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US to send $375 million in military aid to Ukraine, including medium-range cluster bombs - Lemmy
lemmy.mlThe U.S. will send Ukraine an undisclosed number of medium-range cluster bombs
and an array of rockets, artillery and armored vehicles in a military aid
package totaling about $375 million, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Officials
expect an announcement on Wednesday, as global leaders meet at the U.N. General
Assembly,
[https://apnews.com/article/biden-un-general-assembly-ukraine-israel-gaza-4e4e839c3cdd4edd7543aea84af2346f] and
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
[https://apnews.com/hub/volodymyr-zelenskyy] uses his appearance there to shore
up support and persuade the U.S. to allow his troops to use long-range weapon
[https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-long-range-missiles-6bd6af3d74ebbf6225330e476173575f] s
to strike deeper into Russia. The following day, Zelenskyy meets with President
Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington.
They need to touch serious fucking grass. Ratio'd the fuck out of them when they tried to take an Ultra-Maoist stance on why Socialism With Chinese Characteristics is Capitalist.
The best part was that it was on a Lemmy.World World News anti-PRC thread filled with racist Xi caricatures and other nonsense, once they realized I knew what I was talking about they gave me a warning not to troll other commenters in bad-faith again (lol). Even the libs seemed to side with me there, lmao 
Legitimately think they are seriously struggling in their personal life, they've been malding in nearly every comment for the last bit. I kinda pity them.
That thread was genuinely hilarious and also a good reminder (to me) that liberals will refuse to engage with supporting sources (even from their own preferred media outlets) if it's in contradiction with their vibes-analysis of something. The bad faith accusation against you after you effort-post replied multiple times in a non-combative and sourced way was pathetic even for that instance.
Godspeed to you continuing to try to help the few salvageable world members.
Thanks! Yep, you nailed it. Liberalism cannot coexist with genuine analysis along the lines of Dialectical and Historical Materialism. You can notice that they took an ultra-Maoist stance, evidently making it seem like they supported the Cultural Revolution entirely and are anti-Dengist, but they also are generally liberal and anti-Maoist. They have no beliefs, they just want to purity test everyone.
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I genuinely think that singular emoji might be the most kneejerk-infuriating thing this fed has to offer. I can practically hear the tone leaving that face and it makes me want to commit a felony every time I see it lmfao
It's one of those faces that's a bit too perfect at it's job, haha.
is another good one but it saves itself from being infuriating by being hilarious.
Oh shit, really? Didn't know! You love to see it
Huh, what have they done since that video?
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All. The. Time. It's why I mostly don't even bother arguing with people who won't even at least attempt to read Marx or any theory. LIke, don't even throw dialectics in the mix. I just want these people to grasp the basics instead of running to cliches and fallacies.
I have been weening off of the debate-broing (even though I still do it
) but I think clearly pointing out the court jesters for Imperialism, the "left" anticommunists that don't understand the very beginnings of Marxism yet claim to be critiquing Socialist movements "from the left" is invaluable for leading other people to theory and radicalization.
I have no belief that Flying Squid will become a Marxist after this, but maybe one or two libs were SWCC-pilled when they saw my dunk on a Lemmy.world post, and may reconsider their anti-PRC stance in the future. Just a small hope.
Watching Libs interact with MLs on forums and subs is what prompted me to get curious about the Left, in general.
Same here! I almost think reading just a bit of Marx does more harm than good, because idealism and liberalism fills in the gaps if you don't thoroughly purge them with an understanding of Dialectical and Historical Materialism first, rather than the usual path of understanding his critique of Capitalism and advocacy for collective ownership. A liberal and idealist analysis results in the weird ultra-Maoist liberal takes from people like Flying Squid, they don't even like Mao so what did they want to happen? Magic Marxism to elevate the productive forces? People to legitimately stay poor under a system without private property, but little productive forces to begin with?
People who think you must go through Capitalism to get to Communism are wrong, of course, but so is the idea that a Dictatorship of the Proletariat carefully managing and pruning a market economy is suddenly Capitalist because there's Private Property.
You get this a lot with people reading only the Manifesto and dismissing Marxism as childish.
Flashbacks to Jordan Peterson v Zizek
Not that Zizek is a Marxist, he's a Hegelian idealist and a court jester for Imperialism, but Peterson literally asserted that the Manifesto was the core document to Marxism, and not, you know, Capital
This is why when I suggest texts, I give a damn list lol. You can't know it all by just reading the Manifesto. I also specify that my list is an intro. I haven't read it all and don't know it all but I have stuff I can suggest to get the ball rolling if they are willing to put in the effort.
