Here, let's all go ahead and list all the communist places we can think of so we finally have a list of communist places and end the important "is it communism" debate.
then i got one of the flyers they were destributing and it was calling the chinese "gog magogs" (a racist tripe with islamic origins) and nazis and then accusing the state for "stealing" uyghur women by forcing them to marry chinese or assimilation and raping uyghurs with their programme to place chinese men in every uyghur household by force
hope you enjoyed by wonderful contribution to this extremely interesting debate
swampman posted:This thread is horrible... the term "U---rs" is so offensive. None of you would dare post the N word but a lower-class white person adopting aspects of Black culture gets called a derivation of the exact same slur? I guess they must have got away with that on Mad TV for you all to be so comfortable with it?
colddays posted:I have principles, but they don't involve purposelessly labeling things communist or not communist. I don't see any point in proclaiming it either way. How will deciding that China is or isn't communist change my actions and thoughts? I think China is communist today so I say "yes it's great that China has so many billionaires it's very communist of them". Tomorrow I think a bit more and realize that no, China capitalist actually so I say "Screw China's electrification of the countryside, their poverty relief efforts, and their environmental regulation overhauls, it's all just capitalist bullshit!"
What is meant by "purposelessly" here? Demarcating between what and what is not communist is surely important for communists. The point of proclaiming it either way is to avoid promulgating ideas that are harmful to the development of socialism in our own contexts, whatever that may be. If we accept that communism is desirable, and that China is communist, then we should take inspiration from their example surely. All this hand-waiving doesn't square with Marxism and the often relentless critiques Marx, Lenin etc. would employ.
Poverty relief efforts, environmental regulation overhauls...what does it matter in the longterm as long as it's strengthening the capitalist class in China, strengthening international capitalism? Is this not the basis of social fascism, mild reform to placate the masses and strengthen the bourgeoisie? I would assume as a communist you would agree that defense of capitalism spells doom for humanity no matter how many regulations are put in place. If harm reduction is all that is desirable (and I assume so, given the reference to China's "progressive" path) rather than actively seeking to dismantle capitalist relations and promulgate international communism, then may as well be a Democrat or join an NGO (assuming you are an Amerikkkan, apologies if not)
Populares posted:swampman posted:This thread is horrible... the term "U---rs" is so offensive. None of you would dare post the N word but a lower-class white person adopting aspects of Black culture gets called a derivation of the exact same slur? I guess they must have got away with that on Mad TV for you all to be so comfortable with it?
Ah. The joke is that they don't know how to pronounce Uighurs, so they made a racist assumption that cast themselves as the good person. Apparently that's comedy, these days... pathetic
toyotathon posted:except, that isn't what the thread's doing, it's doing liberal moral condemnations, and it's doing it to a US hand-picked conflict. he's asking for some awareness of the ideology that we're swimming in and getting downvoted for it, asking for more than the emptiest internet denouncements and getting downvoted.
Personally i don't think a marxist of any stripe is required to demonstrate any long line of historical reasoning to take part in the simple task of condemning repressive national policy and ethnic chauvinism. vaguely accusing everyone here of swimming in liberal moralism for not sufficiently couching the most trivial and basic points relating to national self-determination without couching it in some completely arbitrary standard of historical analysis in a forum post is unconvincing. Huey is engaging in outright denialism and declaring the impossibility of retrieving any facts whatsoever about this case, no matter how much you try and whitewash his claims.
you're right that the stakes aren't high here. which is why i think demands that discussions here have some grand political "use" in contributing to the development of consciousness required for enacting revolution on maoist terms, or whatever you're suggesting, are inane. we are just weirdos discussing things for fun on a message board. people talk about china because they're interested in china, it's not evidence of a creeping white chauvinism and secret trotskyism
Edited by blinkandwheeze ()
blinkandwheeze posted:I will leave internet debate mode when people are ready to just discuss things honestly instead accusing everyone of being secret liberals & imperialist stooges for failing to meet whatever arbitrary standard of message board discourse they're imposing.
my body is ready
colddays posted:Here, let's all go ahead and list all the communist places we can think of so we finally have a list of communist places and end the important "is it communism" debate.
