The best the capitalists can hope for is that Xi dies and China unravels itself in the same way as Alexander the Great’s empire. I give China a lot more credit than that, though.
Yeah China has had plenty of stable elections and Xi’s replacement will likely come to power peacefully and do just fine. The CPC is pretty stable internally, more so than either mainstream US party internally, which are both experiencing a serious identity crisis.
Even if you don’t manage to learn that phrase, hands up with a white flag, no backpack, no trenchcoat or anything else that looks like you can be hiding something, etc., then they should follow international protocol and take you prisoner. They’ll get a translator for when they are ready to talk.
Though it will help if you can manage that phrase.
More multi-generational genocide for more people, cool. Fucking cool NATO. Every country we’ve been at war with since and including Vietnam not enough?
Actually saw this before hopping onto Lemmygrad today. Came on here to post this update to the war if someone else didn’t already beat me to it. But yeah, sick and fucking tired of NATO. The things I wish for those war criminals will get me in trouble even here if I posted it.
While it is technically true that only a small minority have any real power here, at least in the US (where I live, can’t speak for the rest of the West) a lot of the “powerless majority” still voice support for a lot of the horrific things we do. In my hometown there are plenty of people I hear vocalizing their desire to turn the lands of whoever the enemies are at the time “to glass” and other similar genocidal talk.
Fuck, even a survey by a bourgeois “neutral pollster with a great reputation” (Pew or Gallup, can’t remember which) found that one in three respondents who were Trump supporters during his first campaign in either North or South Carolina (can’t remember which) wanted the return of chattel slavery as it was before the US Civil War. So since about half the population wanted Trump, that means about one in six people you walk past in that state want to fully re-enslave minorities plantation style.
So even if the US was a “true democracy” and people’s votes and wishes did actually matter, the course would likely not be different and if so, could very possibly be even worse.
Just look at Maoism/Mao Zedong Thought confusion.
That seems to stem from not understanding the difference between a “thought” and an ~ism, which I’ll admit in my previous post I inadvertently mixed the two interchangeably. Apologies comrades for that. This section from here (https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/6dgngc/maoism_vs_maozedong_thought/) does a great job of explaining this, far better than I can at any rate:
A thought is more particular to a certain situation. For example, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-"Gonzalo Thought" is particular to the people's war in Peru because of Comrade Abimael Guzman's contradictions in enriching Maoism to the particularities of the external conditions in Peru. You could say what Lenin applied is Marxism-"Lenin Thought" because his contributions put Marxism to the social conditions of Russia. However, you say Marxism-Lenin-ism because it would refer to the universality of his contradictions, the universality of imperialism, the universal urgency for the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. It takes from the lessons of the Russian revolution and puts it higher. Similarly, Mao Zedong Thought is simply Marxism-Leninism in Chinese conditions. It doesn't talk about the universality of the cultural revolution, the universality of the people's war, the universality of contradictions. Maoism does that.
- Comrade "theredcebuano" of Reddit
Basically when helping to educate comrades we should try to spell out this difference in our lingo.
Yeah I’m referring to communists overall, not just MLs, when I say Putin is jailing communists. I don’t include Anarchists in that since part of Communism includes a recognition for the need for authority in Socialism, while Anarchists don’t, and I don’t include SocDems because… well many reasons… like that they are explicitly about limiting capitalism instead of eliminating it entirely.
While I have my own tendencies which are, as far as I can tell, closest to ML, I don’t feel like I can afford to discredit or discount any particular tendency. ML worked for establishing the USSR, MLM worked for China, Castroism for Cuba, Ho Chi Mihn thought for Vietnam, etc.
As a USian, I’m not convinced the ~ism which might one day bring a successful revolution here has even been conceived yet, and that ~ism will take from and invoke numerous aspects of numerous other ~isms in addition to adding its own unique contributions to Marxist thought.
