This is why I advocate for, hear me out, liberal arts. 🤢

Soc 100 or 101, can't remember which, taught this.

But the threat is neither dead nor gone

For a while the ruling class managed to convince people that it really was the end of history.

Why is the threat gone? Cultural and political momentum died down while USSR was around and USSR being dismantled for sure killed off a huge chunk of the momentum and strength, but it's hard to believe the ideology would be dead and never coming back

There are two classes, the senatorial class and the plebeians. Just like in Rome with the worst psychopaths at the top.

Modern liberals drank their own kool-aid and literally thought it was "The End of History", and the future would just be liberal democracy, with some technocratic tweaks. These are people who genuinely believed freedom for capitalists was intrinsically tied to human rights and that capitalism eventually means the best outcomes for everyone. They'd just watched the USSR fall, and were so sure China was either going to embrace free markets and western-style democracy or stagnate until they were overthrown and replaced by a government who did.

Don't worry about that, the threat will be back.

We just have to reach the level of peasantry that started the communist revolution.

Worry about that.

I mean they were sorta right about the Chinese free market thing, but only partly and without the Western style democracy.

Recommend: The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy - Jeffrey Winters

They saw China using markets and didn't understand the fundamental difference between markets being wielded by capitalists, developing the means of production in rare, specific cases where it helps them concentrate power and markets being wielded by workers to for the singular purpose of developing the means of production.

I meant more how they're now where there's billionaires there running huge private companies etc

Silence, the two braincells of a progressist are working now.

The socialist market economy in China was a return to more classical Marxist economics than the dogmatic attempt to collectivize even small proprietors under the Gang of Four.

I'd argue it started with FDR not the cold war. FDR did end up helping many Americans, but the concessions given slowed and/or completely stopped many workers movements in the US. Halting further progress amongst socialist or communist parties in the US.

The middle class wouldn't emerge until the late 1940s, but the groundwork was set in the 30s

After not enjoying Applied Calculus, I took Modern Math, AKA Math For English Majors, to complete my math requirement.

It was a great class! Lots of useful, real-world math skills. It didn't use anything much more complicated than simple algebra, but we talked about the traveling salesman problem and ways to fairly split up an estate.

We also talked about election math, and how first past the post is objectively a terrible election system, and how there are several systems readily available that are mathematically more representative of the will of the people. I don't even know if the teacher had a specific political stance, or if she was just mathematically offended by our outdated democratic operating system.

Great class. Wish they would start teaching subjects like that in high school.

I mean more what became after the economic liberalization. Billionaires and huge private companies and stuff. That's probably partly what the people were expecting to see in the future.

As a STEM grad who spent 2 years undeclared, it sounds like a course even STEM people could use.

I'm so thankful that I sort of accidentally backed into a well rounded education. I cannot say the same for the majority of my STEM colleagues.

Calling the socialist market economy "liberalization" isn't really accurate, as it implies the opposite direction, dogmatic collectivization, would be "more communist." It was a course correction. Either way, western liberals began projecting onto the PRC's economy what they expected of a capitalist economy, and now that it's increasingly evident that this is fundamentally incorrect they are scrambling to come to a new analysis of why China works and why the west is dying.

I think especially STEM students should have lib arts requirements.

Yeah, but unlike the US, those billionaires do not control the government. The government is controlled by the CCP.

It's the dictatorship of the (people who say they represent) the proletariat. Not the dictatorship of the people who buy the most politicians.

Yaaayyyy....

To clarify, the PRC is a dictatorship of the proletariat. The CPC is the organization of the proletariat, not its own distinct class.

100%. Some of the most useful courses that I took were either electives or simply did not count toward my major. Specifically: a logic course, a course about the history of socialism, and a writing course (including research papers)

Critical thinking and logic 101 (syllogistic logic) were infinitely valuable, imo. I think critical reading should also be required.

They should also start teaching basic psych in grade school. Kids need that and adults' bs may be mitigated, but they won't teach it, and that's why.

I just mean it in the sense of relaxation or freeing the market for more private operators.

It's just a very capitalistic seeming thing to have billionaires and huge private corporations. Something familiar to many capitalist countries.

RIP left wave USA 1930-1975
RIP right wave China 1980-2015

I understand what you meant, I just took it a bit further as stating that alone gives a different impression from what actually happened and why.

The commanding heights of China's economy are publicly owned, and the private corporations that do exist are heavily controlled by "golden shares" the CPC owns. Billionaires exist because private property still exists, and private property exists because markets are useful for socializing production. The social surplus is still oriented towards socialist development. The marketization of small and medium firms is in service of socializing production so that it may develop and be folded into the public sector, not for the sake of capitalist class interests.

Nobody called China a paradise, but it is projection to say China is "extremely xenophobic to anyone who isn't Han Chinese." By proportion of the population, Han Chinese are some of the least represented in the NPC, with minority groups given regional autonomy, minority protections, and affirmative action that goes beyond western protections.

Further, the rights the west does have over China, such as with regards to LGBTQ rights, are improving over time in China (and are largely regional, rather than state-wide). Meanwhile, the west seems to be falling backwards.

I dunno, I could see private property existing without letting people hoard billions. It's just very disappointing to see that the prime example of today's socialism has billionaires running megacorps.

Work in progress I suppose but understandable how to some that sorta takes the enthusiasm for the ideology out of it for some

If you criticize the government there in any reasonable way you get locked up.

This is just not true. (Also even if it was I don't see how it supports your point given criticism is not tied to ethnicity).

This isn't actually true, reasonable critique is fine. What's punished is liberalism that undermines the socialist system, which is a necessary tool for defending against mass western disinformation campaigns, campaigns that undermined the Soviets.

