An enlightening answer, thought provoking, thanks. I still feel there are problems with your analysis, as it so easily glosses over the bureaucracy, the imperialism (e.g. origin of tankies), lack of democracy/press/individual freedom, exploitative economies, and several other issues that have/are still plaguing these countries. Assembly line production of pointless gadgets and bombs still sucks whether you’re in China or elsewhere. And I think such labor should be rebelled against, but I worry you might hit me over the head with some theory, and tell me to pipe down, because its all for the good of the cause, historical development, or whatever. Political pluralism, freedom of speech and the protection of civil liberties seems to be a lower priority somehow in the ML interpretation forwarded here. What do you think?

It seems attempts to bring any of these up here is doomed to face strict denial and stupid ridicule, see just how quickly OurWorldInData got stamped as guesswork although it’s clearly a synthesis of a lot scholarly work (which again doesn’t bode well for a society one might wish this community was fostering). I was trying to point out in what comrade spood was saying that there is a need to further develop the strategy towards communism, because the ML approaches, that I admit has made headway, also bring with them problems that to me at least appear endemic. It’s so easy to blame external enemies for those things, but does it bring us any closer to bettering a revolutionary strategy or adapting it to the current conditions? Despite the attacks, and so on…

Anyways, it’s getting late, I’m afraid this reply is not doing your answer justice, but I’ll end on thanking you again for the attempt at education of me and anyone else who might stumble upon this. Gn