Quote:
If your first instinct as a westerner is to criticize and lecture 3rd world communist movements, instead of learning from their successes, then you have internalized the patronizing arrogance of the colonial system you claim to oppose.
Meanwhile the success in question: The 3rd world communist countries have managed to more or less industrialize and build up wealth, but under (state) capitalist system with all the bells of whistles which are markets, commodity production, wage labor, etc. In other words, they used capitalism to build up wealth.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually think they had some absolutely amazing policies for the workers like free housing and social benefits, and good on them for building themselves up. However, this has nothing to do with socialism (socialist mode of production in this case) or communism as it was achieved with, and is therefore a win for capitalism - the same system that drove colonialism and the system that had already built up wealth for ‘non-socialist’ feudal/agrarian countries in the 19-20th century.
EDIT: Damn, judging from the amount of upvotes, it genuinely feels like walking into a bar and everyone drawing a gun and pointing at you. This is probably the most antagonistic I’ve been towards ML (or MLM/Dengist/Maoist) ideology and it’s kinda disappointing how there’s no actual non-ML Marxists to be seen here.
What no theory does to you.
No seriously, you need to read on this, you clearly have at best a very simplistic understanding of the subject.
Private property and markets can’t just be abolished immediately after a revolution, it’s not magic. Young socialist systems have to go through a transitional phase during which private property and markets are still allowed under strict oversight of the state.
His does not make them capitalist as the proletariat still has control over this private sector via the socialist state, such as in China where all of the essential industry that is necessary for every other, known as the commanding heights, are fully state owned and the enterprises that are private are required by law to have a party member on their board as well as a “golden share” owned by the state that allow it unchallenged veto power over the board’s decisions among other means of authority over the private sector.
Private property and markets can’t just be abolished immediately after a revolution, it’s not magic. Young socialist systems have to go through a transitional phase during which private property and markets are still allowed under strict oversight of the state.
That makes sense
His does not make them capitalist as the proletariat still has control over this private sector via the socialist state, such as in China where all of the essential industry that is necessary for every other, known as the commanding heights, are fully state owned
Okay… but when will this “transitionary period” finish.
If a “transitionary period” takes more than a decade at what point do we say “they aren’t transitioning” and call it what it is, state owned capitalism.
If a “transitionary period” takes more than a decade at what point do we say “they aren’t transitioning” and call it what it is, state owned capitalism.
I mean, how could we know how much time is needed for the transition? It has never happened yet, we’re still experimenting.
Western liberals who think they are entirely objective and free of bias really struggle to get to grips with how much of their world view is just patronizing racist chauvinism.
Also I’m not even sure why liberals are permitted on lemmy. Send them and their disgusting violent ideology back to corporate media.
They don’t have any problems with US corporate media’s ideology. They’re just mad reddit took away their app treats.
Dang I didn’t know there were successful communist nations in developing countries.
What do you call Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, the former Burkina Fasso under Sankara, or the former USSR? Do you sincerely believe those countries had a better standard of living for all people, especially workers and peasants, under capitalism? Isn’t the great fall from grace of the USSR proof that the benefits their people had received were indeed the fruits of socialism and not the “rising tide” of global capitalist development (which was actually exacerbating poverty in the global South outside of the socialist countries)?
Maybe it’s just capitalist propaganda but from what I’ve heard, China is a mass surveillance state which doesn’t protect any of the citizens rights for privacy and has lacklustre working environments which is why everything is so cheap to be made there. Cuba is stuck with a poor economy, but I guess that’s all developing nations so i don’t know much other than that. For Vietnam my source is a friend who’s family mostly live in Vietnam, he says people in Vietnam dislike communism but can’t say it out loud. And I don’t know much about Laos or Burkina fasso.
To be clear I do consider myself a leftist and anti capitalist but I don’t believe there have been many properly successful socialist nations outside of Europe really.
China is a mass surveillance state which doesn’t protect any of the citizens rights for privacy and has lacklustre working environments
It is a mass surveillance state, but it’s definitely not any more mass surveillance than any developed country. Maybe one important difference is that in China the government has fewer restrictions for how they will spy on you, but in the US for example the NSA will do blatantly illegal things that aren’t even allowed under the Patriot Act and no one can do anything about it, so the extent to which surveillance is legal or not is irrelevant IMO. I would understand your criticism if China was actually a very repressive country where dissent wasn’t allowed and a huge portion of the population was jailed, but I think the quick response to the anti-lockdown protests and the fact they jail far fewer people than the US (while having 4x the population) means that it’s not a very reasonable criticism. Especially not when you consider the Western countries built up their stability while exploiting others, and China had to go through a hard process of occupation, civil war, and then many mistakes during the Cultural Revolution which still breed resentment at the state, even if things have gotten better.
