SleazyCommunist

Nostalgia in part and desperation for some form of win. In 1991, the Soviet experiment dismantled itself, no thanks to the tireless efforts of its enemies, but what was once the world’s second superpower became little more than another colony of the West. Its wealth and gains for its peoples sold off to the highest bidder. Liberal academics called it the end of history for a reason.

But there is more to the issue. The Cold War proved there was no lie too great for the West to peddle to destroy its enemy. No boundary it would not cross. I’ve even read Gorbachev once cried in his car because Reagan would not shut up about the Star Wars project at a nuclear disarmament conference. A project we now know was little more than science fiction. Nazis in Ukraine? Read about Operation Bloodstone. They were present in the country way before 2014 and anyone with geopolitical knowledge knew it.

So with Russia it is because Russia, while not the Soviet Union, still occasionally stands up to the United States like the good ole days. This is amusingly a poor reading of Lenin, who made it very clear what his stance was on inter-capitalist conflict. There is nothing wrong with rooting for NATO lose though. Putin himself despises the Soviet legacy. He pulled pensions from the half a million red army women who served, describes Bolshevism as a stab in the back (not-so-subtle dog-whistle there) and only pays it lip services when he remembers most of his country wants it back.

China, on the other hand, is a harder one to explain. Much of what we learn about China in the West is just straight made up. And I mean it. The great firewall isn’t just a pejorative. It protects the sensitive ears of the West from China as much as it protects them from the West. This has been exacerbated by the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” which has the express goal of containing China.

Let me ask what wrongdoings of China are being defended? How far back you want to rewind decades of propaganda with the explicit goal of demonizing the country? Or are we speaking of more recent claims like Uyghurs? However, your question was why defend it. I’ll answer that one. Because China still considers itself on the path to Socialism. This isn’t a Russia situation. China still keeps its private sector locked in special economic zones and monitors them heavily. It still prioritizes common prosperity and has provided many third world countries an alternative to the IMF.

China’s road to socialism was always going to be different since it was ... on the other side of the world, from where the theories of socialism were written. But Lenin himself described socialism as ascending a high mountain. It might take many tries. Even restarts to get it right but is better China handles its path its way than trying to conform to some stringent imagined idea of what socialism should be. Therefore it is worthy of defense.

Not saying I disagree, but I see a hopeless situation as a liberating reason to not give into doomerism. In history, we see that every major environmental change changes human society in radical ways. Agriculture developed out of the end of an Ice Age. Feudalism in Europe came from a period of global cooling and likewise, capitalism followed the end of said cooling. Fascism itself is a vicious form of capitalism. People get too caught up in scientifically diluting a core point of what makes it worse than the current liberal order. When all that matters is that it is in fact capitulation because Fascism’s strength of reorganizing a state is also its weakness as it clamps down on mechanisms for reform then ultimately reduces productive relations to a primitive state.

What you’ve listed are not recent developments. Zionists were already committing terrorist acts in British occupied Palestine before there was ever a modern Isreal. The major corporate powers of Germany: Krupp, IG Faben etc were all but forgiven at Nuremberg for their role in the holocaust then reintegrated into West Germany before a United Germany even existed. The United States, like pre-world war 2 Japan, transitioned seamlessly into a system which shares all the trappings of a fascist economy and never left.

Capitalism as a system has been on life-support for a long time. With each new iteration being an attempt to keep the sick old man breathing another few years. Now we face the inhuman core of humanity at its most ruthless. The tools to address the problem are there, ready to be used, produced by said old man. Whether or not we will use them is not something I can predict. However, what I wanted to make clear with my original comment is the infrastructure is already in place and the first major step is buying time.

Fucked yes, doomed maybe not. The most practical solution is also the most impractical, given our current situation. Call it communism or call it a blue donkey if you want, but centrally planned carbon rationing based on projections of emissions is about the only genuine hope future generations have. We know how much we can emit. We have known for a long time. Now, comes the tricky part. How do we maintain a functional civilization while also drastically reducing emissions to meet the goal of carbon zero?

Computer models can help us keep track of carbon production in real time and even be converted to manage specific sectors. This is where the central planning aspect comes in. The average person should not be a victim of these changes. Folks still need to go to work, pay rent and all the basic requirements of life. Instead of a carbon tax, we need a carbon ration which starts at the bottom of society then goes upward to the highest producers. As we go up the ladder, the amount of carbon allowed to be produced on a single hypothetical day shrinks. Eventually reaching those industries and individuals doing the most damage, then putting the burden of reduction on them. The rich/Corporations can find those solutions easily. There will be some instability and no doubt chaos, but they have the resources needed. Amazon, for example, already uses tons of metadata to plan the most efficient routes.

Sure you are aware of this but for other folks, the economy is built around oil at every level. Plastics is an entire industry which just exists to supplement the leftovers of oil capitalism. Our leaders know this, so instead of starting at the lowest level, they seek increasingly impractical solutions. I.E Geoengineering.