Is there a card you’re supposed to get in the mail when you become a leftist? I never got one.
you should contact soros customer service to get a replacement antifa card mailed to you
That one person who said that communists should abolish measurements of all kinds because it was imperialist or something
I have to assume that was a bit, regardless of how serious they seemed.
wow...it doesn't read like a bit, but it's far too dumb of a take to not be a bit
wow, I've heard "straight lines in the ground is the mark of white people" but this one is funny
Actually jagged lines in the ground is the mark of white people because Europeans were still using square plow tines for over 1000 years after the Chinese had invented superior triangular ones.
"Nothing that happens in Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela or the former USSR is of any interest to socialists, because the value-form still exists in those countries."
cut bolivia and venezuela and that’s fair, those two though are socdems still even if they are teetering on the leftier edge at times
when 72% of the economy is private, no price control will make the economy diverge from the socdem model, I appreciate that they are trying though and are committed, and that they are on the edge to proper demsocialism, I guess if being couped is a criteria they are already in there
the language of justice austerity, doing triage to decide which lukewarm reforms ought to be asked for in which order for the benefit of some small number of the oppressed, is a fool's game.
My favorite are the folks who remain completely uncritical of China.
Like yeah, China is doing some cool communist like stuff, and absolutely we should look to them as one model of how communism can work in large scale in the modern era. Modern communists can learn a lot from some of the things China is doing, and I think that China should be supported in the doing of those things.
BUT.
China is not fully communist, at all, and they are still undoubtedly doing some real fucking awful things. Excusing those things as "it's part of the transition" or "it takes time" makes you sound like a psycho lib. Remain critical of China please. Just be critical of the correct things, and celebrate the correct things as well.
we dont really know yet what the plan is
Comrade, lets not beat about the fucking bush
We're touchy over China right now because the US is putting patches of a skull and drone bombing China on its soldiers
https://news.antiwar.com/2020/09/29/us-military-patch-depicts-drone-and-skull-over-china/
I don't see how US could go to war with China. I mean there's absolutely no denying that the propaganda is in full swing, but it's more likely going to be a cold war 2.0 than an actual war between nuclear powers.
My intent was not to be pedantic, but reading this over I can see how I came off that way. When people here talk about war with China or attacking China, my brain hears nuclear annihilation, rather than more of the same but constantly getting worse and worse.
But I don't disagree with the broader point. As a general rule, it's bad to engage in critiques of left wing projects with libs, and this stands even more so when that project is in actively in the crosshairs of American imperialism.
I definitely get WMD flashbacks every time I hear about Uighurs being persecuted in China. I'm not saying it's not true, but I absolutely don't trust the sudden concern from the MSM and government given their total indifference to, well everything else.
Don't forget that they were literally bombing the Uighurs 2 years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2018/02/10/bombing-of-chinese-separatists-in-afghanistan-is-a-sign-of-how-trumps-war-there-has-changed/
"There will be no safe haven for any terrorist group," Gen. John Nicholson, the head of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement Thursday. “We continue to hunt them across the country.”
To be true you have to have evidence
The only evidence is from Adrian Zenz and a think tank NGO owned by the US
And when this evidence is held up to scrutiny it falls apart in seconds or all leads back to far right US paid for organisations who's literal stated goal is to overthrow China
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/05/world-uyghur-congress-us-far-right-regime-change-network-fall-china/
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nato-arms-industry-cold-war/
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/12/25/veteran-diplomat-us-confronts-china-to-protect-supremacy-not-security/
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/07/22/march-of-the-uyghurs/
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2020/10/15/the-us-is-on-a-path-to-war-with-china-what-is-to-be-done/
It's not a huge mystery why. The US has been declining for years, after having built inconceivably extensive systems of imperial domination to compete with a superpower that no longer exists. Those systems need to be directed at something, and China, even though it is or was a major trading partner, is best positioned to knock the US out of the #1 spot.
just curious, what are the awful things they are doing that isn’t uighur related
To pick one, social credit is a little bit questionable in a lot of its implementations. The Great Firewall is another very, very bad practice.
the reality of the "social credit" system was massively overstated in western media outlets.
You're right, but there's still a lot of bad present in the implementation that many regional governments use. My criticisms are all of the present system. Two things I take particular issue with:
- social credit rewards for reporting those practicing Muslim rituals like prayer facing mecca and practicing Ramadan
- better access to loans and jobs for those with higher social credit
Could you provide a source on that first one? I would like to know more
In Xinjiang, monetary rewards are routinely offered to those who provide information to authorities about Uighurs’ religious practices. An April 2014 notice posted on a government website in Aksu Prefecture explained that informants could receive up to 50,000 yuan ($8,000) for reporting on local residents who engage in any of 53 kinds of proscribed behaviour. The list included 18 acts related to religion, such as praying in a public place, holding the Islamic Nikah wedding ceremony, or fasting during Ramadan. In Tibet, officials have offered monetary rewards of up to 200,000 yuan ($31,500) for information on monks associated with a self-immolation or other acts of dissent.