Further, you are completely butchering why the vocational centers in Xinjiang were opened. Just like ideas of "white genocide," western countries often accuse their geopolitical opponents of atrocities, heavily distorting reality in order to make it impossible for the western working class to take an active stance against western imperialism.

Prior to the establishment of de-radicalization programs, western-backed terrorist attacks were common, in order to disrupt the Belt and Road initiative (where Xinjiang is key to expanding westward). These included:

• July 5, 2009: The Urumqi Riots resulted in 197 deaths, and 1700 wounded in mass stabbings.

• October 28, 2013: Tian'anmen Attack, 5 killed, 40 wouded, when a Jeep was driven directly into crowds.

• March 1, 2014: Kunming Train Station Attack, 31 killed, 141 wounded. 8 jihadists committed mass stabbings.

• May 22, 2014: Urumqi Attack, 39 killed, 94 injured as 2 attackers drove cars into crowds and threw explosives at buildings.

And many more. Since the de-radicalization efforts, these attacks have gone down to effectively 0. The reason for these attacks was because Xinjiang is geostrategic for the Belt and Road initiative, which is why the west stoked anti-China sentiment among the Uyghur peoples, funding terrorist groups and separatists. When China responded not with tanks and bombs but with vocational centers and investment in the region, the west pivoted to claims of "genocide," then walked those claims back to "human rights abuses" when no evidence for genocide materialized.

The best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective's Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is a group of Chinese diaspora living in the west, and they compiled an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims. The majority of their sourcing is western, and they cite official Chinese government writing and white papers when relevant. Uyghur culture is preserved.

I also recommend reading the UN report as well as (especially) China's response to it, which eclipses it in size and detail. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, Christian nationalist and professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.

As a final note, I don't know why you are complaining about me being a communist on a socialist community, on an instance run by communists. This is a community for discussing socialism, not for attacking those supporting socialist countries.

You're getting fixated on an arbitrary level of wealth, rather than relations of production and distribution, and using this as reason to be disappointed. It's this self-defeating obsession with "purity" that is holding the western left back, and it has roots in cultural Christianity. For many western leftists, it would be better for China to be poor but more dogmatic and anti-Marxist as they were under the Gang of Four than to course-correct and uplift the working classes.

Yes, China does crack down on certain bourgeois freedoms, because the bourgeoisie are kept on a short leash, when they’re allowed to exist at all.

No, China’s government is not xenophobic to its own people. Some people may be bigoted, including some Han people, but you can find bigotry anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_China

You’re getting your information from anti-communist & anti-China propaganda that our government, corporate media, and NGOs (which are funded by our government and corporations) produce & propagate.

It was the same fear though, there was a really strong working class movement in the US after the great depression, and a lot of communist organizing happening within unions.

I'm fixating people being allowed to hoard billions off the labour of others. I don't think it's a very high horse to be on lol

What level of wealth is too much to allow, and how did you come to that conclusion? Why does this take priority over the scientific basis of socializing production and leveraging markets to accelerate this process?

I mean we cap it at billion. I'd be fine with capping it at much lower too but not allowing someone to hoard billions off the work of other people is at least achievable goal.

It's bad because there's no wealth like that without exploitation. And in a billion, there's shitload of exploitation. More of the profits should go to the workers and not feeding some megawealthy elite.

But that's just my take.

You didn't answer my questions:

1. How did you come to that conclusion? It seems like it's just vibes, which is my point. Your conclusion that China isn't doing enough is arbitrary, not scientific.

2. Why does this take priority over the scientific basis of socializing production and leveraging markets to accelerate this process?

You are making an arbitrary, moralist argument, not an argument based on what's best for the people of China. It's an argument based on perceived purity, not science, and as such it falls into the same trappings as the Gang of Four.

\1. It is a moral take, yeah. Exploitation of worker's to such degree that you are able to hoard billions is bad imo.

And it's not just about China but same goes for everywhere.

\2. I don't believe in your the factuality of your scientific basis for billionaires being necessary. It's akin to all the trickle downs and whatnot.

That is why I called them concessions

The problem with an argument based on "purity" is that we wind back at the Gang of Four, you are fetishizing shared poverty rather than an uplfiting of the working classes. Collective poverty is more "pure" to you and is therefore better. The existence of billionaires is there because of the existence of private property, and private property exists due to the socialization effects of markets for lesser developed industries.

By arbitrarily picking the "1 billion" figure, which doesn't exist for concrete reasons but instead vibes, you are making the judgment that China isn't pure because it doesn't tax enough. Billionaires are not qualitatively different from those with hundreds of millions of dollars, they are both capitalists. The capitalist class itself is being undermined by socialist construction in China, and the working classes are benefiting. You are valuing purity in a religious sense over concrete improvements in the lives of the working classes.

The working class would benefit a lot more of some of that billion was given to the actual workers instead of fattening up some wealthy capitalist's bank account tbh.

I don't know what the purity thing is you're talking about, exactly. Isn't China a mixed economy?

China already taxes them. Your argument is essentially that the level of taxation is not enough for you, based on nothing except your personal issue with the "billionaire" label. If China taxed at higher rates, this would not qualitatively transform the mode of production and distribution. This is why I say you are focused on "purity," you're fixating on what you percieve to be a "blemish" based on nothing but vibes. That's why I asked why you came up with "1 billion" as the limit, and the only answer you could give was "it sounds bad."

It's not the label, it's the literal amount of wealth and exploitation that entails and how that should be the worker's wealth, not some one rich person's.

I don't care what name or label you use for it. The physical reality is what matters. Not to mention I would have been happy to cap it even earlier lol

Why 1 billion specifically, and not the current level of taxation? Why 1 billion in USD? This is an arbitrary argument.

fair