So the suffering during the interim transition phase and potential collapse (I think it’s pretty absurd to believe a socialist revolution in the USA would somehow be successful or develop in a way that you precisely would want) is actually irrelevant to you.
No, it isn't at all irrelevant. It's acknowledged as a necessary consequence of the dying away of capitalism, which is a social, material process, and the transition on to socialism. It isn't avoidable. Capitalism cannot last forever, and is dying away as we speak, so the most necessary task is to effectively organize so as to steer the revolution in a positive direction, with as little instability and bloodshed as possible, and the lowest chance of collapse.
Just saying you think it's absurd to believe a socialist revolution would be successful in the US Empire doesn't actually serve as a substitute for a point on why you believe so. Since we have many historical examples of successful revolution, I see no reason to belive revolution to be impossible in the US Empire.
Yes, I know the basics of how your worldview works here.
You seem to understand that communists don't believe bourgeois democracy is truly democratic, but not the underlying reasons behind that analysis.
This logic makes zero sense as to his motives. Also, this stuff got as far as the OHCHR, and was reported on by many different press outlets.
It makes a great deal of sense for Rimu's motives, you have to contextualize everything, not abstract it. Further, regarding the hysterical claims of organ harvesting, here's an example of how the "evidence" was gathered:
Do you also believe Saddam had WMD? Or that Iraqi forces took babies from incubators and left them on the floor? Or that there's white genocide in South Africa? Or that Venezuela is a narco state? There are endless examples of the same atrocity propaganda schtick played by the west.
Okay?
And many PRC people say the opposite. What’s your point?
Taiwan is already a part of China, the mainland doesn't want to "dominate" them, and the CPC is fine with waiting until the people of Taiwan decide to fully reintegrate.
So there we have it. I’m already right-wing according to you no matter what I say here about any of these issues.
I mean, if you oppose socialism and support capitalism, then yes, by definition. Leftism means progressing on to the next mode of production, rightism preserves capitalism and imperialism. Do you support capitalism and oppose socialism?
I’m not remotely interested in being lectured from you about Communist. I know you regard what you do here on the fediverse as instructional and that you believe you have an obligation to ‘educate’ others. In that sense, it’s not unlike many forms of evangelism. But I’m just not even slightly interested in depating or being convinced into communism by you.
I'm not evangelizing, though, I'm an activist trying to organize the working classes. Trying to equate political activism with "evangelism" is just trying to substitute the reasoning for my views with religion, rather than grounded, scientific analysis and a desire for a better world. You have no evidence of religious foundations for my views, yet you attack them as such anyways. I understand you don't want to learn more about communism, but you don't even seem to be willing to debate your own logical fallacies and anti-scientific dogmatism.
No, you sit there and nod along when a leftist-type calls for the USA regime to be overthrown and act like its the best thing that could happen and would go absolutely swimmingly, but if someone says the same about China, say it’s awful and that would mean the death and suffering of millions.
It's extremely simple: my point isn't that changing systems is inherently bad, but that's your core premise. The reason I am confident that socialist revolution in the US Empire would be dramatically positive (not at all free of conflict or struggle, of course) while collapse of socialism in China would be devastating for most people is because I look at history, not just the abstract, metaphysical idea of change being bad.
For example, when looking at the transition between tsarism and socialism in Russia, we saw a chaotic period of revolution followed by tremendous progress in key life metrics like life expectancy, housing rates, literacy rates, women's rights, and more. It was not perfect, and it did involve violent revolution, but the new system was dramatically progressive and uplifted the people.
When we look at the dissolution of socialism in Russia, we see skyrocketing poverty rates, increased prostitution, drug abuse, disparity, homelessness, drops in education, life expectancy, and more. Many of these metrics are still behind the soviet union in the modern Russian Federation.
By looking at historical example, and comparing the general with the particular characteristics in the US Empire and the PRC, I can say which I support and why.
So that would still mean a lot of suffering in the interim, you know.
Of course, but this suffering pales in comparison to the tyranny of the present capitalist dictatorship and the constant genocide the US Empire exports. If there was an easy, simple, peaceful option to bring about socialism in the US Empire, I'd take it in a heartbeat. The problem is that there isn't, and I can say so because I study the processes of growth and development, of change, ie dialectical materialism.
I said we will “never agree” in your framing that every liberal democracy everywhere is a “dictatorship of capital”. You said it regarding the ROC, but you likely view it true of everywhere. That’s terminology rooted in your world view and not based on any kind of common ground.
