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this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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It's more than fine to Marxist-Leninists. In fact, to MLs it's ideal. They want the United States to collapse. They're not really shy about it, either. I think US officials just didn't see MLs as a threat anymore after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They really embraced the "end of history" narrative. They figured that MLism was dead and would never return. Looks like they were wrong.
China is right there. I have no idea how historians will answer the question "Why did the western empires hand their own means of production to the biggest ML country on the planet?".
Greed. Easy.
Hubris.
Surely they are Marxist-Leninist in name only in 2024? That's how I see it but I'm interested in hearing your points if you disagree.
It's Marxism-leninism adapted to the specific context of China. The scientific part of scientific socialism means you adapt your model based on experience. When they tried to adopt the soviet model as prescribed by the soviets, they suffered significant setbacks multiple times. I wish I could find the transcript of Mao referencing specific failures during and after the revolution to an Albanian (maybe Yugoslavian ambassador) after Stalin's death which illuminated a lot of the sino-soviet split for me, but google fails me.
A lot of westerners consider the overthrow of the gang of 4 after the cultural revolution to be a betrayal of MLism, here's the CPC's evaluation 5 years later. Section 32 is relevant to the course they've been following since, the rest is background and justification.
Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. Yeah saying they had some setbacks is certainly correct. Whether you agree with his outcomes or not, I assume we agree that Mao was a vicious, mass-murdering dictator. I haven't heard such accusations about the gang of four (fantastic band by the way).
They just seem so... Capitalist to me. It's amazing how many Chinese dirt farmers were lifted from poverty for sure. But they have all these seemingly unregulated huge corporations. There are over 400 individual billionaires in China which I think would be appalling to Marx or Lenin. But this is socialism with Chinese characteristics as you said so maybe that's all part of that description?
Anyway, I know I used a lot of weasel words there and that's because I don't know that much about China. I've become good friends with someone who lived in Shanghai for years and traveled through the country in that time. He's been educating me.
I haven't read much on the subject, but from what I understand, similar to the way the landlords were liquidated, during the cultural revolution it wasn't Mao going "kill these people" so much as the party telling villages "Set up courts and try the , we'll support whatever punishments you deem necessary. Here's why this is needed, these are some punishments we've seen effective at achieving the desired result" and they did.
Giving this kind of autonomy to the locals tends to result in people using the system to settle old scores or get promotions, especially when the scope was expanded to potentially target anyone during the cultural revolution. Similar mechanisms resulted in "Stalin's" terror.
As far as I can gather, Mao was a great revolutionary but a garbage administrator who probably would be remembered like Lenin if he died in the late 50s.
I'm glad we're kind of on the same page about Mao. What do you think about the rest of my comment though? Modern China seems like a capitalist country in a communist hat to me. Which comes back to the beginning of the debate about the US giving away all its production to a ML nation.
Don't get me wrong, I very much wish America didn't offshore everything. If they hadn't, it would be good for inequality and better for the climate.
I don't know enough on the subject to make any strong claims, but actions since the Hu Jintao era seem somewhat consistent with the "bird cage economy" idea where capitalism exists within specific bounds as a tool to develop the means of production and the capitalist class is subservient to the state rather than the other way around.
Why would you expect a capitalist country whose ruling class believe they can insulate themselves from the effects of climate change be better on the climate than a socialist country with 5x more people whose breadbasket is in danger?
I'd never heard of the bird cage economy idea, I'll definitely look into it.
Sure, the offshoring was all but inevitable due to capitalism. I'm just wishing pointlessly.
China is doing great on renewables and bringing prices down for the world. At least until the ridiculous tariffs start up.
Would you DM me if your Chinese friend recommends any english-language works?
I would. I'll ask him. But he's not much of a reader. He was there teaching art. What kind of books are you looking for?
Oh and he's American. He just moved to Shanghai for about three years to teach. His Mandarin is decent but not fantastic. But what can I say, I don't speak a word of it myself.
History, politics, anything that would help understand modern China really.
I'm fine with communists of various flavors, even though I personally disagree with it as a political system. Hell, if the current system isn't working, and someone promises you all the potatoes you can drink, of course they're going to attract a lot of supporters.
But just because something or someone is in opposition to the status quo, doesn't mean they're better. That's where tankies come in - I see too much idiocy coming from that camp that communists are getting a bad reputation because of them. Stalin was a benevolent head of state, Beria did nothing wrong, North Korea is a worker's paradise, etc. Oh, and of course some claim an anti-colonialist stance while having no answers to what happened in Afghanistan in the 70's, eastern Poland in 39, and Finland in 39-40, Tibet in 51, etc
Lemmygrad-brigading in 3.. 2.. 1..
I take it that by idiocy you mean hypocrisy. Ideology often does that to people. We're much better at seeing the crimes of our enemies than we are at seeing the crimes of our own ideological group. People can also justify a lot of objectively terrible things in the pursuit of their ideological goals (the ends justify the means). It's important to note that these phenomena are not unique or exclusive to MLs. These biases exist, to one extent or another, in every ideology.