I will never understand why people think the government of China is functionally any different from other governments and such mafia-like structures around the world.
That’s precisely because you don’t understand how the government in China functions.
China is a state governed by the Communist party where Marxism-Leninism is the official state ideology. 87.6% of young Chinese identify with Marxism, and the party has 95 million members. The party is a grassroots driven organization, and members of the party directly engage in their communities.
Claiming that China is not functionally different from other governments shows further ignorance on your part. One simple test to consider is that China doesn’t suffer from regular crashes seen under capitalism. One of the inherent contradictions within capitalism is that the capitalists always want to cut pay for their employees to minimize the costs, while they also require consumers with enough spending power to consume the commodities they produce. This is why capitalism results in regular economic crashes when wages fall below the point where consumption can keep up with the rate of commodity production. At that point you end up with overproduction and a crash. If China was capitalist then it should be experiencing these kinds of crashes regularly just like actual capitalist nations are in the Western world.
And a related point is that quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens. Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
And then there’s the handling of the pandemic where it’s all but eliminated in China with life getting back to normal and the economy growing, while we anxiously look at our fourth wave where our government left people out to dry to protect business interests.
This is exactly like the mafia has worked in southern Italy and many of the mafia leaders have rightly pointed out that the Italian government is just a competing mafia organization.
Your text really shows how you fundamentally don’t understand how human societies work.
Today’s China is 100% state-capitalist, just slightly different in form compared to the version found in the west. Improving the wealth of its citizen has always been an effective strategy of early capitalist expansion and China is no different in that regard (but you need to look back a hundred years or so to see the same in the west). Plus many of the advantages you point out are solely due to being an export oriented economy and thus externalizing the costs to other countries and the environment.
It’s pretty clear that I understand how human societies work a lot better than you do since I at least recognize the basic fact that human societies have organized themselves hierarchically throughout history. This simple fact appears to elude anarchists. Hierarchical organization continues to prevail over federalist approaches time and again. Yet, anarchists keep selling their dogma after over a century of failure to achieve any meaningful results while rejecting sane approaches that have been shown to work.
I also love how you just keep repeating your dogma like a broken record here in face of evidence to the contrary. You claim that China is in early stages of capitalist expansion when China is an advanced economy that rivals any capitalist one already. It’s also not clear how this capitalist expansion is working given that China has grand total of four military bases abroad. Last I checked capitalism expands through colonialism and military subjugation for colonized states.
The advantages I point out are a direct result of the government applying productive forces towards common benefit. There are plenty of export oriented economies where quality of life isn’t improving in the slightest and no infrastructure is being built.
Leftists rejecting practical ways to improve lives for people in favor of utopian ideas is precisely why the west is the hellscape that it is today.
During most of humanity’s 250000 years of existence there was no large scale hierarchy at all, and even during the 5000 or so years of written history most of humanity has lived outside of state hierarchical constructs. I really wish you Marxists-Leninists would finally move on from a long shown to be historically inaccurate description of human society based on some book written more than a hundred years ago. Frankly it reminds me of people referring to the Bible for historical “facts”.
And you yourself have cited a link of the CCP recognizing they they are slowly moving away from the early capitalist expansion phase (in the last 10 years or so) and as a result wealth inequality and lack of social mobility have strongly increased in China. Oh and with expansion I mean economic expansion, not imperialists one through military bases… but beside that… travel to some places in Africa and you will very much see colonialist like expansion of Chinese companies, usually not very well liked by the local people there (other than the corrupt leaders that benefit from it).
During most of humanity’s 250000 years of existence there was no large scale hierarchy at all, and even during the 5000 or so years of written history most of humanity has lived outside of state hierarchical constructs.
That’s just an artifact of there not being that many humans around. Yet, hierarchies certainly existed and they even predate human. Apes and monkeys also organize hierarchically, and seeing how we evolved from same origins this behavior is hardwired in humans through natural selection. And the reason is that it was successful behavior that outcompeted other behaviors. Anarchist dogma is both reductive and ahistorical.
And you yourself have cited a link of the CCP recognizing they they are slowly moving away from the early capitalist expansion phase (in the last 10 years or so) and as a result wealth inequality and lack of social mobility have strongly increased in China.
China is indeed moving away from its capitalist phase, which contradicts your whole thesis here.
Oh and with expansion I mean economic expansion, not imperialists one through military bases… but beside that… travel to some places in Africa and you will very much see colonialist like expansion of Chinese companies, usually not very well liked by the local people there (other than the corrupt leaders that benefit from it).
I see you redefine imperialism as having economic relationships between countries. Why don’t we look at some actual data on how that’s working out:
You continue to parrot counterfactual nonsense while accusing others of “referring to the bible for historical facts”. Sounds like somebody needs to take a long hard look in the mirror here.
lol, the old long dis-proven monkey hierarchy story written by colonial explorers in the 19th century based on very superficial observations of chimpanzee only. Most apes do not live in hierarchical structures and even for chimpanzees it is less clear cut. The entire story is about as accurate as 19th century colonial explorers describing other societies as backwards and primitive.
If you believe that false monkey story, maybe it is time to question some of the other evidently false historical believes you seem to have?
This is the height of comedy. You at least acknowledge that apes and chimps organize hierarchically, and these are our closest ancestors last I checked. Humans throughout history have also organized hierarchically. This is even the case for small tribes.
If you can’t even acknowledge this simple fact what else is there to tell you really. The fact that you glibly jumped on the whole false monkey story instead of addressing this fact shows just how intellectually dishonest you are.
I will never understand why people feel the need to express opinions on China without having any understanding of China.
