Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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If you're referring to this comment:
It's not "dehumanizing" to criticize a government. The people of China - for them I have a huge amount of empathy and sympathy. I believe they deserve freedom of speech, and LGBTQ rights, and all human rights. I go out of my way to pay more for fair-trade goods, and avoid companies that exploit Chinese laborers (hello Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon).
There is a distinctive difference between unhelpful slurs (westoid cesspool), and legitimate criticism (1-party dictatorship).
You're not criticizing the government, you're removing agency from people living in China and claiming that they're not capable of making their own decisions. Thinking that you know better than they do is peak chauvinism. The fact that you confuse your racism with legitimate criticism says a lot about you.
Also, the US might have freedom of speech, but it's still an oligarchy with a government that serves the rich more than the majority.
I'm not "peak chauvinist against US citizens because I'm removing their agency", it's just objectively very difficult for the laboring class to fight back against the ruling & ownership class, and I have no difficulty in criticizing the US government for it.
Not at all what I'm saying.
I'm saying the government controls all the flow of information, and I don't trust their numbers to reflect reality. I don't trust Apple's customer satisfaction surveys either.
I mean, should anybody be surprised that a communist organization newspaper would survey high support for Marxism? That's like the NRA releasing survey results that show high support for zero gun regulation.
If you want to be effective at messaging for communism, besides learning to take criticism, you also have to be aware of your own confirmation bias.
The fact that you don't even see just how absurd this line of argument is really shows just how far off the reservation you've wandered.
Every single survey that comes out of China done by domestically as well as by western organizations consistently shows that people in China overwhelmingly support their government and see it as democratic. The only people who say what you say are invariably westerners who have never been to China or talked to anyone actually living there.
Thinking that it's somehow controversial that people living in a communist country who overwhelmingly support their government identify as communists is laughably absurd.
You changed the subject, I was speaking of communism and socialism being much less popular than they should be.
A country with almost as much wealth disparity between the poor and wealth as the US?
No, I didn't change the subject at all. I provided you with background evidence supporting my point. Communism and socialism are very clearly popular in places like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos. You'd know this if you actually interacted with people from these countries.
Meanwhile, the reason it's not popular in the western shithole countries is because colonizers live like parasites off the backs of the rest of the world, and majority of westerners are perfectly happy with the arrangement.
A country that's seen biggest poverty reduction in human history, where practically everyone owns their home, and people see their lives improve dramatically each and every year. The fact that you ignore all that just shows how intellectually dishonest you really are.
100% true, Western capitalists have been exploiting cheap Chinese labor, and labor of other Asian countries, for decades, plus stripping them of natural resources. With the consent of their (according to you - Communist) governments. This is where the government should be regulating labor, tariffs on imports and exports, and regulating involvement of foreign corporations. Instead, these governments are colluding with Western capitalists to enrich themselves.
https://www.bbc.com/news/56213271
A very dramatic improvement, but about a quarter of China's population still makes less than $5.50 a day, and $600 million make just $154 a month. Meanwhile, China has about 500 billionaires.
If communism looks like a huge number of people living on less than $5.50 a day, while billionaires still exist, I'm really going to dislike communism for the exact same reasons I dislike capitalism.
Pretty funny of you to go on a big rant regarding not trusting state propaganda then post a link to British state propaganda without a hint of irony. Why don't we look at what the World Bank has to say instead 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
Also, you're clearly not familiar with the concept of PPP, so might want to educate yourself on that as well https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/tracking-gdp-ppp-terms-shows-rapid-rise-china-and-india
Your source does not contradict mine, it just defines "poverty" as "less than $1.90 a day", which actually my source already covered.
This is a country with 500 billionaires, you can't do better than "you aren't poor as long as you make $2 a day"?
So communism is when your billionaire factory owner tells you, "Here are your 2 bucks for the day, now you aren't poor anymore".
What you appear to be utterly oblivious to is the change over time that's happening in China. The standard of living is rapidly improving for the regular people living in China with each and every decade. It's not a static situation of people making 2 dollars a day as you try to paint it.
Meanwhile, China has to exist within the global capitalist system created by the west after WW2. That means having to participate within the global economy and engage with capitalism. The thing anarchists invariably aren't able to wrap their heads around is the fact that transition from capitalism to communism is a process, and that countries led by communists still have to exist within the larger capitalist world.
