Xinjiang is more than a place. It is an idea, a world-historical region, light itself.
Renowned Expert China-Watcher Gamer_time with the tea
It's pretty wild that the US State Department can straight up tell us 'we are propagandizing our population to prepare them for a Cold War with China', and even people on the Left will play along.
If social media existed in 2003, every person who protested Iraq War would've been home debating the specifics of the WMD lie. US State Department propaganda has ascended to a terrify level in the past 15 years.
It’s always been bad it’s just easier to see how bad it is. That’s a good thing imho
No, it has not been this bad.
Following the widespread adoption of social media in the mid-00's, the US anti-war movement has been completely decimated.
Social media is a powerful tool for inventing false realities about the conditions in foreign countries. We always had imperialist spreading lies about foreign countries. Now they can disseminate hyper-targeted war propaganda which plays to the biases across countless political trends.
I lived through Iraq, Libya, and Syria. I have seen how the response to each has differed, despite the fact that the imperial crimes have been identical.
The Iraq War protests shut down my city.
The Libyan & Syrian War protests barely formed a small crowd. Social media's targeted advertisements managed to dupe large swaths of the anti-war movement into believing these were people's revolutions.
That’s a good thing imho
If it is a good thing, why has opposition to the crimes of US empire only decreased over time?
This isn't grounded in reality. The fact that you can find the correct information does not matter when the volume of disinformation has become unfathomably large.
The Iraq War protests shut down my city.
The Libyan & Syrian War protests barely formed a small crowd
They people also noticed that protests don't change policy of governments much. Furthermore was Iraq another kind of precedence. The second time isn't as the first time.
Maybe social media played a role, but the circumstances were quite different from the perspective of people in the core.
They people also noticed that protests don’t change policy of governments much.
That doesn't explain the countless other protests which have happened since then - BLM protests, Women's March, March for our Lives, March for Science, etc.
Furthermore was Iraq another kind of precedence. The second time isn’t as the first time.
This is the opposite of how social movements development. The movement against police brutality has learned from previous actions, and continues to develop. There must be a catalyst for changes in trajectory:
- The black power movement was disrupted by expansion of police under the war on drugs.
- The communist trade union movement was disrupted by the crack-downs on communists.
- The anti-war movement has been disrupted by ever-more intelligent propaganda operation that relies on the fact that we don't understand foreign countries perfectly.
Maybe social media played a role, but the circumstances were quite different from the perspective of people in the core.
Social media is why the perspective changed.
The PR for the Iraq War was poor because information was disseminated through a couple of mainstream media outlets. They had to sell war to several political ideologies & spoke in broad terms such as "freedom" and "democracy."
The PR for the Syrian & Libyan Wars was hyper-targeted to various different political ideologies, particularly ones which participated in the . The "Anarchist case for war", "the socialist case for war", "the communist case for war", etc. all had their own operations, using specific social media accounts, people claiming to be Libyans/Syrians with a specific ideology, etc.
It’s pretty wild that the US State Department can straight up tell us ‘we are propagandizing our population to prepare them for a Cold War with China
Damn when did they say this explicitly?
Having an opinion on China doesn't matter.
Here is what the China Bad people ask of China Good people:
- Basically a bunch of internet only shit. Change the way you talk about China online.
- Agree with the worst enemies of the poor and left. Agree with them that China is bad.
- This isn't what I hear in these discussions but it's a logical conclusion of believing China bad -- support action against China. Because if you think China bad but nothing should be done then why are you beating up on people for thinking China good? It makes no difference. If you think action should be taken only after we achieve Socialism in the west so we don't use the tools of imperialism to start a cold war, then again it doesn't matter. We haven't achieved socialism yet and having an opinion on China won't hinder it or help it. So until we have socialism and can actually act then it doesn't matter.
- Agree that hierarchies are bad and that centralization of socialist power is bad.
Here is what the China Good people ask of the China Bad people:
- Stop spreading CIA/State Department/Capitalist propaganda against China (which you shouldn't be doing anyways)
- Unite behind critical support for even imperfect and developing socialist countries. Change the way you talk about China online.
- Don't support any actions, sanctions, skirmishes, etc against China because that's just capitalists doing yet another imperialism (which you shouldn't be supporting anyways).
- Agree that hierarchies aren't inherently good or bad and sometimes they're necessary for socialism to protect itself long enough to develop. Centralization creates coherency and consistency in governance.
The things the China Good people ask are less frictional than what the China Bad people want. That's why China Good always dominate actual leftist spaces. It's not tankies or MLs having a monopoly on discourse, it's that it's easier to stand behind China Good than to not.
People think it's about information. But it's not. It's not about understanding the difference between a high school and a reeducation center. It's not about knowing the definition of a genocide. It's not about stats and witness statements. It's about people online doing the online thing and taking the path of least resistance to the beliefs. But by all means spend hours debating sources and what photographs show.
