This thread is funny because it’s filled with a bunch of libs criticizing but bringing nothing of value to the table except vibes, and communists and comrades providing extensive source material to support their arguments, while avoiding low-hanging fruit like ad hominem.
If you’ve ever done any sort of research into democratic socialism, you’d quickly learn that this is the way. Criticism and self-criticism are at the forefront of cadre training and will make you a better person. If you view a person trying to provide you with educational material as your enemy while you spout off vibe-driven nonsense, you’re not getting the picture and are still hindered by your country’s propaganda, as well your own apathy and ignorance. You’re criticizing people that are passionate because they see a chance to have a better world for all working class—you included—while responding with empty words.
Unchain yourself from the criticisms of figures your country has implanted in you over your lifetime, and think in terms of ideas.
and communists and comrades providing extensive source material to support their arguments, while avoiding low-hanging fruit like ad hominem.
sorry I’m late
Really, I think anyone considering themselves a Leftist needs to read False Witnesses and Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing.” Both are excellent examples of why people don’t change their minds when seeing indisputable evidence, they willingly go along with narratives that they find more comfortable. It explains the outright anger liberals express when anticommunism is debunked. That doesn’t mean Communists don’t do the same thing, but as we live in a liberal dominated west (most likely, assuming demographics) this happens to a much lesser extent because liberalism is that which supplies these “licenses” to go along, while Communism requires hard work to begin to accept. This explains the mountains of sources Communists keep on hand, and the lack thereof from liberals who argue from happenstance and vibes.
In China, Xi is the CEO.
What does this even mean?
One is authoritarian in nature, the other is protestant in nature. These are not the same thing
What are you talking about?
Luigi’s alleged actions were an attempt at drawing attention to social issues. Xi Jinping’s actions on the other hand are attempts at violently suppressing opposition ergo authoritarianism.
Can you provide any support for your argument that the PRC executes billionaires because of opposition, and not, say, massive corruption? Because you again seem to be making up a narrative to suit your present biases without looking at any sources.
All those uyghur CEOs man.
Laughs in temu/shein
Are you dumb libs still claiming an Uyghur genocide despite being like 10 years, zero evidence, and multiple western sources calling out the atrocity propaganda? How does that look like, if Xinjiang’s economy is growing enormously, there’s tons of video evidence from travel bloggers of the bustling cultural and religious activities there? Plugging your eyes and ears to let the state department guide you doesn’t seem like a wise way to go about anything.
The people boosting claims of an Uyghur genocide are still denying and aiding the fucking Palestinian genocide ffs.
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Instead, you make up ideas like Xi bankrolling vloggers when we have very open record of the US approving 1.6 billion to bankroll anti-PRC propaganda. Do you have any sources to back up your claims, at all, or do you invent them for your arguments?
25 of the 2,975 deputies attending the second session of the 13th NPC were Uygur, making them have roughly the attendence as a proportion of their polulation overall. The Han ethnicity represented 2,538 seats, and was the second least represented by ratio of the population overall.
I guess if you can survive the camps and can be virtuously re-educated you deserve to be a sycophant.
So happy for them 🥳🙌 this means there wasn’t any crimes against humanity after all, must have all been a big western propaganda operation. 🤡
Western countries do not even pay the same level of lip service to their own minority populations, white people continue to dominate parliament and leadership roles in a manner that well overrepresents their makeup. Do you have sources for “crimes against humanity” that don’t originate with Adrian Zenz, a US State Department propagandist? The re-education program is complete already.
You would do well to see why this story is so long-lasting despite a clear and odd lack of evidence, from UN inspectors finding no evidence to the ability to openly travel to Xinjiang, by reading The Xinjiang Atrocity Propaganda Blitz. Your attitude that the Uygur deputies must be sycophants and instead trust US State Department Propagandists over the people you claim to be fighting for is wildly chavanistic and racist. It’s one thing to have a hypothesis and investigate it further, it’s another thing entirely to assume its correct and doing no further investigation.
While I agree the concept of work is bad and we should do everything possible to make sure no one ever works again, jobs programs aren’t crimes against humanity. Neither are housing investment programs or schools
A tale of two countries
Bro but they did it dictatorshiply 😭 in a real democracy you’d yell at them online, get arrested by Homeland Security, and politicians give them another 500 million in subsidies and tax breaks.