Pointing at the fact that there are 500 billionaires in China as some sort of a gotcha while ignoring the larger trends really highlights how superficial your understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate really is.
So China is speedrunning late-state Capitalism with private mega-corps like Tencent and exploiting its own cheap labor by giving them out to western capitalists so they can enrich their own billionaires. Of course, your excuse, as I already said it would be much earlier in the thread, "it's the West's fault".
Isn't that peak chauvinism of you, removing all agency from the communist people because "the West is forcing them to"?
What is the point of communism?
If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
It's pretty dishonest to claim ChInA Is DoInG StAtE CaPiTALiSM when it's pretty clear that China is basically the only place in the world where standard of living is going up significantly. If China was doing what you claim it's doing then we'd see the same results as we see under actual capitalism. It'd look like India today.
Point of communism is to have an equal society, but the question is how you get there from where we are now. Apparently anarchists believe that magic happens as opposed to this being a process the way things work in the real world.
Circular reasoning: communism increases standard of living, China's standard of living is going up, therefore China is communist, therefore communism increases standard of living. This is a logical fallacy.
China's economic boom correlates to its involvement in the capitalist world economy. It's very easy to argue that the more China does capitalism, the more wealthier it gets, the better off the Chinese citizens.
India is not doing quite as well as China, but it's still seem a very dramatic decrease in poverty, especially if you go by the "$1.90/day" mark, which is not enough imho, but it's the one you choose to go by: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/september-2023-global-poverty-update-world-bank-new-data-poverty-during-pandemic-asia
To say "China is basically the only place in the world where standard of living is going up significantly", you're "basically" just straight-up wrong.
So the path to communism is paved with mega-corps and billionaires? What do you expect them to do, voluntarily give up all their wealth and possessions when it's time for the communism to begin?
You don't understand what circular reasoning is. What I actually said is that the standard of living is going up in China while it's not going up in capitalist countries. If China was capitalist then you'd expect the same thing to happen as it does everywhere else where there is capitalism. China would look something like India right now.
Oh weird, why aren't we seeing this economic boom in eastern Europe, Russia, India, and other parts of former USSR that transitioned to capitalism. According to your "logic" we should see exact same standard of living improvements there too.
Not even remotely comparable to poverty reduction in China.
Once you show me somebody doing it better than China then we'll talk. And nobody is expecting them to voluntarily give up wealth, taking the wealth away and nationalizing things is the job of the government. Of course, you refuse to accept the fact that working class holds power in China and that's what your fallacious view of China is premised on.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-of-living-by-country
https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp
Numbeo is ranking India at #56, China at #65 for quality of life index.
China is notable for having a recent rapid increase. It's easier to have a big delta number, when your starting number is so low.
According to Numbeo there are still 64 counties doing better on the quality of life index than China.
Working class holds what power? Tencent and Alibaba aren't owned by its workers. Why would the government ever decide to give up its joint wealth and power with the billionaire class? What could the workers possibly do to hold them accountable?
These numbeo rankings of yours are just another great example of how western propagandists like to play with numbers. It's pretty funny how you're very vary of numbers coming out of China because you don't trust them, but quickly lap up whatever numbers fit with your prejudices.
Here's the reality of poverty in India https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/just-how-poor-is-india-10-per-cent-says-the-world-bank-85225
Why is India not having the same kind of rapid increase, why is it getting worse there, why did capitalism create the same problems in post Soviet countries? I love how you keep dodging these questions here.
This illustrates grade school understanding of what the working class holding power means. What that means is that the government is consists of predominantly working class, which it does, and makes decisions in the interest of the working class which it also demonstrably does. The fact that you have private companies in China doesn't make it any more capitalist than having free healthcare in Canada make it communist.
Here's an entire book you can read on the subject if you were genuinely interested in this question https://redletterspp.com/products/the-east-is-still-red
Would you mind explaining which data in particular you are looking at? According to your source, poverty rate in India has dropped from 22.5% in 2011 to 10% in 2019.
It's not getting worse, it's getting much better, just at a worse rate than economists projected. I'm baffled that you can misunderstand a 5-minute read so badly.
I don't think even the most pro-Capitalist person would try to tell you that Capitalism can fix all the problems of a collapsed communist society in only 30 years.