I know I am starting to digress, but it just feels like we are doing ourselves a disservice when we intentionally “don’t invoke” certain Marxist thinkers or start to go down the rabbit hole about how such and such communist ~ism is wrong in some way, discount it completely, and thus place another brick in the wall preventing solidarity. Throwing out the baby with the bath water kind of thing.
Blissful ignorance?
Exactly, it prevents white people from having to reconcile the vile history of our ancestors and our personal contributions to that legacy.
What the hell even is “more socialist” lmao, wouldn’t “too much socialism” just be communism?
In their minds, yes. This is why they think the Nordic countries are still in the acceptable zone but start becoming like Vietnam or whatever and that’s “too much socialism”.
You forgot another thing: They don’t care about what happens to us Global Southerners, as long as they get to live “luxuriously”.
This is likely why they don’t know.
Do they?
Yup, the Nordic countries are just generally seen as ‘more socialist’.
if communism is bad then god i wanna be a bad girl
And who says you aren’t a bad girl?
I don’t know enough about CPRF and have only seen high level overviews of their platform, don’t know enough specifics to say they aren’t communist or whatever. Also am always hesitant to go around declaring “yes this is communist” and “no this isn’t communist” when referring to people and orgs self identifying as communist. Feels too “gatekeepy” or “no true Scotsman”-esque.
Also, not saying you are doing that since I don’t know what basis makes you hesitant to view CPRF as communist.
Most of those types of people don’t know what communism looks like. They think having affordable access to privatized healthcare (subsidized by the oppression of the global south abroad, though they don’t see or know about this part of the idea either) qualifies as communism. Many USians unironically believe Canada is socialist. It is the: “Communism = bad, and all bad things are communist so…” kinda brain
Best part, it probably only cost the Chinese only a number of thousands to make the balloon, but to shoot one down costs the US somewhere in the ballpark of $2m USD per balloon.
China should send a few thousand empty balloons over the US, since for every 500 China sends the US would blow $1b in defense budget if they shot them all down (this is a joke… kinda…).
Not just that many doctors won’t bother looking deeply into these sort of things, but they’ll charge enough to bankrupt most people as they do so. So much as look up hospitals on Google and you’ll be billed for it…
The costs of hospitalizations, some of which involuntary, from mental health breakdowns alone cost me about $15k USD/year for several years. Last time I rode in an ambulance, which was a simple 2 mile ride with one of those typical sodium whatever IVs cost $7k USD. The itemized bill charged less than $100 USD for the IV, which was the only resource other than time and 2 miles of fuel, that was consumed during that ride. Oh, and none of those take into consideration the cost of weekly or bi-weekly meetings with mental health professionals for counseling. All with (most of the time shitty) insurance.
If alternative medicine is a scam, at least it is a scam that is generally affordable for normal ass people and won’t likely bankrupt you. The US healthcare system is a scam that will bankrupt you for even letting your kids spell H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L in a school spelling bee. That’s another big reason alternative medicine gained so much traction, at least here in the US.
Agreed.
We say “abolish the rich” to mean "abolish the idea of an owning class so you can’t have a tiny group of stakeholders getting rich off the labor of the workers in the companies the stakeholders own. The ultra-wealthy will just need to live like everyone else, which will be a reasonable “middle class” sort of lifestyle after the factories and warehouses and farms and stores and everything else that makes society tick are put in the hands of the people and used for the people. Unless they stand in the way of the revolution when it happens, in which case they get fucking eliminated.
You will see them calling Snowden traitor and Assange a Russian agent, on first sight. Cory Doctorow and friends did something really bad to Naomi “SexyCyborg” Wu as far as privacy is concerned.
During my time as a class traitor in military intelligence it was usually those folks I was surrounded with then who were referring to Snowden and Assange as traitors and spies and so forth. I was in during the height of all that. However, most privacy advocates praise them, and in some cases further their causes by involving themselves in the Linux open-source world, the EFF, Tor, Privacy International, decentralized application development, etc.
I work in tech and can say tech people can and do get very political, including with the tech itself. How often I need to try to debunk my co-workers misconceptions about… well… the world… it’s exhausting.