It's Hong Kong Free Press, so take it with a grain of salt, but this information simply will not be reported from a pro-China publication so this is as good as it'll probably get.
https://hongkongfp.com/2019/02/27/social-credit-scoring-chinas-communist-party-incentivising-repression/
And I also want to stress that because of the fragmented nature of the implementation of the social credit system, I do not think that most of China faces issues like this, just isolated regions.
Here's the same information reported by Al Jazeera America:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/25/china-xinjiang-authoritiesofferthousandstofacialhairinformants.html
side note, I fucking hate having to assess the motives of a press institution before reading their content, I hope when we establish global communism that shit dies
The notice also specified rewards, whose value ranges from 50 yuan to over 50,000 yuan, for a wide range of intelligence from those wearing beards to spreading information to topple the authorities as well as conducting illegal religious activities.
Particularly, a reward from 5,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan could be given to whistle-blowers of activities including separatism preaching and training for terror attacks. The reward will also go to those who report intelligence of reactionary organizations overseas or activities to provoke conflicts between religious sects.
The beard bit is bad but I can't speak Chinese so I can't follow this source to the end, thanks for sharing this Comrade, hopefully someone who speaks Chinese can provide more info too
My thinking on the firewall has shifted a lot over time. Imagine what a massive problem it could be if every Chinese person was on Facebook, for example - blocking that as an protectionist move and allowing Weibo to grow as the Chinese-owned and -operated alternative was absolutely the right move. And when you consider the censorship that it enables, consider that western corporations do a lot of censorship too - but the difference between western and Chinese censorship is that the Chinese censors are democratically accountable to a larger degree than the western ones, who just happen to own the website in question.
It would be one thing if it was solely protectionist. It's entirely different; their blocking of websites like archive.org, duckduckgo, and the New York Times shows they're after far more than protectionism. There's also no protectionist argument for the banning of all information pertaining to Tianamenn Square and similar events. For all of America's faults, at least we can read about COINTELPRO and the various coups we've orchestrated (although the US government would probably do something you change that if they could).
banning of all information pertaining to Tianamenn Square
There is no ban on information pertaining to the June 4th incident, the ban is on spreading anticommunist propaganda about it. Like any other internet censorship operation however, China relies on an algorithm to nuke suspected propaganda posts, which means that some non-propaganda posts get caught in the net.
Ok I just tried looking up stuff about Tiananmen Square on baidu.com to see what comes up
Found stuff like this and this, which seem to be a timeline of events leading to and directly after the riots. What stuck out to me is that they don't really offer an in-depth explanation of what happened on June 4th beyond just a couple sentences.
In the early hours of 3 June, some PLA martial law troops were ordered to move in to secure some key targets in the city of Beijing.
At 4.30am on 4 June, the martial law forces began to clear Tiananmen Square. At around 5am, students began to evacuate the square and the martial law forces moved into Tiananmen Square at the same time. By 5.30am, the whole clearing process was over.
3 June The unrest created by a small number of people in Beijing over the past month develops into a counter-revolutionary riot. In the early hours of the morning of the 4th, the martial law troops stationed around the city were ordered to quell the riot by clearing the area and moving into Tiananmen Square.
I tried mixing up the keywords more like "June 4th Incident" "1989 Riots" etc. and found basically the same kind of stuff. Granted, it's also fucky as shit that no matter what I looked up I couldn't find any kind of pictures of the events, or at least a more in-depth description, though that might just be because I don't speak a lick of Chinese and I have no idea what I'm supposed to look up lol. Still pretty damn freaky
I was also very negative on the Great Firewall for a long time but I've come around to the belief that it's necessary, even if its benefits are completely unintentional.
Even libs understand that fake news is a huge threat to democracy and social cohesion, if the media can't be trusted to report fairly on Bernie Sanders how can they be trusted to report fairly on Xi Jinping? How much worse would propaganda in the MSM get if the US thought there was a chance it was going to cause domestic unrest in China? If we challenge and critically approach the framework of free press as a conduit for unbiased information that selects for accuracy, then the Great Firewall might be the least bad alternative.
Furthermore, Western tech companies have horrible privacy practices and literally collude with US intelligence services, even US allies like the EU are sick of their shit and are feuding with the US over data taxes. Nurturing Chinese tech companies and keeping the data of Chinese citizens out of the hands of US companies was a very, very prescient move (if intentional).