As for the working environments, you’ll always see the worst of the worst in negative coverage of China (the suicide nets in Foxconn factories, for example, which to my knowledge have been debunked). Still, it is undeniable that China has had pretty bad working conditions. I think the key element to understand why working conditions are poor, yet more than 80% of Chinese people approve of their government, is that Chinese people understand that their government is committed to improving things and they consistently see those improvements. They also have a much more responsive political system that listens to their individual concerns very well, so whatever problems they have are more likely to be dealt with than if they had a situation in a western liberal democracy, where you write a letter to your representative and your representative has been paid off by 3 different lobby groups to ignore your concerns.
Cuba is stuck with a poor economy, but I guess that’s all developing nations so i don’t know much other than that.
That’s a huge understatement. Cuba faces a horrible, economy-stifling blockade from the US that essentially shuts them off from the entire global economy because they can’t access the global banking system or buy a huge number of basic goods. Despite that, they’re a global leader in medicine, have a far better education system than the US at all levels, have sent revolutionaries to assist in decolonizing countries in Africa, and were leaders of the NAM.
And I don’t know much about Laos or Burkina fasso.
Laos is honestly quite similar to Vietnam.
Burkina Fasso had a very successful few years of developing infrastructure and improving living conditions for the people under Sankara. It’s a very tragic story because he was assassinated and replaced by a regime that reversed much of the good he had accomplished. Nowadays, Ibrahim Traore is essentially just playing it back with many of the same ideas Sankara had, and he has been massively popular and successful for it (look no further than the fact his security team have had to stop many assassination attempts already, much like Castro).
To be clear I do consider myself a leftist and anti capitalist but I don’t believe there have been many properly successful socialist nations outside of Europe really.
What has been successful in Europe? Yugoslavia and the Warsaw Pact countries were great, but could only exist because of the pressure of the USSR on the capitalist bloc. All the social democracies are only social democracies, they have never put the workers in charge of their own destiny and are therefore not socialist at all.
Ok, first of all you clearly know a lot about this than I do and I would love to learn more, where do you find information related to socialism and socialist nations? Obviously I cannot expect to learn all of this from you.
What has been successful in Europe? First of all many European nations such as Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have a progressive multi party system which prioritize good urban planning and privacy laws (the latter I am not 100% sure about but believe to be true) And the European union as a whole regularly enforce regulations ensuring fare practices among big companies such as recently they enforced apple to require side loading and meta to remove the consent or pay advertising model. As well as when apple was required to use usb-c on there iphones. This is just my limited knowledge so feel free to prove me wrong and two examples may not be enough evidence.
Also I read your other arguments but I simply don’t have enough knowledge to have anything to say about them, but I very much go by the quote “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and therefore find it difficult to believe that any dictator can be better than a democracy.
Ok, first of all you clearly know a lot about this than I do and I would love to learn more, where do you find information related to socialism and socialist nations? Obviously I cannot expect to learn all of this from you.
I learned a lot of the history from Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds and Vijay Prashad’s Darker Nations. You don’t have to read the entire books, they have lots of lectures on YouTube. Here’s Parenti’s Yellow Lecture.
You can also could read China Has Billionaires, it’s a good essay that explains why China is the way it is and why socialists should understand it.
First of all many European nations such as Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have a progressive multi party system which prioritize good urban planning and privacy laws (the latter I am not 100% sure about but believe to be true) And the European union as a whole regularly enforce regulations ensuring fare practices among big companies such as recently they enforced apple to require side loading and meta to remove the consent or pay advertising model. As well as when apple was required to use usb-c on there iphones. This is just my limited knowledge so feel free to prove me wrong and two examples may not be enough evidence.
Those are good things, but they’re really just regulations. The urban planning is clearly miles ahead of NA, but it’s still comparable to Japan and we could probably all agree Japan is not a socialist country.
The main difference between those countries and a socialist country like Cuba or China is that in Europe, owners of industry, financiers, real estate moguls, and other capitalists have a lot of influence and political power as a function of the capital they own. They move the capital around to where it will make them more money. They will move capital across borders to colonies and neocolonies where labor and resources are cheap. The state responds to their needs.
