of state, both things I've seen numerous times from users from other instances.

                • YuccaMan [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  For real though. It's hardly difficult to find a bunch of leftists arguing about China lmao

            • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              I believed it. I was a child at the time, but I believed it. Because the entire US was screaming it was true.

              After Libya, my illusions were fully shattered. Now I search out the backstory devoid of Western sources.

              You claim you didn’t believe, but you still buy the US line today.

              How can you reconcile such a monstrous lie they told in Iraq with the idea that they could ever be trusted again? That cognitive dissonance broke my belief in the West entirely.

              Millions died on a lie. Justice would be execution for every official involved. They are doing it again, but once again most won’t realize it until years after.

            • AcidSmiley [she/her]
              ·
              1 year ago

              I definitely did not believe Iraq had WMDs.

              That's interesting. Now i'm genuinely curious what broke your resistance.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I'm talking about your persecution complex. I don't feel attacked.

          you shouldn’t haven’t federated with the real world.

          lmao, alwaysthesamemap.jpeg

        • Gay_Tomato [they/them, it/its]
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears

          If you didn’t want to be ridiculed for your insane opinions, you shouldn’t haven’t federated with the real world.

        • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          You literally believe that people who disagree with you are "farmed bots", you're in no position to say other people have insane opinions

        • oregoncom [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          You went on a long screed about how we keep making fun of you and telling you to go back to reddit. Clearly you're the one being ridiculed for your insane opinions.

    • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Simultaneously a bot farm and separated from any wider instances until very recently.

      Do you honestly believe that?

      Does it really make sense to you that China sets up self contained bot farms interacting with no one?

    • eatmyass
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

    • conductor@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears

      Lmaooo go cry about it I guess

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      Libs crying that they can't just pile on people who disagree with them will never stop being funny. These trolls can't actually make any coherent arguments to support their positions and simply regurgitate a handful of tropes they memorized. All of a sudden this tactic doesn't work anymore and y'all having a meltdown.

      And here's a bingo card for you lot

      Show

    • Redcat [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Yes, yes, China is great

      i disagree since they'll court anyone, even americans and nato

    • ThomasMuentzner [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      You are on a good way , accept us as the new Cultural Hegemony ... Its not like you didnt have a Cultural Hegemony Before, so you know the play
      It was China bad , its China good now! pretty fucking easy ....

    • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Waaaaahhhhh only 99% of everything I interact with is geared toward my Liberal Anti-Communist sensibilities waaaaahhhhh waaaaahhhhh why can't it be 100%

    • oregoncom [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      "Everyone I disagree with is a trolll, I'm so enlightened". Fuck off.

  • Sinister [none/use name, comrade/them]B
    ·
    1 year ago

    The AFD might be pro-russia, but they are definitely not pro-china lol. Maybe China thinks they can buy them? Anyways this is just the consequence of the Anarcho-Bidenization of the German Left.

  • o_d [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    Clickbait headline. It doesn't mention who they mean when they say "China". Is it a high ranking official? Some nobody entrepreneur? It also doesn't say anything about why they might be "court[ing]" the AfD. It's really more about populists doing what populists do and aligning along nationalist lines to the benefit of the national bourgeoisie and the detriment of the American empire. They're right that disintegration with China would be a disaster.

  • Gsus4@feddit.nl
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I'm loving this, AfD has been collaborating with the far-right party in our country, which accuses everyone else of being filthy commies, it would be a beautiful irony (in the unlikely event this were to be true) if they started talking up the CPC because russia can't fund them anymore hahahaha

          • Awoo [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Do you not know what the structure of China is?

            Serious question, do you? When I criticise the US I do so from a position of knowing how power works between its three branches of government, how the senate works, how local governance works, how elections work, how the courts work. Do you know how China conducts any of these? Do you know how they govern 1.6billion people?

            • Dr. Bluefall@toast.ooo
              ·
              1 year ago

              It's a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.

              It may wear the skin of a democracy, but it is not a democracy.

              • Awoo [she/her]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                It's a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.

                It may wear the skin of a democracy, but it is not a democracy.

                This is the vaguest description ever and it's not even correct with the vague points. There are multiple parties, and given that there are multiple parties the candidates certainly aren't chosen by one party.

                How are candidates chosen? Who elects them? When are elections held? What is the structure of the elections?

                Do you know any of these things? Serious question. Have you ever investigated and learned this topic thoroughly? You know how the US system works I assume, I bet you vaguely understand some other systems too, like parliamentary ones such as the UK (or not, could be wrong). Have you ever actually investigated the topic or have you just passively repeated vague statements made by other people who are also passively repeating vague statements about it?

                If you want me to I can in fact give you a fairly good summary of how the Chinese system actually works. But do you even want to know? Are you actually open to learning?

                • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  I've investigated Chinese Democracy thoroughly and vastly prefer Use Your Illusion II or Appetite for Destruction

              • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                Democracy is when you vote between red man and blue man, both of whom have the same policies.

                  • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Though, in fairness, red man is actively hostile to LGBT people, migrants, and women whereas blue man is content to let LGBT people, migrants, and women suffer via apathetic neglect instead.

                    Truly a vibrant political system.

                      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
                        ·
                        1 year ago

                        Weird how democracy didn't stop the genocide of the Native Americans, or the Aboriginal People of Australia, or the First Nations. I guess "true democracy" has just never been tried.

                  • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Two Jews meet on the U-Bahn in 1935. One is reading a Nazi newspaper. His friend asks him "how can you read those outrageous lies about us?!" He replies "If I read a real newspaper, its persecution this and deportation that. But in this paper? We own all the banks, the movies, the government!"