It's based on the analysis of how capitalist systems are run. Bourgeois "democracy" cannot truly represent the will of the people, only the will of the ruling class, that class being the capitalists that control the large firms and key industries. This isn't something leftists believe out of dogma, but observed analysis of history and the process of growth and development of society over time.
I don’t regard what Rimu said as racism.
That's a self-tell, Rimu spread Heritage Foundation propaganda about "organ harvesting" by the PRC. There's absolutely no credible evidence for this, meaning Rimu believes it due to seeing Chinese people as subhuman. It's the same strategy colonizers used to dehumanize those living in colonies, believing lies about them and seeing them as "savages."
Moreover, I didn’t even do that. I said that the pure purpose of Piefed wasn’t rooted entirely in politics, nor that different interpretations of how the blocking function should work (as you recall that was the chief point of dispute) had anything to do with Rimu’s political positions.
My point was that Rimu's views impact the development of PieFed, and thus we need to contextualize PieFed's development with his views. There is no such thing as a process in the abstract, as a static and unrelated thing, instead everything exists in context with everything else. Your rejection of contextualization is anti-scientific.
Because it’s just an expat making cathartic, and ragebait comments? What should I do, exactly?
This is the point you made, not the point said ex-pat made. Said ex-pat has deliberately stated that they want socialism to fall and the capitalist ROC to dominate the mainland. To answer your question, you should stop running interference for these kinds of things.
You regard everyone who isn’t a communist as having right-wing beliefs, so it doesn’t really matter if someone explicitly calls for the Chinese regime to be overthrown or not - you’d still say the same thing if they don’t start from that point.
Anti-communism is right-wing. I don't consider all non-communists to be right-wing, though, for example anarchists are left-wing. Opposing socialism and wishing for the instatement of capitalism is right-wing, and I can't see how you'd argue otherwise.
And what am I doing, exactly?
Running cover for right-wingers that, from our interactions purely, have all had anti-China positions. It seems like you're trying to dance in rhetoric to defend and legitimize those that oppose the PRC and the socialist system it has against any meaningful criticism. I say "dance in rhetoric" because you seem entirely uninterested in talking about the flaws in your analysis, like your metaphysical framing of concepts and your rejection of history having an impact on modern conditions. You see history not as an unfolding process, but as a series of snapshots, and you refuse to engage with my critique of this error whenever I bring it up.
The first half of your comment isn't an argument based in logic, which you already refused to do so earlier by saying we are never going to agree on the ROC being a dictatorship of capital.
Trust me bro. Literally just blatant holding people to entirely different standards that you don’t hold others to.
You invented my position, again, and made a strawman. This is just plain lying, you lie to protect people calling for the dissolution of socialism and the reinstatement of capitalism, while you lie to pretend I would say socialist revolution in the US would be perfect and nobody would get hurt. I never made such a claim, just that collapse of socialism in China would go similarly to the collapse of socialism went in Russia, while socialist revolution in the US would go similarly to socialist revolutions elsewhere.
You abstract away "change in system" to ignore the key context of what those systems are and what is to replace them. This is a metaphysical error in analysis and is anti-scientific.
This is literally just cope and “just trust me bro”, but at least this is as close to an acknowledgement that I can see that you agree that in Taiwan now, the people don’t want to be part of the PRC.
We can get into the material processes driving the US Empire's decline and the PRC's rise, if you want, but that's a shift from your earlier position of "we will never agree so discussion is worthless." Further, I never said most people in Taiwan want to be further incorporated into the PRC, and you'll notice that nobody has been saying otherwise. I am "admitting" nothing, this is the stance I have always had, because my stances stem from analysis of material processes and contextualization, ie dialectical materialism.
I will reply all the same. I don’t answer to “When did you stop beating your wife?” type questions.
Why defend Rimu's racism, and try to pretend PieFed is devoid of political bias in its development? Why defend people calling for the dissolution of socialism in China? Call it whatever you like, these people have in common anti-China views based in right-wing beliefs, and you bat for them relentlessly.
Anyone can see what you're doing here.
I think in their head, they imagine a peaceful and quick and painless transition.
You keep inventing views for people you've never met, and didn't even bother to check his profile to notice that he uses he/him pronouns and was born in the PRC.
People also call for the collapse of the US government which in reality would bring in a possible violent and poor period just like the collapse of any other mega-state would.
The major difference here being that people call for revolutionary overthrow of the US Empire, which would save millions of lives globally and would dramatically uplift the living standards of the Statesian working classes. Advocating a return to capitalism and a collapse of socialism in China would have the opposite effect.
