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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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Because it makes unfairness in the world easier to tolerate if you have a fantasized perfect solution to the problems, same as religions and other political extremes.
Dialectic materialism is the exactly opposite of this, even China changes all the time. You cannot call everyone you disagree or is incapable of understand of fantasizing.
Given how many countries tried this system and turned into authoritarian oligarchies without providing better life for their people, I think we can call it a fantasy when people continue to believe that it can work. Yeah, China changed after millions of deaths from magical thinking based economical strategies, they turned to controlled capitalism and free global market, and it created historical growth and development of their country. Why do you think that it is not a counter exemple for communism? The only thing they seem to have kept from Marxism is the authoritarian phase and they are not going out of it. Capitalism is also materialistic, I'll certainly give you that.
In the neoliberal thinking of economics, China and the US are both mixed economies. I can entertain this framing for a moment, so tell me, between the US and China, which of these countries is on the more socialist side of the mixed economy paradigm and which is more capitalist? Now look back to China overtaking the US in global trade and dominating the world in manufacturing, while the US regresses into a society that can no longer provide clean drinking water for everyone, with the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world.
Now, within this "mixed economy" paradigm, which side is winning? The capitalist or socialist side? We can haggle definitions all you want, but whether China is a true communist country or a more socialist mixed economy is a meaningless diversion from the objective reality that China's approach to statecraft is qualitatively different from that of the West and it has thoroughly proven to be superior in the modern age. China's unique approach to statecraft does not originate with neoliberal thinking, it follows from a combination of China's historical experience and the theory of Marxism-Leninism; in other words, tankies winning, stay mad
Sorry tankie, you're once again aiming at fantasized targets, I'm not defending USA's system. I'm rather defending European social democracy as the best, even though not perfect, model we have tested, using regulated free market to provide economical efficiency, social safety nets to compensate for the negative effects and social freedoms that don't exist in authoritarian regimes. Of course, we can and should do better for the social parts but I believe this model gives people's better life than the tank crushed 996 life of Chinese people.
Yeah but, European social democracy is not self sustaining. Face it, you depend on the USA for everything. Without the USA, you have no LNG, your industry grinds to a halt and Europe freezes. Not to mention military support the USA provides through NATO, which seems to be so essential to maintain Europe's poise against Russia. And the quality of life in Europe would not be so high without actual slave labor and sweatshops in the third world. "996" (which has already been discontinued years ago) doesn't sound so bad in comparison.
Talking about fantasy, Europe is a "Shire". It is a sheltered little play-place for the kiddies to enjoy while the real preconditions of civilization are toiled and fought over with sweat and blood on the horizon. The world in it's entirety is a dark and shitty place. Just because you think you can forget about it by living in a happy little Nordic utopia does not mean you are not as much complicit in the utter violence outside that makes it possible. Say what you want about a country like North Korea, at least they take full responsibility for what makes a nation from within their own borders. Modern Europe is a parasite, the rest of the world would be better off without them.
It is the social democrats who live in fantasy land, I was actually steelmanning your argument by talking about the USA instead.