Any “leftist” that thinks the fact that China has billionaires means it therefore isn’t actually Socialist needs to read Marx and Engels. There are many such liberals here in these comments. Marx predicted Socialism to be the next mode of production because markets centralize and create intricate methods of planning. As such, he stated that folding private into the public would be gradual, and by the degree to which industry would develop. From the Manifesto:
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
In even simpler terms, from Engels in Principles of Communism:
Question 17 : Will it be possible to abolish private property at one stroke?
Answer : No, no more than the existing productive forces can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. Hence, the proletarian revolution, which in all probability is approaching, will be able gradually to transform existing society and abolish private property only when the necessary means of production have been created in sufficient quantity.
That doesn’t mean billionaires are good to have, necessarily, either. It remains a contradiction, but not an uncalculated one. I highly recommend anyone here read China has Billionaires. As much as Marxists want to lower wealth inequality eventually as much as possible (insofar as thr principle "from each according to ability, to each according to needs applies, Marx was no “equalitarian” and railed against them), in the stage of developmemt the PRC is at this would get in the way of development, and could cause Capital Flight and brain drain. Moreover, billionaires provide an easy scapegoat that the USSR didn’t have, and thus all problems of society were directed at the state. It’s important to consider why a Marxist country does what it does, and not immediately assume you know better. The CPC has an over 95% approval rate, you can’t just assume you know what’s best.
The phrase “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” is meant to depict higher stage Communism. Until that is possible, the answer becomes “to each according to his work,” because as Marx said in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
At least take a consistent stance, if you believe the PRC to not be Socialist simply because it has billionaires either you disagree with Marx or you have flawed analysis. There are genuine Marxist critiques of the PRC that don’t rely on nonsense. If you consider yourself a Marxist, correct your study. I have an introductory Marxist reading list if you need one.
Thank you for your service comrade. o7
No problem comrade 🫡
Extraordinarily based, comrade 🫡
Thanks, comrade 🫡
Some resources for a lot of the people below claiming that China is just like any other capitalist country.
Is China State Capitalist?
- The backbone of the economy is state ownership and socialist planning. 24 / 25 of the top revenue companies are state-owned and planned. 70% of the top 500 companies are State-owned. 1, 2 The largest bank, construction, electricity, and energy companies in the world, are CPC controlled entities, subject to the 5 year plans laid out by the central committee.
- Workplace democracy in action in the CPC.
- Is modern day china communist? Is it staying true to communist values?
- Didn’t China go Capitalist with Deng Xiaoping? Didn’t it liberalize its economy? Is China’s drastic decrease in poverty a result of the increase in free market capitalist policies?
- Is the CPC committed to communism?
- The Long Game and Its Contradictions. Audiobook
- The myth of Chinese state capitalism. Did Deng really betray Chinese socialism?
- Tsinghua University- Is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics real socialism, or is it state Capitalism?
- Isn’t China revisionist for having a capitalist sector of the economy, and working with capitalists? Why isn’t it fully planned like the USSR was?
- Castro on why both China and Vietnam are socialist countries.
- Roderic Day - China has billionaires.
- What is socialism with Chinese characteristics (SWCC)?
- How is SWCC not revisionist? How is it any different from Gorbachev’s market reforms?, 2
- Domenico Losurdo - is China state capitalist?, 2
- Did Lenin say anything about Market Socialism, or productivism?
- Vijay Prashad - Is China capitalist?
- Why do Chinese billionaires keep ending up in prison? Why are many billionaires and CEOs going missing? China sentences Ex-Chairman of a major bank, guilty of embezzling ~$100M USD, to death in 2019.
- China cracks down on billionaires - Ben Norton interviews Ian Goodrum
- Do capitalists control the communist party? No, pic
- How the State runs business in China.
- 50% of the economy is in the socialist public sector and directly follows the plan (40% if you ignore the agricultural sector). 20 to 30% is inside the state capitalist sector, which is the sector partially or totally owned by domestic capitalists but run by the CPC or by local workers councils. The rest is made up of the small bourgeois ownership like in the NEP.
- China pushing forward Marxist training in colleges, attracts 1M students.
- China tells the US that it has no plans to weaken the role of its State-Owned-Enterprises, one of the US’s main demands in the trade war. “Beijing plans to make the state economy stronger, bigger, and better.”