If it wasn't for online debate-broing on reddit I'd probably still be a DemSoc tbh.
I hate admitting it, but same
Though exposure to Marxist-Leninists was the biggest factor in making the leap
He does struggle with a lot of personal stuff. Health/disability issues. Medical cannabis to cope with chronic pain.
Before he was a mod I used to chat with him quite a bit on my lemm.ee alt.
pronouns
I've seen a picture of him. Very masculine presenting, so I assume he uses he/him pronouns
That's sad to hear. Hopefully the pain has a cure or treatment, but health issues are awful regardless.
I think they need to take a step back, maybe purge their online presense for a bit and come back later, do a bit of a detox.
As for pronouns, Flying Squid doesn't list them so I don't use he/him, that's just my personal stance. I know people who go by they/them or none/use name online (my fiance being one of them) despite having a binary gender, so I'd like to respect that at least unless I find a statement otherwise.
Thanks for the insight!
No I feel you on the pronouns. If I hadn't seen a picture I would use they them as well. And maybe I still should even having seen a picture.
Hey I also really appreciated your analysis in that thread. I read the comment you linked.
Thanks! I try my best, even though I'm not nearly as well read as I'd like to be, but I think I have enough of an understanding to do more good than bad in a room of liberals, haha.
I mean, Mao being a left-deviationist as he obviously was doesn't make Deng not a right-deviationist, as one would hope to be similarly obvious. Deng talked a big game about the Chinese becoming rich but, by his own standards of a new bourgeoisie forming, capitalism was reinstated, and on top of it he caused a massive increase in extreme poverty for decades by breaking up collective ownership.
Yes, this is also true, hence why the CPC is moving more towards the left, as they reverted too far to the right. You test, readjust, and test again, and readjust again. This is the path of dialectical materialist knowledge.
Deng gave China what it needed at the time, which the Gang of Four did not. Undeniably, there is a bourgeois class, but the CPC appears to be retaining control, and metrics are improving. We can't erase Deng's achievements for miscalculating, just like we can't erase Mao's achievements for miscalculating.
Overall, though, it's important to recognize that this was in response to an absurd claim that China is "Communist in name only" and that the presence of a stock market and billionaires means the system is Capitalist. By that same logic, the US is Socialist, because it has a Post Office.
It seems perverse to me to say that Deng "gave China what it needed" by depriving countless millions of people of their needs.
I have no interest in the broader conversational context, mostly because I think it's hopeless to try to talk about, at least for me.
It seems bad-faith to interpret my comment as such. What would you have had the PRC do? Poverty has been dramatically decreased to outright eliminated in the PRC in no small part thanks to Deng's strategy of inviting foreign Capital. The productive forces developed dramatically, pruned and managed by the CPC. It is not a reach to say that had the PRC continued with the Gang of Four's line that "it is better to be poor under Socialism than rich under Capitalism," the PRC may not have been able to reach its current standards, metrics, and level of influence, or would have risked outright war with the West had the West not been so thoroughly captured industrially.
Then disengage, comrade. Don't smear my comments with bad-faith interpretations. The CPC has openly stated numerous times that Dengism was Marxism-Leninism applied to the time of Deng, and has served its purpose, so that now Xi Jinping Thought can represent Marxism-Leninism applied to modern conditions. Deng served a vital role, and while he made miscalculations and errors, he did so in reaction to the miscalculations and errors of Mao and the Gang of Four. Just as we know that Mao and the Gang of Four served their purposes as well, and applied Marxism-Leninism to their conditions, liberating China and achieving mass equality and a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and a doubling in life expectancy and an end to famine.
No Marxist in history has been perfect, all have made errors in judgement, we must learn and appreciate what worked and analyze how they fit into the broader Socialist trend.
Extreme poverty has. Poverty is still widespread, and as I already indicated, a lot of the extreme poverty (not all of it) is a problem the Dengists made for themselves: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2023.2217087
The man himself said that he will have failed and capitalism will have been re-instated in China if there emerges a new Chinese bourgeoisie. I think that I've seen this mentioned to you before.
I'm curious about the actual viability of re-collectivized commodity production like Nanjie pioneered. I think Vietnam (which I would broadly regard as even more revisionist) has some interesting farming collective stuff and I've been meaning for the longest time to read about the Tae'en system in the DPRK.
