They both still use a lot of coal power.
The 996 workweek is technically illegal, but enforcement is spotty and the system encourages low- and mid-level managers to cheat it.
The prison system slaps people with unnecessarily large sentences for crimes that shouldn't be illegal.
I love guillotine memes, but the death penalty is bad, folks.
The One Child Policy created a crisis of unregistered kids (though many are now adults) who are frozen out of participation in Chinese society. Think the Dreamers but there's way more of them.
No universal health care despite the fact that they are well past the point where they could do it.
Still no gay marriage, and the censors sometimes crack down on independent LGBT media.
All of that and more and I still uphold Socialism with Chinese characteristics. To paraphrase something capitalists have been lying to me about my entire life, it's the best system we've come up with so far.
Always, but sometimes it's necessary I guess for very dangerous people.
Honestly this is a pretty good comment dont take mywall of text as disagreement or an attack. I just want to share my internal reactions.
1 and they are leading in phasing out fossil fuels while the US builds more pipelines.
2 Yes the capitalists try amd cheat/exploit the system that will always be true.
3 ? ?? Vague as hell and if you said this out of context we would automatically think US prisons. You know the ones designed for profit. I have a hard time beleiving any country could match the scale(or cruelty) of the US PIC.
4 I agree with this statement, but looking at how its being used. China uses it on billionares. The Us uses it on black kids.
5 Unlike the dreamers, the state actually course corrected and created a(functional) path for them to get registered rather than demonizing them.
- Ill take that as legit crit, is it as bad as the US? Ie does the state at least have the power to negotiate medical service/goods prices? 7 also legit crit. Anyone with deeper knowledge about AES cultures, id love to learn more.
Im more of an anarchist than ML. Reason I dont crit china much cause on almost EVERY front, the uS is just worse and im busy critting that. I live in the us too, Im sorry Im more upset by children being forced into chain link cages, than kids being forced to go to a building with windows that teaches in their native language. (Unlike the public US school i teach in, where the kids arent allowed to speak spanish.)
I have criticisms but what’s the point in bringing them up?
To bridge the gap if you're trying to connect with someone who doesn't agree with you. The alternative comes off as insincere and in bad faith.
Hey aren't you the mod of r/tankiejerk or do you just post there a lot
The point of bringing them up is to make this place a gathering forum for leftists of all kinds (you know, the stuff the admins intended it for), which honest discussion about states that are considered AES just helps.
There's a reason this place is considered another tankie circlejerk in most anarchist places and it's not the lack of Winnie the Pooh memes
My "empire" is actually on very good term with China and was on very good terms with the USSR too, why should i stand up to them?
(I mean except the fact that they're raging fash, that's a pretty good reason)
But america isn't my empire and never was, so you trying to project redditor tendencies on me is missing the point a lot.
I'm not supporting america, you're the one making that up, again any criticism ("by engaging in sectarian antagonisms online") is something you guys make up. Your whole premise is wrong.
Yeah, you’re right. Just like sitting around talking with other white westerners about how bad Iraq is for having WMDs or throwing babies out of incubators wasn’t supporting the American “intervention” in Iraq. Except for that part where it was entirely instrumental to popularizing support for “intervention” overseas and policy directed at fighting another nation.
"Before you respond that it’s “different to be critical “from the left” of ML or AES countries and we should be committed to analyzing the conditions present and evaluating them and studying them to improve our critical reasoning about good or bad things the country is doing” I want you to realize that not a single Anarchist here has done that. This post, in it’s entirety, was specifically just to shit stir MLs. Because they always are. All of the “Left unity” spaces have fucking tonnes of posts shitting on MLs and AES countries while the Tankies just post “Pro Tankie” shit instead of “Anti Anarchist” shit in response.
Constant complaints about MLs “shutting down discussion” when we’re actively discussing it, when the ML mods made an anarchism channel and made it clear that anti anarchist posts wouldn’t be tolerated, when there wasn’t even a culture of shitting on Anarchists here to begin with."
That's an outright lie lol. There used to be weekly posts about how anarchists were never ever ever successful.
