Eh, there’s a notional aspiration to socialism at least, which is more than can be said about the US sphere of countries.
In practice though? Yeah, China is hyper-captialist, without much of the social security present in wealthier countries.
Why Leftist get a hard-on for the former USSR, Russia and China, or frankly any country, is beyond me.
There are positive and negative outcomes in line or against socialist ideals everywhere (I think people are too black and white about China in both directions personally)
I just do not understand simping for any country, just because they are “socialist”.
That notional aspiration to socialism is basically the ideological smokescreen. It was much more effective in the Cold War era, but it condenses down to: “Suffer through our version of (state) capitalism and exploitative labour for our capital accumulation” - be it by state institutions or even state-sponsored billionaires - “and at the end of it, we promise, there will be communism.”
But that “communism” then tends to be like nuclear fusion - always 20 years away.
There is always someone willing to twist the rules and game the system to get more money and power than everyone else. The 1% have always existed and so have the worker class. It will always shake out to that.
IMO this is why it takes an additional axis to define a government, not just left/right but also free/authoritarian. You can find examples of all combinations. Left wing and repressive? Cuba. Left leaning and free? Sweden. Right wing and repressive? Russia, Saudi Arabia, whatever. Right leaning and free (mostly)? USA.
Obviously, there’s a gradient within these axes, but it’s strange to see people cheering on a country that matches their preferred left or right wing ideology if they’re super repressive.
I think Saudi Arabia is the perfect example of why even that model isn’t even enough. I mean sure they are a monarchy and quite self-focused but not really in a nationalistic way. To be fair I don’t know much about their domestic politics. To put them into the same corner as Russia, eh dunno.
Authoritarianism doesn’t necessarily require nationalism or vice versa, though they’re often linked, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. The USA is pretty flag waving, nationalist brained but individual freedom exists. Versus a country like Saudi as you mention is not particularly nationalist, but repression is widespread.
They are quite different than Russia, but looking only at individual freedom, the two are similar in that freedom of speech is not respected and leaders are not fairly elected.
I couldn’t ask for clearer evidence than not accepting Saudi Arabia as authoritarian to demonstrate that “free vs authoritarian” are just propaganda terms and that how “free” a country allegedly is is really just a function of how aligned it is with the US.
In what universe is Saudi Arabia more free than Cuba?
I think some aspects of freedom are to some extent objectively observable, eg, is freedom of speech or religion observed? These can exist independently of US alignment - there are many countries in the global south that can qualify as free or partially free.
Even the axis spectrum is unproductive, ideologies and frameworks cannot be distilled into single data points on a map, no matter how many axes you add.
The axis spectrum has proven to be very efficient imo. A lot of the politics we talk about are mainly composed of social and economic elements which the axis spectrum portrays well.
These views aren’t complicated though, or aren’t as complicated as you think. Most of our political opinions can be boiled down to any of the 4 quadrants of the axis.
Can you name any view that doesn’t fit into this axis?
Many. Which is more “authoritarian” and which is more “libertarian,” a fully publicly owned and democratically controlled economy, or a highly decentralized market economy with a nightwatchman state?
China has a Socialist Market Economy, it hasn’t reached Communism of course but at the same time the Public Sector covers over half of the economy, and is gradually folding the Private Sector into it with the degree to which it develops. This is the process Marx and Engels described a Socialist State would take. From 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.
The backbone of the PRC is central planning and public ownership, Marx is regularly taught in class, and Marxism-Leninism continues to be the dominant and guiding ideology. They are ideologically Communist, and it is rather silly to protest otherwise simply because they haven’t immediately siezed all property, which would be anti-Marxist as the PRC is still underdeveloped.
The purpose of Marxian analysis of Capitalism is the insight that markets naturally centralize and develop complicated methods of planning. You can’t just will these into existence, and markets provide a quick way of creating them. Once they have sufficiently developed, markets cease to be the best tool to use, and public ownership and central planning becomes more efficient. Given that the PRC is Marxist, it stands to reason it is useful to analyze them with a Marxist lense. I have yet to see a genuine Marxist take on why the PRC is not Socialist, only liberals paying lip service to Marx yet vulgurizing him into a Utopian Idealist, and not a Materialist.
