I don’t care who does IT. I would worship the brave soul who puts that orange cancer out of our collective misery.
“We are never more than nine meals away from anarchy.”
Look, the US is fucked up and an evil country, everyone can agree on that
But why in the everlasting hell do you all act as if China is a savior, as if China can do no wrong?
China is the fucking same plus worse
Same goes for Russia
All those three are evil empires that should be ALL dismantled into loads of smaller countries
It doesn’t matter what the country pretends to want to be, as soon as it gets too powerful you always end up with some asshole dictator, whether they’re called Putin (need a good nickname for him, getting tired of having to write that name every time), Cheeto, or pooh Bear. These so called leaders should all hang for the crimes they’ve committed
So with that said, why the China worship, why the pretence they China can do no wrong? This is literally “US propaganda baaaad, China propaganda goooood”
China can do wrong, though. I wish they were stronger when it came to foreign policy, and they are lagging in queer rights. However, both the ideas that China is imperialist and that China is worse than the US Empire are absurd.
The US Empire plunders the global south, expropriating vast amounts of resources and super-exploiting foreign labor, while China engages in mutual cooperation and win-win development. Countries imperialized by the US are underdeveloped, while countries in BRI have rapid development. The US has hundreds of overseas millitary bases, and the PRC has no more than 3. The US Empire is kidnapping leaders and threatening to annex Greenland, while China is engaging in mutual trade.
It doesn’t matter what the country pretends to want to be, as soon as it gets too powerful you always end up with some asshole dictator
This doesn’t logically follow. There’s nothing about size of country that correlates to having dictators, Cuba under Batista was small but dictatorial, while China is a democracy with 1.4 billion people. The vast majority of Chinese citizens believe the government represents their interests:
Russia couldn’t be as bad as the US Empire even if it tried, as it lacks the ability to do so. China is a socialist country. The US is the world hegemon and a dying empire. Entirely different scales of evil here.
pooh Bear
I don’t see why it’s funny to use a yellow bear to describe a Chinese man.
So with that said, why the China worship, why the pretence they China can do no wrong? This is literally “US propaganda baaaad, China propaganda goooood”
Nobody believes China can do no wrong or that Chinese propaganda is good. If your entire argument relies on strawmen, then it’s not really anything useful.
I don’t see why it’s funny to use a yellow bear to describe a Chinese man.
Oh, I see the problem. You need to become more racist! /s
Oh duh! Should’ve thought of that /s
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BRI isn’t imperialist, because it results in mutual development. Where the west goes in and plunders and underdevelops the global south, countries in BRI see rising wages and industrialization, escaping the endless trap of imperialism. Does China benefit too? Absolutely. Is it imperialism? No. Here are some good articles:
I don’t know about opinion polls to measure China’s democracy. The CCP have ways of “persuading” citizens to feel like the government respects them. According to the World Press Freedom Index, China actually has the third worst freedom of press in the world, ahead of only North Korea and Eritrea.
The CPC’s “ways of persuasion” are continuously improving living conditions and development. China does restrict private press, yes, because it’s a socialist country and doesn’t want the capitalists it keeps in check abusing the press to undermine the system. Further, data on public support for China is accurate, and isn’t the result of any undue manipulation.
The idea of Russia getting a free pass as better than the US simply because it can’t do as much damage is interesting, sort of like an equality vs equity argument, but at the moment Russia’s the only one throwing around literal nuke threats like christmas cracker jokes.
The US Empire is the one plundering the entire global south at the moment. Russia doesn’t get a “free pass,” but the idea that it’s worse than the US Empire is deeply misinformed.
The meme comparing Xi Jingping to Winnie the Pooh has its origins in China, so it’s nothing racial.
It exploded in the west far more than in China, and is most commonly used among racist right wingers.
Since you mentioned that Chinese propaganda isn’t good either, I know you’re arguing in good faith. I’ll also say that before 2025 I would have said China was easily worse than the US, but now I’m not so sure. Either way, it’s comparing mouldy apples to mouldy oranges.
I don’t agree that it’s comparing mouldy apples to mouldy oranges. It’s comparing late-stage imperialism to early-mid stage socialism, a dying empire vs a rising socialist power. Socialism doesn’t mean free from problems, but it does mean that it’s fundamentally different and regularly improving.
If you want to learn more about China’s system, I recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners. If you want to learn about Marxism-Leninism, which is what China and other socialist countries use as their baseline ideology, I made an introductory reading list.
In what way is China an empire?
This is what happens when instead of material analysis you default to mainstream media to be honest about its geopolitical enemies.
No one is saying we’ll like it if China does bad shit in other countries, but they haven’t invaded anywhere in decades even when provoked. Meanwhile the US bombs a few countries a year, and launches a full on invasion every few years, not to mention the unilateral illegal sanctions they impose which kill over half a million people every year. When China does nearly a tiny fraction of that we can talk. In the meantime you’re just repeating western propaganda. China develops our countries, the US coups or invades them.
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Their first emperor is a fucking dragon.
Your first president is an ungrateful British colonist.