It's also not a referendum on hierarchies even if you knew with absolute certainty why China good or bad. That's something that would be decided by creating socialism in the West not by what people think of China.
And most of all nobody can do anything about it. If they're Good then you don't have to do anything but argue with libs and chuds. If they're bad then there's no mechanism for the Western leftist to save the oppressed. And to support the US or other countries in sanctions or military action would be bad. Because those actions would come back home just like all the others.
Someone argued that people are allowed to have an opinion on China. And you certainly are allowed. But to take it so seriously as to judge complete strangers about their deeply held ethical stances or to get into a flame war over it is a waste of time. You're allowed to waste your time, but we don't have to take your outrage seriously. Don't turn having a bad inconsequential opinion into a moral failing. There are no stakes or consequences for being on either side. But this is one of those things where people aren't satisfied by having an opinion. They want others to agree with them and they want to see other people outraged too. If that doesn't happen then everyone else is evil. Because how could you not have an opinion on human rights violations?
If you want to save the oppressed, we have to get rid of capitalism. If you want to get rid of capitalism, we have to do the work of opposing capitalism, abolishing it, and then building socialism. To do the work effectively, you can't place so much importance on making sure everyone online has the right opinion on China. And if you're a person who doesn't care about socialism in the west because the third world will rise up and crush it, then who cares what opinion online westerners have on China? You think defending Xi's honor is helping China crush the US? He pays people to do that already. Go help China materially.
:grill: :grillman:
If this is meant to be making fun of anarchist comrades, I don't like it.
If I misunderstood, carry on.
I don't know if this theory sits well when applied consistently across opinions. Western leftists basically don't have any power to affect major change in the world as if currently stands, so if having bad opinions on things we can't affect doesn't matter then we leave the door open to extremely bad takes like "the Iraq War was justified" or "Israel has a right to exist."
That's exactly what I'm talking about though. You're worried about bad takes. If right now all the workers in the west united and formed a party to overthrow capital, they would have some bad takes. Some of them would think that the Iraq War was justified or that Israel should exist. You're making takesmithing and policing takes a component of building socialism and it's not. You can't wait to get everyone to agree on everything before having socialism. That's never going to happen. Socialism, as I understand it, isn't defined by people agreeing on inconsequential things. We're going to eventually have to work with people who have different opinions and bad takes.
Before someone replies about does that mean working with Nazis, no. But that's part of the internet brain shit. All behaviors and takes get lumped together in these simple categories. Don't do that.
Big tent revolution sounds great and I hope it works. But even if only from a purely opsec perspective, I'm disinclined to trust people with extremely bad takes. If they're willing to swallow obvious State Department propaganda, I can't trust them not to swallow Fed propaganda and sell out.
You’re making takesmithing and policing takes a component of building socialism and it’s not.
Failure to correct bad takes means more mistakes/betrayals the more powerful your organization gets, and the more nations are represented within your international, the worse the effects. Taking the correct positions on issues like the national question, two-stages theory, popular-frontism, permanent revolution, cultural revolution, even something as rudimentary as the definition and character of fascism can be a matter of life and death for your comrades organizing in other countries.
Formulating perspectives and policy can make or break the effectiveness of a political program, something every org needs to attract workers in the first place. They determines what tactics and strategy: the question of whether or not the late-neoliberal US is fascist or not results in implications for questions like, "should we be operating underground right now?".
Furthermore, this determines which organizers you can even consider comrades or allies to begin with, and which are revisionists too dangerous to ignore or even critically support. It can make the difference between siding with would-be revolutionaries in another country and helping the liberals to suppress and kill them. It makes the difference between formulating a successful political program that attracts the best elements of the working class, and one that attracts liberals.
You can’t wait to get everyone to agree on everything before having socialism.
At minimum there should be a revolutionary party/organization within the broader movement of a given country which has maximum possible agreement, and which is linked up with like-minded organizers in other countries. Democratic centralism is impossible without this. Debates over significant questions that reveal irreconcilable differences means a split is unavoidable and necessary. You had better hope you were on the correct side of the split.
Failure to correct bad takes means more mistakes/betrayals the more powerful your organization gets
But you're lumping everything from correcting wrong ideas about parliamentary procedure and opsec to 'I have the wrong definition of fascism so I don't understand letting boog boys into the org.' This is what I talked about in my original post and other posts. People online do this all the time and it drives me nuts now that I recognize it. Of course you think what I'm saying is wrong when you take what I say about bad takes and make bad takes include everything everywhere at all times. I'm not suggesting we not tell people what fascism is or discuss how to run an organization. I'm talking about people online who don't or can't do anything else but post, so they turn posting into a moral crusade. They think they're saving lives by arguing with people online. They think arguing about the definition of fascist with chuds or libs is saving lives but joining a community defense org is a CIA honeypot that they wouldn't be caught dead in.
That's who this is aimed at. It's not aimed at people with an opinion. It's not aimed at people who correct someone when they say things like socialism is when the government does stuff.
