Bro thinks Russia’s left-wing.
I think that’s more a fault of the meme being overly simplified, nobody thinks Russia is Leftist, but that for its own selfish interests it must work against the US for now. That’s one problem with OP’s memes, many times they are overly simplified and thus get across incorrect messages, which causes agitprop to backfire. Sadly, Russia is no longer Socialist, and nobody knows this better than Marxists, along with the sheer level of tragedy its fall has been for the former Soviets and humanity in general.
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Right? I comsider myself fairly far-left, but Putin and Xi are oligarchs abusing their respective positions of power to enrich themselves at the expense of their countrymen and the world at large. You can oppose those things and still think government should take care of its people.
Aww shit! The mods don’t think so. You must conform to the will of the oligarchies or be erased from history. (Or just pictures. They also like to delete people from official pictures.)
But if anyone missed it:
I SAID THAT MANY PEOPLE DON’T LIKE AUTHORITARIAN DICTATORSHIPS!
ML moment
Putin and Xi aren’t really comparable. Xi is the leader of a Socialist country that has made dramatic efforts on eradicating poverty, whereas Putin is the president of a Capitalist country mired in relentless social stratification and a lack of safety nets. Equalizing them is a pretty big error in judgement.
Good points, and I agree with you. I only mentioned those two because the topic was Russia and China.
The wider point stands, that oligarchs in every political and economic system of government are generally more concerned with their own power and welfare. Political leaders and power brokers will claim to have some ideological basis for their crimes, but there is always self-interest at the core of every exploitation. In that narrow-scope comparison, they are the same, but it manifests differently based on the available social and political structures in their respective countries.
I don’t think this is a good, materialist view of human behavior or societal organization. Claiming that there is always self-interest at the heart of any political leader regardless of structure and methods of accountability is self-determinism, not materialism. Such a framework of analysis isn’t really useful IMO.
Some countries only get the choice between a Castro and a Pinochet. Who would you prefer?
You misspelled bootlicker of autocrats.
Putin is a Neoliberal ShitLib, capitalism always sucks regardless of the country (Russia, China, etc)
Russia is certainly Capitalist, but China is Socialist. I think this post is pretty poorly made if I’m being honest, it equalizes the PRC and RF when the PRC is Socialist and the RF is a Capitalist country. Marxists generally only critically support Russia in that it works against US hegemony out of desparation and survival, not because it’s a genuinely good country.
China is “mixed”, they have billionaires and poor working conditions.
Flipping that on its head, it could be said that no system is Capitalist either, as all Capitalist countries have some degree of a Public Sector. Marxism makes explicit acknowledgement of this fact, because it sees Modes of Production as which is dominant in an economy and which way it is moving towards, and in the PRC the economy is based on the Public Sector and strong central planning.
If we call any system that contains elements of the previous Mode of Production and elements of the next Mode of Production “mixed,” every system becomes “mixed.” Relying on purity for Socialism alone signifies Socialism as some unique utopia distinct from all previous Modes of Production, and not a phase in historical development like Marxists assert. Moreover, it leads to interesting conclusions. If we assert that any system with both markets and public ownership is “mixed,” does that mean a country with 99% of the economy in the Private Sector is mixed? What about 51%? Rather than relying on percentages, Marxists rely on dominance and trajectory. In this manner, the PRC is undoubtedly Socialist, even if it has a long way to go to reach Communism.
As a side note, working conditions are frequently exaggerated, they are fairly standard for the global economy and have been rapidly improving.
it could be said that no system is Capitalist either, as all Capitalist countries have some degree of a Public Sector
They’re just working their way towards
fascismadvanced capitalism. See you in 2050 for the next step 🤓The silver lining of the continuous decay of Capitalist countries, the increasing reliance on renting commodities instead of selling them to combat the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, is that there is a larger radicalized base of Proletarians in Western countries than there has been in a very long time. I only hope that we can succeed in achieving Socialism.
Standard for a capitalist economy, I suppose I just would expect more from a socialist nation. Also you didn’t adress the fact that they have billionaires.
Standard in the context of a previously extremely poor former colony is a massive improvement that can only be attributed to rapid development and a people-focused government. As for the billionaire question, I believe I did via discussing markets, but I’ll answer more directly since you asked. Yes, the PRC has billionaires, but it’s important to judge the context of Chinese billionaires vs billionaires in Capitalist countries.
In the PRC, billionaires hold little political Capital compared to Capitalist countries, the strength they have as a class is thus limited. The problem with cracking down too hard on billionaires at this stage in Socialist development is the risk of Capital Flight. China’s strategy is to encourage foreign investment and development, while maintaining government supremacy over Capital, in how it moves and grows. If they took a more hardline stance, they would potentially be decoupled from the global economy and end up as the USSR did. A good article is China has Billionaires by Roderic Day.
