The Jedi were neoliberal losers that allowed fascists come to power and cared not for the extreme poverty going on beneath their feet of Coruscant, so yeah putting the blue lightsaber in Europe's hands is accurate.
Since Epstein was very clearly Mossad and the United States politicians are being blackmailed and bribed by Israeli intelligence I kinda feel like this should be included in the enemy lineup. Although Is china really an enemy of Europe?
No, it's a major military operations base which gives it a lot of political power but the master letting go of the leash doesn't mean they have lost control of their attack dog. They're just letting them loose, one whistle and they're brought to heel.
Do good dogs usually blackmail their masters with trafficked children? It seems to me that Israel who has universal healthcare, free college, a $400 monthly payment per child until they are 18, unlimited money for weapons and 53 million a year to bribe US politicians is perhaps rogue AF. We have major military bases all over and NOBODY gets the red carpet that the country that just happens to be blackmailing our politicians with trafficked children gets….must be a coincidence https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
AIPAC is one of many lobby groups, to say that pissrael controls the US through AIPAC is like saying that the coal industrialists control the US, or the MIC contractors run the US, or the myriad other monied interests influencing politicians through bribery, blackmail whatever.
None of them "control" the US, all of them together are the US. If, or rather when, the zionist project is no longer profitable the other interests will no longer have room for it and the US will drop it.
Some have more influence than the others, sure, but I wouldn't put AIPAC on the same level as Wall Street or Lockheed Martin and Boeing and co. In many regards AIPAC is actually a lobby for those groups since Pissrael is such a profitable project for them.
And yet, what can Israel do without the material support of the country that makes its domestic weapons production capabilities possible? What can Israel do without the country that supplies its Iron Dome system? What can Israel do without CENTCOM? Without the power of the US dollar being maintained? Without Europe being greased up to act as one imperialist unit together with the US? Without US control of oil trade? Without US rigging of international institutions?
Can one meaningfully ever "control" someone that has that much leverage over them?
You're flattering yourself if you think the politicians of the US need to be blackmailed to carry out the material interest of the capitalist ruling class. They won't pay attention to you even if they stop cheating on you with Israel, their main girl is capital.
Except the EU can't compete industrially or millitarily with any of those 3. The EU needs to correctly identify who to partner with for its own survival, and it's clear that the PRC is the best option, Russia being a second choice. The US Empire is dying, and the EU imperialists are either going to fall down with it or be forced into cooperation with those it has convinced itself are existential enemies.
Maybe there'd be some hope for that to happen if everyone in the EU hadn't been conditioned to be racist as fuck against anyone to the east or south for centuries
The EU has a much larger GDP and a significantly higher defense budget than Russia (about 457 billion USD vs. 146 billion USD in 2024). While its industry is more fragmented, it can be rapidly scaled up when needed as demonstrated in Ukraine. and the comparison to russia also lacks because the EU doesn't consider the current situation as active war. However, compared to the US and China, the EU still lags behind their global projections. Although Russia has increased its arms production in recent years, it is suffering from sanctions and material losses in the Ukraine conflict, which limits its military capabilities. Overall, the EU is economically and industrially stronger than Russia, but still trails the US and China in a global comparison. Since there is a noticable shift of power in the world the EU started to focus more on China and India as trading partners and leave the US who traditionally were European allies.
The EU has a much larger GDP and a significantly higher defense budget than Russia (about 457 billion USD vs. 146 billion USD in 2024)
The EU is far more financialized, in terms of gross industrial output the EU is behind the Russian Federation. This is a holdover from their soviet legacy. In terms of real production, Russia succeeds, despite lower GDP, because money stretches much farther in Russia. 1 million USD worth of Russian goods gets you a lot more than 1 million USD in European goods, to make things simple.
Europe could make up the gap, but it is so dominated by finance capital and energy dependency that this makes it incredibly difficult without adopting socialism.
Overall, the EU is economically and industrially stronger than Russia
This is false. The EU is financially stronger than Russia, largely thanks to modern neoimperialism in Africa, but industrially is far behind.
Since there is a noticable shift of power in the world the EU started to focus more on China and India as trading partners and leave the US who traditionally were European allies.
Correct, the EU is being demoted from imperial vassal to periphery, and since it would take devastating losses in open conflict with a major power without US backing it has to seek other allies.
The Netherlands colonized half the world despite being smaller than Mongolia - Venice was able to stand up to countries like the ottoman empire despite being only a single city.
Financialization isn't everything, but it's not nothing either.
-The presence of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
-The merging of bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a financial oligarchy.
-The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of commodities.
-The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations (cartels) and multinational corporations.
-The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism.
-The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.
The global north, Europe included, uses this export of capital to super-exploit foreign labor for super-profits. It also engages in unequal exchange, where the global south is prevented from moving up the value chain in production, allowing the global north to charge monopoly prices for commodities produced in the same labor hours.
The point I am making isn't simply about land conquering, but an ongoing process of shifting surplus value and resources from the imperialized to the core. Finance capital is the primary mechanism by which this functions.
Ridiculous Russia have zero people, they’ve lost 2m in manpower. They have a lot of land but in every measure they are less powerful than the EU. They are economically the size of Spain. The EU contains Spain and it’s not even the largest economy. Russian propaganda much?
What the EU doesn’t have, at least in the short/medium term, is energy. That industrial base needs (a lot of) energy. Russia was able to supply this cheaply, while the US is charging an arm and a leg. Of course in the long run, renewables can help keep that energy production local, but that means developing closer ties with China. And right now the US is trying to throw up walls to prevent other countries from accessing China’s renewable energy products.
The EU does indeed have a significantly larger potential industrial base than Russia. But that also requires coordination, intentional action, and long-term planning. So far the EU hasn’t seemed capable of doing these things but who knows, maybe Trump has been the wake-up call Europeans need.
I also hope Trump has shown Europeans that the US is the bigger threat to European sovereignty than Russia. And this will be true after Trump is gone, it’s not a one-time thing (Biden did things hostile to European sovereignty but that goes under the radar because he was more supportive of Ukraine). But yeah, if the EU makes some coordinated effort to build military defenses, they shouldn’t have a problem protecting their sovereignty against Russia. And that assumes Russia wants to try and military conquer parts of Europe, which I do not believe but even if I did, a more robust, domestic EU military would be enough to prevent an attack even if that was Russia’s intention.
The US is Europe’s fake friend - with or without Trump - and it frustrates me to no end that Europeans can’t see it.
What’s deeply ironic about this situation is that one of the main reasons the EU has remained distant to Russia is the US. Cold war was between US and Russia. More recently US opposed Nord Stream 2. Now US suddenly is friendly to Russia and EU are running around like headless chicken because they made it their own identity to be hostile to Russia. There haven been people suggesting that while indeed Russia is antidemocratic etc. one can still try to carefully cooperate, because it happens to be a neighbor and it makes sense strategically. Who knows, maybe in the process one could positively influence Russia, it doesn’t have to be always the other way. But these people are instantly called Russian assets and demonized. And it’s not like this kind of reasoning was the real issue anyway, as in the meantime you see western democracies happily collaborating e.g. with Turkey or Saudi Arabia. The Ukraine war complicates things though. Aside of the humanitarian and economic tragedy, it’s a diplomatic disaster, as it makes Russia look quite hostile to Europe, whether they actually „want to continue“ beyond Ukraine or not.
I wouldn't say "right behind," Europe was very happy to buy Russian energy for decades until the US sabotaged Nord Stream. The US Empire is by far the most dangerous.
Instead of taking the opportunity to vastly expand renewables and make a green transition Europe is buying LNG from the US for a way higher price than Russia offered. The green transition has been watered down on European level as well (I wouldn't call it exponential growth)
Russia has quite a bit more than just those areas, but importantly, the EU still needs fossil fuels. It could sidestep this by purchasing large amounts of solar from China, or making or buying nuclear reactors, but it can't do so overnight. Moreover, the EU is heavily financialized, and industry is hurting. Much of what the EU consumes is made overseas, or comes from overseas resource extraction, especially from European neocolonies in Africa. Imperialism is decaying, so this puts the EU in an even tighter spot, hence political instability and a strong rightward shift.
The country that export most of nuclear build capacity, is by far Russia, with over 20 reactors in construction abroad. So while EU countries does have know-how to build them too, i bet it's nowhere near the required scale (also China builds like 30 reactors, but in China)
Definitely, that's what I was implying with that but I probably should have spelled it out, rather than expecting them to realize nuclear depends likely on Russia.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Russia has way less industrial output than the EU. Russia is more imperialist than the EU. EU is shifting right, but is still wayyy to the left of Russia. Saying we should align with Russia is like saying we should align with turkey. Or Saudi Arabia.
Russia is the 4th largest economy by GDP, adjusted to PPP, and isn't as heavily reliant on finance capital as the EU is. Moreover, Russia has no colonies nor neocolonies, and doesn't run their economy based on export of capital and plundering the surplus value of the global south, like the US and EU do.
Imperialism is characterized by the following:
-The presence of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
-The merging of bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a financial oligarchy.
-The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of commodities.
-The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations (cartels) and multinational corporations.
-The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism.
-The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.
The global north, Europe included, uses this export of capital to super-exploit foreign labor for super-profits. It also engages in unequal exchange, where the global south is prevented from moving up the value chain in production, allowing the global north to charge monopoly prices for commodities produced in the same labor hours. Russia does not do this, it has a paltry sum of the world's finance capital, and this is proven by just how low their nominal GDP is compared to it's GDP adjusted to PPP.
The Russian Federation and the EU are both right-wing, but the EU is actively imperialist. The fact that progressive nationalist movements like the Alliance of Sahel States are kicking out European plunderers, and the PRC is presenting as an alternative to western domination, is exactly why conditions within the imperialist west are declining and causing a shift to the far-right. Austerity politics are enforced due to capitalist decay.