Formulating perspectives and policy can make or break the effectiveness of a political program, something every org needs to attract workers in the first place. They determines what tactics and strategy: the question of whether or not the late-neoliberal US is fascist or not results in implications for questions like, “should we be operating underground right now?”.
Again I'm not saying people shouldn't talk about things online. You keep trying to find the most reasonable scenario of saying something reasonable online and assuming I'm talking about that. I feel I'm pretty clear that I'm talking about a specific kind of demographic here. I anticipate that people who are insecure about their posting habits might think I'm talking about them, but I'm not. This isn't "you're not allowed to post online about anything or you're a shitty leftist."
At minimum there should be a revolutionary party/organization within the broader movement of a given country which has maximum possible agreement, and which is linked up with like-minded organizers in other countries. Democratic centralism is impossible without this. Debates over significant questions that reveal irreconcilable differences means a split is unavoidable and necessary. You had better hope you were on the correct side of the split.
And now you're talking as if I was saying all debate is bad or unnecessary. Never said that. China being bad or good is not a debate that reveals irreconcilable differences. And the differences are only irreconcilable because people place so much importance on where they come down on the subject. If you're China Good then you're an authoritarian tankie and I can't work with someone like that, even though you never had to or would ever voluntarily do it because of your prejudices and I doubt you could even fully articulate why you can't work with them. If you're China Bad then you're a State Department dupe who's going to get everyone jailed or killed so I can't work with that. They're the ones attaching all these stipulations on the debate and then declaring moral superiority to people they've never met or will meet or will ever work with even if there was a workers party.
If we had political power and a workers party we wouldn't have to cope with powerlessness by creating these courts of opinion in online leftist spaces. It would still exist because some people are alienated among the alienated. But it wouldn't absolutely color all online leftist discussion the way it does now.
I should probably clarify that I'm an active member of an organization that requires at least 95% agreement on most important issues in order to function at all. One that has comrades all over the world, including in countries with Communist Party presence. My correctness on the PRC issue makes the difference between me indirectly financially supporting a necessary workers' movement in China not led by the Communist Party, or unwittingly doing the CIA's work for them. I have a responsibility to be as educated as possible, take an educated position, and then hold internal discussions with comrades both domestically and internationally of the correctness of that position, if the leadership's current position is incorrect. If my org is incorrect and unwilling to change their mind when the issue becomes too important too ignore, I have no choice but to form a faction and spend less time on other necessary work, to prevent them from making the wrong choice later in a life-or-death scenario, or otherwise to consolidate the faction and split if the disagreement is irreconcilable.
Perhaps you meant to limit the context to online left discourse but again, a single organization's inability to settle these issues internally has real-life consequences. Raising the banner of your organization also requires persuasively and correctly arguing for explaining their position when talking to other leftists. It's not just a matter of whose opinion is right online. The DSA continues to be a clusterfuck in part because it's a big tent that gets bogged down by debate between caucuses of different tendencies with mutually exclusive positions on make-or-break issues like Dem-entryism.
I should probably clarify that I’m an active member of an organization that requires at least 95% agreement on most important issues in order to function at all. One that has comrades all over the world, including in countries with Communist Party presence. My correctness on the PRC issue makes the difference between me indirectly financially supporting a necessary workers’ movement in China not led by the Communist Party, or unwittingly doing the CIA’s work for them.
If you having a stance on China is absolutely necessary for your organization to function, I'm not talking to you and I never was. An organization existing that requires everyone in charge to have a stance on China doesn't invalidate what I said though. It doesn't mean that everyone on a shitposting website needs to have the correct opinion or that having an opinion while on the website matters.
I have a responsibility to be as educated as possible, take an educated position
I'm not suggesting people online not be educated.
If my org is incorrect and unwilling to change their mind when the issue becomes too important too ignore, I have no choice but to form a faction and spend less time on other necessary work, to prevent them from making the wrong choice later in a life-or-death scenario, or otherwise to consolidate the faction and split if the disagreement is irreconcilable.
Is this org chapo.chat? If not, then this isn't relevant.
Perhaps you meant to limit the context to online left discourse but again, a single organization’s inability to settle these issues internally has real-life consequences
We're not an organization. And my context was limited. You're reading this too generally.
Raising the banner of your organization also requires persuasively and correctly arguing for explaining their position when talking to other leftists
Wasn't talking about having an argument in general or trying to recruit others to your cause. This wasn't an argument against persuasive arguments.
It’s not just a matter of whose opinion is right online.
But that's exactly what I'm talking about. It is just a matter of being right online in the context I'm talking about. You're the one trying to say that being right on chapo.chat is tied to being a member of life saving organization where the difference in opinion can kill millions or something. I'm not making that argument, you are.
The DSA continues to be a clusterfuck in part because it’s a big tent that gets bogged down by debate between caucuses of different tendencies with mutually exclusive positions on make-or-break issues like Dem-entryism.