I will never understand why people think the government of China is functionally any different from other governments and such mafia-like structures around the world.
That’s precisely because you don’t understand how the government in China functions.
China is a state governed by the Communist party where Marxism-Leninism is the official state ideology. 87.6% of young Chinese identify with Marxism, and the party has 95 million members. The party is a grassroots driven organization, and members of the party directly engage in their communities.
Claiming that China is not functionally different from other governments shows further ignorance on your part. One simple test to consider is that China doesn’t suffer from regular crashes seen under capitalism. One of the inherent contradictions within capitalism is that the capitalists always want to cut pay for their employees to minimize the costs, while they also require consumers with enough spending power to consume the commodities they produce. This is why capitalism results in regular economic crashes when wages fall below the point where consumption can keep up with the rate of commodity production. At that point you end up with overproduction and a crash. If China was capitalist then it should be experiencing these kinds of crashes regularly just like actual capitalist nations are in the Western world.
And a related point is that quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens. Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
Chinese government is consistently directing labor towards public good. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century, they built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade. 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. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet and social mobility is also quite high.
And then there’s the handling of the pandemic where it’s all but eliminated in China with life getting back to normal and the economy growing, while we anxiously look at our fourth wave where our government left people out to dry to protect business interests.
Finally, the government has recently passed massive regulation on big business and released a a five-year blueprint calling for greater regulation of vast parts of the economy. The government has also openly stated that the era of capital expansion is over and the interests of the majority outweigh the interests of shareholders.
This is exactly like the mafia has worked in southern Italy and many of the mafia leaders have rightly pointed out that the Italian government is just a competing mafia organization.
Your text really shows how you fundamentally don’t understand how human societies work.
Today’s China is 100% state-capitalist, just slightly different in form compared to the version found in the west. Improving the wealth of its citizen has always been an effective strategy of early capitalist expansion and China is no different in that regard (but you need to look back a hundred years or so to see the same in the west). Plus many of the advantages you point out are solely due to being an export oriented economy and thus externalizing the costs to other countries and the environment.
It’s pretty clear that I understand how human societies work a lot better than you do since I at least recognize the basic fact that human societies have organized themselves hierarchically throughout history. This simple fact appears to elude anarchists. Hierarchical organization continues to prevail over federalist approaches time and again. Yet, anarchists keep selling their dogma after over a century of failure to achieve any meaningful results while rejecting sane approaches that have been shown to work.
I also love how you just keep repeating your dogma like a broken record here in face of evidence to the contrary. You claim that China is in early stages of capitalist expansion when China is an advanced economy that rivals any capitalist one already. It’s also not clear how this capitalist expansion is working given that China has grand total of four military bases abroad. Last I checked capitalism expands through colonialism and military subjugation for colonized states.
The advantages I point out are a direct result of the government applying productive forces towards common benefit. There are plenty of export oriented economies where quality of life isn’t improving in the slightest and no infrastructure is being built.
Leftists rejecting practical ways to improve lives for people in favor of utopian ideas is precisely why the west is the hellscape that it is today.
During most of humanity’s 250000 years of existence there was no large scale hierarchy at all, and even during the 5000 or so years of written history most of humanity has lived outside of state hierarchical constructs. I really wish you Marxists-Leninists would finally move on from a long shown to be historically inaccurate description of human society based on some book written more than a hundred years ago. Frankly it reminds me of people referring to the Bible for historical “facts”.
And you yourself have cited a link of the CCP recognizing they they are slowly moving away from the early capitalist expansion phase (in the last 10 years or so) and as a result wealth inequality and lack of social mobility have strongly increased in China. Oh and with expansion I mean economic expansion, not imperialists one through military bases… but beside that… travel to some places in Africa and you will very much see colonialist like expansion of Chinese companies, usually not very well liked by the local people there (other than the corrupt leaders that benefit from it).
That’s just an artifact of there not being that many humans around. Yet, hierarchies certainly existed and they even predate human. Apes and monkeys also organize hierarchically, and seeing how we evolved from same origins this behavior is hardwired in humans through natural selection. And the reason is that it was successful behavior that outcompeted other behaviors. Anarchist dogma is both reductive and ahistorical.
China is indeed moving away from its capitalist phase, which contradicts your whole thesis here.
I see you redefine imperialism as having economic relationships between countries. Why don’t we look at some actual data on how that’s working out:
Chinese investment in Africa has had ‘significant and persistently positive’ long-term effects, this study shows positive effects of Chinese debt relief in Africa, and no dept trap resulted from China’s investment in Sri Lankan port.
You continue to parrot counterfactual nonsense while accusing others of “referring to the bible for historical facts”. Sounds like somebody needs to take a long hard look in the mirror here.
lol, the old long dis-proven monkey hierarchy story written by colonial explorers in the 19th century based on very superficial observations of chimpanzee only. Most apes do not live in hierarchical structures and even for chimpanzees it is less clear cut. The entire story is about as accurate as 19th century colonial explorers describing other societies as backwards and primitive.
If you believe that false monkey story, maybe it is time to question some of the other evidently false historical believes you seem to have?
This is the height of comedy. You at least acknowledge that apes and chimps organize hierarchically, and these are our closest ancestors last I checked. Humans throughout history have also organized hierarchically. This is even the case for small tribes.
If you can’t even acknowledge this simple fact what else is there to tell you really. The fact that you glibly jumped on the whole false monkey story instead of addressing this fact shows just how intellectually dishonest you are.
China is not capitalist. Its a mixed economy with a predominating state-planned sector with 5 year plans.
Cut & paste propaganda, nice /s