I think long term a post-Putin Russia should really just join the EU (along with Ukraine). Russia has always been European. The cold war fuelled by the US is over. There's no reason to divide Europe ethnographically when with open borders, free trade and unified economic policies everyone can do what they want.
The only thing the EU should realize faster is unified wages across regions and some sort of control over private property/housing, else western capitalists will keep buying land and homes creating serfdom.
Russia is part of the global north. Most of Russia's territory is made up of colonies. You can not be pro Russia and anti imperialist at the same time.
Europe has convinced itself that Russia and China are existential threats to the EU, largely due to the EU's status as vassals in the US Empire. The US Empire has been demoting the EU from vassal to periphery, though, so now they are caught between increasing tensions with the US Empire and their own historical hatred of Russia and China.
Starmer's visit to Beijing makes it seem fairly clear that the European bourgeoisie at least wishes to normalize more with the PRC.
it’s my latest. thanks for the link! i’ve knocked out most of the prominent marx / engel writing though i want to “finish” capital, and start “the 18th..”
i tend also to read anarchistic theory too. since at least right now that clicks in my brain more too. :)
Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy in the PRC, and the working classes control the state. For example, when looking at publicly owned industries, we can see the following:
Even checking Wikipedia, data from 2022 shows that the overwhelming majority of the top companies are publicly owned SOEs. This is China's strategy, they've been honest about it from the beginning. The private sector is about half cooperatives like Huawei or farming cooperarives and sole proprietorships, with the other half being small and medium firms. As these grow, they are folded into the public sector gradually. This is China's Socialist Market Economy.
As for the state being run by the working classes, this is also pretty straightforward. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the CPC, a working class party, dominates the state. At a democratic level, local elections are direct, while higher levels are elected by lower rungs. At the top, constant opinion gathering and polling occurs, gathering public opinion, driving gradual change. This system is better elaborated on in Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, and we can see the class breakdown of the top of the government itself:
me when I do liberal reductionism and don't understand anything Lenin, Chairman Mao or Stalin wrote.
Edit:
To more properly explain.
You rely on a crude, ahistorical definition of socialism and treats China as a static abstraction rather than a real society developing under concrete material conditions. You reduce Marxism to a legal-form checklist and ignores class power, historical development, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a fundamental error.
In Marxism, “who owns the means of production” is not a question of paper titles but of class rule. Ownership only matters insofar as it expresses which class holds political power, controls surplus, and sets the direction of development. Defining socialism as the immediate abolition of all private enterprise is not Marxism; it is utopian liberal nonsense.
Lenin addressed this explicitly. Under proletarian rule, state capitalism is a socialist tool. His formulation is unambiguous: state capitalism under a dictatorship of the proletariat is not capitalism in the bourgeois sense but a form subordinated to socialist power and goals. The decisive issue is not whether markets or private firms exist, but which class commands them.
In China, the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned and planned: land (state-owned in cities, collectively owned in the countryside), finance, energy, heavy industry, transport, telecommunications, arms production, and strategic resources. These sectors form the backbone of the economy. Private capital exists, but it does not dominate accumulation or political power.
The Chinese bourgeoisie does not rule. It has no independent state power and no ability to capture the party. Capitalists are subordinate to the Communist Party and can be regulated, expropriated, imprisoned, or eliminated when they conflict with socialist objectives. Recent crackdowns on tech monopolies, finance, real estate speculation, and billionaire figures demonstrate this class relation. In capitalist states, capital disciplines the state. In China, the state disciplines capital.
Surplus extraction and allocation further expose the difference. Under capitalism, surplus is privately appropriated and reinvested for profit. In China, surplus (especially from state and regulated sectors) is redirected toward long-term national development: infrastructure, industrial upgrading, poverty eradication, and technological independence. The largest poverty reduction in human history did not occur through laissez-faire capitalism, but through state-directed socialist accumulation (nearly a billion people lifted from poverty).
Chairman Mao was also clear that socialism is not a finished endpoint but a long historical process filled with contradictions. He emphasized that class struggle continues under socialism and that development occurs through uneven, conflicting processes. Socialism is transitional by definition: it emerges from capitalism, contains remnants of it, and advances toward communism through struggle and transformation. Treating socialism as a stable, contradiction-free end state is anti-Marxist.
Calling China “authoritarian capitalism” is ridiculous. I've already dealt with the "capitalism" issue but also authoritarian is a useless modifier used by liberals to easily bundle together countries that opposed the status quo as evil and immoral. Try reading On Authority
“Everything else follows from there” is exactly wrong. Everything follows from class power, historical conditions, and the direction of development. Your reductionist liberal framework cannot explain why China plans five-year strategies, suppresses finance capital, controls land, resists imperialism, and openly declares socialism as its goal. Marxism can however.
The mental gymnastics you need to go trough trying to defend why being capitalistic is basically anticapitalist when the ruling party has "communist" in their name is telling.
No? You're trying to say that an economy where public ownership is clearly the principle aspect is actually one where private ownership is principle, and are pretending materialist arguments about the structute of socialism are about what a party is named. Just respond to the actual comment, don't insult yourself by hiding behind a strawman.
A tankie is when people point out you don't understand what you're talking about and are just regurgitating talking points and it makes you feel bad.
Come to China I can give you a tour I can translate so you can talk to the locals and you can see we're humans too not just some brainwashed peasant "untermensch". You chauvinist loser.
When did I say chinese people arent people? Are you replying to the wrong comment? You sound like you are 14 with your reading skills and going straight to calling me a loser lol.
You are a loser. You don't view us as independent people who have our own views on our country. You ignore the fact that even western outlets report over 80% of us support the government. But none of that matters to you because we're just peasants brainwashed by the evil "authoritarians".
Not exactly related to the main discussion, but none other than Jeffrey Epstein described the Chinese government, and Xi in particular, as peasants. Said you guys spoke in "fortune cookie language." It goes without saying that is the highest compliment to be an enemy of such people, so China is clearly doing something right.
China itself just like Chairman Mao is imperfect but I strongly believe the merits out way the wrongs and the real question isn't is China good or bad but by how much the good out ways the bad e.g. is it 60/40, 70/30, 80/20 etc.
QinShiHuangsShlong was clearly explaining how you are utterly mistaken about China. When Chinese tell you that public ownership is principle (ie controls the commanding heights), that the working classes run the state, and an overwhelming number support the CPC, your response is that it's "stating the obvious" to say otherwise. This stems from a sheer distrust of the words of Chinese people, and is why your comment is chauvanist.
You are defending and agreeing with someone calling China evil and authoritarian capitalist. He is wrong and so are you. No amount of dodging or hiding behind semantics will change the position you chose to defend and that you clearly chose to defend it for chauvinist reasons.
There are indeed communists here, that have been able to debunk the user you're replying to. Simply calling unsourced claims "stating the obvious" in the face of hard facts and statistics is illogical to the extreme.
They try to keep a low profile globally, but they fully support Russia and North Korea. Not to mention, all the drama in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the surrounding seas.
That "drama" in Hong Kong is the result of 100 years of British colonial occupation. North Korea is the result of the US bombing the entire country until there were literally no structures left. Koreans in the North needed to live in caves to avoid being covered in napalm (and if you haven't read about how napalm interacts with human flesh, please do).
China is not the bad guy in these situations. Britain, the US, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany - these are the bad guys.
The Russian Federation and DPRK are better than the west, though, as neither is plundering the global south. As for Hong Kong, it's good that they are no longer colonized by the UK, and the PRC's stance on Taiwan is that they will rejoin the PRC when they decide, and can wait it out.
The DPRK is a socialist country, that more than any other has been the subject of constant misinformation and mythologizing in the west. It's the single most misunderstood state on the planet. No, it isn't some utopia, but it instead is a real country with real people living their lives. It isn't Mordor.
The Black Panther Party famously supported the DPRK, as do many African countries for the DPRK's role in African liberation movements in the 20th century. Cuba maintains friendly ties. More than anything, it's been mythologized about to the point of absurdity.
The problem with reporting on the DPRK is that information is extremely limited on what is actually going on there, at least in the English language (much can be read in Korean, Mandarin, Russian, and even Spanish). Most reports come from defectors, and said defectors are notoriously dubious in their accounts, something the WikiPedia page on Media Coverage of North Korea spells out quite clearly. These defectors are also held in confined cells for around 6 months before being released to the public in the ROK, in... unkind conditions, and pressured into divulging information. Additionally, defectors are paid for giving testemonials, and these testimonials are paid more the more severe they are. From the Wiki page:
Felix Abt, a Swiss businessman who lived in the DPRK, argues that defectors are inherently biased. He says that 70 percent of defectors in South Korea are unemployed, and selling sensationalist stories is a way for them to make a living.
Side note: there is a great documentary on the treatment of DPRK defectors titled Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul, which interviews DPRK defectors and laywers legally defending them, if you're curious. I also recommend My Brothers and Sisters in the North, a documentary made by a journalist from the Republic of Korea that was stripped of her citizenship for making this documentary humanizing the people in the DPRK.
In fact, the report is a propaganda piece likely geared at shoring up the rule of Kim Jong Eun, North Korea's young and relatively new leader, said Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor of Korean studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Most likely, North Koreans don't take the report literally, Lee told LiveScience.
"It's more symbolic," Lee said, adding, "My take is North Koreans don't believe all of that, but they bring certain symbolic value to celebrating your own identify, maybe even notions of cultural exceptionalism and superiority. It boosts morale."
Sadly, some people end up using outlandish media stories as an "acceptable outlet" for racism. By accepting uncritically narratives about "barbaric Koreans" pushing trains, eating rats, etc, it serves as a "get out of jail free" card for racists to freely agree with narratives devoid of real evidence.
