Sloth

5y

Yes I do agree with most MLs itt. Also, as an alleged socialist, why would you want an anti establishment candidate to have the potential power to ruin the strongest communist nation?

Nort

5y

because I don’t think China is communist. I think they’re state-capitalist.

Sloth

5y

I'm not even going to try to argue this as many itt have already tried with you. Nothing can satisfy leftiods

Nort

5y

Okay, so you gave me a lot to address here

1. I don’t think an approval rating says much. obviously this isnt the most charitable example, but Hitler also had a high approval rating.

2. you don’t think China engages with imperialism? I’m lost on this point. I think there’s a mountain of evidence at this point that says otherwise.

3. I think setting boundaries for corporate intervence is great but they’re still a capitalist country. America would be similar in terms of economics if lobbying was banned.

Nort

5y

what’s communism to you? I’m curious. Because we seem to be working with two definitions here.

and are you not a leftist?

Nort

5y

I’m also echoing Noam Chomsky’s arguments. all 3 of us subscribe to the same ideology. i’m sure you agree with most of what the other ML’s here say?

And you’re misinterpreting what i’m saying. You can never have an anti-establishment candidate running in the CCP. Why give people the option to vote if your elected official isn’t allowed to derail from the CCP’s current agenda? how is that democracy?

deadacc

5y

1. yea just pointing out the dialectical interpretation there

2. i don't think relatively charitable infrastructure investment and 51% ownership constitutes as "economic imperialism" or whatever. imperialism is a very distinct aspect of capitalism that China lacks the material interests for.

3. america would still be nowhere close if lobbying was banned. our infrastructure is a complete failure, embarrassingly terrible in every aspect.

american luxury is entirely appropriated from the value of the labor and resources - forced by threat of violence - away from the global south. by no possible comparison can american international policy be equated to chinese international policy, current or historic.

"democracy" is purely an ideological figment of the american mind. in no aspect of our public lives, from government to education to work, do we have any semblance of democracy. this is evident in our own governments poll of US Congress support polling at 28 percent.

Even in the richest country in the history of the world - having amassed the pure total accumulation of the non indigenous' rape and pillage of the entire planet and its people of the past centuries - the conditions of the people are continually declining with unarguable fascist tendencies starting to bubble as a result of the collapse of capitalist contradictions. by every metric american society is failing to even attempt to meet the standards by which even countries impoverished by the US exceed. even if you consider china to be a social democracy, the cpc still exceeds its social economic policies by comparison to even other social democracies in the anglosphere

Sloth

5y

To make it as short as possible - A government that operates with social ends.

I am a ML

deadacc

5y

the people do vote for local candidates. it is just the vetting for higher positions of power within the party are determined based on their ideological dedications to socialism

sniper

5y

some of noname's beliefs are contradictory, but i respect that she is actually doing things to help people

Nort

5y

1. even if going by your definition of “charitable infrastructure investment”, would this not just be an example of capitalist growth similar to those in other capitalist countries? I’m curious what constitutes as “economic imperialism” to you.

2. I’m not gonna defend america. I think the democracy in the US is lackluster at best. I do however think people experience a lot more freedom here than in China.

deadacc

5y

"infrastructure investment" of entities within capitalist countries involve IMF loans mandating privatization and neoliberal policies also be instituted. this means stripping public infrastructure and giving it up to wealthy capitalist orgs to extract value from. IMF and World Bank loans expect countries to restructure their economy in a neoliberal fashion favoring raw material exports, finished goods imports, privatization, deregulation, austerity, and letting American-led multinational firms own and control resource deposits.

the goals here are: debt trapping poor countries, extracting their resources and labor, privatizing industry for foreign profit, and impoverishing the people while granting the bourgeois of these impoverished nations a cut of the pillaging.