That's an entirely separate issue like all the other rebuttals but in that specific case it sounds like there's not enough goal-oriented planning. If your build an org around a nebulous ideology that could be 500 different things and not built around achieving a goal, it will get bogged down in unproductive debate. People with different ideologies can work to accomplish a single goal. Like if we had to build a house and we started an org called "the build a house org" then we'd attract people who are interested in building a house. We still would debate over the best way to build a house, what materials to use, where to put it, who does what, etc. But there's a goal and there's people who want to accomplish it. But if you just call it the "put wood together org" then there's no clear goal. People are going to ask why you're building a house, why not build a piece of furniture instead? A problem worth discussing but nothing to do with what I said so far.
If I may extend the analogy. We have no wood. We have no hammers. We have no nails. We have no plot of land on which to build. We have a stack of old blueprints of other houses built a long time ago. There are several "put wood together" orgs around, and one or two that's like "use hammers to drive nails org." We're on a website tangentially related to a podcast about some dinguses who think we should build a house sometime soon. Some of our members are fiercely arguing over what wood to use for floor joists. A worthy discussion should we have any wood at all or even our own plans to build a house. But we don't. Then those members declare they could never build a house with one another. That if the other were allowed on the construction project, it would destroy the housing project all together. But if they would just shut up and stop worrying about this inconsequential detail and help us find some wood and hammers and nails or maybe draw up some plans, then we could get to the debate about what wood makes good joists (pine imo).
Rest assured that my org is not chapo.chat, which I acknowledge is not an "org" at all but a public forum for different tendencies to put their ideas forward and discuss news and theory while attempting to avoid sectarian flame wars.
My org's current approach acknowledges we're in the "put wood together" stage and most of our current praxis is wood-gathering and doing united-front work/critical support when possible, but we follow one of the blueprints very closely to guide our wood-gathering effort, and emphasize teaching the blueprint in internal education and attempting to win people within that broader united front that can agree on the "build a house" part over to our specific blueprint. My understanding is this is typical for a single-tendency org that hasn't gone off their rocker and fallen into the "everything is a nail" trap, though some may go further and promote popular-frontism, which my org doesn't (else we'd take the DSA more seriously).
Regarding my comment about the DSA, the qualifier "in part" deserves more emphasis. It wasn't my intention to imply that was the only reason. Their big-tent "let's stop at gathering wood, at most" org clearly has other problems, some of which you've listed.
I should probably have been more explicit about this: right now, in a western context where the old left is only beginning to recover from its old wounds, for the purpose of united-front organizing, a lot of these irreconcilable issues aren't important enough to be life-and-death in our local context. If this weren't true, chapo chat would probably settle towards a single tendency and alienate everyone else. However, as the left continues to grow, precision becomes increasingly important. Being 95% correct is good enough right now. But it might be make-or-break at some point in the future when the organized left is developed enough to be approaching the capacity to build towards dual power, when the stakes dramatically increase and the responsibilities of the working-class leadership grow as they prepare to take on the capacities of a state. At that point, perhaps mere decades from now, continuing to be 95% correct could become more dangerous than being only 50% correct. Reaching this crucial point has historically happened faster outside of the west than inside it.
You’re the one trying to say that being right on chapo.chat is tied to being a member of life saving organization where the difference in opinion can kill millions or something. I’m not making that argument, you are.
This is not the case I was trying to make at all. I was explaining why I specifically have to consider my organization when expressing my position online, because part of my membership involves persuading people to my position.
Of course clearly I can't do a very good job of this individually, because I'm stuck at home and can't talk to people who aren't already politically educated and in the same position I am but in a different organization/tendency. Chapo chat isn't and shouldn't be my primary audience (especially because it's an anonymous site, and I don't use my real name on social media) but posting while involuntarily glued to the armchair was I habit I've fallen into for lack of any physical social interaction with even my own comrades, with whom I used to go out and join for protests, rallies, etc. on a regular basis before covid forced me to move.
Your reminder is a useful one; there are serious limitations to posting in online left spaces that I need to overcome through other uses of my time.
The point of arguing "china bad" isn't to support imperialism, it's to get the left to dream bigger than well managed capitalism. It's the same reason I argue with people who get really excited about coop businesses.
The problem is that the support isn't critical. The PSL doesn't say "support china against western imperialism" they say "support china on it's long road to socialism." Its the same with Syria.
It's possible to be critical of the DotP states like China while also opposing imperialism. That's not a frictional ask, and it's why irl leftist spaces are dominated by China bad.
The PSL doesn’t say “support china against western imperialism” they say “support china on it’s long road to socialism.”
Please do not make up myths about PSL's line. It's all publicly available. [1]
To the extent that workers and peasants in China rebel or resist capitalist encroachments and abuses, they deserve the support of the world working-class movement—especially to the extent that these protests lead toward reversing the gains of capital. The rightful place of the Communist Party of China is with these workers and peasants in their confrontation with the Chinese government and with the domestic and foreign capitalists. When the communists stand aside, they lose credibility with their historic social base.
