cfgaussian @ cfgaussian @lemmygrad.ml

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3 yr. ago

Really hope this goes well. If they succeed with this, she will have absolutely redeemed herself in my eyes for the lib brained takes she has had on Russia-Ukraine. If you are putting your life on the line and actively saving people from starvation during a genocide, you deserve a free pass for one bad geopolitical take.

They do, which is precisely why they want another war. They want a rematch and are convinced they can win this time because they have the US on their side.

No government or society is perfect. Socialist experiments are also flawed. But whatever their errors in domestic cultural policies, i will forever appreciate the DPRK for being the single most consistently anti-imperialist state in the world basically since its foundation. No other socialist project has been so consistently on the right side of history, so uncompromising in their revolutionary principles even at great cost to themselves. And while i'm no expert on the DPRK's domestic economic and social policies, it seems to me like they have managed to achieve amazing things in the face of overwhelming obstacles, the kind of crushing pressures which would surely have led to a less robust system to crumble. Not just managing to survive as a society but to develop their productive forces, their infrastructure, and to become a formidable military power capable of punching far above their weight, and doing this virtually all on their own since the fall of the Soviet Union. Beyond that i don't feel qualified to judge them because i simply don't know enough about their internal policies.

The problem with petty bourgeois activism of this kind is that it is almost always entirely ineffectual unless it receives real material and organizational support from the outside, i.e. as in the case of the archetypical color revolution playbook, with entire NGO networks and tons of cash to pay people to go and stay in the streets for days and days (most people need to work and can't afford to do this unless someone pays them), pay for professionally printed banners and signs, etc.

Even online activism needs a certain amount of material support to produce professional propaganda designed to maximize psychological impact, pay for bot networks to distribute it and so on.

Without that kind of support this is just virtue signaling that inevitably fizzles out because there are no resources or organization behind it.

Perfection.

I'm getting lib/petty bourgeois vibes from this. Not that Saudi Arabia doesn't need a revolutionary overthrow of its despotic monarchy, but these methods strongly remind me of astroturfed color revolution movements. Smells too much like "Arab Spring" when online activists literally got NED (aka CIA) training.

Would be cool if it's genuinely grassroots though. Cause fuck the Saudi monarchy.

Very well put. Though i don't know that i entirely agree with your last paragraph. It seems a bit too fatalistic. China is definitely the biggest cause for hope but it is not the only one. When i see things like what is happening in Burkina Faso at the moment, it gives me hope for the Global South as a whole, hope that the revolutionary spirit will never be permanently crushed and will emerge time and time again from the ashes. The most that the enemies of the working class can do is delay it, yes they can cause more suffering, but they can't stop the progression of history. Perhaps my optimistic faith in humanity is misguided, but this is the way i see it at the moment.

This might be a good start: https://archive.org/details/critiqueszymanski/mode/1up

Unfortunately it's fairly outdated. When it was written the Soviet Union was still around and China had not yet opened up, and there are a lot of lessons that Marxists over the past four decades have had to draw from what happened to the CPSU, the dissolution of the USSR, and China's successful rise. But this nonetheless explains basically the origins and problems of ultra-left Marxism in the post Chinese revolution era.

It's not focused on Maoism specifically though. For that you'll have to ask someone else for recommendations, i don't have anything right at this moment. I will look into it.

You'll have to be more specific. Which part? China under Mao? The Cultural Revolution? The phenomenon of "Maoism"? Socialism with Chinese Characteristics? Modern China's view on the Mao period? These are big topics, i don't know a single book that covers them all.

"Maoists" hate Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. They are ultras. Basically China's version of Trotskyites. No existing socialism is good enough for them because it's never pure enough, left enough, or revolutionary enough. It is deeply ironic that they call themselves "Maoists" because Mao himself made pragmatic compromises with the national bourgeoisie under the framework of New Democracy that today's "Maoists" would call revisionist, liberal and a betrayal of socialism. Those who follow the real spirit of Mao's teachings in China don't call it "Maoism", they call it Mao Zendong Thought. They view this as simply a part of Marxism-Leninism. China today takes a 70-30 view on Mao. 70% of what he did was good, 30% not so good. In particular they are very critical of the ultra-left tendencies of the chaotic Cultural Revolution era toward the end of Mao's life.

Now, personally i'd put it more around 80-20 or even 90-10, because i see a lot of value in certain elements of the Cultural Revolution, even if mistakes were made and ultimately the overall strategy was misguided. So it's not like i'm unsympathetic to Maoists who admire that period. I understand where they're coming from, even if it's idealist. But we also have to acknowledge that the more moderate post-Mao policies of the CPC have been a resounding success in terms of improving the material conditions of hundreds of millions of people. Unfortunately Maoists refuse to see this reality. And like the Trotskyists, they make themselves unwitting accomplices of imperialism when they take their irrationally hostile stance against China and the other AES countries.

Have these people been in cryosleep for the past three years and just woken up? Because i can't explain it any other way, why they are acting like they just noticed what Russia has been saying since they started the SMO...

Good riddance. The US can have them.

Lol. Europe is a joke.

One thing that i find very striking is that the new route only goes north of the Tian Shan mountains. Ancient silk road trade routes more often went with the southern option through the Tarim basin:

I wonder why this is. It might be smart for China to diversify the routes in case one gets disrupted for some reason. Plus it would have very beneficial development effects on cities like Kashgar.

Maybe the mountain passes are hard to develop transporation infrastructure through? Or maybe China wants to avoid Kyrgyzstan/Tajikistan for some reason? There has been some instability there recently.

It's beautiful. It gives me the urge to go buy a couple of camels and lead a caravan across the desert.

Now do western liberal democracies. What is voter turnout like there and what percentage of votes do winning parties typically get? Here i'll start you off:

US turnout is typically around 30% and winning parties hover around 50% plus minus a few points, that means only 15% of the eligible voters (which is not even all adults) ever support the government.

In Germany we had record turnout of 80% (usually it's lower) but the winning party didn't even get 30%, and now they are polling even below 25%. This means that in the best case of a record turnout election less than 24% of the eligible voters support the winning party.

None of our parties here could win 80% of the votes even if our turnout was only 40%. By the standard of liberal democracies Maduro is genuinely popular. Don't be a hypocrite. If you're gonna do math compare it properly.

If the opposition wants to boycot the vote that is their choice, but it doesn't invalidate the democratic mandate that Maduro has. It just shows that they know they are not popular and are afraid to be seen losing if they actually participate.

Instead they engage in underhanded plots to try and sabotage the elections, and collaborate with foreign powers to sanction Venezuela, make its people miserable, and try to overthrow its elected government. No wonder they are unpopular.

Always knew there was something deeply wrong with crypto bros.

The agreement is purely one sided. Putin could take out Zelensky any time he wanted. He doesn't because there is nothing to be gained, Zelensky is a joke, a clown. The same doesn't apply the other way. The Kiev Nazis absolutely would kill Putin if they could. They are death cult lunatics who are just itching to trigger a nuclear war if it means "sticking it to the Russians".

The Kiev regime seems really intent on climbing up into the exponential part of the curve:

Good article, very basic stuff here, nothing new but it's written in a simple enough way that the average person can understand which is good. Maybe finally reality is starting to sink in.

But don't these people use spell checkers? "Lobsided" instead of lopsided, "succession" instead of secession...