• Gang_gang [none/use name]
    arrow-down
    33
    ·
    4 years ago

    this lifted out of poverty stuff is bullshit too, its the exact same argument capitalists use, the idea going through the stages of capitalist development is an objective improvement to the world. Capitalism creates poverty. China gets richer and someone else has to get poorer, its just how it works if youre still working on the concepts of rich and poor. As they "develop "they outsource lower profit jobs to other countries and now they have the shitty jobs with no leverage. Without a rejection of capitalism poverty is completely unchanged.

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      this lifted out of poverty stuff is bullshit too, its the exact same argument capitalists use

      The neoliberals are lying and simply taking credit for China's success.

      I mentioned above that the MDGs moved the baseline year back in a manner that claimed China’s gains against poverty during the 1990s, which had nothing at all to do with the MDGs. If we take China out of the equation, we see that the global poverty headcount at $1.25 actually increased during the 1980s and 1990s, while the World Bank was imposing structural adjustment across most of the global South. In 2010 (the final year of the MDGs' real data), the total poverty headcount excluding China was exactly the same as it was in 1981, at just over one billion people. In other words, while the MDGs lead us to believe that poverty has been decreasing around the world, in reality the only place this holds true is in China and East Asia. This is an important point, because China and East Asia are some of the only places in the developing world that were not forcibly liberalised by the World Bankand the IMF. Everywhere else, poverty has been stagnant or getting worse, in aggregate.

      These poverty lines suggest that global poverty is much worse than the official narrative would have us believe. Most analysts recognise that the $1.25 line is too low, but it remains in favour at the World Bank and the UN because it is the only line that shows any progress against poverty – at least when you include China. Every other line tells the opposite story.

    • KamalaHarrisPOTUS [he/him]
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 years ago

      thats wrong though, cause the development is usually much slower and more lopsided and in China qol, height, hdi have all improved drastically

      China gets richer and someone else has to get poorer,

      economics is not a sum zero game lol, humanity as a whole has been getting "richer" per capita and net wealth wtf are you talking about

      buildling schools in Xi'an doesnt hurt you lol and Chinas built a lot of fucking schools and hospitals and provides for its citizen, and now thats imperialism too because you decided its impovrishing someone because???

      if you say debt trap diplomacy i will not respond to just entry level cia shit

      • Gang_gang [none/use name]
        arrow-down
        27
        ·
        4 years ago

        capitalism is absolutely a zero sum game, somebody has to be the bottom for there to be a top. if there is no rich and poor there is no capitalism.

        Saying humanity has gotten wealthier per capita and that this is good is inherently capitalist logic, the line going up doesnt mean anyones life is improved. There were non capitalist areas colonized and made to be capitalist, like tribes or whatever, and get jobs, and now they have more money (before they had zero money) but theyre lives are shit.

        And they do collect interest on third world countries, thats a fact, whatever youd like to call it. because again theyre capitalist and thats what every capitalist country does

          • Gang_gang [none/use name]
            arrow-down
            19
            ·
            4 years ago

            im not really saying that hurt anyone, its not a totally good-evil situation. But like mark zuckerberg built a hospital. its not a pass and there are other reasons to do it

            • volkvulture [none/use name]
              ·
              edit-2
              4 years ago

              also, who ever said that Marxism = pushing the "destroy all capitalism button" and having Utopia automatically built to replace it?

              Marx literally says that the next stage of productive development would be born from the womb of capitalism & have all its birthmarks

              Lenin and Engels both suggest that state capitalism is the initial stage of socialism

              Mao himself said that this stage of socialism would take a long time and be fraught with many obstacles including the choices between "capitalist-road" and "socialist-road" and that class struggle would itself be a protracted and drawn own affair

              Just because you think PRC needs to do it a certain way, doesn't mean you're right or that your "criticism" means anything in light of their history & trajectory

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

                  the Third Temple doesn't have to be "built"

                  god will have perfectly constructed it & it will descend from the Heavens and be placed atop the Mount only after the Messiah has returned & the gentiles have accepted fate

        • KamalaHarrisPOTUS [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          ike tribes or whatever, and get jobs, and now they have more money (before they had zero money) but theyre lives are shit.

          read some history buddy

    • BigBoopPaul [he/him]
      arrow-down
      26
      ·
      4 years ago

      You're correct. All they did is take 300 million rural peasant farmers who live off the grid, stuck them in factories, gave them a meager stipend (hey, they technically were earning ZERO before that), and used this as justification to say "brought 300M out of poverty".

      • KamalaHarrisPOTUS [he/him]
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        4 years ago

        800m and guess what in my 3rd world coutnry id fucking love to have the majority of the people go from being literally the wrecthed of the earth to office workers whose domestic consumption is the largest in the world and shit in a generation lol

        • BigBoopPaul [he/him]
          arrow-down
          20
          ·
          4 years ago

          Well yeah. This is exactly what I mean. You're a victim to the window dressing.

          • KamalaHarrisPOTUS [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            yeah im a victim of not wanting to see my neighbors die of prevetnable disease, window dressing fuck off lol

            i want my community to be better, i want peoples needs to be met and their leisure to be greater, not to project dead russian thinkers from a centrury ago

            if you find a way to both im on board, but i care about material reality, not fantasy

      • Gang_gang [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        well im not going to completely sign off on that, i mean the farmers didnt really live off the grid either they had shitty feudal lords and stuff. im not a maoist either, but life in china definitely improved for a lot of people after his revolution.

