I’m not saying that imperialist aggression didn’t / doesn’t contribute to the collapse of socialist states - it most certainly does - I’m saying campists tend to get tunnel vision and think that it’s the only reason they fail. Cuba has actually been quite successful at enduring in spite of imperialist aggression, and I think there’s a lot of benefit in asking what it is they are doing better than past socialist states. In my opinion the answer lies in the fact that their governmental structure is far more horizontal in comparison to other attempts at socialism such as the USSR, and that has resulted in policy that is far more responsive to the specific material needs of local communities within Cuba. Contrast the USSR in which the pseudoscientific beliefs of a central authority figure turned what could have been a brief and localized food shortage into a full-blown famine spanning the entire union.

With regard to China being state capitalist, I skimmed the essay you linked well enough to see that it does not address the anarchist critique of state “socialism,” namely that state ownership does not truly constitute collective ownership because the state is a hierarchical institution that centralizes decision-making power in such a way that the will of the people affected is often ignored. Don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge the undeniable successes and advantages of central planning when compared to the neoliberal method of not planning at all beyond the fiscal quarter, but those are not the only options. I believe that horizontal planning is superior to both, and is the only way for an economy to be truly socialist in character. Examples of this being done can even be found in the revolutions that created the USSR and the PRC before they seized state power. It’s also not a discrete binary; there is a spectrum between totalitarian dictatorship and full horizontalism, and the projects which are most successful tend to veer towards the latter rather than the former.

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How does this make sense in response to a meme showing that I support Palestine? I know y’all love to use rule 1 to censor people for “bigotry” but at least put some effort into making it plausible.

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I’m responding to the meme which presents learning and critique as separate and mutually exclusive. In order to learn from something you have to critique it, and if you believe that China is not perfect then you know this and should agree with me.

There’s also another thing you’re doing that I see MLs do all the time, which is posit that Chinese socialism is uniquely suited to China and that it must be implemented differently in other places. While I do agree that this is the case, I often see MLs use this argument to excuse flaws in the implementation of socialism in China as necessary alterations required due to the particular conditions and historical circumstances in which it was created.

IMO there were many wrong turns and mistakes that China made in its socialist transition that have had lasting negative consequences, and though they can often be explained by China’s particular conditions and historical circumstances, that doesn’t excuse them.

Learning and critique are the same thing. If you look at China and go “this is perfect in every way and we should copy it,” then you aren’t actually learning anything at all. In my experience MLs don’t get angry with anarchists and others critical of China because they don’t learn from Chinese socialism, but because they don’t like the conclusions they’ve made.

The US killed Iran’s leadership and strengthened their resolve. Now a bunch of younger, more creative, and more passionate people have taken leadership positions. Iranian propaganda has proven more effective and internet savvy, and their military decision-making has likely improved due to destagnation. Trump literally threatening to wipe the entire civilization off the face of the earth likely pushes Iranians who are against the regime to reconsider (even if only temporarily while they deal with the bigger threat), and I couldn’t say I wouldn’t make the same judgment if I were in their position. What a colossal failure, but hey, at least the defense contractors are making money, right? I can’t wait for the blowback from this to inspire the next round of interventions, if we’re even still around by then.

Why don’t you correct me instead of marking my comment as bigotry and removing it? I said that China’s social credit system is just an ordinary credit system much like ours, and that is bigotry how, exactly? Explain it to me.

It’s wild, you don’t even have to say anything bad about China to piss you off, you just have to talk about it neutrally without constantly praising it as a socialist utopia.

The fact that you can take a hit to the credit score for engaging in protests and demonstrations is still scary

I was saying that this sort of thing actually doesn’t really happen. The social credit score for the most part is just an ordinary credit score and is only meaningfully affected by finances. Some localities made an attempt at implementing the “social” aspects of the system and subtract small amounts for certain criminal offenses, but it barely makes a difference.

Engaging in protests and demonstrations gets you the same thing it gets you here; tear gas, pepper balls, beatings, and possibly prison time & a criminal record. The hysteria around the social credit system is very silly when the actual dystopian shit is so glaringly obvious, and occurs in both China and the US.

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Sure there’s been a wave of imperialist wars, but it would have to cascade out of control and legitimately threaten world superpowers directly for a world war to break out. All this adventurism taking place is unfortunately just par for the course. IMO something truly unprecedented like the US launching a ground invasion against Mexico would have to happen to set off a cascade. I don’t think even airstrikes on Mexico would do it, only a ground invasion.