                    • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      Classic but red flag (lol) conspiracy theory vibes in this context. Jewish people owning China or vice versa? Either way fits more in line with qanonists

                      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
                        ·
                        1 year ago

                        God could the point go over your head harder. That user wasn't engaging in a conspiracy theory that Jews on all the banks movies and government, they were comparing your apparent belief that the Chinese government controls the American government to those antisemitic conspiracy theories.

                        Also zero points in an argument with a bunch of people who can't downvote farquaad-point

                        • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          1 year ago

                          Whooooosh lol 😉

                          Would someone actually create a "your apparent belief" in their mind from that

                          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            1 year ago

                            You know what, it's not even apparent, you explicitly stated it:

                            China's red-blue man owns US's red and blue men anyway.

                            disgost

                            • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
                              ·
                              edit-2
                              1 year ago

                              There's actually a looong leap from the known China-sponsored politicians to antisemitic cabal conspiracy theories

                              • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
                                ·
                                1 year ago

                                I think that in 30 years you'll be considered the anti-Semite of this age, honestly. Sartre once famously claimed something like "if the Nazi didn't have the jew, they would have created him."

                                Sartre, for all his faults, understood that fascism always needed the external and periphery, whether defined geographically or ethnically, in order to sustain itself through expropriation. Who this was doesn't matter as much as that this group is defined as having more than it deserves for bad reasons and is therefore justifiable as a victim of violent expropriation. The values represented have become more progressive™ in that you believe China owns American representatives in order to mistreat Muslims or something. But materially it's identical to "Judeo-Bolshevik" antisemitism

                                Here's a bite-sized analysis from a guy who's pretty good at this:

                                https://twitter.com/RodericDay/status/1495054681579692035?t=gmJyzLx5go9hZWcFJkt5fw&s=19

                                • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
                                  ·
                                  edit-2
                                  1 year ago

                                  I remember fascists have been calling antifascists fascists for a long time but "the anti-Semite of this age" is definitely one of the most despicably hateful derogatory things I've seen in a while.

                                  Edit: no, I do not open links from Musk's alt-right-landia

                                  • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
                                    ·
                                    edit-2
                                    1 year ago

                                    Actually, I first posted only hog but I'll give you 1 more comment. Before I decide I'm wasting time.

                                    How do you understand the anti-Semitism that defined 1917(?)-1945 fascism? How did this phenomenon arise and what interests were represented by the actions that these beliefs supported? Don't just give me the Ur-fascism definition, or some extra-simplified version (palingenetic ultranationalism) of this unless you can really describe WHY it arises. I wanna know the why behind the entire process, because, like is claimed in the link I sent, anti-Semitism was defined as explicitly different from normal hatred of Jews/judeophobia which unfortunately was around at that time.

                                    But if it seems you didn't read the 2 minutes of screenshots in the link I sent, I will just post hog to you from that point lol

              • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                It's a one-party state with all candidates chosen by the party.

                I much prefer all those two or three party states where the candidates are chosen by their respective parties on the marching orders of the capitalist class

              • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                According to their respective peoples, China has an infinitely more vibrant and responsive democracy than the United States.

                I'd hate to think you'd be so blind to the irony of saying such a thing as 'wearing the skin of democracy' if you were living in the west.

                Either way I'd be ashamed to act like you have and speak despite having such ignorance about the Chinese system of democracy.

              • Kuori [she/her]
                ·
                1 year ago

                lmao dog you shoulda just said "i don't know anything about that, why don't you tell me?"

                it still would have taken you zero effort and you'd have avoided embarrassing yourself

              • silent_water [she/her]
                ·
                1 year ago

                the representatives are chosen by their parties in most countries, including the US. the difference is that in western "democracies" there's two or more parties all representing the same interests - those of the capitalist class - posing the electorate with a false choice. how is this improvement?

              • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                Democracy is when the people hate their government and the more they hate it the more democratic it is

          • UlyssesT
            ·
            edit-2
            18 days ago

            deleted by creator

              • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
                ·
                1 year ago

                Imagine for a split second that the strongest government in the world is constantly attempting to cause the overthrow of your legitimately popular government, despite it being popular and significantly beloved by almost all people there. This external, most powerful government in the world tried to cause unrest in every possible way, including funding all opposition groups and organizations regardless of their violent/genocidal intent (e.g. Falun Gong, Islamic terror groups) and cause unrest on your borders (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Korea).

                What do you do? When good faith polling shows that you're popular and fulfilling the needs and desires of your country's working class but a foreign press tries to speak about the terribleness and need for overthrow, do you just let that happen with more money and propoganda than you can possibly provide to support yourself? Or do you censor the BS and report to your population that these images/ideas/orgs are actually subversive and attempting to change the government they legitimately love.

                In this hypothetical situation, what do you propose? Allowing the propaganda but claiming it's wrong has failed in many projects, and resulted in massacres once fascism won (Chile, Indonesia). Just trying to set up a wall of no information works for a bit, but info can cross anyways (USSR). Allowing limited access if you search for it but not allowing it's widespread propagation is the method of china. A VPN allows you to see it all, but it can't be spread too widely before it is stopped from being viral.

                Do you have a better solution? Because this is how China presents itself and how the Chinese population sees it

            • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Oh I think he's talking about FDR, the most popular president in U.S. history and one consistently ranked amongst the best

                • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  What are you talking about? Of course the people in China have a right to vote.

                  Honestly, how did you come to be so confidently incorrect about this? You would have to have done no research at all to think the people of China don't vote, but a normal person who has done no research about a subject will have the humility not to assume they know what they're talking about.

