https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/opinion/biden-china.html
Reminderto everyone that, by and large, the Soviet Union never wanted a "cold war" with the US. They just wanted to be left alone to try and build socialism and tried to make peace with the US, but the US and their vassal states refused and were relentless in bringing down the USSR until it eventually happened. And they started literally just a couple years after the revolution btw.
China is going further still, by going to extremes to avoid any sort of foreign intervention (generally good but slightly disappointing they don't support say the Maoists in the Philippines. I get why not a criticism from me, just saying). And just like with the USSR, the US is being the aggressor in the cold war. Furthermore, the US delenda est.
going to extremes to avoid any sort of foreign intervention
A :LIB:, somewhere: "bbbbbut Hong Kong! Free Tibet! End Chinese Imperialism!"
They just wanted to be left alone
The USSR was backing and supporting socialist revolution globally. They backed domestic revolts from India to South Africa to Guatemala. Khrushchev literally sent nukes to Cuba.
These were, literally, tankies. They'd spent the last thirty years crushing imperialist projects internally and into the surrounding territories, and they were 100% committed to both proselytize and propagate Marxist-Leninism internationally, particularly after the death of Stalin.
China is going further still, by going to extremes to avoid any sort of foreign intervention
This is pure nonsense. China's foreign policy is in no way isolationist. Look at the BRI ffs. Look at the Confusion Centers they're sponsoring to encourage foreign adoption of Chinese education and culture. Look at their efforts to distribute Sinovax. They are fully committed to hemispheric alliance and economic union. They are 100% on board with foreign intervention. And that's what's scaring the shit out of the Bidencrats and other Neo-cons.
Come off it. USSR foreign involvement was orders of magnitude below the US, and as a response to US imperialism. Nukes wouldn't have gone to Cuba had the US not invaded it.
Only because the USSR's infrastructure had to be rebuilt in the run up to the next war. Had the Soviets enjoyed the insulated hemispheric hegemony of the US, I suspect they'd have propagated their ideology far more successfully and come out of the Cold War winners in the end.
Nukes wouldn’t have gone to Cuba had the US not invaded it.
The invasion of Cuba was a disaster long before Kruschev delivered nukes. And the nukes were delivered in response to the US's arming of Turkey, putting each country in striking distance of the other.
That's not evidence of an isolationist USSR. It's evidence of a Cold War between superpowers.
Only because the USSR’s infrastructure had to be rebuilt
this doesn't make the Cold War asymmetrical? the likelihood the USSR would've been aggressive if they had the chance doesn't change the actual sequence of events.
the likelihood the USSR would’ve been aggressive if they had the chance doesn’t change the actual sequence of events.
The USSR and the USA were going to come into conflict for the same reason Capital and Labor have traditionally come into conflict.
Pretending the USSR was full of pacifists, in the wake of two world wars and a brutal civil war, is myopic and revisionist. Pretending that Soviet citizens did not want a true globe-spanning International Union neglects ML theory rather severely. Pretending as though they were not justified in advocating an anti-colonial liberationist ethos is cowardly. Pretending as though the violent overthrow of colonial regimes was not both necessary and good is reactionary.
noooooo you're not allowed to criticize china even though chomsky says china is conducting a genocide it's still zenz propaganda mmmkay?
This is literally just saying “We will defeat China because we have freedom and God on our side.” Mega cope
If the American ruling class really believes this, that's a secret weapon in China's hands: pure ideology.
It's incredible. If what's written here is what the ruling class is counting on bringing China down, then it's over. The US will definitely lose.
The Bed Bug cites 3 things that will cause China to lose to the US: nationalism, a "cult of personality" around Xi, and repression of religion. Since none of these are either accurate or even material, it's over. The US has nothing.
Isn't Xi quite famously a super boring administrator? Like, there is basically no personality from what I've been reading. How do you build a sizeable Cult around a person who's that boring?
The other two damage the U.S a lot more I'd argue. American Nationalism and America's continued violence against Muslim and Jewish people.
I feel like Xi has a bigger cult in the west where we're primed to slot into that sort of relationship with public figures.
All of this... I do wonder about the folks at the State Dept and CIA. Do they actually believe the pro-capitalists bullshit that you outlined above? Honestly... I kinda think they do. Unless you have a materialist / Marxist view of things, the neoliberal views you expressed are kinda the default for most Americans. So even the folks in charge of imperialism have their eyes on the wrong ball. That's something that definitely works in China's favor.