Also, privacy advocates aren’t usually saying USA = good. They are usually very suspicious of the US, or any government, almost to a conspiratorial level. Many are libertarians or conservative liberals/Trump folks who dislike basically any government anything.
Even the code written by developers holds the biases of the company within it. Where data is sent and received from, how algorithms feed information to people, who hold backdoors and who are the primary clients of a tech entity, it is all politics.
I’m a union team lead at the factory and make plenty, in addition to my healthcare being provided for and access to numerous other resources. Experiencing the benefits of worker organizing has only made me more of a communist since I believe everyone should have the same - or better - benefits, protections, and privileges I have.
Not every communist has a ‘dead end’ job, there are many solidly working class jobs that pay well and have many benefits and protections, often due to the efforts of communists/socialists, and syndicalists before them. Even when I was working at a UAW (United Auto Workers) plant, during orientation, which was run by union guys, we had a portion which talked about the history of the UAW and they discussed how it was founded by communists. They went on numerous strikes and fought hard to get what we had at the plant. Cops fired into the crowd of strikers at one point even, so the strikers seized on of the plants and used the tools there to make improvised slingshots where they lobbed large chunks of metal and other plant materials at the pigs. The founders of the UAW were assassinated by the Mafia, hired by Ford Motors (yes, that Ford, the same Ford founded by Henry Ford, renowned jew hating eugenicist and inspiration for Hitler. The same company that was making light armored vehicles for the Nazis throughout the entire war).
Anyway, I digressed a bit, so I’ll stop here.
EDIT: Added content. ANOTHER EDIT: Added more content.
First, here are some disclaimers! I do not support the use of underage peoples in war or work or whatever. Honestly, war is abominable, though sometimes necessary to defend the working class from oppressors. Even “normal” war killing between grown adults is a terrible thing, but sometimes there is no other choice.
Here is my best insight regarding the involvement of people under 18 in war:
For starters, we should differentiate between someone close to 18, like a 16 or 17 year old, being involved in war, and say… a 6 year old. The age of 18 is semi-arbitrary and was set by the west as the age of adulthood/voting/die-for-your-imperial-masters-if-things-are-still-mostly-stable-domestically, but the actual physical difference between a 17 year old and 18 year old, or even a 16 year old and 18 year old, is mostly negligible, physically anyway. This is why in many places even in the west the age of consent is often set to 15 or 16, usually with the caveat that if one of the participants in that relationship is older, they must not exceed a certain age gap. Even in the US, if someone graduates high school early, they can often join the military at 17. So including those ages as “child soldiers” means basically everyone everywhere has child soldiers.
Now, when participants in war have children, as in 6 year olds, or 9 year olds, 10 year olds, or other “very fucking young” people, involved in the violence, there is a lot of nuance that is necessary. For one, while many comrades on here referred to it as a “loser strategy”, I don’t think “loser” is as accurate as “desperate”, which is often the case in a revolution.
Revolutions are almost always a form of “asymmetric warfare” and “insurgency” with specific definitions. Asymmetric warfare is a war strategy employed when one or more participants VASTLY overpowers their adversaries, such as when the US was fighting against Vietnamese communist forces, or more recently Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. The US had more fighting personnel, more industry, more financing, higher technology levels, and allies with similar conditions, meanwhile the Vietnamese, Al Qaeda, and Taliban were poorly armed, trained, equipped, fed, and had very little civil infrastructure to rely on. Also, state actors can also engage in asymmetric warfare if their adversary is in a “superior” position, often employing such tactics in tandem with conventional warfare tactics. Inversely, particularly with insurgent revolutions, if an entity which started off utilizing asymmetric warfare from the disadvantaged position begins to gain the upper hand, they will tend to transition to more conventional methods of warfare.
