• Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          14
          ·
          4 hours ago

          Leftists have regularly been advocating for organizing:

          The problem with liberals is that they still think the democrats are a path to progress, rather than slow death.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              10
              ·
              3 hours ago

              Your entire argument is based on the idea that shitposting online is the primary means by which leftists organize. I organize with a communist party in real life, online memes and shitposting are by no means what people advocate as “practice,” it’s just a thing to do in free time. Take a step back and rethink what you believe is going on.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  ·
                  2 hours ago

                  What in Earth are you talking about? All real communist orgs use online agitation, newsletters, social media, and more. I’m not saying that shitposting is valuable, I’m saying it’s not what I mean by practice. You’re deeply confused.

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    10 hours ago

    Ngl, the fact that the US lied about masks and had such a clusterfuck response while China listened to the science was a major step in me becoming China-pilled.

  • pineapple@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    15 hours ago

    Waiting for Liberals to actually have a thought out response to the excellent resources the MLs of this community provide.

      • SpicyLizards@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        5 hours ago

        Lol. Sorry, one is absolutely perfect and must not have any problems spoken about. Let’s do some more you vs us bullshit (not that I am from either).

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          5 hours ago

          Do you think, perhaps, that there could be a middle ground between “as awful as the US Empire” and “absolutely perfect and must not have any problems spoken about?” Do you think the position “US Empire is awful, China is good but not perfect” can exist, or is that too nuanced?

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          5 hours ago

          There is no genocide of Uyghurs. Uyghur genocide atrocity propaganda akin to claiming that there’s “white genocide” in South Africa, Christian genocide in Nigeria, or that Hamas sexually assaulted babies in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

          In the case of Xinjiang, the area is crucial in the Belt and Road Initiative, so the west backed sepratist groups in order to destabilize the region. China responded with vocational programs and de-radicalization efforts, which the west then twisted into claims of “genocide.” Nevermind that the west responds to seperatism with mass violence, and thus re-education programs focused on rehabilitation are far more humane, the tool was used both for outright violence by the west into a useful narrative to feed its own citizens.

          The best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective’s Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is explicitly pro-PRC, but this is an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims.

          I also recommend reading the UN report and China’s response to it. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.

          Tourists do go to Xinjiang all the time as well. You can watch videos like this one on YouTube, though it obviously isn’t going to be a comprehensive view of a complex situation like this.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              12
              ·
              5 hours ago

              I think you should reread my comment and sources, as they already counter that article. Do you think I haven’t read that wikipedia entry already? It’s the first thing people jump to when trying to prove a genocide, despite being full of holes and referencing Adrian Zenz, or sources relying on Adrian Zenz. Have the basic decency to check out the sources I linked.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                9
                ·
                4 hours ago

                You’re getting downvoted because your points have been thoroughly debunked, and we refuse to accept your fantasies as material reality.

    • KurtVonnegut [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      15 hours ago

      The United States of America just assisted in carrying out a genocide.

      China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty through progressive economic policies.

      Please tell me, specifically, why “both states are awful.”

      • davel@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        21
        ·
        edit-2
        13 hours ago

        A lot of people are so blackpilled by capitalist realism that they think “all sides bad” is the enlightened position of Serious People. It also conveniently means that There Is No Alternative, and there’s no point in trying to assert change.

  • wakko@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    15 hours ago

    China is still the world’s leading polluter, in a time where those so-called “scientists” most definitely know what they’re doing contributing to global climate change like they are. No country is innocent, but making no attempt to not be first isn’t a defensible policy position.

    • Ferrous@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      3 hours ago

      China is still the world’s leading polluter

      This is a rhetorical sleight of hand that conveniently glosses over the actual history of polluting nations.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      6 hours ago

      The PRC is leading the world in green energy production, electrification, and combatting desertification. They are the largest polluter because they are the largest producer, if you compare pollution based on consumption then the west is by far the larger polluter.

