Yep! It’s incredible how much he wrote under strict observation.

No problem! Gramsci’s a bit fresh on my mind since I read a good deal of him a few weeks ago.

Yep, Luhansk should have just accepted being targeted by Kiev rather than fighting back after the Banderites took power.

No, I didn’t. You seem awfully content to ignore that Kiev was caught killing thousands of civilians.

I’m aware that the UN report tries to blame Russia for Kiev killing civilians and separatists, but it’s still nice to see them admit that Kiev was massacring civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk. The west coup’d the democratically elected president, and installed a Banderite government. It’s no surprise that they’d be seceded from and that this gov would then try to force these same people they’ve ethnically repressed back into Ukraine.

I’m not really sure what you’re saying, then. You made a point about people living in fear, this just generally isn’t true.

You can both produce more efficiently and without excess without stopping advancement.

To be clear, the comment on false consciousness was separate to Gramsci, as an addendum to his theories of hegemony. I find both are good explanations, not that they are the same.

Not really, we need to advance to make production more green, efficient, and to reduce our impact on the environment.

Despite your gut feelings, the data is understood to be accurate.

Progress doesn’t mean the destruction of the environment. You cannot stop the clock. Progress is necessary to stop the destruction, and to take a more harmonious approach. See how China is combatting desertification, and is rapidly electrifying and adopting solar as the biggest new energy source. This is progress.

As for the state protecting the people, this is progressive. Nay, revolutionary. The people take political power in their own hands, and can radically transform the world and better meet their place in it. The wheel of history is pressed forward.

I fear you’re on a pipeline towards eco-fascism. Not saying you’re an eco-fascist, to be clear, but the combination of trying to stop progress while also adopting prop environmental policies can definitely lead people down that road. It’s not a nice road.

It’s hard to call China communist any more. They’ve embraced the strengths of communism and capitalism, even maybe socialism. Using aspects of each where they’re most effective.

I think you’re misunderstanding capitalism, socialism, and communism. China is and has been under communist leadership since 1949, yet not once has their mode of production been “communist.” Communism is the goal of communist parties, itself a future, global economy where all production and distribution has finally been collectivized, and is run along a common plan to fulfill everyone’s needs. Between capitalism and this future state of being is socialism.

Rewinding backwards, capitalism emerged out of feudalism, and is a mode of production and distribution where private ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, and capitalists own the state. It is not an aspect of a system, but a system itself. Capitalism is really good at socializing production, bringing everyone together into one unified system, but as this goes on the contradiction between socialized production and privatized profits grows greater and greater. This results in revolutionary pressure.

Socialism, then, is a mode of production and distribution where public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state. China has been socialist since 1949. China did not abandon socialism with the adoption of Reform and Opening Up under Deng Xiaoping, it opened up secondary and underdeveloped industry to foreign investment, while retaining public ownership of the large firms and key industries and working class control of the state. It borrowed the ability of markets to accelerate socialization for the least socialized aspects of the economy, while socializing the social surplus, rather than privatizing it.

This is all in the service of building communism, which has been laid out in a simple diagram by Cheng Enfu:

I hope that highly oversimplified synopsis can help explain how this is entirely within communist theory.

But that long term vision causes them to overlook and dismiss real short term pain and problems. Refusing to publicly acknowledge and correct their mistakes, will eventually be the weakness that brings them down in 50-150 years.

I don’t believe this is accurate. China is a developing country, in developing rapidly there definitely arose new contradictions. There’s now a larger capitalist class, a steeper urban/rural divide, and other problems. However, the CPC is not blind to them. State control over capital is increased as industries develop, the “birdcage” is tightened and capital’s freedom to move is strictly controlled and ever-shrinking. Rural development has been a major focus, to bring the living standards in rural areas closer to that of urban living. This is all being done intelligently, in planned fashion.

There is no such thing as a society devoid of problems. What makes China (and socialist countries in general) special is the ability for humanity to take an active role in shaping the future, scientifically, without capital dominating us.

I understand, but at least if we are to consider the march towards communism as the continued development of humanity onto a qualitatively new level, this is a progression. We can be conservationists with respect to the environment, but certainly not conservative. To try to hold back the wheel of history is to be reactionary, not progressive.

The state is not opposed to the market, which is why I brought up the Nordic countries and China. In capitalism, the state serves capitalists. In socialism, the state serves the working classes. A socialist state is necessary for supremacy over capital, which is why revolution is necessary.

This is, again, not true. You have a caricature of China in your head, not an accurate picture of China. People don’t live in fear, data is reliable. China has some of the best perceptions surrounding their country’s democracy in the world:

From NIRA data.

They build whole cities for millions of people that are functional ghost towns.

This is the western cope for what is in practice intelligent economic planning. These “ghost towns” are regularly populated later, it’s anticipated and planned growth.

They build incredible bridges in record time, while nearly 20% are closed or collapsed within 10 years

Not really true. China’s infrastructure is good, the problem is the urban/rural gap due to how rapidly China is advancing.

They’re nearly as nationalist and xenophobic as most of the worst regimes in history.

Absurdly false. China is a strong internationalist country, and in government ethnic minorities are statistically better represented than Han Chinese, with strong minority protections. China raises multilateral development and cooperative agreements.

But it’s also true they’ve been killing it economically. And performed what was thought impossible over the last 40 years.

This part is definitely true, and as time goes on the cope arguments will also break down. The people who knew this was possible were the communists, both inside and outside of China. Communists are going to be the ones in power this century, and beyond.

I don’t really think “conservative” is a helpful angle due to the connotations. I think “pragmatic, and planned” are good descriptors. The advancement of green energy, the radical restructuring of society, all of this is definitely not seen as “conservative.” Further, I’m confused if you mean social democracy, or socialism proper (ie, Nordic capitalism vs. China’s socialist market economy).

China has prisons, what’s your point? They don’t have slave labor nor prison labor. The overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens support their socialist system thanks to the pro-social policies implemented and the real, material gains. Hitler was not economically efficient, he helped Nazi Germany colonize the surrounding regions, and committed the genocide of 10s of millions of people. The People’s Republic of China has had steady, incredibly rapid growth consistently since it was founded in 1949. Socialism is good because it works, and works for the working classes. Nazism only benefited the ruling capitalists at the expense of mass repressions. What on Earth is this comparison?

Why do you like the nationalists that invaded Taiwan, slaughtering local resistance, and installed a military dictatorship after losing a civil war to the popularly supported communist party?

China has never had gulags, the GULAG administration was a part of the early-mid Soviet penal system. Further, India is absolutely not combatting poverty nearly as effectively, purchasing power in 2022 was 25 times higher than 1978 in China. Do you know what the poverty alleviation campaign looked like in practice? The building of mass infrastructure, job creation, and directly building up rural economy.