Moreover, certain entire industries are state owned, like the Steel industry, that the private sector relies on and thus must be bent to the will of the government, not the other way around. The public sector is the base of the economy. The Private Sector is also seeing increased control from the state, because as markets develop they centralize and make themselves ripe for planning, a concept core to Historical Materialism.
China isn’t perfect, but it is Socialist.
I mean the joke is for the people who are getting mad and adding the downvotes that you’re focused on other countries that are the specific targets of US propaganda and not that Russia or China are paragons of awesome. All nations are flawed but clearly diverting every conversation by leftists mostly in the US to China and Russia is a propaganda tactic by US astroturfing. In every way the US is worse than every other nation on earth.
Yea, I feel this meme is not very conducive to productive conversations. It acknowledges the two largest targets of US foreign policy (outside of the DPRK and maybe Cuba), but does so in a manner that doesn’t contradict the US narrative or highlight how they are propagandized. Moreover, there’s good reason to hate the Russian Federation, while critically supporting them, but this post equates the RF and PRC in a way that shouldn’t really be done.
That’s why good agitprop is focused on simple facts that are easily proven and framed in a way that challenges existing notions, and doesn’t stereotype the poster.
Yeah, I agree that it isn’t particularly effective or clear I’m just responding to the comments I can’t even see because my instance blocks lemmy.world.
Based lol
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Well aren’t you clever? Someone’s getting a pat on the head from teacher.
What’s your stance on North Korea?
Based af country. Defeated the USA and has kept its freedom from the empire even after brutal sanctions, same as Cuba
What about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge?
“I am a leftist who hates Russia and China”
Take your critique off my support!
Leftists in the U.S. can actually make change in the U.S. at a local scale, so we talk against the CCPR because what else can we do.
Definitely not how I’d want my commune to be structured, but to each their own. I just hope that’s what the people who live there really want.
In Russia? Eh. The majority preferred the Soviet system, by quite a large margin. In China? Harvard studies suggest an over 95% approval rate for the CPC, so while this certainly could change, the populace generally supports the current system to a much greater degree than Capitalist countries.
I’d certainly be interested in how those Harvard studies were accomplished what with much of China not being on the Internet. 95 percent certainly sounds high.
What on Earth do you mean? First, the vast majority of China is on the internet, secondly there are non-internet methods of polling. Here’s the source, and the relevant section for how they took the data:
The survey team set out to assess overall satisfaction levels with government among respondents from across the socioeconomic and geographic strata of China. “It is always a challenge to obtain a representative sample of the Chinese population, particularly from interior provinces,” said Turiel. “Our survey does not include migrant laborers, for example. But given the fact that the survey conducted in-person interviews with over 3,000 respondents per year in a purposive stratified sample, we are happy that the results include not just the coastal elites or large urban areas, but also poorer and less developed inland provinces.”
Emphasis mine.
That is by far the least satisfying study I’ve ever heard. 32000 people surveyed over 13 years. That’s essentially 3.5 people per city in China. How are we to take that as a valid survey?
I suggest you read up on statistics, 32000 is quite enough for a sample size. 95% of 32000 answering anything is immensely consistent.
This isn’t 32000 in 1 wave, though. This is ~2500 a year over 13 years. Even the answers given at the beginning of the study could have changed wildly if the same people had been polled at the end. And even if not, 4 people per city is not representative of an entire city at any given moment of time.
What demographics in China did they poll each year? Did they poll people of different racial profiles? Did they poll uyhgurs? Were the candidates selected randomly or were the assigned by the government? If the latter, were they coached or paid? Any number of things could throw off that study.
You’re free to read into the study itself more and call the ones who took it up to ask. The fact of the matter is that, statistically, the study is sound and can be trusted to be accurate.
i like to think that i’m plugged into lemmy; but then these insider joke posts keeping popping and i’m so confused.
if it weren’t for the intense level of brigading; it probably wouldn’t have been aware that there was any controversy at all.
I don’t think there is brigading, I keep coming across these posts on /all, no doubt many others too. If the posts on lemmy.ml are not supposed to be seen/interacted with by other instances, why is it federated with them?
A catholic who hates the vatican. A doctor who hates the hospital they work at. A conservative who hates the republican party.
A leftist who wants capitalism, imperialism, authoritarianism, oligarchies gon- but wait not in a couple of places :)
Thanks for understanding the irony I was attempting. Guess I’m off on my delivery.