It's important to recognize that a large part of why the DPRK appears to be insular is because of UN-imposed sanctions, helmed by the US Empire. It is difficult to get accurate information on the DPRK, but not impossible; Russia, China, and Cuba all have frequent interactions and student exchanges, trade such as in the Rason special economic zone, etc, and there are videos released onto the broader internet from this.
Finally, it's more unlikely than ever that the DPRK will collapse. The economy was estimated by the Bank of Korea (an ROK bank) to have grown by 3.7% in 2024, thanks to increased trade with Russia. The harshest period for the DPRK, the Arduous March, was in the 90s, and the government did not collapse then. That was the era of mass statvation thanks to the dissolution of the USSR and horrible weather disaster that made the already difficult agricultural climate of northern Korea even worse. Nowadays food is far more stable and the economy is growing, collapse is highly unlikely.
What I think is more likely is that these trends will continue. As the US Empire's influence wanes, the DPRK will increase trade and interaction with the world, increasing accurate information and helping grow their economy, perhaps even enabling some form of reunification with the ROK. The US Empire leaving the peninsula is the number 1 most important task for reunification, so this is increasingly likely as the US Empire becomes untenable.
If it's your first time Beijing is a must. You get a perfect mix of the old and new china plus museums galore and old Beijing hotpot is a must try as well as proper Beijing duck.
I'm not a huge Star Wars guy. Can you refresh my memory as to when Luke went to the Ewoks' planet, enslaved them, and chopped off their hands when they weren't being productive enough in the rubber plantations? Because if I'm following the meme here right, Belgium would be Luke, but the guy that cuts off people's hands is Darth Vader. Am I missing something?
Europe has a lot of good food, but the tendency is that it's concentrated towards the south - Italy, France, Greece, etc. The food generally gets worse the further north you get, but every national cuisine usually has at least one good thing. Even Sweden probably has a good dish.
But say you and I and 3 other people are in a room.
We find out one is an active serial killer another a serial rapist and you find out another had stolen $1000 from his own mother for a drug problem. If I make a judgment like " hey dude fuck that serial rapist and that serial killer. " And your response is "you have to accept that everybody does bad stuff". That would be just as asinine. Just because nobody's perfect and no institution is perfect. Does not mean you cannot make judgments about which one is morally better than another.
A bunch of African countries just threw off French colonial control like, three years ago, and are still being vilified for it. This shit is extremely current and you're acting like a smug prick
Read up on local decolonial movements, and listen to what they have to say and are advocating for. Read up on settler-colonialism, Fanon is an excellent writer.
Europe is profitting off child slavery and other horrible shit worldwide. This isn't a thing of the past only, and being dismissive like this is beyond disrespectful to the many victims of capitalism.
LMFAO. This meme makes me second-hand embarrassed for Europeans. For 3 reasons.
First, it is politically illiterate and whoever made it is clearly not a serious person.
Second, pretending you're in Star Wars? Really?
Third, you have not and will never be the 'good guys' in any sort of fight, as long as you are a union of capitalist nations still feasting off of the stolen wealth of the global south.
China isn't a threat to the EU lol. Russia is more complicated. but Putin is mostly playing the cards he is dealt. If you got rid of NATO and ended severe sanctions , maybe didn't blow up their NG pipelines, Russia would grow beyond Putin.
You could put any country on the left and the US flag on the right and it would be accurate. You could even put the US flag on both sides and it would be accurate
Russia is the fucking dealer of their own cards. The sanctions and blowing up of pipelines are both direct responses to their fucking invasion of Ukraine.
Listen I do not condone the Russian invasion. But they were all but forced to invade. The western neoliberal hegemon wanted to draw Russia into a war of attrition, the west did a color counter - revolution after Euromaidan. Yanukovitch was forced out after asking for aid from Russia rather than the World Bank. The US funded extreme right-wing militants in Ukraine, and then, after Putin said they would invade if NATO expanded into Ukraine, the US and the EU pushed to make Ukraine a member state. Guess what happened next.
And the Ukrainian people have lost so much. The country has been brutally exploited for the last 100 years. The war is a proving ground for drone warfare, which is being turned on the people of the West. I won't say Russia had no options but invasion, I won't defend Putin, but he's the guy. The West can't admit that their bellicose attitude toward Russia keeps him in power. And the war in Ukraine is a prime example. Staying in power has its own horrible logic. The actions of.Putin are reprehensible, and I probably was too easy on him in the above comment. But it is much more complicated than "bad man invade." The Ukraine war was the result of a decade of meddling by the west.
Perhaps a similar argument can be made of the US, that large powers have to ruthlessly defend their interests, as Mearsheimer argues. But the war in Ukraine wasnt the beginning, The war in Ukraine was the result.
This is the purest possible distillation of western chauvinism and for that I thank you. "Sure we're evil, but we're still the good guys so imagine how evil those Others must be."
Not Europe, germany did. This cant be accepted and is one of the worst things they have done in recent years alongside with the judicial suppor and political backing up they give israel. This must be condemned and fought against.
But since we are on the topic of war: who is supplying russia with the drones and fiber optics they use to invade Ukraine? Isnt that China? And isn't xi giving Putin the same political backing?
As I said: both capitalistic hell holes, but one has slightly less surveillance and slightly less political oppression.
But since we are on the topic of war: who is supplying russia with the drones and fiber optics they use to invade Ukraine? Isnt that China? And isn’t xi giving Putin the same political backing?
This isn't comparable to genocide for several reasons. I mean, for starters, who's accusing Russia of genocide? I know that they've committed various war crimes and have killed thousands of civilians in their invasion, but neither of those suffice for the war to be considered a genocide. There has to be intent from the Russian side to exterminate the Ukrainian population in a generalized manner.
I'd also just say that with the various contradictions in place in the global stage, it is apparent to me that the only way for capitalism and fascism to be done away with is for every organ of USAmerican imperial hegemony to be dismantled. If the hegemony of the US imperialist ruling class is not dismantled, if the organs of that hegemony remain in place, then the earth is done for because of climate change; if that's not enough, there will also continue to be genocides like the one in Gaza wherever the white supremacist states can concentrate populations of climate refugees. There will be unprecedented famines and natural disasters. To be honest, a lot of these things are already all but guaranteed to happen with the amounts of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
With that in mind, knowing what's at stake, and knowing that NATO is one of the organs of US imperialist hegemony, I can't in good faith consider that there's a moral equivalence between the US utilizing Israel as a forward operating base, a tip of the spear, into the heart of the oppressed nations and a testing ground for the extermination technologies of the near future versus China giving Russia military aid to prevent their massive northern neighbor from collapsing. Furthermore, since I am of a mind that thinks that NATO cannot continue to exist for anything resembling a viable future to be possible, Russia is doing my work for me by exhausting NATO military supplies. Every drone, missile, bullet, and tank burned up by Ukraine is a NATO resource that will not be used against someone in the Global South in the near future. Every one of them that Russia destroys is one that anti-imperialist forces would have to destroy in another circumstance, and as valiant as groups like Ansarallah have been in their resistance, they don't have the strength Russia has. I'm not going to condemn that.
I will condemn their war crimes, what has happened to the residential areas, hospitals, and even schools bombed by Russia is horrifying; but I won't condemn the war in general, it would be hypocritical.
To your final point, you don't understand what capitalism is if you think that Europe and the United States are a pole that is "just as capitalistic" as Russia and China. Like, dude, China is a massive net exporter country with a state run, centrally planned economy. Their government is fully democratic^[https://news.cgtn.com/event/2021/who-runs-the-cpc/index.html] and the portion of their economy that is still in the hands of private owners is set to shrink in every successive 5 year plan. That's not capitalism. Russia is a different story, they are capitalist and have a very reactionary government, but to say they're "just as capitalistic" as the West is a criticism that reveals a lot of ignorance. The West has such a large concentration of capital that they were the vanguard of the first, second, and third waves of capitalist imperialism. First in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, privately led by the finance capitalists seeking to extract more resources abroad as rates of profit fell at home.^[https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hobson-imperialism-a-study] ^[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/] This is what led to and was epitomized by the world anti-fascist struggle, or WW2. That led to a period of US domination of world markets. Then in the 1970s came the state-led form of imperialism, carried out primarily by the United States' unbalanced deficit spending.^[https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdf] Lastly, now we are in a kind of third wave that is still definitely dominated by the US as the center of world finance capital. Russia has always been a secondary character in each of these phases, even the SSR.
I agree with you that the war on Gaza is worse than the war on Ukraine, as one of them is "only" imperialistic and the other is a genocide. We are on the same page here.
The EU as a whole is not as supportive of Israel as Germany though, Germany is quite an outlier here. This can be explained (but not excused) by the special relationship between the ex Nazi country and the majority of Israels citizens being Jews. Still, supporting the israelian genocide is fucking disgusting, no question.
Ireland, Slovenia and Spain are much more supportive of Gaza is also part of the truth though.
I would support your idea of dismantling the us system, we are in the same page here as well, I am not that optimistic that this will get rid of fascism and capitalism though, Russia China and India and the EU will fill the void.
I also agree with your take on climate change, while by pure numbers China is one of the largest emitter, given they produce most of the worlds goods, I think their climate efforts are honest and my hope is that they will stick to their plans of co2 reduction and be a valuable force for climate. China's efforts here are very important and I respect them for that.
I also agree with NATO needing to be dismantled, I dont agree with you that Russia is doing that. Look at trump and Putin, the invasion of Ukraine is not fighting against america or the NATO, its imperial landgrabing a non NATO state. And even if Putin would fight the NATO directly, I dont think this will benefit our class, we are the ones dying in the wars, hunger in the famines and getting arrested for fighting for solidarity amongst the international working class, a true change cannot come from a tyrann winning over another tyrann, it need to be a struggle by the people against the oppressors
If you dont condemn an imperialistic country invading its small neighbour, you fight for the oppressor. War is never good for the working class, if you justify people dying in imperialistic wars, you are a class enemie in my eyes.
