It’s not easy to tl;dr. But one way, without explaining any Marxist theory, is that the working class’ material conditions have been improving throughout the last several decades despite the creation of a capitalist class. People are less pissed off when their lives are improving.

China has been using this constrained capitalism; which leverages foreign capital, technology and knowledge; to leapfrog from an illiterate, agrarian, feudal stage.

In terms of theory, it goes all the way back to Marx and Engels. Here is a bevy of quotes.

Just read it man…

Read it in multiple few minutes long sessions across a day or two if it’s too long. Shouldn’t take more than an hour in total.

You can believe that people have different needs and that we don’t all need to be absolutely 1:1 equal in terms of our material possessions etc.

Wonder how this relates to Marxism . . .

The kind of socialism under which everybody would get the same pay, an equal quantity of meat and an equal quantity of bread, would wear the same clothes and receive the same goods in the same quantities — such a socialism is unknown to Marxism.

All that Marxism says is that until classes have been finally abolished and until labor has been transformed from a means of subsistence into the prime want of man, into voluntary labor for society, people will be paid for their labor according to the work performed. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” Such is the Marxist formula of socialism, i.e., the formula of the first stage of communism, the first stage of communist society.

Only at the higher stage of communism, only in its higher phase, will each one, working according to his ability, be recompensed for his work according to his needs. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

It is quite clear that people’s needs vary and will continue to vary under socialism. Socialism has never denied that people differ in their tastes, and in the quantity and quality of their needs. Read how Marx criticized Stirner for his leaning towards equalitarianism; read Marx’s criticism of the Gotha Programme of 1875; read the subsequent works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and you will see how sharply they attack equalitarianism. Equalitarianism owes its origin to the individual peasant type of mentality, the psychology of share and share alike, the psychology of primitive peasant “communism.” Equalitarianism has nothing in common with Marxist socialism. Only people who are unacquainted with Marxism can have the primitive notion that the Russian Bolsheviks want to pool all wealth and then share it out equally. That is the notion of people who have nothing in common with Marxism. That is how such people as the primitive “communists” of the time of Cromwell and the French Revolution pictured communism to themselves. But Marxism and the Russian Bolsheviks have nothing in common with such equalitarian “communists.”

– some guy, I guess

I see where you’re coming from. Having read the article, it feels a little self congratulatory, especially since we can only guess as to the motives of the party members and the state in general. There are interesting perspectives in the article which do point to a general trend towards the “belittling of Capital” and improving the general quality of the workers (*who fall in line with the state [*separate topic]).

I’m trying to avoid words like Marxism/Socialism since I’m still learning and it’s hard to label without full knowledge. I am making a critical assumption that in a global marketplace, where there are monetary and non-monetary transaction costs and discrepancies over value, there will always be billionaires. A metric of “time to billionaire status” is probably better than “number of billionaires” to compare how Marxist/Capitalist the environment is. From the articles it seems that China would have a longer “time to billionaire” than a regular capitalist country. And there is a ceiling to that growth.

In a billionaire corporation, would you rather the workers be on a higher level of Mazlows hierarchy than one where the workers never get to see the fruits of their labor? Yes the exploitation of any worker is bad but at least from the articles perspective, the average Chinese worker has access to some level of housing and bullet trains and food etc. I presume that’s what you meant by the “inequality in the micro” but please correct me if I’m wrong. The inequality suffered by a Chinese worker vs an American or Indian worker (or any other country where Capital has power over policy) is different. I have absolutely no data to back that claim but at least in principle, the worker in a less Capitalist environment is a little less exploited.

For the “inequality of the macro”, the Chinese state is trying to be the only Power in town and making sure that Capital (and by proxy the billionaire corporations), does not control the government. When it tries e.g. Alibaba, examples are made. If billionaires are legit terrified of showing off wealth and are slaves to the party, that at least offers a ceiling to growth of the corporation, and by proxy a ceiling to the exploitation.

As I understood from the article was that the Chinese state has a slightly higher incentive to look after worker and make sure they’re relatively happy since they’re not “corrupted” by corporate interests/billionaires. They have shown some examples in the past to either infiltrate the corporation or keep the bourgeoisie in line. Of course I’m critical of the positive ratings and examples they are stating since it’s hard to separate the noise from false/true signals. Happy to hear critique!

(Stating my position just in case: I’m terrified of one party wielding that much power over people and opinions. I value freedom over security past the line drawn by my potentially uninformed perceptions of China. Happy to update my beliefs based on data)

You argue both that there was no massacre and that violent force against the protesters was justified if it did happen.

Seems like one is meant to excuse the other if disproven (Edie is also innocently mistaken in its reading)

He is plainly saying that the violence that happened was not a massacre.

But I shall play the smallest violin for those poor unarmed tanks killed by violent protesters and their terrifying grocery bags.

It’s wild that you do the tank man meme after you get linked footage showing that tank man a) did not get run over and b) was blocking tanks from leaving the square.

But davel wasn’t talking about that conflict when he was talking about state actors being slaughtered, he was talking about unarmed soldiers being burned to death by petrol bombs and then having their corpses strung up for display as the first shots fired in the conflict between the violent insurrectionists hiding among the protestors and the military.

violent force against the protesters was justified if it did happen.

I said nothing of the sort.

violent protesters and their terrifying grocery bags…

You didn’t look at the photos of the beaten soldiers or their charred, hanged bodies. You didn’t read about the self-proclaimed desire for extreme violence by some of the protest leaders, nor of the CIA’s involvement.

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