"There is no analysis. There is no discourse. I’ve repeatedly said in every post “If you want to have a good conversation as communists let’s read some shit together and discuss it and decide” and not a single time does anyone say “Sure” they just say “No MLs are fucking wrong”."
I don't know i've left this article multiple times in China struggle sessions without anyone ever acknowledging it, i don't think i'm not the one not trying to start discussion.
"Tell me again how you don’t support western hegemony by only spouting western talking points, or shooting down their detractors, and ignoring repeated offers to actually discuss and analyze. Tell me again how you’re not manufacturing consent for the US empire."
Okay, i'm telling it again. I don't do that.
If you are not centering American imperialism towards AES states when discussing them, you are an American imperialist. I don't care where you live.
you dont have to be anti-ml, you just need to be able to do basic amounts of self crit. the original subreddit never had a problem with becoming a place for left unity, and this place has miserably failed, and turned into a complete circlejerk for the absolute worst type of "maoists."
if we wanna achieve socialism, we need to point out when other socialist projects fuck up, so as not to repeat their mistakes. this is really basic marxism.
"I'll only act how I think people should act if other people do it first" harumph
If there was ever a place to discuss criticisms and do analysis of AES, ML or anarchist or otherwise, this site is it
Uncritical support (in a place like this where we're among comrades) of things you have criticisms of is baffling
If that turned you away from anarchism, you never were one.
Literally every critique against "AES" is dismissed as "western takes", if it isn't, then "you're not supposed to talk about it", etc., except if it's coming from MLs
Not every "critique" cites them and are written by them, you just choose to ignore everything else.
You absolutely choose to ignore shit. We're still debating about why criticism of China or any AES shouldn't be allowed.
see, i don't repeat "western" talking points. imperialism bad. militaries bad. foreign militaries are NO LESS BAD because of red flags. pooh bear bad for continuing to entrench capitalism in formerly socialist china, while slowly gutting the socialism, and you people just suck his dick because the capitalism there is still in the early phase where it still has something to prove, is still bribing the workers to let go of the means of fucking production, is still getting its filthy fucking tentacles around their fucking souls.
sometimes, the americans and english storm normandy to do some very necessary murder of fascists, even if it's for entirely the wrong reasons. sometimes, the CIA kills someone whose death actually makes the world a better place (just by the law of statistics it's gotta happen pretty often) even if they cause an entire regional of the world to become more skeptical of vaccines and foreign medical aid in general. sometimes, a general atomics reaper drone blows up a schoolbus that bad a future hitler on it (making two more future hitlers, because means are ends)
ive been pursued harassed by local police. I've been attacked by white nationalists. the CIA is basically the devil to me, not just in ideals, but part of my personal childhood fucking trauma. and part of their propaganda? is seeming like they're more competent than they are. is appearing to be everywhere. it's a fucking panopticon gambit, and you're falling for it. read some fucking theory. as competent as some of their monsters are (and some are!) they are not all powerful, and even their best are prone to failure. if there are plants in your organization, they're more likely assets than agents, and that says more about your supposed people than it does about them.
Jokes change context when uttered by people other than the original group, you cant just say "Its not racist for white westerners to say it because the joke originated with Chinese people, also its epic trolling so it doesnt even matter if its racist because I think its cool".
Like come on this is some "But they call each other the N word" shit.
For you. For me it isn't. That's why i stay out of these debates.
putting ideals before material conditions is your brain on liberalism
Maybe material conditions are affected by ideals first of all, hmmmm,
I don't know how to tell you without sounding condescending that if your views on anarchists are coming from whatever you read by them on reddit than you have very shallow experiences with anarchism,
its not that ML's historically criticize anarchists, it's that they historically kill anarchists, or tell us we're disorganized children and to shut the fuck up and take charge of everything and let spain fall to fascism when an anarchist structure with soviet support would have done a much better job stopping that.
kill. like with murder. i feel like that's worse. if you can't find it in the history books, perhaps it's because you weren't looking?
and no, modern comunists are not the flawed fucked up assholes of old. but if we're talking about history, lets not white-wash anything. everybody sucked. everybody. every. single. fucking. person. if there were good guys, we wouldn't be here. so shut the fuck up and stop pretending your intellectual forebears are "pure" or some shit. work on the ideas. dissect the ideas. find a less awful way forward, and suck less IN THE WAYS YOU THINK MOST EFFECTIVE FOR DOING THAT, and don't pitch your 'enlightenedcentrism' shit to anarchists; we're like the worst people for that.
