The “slave labor” thing about china is 40 years too late. China now has wildly better working conditions than India or Phillipines or Indonesia or Malaysia.

Aren’t you concerned with the cold-war-like escalation that we’re seeing the US adopt against china?

No, I mean that it’s hypocritical criticising the other administration for following the same trend

ROFL, the consumer index that your first source portrays, is still twice that of Canada at 86 points Vs 45, and Germany’s consumer index is -15 points… It’s on par with Australia and Spain, so what does that tell you?

The rest aren’t really indicators of Chinese people seeing the economy struggling aren’t they? They’re just western reports predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy… as they’ve been doing for the past 20 years

For the last time, I’m not the ultimate supporter of themselves Chinese model of Communism, now that I’ve shown you that your position stems from being uneducated about socialism, its meaning, and its history, you resort to “how many gazillionaires” because you’re not trying to have a civilised discussion. You have a preconceived notion that “China isn’t communism”, which is fine, so do I, but when confronted with the discrepancies within the communist movement and how there are legitimate arguments to call it socialist and on the way to communism, you just spout your initial position again with stronger words. I’ll tell you what I said at the beginning: I don’t care whether it’s communist or not, but you saying “hurr durr no socialism if billionaires” is a shitty argument from ignorance.

especially the Chinese

Source?

The sentiment about work, investment, economic prospects, consumption are all quite bad

Source?

My brother in Christ, Mensheviks and Dengists were against the consolidation of centralised socialist economy before the historical consolidation of capital in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the difference being that Menshevism died off and Dengism ended up taking the lead after Maoism. The restoration of capital is simply a consequence of Dengism taking over AFTER Maoism, not because Dengists believed there should be first Maoism and then Dengism.

From Wikipedia article on Mensheviks: (you’ve been talking to someone else in the comments)

Mensheviks came to be associated with the position that a bourgeois-democratic revolution and period of capitalism would need to occur before the conditions for a socialist revolution emerged.

So yes, mate, there are literal historical figures of communism debating this exact same issue that you find so laughable, it’s literally the raison d’etre of the word Bolshevism. There is no specific “Marx passage” as if it was the bible, where it says “in case some fella called Mao organizes a socialist revolution in a peasant agrarian society, pls pull it back to capitalism first, and then go to socialism once it’s capitalist, ok?” If you generally read Marx, you can see how he puts socialism as the necessary and logical end of capitalism, as something inevitable that will happen because capitalism will bring forward the material conditions for the revolution. But despite that, Marx also was a highly politically involved individual, who pushed forward momentously the socialist movement in Europe together with Engels.

Marx isn’t a gospel that you’re supposed to be able to chant and have undying faith for, it’s an analysis of reality that you can agree or disagree with, which explains the existence of different flavours of communism such as menshevism and bolshevism or such as Maoism and Dengism, which can be explained by the material and historical conditions leading up to those moments. Marx himself said that Marxism has to be constantly interpreting the reality of the moment and critically adapting everything. So if you’re looking for a direct quote from Marx about Dengism or Menshevism, I’m not here to provide that, I’m here to tell you that the definition you consider stupid has been hotly debated for a hundred fucking years, so maybe it’s not so stupid.

And I’m saying that you have clearly not dedicated much time to thinking about or studying the issue. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, so I’m not very supportive of Dengism, but if you listen to Dengists and Mensheviks they will tell you that China still has a communist party in power (as does Vietnam and as does Laos) whereas the former USSR has a capitalist proto-fascist in government. Only time will tell who’s really right, and whether china shifts to a less market-socialism society and more towards a democratic centrally planned economy in the hands of the workers and the state.

I’m not myself trying to make the assertion that china is communism or that it will achieve communism, I’m saying that what you consider “ludicrous”, has been a hotly debated topic for the past 100 years with many proponents on both sides, many of them with much more knowledge of socialism and revolutions than you or I possess.

Last I checked the SPD’s party program still speaks of socialism

I’m sure the SPD party program talks about the end of capitalism /s

Again, not here to engage with smug factionalists. Have a good day

You’re right that they ignore the science and the facts, that’s why they’re holding the positions they hold (climate change denialism, prohibition of abortion and gender reassignment, austerity policy, etc.) The problem IMO isn’t so much with the individuals as it is with the propaganda apparatus. It’s clear that people can be indoctrinated into such things, and much worse actually (see nazism), so instead of focusing on whether the individuals are arguing from bad faith or not, I’d rather blame the propaganda apparatus that turns them into ghoul, and not just blame it but put the focus onto it.

there’s already a term for socialists who tolerate capitalism, it’s social democrats

Social Democrats don’t want a transition to communism, not even ideologically. Dengists and Mensheviks do, at least ideologically. Whether you believe that or not is a different debate, but equating socialdemocrats with mensheviks is dumb, not a dunk.

why did they implement, and I quote Lenin, state capitalism

Look, I’m not here to argue for Marxism-Leninism against you because you’re obviously trying to be smug, not trying to have a civilized discussion. If you actually want some good (in my opinion) analysis of actually-existing socialism, there are plenty of Michael Parenti videos online, or you can pick up his book “Blackshirts and Reds”. But I suspect you’re just here to punch to those communists that are further left than you are. If you do want to have this discussion let me know.

“let’s blame voters for wanting to vote against genocide instead of blaming the party which is committing genocide and openly speaking of having the most LETHAL army in the world”

You could be less condescending, I think I’ve been quite clear in my comment but maybe you don’t understand because of the language barrier (I’m not a native speaker). Can you make the effort to consider that there exist actual countries that for the past decades have engaged in no war against any other country?

My code are the lamps, the car is the internet code

Milei managed to improve on the deficit a lot! Turns out all you needed to do is to put 3/4 of your country in poverty and destroy 3.4% of GDP in a year! And you’ll solve inflation as well, prices can’t rise if people don’t have money to buy things!!

Deficit is a good thing for the most part. It literally means by definition the government is putting more money into the economy than it’s extracting, which increases the capacity of families and businesses to save and to spend. Surplus means, by definition, that it’s collecting more money from the economy than it’s reinvesting into it, which literally, by definition, makes people poorer.

The problem isn’t with deficit itself, public expenditure is cool, the problem is where it’s spent. We want fewer corporate bailouts and fewer corruption schemes, and more investment in education, healthcare and pensions.

As a guy who’s absolutely in the far-left camp, and at risk of being exactly what the post is complaining about, I’m sorry but you’re being tribalist and delusional. Many conservatives try and argue from what they consider “good faith”, it’s just that their moral compass has been destroyed by conservative propaganda. Many conservatives actually believe that unborns have souls and are people, and that abortion is murder, even if it’s a clearly wrong moral position. Many conservatives do believe that immigration is hurting their countries and they’re making their country a better place by opposing it. Many do believe that reducing labour regulations will end up boosting the economy for the benefit of everyone. The fact that they’re demonstrably wrong in most of it, doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily arguing from bad faith.

Europe really shot itself in the foot privatising all its former public services

Mods? Why aren’t you banning this post for genocide denial? I’ll help: Uyghur Uyghur Uyghur! That should get your attention