It’s a farce. A gentleman’s agreement that most of the world acknowledges. Taiwan is de facto independent, and only doesn’t aspire towards official international recognition because of not wanting to antagonise China. That’s it.
Incorrect. Taiwan is de facto not independent, and is in many ways incorporated into the PRC already beyond formal measures. Both de facto and de jure, Taiwan is neither fully independent nor fully incorporated.
“Maintaining the status quo” is also the far safer option in terms of not upsetting their neighbour. I don’t think the Taiwanese believe that it’s possible to somehow unify with the mainland on any grounds that they would find acceptable, and nor is it possible that they can somehow convert the Chinese mainland into a state that they would likely merge into, or convince them to join Taiwan. So it’s mostly done to keep the peace as the conditions of ‘status quo’ are considered reasonable enough. Most Taiwanese people identify as Taiwanese now, not Chinese. They’ve simply moved on. But China forces them to keep up this charade.
And in the coming decades, demographics will shift. The US Empire is dying away, and China is rising. The most likely outcome is that the US pulls out of Taiwan and Taiwanese people willingly join with the PRC in the long run, which is why the PRC has no intention to intervene unless provoked.
Loaded question. Ignored.
Important question dodged, discussion over.
Calling for the collapse of socialism in the PRC is absolutely appalling. When the USSR dissolved, there was an estimated 7 million excess deaths due to skyrocketing poverty. Wanting the restoration of capitalism and the destruction of socialist democracy in China is wanting the same to happen to an even greater number of people than were impacted by the dissolution of the USSR.
Taiwan is not independent. It is neither a fully incorporated territory of the PRC, nor an independent state. Independence implies something new, something the ROC itself does not recognize. The ROC considers itself to be the rightful ruler of the mainland, not an independent state, which is why maintaining the status quo is popular there, as people neither want independence nor to be fully incorporated.
Can you honestly answer why you run interference for right-wingers?
The ROC is a dictatorship of capital, similar to the US, Japan, ROK, etc. He is directly stating that he wants the ROC as the legitimate government of the entire mainland, rather than the socialist system set up and chosen by the mainland itself. You have no evidence of him wanting anything other than what I said, and are simply running interference for another right-winger, calling his expressed views "fantastical." Would you do the same if a Neo-Nazi called for exterminating all Jewish people in the United States, claiming it's "unrealistic" and simply "rage-baiting?"
He directly stated that the Republic of China is the legitimate ruler of all of China, mainland and Taiwan included. When someone directly tells you something, why on Earth are you suspecting them of lying? Further, no, I don't consider anyone who opposes China's, Iran's, or Cuba's government in any way to be far-right. You seem extraordinarily comfortable with inventing views for other people.
Desiring the overthrow of the left-wing government, and the restoration of the far-right nationalist government that was overthrown by the leftists, is a far-right viewpoint. Reject the presuppositions all you like, you're continuing to run interference for right-wingers. This is a pattern from you, you've done this before.
I agree that it won't happen, but you're running cover for someone expressing far-right views, for seemingly no reason. This isn't the first time you've done this, either.
Why not? It's common for people who emigrate from socialist countries to hold far-right views. You're giving him far more credit than he's asking for.
He was born in the PRC, not ROC. This is listed right on his profile. Believe it or not, people who emigrate from socialist countries often have extremely right-wing views.
Check his profile and posting history, he's serious.
Answering primarily because I don't want people to see your comment and fall for misinformation, I'm largely repeating what I've said to you elsewhere.
The word imperialism relates to empires. It predates Lenin’s work and its definition continues to be used in that way by most people outside of your tiny political faction.
This is just Eurocentrism. The majority of the world understands imperialism more in line with Lenin's analysis, and describing Marxism-Leninism as "tiny" when it is the ideology governing the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity is absurd. Imperialism does predate Lenin, Lenin built his work off of others that had begun to analyze the formation of the imperialist stage of capitalism.
If you want to refer to it as capitalist imperialism or something that’s fine but it’s absurd to claim that Lenin’s work invalidates the long-standing use of the term to describe the behavior of empires before capitalism before and through to the modern time. Especially when your new definition invalidates virtually all of its historical uses.
This is wrong. Lenin analyzed the imperialist stage of capitalism, he did not invalidate prior forms of imperialism. Lenin scientifically analyzed imperialism as it relates to late-stage capitalism using Marxist methodology. He did not claim Rome wasn't imperialist, just that it was a different mode of production with a different set of processes in place that makes it qualitatively distinct from the imperialist phase of capitalism.