Kinda makes me think of the tech-man in the Foundation
Hober Mallow shows up to see what the Foundation is up against in the dwindling empire, finds a tech-man (a hereditary class of people who work on the reactors that power the planets). Asks him how the reactor works and the tech-man basically just says "well" then when pressed for what he'd do if a component broke, he just says "that doesn't happen!".
We've reached a level of complicity where the people who drafted the first ideas of the propaganda are long dead and no one knows how to run the machines anymore and can't imagine a world without the machines. Trapped in an empire withering away.
as agriculture will become more mechanized, farmers who previously grew their own food and barely interacted with the economy will become way more productive causing average productivity to go up even as the population ages, furthering economic growth.
What kind of garbage capitalist take is this?
"People leaving their ancestral lands to go find work in the cities is progress. We'll grow field corn, wheat, and soy monocrops, which are more productive. With EnergySTAR rated farm equipment, we'll be doing it all sustainably. Newly minted Chinese workers will take up 9-9-6 factory jobs, which are the envy of workers all around the planet. They'll not only be able to afford to live in a pricey city where the air is saturated with PM <2.0, they'll be able to purchase consumer goods! Economy! Line go up!"
Fuck the economy and anyone who follows its conventional destructive logic.
Poverty is when you aren't breathing dioxins or drinking 5 grams of microplastics a week, and have a direct connection to the means of production, got it.
If you think our agricultural and industrial paradigms will last another 50 years, you're tragically mistaken. Too bad it'll take at least 100 years to raise the "productive forces" to that hypothetical point where da socialism happens automatically.
If having solid anti-capitalist and ecological principles makes me an idealist chauvinist, I doubt you're a communist.
I live in the developed world; I have fed myself for extended periods of time for $40 a month. If you haven't experienced poverty like that, fuck off with your "fethisizing [sic]" allegation.
private window and ublock activate
fair warning though, the comments section can be quite cancerous
Not enough, particularly when they go to such great lengths to detect and block private/incognito windows. Read it through an archive.
Love how Bret states China has abandoned "Classical Marxism"; it shows he has no actual understanding of Marxism or how the CPC is operating. Beautiful.
This is not a defense of bret in the least because he clearly has no idea what he's talking about, but doesn't Dengism diverge a decent amount from "classical" Marxism?
Not really, it just accommodates the reality of a world wholly dominated by capitalist ideologues and tries to use the forces that destroyed the Soviet Union to its advantage.
Capitalist exuberance after the destruction of the Soviet Union gave Dengists an opportunity to move China into the heart of all the world's production. America, still wet with the blood of the Soviet people willingly gave China so many of its factories - its literal means of production - and flooded the country with the hard currencies (and technologies) that it had previously deprived the Soviet Union of using the entire weight of the entire NATO apparatus. Deng invited the American capitalists to give China all that advantaged America during the cold war and they actually did it.
It was a very practical application of Marxist theory and allowed the Communist Party of China to play American Capitalists like a fiddle. It takes the world much closer toward the international communist revolution that Marx believed was necessary to overthrow Capitalism. Now communists are in an infinitely better position to agitate for communism in advanced nations (as well as impoverished nations) with China as the shining city in the hill than they were advocating for the degenerating Soviet Union.
Sometimes you need optimism. Also, China is a very unique case. We're seeing a country basically go from the 1600s in some places to space in under a century. The speed with which they're able to develop is literally unprecedented. Bridges in hours, buildings in days, hundreds of km of HSR in weeks.
No one really talks about this in the west beyond some passing interest news pieces, but as the infrastructure here begins to crumble while Chinese infrastructure blossoms the contradictions will become incredibly hard for the average person to ignore. The "shining city" thing will be more than just a metaphor.
the capitalist will sell you the rope which you will hang him with :inshallah:
I love how he starts off by listing the "fake" causes - you know, in case you were under the mistaken impression that the facts about the CIA and the military industrial complex were true.
Americans try to not accuse an Asian leader of creating a cult of personality challenge
A cult of personality is any time a group of people listens to someone else. I am very smart.
Me, a CIA-sponsored conservative intellectualism: "We will use Communism against the Communists!"
You, a senior executive in the hyper-privatized corporate city of Hong Kong: "Xi Jinping is fantastic and I love him."