                • GaveUp [she/her]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  It's okay to admit you don't know something. Like the other person said, Chinese people can vote

                  Learn yourself so that you can make informed opinions

                  It's better to have no knowledge than negative knowledge (knowing "facts" that are completely wrong because of a gut feeling assumption rather than any evidence or research)

              • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
                ·
                1 year ago

                And in hindsight, not such a great person. Or at least had a lot of negatives to go along with his positives. Probably best to hard code not only a term limit, but an age limit on elected officials. I'm tired of the world being run by geriatrics. Culture seems to be consistently 20 year ahead of government.

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Term-limits are blatantly anti-democratic and age limits are clumsy, but a cognitive evaluation and probably an MRI would be good for rooting out cases of cognitive decline.

                  There is an informal age limit in China and Xi is still below it, though just barely. I'm curious if he'll go for another term after crossing it. I think he understands that he needs to retire sometime -- no one wants to become a late '60s Mao.

      • Fuckass
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

        • Sinonatrix [comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          That's because they've been brainwashed by a consistently rising standard of living, they don't have free press like us to tell them how they should really feel about things

          • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            "Sir, their government has brainwashed them by... running the country well enough to consistently raise the standard of living!"

            "Those dastardly Chinese!"

        • masquenox@lemmy.ml
          ·
          1 year ago

          White people in Apartheid-South Africa believed Apartheid-South Africa was a democracy, too.

          • uralsolo
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            edit-2
            1 year ago

            deleted by creator

              • uralsolo
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                deleted by creator

                  • anoncpc [comrade/them]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Yes, they did. Until some alphabet agency agent co opt the protest, when it's about inflation and economic crisis. Many Chinese peoples still piss at them till this days, at least learn about the country first before spouting shite

                    • masquenox@lemmy.ml
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      Riiiight... the country that the CIA had famously failed to penetrate - right until it became convenient for tankies to pretend they actually did, eh?

              • anoncpc [comrade/them]
                ·
                1 year ago

                For their peer, they vote for the most competent to run the govt, not some snake oil sales man or senile old man that rely on pr popularity to run the damn country. Look at Nigeria, a drug lord successfully make peoples vote for him and now they're in the brink of war even though peoples don't like it,

                • masquenox@lemmy.ml
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  For their peer,

                  Riiiight... I'm pretty sure Xi Jinping hangs with the over-worked factory people every night and does his share of the sewing.

                  Tell me another fairy tale, tankie.

          • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I have never looked it up but for them it probably was. That isn't the reason people were upset about the situation.

        • YaaAsantewaa@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          ·
          1 year ago

          No one in China is ever asked what they want or what they believe in because the CCP doesn't care. China is ruled by a military dictatorship, and under that form of government the people have 0 rights and 0 say in any government policy

          • GaveUp [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            No one in China is ever asked what they want or what they believe in

            Thousands in China were asked every single year from 2003 to 2016 by Harvard in an intensive study that they've described themselves as "nothing comparable done on this scale, over such a long period of time, and over a large geographic area"

            The conclusion they found is that 95%+ of Chinese citizens are satisfied with the government

            If you tell me Harvard is a Chinese propaganda institution I'll take your word for it though

            • YaaAsantewaa@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              ·
              1 year ago

              Do you care about the Uyghur people China is currently trying to genocide?

              Also The ban was for calling out Chinese racism against black people in Africa, so no, I don't care quite frankly

              It's amazing how you people put on this fake act about caring about racism and bigotry, it's really astonishing

              • brain_in_a_box [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                It's amazing how you people put on this fake act about caring about racism and bigotry, it's really astonishing

                This is very ironic coming from someone parroting Adrian Zenz's cynical atrocity propaganda.

              • Staines [they/them]
                ·
                1 year ago

                currently trying to genocide

                This piqued my interest, since a lot of the Uyghur genocide narrative collapsed years ago to the point that even the journalists that were reporting it began walking it back.

                Taking a look at who is currently reporting on "Uyghur genocide" in 2023, and it's all organisations like Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, United States Institute of Peace - basically (literal) US government propaganda agencies reporting on the US congress proceedings.

          • TheGamingLuddite [none/use name]
            ·
            1 year ago

            China is ruled by a military dictatorship, and under that form of government the people have 0 rights and 0 say in any government policy

            Not even the most devoted ideologue for the US state department would claim something this ludicrous. How do "leftists" arrive at this conclusion?

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            No one in China is ever asked what they want or what they believe in

            I thought this was a joke at first

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Democracy ™️ brought to you by Yum brands Inc. Is infact everyone's enemy. The Chinese process is infact more democratic. When you look at the way funds are apportioned and how often the legislation passed reflects the will of the people it is undeniable they actually have more democratic input in their system than we do.

      • Gsus4@feddit.nl
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Meh, our democracy isn't even that threatening to China (Taiwan's is, it showcases a viable alternative to the CPC), they just had to leave us to our "contradictions", they'd keep booming and we'd just keep buying their stuff while we eat each other alive, if China is doing this, they gotta be really desperate to turn Europe fascist again.

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          (Taiwan's is, it showcases a viable alternative to the CPC)

          Throwing chairs at each other in the Legislative Yuan over who gets to be America's most loyal running dog isn't seen by anyone thing China as a viable alternative to governance.

          • Gsus4@feddit.nl
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            It's ok, Hu Jintao really didn't mind being dragged off the stage like an idiot in a country where face is everything. China does settle fistfights in private, which does set a good example for the populace, ngl.

