Yeah, that’s the ironic part, it turns out that Soviets didn’t really have to make stuff up about the west while the west had to spin tall tales about evils of communism. I do think that it was a failure of Soviet education system that it failed to make people really understand the problem with capitalism. I remember when I was a kid at school, there was no discussion about it, nobody really gave it any thought. But you look in the west, and indoctrination starts very early on. Not just in schools too, it’s in TV shows, comic books, everything. And we see now just how effective this type of indoctrination is.

And yeah, that’s fair, I meant specifically in terms of media entertainment. I did spend a lot of time outside with my friends as a kid. This is, incidentally, another thing you can’t do in the west. My parents would just let me go out by myself when I was 8 years old without a single worry. I’d go out in the morning, come back lunch, and hang out with friends the rest of the day. That’s how safe things were. That sort of thing would be unthinkable in Canada today.

I don’t think Russia can stay stable if the conflict is frozen though. That’s just not gonna fly politically, and political instability creates a risk for China in the long term. You gotta keep in mind that Chinese tend to have a very long perspective on things, and they’re not looking for quick wins. They know the west is coming after them next, and they understand perfectly well that the war is bigger than Russia and Ukraine. If they don’t defeat the west here, then the west gets a chance to regroup and try again. This is the same danger Russia and China face here together. And when Russia wins, it’s till going to be highly dependent on China economically which means China will continue to exercise a ton of influence over Russia. On top of that, Chinese will probably get a ton of reconstruction and resource development contracts in Ukraine. All of that cannot happen if there’s a frozen conflict. So, there’s simply way more to gain by winning than letting this fester.

Letting the war drag out to drain the west certainly does seem to be what China is doing. I think they’re aiming for a comprehensive victory here where the west becomes so depleted that they have to accept a new world order. You say they’re supplying both sides, but here’s what’s actually happening https://www.mining.com/web/us-business-group-says-some-critical-minerals-are-nearly-unobtainable-from-china/

China cut the west off from critical inputs they need to produce weapons. So, now the west isn’t able to restock what they’ve spent over 4 years in Ukraine and now in Iran. The inventories here keep going down, and there’s nothing the west can do about it lacking its own industries.

Listen to this guy

And this is what I was saying about Bunaov being shuffled to the head of the army. The strategy is shifting towards naked terrorism now.

stay mad

yeah couldn’t imagine why

I do think it’s nice how solar panels actually end up being symbiotic with the biosystem though. There was another similar story from China where solar panels and they were getting overgrown by grass, so they got sheep and goats in, and now it’s a whole ecosystem that’s also producing electricity. Panels also provide shade in hotter environments which allows plants to grow where it was just too hot before.

🤣

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteers_(1985_film)

yup

Do you agree with this?

This is basically what Marx explains in the first volume of The Capital. It’s good to see young people still read Marx in Russia. :)

And he’s right that full automation is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism because the whole system is based around consumption. You need wage workers who produce value, and then pay the capital owner to consume goods. If you eliminate wage workers from the system there’s nobody left to consume the goods. And once you have the majority of population become useless within the system it can no longer function.

But on the other hand, progressive youth there—not just those with socialist views—are starting to realize that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, that it’s a hollow sham

Basically what happened was that the US sat out the second world war and developed its economy while the rest of the world burned. Then they used their head start to prop up their ideological bloc during the Cold War and created the whole mythology that capitalism was a superior system and the standard of living in the west wasn’t because the US had a huge head start, but because capitalism is a superior system. Now that China has caught up and capitalism has destroyed all the material benefits western public enjoyed, we’re seeing the new generation sobering up.

And I’m still shocked how nobody actually reads books here. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me. Just like you, I was reading from the young age, cause there really wasn’t much other type of entertainment. And reading really opened up your imagination, I’m incredibly grateful for growing up in USSR and having developed this habit. Reading a good book is still by far the most enjoyable experience for me.

incidentally https://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latestreleases/202512/17/content_WS6941fa8bc6d00ca5f9a08243.html

It’s a result of changing material conditions. People see they have no future within the system.

