The proletariat in China are already empowered, comrade.
The proletariat in China are already empowered, comrade.
Ah, through the magic of The People’s Billionaires and The People’s Capitalist State, of course
Please do yourself a favor and spend an hour reading this. Then either come up with a better argument or accept that you’re wrong.
Read my agitprop or I won’t discuss this with you.
Lmao, enjoy sitting alone in silence then 🤷
Agitprop is usually a poster or something short and memorable. This is a well written and sourced essay on the topic at hand.
That’s excruciating to read. Why would someone take an hour to read this as an answer to that comment? Only near the end does it conclude the whataboutism and try to address why “socialism” produces hundreds of billionaires.
Apparently, “it’s fine because the proles have public transit and stuff.” Perhaps magical thinking seems compelling if it is disguised in an expensive vocabulary and hiding behind many citations.
“China has billionares therefore it’s not socialism” is not an argument. It’s a thought-terminating cliche. The essay is an in-depth examination of why China should be considered socialist, and is therefore a direct refutation of that sentiment.
You keep saying it’s “whataboutism”. That’s another of those thought-terminating cliches, and you would do well to stop using it to dismiss every argument that makes you uncomfortable.
How would you empower the proletariat?
Not aping bourgeois capitalist oligarchy would be a good start. As for details, I believe there’s a vast amount of socialist writing and thought that doesn’t involve “Let’s make a fascist capitalist state and it’ll totally give power to the proletariat, eventually, somehow” as one of its core tenets.
Ok I didn’t ask how not to do it. How would one go about this in concrete terms, guided by the plethora of attempts in the past? How do you avoid it getting crushed by the united bourgeoisie of other countries?
Yugoslavia style market socialism. Corporations as workers coops. Hell, even central planning would be more socialist than “We’re literally just running a capitalist crony state”. But it seems that fascism is the only acceptable path to socialism according to many Very Interested Online Leftists.
anarcho-syndicalism with a flavour of market-socialism sounds good to me.
I don’t have
anall the answers, so I guess I shouldn’t criticize anything China does. Or the United States or anyone else!/s
Edit: typo
You don’t have the answers because you don’t actually care about “empowering the proletariat” beyond using the proletariat as a rhetorical device to beat up a strawman. Plenty of time to post how China’s doing it wrong, no time to do something constructive
Oh China. Always invading countries and toppling regimes: but its good.
Now, now… Don’t be upset that they’ve failed miserably in Korea and Vietnam to do those things.
My man, yk I could just say flip the liberal whataboutism and that being history and also point ye at the U.S occupying parts of Syria, and controlling South Korea’s military now as we speak
To be fair, regardless of your political views (pro-U.S or pro-China)
I guarantee, this is a more impactful change than the U.S or China’s politics, on their own, will ever get… at least something’s new IN THE WORLD
(I’m not even gonna convince y’all on whether China is good or not or America bad; I have my own views, you have yer own)
I hate this dichotomy of pro-us or pro-china.
It is possible (and highly encouraged) to use basic critical thinking and be critical of both when relevant.
You would probably classify me as pro-us, because I think tianman square was a horrible massacre and russian forces are commiting war crimes in ukraine. Doesnt mean I’m not critical of american imperialism. You can be critical to both. And in your whataboutism, I think a lot of ML, Hexbear accounts fail to be critical when appropriate of both.
The real question is if a person is truly critical of American imperialism or will still vote for politicians doing said imperialism.
It is possible (and highly encouraged) to use basic critical thinking and be critical of both when relevant.
You would probably classify me as pro-us, because I think tianman square was a horrible massacre and russian forces are commiting war crimes in ukraine. Doesnt mean I’m not critical of american imperialism. You can be critical to both. And in your whataboutism, I think a lot of ML, Hexbear accounts fail to be critical when appropriate of both.
Eh, fair enough.
as someone in the periphery, i see us imperialism first hand but none of that infamous chinese imperialism you guys like to rave about. they have been trading with us and investing some, thats it.
How much imperialism you’ll experience and from what source depends greatly on where you are located. The worst Chinese imperialism takes place within their own borders and those of nearby nations. This is almost always true of empires across history.
That said, they are cautiously expanding into global imperialism as US power gradually wanes. But the early forms are harder to recognize as such. US power is so entrenched that they don’t need to be as careful to disguise what they do.
Chinese imperialism takes place within their own borders
thats not what imperialism even is
Imperialism is the nature of expansionist empires. Once they’ve conquered other disparate regions, they continue to practice imperialism by repressing, exterminating or assimilating disparate peoples within those expanded borders. To suggest otherwise would be deny the past imperialism of the British Empire. Was repression and violence against India not imperialist when that country was part of the empire? This seems absurd, especially when you recognize that imperial borders often exist primarily on paper. These peripheral territories only become truly integrated after local diversity and autonomy is crushed. We’ve seen much similar activity in China over the last several decades.
If you drink the kool-aid of your local instance then you probably believe the completely fabricated and ahistorical definition of imperialism that Stalin invented to deflect criticism of his own imperialism. This will make it impossible for you to recognize non-western imperialism, which is by design.
wtf are you on about
So you have seen it, you just refuse to acknowledge it. Glad we cleared that up.
i havent. dont make things up.
Life expectancy in China was just 32 in the year 1850, and over the course of the next 170 years, it more than doubled to 76.6.
If you do the math then in 2190 they’ll be living until they are 153.2.
It was actually still around 32 for a hundred years after 1850, it had been sitting stagnant right up until the communists came to power.
