this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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sino
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I guess you have to be more specific regarding what about that you think is at odds with SWCC.
The whole point of Deng's reforms was opposition to everything the Cultural Revolution was doing! Not just negating its changes but then moving in the opposite direction (as the CR was specifically instated to counter Dengists and their ilk). Saying China should do another CR is like saying it should do another country-wide land redistribution. It would be cool if someone had a magic wand but short of that, it's opposed to state ideology.
Besides, I think the place to start would probably be in the universities themselves and not hangout spots, since the amount of people studying liberal economics in China (better known there, as here, as "economics") is at minimum an order of magnitude larger than those studying Marxism, and that's still SWCC Marxism in the main, i.e. the ideology that got us to this condition where a completed CR is necessary.
Incidentally, I'm reading a book about this right at this very moment. Deng reforms were never meant to liberalize China or make it capitalist. It was a measure that was meant to allow China to catch up to the west. This has been accomplished now, and we're seeing a push from the party to wind down the role of private sector in the economy.
Again, what I described above isn't some drastic reeducation campaign, but rather firming up of the socialist ideological line within the intellectual sphere. Meanwhile, the notion that people aren't studying Marxism in China is frankly absurd. In fact, there's plenty of evidence that the opposite is the case.
https://field-journal.com/issue-26/the-interwining-of-knowledge-affect-life-and-mentality-chinese-youths-turn-to-marxist-leninist-maoist-in-contemporary-china/
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1230909.shtml
Wake me up when Xi or that Shanghai liberal who is going to replace him actually call for struggle against the domestic bourgeoisie.
Reread what I said. You read a lot, I'm sure you can manage my straightforward statements.
That first article -- aside from being a novella -- is a really strange thing to link in this context. You can read countless articles, mostly from neoliberal sources, wherein Maoist student protestors, union organizers, etc. get violently repressed by the state. I know that Maoism exists among segments of the people in China, these stories are even used by neoliberals to delegitimize China's ideological claims. This is a much better argument against Deng's legacy, taken at face value (though I am not just going to take neoliberal reporting on China at face value, I'm not a Trot). Also, just read through the footnotes to get a good handle of the authorial perspective there.
The second one is a collection of anecdotes, and they are nice anecdotes, but the fact remains. I'll definitely check out Awakening Age, though.
Westerners living under the dictatorship of capital thinking they understand how to do Marxism better than the Chinese will never cease to be funny.
Two things, one: this standpoint epistemology stuff is bullshit. The Soviet Union was deeply revisionist for most of its existence thanks to Khrushchev's ideological coup, and I'm sure there were leftists back then smugly saying "It's cute that you think you understand how to do Marxism better than the Soviets" when met with this obvious fact. Two: The article you linked me highlights that, within China, there is very much dispute over how to do Marxism and people who object to the CPC and trying to do their own labor organizing being suppressed. Using "the Chinese" as some imaginary ideological monolith of enlightened Marxists who agree and are willfully collaborating is fantasy to the point of Orientalism.
The obvious fact is that China is a socialist country led by a communist party, and every serious analysis clearly shows that this is the case. Meanwhile, even the revisionist Soviet Unions was a far superior system to what we have in the west today.
Finally, the fact that there is vibrant political debate in China isn't some gotcha. It's an evolving social system and people are figuring things out as they go. That's how real life works.
That's a really cute straw man that has nothing to do with anything I said. What's actually being said to you is that people living in a socialist country understand how to apply socialism in practice than western LARPers.
Hey, if you'll bite the bullet that China's revisionist, I won't have further objections. I never said they were inferior or even merely equal to America, they are clearly superior and a historically progressive force in the world. We agree on that part, it's just not what I was arguing
You are leaving out of this "vibrant political debate" that a broad side of it is getting repressed.
As you have phrased it, this is a circular argument.
"China is revisionist"
"No, it is socialist"
"How do you know?"
"Because the Chinese [who aren't being repressed] know better and they say so"
"How do they know better?"
"Because they live in a socialist state."
"How do you know?"
"Because the Chinese know better and . . ."
No, I don't think China is revisionist. What China is doing is precisely what Lenin advocated with programs like NEP.
You keep saying that despite all evidence to the contrary.
And I see you continue to make straw man arguments instead of engaging with what I'm actually saying. Your claim that the Chinese are being repressed has zero basis in reality. So, you just made up an absurd claim then based your whole argument on it.
It's pretty obvious that you're just going to keep repeating the same line over and over here, so I don't think further discussion is going to be productive. Bye.
Literally the fucking article you linked says that those Maoists are being repressed, that's what the article is all about!
Oh the goal posts are now moving from Marxists being repressed to ultras being repressed.
What was the point of linking the article if the Maoists in it are not legitimate Marxists? Did you get your links mixed up or something, and you meant to link some unrelated article?
The article discusses other things which you ignored since they don't fit with the narrative you want to craft here. Why are you like this?
It's the main subject of the article! The whole thing is about the Jasic labor movement with other elements added in as context or because the liberal author has some ax to grind. It's not some sinister slight of hand that I took a link that you gave no specific commentary for and understood you to want me to see what the article is about. It's a big-ass article, which part were you hoping I'd know was what you wanted me to see?
Edit: Removed an incorrect tangent
Yes, it's a big article which allows you to cherry pick the parts that fit with the narrative you're peddling here. However, both articles show that Marxism is alive and well in China and it's very much being taught to the masses. The fact that you keep trying to pretend otherwise is frankly clownish in the extreme.
In any case, it's very obviously we're not going to convince each other of anything here. So, I'm going to leave it at that. You can keep believing whatever you like about China, it's not going to affect reality in any way.
So when I talk about Maoists in an article titled:
I'm cherry-picking
When I talk about the Jasic labor movement in an article that opens and closes talking about the Jasic labor movement and says "Jasic" no less than 142 times, I'm cherry-picking
I could actually cherry-pick and point to the non-negligible number of paragraphs like these:
spoiler
But I told you much earlier that I can identify when a liberal is writing a hitpiece on China and don't put much stock in these statements (don't get me started on the "Stalinism" part)
You don't need to search to find "The CCP is repressing X group" because the author says it constantly! And I don't even support the idea that all of those times are justified, to say nothing of all the other ridiculous negative views it gives air to, like some describing the CCP as "fascist".
I can't make a definitive statement, but from the evidence given, you are deeply unwilling or unable to engage with someone who doesn't immediately roll over and say "educate me!" but instead just has another view. You are so incredibly obstinate that I couldn't even get you to show me where in this article it says what you want me to read, and so when I come back saying "Wait, the people this article is written about aren't doing so well" you cry that I'm acting in bad faith!
I'm deeply unwilling to engage the same tired tropes. Nothing you've said is original in any way, and all these arguments have been rehashed a million times at this point. Having read actual books on the subject, and having talked to people from China, I've made up my view on how China is developing. Clearly your view is pretty different, and I frankly have no idea how much effort you've put into actually understanding how socialism in China is developing, but I simply don't see any point continuing this discussion. If you think China is revisionist then have fun with that.