            PS: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9D%A2%E5%AD%90:

            面子是人際關係中的一种现象,在東方等级观念较强的社会(如中國等)特別受到重視。具体定义不明,基本上意味给社会中每个人的尊重[1][2]。如果不给人面子,即是拆穿別人的面具,可能会引起报复。如果有面子,一般会被认为是社会地位较高,更受人尊敬,然而面子不够大,可能是因为在社会、经济等方面地位低下。“面子”是“社会脸面”,代表着个人在人生历程中由成就和夸耀所获得的名声以及被社会重视的声誉[3]。「厚顏」俗稱「不要臉」。

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Aside from the racism of the "face culture" narrative, the guy is a dinosaur and notably not an official, just there as a matter of respect and legacy as a former President. We don't really know what happened, but those meetings are long and the dude is probably senile, so he was probably getting helped off the stage by aides at around the time they expected from the outset.

            • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              in a country where face is everything

              In America no one cares about being embarrassed, that's only compatible with the Asiatic brainpan!

              Toss Orientalism on your reading list:

              The term orientalism denotes the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the application of clichéd analytical models for perceiving the "Oriental world".

              • Gsus4@feddit.nl
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Look, if I find it disrespectful and a scandal to watch that video, I assume that anybody who tends to value and respect the position, wisdom of their elders in an institution (more than us who throw them in nursing homes and ignore them forever) will find this pretty jarring for a well-functioning Chinese democracy.

                But you guys are hilarious, finding offense where none was given, you're an amazing instance, I want you to know that, from the bottom of my heart.

                    • tuga [he/him]
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      Es portugues ou brasileiro? Tou memo a ver que deves ser um daqueles "comunistas" anti-comunista se fores portugues

            • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              treated like an idiot in a country where face is everything.

              哇,你真懂中国文化。只有我们中国人不喜欢丢脸,不像那些外国政治者。他们热爱在大家面前受困窘。

            • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Did that sound like a thing that wasn't wildly rascist when you wrote it? You can delete your comment. You simply can choose not to be rascist, it doesn't cost you anything.

    • robot
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

      • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yes, sure. It seems hypocritical to me to say, on the one hand, that there is no political difference between the yankies bombing Yemeni children directly, vs giving the Saudis the bombs to drop, and then on the other hand, say that there is a difference between China supporting fascists who murder children (i.e. Israel or the Apartheid goverment), vs actually murdering those people themselves. I'm not saying that you are defending this, but it strikes me as a weird mental gymnastic were some 'tankies' (or whatever term you want to use, no normative judgement intended) will engage in basically some classic liberalism in order to let China off the hook on this front.

        We should also mention the Khymer Rouge. Fascist might not be the correct term here, but it was politically equivalent in terms of how destructive, bloody and reactionary it was.

        Israel is fascist. There is no excuse, by the nature of fascism, for supporting it. Ever. Yet China is happy to fund both the Israeli army and the West Bank administration.

        Again, people can't have their cake and eat it too. You can't both say (i) profoundly reactionary as Russia is, Ukraine is more deeply fascicized and that as an immediate consequence of that, there should be a preference for the war ending on Russia's terms; and (ii) that China may be funding fascists, but this is understandable and justifiable in the context. Okay. So then what are the criteria and conditions here apart from biased vibes to decide when critical support in these extreme cases is justified or not? What's the line? I know I have my own ideas about this, but it's often difficult to see what other peoples' are.

        It's should go without saying that China's foreign policy, including during the Maoist period, has been by far one of its most reactionary aspects. Once again, the Sino-Soviet split was a historical tragedy and reflects the challenge for communists of avoiding finding themselves in post-revolutionary situations in which their politics becomes nationalist due to them coming to identify their interests with those of the traditional nation state as a matter of reality and pragmatic necessity.

        • robot
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          deleted by creator

          • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            What is the difference between a mistake, and unfortunate necessities? Why are lesser-evil arguments not theoretical mistakes on our part when we make them about China? I'm not disagreeing with what you've said about how China rationalizes their policies, but my point is that, as a massive obligation of all Marxists, we need to critically examine it both analytically and normatively.

            The intention is important because it's relevant to understanding how China will act in the future. For instance, if revolutionary situations emerge in the rest of the world, will China actively support them? China has showed little to no interest in the contemporary era in supporting radical movements. I agree that they may be right to do this. There is perhaps a 'socialism in one country' calculation which goes beyond the Stalinist one (as Stalinist Russia did continue to support revolutionary movements, tho massively shit the bed in the case of China). Perhaps it is the correct one. But it does introduce the fear that they may never change this position, including in revolutionary scenarios when it would be in the interest of the world proletariat for them to do so.

            We can go back to my previous comment to note that it goes further than trade, and depends what they are trading. China is not a group of students. If they boycot Israel or just don't trade with it, it has a bigger effect, and will not contribue, indirect as it may or may not be, to the active repression of Palestinians in an area that is one of the most important for politicala and ant-colonial struggle in the current world.