I maintain that you have to look at the big picture here. The war isn’t between Russia and Ukraine, it’s between the west and the east. And the principle players are the US and China. So, the real question is which bloc can maintain discipline longer. As I’ve said many times before, Russia collapsing or becoming politically unstable would be a disaster for China. They rely on Russian food and energy imports, and Russia protects China’s western flank. If Russia was destabilized or balkanized, then it would become China’s Ukraine. Therefore, it’s obvious that China cannot allow that to happen under any circumstances. If Russia was genuinely in trouble then China would do everything in its power to bail them out. There’s no two ways about it.

Given this unarguable fact, the next question is who is in a better position to provide support. Can the US help Europe more than China can help Russia? Again, the answer is obvious, China being the industrial superpower, is in a far better position to support Russia materially than the US is to support Europe. In fact, the US itself is largely dependent on Chinese imports to function. And China cutting off critical things like rare earths is already affecting military production in America.

So, given all that, there’s only one way this war can go. You can look at all the palace intrigue, and the drones, and all the media about attacks on Russia, but what I explain above is the underlying hard reality of the situation. Everything else is just surface noise. If Russia loses then China is fucked, and given that China is the strongest player here that just will not happen.

And I don’t see what they can do to get out of Iran now. The problem is that Israel is now in an existential crisis, and they will not allow the US to leave. Given the amount of influence Israel has over the US, they will continue to drag them into deeper conflict with Iran. We can already see how the war has restarted and likely to escalate now that the US is attacking stuff like water facilities in Iran.

I can’t see how anything changes in a major way in Ukraine before autumn, but once the global energy shock hits, that’s when things are going to start moving fast. Right now, the US and other countries are frantically dumping their oil reserves on the market to depress the prices, but those are going to run out very soon. After that there’s just not going to be enough oil to go around.

your human generated slop is still slop

ah so an edgy 12 years old

Ah yes, immediately descending into personal attacks once faced with actual counterpoints to your drivel. Bravo.

Wow amazing counterpoint there truly worthy of an edgy 12 year old. Incredible how you can’t comprehend that a socialist society will still have contradictions, but the nature of the government is fundamentally different from one ruled by capitalists. The fact that you reposted that Luxemburg quote shows that you don’t actually understand what she’s saying.

My point is this: you are utterly clueless on the subject you’re attempting to discuss, and you should spend the time to actually learn about it instead of flaunting your ignorance in public and embarrassing yourself.

But the only thing we can do is fight for it, and have the optimism that we can get there.

Amazing contribution to the discussion there. Using google translate to make sure we know you’re clown really is a cherry on top.

Oh wow, you really think you’ve discovered something groundbreaking here. Yup, nobody has ever heard of contradictions or commodity production under socialism. You’re the first genius to point out that private ownership and wage labor still exist in China. Truly a revelation that would make Marx weep with joy!

The fact that you think socialism means the immediate abolition of every bourgeois relation overnight tells me your understanding of the subject comes from memes and a cursory skimming of a single Wikipedia paragraph. Socialism is not some sort of an utopia handed down from the heavens. It is a transitional society that emerges from capitalism and is therefore stamped with all the birthmarks of the old society. Commodity production, wage differentials, and even the market economy persist precisely because you cannot wave a magic wand and instantaneously create abundance and perfect class consciousness.

China’s gig economy and the hukou system are real problems and nobody with a functioning brain denies that. But the difference between China and a capitalist country is that the state, led by the Communist Party representing the working class, is actively intervening to regulate, reform, and suppress these contradictions. Hokou reforms are a perfect example of this. The food delivery fine you cited, a mere 1.5% of profit, is indeed insufficient and that is a legitimate criticism. But to present that as evidence that China is simply capitalist is to ignore the fact that the government has the legal and political power to improve the situation which is precisely what they are doing. The very fact that the regulator fined them at all, that the public outcry is taken seriously, that the party openly discusses the need to break monopoly capital, is something no bourgeois state would even pretend to do.

You want a socialist society with zero exploitation, zero inequality, and zero contradictions. That is called communism, and it will take a long time to get there. In the meantime, socialist societies are messy, uneven, and full of tensions just like every human society that has ever existed. That is an argument against socialism that only a person with an utterly infantile understanding of politics and economics could make. Your gotcha list just proves you have the analytical depth of a child.

really love how you just can’t help but keep replying here, a true master of perseveration

Do give a concrete example of me ignoring class dominance. It’s hard to take people who just make up unsubstantiated personal attacks instead of engaging in honest discussion seriously. Perhaps, you should actually spend the time to learn about these countries instead of making a clown of yourself in public.