this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Anarchism

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/8181688

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is such a bizarre claim, since many people in many places (India is the easiest example, but you can look at any third world country) still don’t have what China achieved in a couple of decades. Even if your speed characterization wasn’t absurd modernism, that doesn’t make a speck of difference to the people dying in the meantime, but again societal change is not a linear scalar from “bad” to “good,” the specific forms of society matter a great deal and, contrary to what you say, liberal systems demand a brutally exploited underclass.

And in some other countries it was faster. And China also demands a "demand a brutally exploited underclass.", or do you think that Capitalist systems turned to Chinese workers because they were less exploited?

You are literally (however clumsily) making liberal arguments to own the tankies, some fucking “anarchist” you turned out to be.

Lol, it's not liberal arguments mate. I counter the same arguments from libertarians all the time. I am not saying the Chinese would be better with (non-state) Capitalism. I am saying that Maoism isn't necessarily the only way they would have progressed. The only alternative to Maoism, isn't capitalism.

I can imagine that Lenin is actually just working on dragging heaven down to Earth and he’ll be back any second, but like you, I would just be playing pretend based on information that I don’t have.

So we agree, that to claim that the Chinese people would have turned necessarily worse if Mao wasn't there, is just fiction.

Aside from this being a pathetic, pathetic deflection, look back again at what I actually said and you’ll notice that I wasn’t attributing things solely to him but merely used him as a marker for time, it was the party and the people who made these advancements, and he certainly helped but he couldn’t have killed all those landlords on his own.

I think I hit a nerve. Anyway, you're clearly not agreeing that without Mao and Maoism, things would have progressed roughly the same way, so I don't know what you're whining about.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

And in some other countries it was faster

Where and when?

And China also demands a "demand a brutally exploited underclass.", or do you think that Capitalist systems turned to Chinese workers because they were less exploited?

Remember that I am talking about Mao-era China, not post-Reform China. Under Mao, with the notable exception of the period of the Great Famine, the quality of life by every conceivable metric was improving every day on a scale not seen before in the history of the world (yes, including the USSR and company, though the USSR helped China accomplish this).

Lol, it's not liberal arguments mate. I counter the same arguments from libertarians all the time. I am not saying the Chinese would be better with (non-state) Capitalism. I am saying that Maoism isn't necessarily the only way they would have progressed. The only alternative to Maoism, isn't capitalism.

You are such a moron. You are clearly saying that they would have gotten there just fine with liberalism, because that was typically the system of the countries you are nebulously comparing it against.

So we agree, that to claim that the Chinese people would have turned necessarily worse if Mao wasn't there, is just fiction.

It's a difficult question, because you one can trace very specific accomplishments Mao made in developing Party ideology prior to 1949, and those developments were critical to the success of the PRC. There is also the fact that we have observed that right opportunists were just waiting in the wings for him to croak and then swooped in under Deng and caused a catastrophic degree of mass-impoverishment through their forced privatization campaigns.

I think there had to be a Mao or a collective that did the work that he historically actually did prior to 49, but that even if Mao had a heart attack in like 1952, there were other competent Party members who might have filled in his role as head of state and done just fine.

It is conspicuous that you talk in an extremely nebulous way because you know nothing of the history.

I think I hit a nerve. Anyway, you're clearly not agreeing that without Mao and Maoism, things would have progressed roughly the same way, so I don't know what you're whining about.

That's the thing, you know nothing about Maoism because you are just equating it to "a cult of personality around Mao" instead of a historical permutation of communist ideology that was primarily authored by Mao, just as Leninism is not the worship of Lenin and Marxism is not the worship of Marx.

Without Mao-ism, though it would obviously be called something else had Mao not been the helm of it, there absolutely would be no new China. Without a clear Marxist analysis that guided the Party away from both liberalism and being a satellite of the Soviets, the PRC would not have succeeded as it did. It did not need to be written by nor named after Mao, but Mao did write it and it accordingly was named for him, so that is in large part why he gets credit for it.