    • tobi_tensei@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      7 hours ago

      China is the one of the most populated country in the world. It produces about 30% of all manufactured goods many of which is consumed by rest of the world. So yeah there is going to be some pollution. If we take about on a per-person basis countries like the U.S. still emit more. Moreover, China is the largest investor in renewable energy and China alone accounted for roughly 40% of the world’s renewable energy investment.

    • davel@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      33
      ·
      edit-2
      14 hours ago

      previously:

      China is the world’s biggest emitter of carbon gases**

      Yeah, because it’s the second-largest population in the world and it’s producing & exporting the world’s products. You don’t get to de-industrialize, import your products, and then chastise your producers for using more energy than you, when they’re using that energy for you.

      China is also the largest green energy user and producer of green energy technology, which it also exports.

      The Economist: China’s clean-energy revolution will reshape markets and politics

  • taygaloocat@leminal.space
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    18 hours ago

    Dictatorship might seem appealing while democracy is failing, but we should never give up on democracy in exchange for safety and stability.

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      14 hours ago

      You have it the wrong way around: Chinese democracy is appealing while western capitalist dictatorship is failing.

      • pie_enjoyer@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        10 hours ago

        When I last checked it, western countries were democracies and china was a totalitarian regime. Did anything change in the last 5 minutes?

          • pie_enjoyer@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            10 hours ago

            Burden of proof is on your side. Prove that China is a democracy and western countries are dictatorships

            • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              13
              ·
              7 hours ago

              For one, no, that’s not how burden of proof works: you were the one who made the claim first. I wish you Reddit losers would actually learn what these phrases mean rather than treating them like magical incantations for winning debates.

              Secondly, you’ve already been presented with ample proof that you just ignored.

    • davel@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      17 hours ago

      You can’t give up what you never had. Previously.

      It’s not wrong to say regulatory capture is a problem, it just doesn’t go far enough. The US government was never not captured by the bourgeoisie, because the US was born of a bourgeois revolution[1]. The wealthy, white, male, land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers constructed a bourgeois state with “checks and balances” against the “tyranny of the majority”. It was never meant to represent the majority—the working class—and it never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (at least those not disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

      The game is rigged. The election cycle’s pomp and circumstance is to divert your energy and attention from the fact that it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.

    • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      34
      ·
      18 hours ago

      China has democracy. Just not bourgeois liberal democracy. The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local levels are directly elected, and then these representatives from around the country elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Also due to the nature of things the vast majority of representatives are among those directly elected by the people. You should research things before you just say things. And we’re very happy with our system. Even Harvard puts the approval rating around 95%.

      • pie_enjoyer@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        10 hours ago

        If China is a democracy, what opposition parties and media not related to government are in there?

        There’s only one party in China, every communication channel is controlled by party (not even the government).

        China consistently ranks near the bottom in every democracy index

        • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          16
          ·
          10 hours ago

          If China is a democracy, what opposition parties and media not related to government are in there?

          Democracy is not defined by how many parties exist. It means that political authority comes from the people and that the population participates in governance. Different societies organize that participation differently. Liberal systems center competitive parties and election campaigns. China organizes participation through elections at the grassroots level combined with consultation and representation throughout the policy process.

          In China we call this whole-process people’s democracy. The idea is that democracy should not exist only on election day every few years. It should exist through the entire political process: discussion, drafting policy, consultation with social groups, implementation, and feedback.

          At the local level, people directly elect deputies to township and county People’s Congresses. These bodies then elect representatives to higher levels, which continues upward through provincial congresses and ultimately to the National People’s Congress. Because of this structure, most officials reach higher positions only after years working at lower levels where they directly interact with voters. Advancement depends on performance, governance results, and evaluation by the people and bodies that elected them.

          China also has a consultative system through the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Multiple legally recognized parties and mass organizations participate there along with the Communist Party. Trade unions, ethnic organizations, professional associations, business groups, and other social bodies submit proposals and participate in consultation before policy decisions are finalized. It is not an adversarial party competition model, but it is still a structured form of representation.

          There’s only one party in China, every communication channel is controlled by party

          China does manage information. But I would recommend learning about Parenti’s concept of “inventing reality.” In capitalist systems the media is formally private, but in practice it is owned by a handful of large corporations and billionaires. Those owners decide what stories are emphasized, what narratives are framed as legitimate, and what perspectives are marginalized.