your posts
toyotathon posted:EVERY MORNING I WAKE UP AND OPEN PALM SLAM A VHS INTO THE SLOT. IT'S CHRONICLES OF TROTSKY AND RIGHT THEN AND THERE I START DOING THE MOVES ALONGSIDE WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER, TROTSKY. I DO DENOUNCEMENTS AND I DO THEM HARD. MAKIN WHOOSHING SOUNDS WHEN I SLAM DOWN SOME TOTALITARIANS OR A DEGENERATE WORKERS STATE. NOT MANY SOCIALISTS CAN SAY THEY DENOUNCE EVERY SOCIALIST COUNTRY. I CAN. I DENOUNCE THEM AND I DENOUNCE THEM ONLINE EVERYDAY TO PEOPLE IN MY LAPTOP AND ALL THEY DO IS PROVE PEOPLE INSIDE LAPTOPS CAN STILL BE IMMATURE JEKRS. AND IVE LEARNED ALL THE LINES AND IVE LEARNED HOW TO MAKE MYSELF AND MY APARTMENT LESS LONELY BY SHOUTING EM ALL. FOR 100 YEARS INCLUDING WIND DOWN EVERY REVOLUTion
blinkandwheeze posted:that we need to explicitly declare and confess this every time we engage in any kind of critical discussion, lest we betray our hidden allegiance to imperialism, is f*cking absurd.
now im as upset as anyone here but lets watch the language
toyotathon posted:if we make revolution in the US on maoist terms,
Caesura109 posted:babyhueypnewton posted:Caesura109 posted:Why do we even have an opinion on the Uighurs? It's not because it's a pressing issue for the left, but rather that the bourgeois media has made it an issue and we've decided we have to have our own leftist "spin."
How can on have a position on China, but not the Uyghurs? Choosing not to share it is another thing. The fact that the bourgois media has made it into an issue is itself something to be interested in and analyse. In fact, our initial conversations on it were about the very fact that the bourgois media was fixated on it, which the morphed into an attempt to discern the facts of it, and now a discussion on the implications it has regarding the Chinese state.
PSL is currently in the bad graces of this forum but at least they attempt to send party members to actually existing states and places that are under imperialist threat. This is not itself a superior form of knowledge but gives a model of what a superior of knowledge would look like it relations were more reciprocal and the PSL capable of deeper analysis. We do not even get left-liberals like Edgar Snow anymore to make our work easier. Think about how much our ability to find facts has degraded since the collapse of the USSR and yet you don't even hesitate to come up with an opinion which aligns perfectly with the state department's.
I would like to know what my opinion on Uyghurs entails and how it aligns in any way with the state department. This sounds like a complete cop out, relegating any analysis or criticism that isnt done first hand as taking spooks for their word on it. Nobody here has cited bourgeois media, nobody here has cited some NED-funded group's report, and in fact we try to seek ou Chinese reporting on it.
, a site posting about uighers, vz mischief, etc, is just tailing VOA? marxism's power would be to explain why CCP uigher policy evolved from this
almost every post about U.S - the chief imperialist power in the world - is "tailing VOA", if you consider giving attention to and criticizing U.S foreign policy to be a sideshow. I also don't see how talking about the uyghur situtation is trying to "cancel" china, i.e give moral denouncements on the internet to feel good about ourselves or whatever and brand china "not communist" or "Bad Regime". Given that the PSL has felt the need to pen several pieces in the past, all prefaced with "The Western media is talking about THIS thing that happened in China, here are our thoughts as socialists", I guess they too have fallen into the trap of caring about a situation because the state department and western media do, and not because a communist state is being targeted by a bourgeois propaganda campaign, which should be denounced, picked apart and the reality behind which should be discussed. Liberation news is like 50% pieces about Venezuela nowadays. I don't think that is unwarranted.
Clearly this is a real abstraction, or an ideological reification which comes out of material conditions. It is impossible to imagine communists making their own history without a mass based party, acknowledging this lack does not make breaking from ideology somehow possible through willpower. PSL takes it to its limit where the nations that imperialism wants to overthrow become progressive at an ontological level; this is necessary but not sufficient. My suggestion is to ignore bourgeois issues entirely since China really doesn't care what western communists think (a lesson learned from the USSR) and slowly reconstruct our own history given a future mass party capable of anti-imperialism. For example, John Smith's categorization of global immigration as "global apartheid" is very productive and focuses our attention on those phenomena which are invisible to bourgeois propaganda, such as the immense refugee camps in Turkey and the impossibility of the EU. Moral condemnation doesn't interest me since the world as it is is unliveable for most of humanity and our select outrage is entirely self-serving. Lacan is right to situate ethics beyond the symbolic and the imaginary, both merely serve to make us feel righteous as communists in liberal comfort.