        • BigBoopPaul [he/him]
          arrow-down
          14
          ·
          4 years ago

          I mean, if "80 hours a week of hard labor to funnel 99% of revenue into the top 0.1% of capitalists" is your kind of revolution, well we'll agree to disagree.

          • volkvulture [none/use name]
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            4 years ago

            billionaires get executed in PRC

            President Xi just this year jailed a billionaire for 18 years for mouthing off online lol

            Dictatorship of the proletariat & mass line are both alive and well within PRC, you're just not going to admit that they're doing far better than the US at both capitalism & socialism lmfao

            • BigBoopPaul [he/him]
              arrow-down
              10
              ·
              4 years ago

              The fact that billionaires exist at all should be a bigger point of contention for you. But if one ritual sacrifice is enough to keep you glommed on to their team, have at it, Capitalist 2.0.

              • volkvulture [none/use name]
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                4 years ago

                State capitalism is the initial stage of socialism

                The lower stage is born from the womb of capitalism and has all its birthmarks... that's literally what Marx wrote

                If a country and a People had to pass some dupe's purity tests online, then I think the revolution & any workable alternative would've been snuffed out long ago

                • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  State capitalism is the initial stage of socialism

                  The lower stage is born from the womb of capitalism and has all its birthmarks… that’s literally what Marx wrote

                  I really struggle to grapple with how many self-avowwed "leftists" don't understand this.

                  Marx said that socialism would arise out of capitalism. So if you think Marx is right then state capitalism and later socialism are not at all mutually exclusive. State capitalism might not be pretty, but it sure seems to beat the shit out of every other type of awful capitalism thats been tried so far.

                  • volkvulture [none/use name]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    plus it's the only legitimate way that workers can both feed themselves & engage in productive organized activity while also creating the surpluses needed to rail against their class enemies

                    if we had a way to "Vajrayana" lightning strike our way to FALGSC, I think the thing would've already happened lol

                • BigBoopPaul [he/him]
                  arrow-down
                  11
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  At the end of the day, you're trusting one set of autocrats over another. I get it. The collapse of Western hegemony is well past due.

                  I just think you're falling for the feel-good reactionary alternative in doing so.

                  • volkvulture [none/use name]
                    arrow-down
                    3
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    4 years ago

                    wrong again

                    there is such thing as social necessity

                    you are a reactionary for thinking that PRC has to abide by some abstract set of "traditional" principles that really only exist inside your mind, not in the real world

                    there are material conditions that have to be considered, and 1 billion+ people have to wake up and eat every day

                    without state capitalism, PRC would still be a feudal backwater and without socialism it would still be an imperialistic or client state mess

                    if you don't want to give credit for the fastest growing & most quickly advancing economic system in history, fine. but don't try to label it something it's not

                    that's just your brand of cope, not anything to do with reality

            • Gang_gang [none/use name]
              arrow-down
              11
              ·
              4 years ago

              doing better at capitalism and socialism lol. talk about a galaxy brain

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

                PRC is the only major country growing at the moment

                so, yes

                It's not the CPC's fault that you haven't read Marx

                • Gang_gang [none/use name]
                  arrow-down
                  10
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  if were being accelerationist ok lol, but then you cant really credit the ccp for that cause theyre literally just following the easiest and inevitable course of things that makes their elites money in the short term

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

                    no, their elites play by the rules & color within the lines or they get executed

                    Billionaires do not get executed in the West & are the crux upon which the entire system relies in the West

                    In PRC, billionaires are jailed for the slightest offense... that's literally dictatorship of the proletariat

                    We are still in the stage of class struggle, and China can't just invent the "communism button" and have it built just so for all naysayers to spit out their cereal, you're acting childish

                    • Gang_gang [none/use name]
                      arrow-down
                      12
                      ·
                      4 years ago

                      how can making literally a billion dollars in unpaid wages of the working class be anything other than an offense to the proletariat. if thats within the lines then fuck the lines. inequality in china is pretty similar to the us right now. and its going up. why would a dictatorship of the proletariat allow this?

                      They could super easily stop sending police to enforce things like rent, coercing people into working their life away.

                      • volkvulture [none/use name]
                        arrow-down
                        1
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        4 years ago

                        you're not listening lol

                        the "historical period of socialism" is fraught with the choices between a "capitalist-road" and there is still "the danger of capitalist restoration"

                        there are still classes, class contradictions, and class struggle

                        Mao literally writes all of this, and says that this phase covers a "considerably long historical period"

                        nothing about what you've written means that state capitalism isn't the first step in the initial stage of socialism, lol

                      • KamalaHarrisPOTUS [he/him]
                        arrow-down
                        2
                        ·
                        4 years ago

                        how can making literally a billion dollars in unpaid wages of the working class be anything other than an offense to the proletariat

                        damn youre right its not communism a claim nobdoy has made class hant been abolished youre so smart wowow

          • Gang_gang [none/use name]
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            4 years ago

            yeah i mean its absolutely not lol, im just objecting to what youre saying about the farmers. but i do agree with the point that yeah more money on paper isnt neccesarily better.