- Unlike the US, China refuses to bail out over-leveraged property developers, and lets them go bankrupt.
- A China misinformation Megathread.
smd admin
I actually agree that the PRC is still presocialist but at least I didn’t spit out your useless ‘lol fuk u’ reply.
You really pissed off the .world neolibs with this one. Good work.
your social credit score has increased!
Reposting my comment from below.
The “social credit system” was made to hold financial and privately-run institutions to account, and prevent companies and organizations from committing fraud and polluting the environment. Even US capitalist mouthpieces like foreign policy agree with this.
The government does assign universal social credit codes to companies and organizations, which they use as an ID number for registration, tax payments, and other activities, while all individuals have a national ID number. The existing social credit blacklists use these numbers, as do almost all activities in China. But these codes are not scores or rankings. Enterprises and professionals in various sectors may be graded or ranked, sometimes by industry associations, for specific regulatory purposes like restaurant sanitation. However, the social credit system does not itself produce scores, grades, or assessments of “good” or “bad” social credit. Instead, individuals or companies are blacklisted for specific, relatively serious offenses like fraud and excessive pollution that would generally be offenses anywhere. To be sure, China does regulate speech, association, and other civil rights in ways that many disagree with, and the use of the social credit system to further curtail such rights deserves monitoring.
These are basic things the US used to do in the 1950s, but now stopped any pretense of doing. Any regulation against business is considered “authoritarian” now.
Meanwhile in the US, having a bad credit score can prevent you from buying a car, house, or even renting an apartment.
China uses these scores to hold financial institutions to account, while the US uses scores to prevent ordinary citizens from getting housing. One country is a dictatorship of the proletariat, the other a dictatorship of capital.
The “Big Brother” style credit system in China doesn’t actually exist.
ok, sure 👍
Glad you could come around!
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what’s inaccurate about this meme?
Death to America
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The original was funny to me because people thought the second guy was fine when the reality would be if a woman is calling human resources there’s probably something there. It’s a joke told from the perspective of someone who’s unable to see anything wrong and is only representing their side of the story. So I thought this was a riff on that idea, and viewed in that light this version is funny too.
Oppressing the owners of capital is good, actually. If you don’t do it you end up like the US where everyone has to pay them for everything all the time and the police is only there to prevent you from doing anything about it.
Chinese people don’t have to go out and get jailed for doming a mass murdering CEO out of desperation, the government gladly prosecutes and makes an example of them.
China ranks second in the world in number of millionaires as well as number of billionaires.
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Quantity of bourgeoisie is not an indication of who runs the country or which is primary, public or private property
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China has the second biggest population in the world, period.
The PRC saw what happened when you cracked down too hard on wealth inequality too early in the USSR, there was significant brain drain and people took what they could elsewhere. This eventually led to decreased growth and contributed to collapse. The PRC instead allows billionaires (so long as they don’t commit crimes), and as a consequnce they now have the largest economy by PPP and second largest by GDP. It’s a “boiling the frog” approach.
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Per capita or total?
China ranks second in the world in human population, too.
They also have more millionaires per capita than Countries like Russia, but I focused on total number because a country that actually oppressed capital owners wouldn’t have any billionaires.
China’s top 1% income share is lower than US and Russia. Top 10% income share is also lower in China.
Except Xi Jinping is not oppressing owners of capital. China has lots of oligarchs that in some ways have a tighter grip on society than their western counterparts. He’s oppressing people that are “inconvenient” to him.
He’s oppressing people that are “inconvenient” to him.
All vibes, no thoughts.
These are all vibes, can you explain exactly how and why you believe Xi is simply “oppressing those invonvenient” to him?
Did you get that info from the same dudes insisting that killing Brian Thompson was, like, not okay guys? Businessmen in China are scared shitless of the party, and so should they, the party has 87 million members and a 90+ approval rating.
There’s no CEO in china wielding one tenth of the influence that weird nazi Elon Musk has, or Bill Gates’ vaccine privatizing ass.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires
You will note that china has 406 billionaires.
So way fewer billionaires per capita with a way smaller fortune than the ones in the US, despite having a bigger economy? Oh no, this is a disaster.
Oh ok, i guess its ok for billionaires to exist as long as they simp for your dictator of choice.
Getting a liberal to read is borderline impossible. They can’t even stomach short articles anymore.