frankly i just think you're engaging in entirely self-interested motivated reasoning where you're happy to immediately dismiss issues that complicate whatever your grand political position is. for one, you're directly attempting to smuggle a partisan stance on the class character of china in here by declaring that it can't be defended on bourgeois lines itself. i'm fine with anyone arguing for any particular analysis of china's class character here, but you're refusing to do that and simply staking this position and refusing to justify or confront them through endless rhetorical dodges to the point that you deny our ability to even talk about it
i think your naked inconsistencies and perpetual dodging is best shown here by your sudden admission that there are somehow now political issues which bourgeois propagandism is not interested in. the idea that bourgeois apparatuses are not invested in questions like the refugee crisis in turkey is absurdly naive. to a degree that i don't think this is something you actually believe, and are just engaging in another rhetorical dodge.
in the absence of a developed counterhegemonic communist investigation, we're obviously forced to rely on a critical investigation of bourgeois outlets. you seem to entirely accept this now, you've just rigged this conclusion by declaring which specific issues are somehow free of a propagandistic influence despite being developed entirely in conditions of bourgeois discourse and scholarship. there's no qualitative line between the issues you're interested in talking about and those you aren't, they both entirely rely on taking a critical approach to the intellectual work directed by bourgeois interests. you've just entirely arbitrarily drawn a red line to bolster your position, while having the gall to accuse anyone else of engaging in self-serving reasoning
i also can't stand this game of declaring the critical approaches of your opponents as being inherently moralistic hand-wringing while your consternation about pet issues are free of any such blemishes. this is just an empty and pathetic attack along another completely arbitrary line you've drawn
Edited by blinkandwheeze ()
blinkandwheeze posted:Huey you're very transparently selecting which issues qualify as "bourgeois" entirely arbitrarily. John Smith's work, and wherever you're gleaning your understanding of the supposedly actually important issues, are exclusively drawn from a critical investigation of bourgeois media outlets and research. you already cede this point by admitting the absence of mass based communist organisations capable of developing a counterhistory, so i have no idea how you can suddenly turn around and assert that there actually are important issues somewhere that we can investigate unfettered without them.
frankly i just think you're engaging in entirely self-interested motivated reasoning where you're happy to immediately dismiss issues that complicate whatever your grand political position is. for one, you're directly attempting to smuggle a partisan stance on the class character of china in here by declaring that it can't be defended on bourgeois lines itself. i'm fine with anyone arguing for any particular analysis of china's class character here, but you're refusing to do that and simply staking this position and refusing to justify or confront them through endless rhetorical dodges to the point that you deny our ability to even talk about it
i think your naked inconsistencies and perpetual dodging is best shown here by your sudden admission that there are somehow now political issues which bourgeois propagandism is not interested in. the idea that bourgeois apparatuses are not invested in questions like the refugee crisis in turkey is absurdly naive. to a degree that i don't think this is something you actually believe, and are just engaging in another rhetorical dodge.
in the absence of a developed counterhegemonic communist investigation, we're obviously forced to rely on a critical investigation of bourgeois outlets. you seem to entirely accept this now, you've just rigged this conclusion by declaring which specific issues are somehow free of a propagandistic influence despite being developed entirely in conditions of bourgeois discourse and scholarship. there's no qualitative line between the issues you're interested in talking about and those you aren't, they both entirely rely on taking a critical approach to the intellectual work directed by bourgeois interests. you've just entirely arbitrarily drawn a red line to bolster your position, while having the gall to accuse anyone else of engaging in self-serving reasoning
i also can't stand this game of declaring the critical approaches of your opponents as being inherently moralistic hand-wringing while your consternation about pet issues are free of any such blemishes. this is just an empty and pathetic attack along another completely arbitrary line you've drawn
Your arguing in a tedious way. I have already said I reject the idea that knowledge itself is impossible because of orientalism or bourgeois framing of all issues, though obviously a party capable of forming its own history is essential to overcoming the discursive framing that shapes all the "facts" we are presented with. All I am doing is pointing out these discursive pressures which you want to ignore because you believe yourself to be capable of overcoming them through immanent critique. That may or may not be true, I have not been impressed with the attempts to do so by you or others and the proof is in the pudding. This tedious debate about knowledge is an attempt to distract from that actually, since I am the only one who bothered to critique an interpretation obviously derived from bourgeois framing where I was attacked for inconsistency (something any honest person would admit is inevitable given that I am responding to different people and immanent critique requires delving into each statement on its own terms).