Here it would help to get the data straight, I'm open to critically over think my position here
Your argument that USA is worse at nearly everything than nearly everyone else I would fully support.
Apart from that there is an argument to be made, that Democratic votes dont mean shit if the discourse is not free, the regime decides what information you can get, what is allowed to be discussed publicly and what is not.
Not only are there information like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_China also My fellow exchange students from China tell me you can't talk critically about the regime, even in private conversations because you will face direct or indirect repercussions.
Things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy also play into this picture.
A state where the working class is truely ruling needs a free working class who can freely from their opinion. This can't be done in a surveillance state.
I'm not saying there is no surveillance in the EU, just less then in China.
Also also: being able to vote doesn't make a country socialist or "not capitalistic", if it would america would fall into this category as well.
I think gramcis works are quite enlightening in that regard.
I also agree with NATO needing to be dismantled, I dont agree with you that Russia is doing that. Look at trump and Putin, the invasion of Ukraine is not fighting against america or the NATO, its imperial landgrabing a non NATO state.
Objectively, NATO is the only reason Ukraine is still standing. No NATO = no war, Ukraine wouldn't even have had the 2014 coup if it wasn't for NATO.
And even if Putin would fight the NATO directly, I dont think this will benefit our class, we are the ones dying in the wars, hunger in the famines and getting arrested for fighting for solidarity amongst the international working class, a true change cannot come from a tyrann winning over another tyrann, it need to be a struggle by the people against the oppressors
Struggle against oppressors often does take the form of great tyranny and violence. That's just how struggle works. If NATO is destroyed NATO is destroyed, the moral character of the people who do it don't impact the material reality. Is any part of what you're saying here actually a true thing that can be verified through study of history, or are they just moral platitudes that sound nice?
If you dont condemn an imperialistic country invading its small neighbour, you fight for the oppressor. War is never good for the working class, if you justify people dying in imperialistic wars, you are a class enemie in my eyes.
I gave my thoughts on the matter of civilian deaths in the war in Ukraine. My contention is that Russia's invasion of Ukraine weakens NATO; I could just as easily say that your refusal to fight NATO makes you a class enemy, and the critical difference is that my position can be justified by observing the ways that NATO is involved in really oppressing the world; meanwhile your disagreement with me is based in moral categories.
About China:
What your friends told you, plainly speaking, is just incorrect. You definitely can criticize the Chinese government publicly and privately. You can protest, the protests against the pandemic restrictions are the reason they don't do zero COVID in China anymore. There's active Hexbear users from China who do criticize the country's policies and are sometimes a lot more critical than the rest of us. Seriously, check out @[email protected]'s posting history. You can hop on Chinese social media like RedNote to see what people are saying; there will be a lot of positive things but negative things too.
On the issue of surveillance, I think surveillance and privacy is basically just dead in the water except for enthusiasts at this point. It's all screwed, worldwide, it's just a situation that's completely beyond repair. Every country that has wide internet access has mass surveillance and the whole world is a police state. Bad situation all around. I'm not gonna try to tell you that it's better in China than in some other countries because that's just not good consolation, lol. But if you think that China is a country that has more mass surveillance than the rest of the world, that is mistaken.
They don't control the flow of information, though. That part is wrong. Talk with Chinese people, I encourage you. They aren't living in some kind of secluded little bubble, they know what's going on around the world. My honest opinion is that sometimes they have overly naive takes about what it's like to live in the West, like they don't know how bad it is over here in a lot of cases. But they are broadly pretty well informed.
A state where the working class is truely ruling needs a free working class who can freely from their opinion. This can’t be done in a surveillance state.
I take specific issue with this argument. I mean, if you put some stress on the word "truly" then I don't disagree. It's a bit of a purity obsessed argument, but not strictly false. But if you really think that the condition of being surveilled is itself reason to forget about the tremendous historical progress China has achieved for their people, even though that surveillance and all other forms of state repression are things that Chinese communists have been aware of as necessary parts of state-building, then I think you are more concerned with creating a utopia than real emancipation.
Also also: being able to vote doesn’t make a country socialist or “not capitalistic”, if it would america would fall into this category as well.
I agree, what I meant is that China has a democratic state and that democratic state's partial ownership of the means of production makes China a socialist country. Both parts are necessary. State ownership without any form of democracy can look like Saudi Arabia. Liberal democracy with a capitalist economy is, at best, social democracy like the Nordic countries.
Idk, being responsible for past colonialism and imperialism, including the transatlantic slave trade, nowadays benefiting from neocolonialism, and taking the side of the US whenever it bullies or bombs random ass countries is a whole lot of evil. The only thing that the EU has going for it is excellent PR.
You said it's better than the others. I contested that based on the history of cruelty perpetuated by and for Europeans and that even to this day many EU countries maintain neocolonial dominance over former colonies and other countries, benefiting from the superexploitation of their people. The EU also whitewashes western crimes constantly and helps demonize any country that seeks a sovereign path (including China). Hell, they profit from the genocide in Gaza and other atrocities worldwide and prosecute protesters locally.
If you want me to agree with you that the present day EU is better you'll have to point to something worse that Russia and especially China are doing.
I stated that the present EU is a hell hole, but oligarch Russia, imperialist america and authoritarian capitalist china are better at being a hell hole nothing more and nothing less.
You imaging me not standing for Gaza or loving colonialism is typical tankie "if your not a Stalinist you must be a neoliberal" is so telling.
You make up a picture in your head, where you are the good guys, everyone else is evil, and nuances dont exist. Same attitude as maga, puti lovers or ai fanboys, just different made up narrative.
Explicitly tell me how the EU is less bad, let's discuss facts. And no, I didn't assume your position on Gaza or whatever else, I explained what the European leadership's position is.
Freedom of expression
Freedom of assembly
Surveillance state
Freedom of press / censorship
Privacy rights
Medical security (at least better than USA and russia, dont know enough about chinas medical system to judge)
Queer rights
Climate destruction (EU is worse than china but better than Russia and USA by relative standards)
Not to say anything of those is good here, just not as bad
Don't bother with the propaganda, Europe is the best place to live in, we are happiest and healthiest population. US is nothing but a European colony in Native American land with hybris. We had fascism here 100 years ago, US is just now starting to explore it. Democracy can be simple populism if the population is uneducated, thats what Europeans concluded 2000 years ago in Greece.
Europe is only a decent place to live because it's reliant on imperialism, and until now has been able to rely on the US Empire propping up NATO to lower Europe's millitary spending. Now that imperialism is drying up and the US Empire no longer wants to be the only one paying for NATO, European countries are enforcing austerity and sliding to the far-right.
But why? What is the material cause of this? I'd say it's the gradual decline in imperialism breeding right-wing populism as the smaller capitalists are pressed downward toward the working classes, and the necessity of austerity to cover for losses in gains from imperialism.
There is certainly a big part that can be attributed to imperialism, but my (uneducated) pet theory is that technocrats were able to harness the accessibility of big data after the great recession to siphon wealth from working class a lot more efficiently, by radicalizing people.
There had been a big leap from 2005 to 2015-2016 on computing power that enabled the widespread of big data and the corpos with the means to get in on it used it to further enrich their corporation and themselves and created this extremely toxic environment where everything is polarized and monetized.
And with big data, populists can change in real time their message so that they get more money and influence. And tribalism seems to work pretty fucking well. So they finetuned their message to radicalize people and achieve that goal.
People can isolate themselves into online communities that will echo and amplify their views of the world. And now they are pouring on the streets because they've became enough of a big group to do so.
Technocrats created this big machine to get rich, and the machine feed itself, giving more power to the ultra rich, which grab more power and influence by radicalizing people.
Are you saying that we aren't completely vassalized and beholden to the yankee empire?? Who rebuilt west europe after WW2? Do you think they just did that and handed the reigns back to the europeans? Do you really think that Europe is equal to and independent from the US? Because this is how they talk about us:
and we just take it. Any project of ours trying to distance ourselves from yankee dependence like e.g. Nord Stream 2, they bomb it. And we just take it. Hate the yankee, but remember they're our master and hate them more.
So you are just going to ignore the European far right who are still have a good % of support from the population and in some cases they are the ruling goverment like in italy
can you make a new one with marvel characters? it allows for more nuance :3
No you don't understand white people are like dumblebot and the asian hordes are moldymort.
i thought i was the only one who noticed the marvel characters and i still don't fully understand what it means. lol
The Jedi were neoliberal losers that allowed fascists come to power and cared not for the extreme poverty going on beneath their feet of Coruscant, so yeah putting the blue lightsaber in Europe's hands is accurate.
Euros love to imagine something they are not
yeah always funny. The main achivement they got was grpd and ubs c on iphone. You dont build an empire base on thoses.
Since Epstein was very clearly Mossad and the United States politicians are being blackmailed and bribed by Israeli intelligence I kinda feel like this should be included in the enemy lineup. Although Is china really an enemy of Europe?
That's just the flag of a US territory
I’m pretty sure it’s the capital
No, it's a major military operations base which gives it a lot of political power but the master letting go of the leash doesn't mean they have lost control of their attack dog. They're just letting them loose, one whistle and they're brought to heel.
Do good dogs usually blackmail their masters with trafficked children? It seems to me that Israel who has universal healthcare, free college, a $400 monthly payment per child until they are 18, unlimited money for weapons and 53 million a year to bribe US politicians is perhaps rogue AF. We have major military bases all over and NOBODY gets the red carpet that the country that just happens to be blackmailing our politicians with trafficked children gets….must be a coincidence https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
AIPAC is one of many lobby groups, to say that pissrael controls the US through AIPAC is like saying that the coal industrialists control the US, or the MIC contractors run the US, or the myriad other monied interests influencing politicians through bribery, blackmail whatever.