I am using the word imperialism as the dictionary defines it, not your weird made up version which you unilaterally declare correct in contradiction to the vast majority of English speakers.
In other words, you're accepting purely what is seen as valid by the western bourgeoisie with respect to how they get their vast riches. This is a semantic game, when Marxists are arguing against real, observed phenomena that behave in specific, observable ways, not the mere word itself. If we only accepted bourgeois framing of everything, then we could make the same reductive statements about anarchism, critique of capitalism, etc that you're making of the imperialist stage of capitalism.
As I said elsewhere, I think it would be a good idea for you to read Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism for yourself. This isn't a "read theory" argument, I know you can't force people to read if they don't want to, but instead a suggestion for you to understand why Marxists analyze the behavior of late-stage capitalism this way. Even watching this summary video by Red Pen would do wonders, and it's only ~55 minutes long (as compared to the 3-5 hours of reading the original text itself).
Real "the south will rise again!" energy here. The KMT was kicked out of the mainland precisely because the people of China supported the CPC, which is why today over 90% of Chinese citizens support their government. The mainland would be devastated by the collapse of socialism, with over 1 billion people being thrown into poverty. The White Terror wasn't exactly "democratic," when the KMT took over Taiwan and slaughtered thousands that resisted the new dictatorship.
I got a lot of people attacking me right now so I didn’t read as carefully as I should have, so I didn’t know it was a concept created before Lenin came into power. That changes my understanding of the context in which he created it, specifically.
I understand that you're flustered, and you feel attacked. It's good that you're changing your understanding to reflect new information, rather than reflexively dismissing it. My advice, if you'll hear it, is to try to research things more before saying potentially inflammatory things about them, and this type of situation happens much less frequently.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that auth-left people use this confusing language that is in total contradiction to how the rest of the anglosphere uses the word exactly as it’s being used here–to deflect from actions that are very obviously of the same nature as historical imperialism.
There's 2 major factors here:
Yet because the PRC claims to be socialist, suddenly we ignore all of the power dynamics and all of the coercion and decide this is benign simply because it supposedly doesn’t match Lenin’s definition.
This isn't true, either. The PRC is socialist, not because it claims to be, but because public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state. The PRC isn't imperialist, not simply because it doesn't match what one guy said, but because said guy accurately analyzed an existing phenomenon and that phenomenon is not present in the PRC.
Why is it that countries participating in BRI rapidly develop and escape underdevelopment, while western IMF loans perpetuate underdevelopment? Why are the results so different? Marxism is not a dogma, we don't twist reality to meet theory. Dialectical materialism does not tell us the answers, but tells us where to look, and that reality must be testef.
I think it would be a good idea for you to read Imperialism, the Current Highest Stage of Capitalism for yourself. This isn't a "read theory" argument, I know you can't force people to read if they don't want to, but instead a suggestion for you to understand why Marxists analyze the behavior of late-stage capitalism this way. Even watching this summary video by Red Pen would do wonders, and it's only ~55 minutes long (as compared to the 3-5 hours of reading the original text itself).
You’re right, Lenin, not Stalin. The two are very ideologically similar so I hope you’ll forgive my misremembering. It doesn’t change the validity of my argument however. You can change Stalin for Lenin in my original comment and it remains true.
It changes your argument entirely. You claimed Stalin made it up to justify "soviet imperialism," ie that it was an unscientific definition created for the purpose of justifying actions after the fact. The truth, on the other hand, is that analysis of imperialism predated the USSR, and was used to help analyze tsarist Russia's place in the world and wage a successful revolution, because it was a scientific analysis of imperialism.
Any analysis that automatically rejects 90% of historical imperialism as suddenly not imperialism is unserious.
That's not what Lenin's analysis of imperialism does, though. You're doing the thing where you confidently make a statement easily debunked, which leads me to believe that you either have no concern for accuracy, or instead are deliberately making things up. Roman imperialism was different in form and function to what Marxists recognize as the imperialist stage of capitalism.
If you wish to call it capitalist imperialism that would be one thing but one obscure and frankly not all that serious theorist doesn’t just get to tell everyone else in the world they’re suddenly using a word wrong just because they decided to and because it’s convenient for their, yes, imperialist politics.
Again, no, Lenin developed the Marxist analysis of imperialism in the context of the coming inter-imperialist war (World War I), and the successful analysis of imperialism helped establish socialism. There was no USSR, so you couldn't even accuse Lenin of trying to justify "soviet imperialism," which doesn't exist anyways.
