Also see "The New Rules of Algorithmic Institutions" and "Logistics Genealogies" by Stefano harney https://www.academia.edu/35934398/The_New_Rules_of_Algorithmic_Institutions_by_Stefano_Harney

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7227

  • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    4 years ago

    I found them fairly neutral on all of china's controversies. Again, I found them fairly recently so if you can point to any known propaganda they've pushed forth, I'd be glad to know about it.

    But read the above article. it's definitely not sourced with western garbage.

    Also, to understand their positions on other stuff, take a look at this article - http://chuangcn.org/2020/11/interview-with-asia-art-tours/

    They are very quick to point out the hypocrisy of western "liberals" and "leftists" who unilaterally criticize China by linking to Adrian Zenz or HK protestors with US flags. At a lot of points they consistently speak against supporting western propaganda against china. their idea is that we support workers wherever they are. the thing for western leftists to do isn't cheer on protests elsewhere, but to riot against their own oppressive governments. and if you read the article i'd linked in the

    We think that any politics built around “pressuring” states or corporations to act better is going to be a losing game. Think, for example, of the giant global protests nearly two decades ago when the US invaded Iraq. There were enormous demonstrations in countries across the world. All kinds of diplomatic pressure emerged, many nations refused to join the US-led effort, anti-war groups sprouted up across the US itself and organized continually as the war began and dragged on. And it did absolutely nothing. States and the capitalists that sit behind them simply aren’t beholden to any rules of etiquette other than the ones they set for themselves. So, at the very best, an “effective” pressure point in this sense means begging that one fraction of the capitalist class punish another one for stepping out of line. This sort of appeal to the state is, effectively, what a lot of activists have been pursuing with regard to China’s crackdown in Hong Kong and its violent assimilationist projects in Xinjiang, Tibet and now Mongolia. Hopefully at least some of these activists are a bit embarrassed that those most ready to condemn China alongside them have been the most notorious of conservative politicians and domestic capitalists This should be enough evidence that the idea of “pressure points” is a losing strategy, all around.

    A lot of “socialists” today are also falling into this trap, though, from the opposite end: thinking that “anti-imperialism” means taking one side in what is really a building inter-imperialist conflict. They point to the hypocrisy of supposed leftists sharing articles by notorious, lunatic anti-communists like Adrian Zenz about Xinjiang, for example, or they share pictures of Hong Kong protestors waving American flags. These are easy targets, but they’re real targets, because so many people are making these basic mistakes and appealing to conservative forces who also oppose “Chinese authoritarianism” out of economic interest or because of their far-right evangelical ideology—despite the fact that these are the same people pushing for the passage of laws that illegalize far-left organizing in Europe and the US! But it’s equally idiotic to make the equivalent error in the opposite direction, jumping to the defense of the Chinese state, ignoring the crackdown on feminists, workers’ centers and Marxist student groups, or denying outright what is going on in Xinjiang.

    Against all this, we think it’s more strategic to ask **how and where communists can build real power in the midst of ongoing global uprisings in a way that doesn’t just get washed away into a generic push for “progressive” social policies, or roped into supporting one faction in a global inter-capitalist conflict. **

    If you really want to show “solidarity” with China, you’re wasting your time trying to appeal to the better nature of governing elites. If this is your idea of solidarity, you’ll ultimately be embarrassed by the results. You’d do better to go join the frontlines and defend the rioters burning down the police station and looting the Target in Minneapolis; kick back teargas canisters as the crowd smashes the luxury shops all down the Champs-Élysées; hurl bricks into the retreating line of riot cops in Bandung, Indonesia; storm federal buildings with the feminists in Mexico City. Wherever you are, the best solidarity is built from the blood and sweat that goes into making territories increasingly ungovernable, regardless of how well you intellectually understand, for example, that the struggle against racism in the US is structurally linked to the struggle against austerity labor laws in Indonesia and the struggle for so-called “democracy” in Hong Kong.

    :Context is important here. When you say “increasingly brutal governance/ethnosupremacy,” we would ask: relative to where and when? In reality, it seems that things which have always been happening are just recently being made visible to many people. This is what you could maybe call the “Trump phenomenon” in the US, for example, where suddenly mass incarceration, forced labor, the construction of concentration camps for migrants, family separation at the border, rampant police murder, far-right assassinations and mass shootings—all these things suddenly appear to a bunch of people all at once not because they didn’t exist before but instead because the election of Trump turned such peoples’ eyes toward political topics for the first time in their lives. The reality, of course, is that everything listed above has a long, long history in America. In fact, that list is a fairly good summary of American history in general!