I did not feel it necessary to justify that certain issues are more impacted by bourgeois propaganda than others and that China is one that is far more difficult to grasp than the concept of ethnic oppression. I would refer you to decades of bourgeois propaganda designed exactly to focus on the latter and ignore the former but I don't think you are interested since you already know it, you're just being stubborn and seeing this as a debate to be closed instead of a chance to open discussion. I'm kinda done with this thread anyway, it's no longer productive to respond to different people only to be attacked for attempting to reconstruct their logic. You claim that we do not need to declare principles but I have yet to see you call out the anti-Chinese posts with the same vigor as you call out my call outs, here too the proof is in the pudding.
Caesura109 posted:Gonna be honest, I have no clue what the hell consists a "bourgeois issue" except your other allusions to State Department propaganda. The refugee camps in Turkey have been at the forefront of a bourgeois debate about a bourgeois state joining a bourgois suprastate entity, as well as a bourgeois war fought by bourgeois parties.
Even if Chinese communists do not care what western communists think of the Uyghur situation, this discussion isn't for them to read. I am not interested in challenging their self-perception, and if what I'm engaging in is liberal moralizing about the real, unabstract going-ons in Xinjiang, then it should be quite easy to critique what I say without evasive suggestions that the problem is that I even discuss the issue itself.
I cannot discern why the question of internment and neocolonialism against a few million Uyghur in Xinjiang as part of China's state-building project is any less bourgois an issue as the plight of a few million Arabs in Palestine or a few million Kurds in Syria, though I've never heard you relegate the other two to bourgeois topics unfit for discussion, despite them being focal points for bougeois media. It isn't even that you are simply arguing that we are mistakenly coming to a "State Department" conclusion on one but have broadly correct perspectives on another, you seem to object to discussion of "bourgeois issues" as a whole, because apparently one only engages in those because they are put in front of them by the State Department to say "yay" or "nay" to.
I agree with you that the label of genocide here is hyperbolic, but its rather clear that there is an ethnic and religious element to the issue in Xinjiang as opposed to other "countryside" provinces, and that the language of "ethnic harmony" from the mouths of CCP officials coupled by their own descriptions of their policy to meet that end make it clear that they're interested in fostering conformity with the Han majority, who hold the levers of power in Xinjiang as well. I try to approach any reporting by Western media with assumptions that it is in bad faith and seeking to manufacture consent for Western power, be it state or capital, and I have no compunction about approaching Chinese media with that same lens. A CCP official giving and interview to Xinhua in which he decries the unspeakable evils of terrorism - as if it is an abstract evil that exists in a vacuum - pretends to mourn a dead cop, and speaks about the great indoor and outdoor sports facilities of "vocational schools" reads to me the same way it does coming from the mouth of a Western "counter-terrorism expert". Of course, here would be the part where I would be obligated to waste breath explaining that just because I make an analogy between China and the West, im not making parity between the two and China is obviously more progressive in mkst of its foreign and domestic policies, a fact we all know and shouldnt feel the need to reiterate when criticizing China
I like how you casually slip in the word "internment" and no one bothers to object except me. That is pure propaganda and on this I will stand up for facts and not merely discourse. More broadly, I have already pointed out that it should be obvious our framing of this issue is problematic because of decades of attempts to frame it in this way (see: Tibet) and brought up a counterexample which no one bothered to respond to, as someone else pointed out a communist analysis would at minimum contextualize these events with other national minorities in China. I'll say it again, the proof is in the pudding and the fruits of critique of China "free" from bourgeois propaganda have not impressed me.
babyhueypnewton posted:Your arguing in a tedious way.
toyotathon posted:it's obvious that bhpn isn't choosing the uigher national minority as his first chauvinist target, what's maybe not as obvious is that voicing the opinion on it inside the empire is chauvinism-in-practice. how do you know better than any of the parties involved, whats going on there? stay out of their fucking business! this is not hard to grasp. have the basic sense to keep your keyboard quiet when asked to opine on this college republican / trot bait.
hmm, would you say that communist criticism of the CPC for its male dominance, from inside the empire, was chavinism-in-practice?
This was previously posted by damoj in a tiny uighur thread last year, but maybe worth reposting: A Week In Xinjiang’s Absolute Surveillance State, from a seemingly straightforward independent amateur source, a Russian-pseudonymed (and accented) guy who lives in China. He was interviewed on Radio War Nerd #160, which is free to listen to here (2h44m). He isn't the most natural interviewee at first but they do eventually get him speaking a little more freely. The ultimate conclusion seems to be around the lines of (I haven't relistened so this is from memory) more or less they don't really know what the fuck to think entirely and it's complicated.
there is also this excellent post by parenti where he digs up forum posts etc.:
Parenti posted:
