toyotathon posted:i guess i wasn't around on the early rhizzone but seems like this bnw guy pops up every couple months for a good internet yell or to discipline a new poster and every time he does i'm less impressed. just seems like an aggro prick, no offense.
You've been constantly accusing people of falling prey to bourgeois liberal moral handwringing, being secret crypto-trots and imperialist stooges for the intelligence agencies for voicing basic critical stances. i think you're engaging in these discussion far more aggressively and uncharitably than anyone else. i'd be happy to moderate my tone if your objections were coming from a place of good faith but i don't think me using the word "insane" a few times is even close to the attacks you're throwing out at people for the completely innocuous offence of just having a critical discussion on a subject. i'm really at a loss as to why you can't see how poisonous this lack of basic charity is, while being apparently concerned with comradely tone from others.
pescalune posted: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)
Of course it's important to figure out if some things are communist, (using "communist" as shorthand for desirable, helpful to meet social goals, etc.) but the country of China isn't one of those things. Deciding either way can't guide your thoughts or actions in any useful direction because you, your organizations, and your country can never become China. Unless you live in China of course.
We can look at aspects of China and actions by China to evaluate if they're something we might want to try. I think we can even judge if those things are good for China or not, to a limited extent. For example, if we have reliable information and we're careful about propaganda like posters here are, we can discuss China's policy towards national minorities and that can guide our thoughts and actions on that issue if we somehow have a chance of influencing it, and on similar issues in other contexts. I don't think that knowledge of those things is impossible like BHPN. But if we come to a decision on any one of those issues, that doesn't really scale directly to the question if China is communist, and whether or not China is communist or not doesn't scale down directly to the smaller questions. I'm sure you have to apply dialectical materialism to really figure out how those scales interact with each other, but I don't know how to do that very well yet. I just know that we can't do something like (communist aspects)/(capitalist aspects) and see if the ratio works out.
I'm not sure that China's advances are strengthening Chinese capitalism, but if they are, should I oppose the lifting of millions from poverty on that basis? Maybe if strengthening Chinese capitalism is ALL the reforms are doing, but I don't think anyone can claim that in good faith. If the USA institutes a 15 dollar federal minimum wage, should I oppose that since it definitely is in the service of American capitalism? I do want to see the end of capitalist relations. Harm reduction isn't enough. That's why I don't join the democrats or an NGO like you said, but I don't think voicing an opposition to China is any more helpful than voting for Bernie either.
Edited by colddays ()
colddays posted:But if we come to a decision on any one of those issues, that doesn't really scale directly to the question if China is communist, and whether or not China is communist or not doesn't scale down directly to the smaller questions.
i don't really know why the question of communist development isn't able to be scaled down directly to micro concerns. i think it's the great & most fundamental lesson of the GPCR that communist development is a matter of direct political intervention on immediate concrete issues rather than being some abstract consequence of grand scale national strategy.
Edited by blinkandwheeze ()
like i mentioned earlier i think taking the questions of chinese socialist development absolutely seriously and holding them to their own revolutionary theoretical traditions is generally less chauvinist than cloying platitudes seeking to avoid basic scrutiny. if you can't make a distinction between the motivations of those who might be interested in an approach grounded in a consistent marxism-leninism and those of chauvinist crypto-trots then you aren't engaging in good faith. i don't really agree with any of colddays' or petrol's points but they're at least actually happy to openly and honestly discuss things.
obviously there hasn't been much effort put into deep historical dives on these questions yet in this thread. but i don't see how that can happen at all when the discussion is poisoned by the most basic broaches of a critical stance being met with endless accusations and invectives of empty bourgeois moralist hand-wringing, reiterating imperialist propaganda, white chauvinism etc. etc.
blinkandwheeze posted:obviously there hasn't been much effort put into deep historical dives on these questions yet in this thread. but i don't see how that can happen at all when the discussion is poisoned by the most basic broaches of a critical stance being met with endless accusations and invectives of empty bourgeois moralist hand-wringing, reiterating imperialist propaganda, white chauvinism etc. etc.
i think part of the problem is that some of us (myself included) have a visceral response to bald, undeveloped statements like 'china isn't communist' or 'china is doing genocide in xinjiang' because it's exactly what we're accustomed to hearing from bougie pseuds. there have been several instances of statements of that kind in lieu of "basic broaches of a critical stance". in saying this i don't mean to excuse all the accusations that have been flung around. anyway, the thread seems to be simmering down to a more potentially productive level now
toyotathon posted:... what are you talking about, you just posted about all the work you wanted to do, and how you were going to do it. three paragraphs! i'm saying, go for it! you meant all that, right?
i don't know what you're saying here. i think it's necessary to conduct extensive critical investigations on these subjects but that's something we're all working through protractedly in many different discussions and personal study. i don't think that obliges anyone to conduct extensive historical prefaces of whatever arbitrary length you demand before they can start discussing these questions in the most basic manner. especially in a place where we can assume we all have a general agreement on basic principles and are capable of taking a shorthand approach to these subjects.
coming to developed conclusions on these things requires being able to discuss them honestly and openly. imposing these endless rhetorical standards on how these discussions need to be conducted, lest we be accused of your constant insults and invectives, is completely unproductive. after accusing me of swooping in to discipline new posters, you should maybe look at how besides me your invectives have been pretty much been exclusively directed at posters newer than you for daring to discuss these particular subjects
toyotathon posted:was thinking of spectralmarx, a new reg woman who he ran off a bit ago. male MLs screaming at women but chauvinism in our ranks, it's so inscrutable..