I'll see if I can pirate an audiobook, I'm not interested enough to read a book on it. I read some summaries and it looks like massive overkill for a really simple direct question. Maybe you should just stop dodging this question: how will workers take back the power and wealth of the billionaire class?
The one that says that Indian government refuses to publish the full numbers. I'm just going to ask you straight up whether you genuinely think the poverty reduction in India is comparable to China, because if that's so there's absolutely no point continuing this discussion.
Except there was no collapsed communist society. You just made that up. What actual studies show is that over 7 million people died as a result of capitalism being introduced. https://academic.oup.com/cje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cje/beac072/7081084?guestAccessKey=01c8dd9f-af1c-48b3-b271-eb5d3a45017c&login=false
If that's your idea of fixing things what else is there to say to you.
It's pretty wild that you say you're not interested enough to read a book on a subject you've been arguing about for two days straight. You clearly have very strong opinions on this, but you refuse to even read a book about it?
I didn't dodge that question. I answered it repeatedly. Workers already took power in China when the revolution happened. The government in China is by the workers and for the workers. You only have to look at the composition of the party to see that. If you bothered to learn how Chinese government works then you wouldn't be repeating nonsense here like a broken record.
China isn't run by the billionaire class. In fact, billionaires regularly being sentenced to jail and even executed is another clear difference between China and actual capitalist societies where such things simply don't happen.
All your claims have been debunked in detail by main people. Maybe spend the time actually learning about China instead of arguing here ignorantly?
I changed my mind, I might read the book, it looks AMAZING. Remember how my original point was the communists are bad at messaging because they can't handle any criticism, they're super defensive, and they blame everything on the West? It's an entire book dedicated to proving my point.
Biden was a working class man, looks like the US is run by the working class.
Very true a lot of them are executed, but also China loves it's executions, and the US hardly executes anyone anymore.
Sending them to jail is good, better than the US, but why even allow billionaires to exist? You still have very poor people and the wealth is being gobbled up by the 500 greediest.
I'm so debunked, let's not forget your best bangers: "westoid cesspool", a clown face 🤡, posting a source that you interpreted completely wrong, and giving me a whole book because you can't answer a question.
What you evidently don't realize is that you're looking in a mirror here. You are smug and arrogant, you refuse to even consider the possibility that you might be wrong even though you openly admit to having superficial knowledge of the subject. Then you get upset that people don't take your criticisms seriously.
See this is precisely the smug sort of ignorance I'm talking about right there. If you bothered to actually learn how the party works in China, then you'd see how utterly hilarious your comment is. Pretty much all the party members come from working class, and they regularly engage with the people in their communities, and do actual community work. Party members are even on the frontlines when there are natural disasters. Comparing that to the oligarchy you have in US is equal parts sad and hilarious.
Your orientalism is showing again.
I've already explained this to you. China has to exist in a world that's been dominated by US capitalists. If you bother studying a bit of history, you'll see the problems USSR had as a result of trying to compete with the US dominated world. While you smugly blame all the problems on USSR on communism, the reality is that it was under siege from your empire throughout its whole existence.
It's pretty funny how this works isn't it. If a country disengages from the capitalist world and capitalists choke it to death then you point to it as a failure of communism. If a country finds a compromise that allows it to exist within capitalism then it's not real communism. So, you anarchists want us all to keep living in hell because real world solutions just don't live up to your perfect standards.
Sorry, I forgot that reading to an anarchist is like garlic to a vampire.
Wrong about what, in particular? I think communism is the only chance our species has at a future. I think China does a lot of good things, particular in the spirit of communism, and has communism to thank for many of its particular successes. I believe in global labor solidarity, US laborers and Chinese laborers, together against the capitalist classes. I think your brand of messaging is working against that goal.
Many US politicians come from working class, are almost always found on the front lines of disasters, and frequently engage with communities in town halls. This is not impressive stuff, it's like baseline politician duty.
I love the shifting rhetoric where sometimes communism is stronger and better than capitalism, and sometimes it's weaker. And don't pretend the USSR and China weren't/aren't also imperialist.
100% true, the only way to real communism is global communism. Which means if you want real communism, you have to begrudgingly shift your focus from "West bad", to "how do we liberate the laborers of the West to overthrow their capitalist overlords", which means better pro-communism messaging.
