I can't believe 20 of you can't appreciate a perfectly good burn despite how good or bad of an argument the slime dude was making or whatever.
Is this after he posted that tankies are saying lifting people out of poverty is the same as socialism?
Always fun when comrades come up with strawmen to explain why youre wrong when they don't even appear to understand the issue :rage-cry:
I give critical support to china as an anti-imperaialist, and because they're actually doing stuff about climate change and are pretty much the only nation who is labeled as capitalist who has actually lifted their people out of poverty and improved quality of life for their citizens. I do not support all their endevours, nor do i think they have acheived socialism. I have never seen anyone on the pro-china side say they have reached socialism or that China is perfect with their system of government and should stop trying to improve lol... just that as materialists we're concerned with the common people, and the common people of China are treated fairly well off compared to those of us in amerikkkka when you look at poverty and the social safety net and those are good and desirable things.
If anyone gave that level of critical support to ANY OTHER COUNTRY, including succdem ones like norway or whatever, they wouldn't be labeled a fucking tankie or 'state capitalist', everyone would be like "oh yeah, they like the good stuff from there and don't like the bad stuff, yeah of course" But as soon as someone supports China in any way, they're being a state capitalist that doesn't understand socialism :thinkin-lenin: :agony-4horsemen:
You see, China's over reliance on direct action to alleviate inequality creates a gap in the demand for supply side thoughts and prayers.
You nailed it, and also unlike Norway or the other succdem countries, political power in China is firmly in the hands of the socialist state. China is literally in the NEP phase like the USSR post civil war
Man, I kinda like thought slime's content and that he's the only one I know of that platforms smaller channels, but goddamn does he need to read more. His takes about MLism are really uninformed. He does that thing that a lot of internet anarchists do and just hyper focus on the whole "hah you think the state will just wither away lmao no way." Idk, maybe hell get there eventually.
goddamn does he need to read more
They posted their reading list some time ago and the problem isn't that they need to read more (they likely read more theory than most people on this site), but that they don't read any ML theory at all. They don't get ML concepts of statehood in the slightest, and as they don't understand that we see states as a tool of class rulership, they can't understand what ML critiques of Anarchism are getting at - the problems that arise from abolishing the state before abolishing capitalism.
This is the core of their mistakes besides falling for Western propaganda way too easily.
I kinda have a soft spot for him but agreed. His videos are good for preaching to the choir and probably not much else. Lib and chud whispering are fickle practices.
TS is completely right tho.
I mean isn't China state capitalist?
Lenin was the first to admit that the USSR was state capitalist while he was alive
Wasn't that specifically about the NEP and the label stopped applying once the central planning apparatus had been developed and capital had been collectivized? By that definition China in the early 50s (before collectivization and what loose central planning and logistics they had were implemented) and post-Deng would be state capitalist, but not in between.
Venezuela is “state capitalist” ... But they arent dictatorships of Capital/the bourgeois.
Venezuela isn't even state capitalist, it's just a normal capitalist welfare state (except in a periphery country instead of in the imperial core) where large swathes of the economy are still held by the same private oligarchs that owned them before Chavez came to power, and that private oligarchy (in collaboration with the US) has been the root of repeated coup attempts and a sustained program of terrorism, lynchings, and economic warfare aimed at forcing regime change, with footsoldiers drawn from the ranks of the aggrieved petit bourgeoisie and PMC white supremacists.
Like the Chavista movement was and is good, and their programs to expand education, combat racism, expand housing, and proliferate agricultural coops have both made a massive positive difference in the lives of millions of people and helped to partially mitigate the economic warfare and destruction of food and capital by the private oligarchs, but they have been either unable or unwilling to eliminate the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie so far (and there are, obviously, strategic geopolitical reasons for that like trying to avoid the worst violence the US likes to leverage against anyone who does, instead accepting a slow burn of economic warfare and terrorism by the US).
Yeah modern china is state capitalist.
Thanks. That's all that is stated on the picture.
We like China because they’re anti imperialist. I don’t air my criticisms of China because they do not help make things better in China.
how is china anti imperialist? they make all the shit and steel for the imperial world. their elite class is making money off imperialism. you cant be capitalist and anti imperialist
China's position as an alternative to western capitalism means their actions almost always goes against the interests of American/Western imperialism. The BRI for example is pretty much going to heavily diminish western imperialism if these countries no longer suffer from sanctions or capital exploitation. Iran not being oppressed by BS American sanctions is a heavy blow to imperialism. The African loans/general infrastructure investments also directly opposes Western imperialism in Africa/the third world by replacing the vulnerability on the IMF and "foreign investors". There is a reason liberals are so pissed about them getting low interest loans. China is bypassing the global financial market and creating bilateral relationships everywhere AND without little or no strings attached.