Elon Musk openly daydreams about being Ma Huateng. What does that tell you?
He dreams of copying their products not being him lmao.
Elon Musk is an idiot.
By this logic, a monarchy that keeps the aristocracy in line is better than the US democracy. A benevolent dictator is still a dictator.
In what manner is Xi a dictator? The fact that he has been reelected democratically and hasn’t lost to someone else?
I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but you’re missing the point
I don’t believe you have a point. Your point rests on the PRC being a dictatorship, which it isn’t.
The Communist Party is based in the Leninist principle of “democratic centralism”. This means “debate within the party, unity in action”. It is meant to make the party more powerful by allowing dissent and debates within the party, but when it comes to taking action, all members are expected to follow the consensus even if they disagreed with it.
Since China’s Congress is primarily members of the Communist Party, this means that the decision of the president ultimately originates in the Communist Party itself. After they reach a consensus, the whole party will vote for that consensus in the Congress. While there technically are smaller parties in China’s Congress, they act more as advisors, since it is not practically possible for them to overturn the vote, since the CPC always votes in unity.
Formally, China’s president is elected by the Congress. But the decision of who to elect largely comes back to the CPC itself before they come to a consensus. So the final decision largely originates in the Politburo and the Central Committee.
The president in China is harder to shift on a dime than like in the US. The president is not elected by a nation-wide vote but by the Congress itself. To change who the Congress elects, you have to change the opinions of the largest party in that Congress, you have to change the opinions of the CPC
Xi is not technically a dictator in the same way that Putin is not technically a dictator. He is in control of a governing body that could replace him on paper, but never will. And he has dictatorial powers without real checks/balances. And, to return to my original point, it may appear that this system is fine if it produces a good result, but the power of the government should come from the will of the people.
You spent several paragraphs correctly outlining why Xi has power, while being subject to recall and democratic checks. The CPC has 96 million members, he isn’t leader of a cabal but of the party of the people, and as a consequence the CPC has over 95% approval rates in peacetime. This is unheard of outside of wartime in the west, you need to understand what you are talking about here.
I recommend Xi’s writing on democracy from 2021, Democracy is not an Ornament.
Baby level understanding of how China’s peoples democracy works, with not a single source.
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The problem with a benevolent dictator is that they die eventually, and are replaced by a non-benevolent dictator, or a civil war, or both. Unfortunately it looks like the US democracy might have the same outcome.
Yeah, but they get jailed for literally anything else lol
Brother the US has ONE FIFTH of the world’s inmates (in dire conditions that provide slave labor) despite having less than 5% of the world population.
If y’all didn’t thoughtlessly and immediately internalize whatever outlandish shit your media tells you about the yellow peril you’d be envious of their living standards and, honestly? Their political freedom too.
That’s the point.
Source?
What do you mean?
Playing connect-the-dots by just scribbling whatever we want on top of the dots
Working class executing CEOs that work against them
Ruling class executing CEOs who don’t work for them
Slight difference
That’s an anti-Marxist view of class. What is the “ruling class” you speak of in the PRC? Government isn’t class, but an extension of the class in power, so which class is in power?
the ruling class in china is the working class since its a dictatorship of the proletariat. So commentor is kinda right, tho im sure commentor doesn’t mean it that way.
Yep, that’s why I framed my question in that manner. If they said bourgeoisie, I would point out how that’s wrong, if they said Proletarian, I would ask why that’s bad, if they said some third class I’d show how that’s anti-Marxist.
Oh no, you depicted me as a nerd! My point is ruined 😭
My point is you had no point. You responded to a FANTASTIC explanation of the difference by splitting hairs on what by your definition qualifies as a class.
Instead of addressing the argument, you just threw a semantics argument, which I maintain is the terminally online version of pocket sand.
I addressed it entirely. The Proletariat executing Billionaires who go against the proletariat is perfectly in line with Marx and his concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The CPC has 96 million members, it isn’t a distinct class, it represents the will of the people and as such has a higher than 95% approval rate. Their implication is that the CPC is some third ruling class, and not the instrument of proletarian supremacy, which is why I corrected it.
Your response doesn’t address any of how I analyzed their argument, by insisting I am “splitting hairs” by pointing out how the class dynamics of a bourgeois state and a proletarian state are fundamentally different, and that difference is that the proletarian state represents the real will of the people while the bourgeois state does not.
This is where I think the conversations always break down on ml.
You fervently assert things like a 95% approval rating while selectively ignoring the “social credit” system that punishes people who don’t approve. You use large party employment to justify some kind of perfect overlap between the proletariat and the government. Where do you think the real decision making is done? Do you think it isn’t a tiny fraction of party elite? How would you view these things through the lens of manufactured consent?
I don’t think it’s any better in a western capitalist system, but I’m not going to deceive myself into thinking that china is running fundamentally differently than any western oligarchy.
The “social credit system” was made to hold financial and privately-run institutions to account, and prevent companies and organizations from committing fraud and polluting the environment. Even US capitalist mouthpieces like foreign policy agree with this.
The government does assign universal social credit codes to companies and organizations, which they use as an ID number for registration, tax payments, and other activities, while all individuals have a national ID number. The existing social credit blacklists use these numbers, as do almost all activities in China. But these codes are not scores or rankings. Enterprises and professionals in various sectors may be graded or ranked, sometimes by industry associations, for specific regulatory purposes like restaurant sanitation. However, the social credit system does not itself produce scores, grades, or assessments of “good” or “bad” social credit. Instead, individuals or companies are blacklisted for specific, relatively serious offenses like fraud and excessive pollution that would generally be offenses anywhere. To be sure, China does regulate speech, association, and other civil rights in ways that many disagree with, and the use of the social credit system to further curtail such rights deserves monitoring.
These are basic things the US used to do in the 1950s, but now stopped any pretense of doing. Any regulation against business is considered “authoritarian” now.
Meanwhile in the US, having a bad credit score can prevent you from buying a car, house, or even renting an apartment.
China uses these scores to hold financial institutions to account, while the US uses scores to prevent ordinary citizens from getting housing. One country is a dictatorship of the proletariat, the other a dictatorship of capital.
It’s more that liberals like yourself directly ignoring facts and statistics while blindly repeating vague and unsourced claims of “China Bad,” because it lets you remain comfortable in your pre-existing worldview. Communists do not have such luxury, which is why they seemingly always have endless sources on hand. In your comment here, as an example, you discredit the CPC’s approval with no source. However, if we ask Harvard themselves about the results of their study, they say “We find that first, since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction. Second, the attitudes of Chinese citizens appear to respond (both positively and negatively) to real changes in their material well-being, which suggests that support could be undermined by the twin challenges of declining economic growth and a deteriorating natural environment.” This directly goes against your claims of “social credit” preventing this, moreover the “Orwellian Social Credit System” you hint at doesn’t even exist, at least not in the manner you imply it does.
You are directly decieving yourself because you license yourself to. If you actually looked at real sources and didn’t reject them reflexively, instead of accepting bourgeois media at face value, you’d sit much closer to where I do. You should read False Witnesses and Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing.” Both are excellent examples of why people don’t change their minds when seeing indisputable evidence, they willingly go along with narratives that they find more comfortable. It explains the outright anger liberals express when anticommunism is debunked. That doesn’t mean Communists don’t do the same thing, but as we live in a liberal dominated west (most likely, assuming demographics) this happens to a much lesser extent because liberalism is that which supplies these “licenses” to go along, while Communism requires hard work to begin to accept. This explains the mountains of sources Communists keep on hand, and the lack thereof from liberals who argue from happenstance and vibes.
There is never a case of a working class party conquering political power, that hasn’t been demonized by western anti-communist society.
When the US and its media tells you that the leaders China or Cuba or Vietnam are just “dictators”, why do you believe them?
Absolutely. Power is the difference. Vertical power structures all look the same. Call it communism, but those at the bottom are still ruled by those at the top. Instead give me some of that horizontal, bottom up power. No gods, no masters.
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Oh, so like Boeing whistleblowers?
I heard they all accidentally fell out of windows.
Three times
It is indeed possible for a person/entity to do a good thing and a bad thing. Who would’ve guessed, it’s actually incredibly likely. I’m sure Luigi was no angel and can be criticized about many things, though he likely didn’t have the power to perform systematic human rights transgressions.
Wow, so insightful!
I bet he’s a shit surfer and just hangs out on his board looking cool, but bails when a big wave comes in.
Pretty damning if true. Paints him in a whole new light. Feeling betrayed.