I'm skeptical of the idea "the free market is bad, except when it comes to the press". I still have a lot of gripes with the Great Firewall as a concept and its implementation but I also don't know how to resolve those problems without emboldening the US's efforts at hybrid warfare.
The Chinese fishing fleet is massively subsidized and operates in a lot of African EEZs without regard to international laws, causing the collapse of the local fishing industry and ecosystems.
Failling to protect their culture, I'm sure Gorbatchev would approve the amount of pizza huts they have. Most locally-produced movies are trying to copycat hollywood blockbusters and the music industry ain't doing better.
China literally claims social credit, calling it "not real" is speaking in direct contradiction of the official information channels of both the Chinese state and all of the experiences and reporting of people who have ever lived and been there.
tl;dr, I don't even know if you're trying
Killing Gaddafi and overthrowing the Libyan government though NATO assets was good actually ™️
Gaddafi is now exhibit A of why you should never, ever give up your nuclear program.
I'm not so certain that Gaddafi would have been killed if Libya had been a nuclear state. The US-backed insurrection was enabled in part because of the lack of nuclear threat from his regime - where are the color revolutions in Russia or North Korea, for example? In the end it's a historical "what-if".
But yeah backing out on the Iran deal was definitely the final nail in the US soft power coffin. Libya was betrayed by us secretly over a decade later, Iran was done about two years later completely in the open, and for a second course we assassinated one of their top military guys while he was acting in a diplomatic role in another country.
Once there are more Chinese billionaires than Western billionaires, global communism will finally be realized
The dumbest one I've ever seen was a guy saying the Soviet Union was the most anti-worker state in existence. I don't remember his reddit username but he was one of the most obnoxious leftcom posters on the site.
Listen, I'm sorry my branch of posadism released Covid. It wasn't ready yet, and the next one our lab puts out will def cleanse all the capitalist AND Remap the Dolphin DNA into growing vocal cords capable of human speech.
I once saw someone say that the DSA is robbing the "left" of valuable bodies and turning them into libs as if the DSA isn't the number 1# supplier and creator of leftists in America.
-7DeadlyFetishes
Antinatalism
Anprim
Kazcynzkites
Russia, Belorussia, Syria, Iran are socialist
Capitalist phase of development can be skipped
No such thing as class traitors
Anarchist Society dealing with climate change
SU was not state capitalist
CPC will bring about global communism
Anti-Revisionists of all flavors
Social democrats of all types
Vaush
Supercapitalism
Yes, these are just things I don't like and not necessarily 'ultra left' but that term is stupid because none of the things in this thread are 'ultra left' they're usually liberal or nationalist takes disguising themselves as socialism.
If 'right' and 'left' are meaningful terms at all, they should refer to 'right' being closer to the currently established hierarchy, and the relative distance away from 'right', the 'left', then representing the degree of change away from the present society.
Antinatalism
Still my favorite struggle sesh we've had here so far. Outdoor cats is a close second.
Virgil's cold open about it is still my favorite moment of the whole show
308, here's the bit, but you gotta understand - there was a Q&A where the hosts were like "nah we think antinatalism is dumb" and then the subreddit ERUPTED because it was extremely blackpilled and thought having kids was pointless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_P-VsPJk6Y
Mostly agree except antinatalism. I'm not gonna yell at anyone for having kids or anything; but I know I'd have been better off not having been born and the world in general is pretty shit, so I can't force that on someone else.
Antinatalism as a personal choice is fine, I'd probably adopt instead of making a new baby myself, my problem and I assume op's problem is with enforced Antinatalism. Also with "antinatalism isn't just a reaction to capitalism it would be true even after socialism is fully established in the whole world and should be the enforced policy of socialist states".
Yes. Something I want to add is I think a lot of people don't want to or feel like they can't satisfyingly have children, and need a justification for it. In times of system failure or collapse or even just general squeeze on the working class, people will stop having kids or have less kids, because of the economic stress. I think a lot of us are feeling that economic stress and logically deciding not I have kids bc we could only offer a life offering less than they would deserve, and look for a justification for it. This was the case for me, when I was an antinatalist. Now that I'm past it, perhaps I am unfair to those who still are. I don't mean any judgment to anyone choosing not to have children, I probably won't, or I'll adopt.
Antinatalism
I really hate admitting it but I struggle to talk myself out of being low key antinatal.
It just seems supremely arrogant to force a being into existence. Yeah they may have an awesome life, but they may have a life of suffering and pain, you have no way of knowing for sure. Even if we lived in fucking Star Trek communism there’s still a chance their life could be one of pain and misery so I really don’t feel okay taking that gamble just for the satisfaction of having a kinda cute sorta clone of myself.
