this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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As opposed to you, who definitely doesn't roleplay being the "smartest one in the room" and speak in condescending generalizations about a large group of political others. Never ever.
If you are still seriously reading communist theory beyond the age of 20, I've got some truly terrible news for you. You should probably stay out of rooms altogether before anyone puts it together for you.
So what big boy books do you like to read, then? Give us your top recommendations.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Harry Potter, Turner Diaries
Hot take: I thought 1984 was somewhat alright, but I haven't read it in a while.
I liked it, but it's not really a book I think "says a lot about society" or whatever, which it is to a lot of libs
I agree. It's just a solid work of fiction. I think a lot of people probably actually haven't read it or don't really think about the story deeper. A lot of people don't seem to read much.
Read that one Isaac Asimov review of it, it’s hilarious. Here I’ll pull it up https://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm
Lib take
I'm packing my bags for the gulag for a bit.
We all know you're using that isle of man flag as a coward's version of the afrikaner flag. You're so god damn bad at this.
Yeah, that had me raising my eyebrows too
I'd like to call it the Brakpan swastika, but that's harsh on Brakpan.
A) I don't know the first thing about an Afrikaner flag.
B) I was born there
Try again.
I hope you get the Praxis you are looking for one day.
Mate pull the other one. You write like a yank and you spell like one too. It takes 5 seconds to see every single little thing in your user history is american, not british.
Fooling absolutely nobody.
No surprise they're shittty, I've never met a nice south African.
They're all arrogant bastards, who hate black people
In Australia even our absolute harshest lockdowns made allowances for millions of "essential" industries.
This you, mate?
Yep. Doesn't change where I was born. Us filthy "libs" are a bit more mobile than you lot. I've lived in a lot of countries, and I've visited half the world including China which is why I don't need to engage any further on this. None of you have a clue what you are talking about. You are singing the praises of a country that is a living hell for 99% of its inhabitants, even moreso than filthy capitalist strongholds.
“Living hell” but >90% of people support the current government]
Under threat of being disappeared. That's the thing about totalitarian regimes: If you poll the local population, they enjoy almost total support for some reason. Gee, I wonder why that could be.
It's the same everywhere these shit heels operate. I did not hear a bad word against the government in Laos in the early 2000's either. They must have been doing a stellar job, no other reason.
Complete nonsense; the categorization of "totalitarian regimes" is also total nonsense aimed at excusing imperialism and Euro-fascism. Specifically with regard to the PRC, their prison population is lower than the U.S. (notable because the U.S. has 1/4 of the population of the PRC), and their per-capita prison population doesn't reach the top 10 (unlike the U.S. as per). This doesn't even begin to explore how the Chinese political system better serves the masses, for instance with regard to 1/10 of the eligible population being members of the CPC in various levels.
This doesn't matter, and the U.S. will never be called "totalitarian", precisely because these incorrect categorizations were formed to lend the West credibility. With Laos, state media control is only a secondary to global media control (I would love to mention here also how the U.S. hid their carpet bombing of Laos from the public, although naturally this won't be addressed).
The USA should absolutely be called totalitarian. Their prison industrial complex is fed a constant stream of bodies. Laws created just to keep the slave labour flowing.
I never for one second suggested that the USA are the good guys. They are international aggressors that feed on war. Locally they have zero care or regard for their own population. The best healthcare in the world, but only if you can afford to pay. Housing affordability so bad that the homeless population grows year on year with no end in site...people just die in the cold.
What I don't understand is how you can bury your head in the sand on China. How can you sit there with any conviction and sing their praises?
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/china-allegedly-has-two-secret-police-stations-in-australia-what-do-we-know-about-them/dz2lmxb13
This is happening where I live. We have a large number of Chinese students at our Universities. Some of them get politically activated whilst they are here, and with a bit of a break from the brainwashing they realise what they are living under at home, maybe they say the wrong thing within earshot of one of the many party spies planted at their university. Maybe nobody ever sees them again.
It's not a system I am in any way interested in supporting, yet I'm typing this on a Chinese phone. I'm complicit in brutality, just not as much as you.