People can't read your mind and it never comes across that you believe any of these things. What you come across as a defender of the current capitalist system. So, perhaps you too could think about better messaging. Frankly, you just come across as a total dick, and that naturally brings out the worst in people. When you do your trolling and make smug jabs you get the same in return, and then you end up making people who might actually agree with you on a lot of things develop a dislike for you.
None of US top politicians do any of that, and none of them worked a day in their lives. For example, let's look at how Xi started out. Guy literally lived in cave in a small village. How has he advanced and got where he is? By doing actual work and demonstrating results to his community, by getting increasingly bigger responsibilities and demonstrating competence. And he still visits the poorest villages today, he sees how people live, what their problems are. And that's how it works for the rest of the party as well. If you look at the structure of the party, it is in no way comparable to what you have in US https://news.cgtn.com/event/2021/who-runs-the-cpc/index.html
I'm not shifting any rhetoric, I just love how you make an art of misinterpreting everything I say in the worst way possible.
In case you weren't aware, US was the only major country that didn't get razed by WW2. While USSR along with the rest of Europe and Asia were being destroyed, US ramped up its military industrial complex. After the war, US created NATO and turned Europe into its vassal. That's how it became the dominant global power. The fact that USSR was able to stand up to that while rebuilding essentially on its own is a testament to the strength of communism.
The point I was actually making was that the cold war obviously had a huge negative impact on both economic and social development of USSR. This is the same problem DPRK and Cuba have today, and your regime spends a lot of time scaring people regarding dangers of communism using them as examples.
Accepting that the western system is bad and recognizing that systems like China, while imperfect, are a path in the right direction is the correct messaging. Most of western propaganda relies on the red scare. When people are afraid of real world examples of communism, then they naturally end up preferring keeping the system they have. If people learn to accept that China does a lot of things right, and that real world communism isn't scary, then it can be used an example of how things can improve.
Finally, if communism ever did end up developing in the west then it would necessarily be rooted in western values. Every communist project is necessarily rooted in history, culture, and the material conditions of the place it develops in. USSR, China, Cuba, and so on are all different approaches that people can learn from.
So, if you think that the only way forward is global communism, then you have to ask yourself why people in the west are so afraid of communism and whether your own messaging is feeding into that fear.
Yeah, I am a dick, but also the only position you were making me defend was that communist messaging sucks. It's way too easy to defend that communist messaging sucks.
It's because communist messaging sucks.
Let's be honest, you would've been saying that communist messaging sucks when the Soviet revolution happened too. You would've dismissed Lenin with the same smug insults. Yet, that's the kind of messaging that got people organized, educated, and mobilized to carry out a revolution. If ML messaging actually sucked then it wouldn't have resulted in many successful revolutions.
Absolutely not, and the Communist Manifesto was a brilliant piece of writing. These are communists who knew how to speak to people's frustrations and desires.
So I amend my claim, I was wrong. Communists in the past were great at messaging, communists alive today suck at messaging.
Communists today are using all the same materials and asking people to read works like The State and Revolution, the Manifesto, and so on. I'm not sure what you think is so different about messaging today from the messaging in the past. From what I can tell the problem isn't the messaging, but the fact that most people in the west have been generally happy to keep capitalism and ignore its problems.
Notice that the revolutions failed to spread to the west at the start of the 20th century as well, despite the great messaging. Germany came close, but ultimately socdems, libs, and fascists closed ranks to strangle the revolutionary movement. Same happened in France, Italy, Spain, and Greece.
The difference is that we live in the present, not the past, and the present is a lot different than the past.
The communist manifesto was brilliant because Marx and Engels wrote it specifically for the average working class people of their time. It wouldn't have worked if they wrote it for people almost 200 years past.
Let go of the history and tradition. I'm not asking anyone to write a new communist manifesto of the 21st century, but talk to people like you live in 2023, not a cult of tradition. Embrace modernity.
Lol, no. Open your eyes up, Westerners hate capitalism, they mostly just don't know yet that it's capitalism at the source of their problems. People are exhausted at the idea of the iPhone 16 Max Pro Plus X Series, they just want to make a fair living wage to provide for their family, and have time to spend with their family. If you can offer a home, healthy food, medical care, and education at 32 work hours per week, you are sold to almost everyone in the US.