None of them "control" the US, all of them together are the US. If, or rather when, the zionist project is no longer profitable the other interests will no longer have room for it and the US will drop it.
Some have more influence than the others, sure, but I wouldn't put AIPAC on the same level as Wall Street or Lockheed Martin and Boeing and co. In many regards AIPAC is actually a lobby for those groups since Pissrael is such a profitable project for them.
And yet, what can Israel do without the material support of the country that makes its domestic weapons production capabilities possible? What can Israel do without the country that supplies its Iron Dome system? What can Israel do without CENTCOM? Without the power of the US dollar being maintained? Without Europe being greased up to act as one imperialist unit together with the US? Without US control of oil trade? Without US rigging of international institutions?
Can one meaningfully ever "control" someone that has that much leverage over them?
You're flattering yourself if you think the politicians of the US need to be blackmailed to carry out the material interest of the capitalist ruling class. They won't pay attention to you even if they stop cheating on you with Israel, their main girl is capital.
American politicians are treasonous traitors but Jokes on you because Europe is Israel’s bitch too.,
Except the EU can't compete industrially or millitarily with any of those 3. The EU needs to correctly identify who to partner with for its own survival, and it's clear that the PRC is the best option, Russia being a second choice. The US Empire is dying, and the EU imperialists are either going to fall down with it or be forced into cooperation with those it has convinced itself are existential enemies.
Maybe there'd be some hope for that to happen if everyone in the EU hadn't been conditioned to be racist as fuck against anyone to the east or south for centuries
They have to do something, which is why political instability is on the rise.
The EU has a much larger GDP and a significantly higher defense budget than Russia (about 457 billion USD vs. 146 billion USD in 2024). While its industry is more fragmented, it can be rapidly scaled up when needed as demonstrated in Ukraine. and the comparison to russia also lacks because the EU doesn't consider the current situation as active war. However, compared to the US and China, the EU still lags behind their global projections. Although Russia has increased its arms production in recent years, it is suffering from sanctions and material losses in the Ukraine conflict, which limits its military capabilities. Overall, the EU is economically and industrially stronger than Russia, but still trails the US and China in a global comparison. Since there is a noticable shift of power in the world the EU started to focus more on China and India as trading partners and leave the US who traditionally were European allies.
The EU is far more financialized, in terms of gross industrial output the EU is behind the Russian Federation. This is a holdover from their soviet legacy. In terms of real production, Russia succeeds, despite lower GDP, because money stretches much farther in Russia. 1 million USD worth of Russian goods gets you a lot more than 1 million USD in European goods, to make things simple.
Europe could make up the gap, but it is so dominated by finance capital and energy dependency that this makes it incredibly difficult without adopting socialism.
This is false. The EU is financially stronger than Russia, largely thanks to modern neoimperialism in Africa, but industrially is far behind.
Correct, the EU is being demoted from imperial vassal to periphery, and since it would take devastating losses in open conflict with a major power without US backing it has to seek other allies.
The Netherlands colonized half the world despite being smaller than Mongolia - Venice was able to stand up to countries like the ottoman empire despite being only a single city.
Financialization isn't everything, but it's not nothing either.
Imperialism is characterized by the following:
-The presence of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
-The merging of bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a financial oligarchy.
-The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of commodities.
-The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations (cartels) and multinational corporations.
-The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism.
-The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.
The global north, Europe included, uses this export of capital to super-exploit foreign labor for super-profits. It also engages in unequal exchange, where the global south is prevented from moving up the value chain in production, allowing the global north to charge monopoly prices for commodities produced in the same labor hours.
The point I am making isn't simply about land conquering, but an ongoing process of shifting surplus value and resources from the imperialized to the core. Finance capital is the primary mechanism by which this functions.
Ridiculous Russia have zero people, they’ve lost 2m in manpower. They have a lot of land but in every measure they are less powerful than the EU. They are economically the size of Spain. The EU contains Spain and it’s not even the largest economy. Russian propaganda much?
You're confusing finances with raw industrial power. An 8 USD big mac in Switzerland isn't 3 times better than a 2.54 USD big mac in Indonesia.
How many times has Russia supposedly been about to collapse? You'd think after the dozenth, people would learn
Russia has collapsed a bunch in history. Their conquering isolationist history is a failed strategy.
"In history" lol ok, now how many times has the Russian Federation been predicted to collapse in Ukraine, and how many times has it.
Who is they? Everyone in Russia? Who are you talking about, you weird nationalist?
What the EU doesn’t have, at least in the short/medium term, is energy. That industrial base needs (a lot of) energy. Russia was able to supply this cheaply, while the US is charging an arm and a leg. Of course in the long run, renewables can help keep that energy production local, but that means developing closer ties with China. And right now the US is trying to throw up walls to prevent other countries from accessing China’s renewable energy products.
The EU does indeed have a significantly larger potential industrial base than Russia. But that also requires coordination, intentional action, and long-term planning. So far the EU hasn’t seemed capable of doing these things but who knows, maybe Trump has been the wake-up call Europeans need.
I also hope Trump has shown Europeans that the US is the bigger threat to European sovereignty than Russia. And this will be true after Trump is gone, it’s not a one-time thing (Biden did things hostile to European sovereignty but that goes under the radar because he was more supportive of Ukraine). But yeah, if the EU makes some coordinated effort to build military defenses, they shouldn’t have a problem protecting their sovereignty against Russia. And that assumes Russia wants to try and military conquer parts of Europe, which I do not believe but even if I did, a more robust, domestic EU military would be enough to prevent an attack even if that was Russia’s intention.
The US is Europe’s fake friend - with or without Trump - and it frustrates me to no end that Europeans can’t see it.
What’s deeply ironic about this situation is that one of the main reasons the EU has remained distant to Russia is the US. Cold war was between US and Russia. More recently US opposed Nord Stream 2. Now US suddenly is friendly to Russia and EU are running around like headless chicken because they made it their own identity to be hostile to Russia. There haven been people suggesting that while indeed Russia is antidemocratic etc. one can still try to carefully cooperate, because it happens to be a neighbor and it makes sense strategically. Who knows, maybe in the process one could positively influence Russia, it doesn’t have to be always the other way. But these people are instantly called Russian assets and demonized. And it’s not like this kind of reasoning was the real issue anyway, as in the meantime you see western democracies happily collaborating e.g. with Turkey or Saudi Arabia. The Ukraine war complicates things though. Aside of the humanitarian and economic tragedy, it’s a diplomatic disaster, as it makes Russia look quite hostile to Europe, whether they actually „want to continue“ beyond Ukraine or not.
Surprise 😂
?
Of all choices, Russia is the most dangerous right behind the US.
I wouldn't say "right behind," Europe was very happy to buy Russian energy for decades until the US sabotaged Nord Stream. The US Empire is by far the most dangerous.
Sabotage as in actually sabotaging the physical pipeline or just salting the contracts by lowering the demands for the goods?
Bit of A, bit of B.
A bad. Doesnt matter who does to whom
B 50/50 on that.
Then you should read about who really blew up Nordstream.
Russia has literally nothing of value to offer us.
Vast industrial capacity and tons of oil and natural gas, both of which the EU needs but does not have.
Only major industries Russia has are weapons (we sell those, they are a competitor) and fossil fules (we are in the process of not using them)
not anywhere close to fast nor soon enough to help the situation.
I disagree. Renewables have been growing exponentially for years. Its already making an impact in some countries, sadly way less in others.
Mostly due to the PRC and its incredible increase in solar and other renewables.
Yeah, good.
Instead of taking the opportunity to vastly expand renewables and make a green transition Europe is buying LNG from the US for a way higher price than Russia offered. The green transition has been watered down on European level as well (I wouldn't call it exponential growth)
Russia has quite a bit more than just those areas, but importantly, the EU still needs fossil fuels. It could sidestep this by purchasing large amounts of solar from China, or making or buying nuclear reactors, but it can't do so overnight. Moreover, the EU is heavily financialized, and industry is hurting. Much of what the EU consumes is made overseas, or comes from overseas resource extraction, especially from European neocolonies in Africa. Imperialism is decaying, so this puts the EU in an even tighter spot, hence political instability and a strong rightward shift.
The country that export most of nuclear build capacity, is by far Russia, with over 20 reactors in construction abroad. So while EU countries does have know-how to build them too, i bet it's nowhere near the required scale (also China builds like 30 reactors, but in China)
Definitely, that's what I was implying with that but I probably should have spelled it out, rather than expecting them to realize nuclear depends likely on Russia.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Russia has way less industrial output than the EU. Russia is more imperialist than the EU. EU is shifting right, but is still wayyy to the left of Russia. Saying we should align with Russia is like saying we should align with turkey. Or Saudi Arabia.
Russia is the 4th largest economy by GDP, adjusted to PPP, and isn't as heavily reliant on finance capital as the EU is. Moreover, Russia has no colonies nor neocolonies, and doesn't run their economy based on export of capital and plundering the surplus value of the global south, like the US and EU do.
Imperialism is characterized by the following:
-The presence of monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
-The merging of bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital controlled by a financial oligarchy.
-The export of capital as distinguished from the simple export of commodities.
-The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations (cartels) and multinational corporations.
-The domination and exploitation of other countries by militaristic imperialist powers, now through neocolonialism.
-The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers.
The global north, Europe included, uses this export of capital to super-exploit foreign labor for super-profits. It also engages in unequal exchange, where the global south is prevented from moving up the value chain in production, allowing the global north to charge monopoly prices for commodities produced in the same labor hours. Russia does not do this, it has a paltry sum of the world's finance capital, and this is proven by just how low their nominal GDP is compared to it's GDP adjusted to PPP.