Meanwhile, in socialist countries, the state takes the capital under its democratic control. In China, for example, the state is growing its control of private companies and steadily implementing more measures to reduce the power of their capitalists. Even when Deng liberalized their economy a great deal, they never stopped regulating the flow of capital, still having strict controls on investments.
“absolute power corrupts absolutely” and therefore find it difficult to believe that any dictator can be better than a democracy.
I think there’s 2 levels to this quote. First, how could power be held non-absolutely? Through a constitutional republic with a balance of powers where each branch of government keeps the others in check? What Marx shows us is that, make the political system how you will, if the state remains a bourgeois state the ruling class will keep using political power to protect the interests of capital. There is no way around that, all regulations will be stripped away as the rate of profit falls and the capitalists go hungry. They’ll descend into fascism if their profits are threatened enough. So ask yourself, doesn’t capital already hold absolute power?
Secondly, if I take it at face value that the way a state is organized makes a big difference and it matters how much control any given individual has (which I think is true, even though it kinda contradicts the previous point that all power is class power) that’s still not a reason to say European and North American democracies are less dictatorial than any socialist democracy. Check the link I put in my first comment to see how China’s system works. The USSR had a similar system with soviets making up the democratic structure, with democratic power over each workplace and each community, which would go up in levels up to the CCCP. People think that these countries aren’t democratic because they’re one party states, but the truth is that they just make their limitations on what ideologies are not allowed to take control explicit, instead of implicit like they are in the liberal democracies.
Yeah that’s so true there are only 2 politics forever and when one lose the other gain that is so true not
How can you possibly read what amounts to “consider the context of your beliefs” and decide to leave this sarcastic, nonsense comment?
My beliefs is that capitalism is an abhorrent apocalyptic cult. The text says I should consider so I considered. I realised I don’t care about fucking bickering about “the other side” because it’s childish. I want to only talk about benefits of policy that is fully opposing capitalism
So what does any of this have to do with the OP? You’re the one bickering and being childish here. You’ve not said anything of substance and simply left a sarcastic comment.
In the case of capitalism that is literally true. Capital will try to destroy any country, culture, ecosystem or set of beliefs that can’t be exploited, or that threaten it’s ability to exploit. It literally is a case of “you have to pick one, and only one can win.” Liveable planet, or capitalism. No other options, no way to avoid the choice. Not choosing is choosing.
If it wasn’t clear, I abhor this doomer mindset that benefits nobody except the class war leaders and weapons manufacturers. Not a single mention of improvement, only destructive hate and the naive intent that any of that leads to actual community in any participants. Hate binds a war like cult that has utterly forgotten about how humans can help each other and prosper from it. Choosing is choosing. Choosing a hateful side or the other hateful side and never thinking about your own ideas, needs of many, morals and ethics, or your own belief is utter disgrace and folly
That doomer mindset that benefits nobody except the oligarchs, the mindset of…pointing out that the oligarchs are oligarchs? Genuinely confused here. You seem to be interpreting physical observations are some kind of provocative personal statement. Slug and salt physically cannot coexist. Flame and gunpowder physically cannot coexist. Capitalism and a healthy, peaceful living world physically cannot coexist. Pointing this out is no more “hateful” than pointing out that 6 times 7 is 42.
Choosing a hateful side or the other hateful side and never thinking about your own ideas, needs of many, morals and ethics, or your own belief is utter disgrace and folly
The needs of the many is actually our whole thing here, and the thing about the needs of the many is that if you actually take it seriously, what usually happens is that the sideliners who have spent much less time examining the facts will call you hateful for pointing out that the hell empire built on mass-subjugation is unsurprisingly the primary obstacle to the world we want. And that a house with a rotten foundation stands no hope of reconstruction.
While bewildered, I really am trying to approach this openly, which is why ive gone back and softened a couple embarassing redditisms in the edit. So genuinely, and in a spirit of understanding: what is your critique of my assessment?