You know as well as I do that in common speech "Dengism" means SWCC, which was established in Deng's time and which Xi, in his plodding speeches almost bereft of actual content, constantly reaffirms as the path Deng rightly put China on.
What would you call his major errors?
I'm quite interested to learn what you think of as being the purpose served by the Gang of Four, since most of them came later than what you mention as the accomplishments of Mao and them.
But really, going point by point is probably worthless, and you have my endorsement to ignore everything I said (though check out that link), I guess what I'm most curious about is, concretely, what actually separates China from a capitalist system? Surely it's not just proportion of SOEs, or fucking Bismark was a socialist. "The dictatorship of the proletariat" is going to be your answer, but I ask, "What separates China's 'DotP' from a liberal democracy?" Surely, it's not just their anti-corruption measures or then Deng really did destroy socialism and I guess Xi re-established it.
I don't know, it just looks to me like a state where the power is held by public businesses rather than private ones in order to keep its sovereignty. To be clear, I'd like to see it otherwise, I get no satisfaction from what I say and it was nice cheering for the emerging dominant power thinking that it was not merely historically progressive but actually represented major progress in world socialism, but ultimately I realized that it was mainly what I wanted to believe and soon came to see Deng as being just a massively more competent Khrushchev, who had the refinement in his approach to praise Mao while in practice being everything that Mao had warned China he was for many years.
I agree. Each point could be an entire conversation in and of themselves. I am not trying to dismiss your concerns or the points you raise.
The class that's in power. Is the US Socialist because it has a state-run Post Office? No. The PRC is led by the CPC, which has a bottom-up and top-down organizational structure via the mass line. It has a market economy that it carefully manages, prunes, and allows to develop to the point of "harvesting," where it increases ownership.
Correct, it would be anti-dialectical to purely look at snapshots of ownership and not trajectories and class dynamics.
The practice of Whole Process People's Democracy is a large factor, but it's ultimately the sum of its parts. The CPC is a DotP, what separates it is who is in power, the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. We see the effects of this in privitization vs nationalization, large infrastructure projects or private contracts, an improvement in real wages and democracy for workers or restrictions.
So far, it appears that, especially in the last decade or so, these trends have been rapidly moving in the favor and direction of the Working Class, not the Bourgeoisie.
China is an incredibly complex system, and I won't say your concerns aren't valid. I recommend reading The Long Game and its Contradictions and China Has Billionaires.
I'll be honest, I've looked at China Has Billionaires before and didn't think it was impressive, but I'll try actually reading both, if only because I appreciate you being nice to me.
Could you expand on this point? Most of what you listed in that paragraph, and I think you'd even agree with me on this, belongs in the "this applies to Bismark" category of non-evidence. The part I quoted does not belong in that category, but I also am not familiar with worker democracy being on a positive trajectory in China and would consider that to be positive evidence.
Dessalines has a large compilation of Frequently asked questions, including an article on workplace democracy.
Economically speaking, deng's reforms did not so much eliminate economic planning as it changed the way it was done. The Chinese government controls which industries are allowed to grow and decline through controlling credit and availability of material resources. The mode of production has been reverted to capitalist production essentially, but this is something that dengists acknowledge either way.
Any response to the paper I linked?
Well, few dengists would deny that the dismantling of the iron rice bowls, privatisation measures and neoliberal policies did not cause an immediate increase in extreme poverty. This is why I didn't consider the paper relevant (I also agree with the basic facts presented).
Yet at the same time, the argument for why the PRC had to adopt these policies (temporarily) and why under xi jingping there is a turn away from these trends (started under hu jintao really) are linked, and complex.
Under the Mao era organisation of the economy, China faced many economic problems. It was isolated from the world, its technology was lagging behind the west, and the quality and quantity/quantity of consumer goods available to chinese citizens was limited.
These were the same problems that had destroyed the ussr, and the Chinese could see that it was a dead end. What they did was similar to cutting off a leg and eating it after getting stranded on a barren deserted island. Under ideal circumstances, the cpc would have never done deng's reforms because it would have just been given access to all the tech and international trade it wanted with no strings attached.
When dengists celebrate deng's reforms, what they are really celebrating is that the wound on the leg healed up and we found a way off the deserted island back to our normal life. Or at least, that's my perspective on it. Basically, the Chinese people did not want to live under seige conditions waiting to be outcompeted and destroyed.
I appreciate your perspective