China gets mad praise on Lemmy as long as you say US bad in the same sentence
Been waiting over a year!
Who’s the lady in the picture?
What’s the context?
My dudes, you have nothing to lose but your Chains.
So, workers of the world need to unite?
Eat the rich asap obvsly
No thanks I’m on a low fat diet
Source?
Hence why some of the US simply CAN’T protest. If they miss a single pay check-- or get fired for missing work-- they’re fucked. Insurance is also tired to work.
The decoupling of employment and insurance needs to be possible
Financial slavery
Mario’s brother said what?
it all started in the city of Wurms in the year 1000
Or get injured and end up with a bunch of medical bills. Or about any number of other things that can go off the rails.
get injured and end up with a bunch of medical bills
especially when having health insurance
is xi santa now?
isnt that a silver fox flying a plane backwards?
No but they’ve met up irl
If one paycheck is all that stands between half of the people and homelessness, can it really be called the “middle” class?
There’s only two classes. There’s nothing in the middle.
If you’re in doubt which class you belong to, look at the paycheck. Does it have your name on it? Then you’re one of the ones who get paid.
It’s better to think of working, middle, and upper class in terms of how much of their income derives from labour vs capital.
Working class = majority of income from working.
Upper class = majority of income from owning capital, i.e. can afford not to work at all.
Middle = somewhat evenly split.
Traditionally working class was associated with “lower” jobs such as labourers, and those working cushy office jobs usually earnt a high enough income to accumulate enough capital to become middle or upper class.
This is more aligned with the British definition, where their “middle class” is more equivalent to the US “upper middle class.” Make no mistake though, with many jobs not paying enough to accumulate capital, professionals such as teachers, accountants, and nurses would firmly be considered working class, because they you know, need to work.
I mean, the “middle class” doesn’t usually refer to the poorest 50%. The Lower class has always been the majority, Middle a large minority, and Upper a vanishing minority.
There was an article with a pretty compelling argument a while ago that basically said the true poverty line in the US is over 100.000$/year family income (when you look at what that number was originally supposed to measure). Below that you’re getting fucked left and right.
Every dollar a family earns between 40k and 100k makes them poorer, because it triggers benefit losses (like health care & child care) that exceed income gains.
So what the US reports as “the middle class” are actually the working poor
I was reading Michael Roberts’ blog the other day, and he pointed out something similar. The official calculations for inflation significantly understate it for various reasons. However, if you look at actual labor hours needed to cover the essentials of life, and you use the median income amount from 1950 (for the US), then that number comes out about $102k per year. Said another way, for a standard of living based on real life, to have the standard of the median American in 1950, you would need to earn over $100k today. But if you take that 1950 median income and just adjust it for official inflation, you only get to like $42k.
So I learned it this way:
Upper Class - can live a luxurious life without working at all, and even have domestic employees etc.
Middle Class - can live comfortably but only if they work
Lower class - cannot live comfortably even if they work, and can very easily end up homeless (no social safety net)
The dude who taught me this was my Sociology of Work teacher over twenty years ago.
This isn’t particularly helpful, though, as it doesn’t explain why these classes exist. Class traditionally refers to how we engage with societal production and distribution, like wage laborers, business owners, sole proprietors, artisans, etc. By focusing on the outcomes of this class distinctions, you obscure the mechanisms by which they persist and are reinforced.
I was just trying to offer a quick explanation/summary of the concepts or the main distinguishing external features of each class, because I see a lot of confusion and wrong self-perception. I see a lot of people saying they’re “mid to upper class” because they can afford a nice home and two cars. Just looking at how much money they have, not how do they have it or whether they can maintain that without working. Obviously to understand class and social stratification you have to read more. I am aware that the upper class are there because of the work of the lower classes and the surplus etc. I’m not obscuring anything, just offering some definitions. Sorry if it didn’t come out that way.
Understood, I just wanted to build on your comment.
Class traditionally
It only refers to how we engage with societal production in a handful of belief systems such as Marxism. These are different from how Anthropologists view class which is different from how sociologists view class and all of the above are different from how many older societies viewed class.
Marxism did not invent that class previously meant things like “serf, lord, slave, merchant, etc,” this was something Marx just used that everyone else was using. Marx developed class struggle further by developing dialectical and historical materialism, but did not invent this conception of class.
Marx overly focused on one criteria to describe class. It’s ok to accept ownership/working classes as a useful tool for understanding the world but other systems also offer useful lessons for understanding the world in different ways and contexts.
Marxism does not limit one’s understanding purely to production and distribution, though, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Domenico Losurdo’s Class Struggle is a good read.
It’s helpful to divorce class from simple material wealth, and return to how we engage with production and distribution. The true “middle class” is the small business owner, in reality most people are working class.