I have a cold and clear hate towards capitalism. It cuts surgically and makes a difference. Your screaming flailing buckshot is a good product for rage bait and political pundits to consume. Learn to not be an extreme capitalist creation that rolls around bouncing against it’s playground fence. The only game that wins is to not play and climb out. You afford no energy toward actual revolution or change or demand or function or policy or anything in this rant, and nobody that reads it is inspired to do it either. You benefit the status quo which is hyper capitalist. If your focus is destructive and nothing else, in an actual uprising you will not help and even hinder it’s progression. Nobody wants to dismantle only for dismantling, all persons need cause and just inspiration for the actual replacement that will stand in its place. 60% debating philosophy, 20% condemning 20% war cry. Take a small piece of policy and put it in there, and watch the change it makes. Then, swap out your statements incrementally until they are 100% policy. Replacement policy. This is a real path should you tire of trudging in this insane climate
Got it, content of critque=
Okay okay, for real. You seem to think that because I recognize the necessity of uprooting capitalism, I have nothing positive to replace it with? Cause brother lemme introduce a concept you may have heard of before;
I don’t think anything about you. I am critiquing what you are saying. It is a handful of childish statements and reveals a critical need for education
There are two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. There’s myriad bourgeois ideologies and myriad proletarian ideologies. When the proletarians come to power, the bourgeoisie oppose their ideology and their state. That’s true of third world communist projects.
Nope, there are as many people and they are different. The buregoise are a plague a systematic plague and you help them by having a class war that they become desperate to win. We can have beneficial policy and support each other while dismantling the oligarchy without being feral assholes ourselves
What are you talking about? The “peaceful” status quo is already a class war. Capitalism is devouring the planet by creating conditions that will inevitably displace hundreds of millions of people as ecosystems collapse over the next ~20 years. I don’t even want to imagine how many people are going to die of starvation, heat stroke, or gunned down at the borders by the fascist stormtroopers. That is a level of violence that no socialist state has ever unleashed on the world, not even in WW2. There is no “beneficial policy.” Capital only responds to profit, that’s why workers strike instead of appealing to the good nature of their employers. Don’t you think the same applies to the whole system? The capitalists, executives of energy companies for example, have known they were destroying the world for decades. In the early 2000s they were writing letters to the Bush admin asking the government to put stronger regulations on them, because capital is entirely incapable of stopping itself from the race to the bottom, to make the most profit possible out of the exploitation of labor and natural resources. You should seriously consider how possible it is to stop these processes without revolution.
Why should I consider that when I haven’t expressed that standpoint? What do you mean there exists no “beneficial policy”? There is a class war yes and I aim to win it. You seem to want to attack random people with facts you absorbed about how bad capitalism is. Rage bait consumer is just another hook in capitalism you eat greedily. You give nothing to improve or develop an actual communist uprising except hatred. Why should I be lashed you imagine as if I am a pig of the greediest cunts? You have zero interest in actually growing political movements and culture, and an intense fire at breaking society down. It is symptomatic of capitalism and you will most likely not be freed from it by dismantling anything but will carry this hate your life out and point it to new things until it kills you. Your hate is manufactured and consumed just like any capitalist product
It seems like you think I want some kind of idiotic peaceful revolution? Or why post that?
You never explained what you believe in. You just came here with a kneejerk reaction to the meme that criticizes the way westerners often do want an idiotic peaceful revolution, when we explained why we disagreed with your reaction you have just been on a tirade against “hate” which is deeply anti-materialist. If you agree with the revolutionary agenda then by all means, I’m sorry for dogpiling you, but you shouldn’t spend so much energy arguing against people who also agree with you on the broad strokes?
The buregoise are a plague a systematic plague and you help them by having a class war that they become desperate to win.
These were your words from the previous comment. Are you against class war or not?
And when I say there’s no beneficial policy I mean you won’t ever get lasting reforms by electing better politicians, you’ll just get temporary concessions that will be taken away the next time there’s a crisis. I think looking at the fall of European social democracy since the dissolution of the USSR should prove my point: European workers opted for just getting “beneficial policy” instead of revolution, and now the benefits are gone.
Against class war? What does that matter for our discussion? There is a class war going on right now.
If there is no benificial policy, you should not argue or fight any revolution. Why do you keep talking about cases where there is concession with hyper capitalist corpos as if that is what defines beneficial policy? What are you smoking?
I thought when you were talking about fighting for beneficial policy what you meant was running electoral races trying to elect progressive candidates. IMO the better way to describe a revolutionary state is that it’s a whole new system with a different structure, it’s not just a matter of “policy.” Talking purely in terms of policy is missing the forest for the trees.
i’m not sure there’s any metric by which the soviet union could be called a success but go off king