            I think the issue goes deeper than mistakes. Vulgar marxists often seem to judge things either 'mistakes' or 'determined deterministically by their historical conditions, so stop moralizing about it' based on their vibes towards the choice in question; mostly because they havent actually properly thought through and analyzed as Marxists the relationship between normative thought and judgement, and explanation in the context of historical materialism (which we can understand to mean here, in a relatively minimal and non-metaphysical sense, as simply a theory of social reality or phenemenon which aims to explain them on the basis of class, and how the latter determines the control and distribution of the economic surplus and other social relations in virtue of how the class relations organize and are influenced by transformations between the classes and between them and the forces of production). So you often see some people act or speak as if any use of normative concepts is 'idealism' (whatever they happen to mean here, which often seems to fluctuate incoherently), and cite out of context and reductively the quote where Marx says that communism is not an ideal to be established but a real movement of history. Ofc, even beyond the context, Marxism is not a religious dogma. It is not a cult. It is the proletarian stage of human enlightenment and a continuation of the scientific method in its first real application to the social, hence to itself, which in term influences itself, thus the world, thus itself in term and so on (whereby the mind-bending aspects of dialectics in the social context). Marx himself, and all of us, and any Marxist, when you read about their lives, and first and foremost motivated to political radicalism not based on some metaphysical revelation or scientifc realization of the dialectic of the movements of history (athough perhaps this is the more advanced view which develops later). It is based on the experience of oppression, exploitation, abuse, repression, violence, coercion and alienation, which reflect something not coherent with our own material interests. What matters normatively, in a concrete and experiential sense, are the material consequences that affect the majority of people. Experiences of justice are a part of this. Political thought decisions require necessarily normative (thus ethical or moral) forms of thought, though the latter don't exhaust the former. But we need to be able to respond when people ask 'why should we have communism/socialism/anarchism'? And they are going to what normative arguments in terms of how that kind of society will be more beneficial for them and the people they care about. If fascism was a more likely 'real movement' of history I would still oppose it and hopefully be willing to die fighting it than to simply say 'okay well history has spoken'. The reason why there is a movement of history towards the conditions of socialism and communism is because they are, from the point of view of socio-historical evolution of the species, more advanced, efficient, beneficial ways of organizing society. Societies evolve into new forms based on their tensions, instabilities and internal dynamics, and those which have the historical advantage, as capitalism did when it emerged due to its greater powers of production and control, will often take a historical lead. We'll see if China can do this. But socialism is a normative necessity, not a metaphysical necessity, although the two are linked in virtue of my last comment.

            Btw I'm not saying at all that you are doing the above 'vulgar marxism', just highlighting it as a relevant topic of discussion. Just to be clear that I'm not attacking you here.

            Chinese foreign policy was definitely, I agree, filled with actual mistakes. But if we put in the context of the Cold War and the increasing revisionism of the USSR, the hostility of the latter towards China, and the fact that the interests of the CPC were now tied to those of a nation-state structure, it forces us to realise the difficulty of determining the historically progressive policies when there is an immense temptation to identity those with the more spatially and temporally localized ones of the nation state one happens to control.

        • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Its not about universal values at all but about what the Chinese People want and what the party determined is the interests of their communist goals. I don't love that China treats Israel as anything other than the fascist government it is, but the biggest difference is locality/direct influence. Russia is directly affected by the fascists at their border, because their fascism is directed eastward. China isn't impacted by the Israeli fascism and therefore has no direct interests.

          Maybe you call this classic liberalism, but the analysis here begins in a materialist position. China just takes the very minimal-conflict path within their material position. This means that great evils occurring elsewhere do not trump their need to develop and become strong enough to become communist. Once those evils are aimed towards them, they react and sometimes not perfectly, but in the way which is protectionist. Hopefully, from their example, we can learn to be better at exporting revolutions like the USSR but without destroying ourselves, like the USSR allowed itself to be destroyed (the phrasing here isn't meant to indicate systemic intent, but it wasn't prevented obviously). I hope we can be better at internationalism than China but they're surviving and influencing the world while every other communist led country has been marred by a sort of irrelevance to the rest of the world if they didn't get destroyed.

          • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I don't know how many times this needs to be said but I'll say it again: Marxism is a univeralist (at least applied to human history and societies) scientific theory and set of revolutionary normative principles of thought and action that emerged in modern Europe as the Proletarian stage of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.

            If people want to do historical relativism of value based on nationalist considerations, then they're basically a postmodern fascist whose view is identical to the basis of Dugin's ideology. Dugin himself thinks that's he's synthesized and gone beyond liberal capitalism, communism and fascism here, by identifying the material interests of individual people's with their national identity. Ofc this is just postmodern strasserism.

            There are also several distinct questions here: firstly to what extent the Chinese people have actual democratic control over the CPC and the PRC, which I'd say is little, and which is different to whether or not the policies of the CPC are in their interest (to a great degree, I'd say yes), and is also different to the question of whether or not they have objectively high approval ratings (also genuinely very high compared to any other society that comes to mind).

            I agree with you that there is a locality/directness factor that is imporant, but the two examples are not fully analogous because in the one case we are talking about whether Russia's invasion is understanding from the pov of Russia's interests, whereas in the other we are not talking about invasion, but about whether China should be supporting fascists. It answers why China might be excused from not intervening in Ukraine more directly but it doesn't answer why they should be economically supporting Israel. Ofc, perhaps they want economic leverage to eventually pull Israel away from the US orbit based on Irsael's perception of its own interests. I don't know. I'm not saying we should unilaterally and unequivocally condemn China on a purely detached 'moralist' basis here. The final judgement has to be in terms of whether or not their actions contribute positively or negatively in the long-term to world communist revolution.

            The way you've phrased it would suggest that China's interests are those of the realist modern nation-state. These are inevitably part of them, but China is not the nation state. The latter is the state of the society, which is part of but not identical to the society itself. The Chinese working classes interests are ultimately those of a transition to socialism and world-revolution. Your phrasing also suggests that Israel is not in their direct interests. I think you need to make clearer what you mean by direct interest. Do you mean no interest at all if not direct? Or can they still be of indirect interest if not direct? But Israel is a bulwark of American influence in the middle east and key source of black ops and intelligence operations. No-one is better at killing radicals than Israel. It is also in the interest of China as a society, again, to contribute to a world revolutionary situation. How is the Chinese government doing this? If so, is it intentional? If not, then why is this not a problem, given that intentions are our guide to what China's power structure would do in any future potentially revolutionary situation. If they were not an interest at all, then they wouldn't be trading and helping the IDF to arm itself.