The Russian Federation and the EU are both right-wing, but the EU is actively imperialist. The fact that progressive nationalist movements like the Alliance of Sahel States are kicking out European plunderers, and the PRC is presenting as an alternative to western domination, is exactly why conditions within the imperialist west are declining and causing a shift to the far-right. Austerity politics are enforced due to capitalist decay.
I think long term a post-Putin Russia should really just join the EU (along with Ukraine). Russia has always been European. The cold war fuelled by the US is over. There's no reason to divide Europe ethnographically when with open borders, free trade and unified economic policies everyone can do what they want.
The only thing the EU should realize faster is unified wages across regions and some sort of control over private property/housing, else western capitalists will keep buying land and homes creating serfdom.
Russia is part of the global north. Most of Russia's territory is made up of colonies. You can not be pro Russia and anti imperialist at the same time.
Tell that to roughly a quarter of the entire continent of Africa that lived or still lives under French imperial control
why is china the bad guy?
Europe has convinced itself that Russia and China are existential threats to the EU, largely due to the EU's status as vassals in the US Empire. The US Empire has been demoting the EU from vassal to periphery, though, so now they are caught between increasing tensions with the US Empire and their own historical hatred of Russia and China.
Starmer's visit to Beijing makes it seem fairly clear that the European bourgeoisie at least wishes to normalize more with the PRC.
unrelated: just finished “state and revolution.” liked it a lot, was able to let it sink in. thoughts on next?!
That's great! Consider checking out the Marxist-Leninist reading list I made! State and Rev is fantastic, but is that your first work of Marxist theory, or just the latest? What are you interested in?
it’s my latest. thanks for the link! i’ve knocked out most of the prominent marx / engel writing though i want to “finish” capital, and start “the 18th..”
i tend also to read anarchistic theory too. since at least right now that clicks in my brain more too. :)
thanks again!
No problem!
i concur. i feel like the op meme is just slop. not ai just .. bog standard slop.
Yep, we'll see soon how the tides change.
Authoritarian capitalistic state?
For all the tankies disagreeing simply ask yourself two questions:
Who owns the means of production in a socialist society?
Who owns the means of production in China?
Everything else follows from there
Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy in the PRC, and the working classes control the state. For example, when looking at publicly owned industries, we can see the following:
Even checking Wikipedia, data from 2022 shows that the overwhelming majority of the top companies are publicly owned SOEs. This is China's strategy, they've been honest about it from the beginning. The private sector is about half cooperatives like Huawei or farming cooperarives and sole proprietorships, with the other half being small and medium firms. As these grow, they are folded into the public sector gradually. This is China's Socialist Market Economy.
As for the state being run by the working classes, this is also pretty straightforward. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the CPC, a working class party, dominates the state. At a democratic level, local elections are direct, while higher levels are elected by lower rungs. At the top, constant opinion gathering and polling occurs, gathering public opinion, driving gradual change. This system is better elaborated on in Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, and we can see the class breakdown of the top of the government itself:
Overall, this system has resulted in over 90% of the population approving the government, which is shown to be consistent and accurate. If you want to learn more, while not nearly as in-depth due to time limits as Roland Boer's work (and mostly focused on the Xi Jinping era), Red Pen's A Summary of Xi Jinping's Governance of China can be a good primer! There's also This is how China's economic model works: Explaining Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by Geopolitical Economy Report.
Edit: To more properly explain.
You rely on a crude, ahistorical definition of socialism and treats China as a static abstraction rather than a real society developing under concrete material conditions. You reduce Marxism to a legal-form checklist and ignores class power, historical development, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a fundamental error.
In Marxism, “who owns the means of production” is not a question of paper titles but of class rule. Ownership only matters insofar as it expresses which class holds political power, controls surplus, and sets the direction of development. Defining socialism as the immediate abolition of all private enterprise is not Marxism; it is utopian liberal nonsense.
Lenin addressed this explicitly. Under proletarian rule, state capitalism is a socialist tool. His formulation is unambiguous: state capitalism under a dictatorship of the proletariat is not capitalism in the bourgeois sense but a form subordinated to socialist power and goals. The decisive issue is not whether markets or private firms exist, but which class commands them.
In China, the commanding heights of the economy are publicly owned and planned: land (state-owned in cities, collectively owned in the countryside), finance, energy, heavy industry, transport, telecommunications, arms production, and strategic resources. These sectors form the backbone of the economy. Private capital exists, but it does not dominate accumulation or political power.
The Chinese bourgeoisie does not rule. It has no independent state power and no ability to capture the party. Capitalists are subordinate to the Communist Party and can be regulated, expropriated, imprisoned, or eliminated when they conflict with socialist objectives. Recent crackdowns on tech monopolies, finance, real estate speculation, and billionaire figures demonstrate this class relation. In capitalist states, capital disciplines the state. In China, the state disciplines capital.
Surplus extraction and allocation further expose the difference. Under capitalism, surplus is privately appropriated and reinvested for profit. In China, surplus (especially from state and regulated sectors) is redirected toward long-term national development: infrastructure, industrial upgrading, poverty eradication, and technological independence. The largest poverty reduction in human history did not occur through laissez-faire capitalism, but through state-directed socialist accumulation (nearly a billion people lifted from poverty).
Chairman Mao was also clear that socialism is not a finished endpoint but a long historical process filled with contradictions. He emphasized that class struggle continues under socialism and that development occurs through uneven, conflicting processes. Socialism is transitional by definition: it emerges from capitalism, contains remnants of it, and advances toward communism through struggle and transformation. Treating socialism as a stable, contradiction-free end state is anti-Marxist.
Calling China “authoritarian capitalism” is ridiculous. I've already dealt with the "capitalism" issue but also authoritarian is a useless modifier used by liberals to easily bundle together countries that opposed the status quo as evil and immoral. Try reading On Authority
“Everything else follows from there” is exactly wrong. Everything follows from class power, historical conditions, and the direction of development. Your reductionist liberal framework cannot explain why China plans five-year strategies, suppresses finance capital, controls land, resists imperialism, and openly declares socialism as its goal. Marxism can however.
The mental gymnastics you need to go trough trying to defend why being capitalistic is basically anticapitalist when the ruling party has "communist" in their name is telling.
No? You're trying to say that an economy where public ownership is clearly the principle aspect is actually one where private ownership is principle, and are pretending materialist arguments about the structute of socialism are about what a party is named. Just respond to the actual comment, don't insult yourself by hiding behind a strawman.
You didn't read anything I wrote. You have no idea what you're talking about. Please read a book.
The German brainpan not able to comprehending a popular socialist government
The people, the people.
Good luck trying to state the obvious here, lots of tankies on lemmy.ml (as you can see from the other replies)
Come to China I can give you a tour I can translate so you can talk to the locals and you can see we're humans too not just some brainwashed peasant "untermensch". You chauvinist loser.
When did I say chinese people arent people? Are you replying to the wrong comment? You sound like you are 14 with your reading skills and going straight to calling me a loser lol.
You are a loser. You don't view us as independent people who have our own views on our country. You ignore the fact that even western outlets report over 80% of us support the government. But none of that matters to you because we're just peasants brainwashed by the evil "authoritarians".
Not exactly related to the main discussion, but none other than Jeffrey Epstein described the Chinese government, and Xi in particular, as peasants. Said you guys spoke in "fortune cookie language." It goes without saying that is the highest compliment to be an enemy of such people, so China is clearly doing something right.
China itself just like Chairman Mao is imperfect but I strongly believe the merits out way the wrongs and the real question isn't is China good or bad but by how much the good out ways the bad e.g. is it 60/40, 70/30, 80/20 etc.
Does lemmy.ml include entirety of China? Because I was only talking about lemmy.ml. Again, you sure you replied to the right comment?
QinShiHuangsShlong was clearly explaining how you are utterly mistaken about China. When Chinese tell you that public ownership is principle (ie controls the commanding heights), that the working classes run the state, and an overwhelming number support the CPC, your response is that it's "stating the obvious" to say otherwise. This stems from a sheer distrust of the words of Chinese people, and is why your comment is chauvanist.
You are defending and agreeing with someone calling China evil and authoritarian capitalist. He is wrong and so are you. No amount of dodging or hiding behind semantics will change the position you chose to defend and that you clearly chose to defend it for chauvinist reasons.
There are indeed communists here, that have been able to debunk the user you're replying to. Simply calling unsourced claims "stating the obvious" in the face of hard facts and statistics is illogical to the extreme.
It's .ml, not .lib
Social and political misalignment I think. Being wary of anyone "bigger than you" is a common defensive stand too.
They try to keep a low profile globally, but they fully support Russia and North Korea. Not to mention, all the drama in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the surrounding seas.
That "drama" in Hong Kong is the result of 100 years of British colonial occupation. North Korea is the result of the US bombing the entire country until there were literally no structures left. Koreans in the North needed to live in caves to avoid being covered in napalm (and if you haven't read about how napalm interacts with human flesh, please do).
China is not the bad guy in these situations. Britain, the US, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Portugal, Germany - these are the bad guys.
The Russian Federation and DPRK are better than the west, though, as neither is plundering the global south. As for Hong Kong, it's good that they are no longer colonized by the UK, and the PRC's stance on Taiwan is that they will rejoin the PRC when they decide, and can wait it out.
The DPRK is a socialist country, that more than any other has been the subject of constant misinformation and mythologizing in the west. It's the single most misunderstood state on the planet. No, it isn't some utopia, but it instead is a real country with real people living their lives. It isn't Mordor.