I literally said *there are no good guys in history. if there were; we wouldn't be here."
and uncritical support of a state going capitalist and turning away from socialism? yeah that's stupid. tankies who do that uncritically are not acting in their right minds. its a serious fucked up problem and I think ML's should fucking do better. we all know how capitalism goes, so why are you people sucking its dick so rabidly?
its not that a lot of anarchists are parroting americanisms, it's that a lot of americans are juuuuuuuust starting to be babby anarchists and start adopting/appropriating our stuff. its a messy time, and maybe it's what building sympathy looks like.
they were more strictly organized, lost the international forces when they decided they needed to fucking hierarchalize everything rather than letting them just operate as their own side thing (they could, at LEAST, have been useful idiots), killed morale, etc. "more organized" is not "better organized". im not saying either tactic would have necessarily won; i don't know enough about the military history of the conflict, and what I know of the political history of it always put it at long odds, but the soviets fucked up big and throw away buckets of assets in a specifically tankie sort of way.
wait, a big army of assorted leftists FIGHTING FASCISTS IN A PROXY WAR AGAINST HITLER AND MUSSOLINI didn't deserve... well that says a lot of what the soviets (in your mind) actually stand for, doesn't it?
and yeah, maybe if half your army is anarchists and volunteers who literally came across the ocean to join you, a strict soviet style structure isn't the smartest fucking move
fucking libs, as long as they're gonna keep fighting, deserve support against fascists.
I think you're exaggerating how close it was to "religion", because if it really was that close the Anarchists would have killed the advisors, castrated them and shoved their genitals in their mouth like they did the clergy of Spain.
"oh, youre against systematically massacring anarchists? well what about that one time anarchists tried to kill a ML?"
What about the point being to think about and analyze stuff because thats an invaluable skill for marxists to hone? No one ever said "just posting" china-criticisms, I'm pushing back against you saying NO criticisms. And no, I'm not talking genocide shit, I'm saying we should make more of a habit of actually analyzing what china is doing, right and wrong, for the purpose of learning and thinking about a present example of the system and what it's doing/ how it might change/ perspectives for the future
Again, analysis is one thing, and overt criticism is another.
No it's not. Analysis can and often does involve overt criticism, and it's clear dipshits like yourself twist in knots to shut down discussions rather than engage seriously in them, hence the obviosuly absurd conditional of talking about anarchists bad so therefore I can ignore any other attempt to engage in this shit.
i will continue to criticize homophobic and racist states that self identify as socialist yeah, sorry
Sorry, it's "ruthless criticism of all that exists" not "ruthless criticism of all that exists except for your mum"
Also it's a very good concept that you should take to heart
I mean, she's a bit promiscuous? but that's just sharing her gift. and she is gifted.
oh my god she so is. like, wow does that woman know how to... bake a delicious wholesome cake for entirely platonic friendtime activity which was exactly how I always planned to end this sentence.
CNT's forced labor camps and Makhno's army were both authoritarian nightmares.
the criticism is mostly words too, so maybe both are weak statements of 'yep, those aren't the top priority problems, and they're currently being problems for some of the other problems, so fuck them but we have other shit to do.;
what im saying is "bad news: the heater broke. mixed news: the radiator broke, and im now running the heater to warm up the inside of the car so we don't have to stop. but at least we're warm!" is critical support for the (now broken) radiator. which in this metaphor is the chinese government.
uncritical support for the DPRK in its heroic struggle to liberate occupied Korea from the genocidal American empire
DPRK to me is a fascinating one and really displays western chauvinism when 'Lefts' want to be able to criticise them.
They were quite literally genocided in the 1950s by America.
