If you are incapable of doing so, then your point is simply considered a rumor.
Why don’t you hold yourself to this standard?
If you are incapable of doing so, then your point is simply considered a rumor.
Why don’t you hold yourself to this standard?
What has been effective is the strategy of “make life as hard as possible on Cubans so most Americans will look at Cuba and think communism doesn’t work.”
don’t tone-police comrades
I’m not sure there’s a good definition of this. Your comment makes great points and I read it as respectful to comrades who might disagree, but I’ve seen similar comments called tone policing before. It’s also hard for me to imagine an organization upholding a party line on an issue without some method of policing how its members communicate about that issue.
Most people aren’t going to change their minds over a Lemmy conversation, but a significant number will change their minds over a bunch if conversations.
There’s a Mao quote I can’t find about how party members shouldn’t presume they can change people’s long-held political opinions with just a lecture or two. Deeply held beliefs by definition take a long time to change.
Whenever I see these sorts of posts I think about how different they are from revolutionaries who have accomished major successes. The latter group almost universally says you have to keep explaining, keep educating, keep persuading.
I don’t think it can be said enough that bringing revolutionary change will require doing a hundred things we would rather not do. It is labor, and it is unpaid, because that’s what a social movement requires to differentiate it from posting. I’d rather not go to meetings, or organize my workplace, or go to a protest, or go on strike – but if it’s necessary to get to socialism, I’ll do it. I’d rather not put in the effort of patiently bringing people along to my views, but if that works better than telling them to fuck off, I’ll do it.
Another part of the problem is that Obama promised fundamental changes, made only some minor improvements, then the party took a significant rightward turn (especially in foreign policy). His signature domestic policy achievement was so minor that healthcare was the biggest issue in the next two Democratic primaries. His two biggest foreign policy achievements (the nuclear deal with Iran, beginning to normalize relations with Cuba) were immediately undone by Trump, and Biden took no steps to revive them.
He overpromised and way, way underdelivered, often with a notable lack of trying. You can’t sell people on incremental change if you build only small things the other guys can immediately break, and if you don’t even try that hard to do better.
If an election shows a socialist country’s government is unpopular, it’s a clear sign of oppression. If an election instead shows a socialist country’s government is popular, well that’s clearly rigged, another clear sign of oppression.
still gotta use capitalism to critique capitalism
I think there’s an argument to be made that this is the best way to get the message out. A book with a publisher and a famous author gets a lot more attention than a PDF on the internet by someone less notable. And the notoriety of authors – for worse – is tied to your book deal, the media hits your publisher helps attract, and being an in-demand speaker. The theses of any prominent book is readily available in interviews, articles, etc. anyway.
It’d be better if she donated much of her earnings to a worthwhile cause, but for all I know she does.
You don’t think a character named Captain America is meant to make Americans believe they are exceptional and good?
The character has been consistently anti-facist over the years.
What was he doing during the Cold War?
We’re all about “let people enjoy what they want” until someone says they enjoy something besides your favorite media
everybody who has a retirement plan is a capitalist because retirement funds invest in stocks, bonds, etc.
The term you’re looking for is petite bourgeoisie: people who do get some income by owning slivers of the means of production, but who also have to live by selling their labor. Someone who has investments purely for retirement purposes is straining the lower bounds of that definition.
Everyone with a savings account is a capitalist
Change in your pocket is not anywhere close to owning the means of production.
Many of today’s problems were yesterday’s solutions. It’s a common cycle for an improvement to come along, be implemented, show some new problems over time, and then need another improvement to address those problems.
Capitalism was an improvement over feudalism (Marx agrees with this!), but no one is advocating going back to feudalism. The argument is that the problems with capitalism are so large and capitalism itself is unable to address them. Hence the need for the next improvement: socialism.
police state where the leaders pretend that there’s a higher ideal
When the Bad Countries do this it’s a damning indictment of their entire system; when the U.S. does it, it’s just bad apples that can be reformed away.
Trump is driving off the cliff at 100 mph, Biden was driving off it at 90. “We’re technically better” – when part of that argument includes doing hypothetically less genocide – is a losing platform. You have to seriously promise major improvements.
The transitory period of New Economic Policy lasted only a few years in USSR
Who’s to say that’s the best length of time for a transitory period, in all countries? Why are you sure you’re right and China’s leadership is wrong? If the USSR could allow limited private control of businesses for a time and then revoke that, why can’t China?
Note that Mao himself was far from strictly opposed to private ownership of capital, at least as long as the national bourgeoisie did not seek to undermine the socialist project:
In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie comes under the category of contradictions among the people. By and large, the class struggle between the two is a class struggle within the ranks of the people, because the Chinese national bourgeoisie has a dual character. In the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, it had both a revolutionary and a conciliationist side to its character. In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class for profit constitutes one side of the character of the national bourgeoisie, while its support of the Constitution and its willingness to accept socialist transformation constitute the other. The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is one between exploiter and exploited, and is by nature antagonistic. But in the concrete conditions of China, this antagonistic contradiction between the two classes, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods. However, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie will change into a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy if we do not handle it properly and do not follow the policy of uniting with, criticizing and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy of ours.
There are historical examples of completely and actually socialist countries
Such as?
The point about Norway wasn’t that it’s socialist (it’s not). The point was that Norway’s low rate of poverty and generous social supports come directly from parts of the economy that are publicly owned.
The notion that a country’s entire economy must be under public control otherwise it’s not Real Socialism is too idealistic. China in 1949 was a late-feudal/pre-industrial country that had just been through a century of colonial invasions and civil wars. It needed to attract capital and expertise in pretty much every field, and it needed to build an effective, modern administrative state. How was it supposed to do all of that at once, wholly through the government? The Soviets ran into the same problem and the result was the New Economic Policy, which, like China today, involved markets and some private ownership, but ultimately subjected both to real state control. You need a transitory period to go from pre-revolutionary society to whatever your vision of Real Socialism is.
For me, China is socialist because the state is ran to the benefit of the working class (see massive poverty alleviation), that state really does control the capitalist class, and China seems to be doing more of both as time goes on.
You said:
China is capitalist… It has private property on means of production, and it is defining Chinese economy just like any other capitalist one.
The response was a well-souced refutation of the idea that the Chinese economy is developing like a capitalist economy. You replied with Wikipedia. All I’m saying is that you’re not looking at this in a whole lot of detail and you might have some things to learn.
For instance, you say Nordic countries have low rates of poverty and good social supports despite private ownership of the means of production. But in reality a lot of that is due to sovereign wealth funds, like Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, which is owned by the government and managed by a state-owned bank.
What makes you right and a bunch of people who actually live in China wrong?
Every national economy has some planned parts (utilities and ag in the U.S., for example). Most less-planned capitalist economies don’t work, either – what has capitalism done for the vast majority of people in Latin America, Asia, and Africa?
China is a major example of a more-planned economy working as well as any economy in recorded history. About two-thirds of the economy is in the form of state-owned enterprises, the rest of the economy is firmly answerable to the government, and there’s top-down economic planning at regular intervals. In 75 years this has taken China from a mostly feudal society that had been carved up by various invaders for the previous century to a country with modern living standards and technology on par with anyone in the world.
Central planning is also at the core of the largest companies in the world, even ones that operate outside of significant state economic planning. Apple and Microsoft don’t have internal divisions operate on market principles; they plan and direct resource and labor distribution from the top down. The People’s Republic of Walmart is great reading on this last topic.