Are you being genuine, or have you made up your mind already and are making things up as you go to justify that? Honest question, because you're doubling and tripling down on this.
That’s just a nonsense definition invented by Stalin to apologize for his own imperialism.
Not only was the USSR not imperialist, but it was Lenin that formulated the Marxist analysis of imperialism, not Stalin, and Lenin further relied heavily on John A. Hobson's formulation of imperislism. Lenin took Hobson's base observations and re-analyzed using a Marxist frame. Stalin had no part in that, and it seems like you're trying to invent a reason to not take Marxist analysis of imperialism seriously. Lenin's work on imperialism predated the USSR, and actively informed how the bolsheviks struggled for socialism in tsarist Russia.
This is extremely easy to verify, so I'm not sure where you got this idea from. Either you genuinely didn't know, and thus didn't care enough to learn or verify, or you made it up knowing how easy it is to debunk. Neither points to reasonable argument.
The absurdity here is that by this definition classical empires like Rome didn’t even engage in imperialism.
The Roman Empire was pre-capitalist, and thus its mechanisms for extraction were entirely different from what Marxists analyze as modern-day imperialism. Call it whatever you wish, Marxists do not critique what we call imperialism because of its name, but because of its function as the primary contradiction driving global struggle and development today.
Although arguably the PRC has done that even by this muddled definition.
What you call "muddled" is in fact a far more scientific analysis than "big country bully small." Further, no, the PRC does not fall into the Marxist analysis of imperialism.
Dbzero has Defederated from Feddit.org following its Governance post about the later's "Zionist Bar Problem"
I'm talking about both before and after revolution, such as in this comment where I talk about democratic systems in post-revolutionary socialist states. This was 2 comments ago, either you forgot about it already or didn't read it, neither of which shows any real sense of care for truth on your part.
Secondly, as I explained in my last comment, "intellectuals" are not a class. They belong to broader classes. Vanguards are indeed supposed to teach the rest of the working classes how to correctly struggle. Are you going to tell me that teachers in schools are an "elite class" too? This is just anti-intellectualism. Not everyone is going to be dedicated to studying revolutionary theory and history, not everyone is going to be a labor organizer, but that doesn't mean we can't have people dedicated to doing so.
Classes are social relations to production. The vanguard party and non-vanguard working class both have the same ownership over the means of production, just like your manager at whatever job you have likely isn't an owner either.
Where are you getting all of these confused ideas about class, socialist democracy, and vanguards from? It certainly isn't from Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc, nor is it from historical documentation.
Dbzero has Defederated from Feddit.org following its Governance post about the later's "Zionist Bar Problem"
Both .ml instances are extremely broadly federated. Grad is defederated by more instances, but nevertheless remains federated on their end, meaning Grad accounts see pretty much everything except a few instances.
China already has democracy. In China, they have direct elections for local representatives, which elect further "rungs," laddering to the top. The top then has mass polling and opinion gathering. This combination of top-down and bottom-up democracy ensures effective results. For more on this, see Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance.
The dissolution of the US Empire would dramatically uplift the global south, whose surplus value is stolen by the US Empire daily. The millions who die regularly from sanctions would now survive.
Correct, so the solution is to learn from both successful and failed revolutions, not to not try at all.
Your flaws in analysis stem from metaphysical frames of analysis. It's plain, clear, and obviously holding your reasoning back.
A vile, hateful smear is sharing far-right propaganda about "organ harvesting" the way colonists spoke of colonized people. Believing outrageous lies about foreigners simply due to the fact that it justifies Rimu's opposition to communism doesn't change the fact that this is a chauvanistic view.
The difference being that the CPC is overwhelmingly supported, while the KMT violently took over Taiwan and slaughtered resistance for decades in a millitary dictatorship.
The majority of westerners are right-wingers, yes. Socialists are overwhelmingly revolutionary, though, this question was already answered definitively well over a century ago.
Word salad.
I am a political activist, that uses real, materialist analysis of social structures and history to guide how I organize in real life, like any decent communist. Your argument is effectively against any kind of analysis and education, it's pure anti-intellectualism. You speak of political science like Flat Earthers speak of Astronomy.
I understand that not everyone is interested in communism, I exist in the real world. I also know that, by numbers, this is rapidly changing, and more and more people turn to tried and true methods of analysis and organizing to answer the problems of today that communists already accurately analyzed over a century ago, and continue to develop and analyze.