carl_marks_1312

You can’t just make things binary. If I say billionaires are either taxed or not or say that socialism/happiness either exists or not and there’s no point quantifying or comparing it, you’d certainly disagree.

I'd certainly agree. You can't quantify "Authority". You can quantify billionairs (one can have more billions than another). You can't quantify "being taxed", you can however quantify the taxed amount. Also you can't quantify "socialism".

“the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.”

You can't quantify these either.

Is the government controlled by the workers? Certainly not.

That's a very abstract question. When one in 15 is a CPC member the, PRCs government represent workers interests? Certainly.

Yeah, they control all the finance. No, I don’t see how that means the workers are getting more of or closer to getting the means of production.

Not what I'm saying? I gave you examples on how the state represents workers interests.

Unions have nearly no power.

Good. They can be used as a wedge against the workers state as we saw in the Western toppling of the SU.

The third part of that law you sent, worker’s representatives, just seems like extending the ruling elite’s reach further.

How so?

Not to mention that the housing bubble hasn’t stopped.

Then you're not following news. The fact that western media is screeching about how CNs real estate market crashed says otherwise.

Saying that every state is authoritarian is missing the point. When we say that a state is authoritarian, we mean that relatively, the people are much more oppressed by the elite.

Sorry I disagree with trying to quantify "authority" in order to put in relation. It's becomes meaningless. Authority either exists or doesn't, it's a binary.

Even anarchists only oppose hierarchical authority.

As I'm reading the link I see that the author compares Bakunins understaning of authority, to that of Engels. The Author's interpretation of Engel's text is, that it argues against anarchists, when in fact it argues against "anti-authoritarians" and therebay misunderstands it significantly lol (Ctrl+F "anarchist" yourself https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm). The author of your link further highlights their misunderstanding in the section "Does organisation imply the end of liberty?" and says "Engels argument proves too much. As every form of joint activity involves agreement and “subordination,” then life itself becomes “authoritarian.” Yes, Engels indeed proves that "authoritarian" is a meaningless term and authority can have different forms.Engels doesn't even say anything about wether organization ends liberty. Engels acturally argues that "authorty" transforms. "If we took Engels’ argument seriously then we would have to conclude that living makes freedom impossible!" That's not even what Engel's is saying in the text.

Engel's defintion of authority ("Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. [...]" is quite elegant. Organization Engel's defines as "combined action". Engels further asks the abstract question whether organization [combined action] is possible without authority [the imposition of the will of another].

In your link the author writes "However, Engels is simply confusing two different things, authority and agreement." and literally falls into "These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves." Further down your author writes: "For a given task, co-operation and joint activity may be required by its very nature." and uses and example of the organization of train networks. (Guess what example Engels used to showcase how authority is transformed?)

Read Engels yourself if you don't believe me. There's a qualitative difference between reading about Marx, Engels, Stalin, Lenin, Mao and reading them.

But are they? Yes, China has lifted a ton of people out of poverty, but as long as most employees don’t own the means of production, they are being oppressed,

Yes they are. Hardly seems oppressive, when Harvad's Long-term survey reveals Chinese government satisfaction

and the hands of the means of production don’t seem to have been transferring.

Yes it is. The fact that you have the state tightly regulate capitalism and outright forbidding the formation of a financial capitalist class (China's banks are public. Find out how Jack Ma is doing after they tried to ascend to financial capitalist by creating ANT pay), have a state that works in the interest of the majority (Stopping the Real Estate Bubble and make housing affordable, while with a 95% homeownership rate; Massive Public transport; Renweable engergies, etc.) and also encourages worker coops (e.g. Huawei) and China’s Revised Company Law looks very promising (Keep in mind it's the economist, but damn even that makes it sound so good https://archive.md/VIEPf ).

Are you just looking for something to get angry at or did you momentarily turn your brain off? Ssm's comment clearly can be read sarcastic seeing the votes, which changes it's meaning quite a bit. Dessalines is right to for ask for clarification before swinging the hammer.

China ended most collective ownership and switched to market socialism

The definition of socialism is when workers are the dominant class in society (i.e. the owners of the means of production aka collective ownership). So this sentence doesn't make sense to me.

Also China can be described as markert socialist but more accurately they have a mixed economy of SOEs, worker coops (e.g. Huawei), and privately run/capitalist enterprises (that have party members on board of directors).

pretty authoritarian state

Any state in the world is authoritarian. Because ANY type of organization requires authority. (Even volunteer militias). Read Engels Essay "On authority" for the Argument being made

Now the market’s taken for granted; its principles haven’t changed towards communism in the decades since it’s been implemented. That seems like abandoning the idea of implementing communism and just maintaining their socialist market economy for now.