            This is important because communism is not, I repeat not, possible without a world revolution.

            I'm saying that the mental manouver justifying the position in one that is common in liberalism. I'm not even necessarily saying it's wrong. But I'm asking for clarification why it's justified to make that move when talking and thinking about China, and not about other states. Which states are not reasoning in terms of their materialist position? They all are, more or less, when looked at from a Marxist pov. This is explanation. It's not justification. Justification in the Marxist revolution is always, first and foremost, what most likely contributes in the long-term to a world-proletarian revolution. This is always the end goal (although the end goal of the revolution is the production of conditions for real fulfilling and ethical life and advancement of the species).

            • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Just replying to your splitting it into 3 questions: this is in direct opposition to democratic centralism and is a liberal absurdity to think that these should be considered separately. It doesn't really impact the rest of your comment though, so that's below.

              Also Marxism is a universalism based in a scientific approach, not based in a set of principles i think. Unless you mean by principles here: dialectical approach and materialist basis.

              By direct and indirect, I mean primarily that its immediate. I should use that word, and that's a good critique of my phrasing for sure. But it's immediacy does not negate the eventual interest, a direct but not immediate interest, in revolution in Israel. I mean I can forgive eventuality for immediacy if this is part of the scientific learning process of world transition. Why I justify it for China is that I believe there is a clear communist party interested in the highest levels of focus and learning for the sake of communism doing this. I think their track record is clear in this sense despite mistakes.

              • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                I'm not absolutely sure what you mean by the first sentence.

                It seems pretty clear to me that you're confusing the fact that the questions have things in common, whether they are about similar topics, or whether one question is relevant to another because implies consequences that determine or influence our answers to the other questions, with the idea that they are the same single question. The fact that China's government has very high approval by all measures, is not proof that the government is democratically run in a socialist sense. Indeed we know it's not, because Chinese workers do not have direct control over the means of production. So it's not sufficient for it to be democratic. However it's almost definitely a necessary condition, so you would need it, and it is evidence in favor in the weak sense that it does not refute the idea that China is democratic by itself. But there is other evidence not in favor.

                But historical materialism is not mystical nonsense where suddenly everything connected or with any property in common in suddenly identical. It's not a metaphysical calculator you can use to answer every question.

                Democratic Centralism is a theory about how a party should be organized. It has no bearing on a linguistic or semantic question. End of. What it implies, which you seem to me to be confusing with the idea that these are the same question, is that the questions practically have to be considered together, or that you can't answer one without one or more of the others. I completely agree in the latter case. As evidenced by this very discussion, it will be difficult to enter into a discussion where you discuss one but you don't discuss the others. But they are not the same thing, and saying they are is just a logical error (which dialectical materialism or democratic centralism have nothing to do with) which ends up with us treating China as closer to socialism than it actually is, which is a massive failure on our part as Marxists. For Marxists more than any else, we have a duty to be clear, because the truth is on our side and we are not in power.

                Okay but if but now I need to ask the exact same question about the word 'immediate'. This seems to be a synonym for 'direct' here, so it doesn't necessarily make it more clear to me what it means. In a dialectical context it is difficult to make any sense of the concept of directness or immediately (unless it is meant relatively), due to the omnipresence of mediation. I'm assuming therefore that you don't mean it in that more philosophical or meta-theoretical sense as used in the Marxist tradition. I'm guessing you just mean that practically it is more important or pressing for China's interests if it is more direct, in that it should be given priority as an objective.

                In that sense I don't completely disagree with you, but there's also a difference between not having an aggressive policy towards Israel and actively funding it's settler-colonial apartheid project. Why is the latter sometimes treated as absolutely and necessarily unjustifiable in some cases but not here?

                • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  My claim in the first part is not a philosophical claim about the possibility of separate questions interacting, it's that a judgement of existing socialism based on the dividing of some necessary or sufficient conditions as opposed to how these are intended to maximize the democratic process as a whole while integrated over time (meaning that these processes continually allow for the better development of all aspects of democracy. With the most portant being that the interests of the working class and desired results of the people are achieved. Any further division is unnecessary at this stage. Improvements are another, but the way you philosophically divide it is not something that hasn't already been discussed as infinitum and understood by our Chinese comrades. This is what I intended at the beginning, though I did sloppily present that, including a use of "democratic centralism" without being clear that I meant "it's against the principles and plans which have been determined best by democratic centralism incorporating the interests of about 18% of the world population."

                  The fact that it's not yet communist and/or fully worker owned is just unfortunately not yet relevant at all. It's not philosophically incorrect, just divisive and not necessary, because the plan to arrive there has been clearly laid out. Is your critique on that plan then, or just the current state? The plan, unfortunately, currently includes being so protectionist that they can't intervene against Israel and must include them in the global trading powerhouse they are developing. I say unfortunately, but know that I mean that I wish it could be otherwise but the scientific approach has led to that conclusion based on the failure of other approaches. I find it a conservative (here meaning not radical) approach, but conflict avoidance does currently entail trade with all States which are not currently threatening China, especially those in hotspots of western imperialism to drag them away from american-centric policies. China will eventually hopefully be able to utilize this dominance to push radically, and I will most definitely critique the approach if this doesn't change once war with america is no longer a giant possibility.