However, to the extent that these struggles move from spontaneous battles for economic and social justice to movements that are taken over politically by leadership groupings that seek to overthrow the political rule of the Communist Party—as, for instance, occurred with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests—these struggles can only, under the current political circumstances and absent an organized revolutionary communist leadership current, move into the camp of reactionary counterrevolution. They will be organically connected to and nourished by the forces of world imperialism.
The overthrow of the Communist Party of China in these circumstances would not only lead to the absolute destruction of what is remaining of the old socialist revolution, it would suspend China’s bourgeois democratic revolution.
Such an overthrow by non-revolutionary forces would hurl China backward in its epoch-making struggle to emerge from underdevelopment. It would return China to the semi-slavery of comprador neo-colonial rule. China would then also face the possibility of splintering, as happened in Yugoslavia and as may happen in Iraq under the impact of foreign occupation.
In the face of this threat, it is the responsibility of all revolutionaries and progressive people to resist the imperialist offensive and offer militant political defense of the Chinese government—de-spite profound differences with the theory and practice of so-called “market socialism.”
That is more frictional because you're arguing a more nuanced definition of capitalism and socialism. Asking people to dream bigger is just asking them to change the way they talk about China. You don't think they dream bigger because they post praises of China. So you're asking them to post differently. Focusing on the aesthetics of posting goes back to my original thesis. I was going to post this yesterday but changed my mind. One of the original parts of the list included "stop holding China up as a model for socialism" but I left it out today because I lumped that in with focusing on posts.
Agree that hierarchies aren’t inherently good or bad
they are bad tho
curious, you think hierarchies are bad but have a hierarchy of the correctness of ideas
okay, understood, I will go buy chinese made goods and services
Starting a communist port on a new shipping route after the ice caps melt mite b cool.
Good countries can do bad things.
The answer for China is even more Marxism. Like, staggering amounts of Marxism.
because westerners are fucking weirdos who dont know how to act like regular people heres just some videos of just regular life in Xinjiang from a food blog so you can actually learn about the place youre posting so hard about online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKVk8HO4Ht0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpct5lXg7Wo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9C_Gmrvs8w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjGG6B54wQc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POdxYP7KmxE
E: the full 10 episodes series
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoW6f-uH7MHBw-sus0KdClk8bQCDOBLum
their brains are rotted out from all the spoils of conquest and empire they’ve fed on
turn cc on and in settings set it to auto translate English, it works pretty well!
Did youtube's auto translate improve? I always found it to be pretty shitty.
In the last few years, definitely. It's pretty reliable for the gist of most things, but you'll inevitably always get those CC errors where it completely fucks a sentence up and that results in the auto-translation being equally absymal.
EDIT: Since they allow creators to upload their own subtitles (and up until recently, iirc, allowed the option for creators to use community-submitted captions) I forgot to mention that videos (like the ones posted) where clearly the uploader has done some subtitling/captioning in their own language probably get translated even more accurately, since youtube's not relying on their own generated Chinese captions and then translating those to English.
its not like super accurate i assume but its easy enough to understand everything
the whole series is great, theres 10 episodes from Xinjiang, makes me mad im just here eating bagels and frozen pizza every day lol
Careful, the CIA is about a year away from revising the history of China so that it is no longer a relatively continuous ten thousand year old civilization, but rather a loose confederacy of dozens of nation states operating under a dictatorial theocratic imperial regime known as "the mandate of heaven"
I'll take a crack at attempting to explain why it's important for western Marxists to take a decisive position on the PRC: it's a matter of international solidarity. If the Uyghurs are in any way oppressed or underprivileged in Xinjiang, international solidarity requires balancing the scales between critical defense of the PRC on an anti-imperialist basis, and correctly answering the national question. If the PRC is socialist, its socialism is so immature that it resembles state capitalism. If one's position is "China bad but America worse", that's saying the PRC is at best a lesser evil, not exactly something worth bleeding for.
My organization is just one part of an international org which has no choice but to attempt to develop a correct take on China. We also have skin in the game because our tendency historically tends to be ruthlessly purged in "AES" countries.
The PRC draws from an extrapolation of the Stalinist/ML tendency which absolutely screwed the pooch foreign-policy-wise, so much that their compounding mistakes trapped the USSR in a cold war, that they eventually lost because capitalists penetrated most of the the third world before they could to the point that the proto-Maoists/early Maoists had no choice but to split from the twice-degenerated Soviet leadership, created deformed workers' states that survive to this day only because of their concessions to international capitalism.
I would rather have gone down fighting to the last man than pretend to still have a socialist state that's been screwed up beyond all recognition, and I'm beginning to understand why so many in the 4th International split off to become Posadists when the prospect of mutual destruction (with the capitalists more likely to pull the trigger first) changed objective conditions inestimably for the worse on the global scale for the major capital-C Communist powers.