Ok basically you're asking when Xi is going to press the communism button and I agree that they are keeping it at socialism for now.

Again communism is a higher stage and can't exist within a context of other countries being able to organize state power to invade a "communist" country.

I was talking about communism and how you claim that, for defense reasons, it can only be implemented globally.

I mean you know what class and class interests are, right? When you have landowners and capitalists and states that represent their interests, they will inevitably attack.

I think we agree that socialism doesn’t dismantle the state and isn’t utopic. I think we’ve been collectively bamboozled

Bamboozled by whom? And what are we being bamboozled about? I'm so confused by this

Socialism will eventually dismantle the state and it wither away, when all contradictions and class interests have been resolved. (The state is an extension of class interests after all). You mention that socialism existed for decades and nothing happens, when capitalism, feudalism, slavery each existed for hundreds of years. Socialism is in its infancy still and has been struging to be born from the old system over the last decades (cold war, Operation Condor, Operation gładio, etc)

Sure, implementing communism would take a long time, but I don’t see how they’re working towards it instead of just improving on socialism.

What do you mean by this? Specifically "improving on socialism"? Reading this I get the impression that you don't know what you're talking about, but would like to give you a chance to clarify.

I don’t know what AES is

Actually existing socialism. One party proletarian states lead by Marxists-Leninists.

Yes, they’re socialist I don’t see how this book on socialism relates to the topic, which is how any system you can’t implement is utopic.

Good that we agree that China, Soviet Russia, Cuba etc. Are Socialist. Since they obv were able to implement socialism they're not utopian. I recommend the book because I wasn't sure you were aware of that

Volunteer militias. Stateless doesn’t mean people can’t organize. This applies to many kinds of work as well: roles on the railway have to constantly communicate with each other.

Sounds utopian and not very effective to me when you have countries that have conscription and Military industrie. Can you give examples that exist today and how it can defense itself against such adversaries?

what these countries did (well ig I don’t know about Cuba) is move away from it.

Move away how and were? The Soviets, Chinese, Cubans, definitely were/are socialist.

Every political system needs some idea of implementation and transition, and of course defense.

Yes and AES states managed to do so.

To say that it’s impossible for a system to do that is conceding its outright utopicness.

Frederick Engels - Socialism: Utopian and Scientific https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm

I really don’t know what you mean by “it would have to be globally”

A new system will always exist within an old one. You cant proclaim communism/anarchism and think that other countries will just stand by idle. (See Rojava, etc.) In a world where most other countries are capitalist and go on imperialist emdevours, you're basically inviting them to colonize you, because you don't have a state apparatus to organize defense. Communism/anarchism can only be proclaimed at once and globally where adveserial forces to the working class had been overcome.

Communists in China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. are aware of it and are exercising state power to navigate these conditions. What they are doing is socialism, which ofc still has classes and it's own contradictions which are being resolved.

Thanks to your valuable contribution to the discussion

Because for the idea of communism to exists it would have to be globally, otherwise youd need a state and a definition of communism is a stateless and classless society.

A common misconception is to think that what the Soviets, Chinese, Cubans,, etc. were/are doing is communism, when in fact it's communists exercising state power to organize the economy in a state socialist, market socialist (or SWCC) etc. way. You can't just claim power and say it's communism now, in a context where globally capitalism and imperial forces exist. (See if you find and notable examples of anarchist/stateless societies that survived)

they all are to the people who claim we’ve never tried our Communism.

When you dont know the difference between socialism and communism

I specifically used that example because Javier Milei espouses the same nonsense as OP I replied to did. The ideology is very similar, and you can see how it materializes lol

Why so hostile? Name a different example and fuck off?

why would be a fascist propaganda if they were the ones making agreements with the fascists?

Because fascists like yourself like to share this without the proper context to paint the Soviets in a bad light, when in fact it was them almost alone stoping the Holocaust.

maybe yes, maybe not, the love for genocide was mutual tho

I like how the article you shared says

Scholars continue to debate whether the human-made Soviet famine was a central act in a campaign of genocide,[159] or a tragic byproduct of rapid Soviet industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture.[76][51][17][52] Whether the Holodomor is a genocide is a significant and contentious issue in modern politics.

Check Argentina if you want to see what happens when you want to try "pure" capitalism lol Also not like there's been a shitton of books written describing in detail it's contradictions, which apparently you choose to ignore and espouse liberal ideology instead