                  I use immediacy to describe the time-aspect, and I don't think I made that clear based on your response, so here my response may seem tangential but I think we are just not using the terms the same so I'm going off of my intended meaning and ignoring what I think was a response to something I didn't mean. We have geographic and time variables at play (which affect each other in pretty obvious ways i think). Russia was presented with both immediacy and directness of the fascists at their border (and the USSR before them, of course). China with Israel has determined that both are not at play, that Israel is not a "becoming" problem for them as a possible war actor and is geographically not direct. "The omnipresence of mediation" how you use it here seems to be an almost trotsky-like position where all issues must be tackled simultaneously, which I can't see concluding anything except for for the immediate attempt at the overthrow of all capitalist nations by every communist. I'd love it, but Stalin was, i think, proven correct that socialism in one country was necessary in those conditions (pre WW2, though I think we all usually agree he shouldn't have stopped at Berlin lol) and therefore the omnipresent mediation does not supersede the immediacy or directness aspect.

                  Good Convo though, even though we're talking a bit last one another. You seem more knowledgeable about the philosophical terms, and I appreciate your fairly clear usage. Still haven't read grundrisse lol

                  • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Yeh good convo. No beef obviously. Marxism is a part of science and so has to include continuous critique.

                    My point is simply that the confusion of these questions as if they are the same, when they are trivially not, actually gets in the way of precisely the important objective you've cited, namely understanding and taking the correct position on China. If our position does not make sense when explained to people then that it our fault and issue, not their's. People not being Marxist is just as much, if not more, the fault of us as Marxist to clearly explain and convince that it is their's.

                    However I'm still not fully understanding your first point. Breaking down concepts, making clear definition, and thus theoretical conditions, is for the sake of clarity and so that we can actually analyze properly, and is obligatory at the onset of any scientific analysis or inquiry, once we've gotten beyond the more intuition stage of concept formation. I'm not disagreeing with you that the answers to those questions, the properties and facts they are making reference to, all have to be taken into account in a holistic way if we are going to give a proper analysis or have a decent understanding of how democratic the Chinese political and socio-economic system is and whether it is moving in that direction. It's also essential so that we know what conditions would produce these conditions, so that we know whether the socio-economic basis for a deepening of proletarian democracy is developing. But clear analysis of concepts at the very onset is still essential. Even tho this points have ofc, as you say, been analyzed to deathly minutiae ad infinitum by millions of Chinese comrades, I'm not seeing how this makes is irrelevant for those of us outside of China. It is still important for us, in our own position, to have a correct understanding of China as Marxists. Marx wrote much of his work before the conditions of as pure capitalism as he describes in works such as Das Capital were even really there. Marx reflected with scientific ruthlessness and lack of qualms about people's political correctness ceaselessly. This is why we still read him today and not other analysts of capitalism from the time. Hell, even the Communist Manifesto describes a capitalism which is too purified for the time. But this was not an irrelevant mistake on Marx's part. It was scientific foresight as to where European societies undergoing the transition to capitalism were headed. We need similar analysis today of China, if we think or hope that China will be a future global revolutionary center.

                    On the plan for socialist transition being laid out, the CPC most certainly have stated and presented such a plan, although I haven't seen very detailed data demonstrating that such a plan is seriously being laid out and applied. It seems to be based on a kind of faith in the CPC. The argument that they have continued to massively improve the standard of living since the Reform and Opening up, bringing 800 million people out of poverty is of course correct and a historic achievement. However the same argument is often used by liberals to justify, say, the capitalism of the 50s-70s in which living standards in the West did considerably go up. The difference which might be brought up is the fact that China has done so without using imperialism. However, given that the core issue of imperialism is that it is exploitation (of some of the most extreme kind), and given that China has charged its development in recent decades (and did so in the 50s when Liu Shaoqi was saying things like 'exploitation can be good!') with exploitation of its working class and peasantry, citing improvements in living standards is not proof that the intentions of the part-leadership are necessarily geared towards a truly socialist transition. So I don't think it's just a philosophical point, but something to be always born in mind so that we suspend judgement until hard evidence is there that the CPC will, so to speak 'push the big red button'. I'm not going to believe something unless I have actual incontrovertible evidence for it. That doesn't mean that I know that they won't. But something it's just not possible to be confident either way. Another issue is that the current mode of production in China does not function like capitalism as we know it at the macro-level, nor does it operate fully like socialism. Maybe it is a type of transitionary stage (but then we hear the Leninist critique of the reforming, Menshevik notion of non-revolutionary transition to socialism in our heads). In either case, it makes clear to me again that one reason for so much of the theoretical impasse of people outside of China trying to understand it is that we don't have a fully adequate understanding of the key mechanisms at the macro-level of their mode of production.

                    Of course I'm happy to be proven wrong on this point. The main issue is that I've only just recently started leaning Mandarin, so I cannot read Chinese sources. But if anyone has excellent economic data and analysis to give me on this point i'd be happy to see it.

                    This is, again, why intentions are important. Political groups with different interest take on different objectives and intentions in the same set of external material conditions, so the fact that the Dengist are in power and not the Maoists, and that the economic base of support for the party and the state is therefore different now in the aftermath of the reforms, is very significant for trying to understand what the intentions of the current CPC leadership actually is.

                    I personally don't really understand how saying the truth about China, as far as we can discern it through scientific, Marxist analysis (which in no way contradicts, but rather radically extends, the methods of scientific enquiry of the past, whichever culture they were taken from), amongst ourselves is an issue. We have an political and therefore intellectual duty for our understanding of China to be as clear as possible, and that's not going to be achieved by saying that certain questions which are relevant to understanding China's contemporary political system are divisive. I'm not seeing how you and I having this convo is divisive. Furthermore, rigorous critique and debate is of the essence of Marxist methodology. Look at the records of the Bolshevik party until the Stalinist period. Before they were in power they were rigorously critiquing each other (perhaps too viviously) left, right and centre. Lenin was theoretically beefing with everyone all the time. In the 20s, once the Stalinist position was dominant, you can look for instance at economic debates or at the party debates on China. They were theoretically sophisticated and based on the premise that a clear theoretical understanding is essential for policy. Obviously we are not in anything like such a position of power of influence, but we do need to start, as part of a truly Marxist culture, to act and prepare for this, not only because liberal hegemony will not last forever, but because it's important that in order to convince people of the correctness of our view, that we can do so rigorously and clearly.