It doesn't eliminate imperialism of course as long as any country participates in the world economy it will interact with global capitalism on either side, as an imperialist or as a victim.
I also don't think there is any argument to be made about how China does benefit from the existing infrastructure created by western imperialism. China couldn't import resources from other countries otherwise without a capitalist global market that allows it. But as I explained China is mostly acting against the interests of Western imperialism most of the time.
Mr. Sandler, with all due respect, i'm not in the US so my shitting on the US won't make it better for people there, shall i cede my shitting on the US and only care about my own neighbourhood?
And btw i like China's anti US imperialism efforts too but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any honest discussion on their project, which contains not going for the jugular of people that simply mention the fact that China is indeed state capitalist.
You should care about events in your own country. You should also realize that the events in your country really don’t affect us, while the events in our country affect people in your country just as much.
Well, most people here seem to be western leftists. Our criticisms of China really don’t help make China better.
Considering we're pretty much already in Cold War 2: Yellow Scare Boogaloo, I'd disagree at least when it comes to stuff that western leftists put out in public.
Yeah, if Leftists are saying that China is evil and needs US intervention in large public platforms that might contribute to American imperialism in a tiny way. But applying critical support and discussing ways in which we may achieve socialism better on a small Leftist website certainly isn't going to hurt China.
I'm sure the opinion of the leftists who are horny for Garfield is the only thing that stops the military industrial complex from starting the third world war.
Let's all hope this post ages well, because if it doesn't it means Chinese people got put into camps.
If Chinese people are put in camps it won't be because Leftists on the internet gave critical support to China instead of utterly uncritical support.
especially leftists on a small isolated platform like this
Being complicit in the manufacture of consent in even a small way is bad. Even if we don't have big voices here, things we say can still impact individuals and groups in ways we can't predict.
Good faith critical support from the Left is not contributing to manufacturing consent for imperialism. We can have discussions about China without having to pretend it’s a utopia.
After all, we’re materialists, not idealists, right? If the US is forced by its internal contradictions to attack its biggest trading partner and destroy the global economy that it requires to exist, then it won’t be because some Leftists online said that China could do socialism better in some ways.
This seems like a weird argument. The way things are going, the internet left doesn’t have a say in how congress works.
It ultimately depends on how broadly we define socialism, but we could either describe China as a far from perfect socialist project that is currently still in the state capitalist stage of development in the Leninist sense or even a unique form of early-stage market socialism carefully building towards a later higher stage of socialism (this of course assumes that you subscribe to the idea that socialism can coexist with commodity production and the law of value which left-coms who reject even the USSR as state capitalist also would definitely reject).
China's economic model is very similar to what the Soviet Union was under the NEP (New Economic Policy) that Lenin championed as a necessary strategic retreat from the previous economic strategy of War Communism (which had practically everything nationalized and centrally planned). Lenin argued that the NEP and state capitalism were required to attract foreign investment and build the productive forces necessary for socialist development. According to Lenin:
For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.
Under this economic model of the NEP, the commanding heights of the economy (heavy industry, natural resources, and banking) remained under public ownership with a large private sector allowed to exist outside of those strategic industries along with the establishment of a new small class of capitalists called "NEPmen" that were excluded from any real political power. The NEP was eventually ended by the Soviet leadership under Stalin as he argued that state capitalism under the NEP despite its achievements in helping to rebuild the Soviet economy after the civil war would still not allow for the rapid industrialization that was believed necessary at the time to defend the USSR against Western imperialist aggression.
Deng argued that China had become economically isolated in a capitalist-dominated world (the Sino-Soviet Split exacerbated this situation) and was still deeply scarred with the poverty and economic backwardness from China's era of semi-feudalism and consequently lacked the productive forces, technology, and know-how to immediately jump into becoming a successful fully centrally planned economy of 100% social ownership like many in Mao's faction of the CPC wanted.