Edit: not even 3 days since I made this comment and I think I may be horribly wrong. Israel employing the same genocidal tactics in Iran that they did in Palestine, Shiite uprising in Bahrain and Saudis sending in forces to put it down, US and Israel setting the stage for Kurdish forces from Iraq to invade Iran, submarine strike on Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean, China and Russia providing satellite support for Iran, Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon. The cascade seems to have begun.

AI is new, the military industrial complex is not.

I think it’s because people are no longer in a mood to laugh at anything Trump does. We already know that nothing he could do will shame him or his base, so Trump shitting himself on live TV feels more like a sick joke at out expense meant to humiliate us.

These are soft power projection projects. You would recognize them as such if it were the US doing it (which we used to before Trump decided it was woke), so why do you stick to the Chinese state narrative here?

Well, it’s been a very big topic in American politics since Oct. 7th, as the majority of Americans have now become aware that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians with our tax dollars, and most of our politicians are complicit. Even the right-wing has largely woken up to this, though there is some extra baggage in their case.

You been living under a rock?

Communism is a post-socialist mode of production established by resolving the contradictions within socialism. States eradicate themselves by eradicating the basis of class, and this happens by collectivizing production and distribution.

The contradictions within socialism will not be resolved without people acting on their own initiative to resolve them. The state siezing the means of production and claiming it is doing so on behalf of the people forms a new basis of class, it does not eliminate it. It is simply taking the means of production from one set of private hands to another more centralized set that is only somewhat more responsive to the people’s will. The people must act of their own initiative to forcibly decentralize the power of the state until no hierarchy remains in order to eliminate class.

Cooperatives are petty bourgeois collectives of private property, not socialist property. The idea of competing small cells of worker-owners is petty bourgeois in origin and stands opposed to collectivized production and distribution.

Who says they have to compete? Realistically they would form federations to organize production and distribution on larger scales. Cooperatives in Italy do this, though they face strong resistance from corporations and the state as they do so. If you have eaten Parmigiano Reggiano you have eaten something created by many small cooperatives banding together to collectivize production and distribution. The cheese is made with milk from many small cooperatively owned farms that pool their resources together and share in the profits.

states exist to establish the supremacy of a class

Already we’re dropping the pretense of eliminating class, which is the entire premise of communism. A system which establishes supremacy in any form could never hope to eliminate class.

Independence from socialism is a petty bourgeois notion, not proletarian.

And again you are uncritically equivocating socialism and the state. Socialism can and does exist independently of the state whenever workers collectively organize production and distribution anywhere and for any reason. Cooperatives are socialist, not petty bourgeois, because the workers themselves have collectivized the means of production. Small businesses that are privately owned are petty bourgeois.

These [socialism and the state] are one and the same in the context of a socialist state transitioning towards communism.

Always transitioning towards but never quite getting any closer and never will without the people themselves acting collectively to dismantle the state. The idea that the state will just “dissolve,” or even more ridiculously disassemble itself, is absurd.

This slogan sounds nice, but ultimately just means that people should have a right to undermine socialism against the will of the people.

Again, people collectivizing the means of production on their own terms does not undermine socialism, it undermines the state. It’s funny you suggest people acting on their own initiative undermines their own will, and not the state cracking down on them. I thought from our previous interactions that you were more reasonable than this.

a union in a socialist system is somehow “class collaborationist” for being official and supported by said socialist state requires a ton of heavy lifting on your part.

A union in any system that stops short of supplanting the boss and siezing the means of production is class collaborationist. Such a union in a capitalist republic is essentially just a bureaucratic arm of the company that serves as controlled opposition, and in a “socialist” republic is a bureaucratic arm of the state that exists to ensure the working class acts in the state’s interest. You think the latter is acceptable because you believe the state truly represents the will of the people, but I believe that only the people themselves are truly representative of their will.

If it’s not independent then it’s not proletarian. The state doesn’t crush independent unions because they’re opposed to the socialist system, but because they are a threat to the authority of the state. I believe people have a right to self-determination, and preventing workers from organizing on their own terms violates that right. The means of production should belong only to those who actually do the work of production, not private individuals and not the state claiming falsely to represent them in the abstract. I’m a syndicalist in that I believe that the purpose of unions is eventually to overthrow the hierarchy and establish a cooperative, not to settle and become a class collaborationist union or an arm of a class collaborationist state, though it is preferable to no union at all.