                    I'm not using mediation in a Trotskyist position (not a Trotskyist). I was just checking whether you meant directness in a more philosophical, meta-theoretic sense appropriate to materialist dialectics or whether you were using it in a more colloquial sense. Obviously the latter as you've clarified that it has to do the time-aspect and thus the pragmatic importance. I'm also not disagreeing in the slightest that the Trotskyist position of that type, especially today, would be ultraleftism in the pejorative sense.

                    • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      1 year ago

                      Were getting a bit long here, comrade lol. I can't reply to all that at the moment, I just threw up in a train and realized I was sick at the same time. (I actually just realized I replied to you in a different threads moments before throwing up lol) About out of posting power for the day. Will respond later better though.

                    • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
                      ·
                      1 year ago

                      Ok so I think we just started at different reasons for beginning the analyses, because I'm not in disagreement with anything you said basically anywhere. My point from the beginning (that China has determined that it must strategically act as it is) begins already at the assumption that our Chinese comrades are making the analyses that are needed to reach that conclusion. This assumption is not based in any sort of unpenetrable philosophical claim, as you pointed out well. But I think there is enough evidence for it to be worth assuming for strategic purposes. Going into a deep discussion about whether they are correct at the most basic level of analysis is maybe too far for me to try at the moment as a learner of mandarin also, but reading works of Chinese comrades, I have trust that their analysis of their own conditions is better than mine. I don't disagree about how we should assess that for our own movements, and honestly think we should be skeptical of the support of Israel for exactly those reasons, I just don't find it fruitful to use it as a "GOTCHA" to China about universal values, because that is most often based in having a distrust which I find as unfounded as blind trust (the distrust that China is off of the socialist path because it trades with reactionaries/settler colonists).

                      I was speaking muchhhh more colloquially everywhere than I think you realized, which seems to have added to difficulties. Should do better at that kim-salute

                      My point at the beginning about the interests being represented is a sort of philosophical underpinning, though, where we might disagree. I do see the trend of interests of proletarians overtime aligning within a set of conditions and aligning towards socialism. When mistakes are made among the masses, we can be critical, but even those mistakes will be overtaken by advances and fixed by the same process as long as the class's interests are represented. Here I am making a more philosophical stake in the ground, and I do think that, if the Chinese proles are wanting to trade with everyone and not go to war with anyone, that it might not be the fastest path to communism but it will eventually reach there faster than doing the bidding of the capitalists. (Here I am making an anti-accelerationist claim for places which have already seen a revolution that's been upheld). Here we may disagree still and I'd enjoy reading your thoughts.

                      • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]
                        ·
                        1 year ago

                        Sorry may seem like I avoided a lot for what you said, but i more just didn't actually disagree and realized our only real disagreement was one of the first things I said days ago lol

        • eatmyass
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          deleted by creator

          • StalinForTime [comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yes I agree with everything you've said.

            I think it's worth adding that we also need to be aware that in any multipolar world, preferable as it may, or may not, be, it is perfectly possible that other spheres of influence around the main poles develop imperialist positions. I personally think that Russia has already well displayed this capacity. It's interests as a nationalist state capitalist power will naturally drive it to an imperialist position in its region of influence, imo.

        • tuga [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          China actually warned Allende to be "careful of counter-revolutionary", and specifically called out the army IIRC, they just didn't break off relations with the country post-coup

            • tuga [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              Sounds like bullshit, what do you base that on?

              • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                ·
                1 year ago

                As far as I can tell, Deng openly admits that in the interview that we all like:

                https://redsails.org/deng-and-fallaci/

                • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Can you cite a passage? The only relevant thing I can see is talking about maintaining relations with post-coup Chile.

      • FakeNewsForDogs [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        They're after that "peaceful coexistence" the USSR could never achieve because they failed to see that in order to peacefully coexist they first had to absorb most of the west's manufacturing capacity.

        • Alaskaball [comrade/them]A
          ·
          1 year ago

          they failed to see that in order to peacefully coexist they first had to absorb most of the west's manufacturing capacity.

          They never had a chance to even negotiate with the International bourgeoisie in the first place!

          The RSFSR was literally being invaded by Entente and Central power exeditionary armies from day one and the Soviet Union from the day it was founded was under a cruel international economic siege as well.

          Peace was never an option as the only offer was unconditional surrender.

          • FakeNewsForDogs [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, was just joking. It was of course never on the table for the soviets, and would be an absurd thing to plan in the first place. I doubt even deng ever thought China was doing anything more than developing their productive forces and buying a modicum of security by opening up. The idea that the west would be stupid enough to deindustrialize itself (by offshoring to a communist country no less) to the extent it has makes sense in hindsight, but I doubt anyone had the foresight to anticipate things turning out quite like this, let alone actually plan it.

    • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Dengist foreign policy and the Sino Soviet split was such a disaster. China even invaded Vietnam at around the same time period. Went from backing the ANC to backing the PAC and even the apartheid government, as your article states.

      • tuga [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Dengist foreign policy and the Sino Soviet split

        That's not Deng that's Mao and Zhou Wenlai. Mao was even mad that Zhou was getting all the credit for reopening relationships with the west and stuff. By the time Deng was rehabilitated and given more power (by Mao btw) China's foreign policy was already set.

        Read Vogel's biography of Deng it's very good