How Deng and even Mao in his twilight years could have tolerated western-controlled sweatshop labor and sacrificed so much working-class control over workers' lives, I fail to understand. The PRC is pumping out neoliberal economists now. Is such betrayal necessary for the long-term success of socialism? Is this what the "lower stage" of socialism is supposed to look like until the economy is developed enough to feed everyone 4 times over?
This is what Dengists (and to a lesser extent, all MLs, especially those on the Soviet side of the Sino-Soviet split) seem to imply when they all but uncritically support the PRC. Choosing a patient strategy, waiting decades for western imperialism's collapse even after you have the biggest economy on the planet, condemns entire generations of your workers to lifetimes of continued exploitation and suffering, at least some of which might be redundant. I don't think I can get behind that, but I will try to remain open-minded.
History is a hell of a drug. If it works, we will never know untill after the fact, that it will have been worth it. Anything will have been worth it. If china creates the future falgsc all of human history will be rendered a footnote.
Did the USSR fail yes? Could they have known the things they were doing wouldn't work? No.
The only data is that failure, destruction by imperalists, and further degredation are the most likely outcomes. So every bit where china isn't moving as gast as we'd like has to be weighed against a seccond hundred years of misery and the revitalization of western powers. Compared to that, a little state capitlaism is worth it to blunt the risk.
But even so. China is less than one lifetime old. You can really only call 40 or so of those years in any way modern. And in that time they have done wonders. So both optimism and fear are appropriate.
I know the mantra "no political work goes wasted" has some utility here but the thought of the possibility that I could spend years or even decades of my life backing the wrong horse and acting as an unwitting enemy of the correct path haunts me to no end.
Correct path? There are two paths in this story. Us and China. If china was bad, they'd be on our side. What other side is worth considering? even if china ends up failing, there is no better horse in the race.
It will be hundreds of years before someone else will get to try. And there is no reason to think their campfire tales of the sunken cities of cuba and vietnam will give them better odds than china has with the biggest richest country on earth with all the means of production in it.
it's okay if you're a trot, you're allowed to admit it. mods have a policy of deleting outright sectarian shitfighting
I know reliable information about China is scarce but do you not believe in Xi's public recommitment to socialism? From where I'm standing he has taken a firm stance against capitalist corruption and is working to bring China back to the right path. Changes in a state do take time, and I think Xi is doing a good job changing things for the better. Perfect excuse for the CIA to drum up some bullshit about a genocide too, if you look at their history with the USSR
I know reliable information about China is scarce but do you not believe in Xi’s public recommitment to socialism?
No. Or more charitably, not yet. All I can say (given what I've learned so far) is he's significantly better than Deng.
What is the bar here?
Probably the biggest shortcoming is the absence of working-class democracy, the absence of apparent proletarian dictatorship. The PRC looks like like it's governed by a party of bureaucrats who tolerate the continued exploitation of workers by capitalists, who cooperate with said capitalists. An environment where Jack Ma can make an inconceivable fortune pressuring workers to adapt to the 996 workweek, one in which Foxconn is able to operate sweatshops with working conditions so awful (while lying to party regulators about adhering to minimum standards and getting away with it) that they had to set up suicide nets, one in which a panopticon is used to monitor the behavior of all citizens (instead of just capitalists and known CIA saboteurs) and controlled only by the ruling party, does not resemble socialism. It more closely resembles state capitalism.
I think the idea that China is still working towards an actually socialist state is eminently false, or if they are it is beyond foresight, so predicting or hoping for it is a waste; but I think China still presents a strong stance against US hegemony + western imperialism and represents a better version of capitalism than the West offers. This is not a very socialist position. Any thoughts? Thanks
You cannot raise multiple generations of young Chinese people on a steady diet of Marx and Lenin and Mao from elementary school onwards and be a little surprised when you end up with a lot of genuine communists. The new generations will eventually fill those positions in their politburo. Even were that not the case, China has demonstrably done more for poverty alleviation than any capitalist nation can claim.
Even were that not the case, China has demonstrably done more for poverty alleviation than any capitalist nation can claim.
But so far they have achieved this largely because of their own type of capitalism, which I claimed is better than the West's, but is not yet socialism. I could easily see a future where China is always "almost ready to start actual socialism" for decades on, without end
This is going to be an unpopular position here, but the Chinese system is neither a temporary retrenchment to capitalism, nor is it just state capitalism with socialist rhetoric covering it up- China is socialist. Period. Having a market sector in the overall framework of a planned, publicly-owned economy is what Socialism looks like in the 21st century. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Belarus, and Vietnam use this model, and increasingly Cuba and the DPRK are moving in the Chinese direction. There's nothing false or fake about Socialism with Chinese characteristics. Maybe in the future they'll move in the direction of a fully centrally planned economy, and there are factions in the party that want to do just that, but that takes nothing away from the fact that their system right now is an example of real, actual socialism, even with their billionaires. Western communists who are wondering whether China will become their ideal picture of a socialist state or whether it's actually some kind of state capitalist hat trick are missing what's right in front of their faces.