          That kind of control is less visible but still very real. A small group of capital owners has enormous influence over what hundreds of millions of people see and how events are interpreted. So the idea that Western media is completely free from power structures is not serious. Remember Cambridge analytica?

          China consistently ranks near the bottom in every democracy index

          “But the eagle burger institute of goodness says China bad”. These indexes measure democracy using a definition that assumes Western liberal institutions as the universal standard. If your scoring system requires competitive multi-party elections and privately owned media corporations, then of course a different political model will rank poorly.

          China measures legitimacy differently. The government is evaluated based on outcomes and public satisfaction. Long-running surveys like the Harvard Ash Center study consistently find extremely high levels of reported public satisfaction with government performance in China.

          You can disagree with the Chinese political system. That is fine. But reducing democracy to “number of parties” or citing Western indexes without examining how the Chinese system actually works is not a serious analysis.

      • flyby@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        15 hours ago

        Polls in authoritarian countries are notoriously more positive about own countries than in democratic ones due to insane amount of propaganda (yes, even compared to US). In which next country do we di polls next - Russia or North Korea?

        • tobi_tensei@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          4 hours ago

          “C’mon, Chinese govt lifted 800 million people out of extreme poverty. Took the country from one of the poorest in a world to a world power. All this in just 4 decades and you expect the people to hate the govt.”

        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          14
          ·
          edit-2
          12 hours ago

          “Umm they’re they Bad Country sweaty you can’t trust the people there. Just like the other Bad Countries!”

          You are a political toddler and the fact that you don’t understand this while our side diddles kids and bombs elementary schools is insane

          • flyby@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            8 hours ago

            You are just privileged idealist disappointed in your own system so you try to latch on something completely opposite in order to belong somewhere. I have experienced living under one of those systems and fleeing it to one of the “West Bad!” countries. I am both envious that you didn’t have to go through this and pitying you that eventually you will be disappointed in your new “Good Country” choice

            • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              11
              ·
              8 hours ago

              Lmao you’re another one of the post soviet 20 something’s who think shock therapy was communism’s fault. Or you’re a reactionary who fled because you’re a right wing loser either way it explains your white man’s burden chauvinism.

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          19
          ·
          14 hours ago

          “During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”

          Blackshirts and Reds, Michael Parenti

      • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 hours ago

        the US is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and that people still fail to see that after the epstein files is actually shocking

        While this is true

        https://progressive.international/blueprint/cb7dbaf4-b106-4105-8bde-fdab4bfc2fe8-building-whole-process-peoples-democracy-in-china/en/

        To be fair, you didn’t pick ubiased authors here. Neither of the authors is capable of saying anything negative of China.

        For example, Paweł Wargan proponent of new Chinese imperialisms with extra steps - e.g. https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/global/multi-polar-world-order-is-multi-imperialism/

        • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          5 hours ago

          The slogan “oppose all equally” may sound revolutionary in its refusal to compromise, but detached from dialectical and historical materialism it collapses into abstract moralism that objectively serves the very hegemony it claims to reject. Dialectics teaches us that not all contradictions are identical, and that the principal contradiction must guide our strategic orientation. To declare neutrality between an empire that maintains eight hundred overseas bases, controls the global financial infrastructure, and routinely overthrows governments, and states that merely seek to weaken that empire’s stranglehold, is not principled internationalism. It is a refusal to analyze the concrete balance of forces, and in practice it aids the stronger power by dispersing opposition and denying tactical support to forces that, however imperfectly, challenge the core of imperialist domination. This abstract stance upholds capitalist hegemony by ensuring that resistance remains fragmented and that the most powerful aggressor faces no coordinated counter-pressure. Lenin criticized this kind of centrism as the highest form of opportunism because it cloaks passivity in revolutionary phraseology. Scientific socialism requires us to engage with actually existing struggles, to distinguish between the hand that wields the whip and the hand that seeks to break it, and to build proletarian independence within anti-hegemonic movements rather than abstaining from them in the name of purity. To do otherwise is not to stand above imperialism but to leave its structure intact.