Class relationships have not fundamentally changed in the past century, and much of the writing directly applies to our society today. In fact, it's the clearest and most lucid explanation of what we're seeing around us. Furthermore, there have been plenty of people, such as Parenti, who have been building on these works and modernizing it. You keep talking like modern explanations of ML theory don't exist when they're readily available.
It's true that young people are becoming disillusioned by capitalism because the system is becoming increasingly unbearable. However, that's a very recent phenomenon. Meanwhile, even on Lemmy which is pretty far left from the mainstream there are plenty of people running around defending capitalism. Most people in the west can't even define what capitalism or socialism is, and they take western system for granted.
What's more is that majority of people who are discontent have no idea what to do about it. People vent their anger online and grumble, but they have no idea what to do to actually improve their conditions.
These things aren't possible under the current system because it's designed by capitalist to facilitate exploitation of the workers. The only way to change things is for workers to tear the system down and build a new one from ground up. There are no signs of that happening in the foreseeable future.
I just love that you misread the numbers to reach the conclusion you wanted, and not the real conclusion. And when I call you out, without a beat you pivot to "oh actually it's that we don't have the Indian government's numbers".
This is apex "communists are not capable of admitting they could make a mistake".
It's okay man, we're all just human, we all make little mistakes sometimes. I've certainly apologized for mistakes on this site before.
I love how you don't see the problem with claiming India reduced poverty when they don't publish their numbers.
Oh, I think it's very sus India won't publish numbers, but that's not the point. The point is that I think it's hilarious that you tried to use it as proof to make your point, when you probably skimmed it too fast because you straight read it wrong.
Especially when you're trying to cultivate a perception that you're a well-informed person, that mistake is just extra embarrassing.
So, just to be clear. You're saying we should accept that poverty reduction is happening in India despite the fact that they hide their numbers. Did I get that right?
No, I think we should read an article thoroughly before misquoting it and looking really silly.
So, what part am I misquoting. Do be clear. As far as I can tell, you are saying that I'm wrong because you believe the numbers indicating poverty decrease in India despite the fact that India hides the actual numbers. That's your argument is it not?
Seems that reading the article critically is what you refer to as misquoting.
No, my argument is that you misread it, because you were trying to use it as proof that poverty was getting worse. The article said nothing about that.
I think using sources that you've misread and are quoting to incorrectly makes for bad messaging.
I'm starting to get the impression that you didn't actually read the article. It talks about poverty decreasing using the numbers that are publicly available from India while also pointing out the following:
It' also concludes that India contributed to an overall poverty increase globally which is another indirect indicator of poverty actually increasing there:
Hope that helps.
Your two quotes are referring to two different survey counts. Let me explain how this works: it's impossible to get an exact count down to every individual, you survey a population sample and then make estimates based on your population sample. This can be done by both government and private agencies.
Here are the two different surveys from the article broken down:
The NSSO survey, done by the Indian government, not officially released, but leaked to the media. All this article tells us about the results of this survey is that "poverty had increased". No years, no numbers, no percentages. Just three words.
The CMIE survey, done by a private company, used by the World Bank. We at least have the numbers for this survey, which says poverty has more than halved from 2011 to 2019. However, the World Bank already assumed that poverty would be decreasing rapidly, and put out global poverty estimations based on rapidly decreasing poverty before
When you quoted the World Bank as saying
That was referring to CMIE survey results being less optimistic than original World Bank projections.
I did make a mistake, I didn't credit you for the NSSO survey, which did indeed support your point. I think that's why you misread the conclusion of the CMIE survey. I think it's sus af the government won't release it, but I'm also a scientist. All we have from it is, "poverty had increased". Imagine I presented to you a new article that said nothing about poverty rates in China except "poverty had increased", how much would you value that piece of information?
You are correct that the published data indicates an overall decrease, just not as much as originally claimed. And you're of course right to say that a leaked report alone with a general statement regarding poverty increase isn't necessarily convincing. However, there is a lot of other indirect evidence showing that the poverty problems in India are quite dire today. Massive farmer protests are one example, increasingly volatile political environment is another. There are also lots of articles discussing lack of investment in the social safety net in India. All of this does not paint a picture of a country where there is any meaningful poverty reduction happening.
I acknowledge that there is conflicting evidence in the article I linked though.