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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: August 24th, 2019

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  • It does give a definition: that there is none (lack of a definition is a definition). This is pretty clear if you read the whole page. Authoritarianism is just trying to distance itself from authority because all states wield authority in various ways, and so a word was created to separate the two and criticize the socialist bloc that also wielded authority, like the west did, but their authority was bad you see, not like ours which is good.

    But why am I saying this; you didn’t read the page, you’re not gonna read this either.

    In fact nobody has ever really been able to articulate to me why authoritarianism is bad beyond “I want my freedom”. It just inherently is undesirable, don’t ask too many questions, just accept it.



  • Communism is indissociable from its three components, which includes a political system: dialectical materialism (the philosophical part), the labour theory of value (the economic part), and the class struggle (the social thus political part).

    Anything other than Marxism is ineffectual in the real world and leads to nothing as exemplified by 200 years of history. “Tankies” don’t “happen” to have an economic theory, it’s an integral part to the whole of Marxism and Marxism could not exist without the economic basis for it. Why do we dislike capitalism? Because through math we can prove it is rife with contradictions and invariably leads to imperialism. Otherwise why would we want communism? Just because it’s cool to be a communist? Just because it’s a hobby? There has to be an actual justification for what we want.


  • But as I’ve argued, having elements of capitalism like commodity production (and the subsequent export of these commodities) does not make China capitalist by themselves, which is also the original point I was making, that China has not “turned” to capitalism* like OP might have implied.

    Markets are not inherently capitalist, and these capitalist elements in China allow them to build their productive forces which are required to achieve socialism, they’re also the same commodities they build for the Belt and Road initiative, for example 😁

    Capitalism can be summed up in many ways, and one of them is production for the sake of finding a market and making money. There is capital in China (in the marxist definition) and people can make money, but while these capitalist want to simply make more money, for the Chinese government the goal is to build up production and achieve socialism, hence why the superstructure of China vs. any country in the imperial core is different. In the first case (capitalism) we’ll just keep producing and creating markets infinitely, the “anarchy of production and socialisation of labour”, and in the second case they’re using some methods (with the consequences that come with it -> if you make a factory to produce stuff, you will have to find a market to buy that stuff so you can produce more stuff) as a stepping stone until they don’t need to any more.

    Of course the superstructure is predicated on the base, and in China for example land is leased to businesses, but never sold, and the government can take back their property at any time, including whatever is on it. It’s fundamentally different to capitalism in the west.



  • Which communists? The USSR was infiltrated and the US then spent millions getting the bumbling mass of ethanol known as Yeltsin to win an election. They (the new capitalist government) even sieged the parliament building and sent tanks in Moscow to disperse the huge waves of protestors. It then lead to one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the modern age almost overnight.

    And in China they are assuredly not capitalist, this becomes very clear once you read Deng Xiaoping. It’s Schroedinger’s China: when they do something bad they’re communists, and when they do something good (like lifting people out of poverty) they’re capitalists.

    Cuba is still socialist, DPRK is still socialist, Vietnam is also reforming and opening up kinda like China did but a bit differently so still socialist