That’s moving the goalposts though, isn’t it? I was responding to the claim that the PRC isn’t at all Communist, which is false regardless of your opinion of it being “good” or “bad” whether overall or in comparison to the US.
Further, I am not sure why you describe it to be a dictatorship, even Mao was forced to step down after the tremendous struggles during the Cultural Revolution. Xi is an elected official, and there are 8 political parties besides the CPC that actively contribute to the decision making progress of the PRC, the CPC is merely the largest at 96 million members out of 1.4 billion people.
In order to accurately judge the merit or lack thereof of the PRC, you have to actually take a real look at what it looks like, question why Beijing has an over 95% approval rate, and see what the living conditions look like for the people that actually live there. If you perpetuate sloganeering because it is convenient, then actual, systemic problems you could be criticizing go under the radar.
Xi is an elected official, and there are 8 political parties besides the CPC that actively contribute to the decision making progress of the PRC,
Right right right, just like Russia and North Korea has “elections” lmao
Beijing has an over 95% approval rate
Lol, and I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that speaking against Xi and the CCP makes you disappear or that China has been known to lie about official statistics all the time
You didn’t just drink the Kool-aid, you’re drunk on it
A core tenant of socialism is a democratized workplace, being able to vote for your wage and company policy, like an Engineer choosing when to launch the rocket instead of some MBS degree.
Last time I checked I dont think factory workers in China that make all our shit can do that.
Workplace democracy isn’t necessarily a core concept of Socialism, at least not in the Marxian sense. Removing the issues that come with the profit motive alleviates issues you describe. Instead, Marxists advocate for public ownership and central planning with extensive democratic controls, without necessitating competing democratic worker coops. Engels argued against such a concept in Anti-Dühring, actually, believing such a system to revert to Capitalism through competition and accumulation.
Which is also why socialism will never work. Humans are piss poor at evaluating the common good and making decisions collectively (see also: the last US election.)
Remember folks: China is communist in the same way that North Korea is democratic and the Nazis were socialist.
It’s just a smokescreen.
Eh, there’s a notional aspiration to socialism at least, which is more than can be said about the US sphere of countries.
In practice though? Yeah, China is hyper-captialist, without much of the social security present in wealthier countries.
Why Leftist get a hard-on for the former USSR, Russia and China, or frankly any country, is beyond me.
There are positive and negative outcomes in line or against socialist ideals everywhere (I think people are too black and white about China in both directions personally)
I just do not understand simping for any country, just because they are “socialist”.
That notional aspiration to socialism is basically the ideological smokescreen. It was much more effective in the Cold War era, but it condenses down to: “Suffer through our version of (state) capitalism and exploitative labour for our capital accumulation” - be it by state institutions or even state-sponsored billionaires - “and at the end of it, we promise, there will be communism.”
But that “communism” then tends to be like nuclear fusion - always 20 years away.
My money is on fusion before proper socialism.
There is always someone willing to twist the rules and game the system to get more money and power than everyone else. The 1% have always existed and so have the worker class. It will always shake out to that.
IMO this is why it takes an additional axis to define a government, not just left/right but also free/authoritarian. You can find examples of all combinations. Left wing and repressive? Cuba. Left leaning and free? Sweden. Right wing and repressive? Russia, Saudi Arabia, whatever. Right leaning and free (mostly)? USA.
Obviously, there’s a gradient within these axes, but it’s strange to see people cheering on a country that matches their preferred left or right wing ideology if they’re super repressive.
I think Saudi Arabia is the perfect example of why even that model isn’t even enough. I mean sure they are a monarchy and quite self-focused but not really in a nationalistic way. To be fair I don’t know much about their domestic politics. To put them into the same corner as Russia, eh dunno.
Authoritarianism doesn’t necessarily require nationalism or vice versa, though they’re often linked, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. The USA is pretty flag waving, nationalist brained but individual freedom exists. Versus a country like Saudi as you mention is not particularly nationalist, but repression is widespread.
They are quite different than Russia, but looking only at individual freedom, the two are similar in that freedom of speech is not respected and leaders are not fairly elected.
I couldn’t ask for clearer evidence than not accepting Saudi Arabia as authoritarian to demonstrate that “free vs authoritarian” are just propaganda terms and that how “free” a country allegedly is is really just a function of how aligned it is with the US.
