I had a journey

Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)

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You're not criticizing the government, you're removing agency from people living in China and claiming that they're not capable of making their own decisions. Thinking that you know better than they do is peak chauvinism. The fact that you confuse your racism with legitimate criticism says a lot about you.
- Also, the US might have freedom of speech, but it's still an oligarchy with a government that serves the rich more than the majority.
  I'm not "peak chauvinist against US citizens because I'm removing their agency", it's just objectively very difficult for the laboring class to fight back against the ruling & ownership class, and I have no difficulty in criticizing the US government for it.
- Not at all what I'm saying.
  I'm saying the government controls all the flow of information, and I don't trust their numbers to reflect reality. I don't trust Apple's customer satisfaction surveys either.
  I mean, should anybody be surprised that a communist organization newspaper would survey high support for Marxism? That's like the NRA releasing survey results that show high support for zero gun regulation.
  If you want to be effective at messaging for communism, besides learning to take criticism, you also have to be aware of your own confirmation bias.
  
  The fact that you don't even see just how absurd this line of argument is really shows just how far off the reservation you've wandered.
  Every single survey that comes out of China done by domestically as well as by western organizations consistently shows that people in China overwhelmingly support their government and see it as democratic. The only people who say what you say are invariably westerners who have never been to China or talked to anyone actually living there.
  Thinking that it's somehow controversial that people living in a communist country who overwhelmingly support their government identify as communists is laughably absurd.
  
  Every single survey that comes out of China done by domestically as well as by western organizations consistently shows that people in China overwhelmingly support their government and see it as democratic.
  You changed the subject, I was speaking of communism and socialism being much less popular than they should be.
  people living in a communist country
  A country with almost as much wealth disparity between the poor and wealth as the US?
  
  No, I didn't change the subject at all. I provided you with background evidence supporting my point. Communism and socialism are very clearly popular in places like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos. You'd know this if you actually interacted with people from these countries.
  Meanwhile, the reason it's not popular in the western shithole countries is because colonizers live like parasites off the backs of the rest of the world, and majority of westerners are perfectly happy with the arrangement.
  A country with almost as much wealth disparity between the poor and wealth as the US?
  A country that's seen biggest poverty reduction in human history, where practically everyone owns their home, and people see their lives improve dramatically each and every year. The fact that you ignore all that just shows how intellectually dishonest you really are.
  
  colonizers live like parasites off the backs of the rest of the world, and majority of westerners are perfectly happy with the arrangement.
  100% true, Western capitalists have been exploiting cheap Chinese labor, and labor of other Asian countries, for decades, plus stripping them of natural resources. With the consent of their (according to you - Communist) governments. This is where the government should be regulating labor, tariffs on imports and exports, and regulating involvement of foreign corporations. Instead, these governments are colluding with Western capitalists to enrich themselves.
  A country that’s seen biggest poverty reduction in human history, where practically everyone owns their home, and people see their lives improve dramatically each and every year.
  https://www.bbc.com/news/56213271
  A very dramatic improvement, but about a quarter of China's population still makes less than $5.50 a day, and $600 million make just $154 a month. Meanwhile, China has about 500 billionaires.
  If communism looks like a huge number of people living on less than $5.50 a day, while billionaires still exist, I'm really going to dislike communism for the exact same reasons I dislike capitalism.
  
  Pretty funny of you to go on a big rant regarding not trusting state propaganda then post a link to British state propaganda without a hint of irony. Why don't we look at what the World Bank has to say instead https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
  Also, you're clearly not familiar with the concept of PPP, so might want to educate yourself on that as well https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/tracking-gdp-ppp-terms-shows-rapid-rise-china-and-india
  
  Your source does not contradict mine, it just defines "poverty" as "less than $1.90 a day", which actually my source already covered.
  This is a country with 500 billionaires, you can't do better than "you aren't poor as long as you make $2 a day"?
  So communism is when your billionaire factory owner tells you, "Here are your 2 bucks for the day, now you aren't poor anymore".
  
  What you appear to be utterly oblivious to is the change over time that's happening in China. The standard of living is rapidly improving for the regular people living in China with each and every decade. It's not a static situation of people making 2 dollars a day as you try to paint it.
  Meanwhile, China has to exist within the global capitalist system created by the west after WW2. That means having to participate within the global economy and engage with capitalism. The thing anarchists invariably aren't able to wrap their heads around is the fact that transition from capitalism to communism is a process, and that countries led by communists still have to exist within the larger capitalist world.
  Pointing at the fact that there are 500 billionaires in China as some sort of a gotcha while ignoring the larger trends really highlights how superficial your understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate really is.
  
  Meanwhile, China has to exist within the global capitalist system created by the west after WW2. That means having to participate within the global economy and engage with capitalism.
  So China is speedrunning late-state Capitalism with private mega-corps like Tencent and exploiting its own cheap labor by giving them out to western capitalists so they can enrich their own billionaires. Of course, your excuse, as I already said it would be much earlier in the thread, "it's the West's fault".
  Isn't that peak chauvinism of you, removing all agency from the communist people because "the West is forcing them to"?
  Pointing at the fact that there are 500 billionaires in China as some sort of a gotcha
  What is the point of communism?
  
  So China is speedrunning late-state Capitalism with private mega-corps like Tencent and exploiting its own cheap labor by giving them out to western capitalists so they can enrich their own billionaires. Of course, your excuse, as I already said it would be much earlier in the thread, “it’s the West’s fault”.
  If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
  If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.
  The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.
  It's pretty dishonest to claim ChInA Is DoInG StAtE CaPiTALiSM when it's pretty clear that China is basically the only place in the world where standard of living is going up significantly. If China was doing what you claim it's doing then we'd see the same results as we see under actual capitalism. It'd look like India today.
  What is the point of communism?
  Point of communism is to have an equal society, but the question is how you get there from where we are now. Apparently anarchists believe that magic happens as opposed to this being a process the way things work in the real world.

550 comments