Being a socialist is about wanting to build a better future for human kind. If creating new humans is arrogant and shitty because their life might be bad, we're basically saying that actually the human race should go extinct. Misanthropy and socialism are incompatible.
Like I said in my other reply here, antinatalism as a personal choice is fine. If you feel arrogant making a baby, don't make a baby.
This is a disingenuous framing. I can think that having children is a bad idea and still want to build a better world for the people who are alive. I’m not anti-natalist because I’m a misanthrope, it’s because I care about people and don’t want them to suffer through a life that they never wanted in the first place.
I wish I had never been born. My life has been utterly miserable and it isn’t the sort of thing I’d ever want another being to suffer through. It’s not arrogance to want to spare others from suffering. My parents did not feel it was arrogant to have me, but they really should have. They’re emotionally immature people who were absolutely not capable of good parenting and of course that’s exactly the sort of people eager to have children without thinking through the consequences of choosing to bring someone into existence.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for enforcing anti-natalism or anything like that. It’s not something that could ever be ethically done even if it was possible. I just don’t care to be accused of arrogance or misanthropy because I think forcing other people to go through what I have is a shitty thing to do.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for enforcing anti-natalism or anything like that.
Then we don't disagree on anything here? I thought I was clear that personal antinatalism is fine, and that I only have a problem with enforced antinatalism? I myself would probably prefer to adopt.
I never accused you of being arrogant, I was repeating your argument about having kids being arrogant (or feeling arrogant to you). I reread my statement to make absolutely sure I didn't misword something there to give you that impression, but I definitely didn't. I don't think your position is arrogant in the slightest, its actually very humble.
And I didn't mean to accuse you of being a misanthrope either, though in this case I can see how you got that impression. I was aiming the misanthrope argument at enforced antinatalism, and people who hold their personal stance of antinatalism on others.
Also to be clear, criticizing individual parents for having kids before they were ready and shit is fine as well.
Sorry, I read your comment as implying that anyone with anti-natalist beliefs was driven by either misanthropy or a desire to not feel arrogant and I got defensive. I think we’re on the same page here and it’s all cool.
(Also I’m not the same user you were responding to initially, just so you know)
Capitalist phase of development can be skipped
So this has like 12 million qualifiers but it was supposed to be in a situation where at least one of the capitalist imperial powers, if not the hegemon, would have a socialist revolution and could help a still semi-feudal peasant society skip (or at least significantly shorten) the capitalist stage of development because they could give them the necessary means of production to construct the material basis for a socialist society. Not, as is often claimed, that you could just skip from feudalism to socialism in one country on its own. Engels hints at this in the preface to the russian edition of the manifesto:
Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeaval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West? The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.
Now obviously this hypothetical never came to pass and it might not have worked anyway, since you wouldn't have had capital destroy the traditional social structures out of which you could build something resembling socialism. Instead you would likely have to have an alternative transition stage of development which would accomplish the same things but (hopefully) without the same levels of immiseration and exploitation that capitalism inflicts on a society. But it doesn't really matter now because there aren't any semi-feudal peasant societies anymore so the whole argument is moot. As was this comment.
I'm glad you typed it out though comrade! Marx as I understand it actually made this argument as well, but it seems like it hasn't panned out, and I don't see any present historical analogues, as you say.
that term is stupid because none of the things in this thread are ‘ultra left’
thank god someone said it. I fucking hate the term ultraleft for this reason.
If ‘right’ and ‘left’ are meaningful terms at all, they should refer to ‘right’ being closer to the currently established hierarchy, and the relative distance away from ‘right’, the ‘left’, then representing the degree of change away from the present society.
there's a point on the right where they're no longer trying to preserve the present society and instead reinstitute an older one, but yeah, you're generally correct.
Idk when some dork posts takes like "NATO overthinking Gaddafi and Libya was good" or "support ISIS against the west" on WSWS I'm going to dunk on them and call them ultras. At that point I don't really care anymore and I'm not going to engage past petty insults like ultra
those are nationalist takes masquerading with leftist aesthetics. a further left analysis is exactly what's needed to dismantle them. punching left to own the right is.. uhh... what?
At that point I don't care about dismantling the argument or anything. If people are seriously parroting those talking points. It's not worth the time or effort. It's not about the terms being correct or anything. Maybe that is not the correct approach but...
yea, but make fun of them for being right wing... don't feed their lie that their takes are in any way left.
I mean you're obviously right and I'm being an ignorant lib. You win this time haha
"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
have you ever see a dolphin brain? they are huge. if we gave them nukes we would have actual world peace and prosperity
I for one, welcome our exosuit dolphin overlords.