Iirc that person was insisting we approach the issues of armed contra death squads targeting naxalites with balance & nuance. which is much more objectionable a point than anything you've eagerly ran to attack new posters over here. i don't really know why anyone who objects to the people's war in india would be interested in posting here in the first place, it's pretty obvious that this position would be met with immediate pushback.
Edited by blinkandwheeze ()
toyotathon posted:how do you know better than any of the parties involved, whats going on there? stay out of their fucking business!
Impressive that you so easily abandon any spirit of internationalism or investigation, because what, the CIA is trawling the fucking Rhizzone for inspiration?
The call to be morally clever in this case seems like more of that "bourgeois handwringing" you decry.
colddays posted:Of course it's important to figure out if some things are communist, (using "communist" as shorthand for desirable, helpful to meet social goals, etc.) but the country of China isn't one of those things. Deciding either way can't guide your thoughts or actions in any useful direction because you, your organizations, and your country can never become China. Unless you live in China of course.
We can look at aspects of China and actions by China to evaluate if they're something we might want to try.
Why would China as a nation be exempt when we discuss what is communist? Deciding either way can guide what my goals are at the least. I feel like these two statements somewhat contradict each other. Of course my country can never become China, but it can't become the USSR either. Nonetheless Marxism-Leninism(-Maoism) is predicated on the idea that certain ideas, even removed from their own context, have universal validity. And it seems to me that China took a similar path to every other revisionist state, none of which ever returned to a socialist path. I think BNW summed up well the lesson of the GPCR above.
colddays posted:I'm not sure that China's advances are strengthening Chinese capitalism, but if they are, should I oppose the lifting of millions from poverty on that basis? Maybe if strengthening Chinese capitalism is ALL the reforms are doing, but I don't think anyone can claim that in good faith. If the USA institutes a 15 dollar federal minimum wage, should I oppose that since it definitely is in the service of American capitalism? I do want to see the end of capitalist relations. Harm reduction isn't enough. That's why I don't join the democrats or an NGO like you said, but I don't think voicing an opposition to China is any more helpful than voting for Bernie either.
Of course we should not oppose the lifting of millions from poverty. But a certain skepticism is warranted about the motivation for doing so, and the enormous inequality that was fostered in China as a result, not just between the Chinese bourgeoisie and proletariat/peasants, but between rural and urban areas. Mobo Gao gets into this in his books, though he's more optimistic about China under Xi Jingping. If that poverty elimination isn't tied to a strong socialist proletarian party/state than it can strengthen the power of the bourgeoisie. And I think you get to the crux of the issue by comparing it to a 15$ minimum wage and Sanders, because the argument in defence of many of China's policies is really very similar.
China under Mao, especially during the GPCR, was more than merely a mild improvement or "progressive" alternative to bloodthirsty Empire, but a serious attempt to dismantle capitalist relations and move beyond the limits of the Leninist party. And this was being sought while also improving the lives of the average Chinese person.
there's also the obvious problem of the adequacy of the bourgeois categorical measures these advances are accounted under. the role of GDP in hiding the real mechanism of value extraction and exchange is well understood. in particular there's the further question of the adequacy in how relevant these measures are for understanding socialist development at all -- a transition from a system incorporating non-commodity exchange to one of greater marketisation is automatically going to introduce sudden and significant gains in economic activity because non-monetised services and goods weren't accounted for. there's a really phenomenal discussion on these issues here: https://rupeindia.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/the-struggle-of-actually-building-socialism-an-interview-with-fred-engst
which also isn't even getting into the question of ecological sustainability in large scale industrialisation, urbanisation and incorporation of modern agricultural practices...
tears posted:hmm, would you say that communist criticism of the CPC for its male dominance, from inside the empire, was chavinism-in-practice?
a Chinese person once tried to talk to me about what one of her parents did working for the chinese government, but i didn't actually listen what she said until she brought up something i could use to talk shit on her for yuks on an English-language comedy marxist forum. so i guess i'll never know.
tears posted:i went out for a drink a few weeks ago with the daughter of a chinese senior administrative functionary (cant remember what she actually said he did, but something to do with running a city) studying here, she didnt like communism and chose margaret thatcher when i asked if there was anyone she really admired. took alot of restraint not to denounce the CPC then and there to all the other people in the wetherspoons
...and take people at their word. like... bnw, i am pretty much 100% sure that you understand the coding behind using the word "functionary" to describe a Chinese government worker instead of "civil servant" or just "worker" or something similar. As for "cant remember what she actually said he did, something to do with running a city", that's also pretty clear about tears's attitude here.
so yeah, if we're going to discuss what is and isn't chauvinism in the context of discussions on this forum then it's probably relevant to examine actual chauvinism in discussions on this forum. when it's relevant because that poster decided to zero in on the topic themselves, i'm going to bring it up. and i mean... it's also just fucking funny. "something to do with running a city".