The Black Panther Party famously supported the DPRK, as do many African countries for the DPRK's role in African liberation movements in the 20th century. Cuba maintains friendly ties. More than anything, it's been mythologized about to the point of absurdity.
The problem with reporting on the DPRK is that information is extremely limited on what is actually going on there, at least in the English language (much can be read in Korean, Mandarin, Russian, and even Spanish). Most reports come from defectors, and said defectors are notoriously dubious in their accounts, something the WikiPedia page on Media Coverage of North Korea spells out quite clearly. These defectors are also held in confined cells for around 6 months before being released to the public in the ROK, in... unkind conditions, and pressured into divulging information. Additionally, defectors are paid for giving testemonials, and these testimonials are paid more the more severe they are. From the Wiki page:
Side note: there is a great documentary on the treatment of DPRK defectors titled Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul, which interviews DPRK defectors and laywers legally defending them, if you're curious. I also recommend My Brothers and Sisters in the North, a documentary made by a journalist from the Republic of Korea that was stripped of her citizenship for making this documentary humanizing the people in the DPRK.
Because of these issues, there is a long history of what we consider legitimate news sources of reporting and then walking back stories. Even the famous "120 dogs" execution ended up to have been a fabrication originating in a Chinese satirical column, reported entirely seriously and later walked back by some news outlets. The famous "unicorn lair" story ended up being a misunderstanding:
These aren't tabloids, these are mainstream news sources. NBC News reported the 120 dogs story. Same with USA Today. The frequently reported concept of "state-mandated haircut styles", as an example, also ended up being bogus sensationalism. People have made entire videos going over this long-running sensationalist misinformation, why it exists, and debunking some of the more absurd articles. As for Radio Free Asia, it is US-government founded and funded. There is good reason to be skeptical of reports sourced entirely from RFA about geopolitical enemies of the US Empire.
Sadly, some people end up using outlandish media stories as an "acceptable outlet" for racism. By accepting uncritically narratives about "barbaric Koreans" pushing trains, eating rats, etc, it serves as a "get out of jail free" card for racists to freely agree with narratives devoid of real evidence.
It's important to recognize that a large part of why the DPRK appears to be insular is because of UN-imposed sanctions, helmed by the US Empire. It is difficult to get accurate information on the DPRK, but not impossible; Russia, China, and Cuba all have frequent interactions and student exchanges, trade such as in the Rason special economic zone, etc, and there are videos released onto the broader internet from this.
In fact, many citizens who flee the DPRK actually seek to return, and are denied by the ROK. Even BBC is reporting on a high-profile case where a 95 year old veteran wishes to be buried in his homeland, sparking protests by pro-reunification activists in the ROK to help him go home in his final years.
Finally, it's more unlikely than ever that the DPRK will collapse. The economy was estimated by the Bank of Korea (an ROK bank) to have grown by 3.7% in 2024, thanks to increased trade with Russia. The harshest period for the DPRK, the Arduous March, was in the 90s, and the government did not collapse then. That was the era of mass statvation thanks to the dissolution of the USSR and horrible weather disaster that made the already difficult agricultural climate of northern Korea even worse. Nowadays food is far more stable and the economy is growing, collapse is highly unlikely.
What I think is more likely is that these trends will continue. As the US Empire's influence wanes, the DPRK will increase trade and interaction with the world, increasing accurate information and helping grow their economy, perhaps even enabling some form of reunification with the ROK. The US Empire leaving the peninsula is the number 1 most important task for reunification, so this is increasingly likely as the US Empire becomes untenable.
Nodutdol, an anti-imperialist group of Korean expats, released a toolkit on better understanding the situation in Korea. This is more like homework, though. I also recommend Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance for learning about the DPRK's democratic structure.
You 白左 really hate the liberation of your owners colonial holdings and fascist attack dogs.
Unrelated, but I wanted to say you've got fantastic english skills
Also, if I was to visit China, do you have any recommendations on where to visit?
If it's your first time Beijing is a must. You get a perfect mix of the old and new china plus museums galore and old Beijing hotpot is a must try as well as proper Beijing duck.
Good.
Who are the Ewoks?
Me, i'm the ewoks (all of them)
George Lucas' hamfisted metaphor for why the Viet Cong were cool.
Probably sub saharan Africa?
I'm not a huge Star Wars guy. Can you refresh my memory as to when Luke went to the Ewoks' planet, enslaved them, and chopped off their hands when they weren't being productive enough in the rubber plantations? Because if I'm following the meme here right, Belgium would be Luke, but the guy that cuts off people's hands is Darth Vader. Am I missing something?
It's a loose analogy anyway. Europeans like to see themselves as heroes.
Extended universe
At least China has good food.
Aside from britain europe has pretty good food too.
braSSiKKKa sucks ass
Europe has a lot of good food, but the tendency is that it's concentrated towards the south - Italy, France, Greece, etc. The food generally gets worse the further north you get, but every national cuisine usually has at least one good thing. Even Sweden probably has a good dish.
I didn't think Europe having good food was in contention, it's kinda the basis for fine dining.
What no materialist or historical analysis does to a mf.
Liberal brainworms slop.
Europe is america and israel's bitch.
The image should be a dog on Vader's leash.
Ah Europe famous for
colonization, slave trade, racism, the literal nazisbeing the good guys?Y'all I'm an American and fuck my country and fuck the current Russian state but fuck Europe even more tbh.
Also what are you hating on China for? Guess that's European racism again.
What, if the US with their genocidial history can play world police...
Ok you can same the about people.
But say you and I and 3 other people are in a room.
We find out one is an active serial killer another a serial rapist and you find out another had stolen $1000 from his own mother for a drug problem. If I make a judgment like " hey dude fuck that serial rapist and that serial killer. " And your response is "you have to accept that everybody does bad stuff". That would be just as asinine. Just because nobody's perfect and no institution is perfect. Does not mean you cannot make judgments about which one is morally better than another.
The only thing Europe did wrong was causing the fall of Rome. Everything that came after that was just a consequence.
Rise again, Italy, and claim what is yours. The world.
I would think this is not satire if we were in Reddit.
You gotta use the tone indicators haha
Yeah can't let go of the past, im still mad about the bacteria that killed my ancestor before we evolved out of the ocean
A bunch of African countries just threw off French colonial control like, three years ago, and are still being vilified for it. This shit is extremely current and you're acting like a smug prick
Europe still practices neocolonialism and imperialism. Hell, Australia and other European settler-colonies still exist.
As a non indigenous Australian what would a real communist do?
Read up on local decolonial movements, and listen to what they have to say and are advocating for. Read up on settler-colonialism, Fanon is an excellent writer.
What a brain dead and privileged take. Exactly how long are people allowed to be upset for? Would you say that shit to a holocaust survivor.
White people smh
Ironic I'm not white, I'm Australian Aboriginal, every year on the 25th of January people getting shitty about the invasion of Australia.
I think get over it my grandmother was stolen generation but I'm not beating my chest about it
Lastly saying "White people smh" is still racist.
Imagine someone said black people smh because of their opinions
Solid mate
LMAO
INCREDIBLE
Yes. I would, if they were still mad at the present german government.
Well my comment is in the past so just disregard that
The present German government that is presently elbow-deep in another Holocaust?
Europe is profitting off child slavery and other horrible shit worldwide. This isn't a thing of the past only, and being dismissive like this is beyond disrespectful to the many victims of capitalism.
Australia can into EU plz?
AUKUS says no.
LMFAO. This meme makes me second-hand embarrassed for Europeans. For 3 reasons.
First, it is politically illiterate and whoever made it is clearly not a serious person.
Second, pretending you're in Star Wars? Really?
Third, you have not and will never be the 'good guys' in any sort of fight, as long as you are a union of capitalist nations still feasting off of the stolen wealth of the global south.
Idiots. The world should be ONE already for at least 26 years. We are thrown back in time by fascist dictators
China isn't a threat to the EU lol. Russia is more complicated. but Putin is mostly playing the cards he is dealt. If you got rid of NATO and ended severe sanctions , maybe didn't blow up their NG pipelines, Russia would grow beyond Putin.
You could put any country on the left and the US flag on the right and it would be accurate. You could even put the US flag on both sides and it would be accurate
Russia is the fucking dealer of their own cards. The sanctions and blowing up of pipelines are both direct responses to their fucking invasion of Ukraine.
They don't get to play the victim.
Listen I do not condone the Russian invasion. But they were all but forced to invade. The western neoliberal hegemon wanted to draw Russia into a war of attrition, the west did a color counter - revolution after Euromaidan. Yanukovitch was forced out after asking for aid from Russia rather than the World Bank. The US funded extreme right-wing militants in Ukraine, and then, after Putin said they would invade if NATO expanded into Ukraine, the US and the EU pushed to make Ukraine a member state. Guess what happened next.
And the Ukrainian people have lost so much. The country has been brutally exploited for the last 100 years. The war is a proving ground for drone warfare, which is being turned on the people of the West. I won't say Russia had no options but invasion, I won't defend Putin, but he's the guy. The West can't admit that their bellicose attitude toward Russia keeps him in power. And the war in Ukraine is a prime example. Staying in power has its own horrible logic. The actions of.Putin are reprehensible, and I probably was too easy on him in the above comment. But it is much more complicated than "bad man invade." The Ukraine war was the result of a decade of meddling by the west.
Perhaps a similar argument can be made of the US, that large powers have to ruthlessly defend their interests, as Mearsheimer argues. But the war in Ukraine wasnt the beginning, The war in Ukraine was the result.
Except Europe isnt as strong as obi
Should be Maul vs Palpatine and would still be a very stupid meme
I wish you'd add the Canadian flag on the European side.
You're on Lemmy.ml.
Europe is a capitalistic hell hole, but in comparison to the world powers it really does look like the white knight Jedi...