Calling it the "Korean war" was just as much a lie as the "Vietnam War" (The Vietnamese call it the "American invasion"). During the Korean war was the landlords and capitalists in the north fled south whilst South Korean communists and proletarians fled north to flee the massacres of leftists under dictator Syngman Rhee [1]
And even during the Korean 'War' (read: Genocide) the South Koreans committed massacres at a rate of 6 X that of the Communists. ( Bruce Cummings, The Korean War, P.202 )
The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160116194834/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-north-korea-wont-forget/2015/03/20/fb525694-ce80-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html
So after killing off "20 percent of the population" in the north of Korea the Communists in Korea rebuild their country from scratch after the US "didn't leave one brick on top of another" and after the US had moved on to bombing hydroelectric and irrigation dams. They rebuild their country and even surpass the South Korean dictatorship in GDP before US realises they can't have their South Korean puppet state upstaged so begins pumping in huge investments (while DPRK is under blockade).
The Soviet Union collapses and DPRK loses it's military ally and main trading partner and due to the blockade they can't trade on the international market so they shift to a policy of complete self reliance and due to the oil embargo (main component for agricultural farming) they endure famine and hardship during the decade of 1990s.
Yet despite this by 2006 they detonate their first nuclear weapon - ensuring that never again will imperialist dogs do what they did to the Korean people in the 1950s.
I mean...What criticism is some western left hoping to give?
The Koreans in the North have crawled over glass for their sovereignty and independence from bloody thirsty genocidal murderers in USA. And it's not like they're even free from USA now.
They're still completely blockaded and sanctioned by USA. USA still points an unfathomable amount of weapons at them and practises invading DPRK every year in "military exercises" with the puppets in the South
It's like what Parenti says... Any socialist country that comes to power and liberals are immediately asking the next day "why there's no free speech for fascists? Why can't they have their newspapers and organisations?" lol
Well Yeonmi Park told me that they execute people for watching K-dramas.... I mean James Bond films... uh, I mean- shit she's going to a different country idk what it'll be this time
I hear MLs criticize them quite a bit. The only way I can see them “never” criticize these states is if the only thing you count as criticism is “these states are evil and must be opposed”.
I've literally never seen a critical post of "aes" get more than like 10 upvotes here
What good could that possibly do in North America? Is this not doing a sectarianism?
learning from our mistakes so as not to repeat it. like, very basic introspection or analysis. i dont recall marx ever saying "dont ever criticize anyone that tries my ideas ever"
Here's formula on the whole China good/bad thing:
When China does something good: China good
When China does something bad: China bad
When China does something that could be good or bad: China I don't know
When China does something that is neither good nor bad: China neutral
When China does something that is both good and bad: China complicated
BUT AMERICA ALWAYS BAD, GOT IT?????
Maybe, maybe, China will be in 2050 what America is today - evil empire who does imperialism. Maybe it won't. Either way, for now, my formula works.
China you're not the boss of me now
China you're not the boss of me now
China you're not the boss of me now and you're not so big
I rolled a D20 and what do you know, it came up 20 so my support critted
When Lefts insist on being able to "critically support" they never do anything to actually support the countries under imperialist aggression
They just want the ability to spread imperialist and easily debunked propaganda against those countries and not be called out for being a Western chauvinist and running dog of imperialism
And it's pure horseshit anyway. If you want to read MLs criticising AES go ahead and check out...
https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/soviet-revisionism/
https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/nepali-revisionism/
https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/cuban-revisionism/
https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/titoism/
https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/chinese-revisionism/
https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/cambodian-revisionism/
Harpal Brar - Perestroika the Complete Collapse Of Revisionism
A very easy, very clear point of criticism is China's use of the death penalty. There's really no excuse for an established nuclear superpower to execute its own citizens.
Countercounterpoint: Billionaires aren't human and as such, do not count as murder victims
My only problem with Capital Punishment is that it should either be limited exclusively to Capitalists, or it should be an opt in feature.
Counter counter point: having him do something productive in a gulag for a while would be a better punishment all around
Make him do what he does to his own employees (including piss bottles, living in a tent, poverty wages, and 10 hour shifts)
I see your struggle session and raise you another: China needs to curb emissions faster by developing much more nuclear power.
The U S should curb emmisions faster by becoming a pile of smoldering rubble .
ITT people being called out act surprised that anarchists criticise states.