Barely a response. I'll tackle the "secret 'police stations'" bit (Safeguard Defenders report) since it has already been addressed by the Paul Tsai China Centre of Yale.
"Maybe nobody ever sees them again", prove this. "Maybe this happens then maybe this happens then maybe (maybe) this happens" isn't an argument. If China is forcing everyone to agree, wouldn't 100% of respondents in non-govnt. polls say they completely support the party/government at all levels, at least after a couple trials of rooting out the dissidents? It doesn't make sense (the Harvard study also refutes this mode of analysis, but this was ignored of course). I've shown you to be incorrect repeatedly [1] [2], and yet none of this is addressed.
Great response! You have incredible patience
Disappearing people is something the USA did and taught dictators and similar all around the world including South America. This image of Pinochet and alike is what they evoke with the sentence. "Nobody" means death. This is as you rightly called out propaganda.
The approval rating being referenced was a 10+ year long study done by Harvard University, not some poll done by the government while pointing guns at people. You’re just in full and complete denial of reality and can’t explain why Chinese people are happy, since that conflicts with your own programming, so you handwave it away with this pure fiction that they’re all lying because the government is just so scary lmao.
Look, I'm coming around. I have been provided with so much reading material in this thread that my head is spinning and I'm starting to feel sick for being such an arsehole given the quality of some of the responses I've received. I work 60+ hours a week and I really should not have been so quick to respond to a lot of this stuff without proper time to read and digest, but I was already being called out for being a coward and not replying. I got mad as fuck at the trolling, which I guess is half the point of the hexbear method but it's no excuse to be a goon. In truth I hardened my position in the opposite direction due to some of the low-effort baiting in here, but the quality responses win out.
I still don't believe for one second that the people running China are on the whole "good" people, if such a thing even exists anymore. I visited the country in 2017 as part of a small delegate of primary producers. Covertly State-owned industry made up two of my largest customers at the time. We don't deal with them anymore because our previous Prime Minister was a careless dickhead who liked to run his mouth in the media...a bit like me I guess.
Our experience in China was curated about as intensely as any visit to Pyongyang is. Even after the activities for the day, we were followed and watched extremely closely. I don't like the place, it gave me the heebie jeebies worse than anywhere I've ever been. People seemed to be terrified to leave the acceptable script and I left feeling like I had just been exposed to an entire country full of dedicated cult members and paid actors. I still believe what I was seeing was pure fear in their eyes. Just sheer terror to say the wrong thing, or give away something that they weren't supposed to. This was not a case of a language or cultural barriers, and given their position of power over us during negotiations I do not buy into any idea of deference to colonial powers or any of that tripe. They took us to the cleaners. They held ALL the cards and they knew it. The people I dealt with also had better English language skills than I do so it really just felt like hitting a wall where humanity was not allowed to be expressed out of fear of consequences. OF COURSE there are cultural differences as well, but again - none of you were there and as much as you might pretend to understand my biases and prior programming, you really don't know shit on that front.
I AM doing my best to take on the points about my own programming however. There's certainly got to be an element of truth there - we are all products of our environment and the anti-China sentiment in Australia has always been as strong as hell and seems to be getting worse, but it's all just political posturing. Our federal government will publicly bad-mouth the Chinese whilst gladly taking millions in international tuition fees and Chinese migration. It's just posturing. It really means nothing, but the narrative remains. Whilst I'd love to think I'm above assimilating this type of trash, Australia has been my primary country of residence for over three decades now. I'm mostly a product of their primary, secondary and tertiary education systems. They have had plenty of opportunity to infect me with bad ideas, even as cynical and critical as I have always been, and with an ever growing disdain for the capitalist and democratic status quo since literally childhood.
I do wish people on hexbear would not be so judgemental. You don't know me at all: where I've been, what I've done and oddly enough for a guy who just spent two days arguing with communists, what I have done for the Labor movement here. Having said that, you can only judge me on what I give you, and I gave you a bunch of aggressive trolling so I absolutely received better than what I deserve in return.
Having said that, even as I make my way through all of the articles and material I have been sent, it is going to be a very very hard sell to convince me that the PRC and Russia are the good guys. It might be a bloody good time to try and give it a thorough evaluation though given the current state of geopolitics and Australia's tenuous position in the region.
