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this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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There is no contradiction here, because the communists, with their customary candor, acknowledge the necessity of stifling speech they deem to be harmful. It is the liberals, those self-appointed guardians of unfettered discourse, who are engaging in hypocrisy. They wax lyrical about the sanctity of free expression, only to abandon their lofty principles the moment their narrative falters.
Show us on the doll where the communists touched you...
Where and who are these communists you're referring to?
I asked like this, because it's generally a hallucination, as communists have no real power over others, anywhere on this planet. So, it's a logical impossibility that you could have experienced any kind of censorship done by communists.
Communists who hold power in China, Vietnam, and Cuba are just few examples.
Communists haven't held power in China in a very long time... If they did, they wouldn't be a state capitalist society.
And how have the Vietnamese and Cuban governments censored your speech lately? And what reach would you say they have on social media?
How to say you don't have any clue about China without saying you don't have any clue about China. If you genuinely want to learn about China I can recommend this book, but we both know that you don't https://redletterspp.com/products/the-east-is-still-red
I'm sure you can figure out how google works all on your own. The reality is that no society practices free speech absolutism, and the only question is what type of speech gets censored. I urge you to spend a bit of time educating yourself on the subject you're attempting to debate here instead of wasting everyone's time.
Oh, I understand China enough to know they aren't communists. Communism isn't "Whenever the state does things" or "Whenever the state gets bigger".
I'm sure I can, however, I cannot see any large levers of power either of those governments have over people not inside of their national borders.
And, to be honest, I'm not sure how much either of them are "communist", since communism requires a stateless society in order to be considered "communist".
Like, do you even know what communism is?
If you understood China at all then you would know that they are in fact communists. But it's very clear that you have an incredibly superficial understanding of the subject.
I do know what communism is, and I also understand that the fact that we live in a world dominated by capitalism that nations led by communists must exist within. Seriously spend a bit of time educating yourself instead of clowning around here.
Ok, I'll bite. What makes you think China is a communist state?
How does one have "nations led by communists" that are fully state-capitalist societies?
Oh, I have spent a LOT of time educating myself... Its the main reason I understand that China hasn't even been socialist since the 1970s or so, Russia hasn't been a socialist society since the late 1910's, and the way of the socialist revolution never starts with "Making a state bigger", because it almost immediately gets usurped for a new set of oligarchs that love using socialist words.
China is a socialist state that established the dictatorship of the working class, and that's governed by a Communist party that represents the interests of the working majority. Socialism is a transitional stage where the workers hold power in society, but capitalist have not yet been abolished. That's precisely the stage of development China finds itself in today.
I wonder what goes through your mind when you say state capitalism. Capitalism is a system where the means of production are privately owned, and people who own the means of production exploit the workers who sell their labor to increase their wealth. In contrast, state owned industry does not exist to create wealth for a capital owning class, and the work that's done has direct social value.
It's quite obvious that you have not based on the fact that you don't understand the basics of the subject you're debating.
Weird, because I don't seem to think there's any of the working class liberated there, like at all?
Just more capitalism. When do you think there will be some working class liberation there?
I imagine a system that is capitalist, and ran fully by the state, at the best of oligarchs. Which is exactly what China is.
Yep, China ticks all of those boxes.
Ah yes, we should let all the people of China know that all that wealth is actually theirs, and they are fit to use it as they deem fit, even if Xi disagrees.
Get back to me when China actually liberates anyone in the working class.
That's because you're utterly clueless on the subject and speak out of ignorance.
It already happened as a result of the revolution. One only has to compare the development path of China to actual capitalism states to see that it's socialist. These kinds of things do not happen under capitalism.
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China%E2%80%99s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&%3Blocations=CN&%3Bstart=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
In fact, we can directly compare to how things are progressing in India to see what capitalist path of development looks like.
It's not, and if you actually bothered to learn about China you'd know that. You can start by reading the book I linked above.
It doesn't as you can clearly see above. The problem with trolls such as yourself is that you just continue to repeat nonsense confidently and refuse to engage with reality.
The fact that you think that Xi runs China unilaterally once again shows just how ignorant you are on the subject. You don't even understand the basics of how a political system works.
They already have, but you don't care about actual facts of the situation because they don't fit with your demagogy. Bye.
Are you trying to make the argument that Marxism isn't Socialist? I think that's a very silly argument, Marxism certainly isn't Anarchist but it is Socialist. The USSR operated under Marxist notions of Socialism, based on public ownership and central planning, something the PRC is based on today (though with their own characteristics).
Is is Marxist to murder workers for daring to go on strike?
Can you elaborate?
Kronstadt, as one example.
I don't think Kronstadt is a good example for your case. The Kronstadt mutiny happened during the Russian Civil War, while the Red Army was fighting off the Tsarist White Army, as well as 14 Capitalist countries that had invaded in order to destabilize the new Socialist State. Secondly, it was headed by Stepan Petrichenko, who had 1 year prior tried to join the Tsarist White Army.
Furthermore, Kronstadt was reported on by Western Media 2 weeks before it had happened, with enthusiastic support against the Socialist State. The "strike" involved arresting 300 Bolshevik officials, and threatening to execute 23 of them. Among their listed demands? Freedom of anti-Communism and purging of Communists from the factories and millitary. After it failed, Petrichenko fled and joined the White Army, finally fulfilling his goal of proving himself as a good anti-Communist and worthy of fighting to reinstate the Tsar.
Do you have a better example of an actual strike being slaughtered, and not a mutiny in the middle of a Civil War that was led by a Tsarist for the purposes of dismantling Socialism?
lol, ok.
It wasn't a "mutiny" it was a labor strike. And, speaking of which, how does a "Mutiny" happen in a classless society of liberated workers?
And it involved much more than just 300 arrests bro...
Again, can you explain how it was a labor strike when they arrested 300 Communists, threatened to execute 2 dozen of them, all at the command of someone who wanted to reinstate the Tsar, whose demands included purging Communists from the government and millitary?
Secondly, you're confirming that you don't think Marxism is Socialist. No Marxist has ever claimed that you even can abolish classes instantly, nor that the USSR managed to do so. Abolition of classes is a global phenomenon.
What of Marx have you read? I don't think it's a good idea to argue from a position you haven't studied.