I don't disagree. Equally though, they don't don't interfere with our own ability to build socialism, which is also a lot more than can be said about western imperial nations. So they are in the best case scenario, an imperfect socialist nation inching slowly along to a post scarcity level when they can finally hit the full socialism switch, or an equally imperfect capitalist nation that nevertheless manages to improve their own citizenry's lives while also not interfering with other socialist projects.
Yes, agreed. At worst they are probably the best capitalist superpower in history so far. The least imperialist, the most helpful to their citizens. Not perfect but no one is.
The Soviets post Stalin were revisionist, but much of that was walked back by Brezhnev, and yet the split intensified (and the reason for this is squarely laid at Deng's feet here, as he was in charge of the negotiations.) The PRC abandoned critical support and went into shockingly bad tit-for-tat policy measures against the SU when together they might have very well survived. The west nearly fell in the late 70s, during the oil crisis. And that's the most damning criticism I have as someone who supports left unity. The first rule is don't fucking split, support everyone who isn't literally Pol Pot (who was an agrarian-primitivist-nationalist with communist trappings).
Perhaps some market reform was inevitable during the 80s to lessen siege socialism and allow primitive accumulation, the fall of the Union and full Chicago-School Dengism was not. China may have survived, for which I'm grateful, but like Vietnam they're playing with fire and risking Capitalist co-option.
That said, if China is "State Capitalist" it is a deliberate, worker driven state capitalism with a defined goal. And it's under the control of a genuine DotP. Under these circumstances I think critical support is justified.
As for the take of leftists in the West. well it's hard for us to critique without playing into red-scare propaganda. Firstly, most of Xi's work is in English. Comrades should read On the governance of China, or at least a sympathetic summary before critiquing. As for political positions, we should support and uphold the thought of his advisors on the Neo-Maoist left like Wang Shaoguang while critiquing the Autocratic Rightists in the government like Wang Huning and the hard-partyist revisionists like Jiang Shigong who openly seek to drop the "utopian judeo-chrstian" aspects of Marx in favour of an eternal Party rule.
As for Xinjiang, China's doing some bad things, some cultural oppression, some isolated Han nationalistic acts, and we should say they're bad.
It doesn't appear to be Genocide or any worse than what the US does to its own population or its client states, let alone what it would do to a rebel-sympathetic population on a strategic border. You try putting down a CIA funded Wahhabi extremist led rebellion in a province that has had CIA rebellions since the 1960s without breaking eggs.
Just fyi, there's no evidence afaik that TIP in anyway was derived from ETIM (if you were referring to ETIM as a group instead of an idea). ETIM was most likely a tiny group of like 20 people that went to Afghanistan in 1999, and all were dead by 2003 or in GITMO having been sold/captured to the Americans. TIP popped up several years later with a video threatening the Beijing Olympics, and claims to be descended from ETIM but there's no evidence (or at least extremely sketch evidence) they are. The whole narrative around the inception of ETIM is really weird, because basically they suddenly pop with a Chinese report given to the UN in 2001 claiming they had existed since the early 90s but no scholars in the region had ever heard of the group before and the evidence that was given to the Pentagon that got the US to declare ETIM a real threatening organization is still classified and was never released. It's confusing though because the Chinese government wants TIP to look connected to ETIM (as does the TIP itself) and refers to them officially as ETIM often because it extends Uyghur extremism in Syria back into the 1990s in China.
Here's a paper all the way back in 2012 that was trying to analyze the narrative ETIM existed in a verifiable substantial way that US terrorism experts were claiming it did at the time.
I agree, just noting the ambiguity since calling TIP ETIM creates a chain stretching back into the 90s inside of China where I don't necessarily think one exists.
Evergreen post (from my macros collection):
Imagine that you're a landless peasant from a poor country in West Africa:
You've been ground down your entire life, toiling for 12 hours a day in the sun for a small barely subsistence wage. Your parents were born as colonial subjects in a European colony. Your grandparents were essentially slaves. Your great grand parents were formally slaves. After decolonization, the CIA backed a coup in your country that installed a brutal dictator that terrorized your people and chopped up your parents for having been involved in the decolonial struggle.
You find out about a subversive political group that's been preaching everything you know intuitively but could never articulate. They say that your labor is exploited, and the reason your pay is so low is because a cut gets sent to the West where white people will get to use it to live lavishly. The group is your local Communist Party.
You get educated through free classes by the CP and eventually become a member. You risk imprisonment for just being a member and the ruling regime has been known to disappear and torture Communists. You don't care, it's worth it. You've now read virtually all of Marx and Lenin and Mao and Fanon etc despite never having attended school. Your involvement in the Party over the years gets you into influential positions within it.