We have a huge Chinese population in my country: permanent residents like myself, student visas, working visas. A total of 5% of our population are first generation Chinese migrants, and this is nothing new. The Chinese have been here since prior to federation during the gold rushes.
I went through school with Chinese. I worked extremely closely with a lot of Chinese-born migrants at university, I've worked with Chinese people in a professional capacity both based here and based in China (mostly Han, obviously) and I've gotten drunk and red faced with enough of them to know that there are lines they will not cross, no matter how far removed they are from the reach of the CCP...the fear is still there. I can't express how much that bothers me, and this is my biggest driver for looking at the wholeheartedly pro-CCP posts here with the fattest dose of skepticism I can muster. If theirs is the best system, and something that we should strive towards...I just don't see it. I can go anywhere I like in the world and talk shit about the government of Australia or the country of my birth as much as I like without consequence, and I do. I'm not even a citizen. Until such time as Chinese people feel free to do the same then I am going to struggle to accept that any move in that direction is a move towards progress. This is why I lean towards anarchism, because I value freedom above most things. It's why I live in the middle of nowhere where I am truly left alone. I receive few government services here: no water, no sewage, no garbage collection. I have to travel 2 hours for healthcare but...I am free to do as I please and say as I please. You can read this both as a staunch indictment of Australia's version of democracy that I have had to take these steps to achieve a limited freedom within its bounds AND why I come across as libertarian with some of my beliefs. I am almost completely self-reliant in this world and exist in stark defiance of the government structures that strive to pull me back into the fold, but not ignorant of the privilege I was born into that has allowed me to be so.
Again, I will qualify this. I am not even half way through the material that /u/robinn2@hexbear.net , /u/Mardoniush@hexbear.net, and /u/Tastysnack@hexbear.net have sent. Even /u/Egon@hexbear.net has given me plenty to think on, and they really only turned against me when I hardened my position against you all. In my defense, I did start out this discussion in good faith. You really do have a lot of members who are antagonistic fuckwits but after 27 years on the internet I should know far better than to feed the trolls.
Reading my drunken string of replies this morning I will admit I was pretty horrified. I got defensive and just took up a position against communism in general, which is pretty unproductive and not really inline with my day to day thought. I walk around every day with a knife on my belt that has this symbol on it: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Emblema_NKVD.svg/1200px-Emblema_NKVD.svg.png
I can't pretend to understand fully what it means. As a matter of fact I feel I'm pretty staunchly against the tactics employed by the NKVD but I wear the knife anyway. It was a gift from a group of friends that know me better than most. Obviously it was a joke and a jab in some fashion, but they know the content of my heart maybe better than I do, so I will do my best to grapple with what I have been sent here. I remain extremely dubious, but I am dubious of everything...especially capitalism and perverse profit incentives.
I am grateful for the time that people have invested here, even in the face of my arrogance and opposition. I'm also aware that I'm out of my depth here. /u/robinn2@hexbear.net is obviously a scholar of communism, and I am obviously not. I have read far more theory than any of you have given me credit for, but I didn't give you any reason to give me any credit either. I'm just grateful for a space (lemmy, not hexbear) where such discussions can take place without all comments being deleted and half of us banned.
It really does seem like things are falling apart at present. I will be out here in rural Australia, armed to the teeth and ready for what comes but still not sure if we will end up friend or Phở in the long run.
I appreciate your response and that you’re reflecting on this stuff. It might help to remember that most people here critically support the Communist Party of China which means having valid criticisms while also understanding the disaster it would be for the people of China and the world if the aggressive imperialists led by USA ever got what they wanted and unseated them (see the horrible effects of the overthrow of the USSR, still negatively affecting millions to this day).
This is a fantastic way to piss off poor and marginalized people, flaunting your privilege and using it in a context to assert some flavor of chauvinistic superiority over us. You're only digging the grave of your class further and further by being a jerk that thinks their own shit doesn't stink, which is fine with me as I enjoy skipping to the end of direct class conflict. The people you step on are the vast majority on this planet, and they recognize which class actually shares their interests based on how they are treated, so you're just giving us more comrades and bolstering solidarity by throwing them into our open arms, critical support to you in that regard.