I certainly don’t disagree, but I think it’s very useful to highlight how this has changed (IMO) in recent decades. I think there was a time when the boomer generation was earning relatively good incomes that allowed them to live comfortably and accumulate wealth (mainly in houses and the stock market). I think this arrangement between capital and the (predominantly white) working class created a situation where even those workers without much wealth could be “bought off” and swear allegiance to capitalism. This wasn’t sustainable of course, as the postwar industrial boom and then the gains from neoliberalism were never sustainable. Couple that with the fall of the Eastern Bloc and with it the “threat of a good example”, and I would say that this arrangement lasted as late as the GFC at most. I think this helps explain how older people today - even if they are solidly working class - might still be hostile to anything they think is “socialism” while younger generations do not share those opinions, it seems.
Yep, you’re referring to the “labor aristocracy.” The working classes in the imperial core are bribed by the spoils of imperialism into complacency. What’s causing the rise in radicalization is a decline in imperialism, due to global south development (largely due to projects like BRI and trade with China). This is why the US Empire is surging to the right, as imperialism is being brought inward and austerity forced on the labor aristocracy. This is causing radicalization:
So it’s important not just to look at the local, but also the international aspects of class. There’s also the fact that the US is a settler-colony, and this is the primary contradiction within Statesian society.
Its right in the middle, between homelessness and billionaire.
Middle: in between homelessness and millionaires
Nor even “the working class”.
The precariat.
Median class? Mode class?
Precarious class.
Yeah cuz the lower class don’t get paid at all. Homelessness is rampant all over the states
Fuck it. Chips on the table, china taking over america would be a net positive at this point. I’ve never bought into the “country bad because ideology different” bullshit we’re fed here in the us. As I can see from here, just about any other large nation assuming control would bring me everything I ask my government for as a default.
Please, president Xi, the Statesian public yearns for liberation
Maybe the Chinese proletariat can launch a concurrent revolution to overthrow Xi.
Why would they do that? Over 90% of Chinese citizens support their government.
I didn’t seriously consider that they would just like I wouldn’t seriously consider White Americans in the 1950’s launching a revolution. China has high propaganda and they’re at the part of both industrialization and capitalism where average people see benefit from both.
China isn’t capitalist, nor is it an imperialist settler colony that gave 1950s white Statesians a better life. It’s a socialist country, the large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly owned and the working classes are in charge of the state. A revolution would be devastating for the Chinese working classes.
Trading late stage capitalism for mid stage capitalism and a pre-existing merger of state and corporate power doesn’t sound like a permanent fix. Also, deposing a strongman in favor a system that has reestablished it’s leadership as a strongman is not an improvement.
I think you underestimate the term “improvement”. Lossing two fingers instead of three is an improvement. 8inches from the ledge is better than 4inches from the ledge even if either measure isn’t even one whole step. If in never going to see best then I’ll take any better I can get.
A permanently better world is possible so why settle for a temporary better situation with little hope for further improvement? Why insist people have to lose fingers when no one losing fingers is achievable and not at all far fetched?
That’s like insinuating that I refuse to lose weight because I can’t lose 60lbs today. I’m literally saying I will take any movement what so ever if it means movement.
Because they’re moving there? No one said there should be no more progress?
China is socialist, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned and the working class is in control of the state. They don’t have a “strongman,” just because Xi gets re-elected. Stability is good if public support is high.
They have a Strongman because Xi went to great efforts to sideline people or policies that served as a check to his power. Something that would have been unthinkable in China at any point after Mao and before Xi.
Do you have an example? The anti-corruption campaigns are immensely popular among the public in China, and they support the government.
Just years of reading. That you bring up the anti-corruption campaign means you’re at least familiar with allegations that Xi unevenly applied the campaign against his political opponents. As a side not, I’ll say the anti-corruption campaigns in China are definitely popular and also one clear situation where improvements in computer technology made a major advance in society and peoples quality of life. Corruption of low level officials was hard to root out when the people would be making complaints to other corrupt low level officials and risking retaliation in the process. Computer technology helped bypass that.
So I still don’t see any evidence of Xi being a “strongman,” but instead an extremely popular and influential leader.
See here for a possible solution to turning a global China into a sustainable hybrid of communism and capitalism: https://philosophyofbalance.com/blog/new-monarchy/
Gross
China isn’t turning into a “hybrid of communism and capitalism,” it’s socialist, ie transitioning between capitalism and communism. It isn’t possible to sustain this transitional phase indefinitely, as production grows and develops so too does socialization, which forces higher stages of socialism.
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Y’all have no idea what you’re asking for
Communists created Lemmy, and have been here since the start. Not sure why you’re surprised that communists are on Lemmy.
These tankies think they’re communists?
We are.
Oh hell yeah, can’t wait to read an incredibly babybrained and incoherent treatise on the “difference”.
Lol. How dare those commies take over their own community…
Y’all have no idea what you’re asking for
I’ve got a pretty good idea: Death to America
You’re on lemmy.ml
This has always been a Tankie instance.
Yep, communists were here from the start.
Brits and Germans too.
Canadians and Australians too while we’re at it. … And and and and and…
But sure. First rule of triage, tend to the most in danger first.
It’s almost like we need a goal working class revolution or something. Nepal gives me hope.
Just keep working harder! It’ll trickle down!