You attend an international meeting of Communist Parties as a representative from your country. It's an extreme honor to work with comrades from all around the world. You hear their stories and realize that their struggles are the same whether they're in Africa, the Middle East or Latin America. The group sets out to work on a principled anti-imperialist line to help liberate all these comrades from the grip of imperialism and eventually capitalism. You understand that socialism is impossible in your country until the aggression and exploitation from the West ceases, so this is very important to you. You and your comrades have decided that despite many of their flaws, you should support China as a counterweight to US Imperialism which has utterly decimated your peoples, as well as DPRK, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, which have all always stood by your comrades when they fight Western occupation and exploitation.
On the other side of the world, sitting in an air conditioned suburban home that is worth more than all the homes and possessions of all the people in your village combined, is the infamous Chapo. He's 28 and recently laid off from his job as assistant manager at pizza hut. He's not a millionaire or anything but he never has to skip meals, has electricity, clean running water, and owns a catalog of video games worth more than your annual salary. He's never had to work more than a 10 hour shift baking bread sticks. He's been living off his parents who are both retired and receive generous pensions funded by collecting dividends from companies that exploit your village. The Chapo looks at his laptop made with rare earth minerals from your country (three of your cousins died in the mines) and is also worth enough to feed your children for three years. He sees on Twitter dot com that an international group of Communist Parties has released their Anti-Imperialist line. The Chapo reads it as he sips coffee that was made from beans grown in your comrade's home country, where his mother, father and aunt and uncle were all killed by CIA-backed death squads. The Chapo reads the article and is incensed. "How could they do this? How could they be this stupid? Fucking dengists, don't they know you can support oppressed people without supporting authoritarian dictatorships"?
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/lsaji0/masterpost_of_sources_for_debunking_xinjiang/
https://www.reddit.com/r/sino/wiki/fakenews-china
:halal: I'm tired of Xinjangposting, I will therefore start a new Deng struggle session, brb
There are like at least 8 that have infiltrated lol, they're replying to like every comment here with copy pasta and refusing to cite any evidence other than just saying we're racist lol
Wait, does this mean that any posts about Xinjiang or Uyghurs will be removed?
Well, I 100% agree that constantly arguing about it is unproductive, and probably even counterproductive because it drives people apart over an issue that neither side has the ability to take action on. So I appreciate you guys trying to do something to keep the bickering down to a minimum.
One side supports action being taken though, specifically playing into the Human Rights war industrial complex. The implication of them so agressively asserting that what's happening is a genocide implies justification of military intervention/sanctions which are bad.
Definitely agree though, that a ban on discussion would be a net positive. It's exhausting.
I think it's important for us to get on the same page on this topic so that we can push back effectively against the mainstream narrative in the West.
The rhetoric is driving countries to ban products coming from the region and cut ties with companies that employ Uyghur workers without conducting any sort of proper investigation into the matter: https://archive.is/k1oTj
I'd also like to bring up the uptick in anti-asian hate crimes that have been occurring for a while now, which I imagine all this China-bashing in the media has helped to enable, although the role that the Xinjiang issue plays into this is probably minor compared to that of the covid misinformation.
Finally, I think this is a good opportunity to educate people more on media literacy so that they become less susceptible to this kinda stuff in the future.
CPC stans 🤝 Western Islamaphobes
That is not the same thing at all. Nobody here is calling all Uiyghir people terrorists, we are saying that extremism exists and the Chinese government is dealing with it well, to the benefit of the people there. They are providing a service and opportunities to them. I'm not so naive to think that its all rainbows and shit over there, nothing ever is. But why is it so hard to believe that they are doing Socialism? This is the same country that exempted them from the two child law to encourage minority population growth, why would they now be doing a genocide?
The regulation, adopted on Wednesday by the Xinjiang People's Congress, prohibits people in the region from wearing full-face coverings and long beards, which are deemed to promote extremism. ... Violators will be cautioned first before being punished in accordance with China's Anti-Terrorism Law and Criminal Law.
-- China Daily, an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party.
CPC stans 🤝 Western Islamaphobes
Everyone who wears a long beard or veil is a terrorist and the slower they are to accept that more terrorist they are
CPC stans 🤝 Western Islamaphobes
Everyone who wears a long beard or veil is a terrorist and the slower they are to accept that more terrorist they are
CPC stans 🤝 Western Islamophobes
Everyone who wears a long beard or veil is a terrorist and the slower they are to accept that more terrorist they are
alright that's a bit much I'll agree. Still doesn't scream genocide to me
What a shitty chain, piece of shit logic that is only interested in a cheap "haha gotcha" as if material conditions doesn't matter, as if the terrorist attacks don't matter, as if the lack of alternative solutions doesn't matter.
Gee I guess at some point the government may use some traits to help discern who may be(it wouldn't even be the only thing that matters, unlike the color of your skin in the US) terrorists or not, oh no the fucking horror I can't imagine the horrible fate that awaits them in the check notes temporary re-education and training facilities.
You want to pretend we are talking about Auschwitz and measuring skulls, stupid nonsense. See the CEECEEPEE isn't perfect! Gotcha stupid tankies!