You said you've "visited China"... When? When precisely did you visit China, and where did you actually go? What's your story here?
Complete projection here. Everything you said is basically true in regards to specifically the United States, but also the Western world in general, which is only worsening in living conditions for the working class as time goes on. You failed to elaborate on why you assert China to be a "living hell" for 99% of its inhabitants. Do you have any actual tangible examples, or is this just like all the other bullshit claims that are taken at face value as Gospel Truth because liberal media monopolies in the West, with the US at its core and main source, endlessly hammer these things into the heads of the population?
See, unlike you, a person who speaks, condescends and sneers from an ivory tower of privilege, the vast majority of us cannot afford to just take luxury vacations and go wherever we want. Your demographic treat the poor of other countries like zoo animals, finding it a good time to travel to poorer places and ooo and awe at the less fortunate to reinforce your confidence in grandstanding to flex and scoff at those that oppose your class interests and intend to fight against them.
Here. I may not have the wealth to travel around the world, but I'm resourceful enough to have found some concrete examples of this "living hell" you spoke of. Check it out:
Things You CAN Do in China (You CAN'T Do in America) Americans WON'T Believe It...
Apartment Tour in China | What can $300 a month get you? 🇨🇳
China vs USA - Please DON'T Compare... (Americans Crying) (CW for the vegans: meat carving/eating)
China LEADS the World in Electric Cars! (America Shocked)
Next time you want to talk about socialist nations being inferior to the living hell that capitalist nations have cultivated for their own people, bring receipts. If you refuse to engage in the concrete examples I have provided, don't even bother replying because I'm not interested in bad faith conversation.
"Living hell"? Your privileged "mobile" arse hasn't seen a sniff of it.
Know some people who moved to China for work from Neoliberal democracies in African countries.
Please tell us more about the plight of incarcerated indigenous people, o australian
China is a living hell for 99% of its inhabitants which is why they overwhelmingly approve of their government and are overall happier and more optimistic about the future than people living in western “democracies” , you sure are smart dude
Seems I have to narc on all my professors, postdocs and PhDs, they all read Marx.
So which one is it: round up all the intellectuals and cast them out to carry out farm labour, or let them sit in their ivory tower and read theory?
Your point was "No adult reads Marx!", which I disproved readily with people of status and learned people that do.
The funny thing is that one of the professors does actually carry out farm labour, as they are involved in international brigades and works for 30 years for food security with sustainable practices in precarious countries. Did quite a bit of their study in AES countries, too.
I would start with casting you out to do farm labour (which you seem so into) and also having to read/discuss various things, too.
round up the "Passiv income Class defending" intellectuals and cast them out to carry out farm labou AND let them read theory?
no reply .. tssk ... typical .. currently probably franticlly searching for something online he can repeat ...
There's this reactionary trope that Communism is just something teenagers who have never had real jobs are into, that somehow the basement-dwelling children of 1st world small business owners are able to easily blaze through all The Manifesto, Grundrisse, Anti-Duhring, German ideology, All 3 volumes of Das Kapital, All 3 volumes of Theories of Surplus Value, etc. etc. etc. before they're old enough to drink, and then after getting an associates degree abandon it because they learned to adult... it's patently absurd. If anything the type of people in question don't even begin to question Capitalism until they're well into their 20s and sufficiently addled with student loan debt and long hours and a bleaker future than their parents.
Which Marxist texts have you read, and can you summarize any Marxist ideas without plagiarizing wikipedia?
Okay, explain how the following mathematical formula that's used to examine the rate of profits of a company, which tends to fall, is invalid and shouldn't be studied
This is you forgetting that there are actually theoretical texts and not just agitprop like the Manifesto, right?
Yes who would ever want to study the leaders of succesful revolutions? Why should we want to learn from those that managed to fight off the capitalists?
Also that sectarianism is probably working super well for you. Great way to build a mass movement.
You're just parroting the most basic of chud clichés, but I guess that shouldn't be surprising when you're petite bourgeoisie
P... puts what together?
that's right, I only read liberal theory. Slava Hogwarti!