          The comparison of contemporary China to Weimar Germany seeking a “place under the sun” is not merely imprecise; it is fundamentally ahistorical because it transplants categories from one historical epoch onto a completely different material and geopolitical conjuncture. Weimar Germany operated within a world order defined by colonial scramble, pre-nuclear military technology, and the absence of any binding international legal framework constraining territorial conquest. Its mode of production was monopoly capitalism in crisis, with a bourgeois state increasingly fused with fascist political forms, driven by the imperative to seize colonies for raw materials and markets through direct coercion. The superstructure of that era reflected this: social Darwinist ideology, overt racial hierarchy, and a diplomatic culture that accepted war as a legitimate instrument of policy. Contemporary China exists in a post-1945 world shaped by the UN Charter’s nominal commitment to sovereignty, the constraining reality of nuclear deterrence, and a dense network of multilateral institutions that, however imperfect, raise the political cost of overt aggression. Its mode of production retains some of the contradictions as is expected in the socialist transitionary period, grounded in public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, the leading role of the Communist Party, and a development logic subordinated to long-term social stability rather than the short-term maximization of monopoly profit. The superstructure reflects this: an ideological framework centered on “community of shared future for mankind,” non-interference principles, and South-South cooperation rather than civilizational hierarchy. When China engages the Global South through infrastructure investment and trade partnerships, it does so within a historical context where former colonies possess sovereign statehood and can negotiate terms, however unevenly. This is not to deny contradictions. It is to insist that historical materialism demands we analyze the concrete social formation before us, not force it into an abstract analogy that ignores the vast differences in geopolitical structure, productive forces, class relations, and ideological superstructure that separate the interwar period from the twenty-first century. To do otherwise is to abandon the method that allows us to understand history as a process of material development rather than a cycle of repeating labels.

          The concept of “social imperialism” as applied to China and Russia in this context is not just analytically weak; it is politically absurd because it detaches the label from any concrete examination of how value actually flows through the global economy. To claim that a state is imperialist simply because it engages in international trade, invests in infrastructure abroad, or seeks to protect its sovereign interests is to empty the term of all scientific content and reduce it to a sectarian slur. This misuse of theory reflects the deeper problem of Trotskyism as a reactionary and ultra-leftist tendency that substitutes dogmatic formulae for materialist analysis. Lenin warned against the “infantile disorder” of communism, and this article exemplifies it perfectly: a refusal to engage with the messy contradictions of actually existing struggle in favor of a pure, abstract schema that exists only in textbooks. This approach worships the letter of Marxist theory while abandoning its living soul, applying quotations like incantations rather than using dialectics to grasp the movement of real historical forces. By demanding that anti-imperialist movements be led by perfectly conscious proletarian forces before they deserve support, Trotskyism isolates revolutionaries from the masses they seek to lead and objectively strengthens the hand of the principal enemy. It is reactionary because it blocks the formation of united fronts against hegemony, dismisses the genuine anti-colonial content of multipolarity demands, and substitutes moral denunciation for the patient work of building working-class independence within actually existing movements. Scientific socialism requires us to start from material conditions, not from doctrinal purity, and to recognize that the path to revolution runs through the concrete contradictions of our time, not through the abstract categories of a frozen orthodoxy.

          All the errors traced through this critique flow from a single, foundational break: the abandonment of dialectical and historical materialism as the method of scientific socialism. When analysis begins with abstract categories like “imperialist” or “social-imperialist” applied mechanically, rather than with a concrete examination of production relations, class forces, and historical specificity, the conclusions are predetermined by the schema, not discovered through investigation. This is why the article collapses distinct social formations into a false equivalence, why it substitutes moral denunciation for strategic assessment, and why its prescription of “oppose all equally” becomes a sterile formula that objectively upholds the hegemony it claims to fight. Scientific socialism does not proceed by labeling but by uncovering the movement of contradictions within actually existing conditions. Multipolarity is not an end-state to be celebrated or condemned in the abstract; it is a contradictory terrain shaped by the struggle between hegemonic capital and sovereign development, within which class struggle must be advanced. Our task is not to stand outside this terrain in doctrinal purity but to engage it, to build proletarian independence within anti-hegemonic movements, and to push the logic of multipolarity beyond bourgeois limits toward genuine internationalism. To do that, we must return to the method that makes our politics scientific: the concrete analysis of concrete conditions, rooted in the living dialectic of historical materialism. Anything else is not Marxism, but book worship dressed in revolutionary phraseology.

        • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          5 hours ago

          This article is garbage because it abandons the very method that makes socialism scientific. Dialectical and historical materialism are not optional accessories to Marxist thought; they are its core foundations, and to break with them is to break with scientific socialism as a whole. The article’s definition of imperialism remains stuck at the level of quantitative description, ignoring how modern imperialism functions through the enforcement of unequal exchange and the systematic extraction of super profits from the periphery to the core. This qualitative dimension is essential because imperialism is not merely about military bases or corporate size; it is about the global circuit of capital that reproduces dependency and drains value from oppressed nations. When we apply this materialist framework to Russia, we must acknowledge that it is a capitalist state with possible imperialist ambitions, yet the devastating aftermath of shock therapy left it without the economic means to project power as a classic imperialist state. This structural weakness has pushed Russia toward backing anti-imperialist struggles throughout the periphery as its primary method of competing with the entrenched imperial core bloc, a position determined by concrete historical conditions rather than abstract moral equivalence. China presents a fundamentally different case because its mode of production retains a socialist character grounded in public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, the leading role of the Communist Party, and a development model subordinated to social need rather than monopoly profit maximization. This does not mean China is free of contradictions, but the dominant logic of its political economy is not driven by the imperative to extract super profits from the Global South. Instead, its foreign policy, however imperfect, aligns with breaking the chains of unequal exchange and creating space for sovereign development. To collapse these distinct material realities into a single “multi-imperialist” label is to abandon the concrete analysis of concrete conditions that Lenin identified as the living soul of Marxism.

          This false equivalence between US hegemony and the multipolar framework extends from a refusal to analyze the actual architecture of global power. The contemporary imperialist system is not a collection of equal great powers but a hierarchical structure of Euro-Amerikan hegemony led by the United States and integrated through institutional mechanisms like NATO, Five Eyes, AUKUS, and the G7. Europe, Oceania, and numerous vassal states are not independent poles but subordinate components of this core bloc, bound by military integration, financial dependency, and ideological alignment. This is the actually existing unipolar order that multipolarity challenges. Within this context, both Russia and China support anti-imperialist struggles across the periphery, but they do so for fundamentally different reasons rooted in their distinct material conditions. Russia, as a capitalist state weakened by the catastrophic legacy of shock therapy, backs anti-hegemonic movements as a strategic necessity: lacking the economic mass to compete through direct imperial projection, it aligns with forces that weaken the US-led bloc, creating breathing room for its own sovereignty and regional influence. China, by contrast, operates from a socialist mode of production where the state retains command over the commanding heights of the economy and where development is subordinated to long-term social stability rather than monopoly profit extraction. Its support for multipolarity stems not from a drive to dominate the Global South but from a structural interest in dismantling the unequal exchange mechanisms that have historically drained value from oppressed nations, including its own experience of semi-colonial subjugation. To conflate these two distinct positions, or to equate either with the predatory logic of Euro-Amerikan imperialism, is to abandon the dialectical method that requires us to analyze the specific character of each social formation and its place within the global contradiction.

        • zedcell@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          6 hours ago

          Trotskyists failing to understand Lenin’s Imperialism for the 1000th time.

          Imperialism is the stage of Capitalism where a militaristic foreign policy is developed and employed as a continuation of economic policy.

          China is not doing imperialism because it trades with other nations and helps them build infrastructure and factories in win-win negotiations. When was the last time China got a trade deal or negotiated settlement because it pointed a load of guns and missiles at its potential trade partner?

          Just childish and pathetic both sides-ism of the social fascists.