In what universe is Saudi Arabia more free than Cuba?
I think some aspects of freedom are to some extent objectively observable, eg, is freedom of speech or religion observed? These can exist independently of US alignment - there are many countries in the global south that can qualify as free or partially free.
This is why we need to reeducate people and stop using the traditional left-right spectrum and start using the axis spectrum
Even the axis spectrum is unproductive, ideologies and frameworks cannot be distilled into single data points on a map, no matter how many axes you add.
The axis spectrum has proven to be very efficient imo. A lot of the politics we talk about are mainly composed of social and economic elements which the axis spectrum portrays well.
You cannot distill complicated views into linear axes, though.
These views aren’t complicated though, or aren’t as complicated as you think. Most of our political opinions can be boiled down to any of the 4 quadrants of the axis.
Can you name any view that doesn’t fit into this axis?
Many. Which is more “authoritarian” and which is more “libertarian,” a fully publicly owned and democratically controlled economy, or a highly decentralized market economy with a nightwatchman state?
China has a Socialist Market Economy, it hasn’t reached Communism of course but at the same time the Public Sector covers over half of the economy, and is gradually folding the Private Sector into it with the degree to which it develops. This is the process Marx and Engels described a Socialist State would take. From Principles of Communism:
The backbone of the PRC is central planning and public ownership, Marx is regularly taught in class, and Marxism-Leninism continues to be the dominant and guiding ideology. They are ideologically Communist, and it is rather silly to protest otherwise simply because they haven’t immediately siezed all property, which would be anti-Marxist as the PRC is still underdeveloped.
The purpose of Marxian analysis of Capitalism is the insight that markets naturally centralize and develop complicated methods of planning. You can’t just will these into existence, and markets provide a quick way of creating them. Once they have sufficiently developed, markets cease to be the best tool to use, and public ownership and central planning becomes more efficient. Given that the PRC is Marxist, it stands to reason it is useful to analyze them with a Marxist lense. I have yet to see a genuine Marxist take on why the PRC is not Socialist, only liberals paying lip service to Marx yet vulgurizing him into a Utopian Idealist, and not a Materialist.
You can call their economy whatever you want, doesn’t stop them from being a dictatorship.
That’s moving the goalposts though, isn’t it? I was responding to the claim that the PRC isn’t at all Communist, which is false regardless of your opinion of it being “good” or “bad” whether overall or in comparison to the US.
Further, I am not sure why you describe it to be a dictatorship, even Mao was forced to step down after the tremendous struggles during the Cultural Revolution. Xi is an elected official, and there are 8 political parties besides the CPC that actively contribute to the decision making progress of the PRC, the CPC is merely the largest at 96 million members out of 1.4 billion people.
In order to accurately judge the merit or lack thereof of the PRC, you have to actually take a real look at what it looks like, question why Beijing has an over 95% approval rate, and see what the living conditions look like for the people that actually live there. If you perpetuate sloganeering because it is convenient, then actual, systemic problems you could be criticizing go under the radar.
Right right right, just like Russia and North Korea has “elections” lmao
Lol, and I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that speaking against Xi and the CCP makes you disappear or that China has been known to lie about official statistics all the time
You didn’t just drink the Kool-aid, you’re drunk on it
A core tenant of socialism is a democratized workplace, being able to vote for your wage and company policy, like an Engineer choosing when to launch the rocket instead of some MBS degree.
Last time I checked I dont think factory workers in China that make all our shit can do that.
Workplace democracy isn’t necessarily a core concept of Socialism, at least not in the Marxian sense. Removing the issues that come with the profit motive alleviates issues you describe. Instead, Marxists advocate for public ownership and central planning with extensive democratic controls, without necessitating competing democratic worker coops. Engels argued against such a concept in Anti-Dühring, actually, believing such a system to revert to Capitalism through competition and accumulation.
ThAt’s jUst WeSTeRnn prOpaGAndA
Which is also why socialism will never work. Humans are piss poor at evaluating the common good and making decisions collectively (see also: the last US election.)
Yes. That was the point of what they posted. None of those groups are what they claim to be beyond nominally.