So, Deng Xiaoping advocated for an transitory economic model of a "socialist market economy" that he developed from studying the Soviet NEP that would still place China within what Chinese communists had called the "primary stage of socialism" where certain aspects like markets and limited forms of private ownership outside of major strategic sectors of the economy that comprise the commanding heights of the means of production would be allowed like private ownership of less important light industry and consumer goods/services under Communist Party supervision with a strong emphasis on joint ventures with foreign Western companies that would require critical technology transfers from foreign capitalists to the Chinese public if they wanted access to the Chinese market:
However, by allowing foreign capitalist companies to employ Chinese labor, this does of course come with the negative consequences of more exploitation of certain workers during the "primary stage of socialism" but is still seen by enough of the CPC as a necessary evil for a middle income developing country to acquire foreign capital and technology that they contend are necessary to avoid becoming economically isolated by capitalist encirclement while also building productive forces. Made in China 2025 is the current government initiative that has utilized past technology transfers and Chinese industrial policies in a campaign to position China as a global powerhouse in high-tech industry. Nevertheless, the reform and opening up era still had a lot of harmful excesses from the market reforms in hindsight like the partial privatization of healthcare that the current government under Xi is trying to fix with the Healthy China 2020 and the Healthy China 2030 initiatives (Universal healthcare is claimed to have been just recently achieved by the government, but still is not free at point of use despite better coverage and affordability). The staff and workers' representative congresses also lost power during the 90s under Zemin, but have been re-strengthened under both Hu Jintao and more recently under Xi. There was also an explosion of corruption and inequality due to the market reforms that the CPC didn't handle or prepare for particularly well until more recently with the anti-corruption campaign of Xi's administration and the recently revised tax code that lowered the tax burden on the working class while increasing taxes on the wealthy and enforcing taxes on global income that disproportionately affects wealthy Chinese. Excessive inequality will undermine China's dual circulation strategy.
The "socialist market economy" that the CPC established retained public ownership over the commanding heights of the economy (the state has an effective monopoly over banking, finance, heavy industry, energy, mining, transportation, metals, telecommunications, natural resources, land, and public utilities) while also having many local or provincial state-owned enterprises in many other industries including the auto industry, pharmaceuticals, and IT as well as many cooperatives especially in agriculture. Central state-owned enterprises were consolidated to be much fewer in number but also significantly larger in size and total assets while also becoming more efficient, comprising nearly 2/3 of the top 500 companies in China. The Chinese government also has varying degrees of minority ownership in many private enterprises in China. The size of the Chinese private sector can be inflated at times by having cooperatives and mixed enterprises of mostly government ownership with little private ownership be included as part of the private sector.
Just as the Soviet NEPmen were excluded from political power under the NEP, the national bourgeoisie in China are also excluded from real political power with no capitalist membership in the Central Committee of the CPC. Lists of the wealthiest people in China are often called the "kill pigs list" as about 17% of these capitalists according to one study end up in court, jailed, and some being even executed with about 14 billionaires being executed in China within just 8 years.
The CPC also implemented a form of workplace democracy through staff and workers’ representative congresses that allow worker participation in management decisions and these institutions exist within all state-owned enterprises and even parts of the private sector (the staff and workers’ representative congresses in the state sector have more power though). The CPC can control its private sector through active management via quick direct interventions or more passively managing its private sector through its Communist Party committees within China's private enterprises, joint ventures, and foreign enterprises that influence management decisions to be more aligned with Communist Party goals. 5-Year Plans also still exist with directive economic planning being retained for certain strategic publicly-owned sectors of the economy while indicative planning has replaced directive planning elsewhere.
Regardless of whether we label China in its current economic state as socialism, market socialism, or state capitalism, it's a massive mistake for any leftist to disavow China as simply "capitalist" as it dismisses how fundamentally different China's economy is from capitalist economies and strengthens the fallacious capitalist poverty reduction narratives of neoliberals like Steven Pinker whose arguments rests almost entirely upon China's progress on poverty reduction (global poverty reduction without China's poverty reduction numbers has largely stagnated throughout the capitalist world). It also ignores the important lesson that socialist projects are sometimes going to be forced into making strategic retreats due to capitalist encirclement and imperialism as we've seen with the Soviet Union under the NEP, China, Vietnam (Vietnam has a nearly identical economic model as China as it faced similar material conditions and was forced to restructure economically to have access to international capitalist markets), and even Cuba to a lesser extent. And holy shit my response was too late and way too long.
Thanks for the rant tho, it was interesting, even though because i understand what state capitalism means in a leninist concept, i didn't interpret the tweet as an offense to China, that's why i said TS is right.
It doesn't help the narrative though that the poverty reduction in China came with them being very much embedded in global capitalist economy. Vietnam is more sympathetic to me from that regard.