    The de facto illegalization of independent labor organizing meant that all the major strikes were informal wildcat strikes that made use of direct action. Back in the day, this include ** not only direct shutdowns of production, but also a lot of property destruction, the kidnapping of bosses and even just direct violence against abusive managers or corrupt local officials. Such tactics were, on average, also extremely effective. ** These are all great lessons for workers in Western countries, and especially in the US, where unionization is incredibly low and the existing unions act almost exclusively to repress unrest, divert workers away from truly effective tactics and slowly concede to bosses in negotiations. American workers could learn a lot from this: don’t blindly trust the official, state-sanctioned union representatives, for example. And more importantly: engage in the most direct possible action to disrupt business, including property destruction. Meanwhile, encrypt your communications and be ready to defend yourselves against the police!

    One thing that’s often forgotten when people talk about “solidarity” and “internationalism” today is the pragmatic form that those terms used to take. **olidarity didn’t just mean “thoughts and prayers” or our “hearts and minds” are with you! It meant: you are having an insurrection? Great, we’ll join you! Or, if we can’t have our own, at least take these shipments of guns! ** his is an extreme example, of course, but it signals the ultimate character of what we’re talking about ** that’s what we should say instead of solidarity from now on: sweat and blood. **

    It’s not clear what you mean by “sacrificing” Wuhan? As the epicenter, of course it was going to be put under much more stringent controls, but let’s not use hyperbolic language here, because “sacrifice” sounds like there’s been some sci-fi zombie plague and the government is debating whether to deliver an airstrike. The situation was never that severe. If you want an example of “sacrifice” we’d suggest you look toward the policy of the US (pushed for by all the major industrial interests except the few who benefit from telework or e-commerce), where hundreds of thousands of people—disproportionately poor, which in the US also implies a racial disproportion—have been quite literally sacrificed to serve the needs of the economy. The death toll is enormous. If you took all those who died from Covid-19 in all of Hubei province, they wouldn’t even fill ten percent of the seating in an average American football stadium. Even if you took all the reported deaths in all of China and, suspicious of undercounting, doubled the number, you still wouldn’t have enough bodies to fill even a third of an average stadium. But then take all those who died of the disease in America and you could replace every single person in a city the size of Richmond, Virginia with a corpse and still have dead leftover. It’s a grim metaphor, but the point is that what happened in Wuhan would have, in every sense, been a major success compared to literally every major American city.

    • SimMs [none/use name]
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 years ago

      Its a worthy discussion. I'd like to see a much thorough vetting process of outlets like them, Lausan and that loose network of left-opposition blogs. My issues revolve around their line on stuff like hong kong, you should've seen their twitter in the middle of the movement. When the lines between them and those seemingly authenthic chinese opposition figure progaganda plants and these blogs become this blurries, you gotta get critical. There was stuff with them sourcing back to NED institutions, I thought there were other instances than CLB but I couldn't find it. It kinda looks like that typical, bizarre phenomena of left-communists that rejects any marxist structure on principle. There is no understanding of the practical reality, and the concessions that will be made within the existing contradictions. They exist in a headspace where every socialist project must be fake, because it doesn't perfectly uphold the marxist principles. Basically, it's the starting position of a western leftist that havent talked to socialist from socialist countries or shattered that idealist bubble. Though, that left-opposition position will always be vocal, we just need to stomp the breaks when there is a clear allignment between them and imperialism. That is the charitable assessment, but there's also tragic statements like these: ....

      This [state homogenization] is of course exactly what the Chinese state continues to pursue today, causing the recent conflict around Mongolian language education, for example

      China is a capitalist society ruled by a capitalist class and driven by capitalist imperatives

      • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        Yeah, I'd love to have a thorough vetting process. I don't follow their twitter or anything, so I don't know what they comment over there. The main thing I like about them is their journal, followed by their blog.

        They aren't like the typical baby leftists (as far as I've seen) who just criticize China because it's authoritarian. They make a very strong case that China is a capitalist country and has been one since "Reform and Opening Up". I'd love for you or someone to take down. I would dismiss it on principle if they cited the usual source i.e. "pro-democracy" for HK or Adrian Zenz for Xinjiang. But they don't do that (as far as I've seen) and neither is their criticism from the perspective of baby anarchists/marxists who want communism (stateless, classeless etc) from the word go.

        Again, I'd love to read any take down or criticism of Chuang (and of the broader, endnotes style of leftism, which I've also recently found out about).