A group entity is considered an “insurgency” when the group aspires to replace the existing government - including colonial governments - with one of their own or one they support. Al Qaeda wanted the US and Western influence out of the areas in which they operated (they wanted to eject existing colonial governments) and replace it with a government with their version of Islam and their cultural values at the fore (though with Al Qaeda, it didn’t need to be “them” specifically, just one with their values). With the Taliban, they wanted the US and company out and they wanted to replace that colonial government with a Taliban government. The Vietnamese Communists wanted the French and US out and their government in charge. Even the US war for independence was an insurgency; the USian entities wanted Britain out to be replaced by their own government.
So, revolutionaries almost always find themselves at a disadvantage at first. They lack funding, infrastructure, membership, and other cogs which allow them to conduct warfare “as equals”. They usually start off “desperate” and stay as such for the bulk of the war. This leads them to use desperate tactics, and this is especially true when fighting an enemy like the US who has no qualms about killing innocents, often openly justifying or bragging (see the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) about it.
For example, there were children fighting against the Amerikkkans on the side of the Communists during that war. However, the Amerikkkans were massacring village after village after village, men, women, children, and even livestock. So entire villages had to defend themselves at all costs, because the cost was going to be everything if they lost. Children can’t go to school or have a fulfilling childhood if they are being killed in systematic genocide. However, as the Communists gained ground and started pushing the Amerikkkans out, there were fewer and fewer child soldiers, and by time the Vietnamese could declare victory, their forces looked very much like conventional forces and conducted themselves as such (they were using less boobytraps, wooden bullets, etc.). They had the means to do so.
That said, a grand majority of insurgencies, communist or not, do not use the very young kind of children, since even from a strategic perspective they can’t provide much assistance, not to mention the moral implications or the impact “forcing” children into war when it isn’t necessary can have on a cause and its chances of success. It is usually in circumstances like what I described with Vietnam in which the young kind of children become involved, and in that case I feel it says more about the US and company than it does about the Vietnamese communists.
Now, I’m going to repeat my disclaimer since it may have been forgotten after reading this.
I do not support the use of underage peoples in war or work or whatever. War as a whole is abominable, though sometimes necessary to defend the working class from oppressors. Even “normal” war killing between grown adults is a terrible thing, but sometimes there is no other choice.
I will try my best not to express bias one way or another, but full disclosure, I am a former Maoist and as of now don’t really know exactly where I stand since I am not fully convinced any particular ~ism is suitable to the material conditions here inside the imperial core… yet. If you want more on this, feel free to ask. Now to the question and my best attempt at an answer:
Maoists still consider themselves Marxists, which is why they label themselves MLM (Marxist - Leninst - Maoist).
The way to think about it is roughly like this:
In physics, Newton is often credited as a sort of founder, much like Marx is credited as the founder of Communism. Then you have other physicists contribute to the science, adding on to it and amending the mistakes of predecessors, leading up to Michio Kaku or Hawking or Penrose or Hooft or what have you of today.
The same with Marxism. Marx’s analysis, while a great foundation, was not enough to explain the material conditions in Russia, so Lenin and company added to the science by including their own analysis. Then China happened, and the contributions of Marx, Lenin, and others weren’t enough to explain the material conditions adequately in China, so Mao and company added their own analysis.
Just as in certain circumstances in physics it is best to invoke principles of Newtonian physics to best analyze a certain physical problem, while in other circumstances principles of Einsteinian “Relativity” or Kaku’s “String Theory” might be best applied, so too in Marxism do we often invoke principles laid out in the foundational “Marx” original analysis, while sometimes Lenin has the best answer, and sometimes Mao.
I hope this helps answer your question as to why Maoists still refer to themselves as Marxists.
EDIT: Didn’t see the [BANNED] thing and that this comment was made one month ago. Whoops. Well then hopefully this helps anyone else looking for answers to this question.
Green yes (well mostly, has significant caveats worth considering).
Renewable no. Ore, such as uranium or plutonium, is finite and will not regenerate in a reasonable timespan. Usually requires supernovae by particularly dense stars to produce heavy metals like this.