Numerous Marxist economists and scholars including Michael Roberts, David Kotz, Junshang Liang, Zhonglin Li, Lijun Su, Guglielmo Carchedi, and Minqi Li have shown that China is not an imperialist country in a Marxist sense. China’s focus on mutually beneficial state-led projects for directly needed infrastructure, industrialization, schools, hospitals, manufacturing, and power generation are all critical developments required by the global south to break out of their state of underdevelopment and dependency inflicted upon them by the western imperial core. China’s international loans and trade deals do not impose neoliberal structural adjustment programs of privatization and austerity or other harsh conditionality measures that are utilized by western capitalist countries and western-dominated financial institutions like the IMF. The loans do need to be paid for but that is not what imperialism means.

deadacc

5y

"infrastructure investment" of entities within capitalist countries involve IMF loans mandating privatization and neoliberal policies also be instituted. this means stripping public infrastructure and giving it up to wealthy capitalist orgs to extract value from. IMF and World Bank loans expect countries to restructure their economy in a neoliberal fashion favoring raw material exports, finished goods imports, privatization, deregulation, austerity, and letting American-led multinational firms own and control resource deposits.

the goals here are: debt trapping poor countries, extracting their resources and labor, privatizing industry for foreign profit, and impoverishing the people while granting the bourgeois of these impoverished nations a cut of the pillaging.

Numerous Marxist economists and scholars including Michael Roberts, David Kotz, Junshang Liang, Zhonglin Li, Lijun Su, Guglielmo Carchedi, and Minqi Li have shown that China is not an imperialist country in a Marxist sense. China’s focus on mutually beneficial state-led projects for directly needed infrastructure, industrialization, schools, hospitals, manufacturing, and power generation are all critical developments required by the global south to break out of their state of underdevelopment and dependency inflicted upon them by the western imperial core. China’s international loans and trade deals do not impose neoliberal structural adjustment programs of privatization and austerity or other harsh conditionality measures that are utilized by western capitalist countries and western-dominated financial institutions like the IMF. The loans do need to be paid for but that is not what imperialism means.

Nort

5y

I need to read up on this more.

but, this is still expansionism. Does this not qualify as a “capitalist model of growth” to you?

Nort

5y

I need to read up on this more.

but, this is still expansionism. Does this not qualify as a “capitalist model of growth” to you?

sniper

5y

· edited

The answers you'll get ITT are excuses for neoliberalism under a red flag, and a flimsy understanding of Marx

most of the chinese economy is private sector, more than 60% of growth is attributed to it, the state does reign them in a bit more, but America does the same when it needs to (bailing out the banks during the financial crisis of 2008)

the means of production are privately owned by corporations and the state in tandem

deadacc

5y

is the soviet union committing to similar loans for China to have developed its productive forces also expansionism to you?

Nort

5y

Very glad you’re here rn because you understand my arguments and articulate them better

sniper

5y

· edited

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

Engels - Historical Materialism (1880)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

The last part has been historically disproven, with the exact opposite effect happening, the state has perpetuated itself every single time, the eternal chase of a carrot on a stick, you use the state for your means, you perpetuate the state in your ends.

sniper

5y

i mean china is doing classic expansionism, and there are videos of chinese foreman beating down their subordinate african workers, it's textbook debt trapping

also Marx later stated his stage theory as eurocentric, and he wanted to improve on it, but he passed away, and engels edited his manuscripts

deadacc

5y

yea that video was f***ed but that's literally taking the actions of one bourgeois chinese person as evidence of china being a neoliberal state.

there are definitely important things to be examined in the way chinese economic policy develops but i think the very semantic sectarian attacks on china for certain aspects of its policy do not still mean that they don't deserve critical support in totality.

sniper

5y

China is a neoliberal state, by definition, and the West claims it is following Marxism-Leninism, but I don't even believe it's that simple. They are two dogs of the same global capitalist hegemony.

Nort

5y

Okay, then I understand your perspective, I just don’t agree. I think that’s a misinterpretation of socialism.

and are ML’s not leftist’s? I’ve argued with ML’s with the past and accused them of not being on the left to piss em off.

Sloth

5y

Yes, MLs are "leftists."

All I can say in response to "misrepresentation of socialism" is read the books