China is a dictatorship of the proletariat that is attempting to blaze a trail to socialism/communism that no country has ever done before. So people are both right and wrong when they say that China is socialist, because it both isn't socialist yet and is making its decisions via a coherent socialist theory.
I stan the Soviet Union, but their path lead them to balkanization and neoliberalism, while China's has not.
Because China is being run by Xi, the greatest socialist hero of our era
Watching the recent video, I think he did okay showing Maupin being kind of dumb and dishonest, the only points that really bugged me-bugged me was when the other guy was like "communism is a moneyless, classless, stateless society" and Slime was like "I'm sorry say that last part again." as if ML's or whatever think full communism is when you have a state.
and also when they just started dunking on China at the end for some reason.Maupin is a genocide denier.
I mean he hangs out with literal NazBols so he probably has denied a few actual genocides
Is the recent video worth watching? Just based off the thumbnail/title alone I assumed there will be some more infuriating anti-ML stances and was planning on just taking a pass.
I mean, maybe if you are still stanning Maupin after the nazbol and terf stuff this will put the nail in the coffin?
or if you just like internet drama.
but there isn't anything in there I would say you "have" to hear.I didnt even know who he was until the nazbol/terf stuff, so he gets 0 stanning from me. And internet drama is always hit-and-miss for me. So sounds like I'll just pass then.
There's anarchists who take ML objections seriously and even support AES projects. Even youtube anarchists like Non-Compete, who has lived in Vietnam since 2012 or so, regularly defends the country on his channel and accepts that ML concepts are a viable approach for their revolution that produces results that outright impress him. He just thinks that AnCom is better suited to material conditions in the US. While that's a debateable idea, it isn't a stance that's underpinned by internalized American chauvinism.
LOOK AROUND YOU! MILLIONS ARE DYING! SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP
It's usually less downvotes because of that . Btw stolen from elsewhere, didn't care about the original tweet.
On a side note, do you think the FBI knows what Bay Area ML looks like?
People with emojis in their twitter handle are easy to ignore.
Yes, this is my old person take.
'Thought' Slime, a.k.a. the anarkiddie who thinks the Uyghur Genocide narrative is unquestionable and if you cast even the slightest doubt upon its veracity you are a genocide supporter, apparently no better than Nazis.
Yeah , fuck him.
China is a capitalist country. They are communist in name only. The two most annoying things on this site; #1. all the cheerleading of China as some communist utopia and even using right wing talking points to defend capitalism over there (precisely what this jackass is doing in the screenshot), and #2. Vaush posting.
Abolishing commodity-production is difficult in a world where you have to trade to maintain competitiveness. China is playing the long game, they're building their productive forces, increasing their military strength and advancing their technological capabilities. China is mostly western-style capitalist, but they also have a significant state controlled capitalist sector. And most importantly at the current stage, the government is firmly in the hands of socialists, rather than the capitalist class.
And most importantly at the current stage, the government is firmly in the hands of socialists, rather than the capitalist class.
And the thing that guarantees that it stays that way is:
Left unity is a fucking joke.
Because some people on twitter got pissy with each other?
No.
Because it is a joke. Not because someone had a twitter slap fight.
Maybe it is. My experience with different orgs populated by an array of anti-capitalists would say differently, but maybe you're right.
While twitter arguments arent the best example, there are fundamental divides between leftist tendencies that cant just be bridged over, and which always manifest in conflict the second after power has been seized from the bourgeoise.
Perhaps, but to insist that left unity is possible if not just for childish disagreements like is so popular right now is to just abandon analysis when it comes to leftist tendencies.
Well, the main one is that communists/MLs believe that you must first form a communist state to combat capitalist states and capitalism before transitioning to the ideal classless, stateless society. Anarchists believe that the destruction of the state must occur concurrently or even before the destruction of capitalism.
Like the other person said, the main divide is the usage of the state and "authoritarian measures" as need arises, Marxists will use the means required to face threats even if its not ideal or perfectly moral, Anarchists will either idealistically avoid any such measures and get crushed, or implement mutated versions of the same measures while insisting its nothing alike, like with Makhnovia and Anarchist Spain.
I posted a shit about "agents wasted months trying to find the ceo of antifa on twotter but only found idiots cancelling each other"
some of those very smart people on twitter act that way off twitter as well. Shocking huh.
Guess today is angsty ML day. Not one of my favorite days tbh.