This is the purest possible distillation of western chauvinism and for that I thank you. "Sure we're evil, but we're still the good guys so imagine how evil those Others must be."
How so? It's a region of imperialists.
Europe provided something like 30% of the foreign weapons used to commit the genocide in Gaza. How many did China provide?
Not Europe, germany did. This cant be accepted and is one of the worst things they have done in recent years alongside with the judicial suppor and political backing up they give israel. This must be condemned and fought against.
But since we are on the topic of war: who is supplying russia with the drones and fiber optics they use to invade Ukraine? Isnt that China? And isn't xi giving Putin the same political backing?
As I said: both capitalistic hell holes, but one has slightly less surveillance and slightly less political oppression.
This isn't comparable to genocide for several reasons. I mean, for starters, who's accusing Russia of genocide? I know that they've committed various war crimes and have killed thousands of civilians in their invasion, but neither of those suffice for the war to be considered a genocide. There has to be intent from the Russian side to exterminate the Ukrainian population in a generalized manner.
I'd also just say that with the various contradictions in place in the global stage, it is apparent to me that the only way for capitalism and fascism to be done away with is for every organ of USAmerican imperial hegemony to be dismantled. If the hegemony of the US imperialist ruling class is not dismantled, if the organs of that hegemony remain in place, then the earth is done for because of climate change; if that's not enough, there will also continue to be genocides like the one in Gaza wherever the white supremacist states can concentrate populations of climate refugees. There will be unprecedented famines and natural disasters. To be honest, a lot of these things are already all but guaranteed to happen with the amounts of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
With that in mind, knowing what's at stake, and knowing that NATO is one of the organs of US imperialist hegemony, I can't in good faith consider that there's a moral equivalence between the US utilizing Israel as a forward operating base, a tip of the spear, into the heart of the oppressed nations and a testing ground for the extermination technologies of the near future versus China giving Russia military aid to prevent their massive northern neighbor from collapsing. Furthermore, since I am of a mind that thinks that NATO cannot continue to exist for anything resembling a viable future to be possible, Russia is doing my work for me by exhausting NATO military supplies. Every drone, missile, bullet, and tank burned up by Ukraine is a NATO resource that will not be used against someone in the Global South in the near future. Every one of them that Russia destroys is one that anti-imperialist forces would have to destroy in another circumstance, and as valiant as groups like Ansarallah have been in their resistance, they don't have the strength Russia has. I'm not going to condemn that.
I will condemn their war crimes, what has happened to the residential areas, hospitals, and even schools bombed by Russia is horrifying; but I won't condemn the war in general, it would be hypocritical.
To your final point, you don't understand what capitalism is if you think that Europe and the United States are a pole that is "just as capitalistic" as Russia and China. Like, dude, China is a massive net exporter country with a state run, centrally planned economy. Their government is fully democratic^[https://news.cgtn.com/event/2021/who-runs-the-cpc/index.html] and the portion of their economy that is still in the hands of private owners is set to shrink in every successive 5 year plan. That's not capitalism. Russia is a different story, they are capitalist and have a very reactionary government, but to say they're "just as capitalistic" as the West is a criticism that reveals a lot of ignorance. The West has such a large concentration of capital that they were the vanguard of the first, second, and third waves of capitalist imperialism. First in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, privately led by the finance capitalists seeking to extract more resources abroad as rates of profit fell at home.^[https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hobson-imperialism-a-study] ^[https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/] This is what led to and was epitomized by the world anti-fascist struggle, or WW2. That led to a period of US domination of world markets. Then in the 1970s came the state-led form of imperialism, carried out primarily by the United States' unbalanced deficit spending.^[https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdf] Lastly, now we are in a kind of third wave that is still definitely dominated by the US as the center of world finance capital. Russia has always been a secondary character in each of these phases, even the SSR.
I agree with you that the war on Gaza is worse than the war on Ukraine, as one of them is "only" imperialistic and the other is a genocide. We are on the same page here.
The EU as a whole is not as supportive of Israel as Germany though, Germany is quite an outlier here. This can be explained (but not excused) by the special relationship between the ex Nazi country and the majority of Israels citizens being Jews. Still, supporting the israelian genocide is fucking disgusting, no question. Ireland, Slovenia and Spain are much more supportive of Gaza is also part of the truth though.
I would support your idea of dismantling the us system, we are in the same page here as well, I am not that optimistic that this will get rid of fascism and capitalism though, Russia China and India and the EU will fill the void.
I also agree with your take on climate change, while by pure numbers China is one of the largest emitter, given they produce most of the worlds goods, I think their climate efforts are honest and my hope is that they will stick to their plans of co2 reduction and be a valuable force for climate. China's efforts here are very important and I respect them for that.
I also agree with NATO needing to be dismantled, I dont agree with you that Russia is doing that. Look at trump and Putin, the invasion of Ukraine is not fighting against america or the NATO, its imperial landgrabing a non NATO state. And even if Putin would fight the NATO directly, I dont think this will benefit our class, we are the ones dying in the wars, hunger in the famines and getting arrested for fighting for solidarity amongst the international working class, a true change cannot come from a tyrann winning over another tyrann, it need to be a struggle by the people against the oppressors
If you dont condemn an imperialistic country invading its small neighbour, you fight for the oppressor. War is never good for the working class, if you justify people dying in imperialistic wars, you are a class enemie in my eyes.
For your las paragraph is where I find it to get interesting as we have the same opinion, that a democratical controlled public economy is better then privately owned means of production. From what I've read China is moving towards private ownerships of means if production then away from it and the actual public decision-making gets progressively less in favor of concentration of power for the political elites (https://www.statista.com/chart/25194/private-sector-contribution-to-economy-in-china/) (https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/china-in-xis-new-era-the-return-to-personalistic-rule/)
Here it would help to get the data straight, I'm open to critically over think my position here
Your argument that USA is worse at nearly everything than nearly everyone else I would fully support.
Apart from that there is an argument to be made, that Democratic votes dont mean shit if the discourse is not free, the regime decides what information you can get, what is allowed to be discussed publicly and what is not. Not only are there information like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_China also My fellow exchange students from China tell me you can't talk critically about the regime, even in private conversations because you will face direct or indirect repercussions. Things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy also play into this picture.
A state where the working class is truely ruling needs a free working class who can freely from their opinion. This can't be done in a surveillance state.
I'm not saying there is no surveillance in the EU, just less then in China.
Also also: being able to vote doesn't make a country socialist or "not capitalistic", if it would america would fall into this category as well.
I think gramcis works are quite enlightening in that regard.
Objectively, NATO is the only reason Ukraine is still standing. No NATO = no war, Ukraine wouldn't even have had the 2014 coup if it wasn't for NATO.
Struggle against oppressors often does take the form of great tyranny and violence. That's just how struggle works. If NATO is destroyed NATO is destroyed, the moral character of the people who do it don't impact the material reality. Is any part of what you're saying here actually a true thing that can be verified through study of history, or are they just moral platitudes that sound nice?
I gave my thoughts on the matter of civilian deaths in the war in Ukraine. My contention is that Russia's invasion of Ukraine weakens NATO; I could just as easily say that your refusal to fight NATO makes you a class enemy, and the critical difference is that my position can be justified by observing the ways that NATO is involved in really oppressing the world; meanwhile your disagreement with me is based in moral categories.
About China:
What your friends told you, plainly speaking, is just incorrect. You definitely can criticize the Chinese government publicly and privately. You can protest, the protests against the pandemic restrictions are the reason they don't do zero COVID in China anymore. There's active Hexbear users from China who do criticize the country's policies and are sometimes a lot more critical than the rest of us. Seriously, check out @[email protected]'s posting history. You can hop on Chinese social media like RedNote to see what people are saying; there will be a lot of positive things but negative things too.
On the issue of surveillance, I think surveillance and privacy is basically just dead in the water except for enthusiasts at this point. It's all screwed, worldwide, it's just a situation that's completely beyond repair. Every country that has wide internet access has mass surveillance and the whole world is a police state. Bad situation all around. I'm not gonna try to tell you that it's better in China than in some other countries because that's just not good consolation, lol. But if you think that China is a country that has more mass surveillance than the rest of the world, that is mistaken.
They don't control the flow of information, though. That part is wrong. Talk with Chinese people, I encourage you. They aren't living in some kind of secluded little bubble, they know what's going on around the world. My honest opinion is that sometimes they have overly naive takes about what it's like to live in the West, like they don't know how bad it is over here in a lot of cases. But they are broadly pretty well informed.
I take specific issue with this argument. I mean, if you put some stress on the word "truly" then I don't disagree. It's a bit of a purity obsessed argument, but not strictly false. But if you really think that the condition of being surveilled is itself reason to forget about the tremendous historical progress China has achieved for their people, even though that surveillance and all other forms of state repression are things that Chinese communists have been aware of as necessary parts of state-building, then I think you are more concerned with creating a utopia than real emancipation.
I agree, what I meant is that China has a democratic state and that democratic state's partial ownership of the means of production makes China a socialist country. Both parts are necessary. State ownership without any form of democracy can look like Saudi Arabia. Liberal democracy with a capitalist economy is, at best, social democracy like the Nordic countries.
Idk, being responsible for past colonialism and imperialism, including the transatlantic slave trade, nowadays benefiting from neocolonialism, and taking the side of the US whenever it bullies or bombs random ass countries is a whole lot of evil. The only thing that the EU has going for it is excellent PR.
Dehumanization and ableism, a liberal classic
You said it's better than the others. I contested that based on the history of cruelty perpetuated by and for Europeans and that even to this day many EU countries maintain neocolonial dominance over former colonies and other countries, benefiting from the superexploitation of their people. The EU also whitewashes western crimes constantly and helps demonize any country that seeks a sovereign path (including China). Hell, they profit from the genocide in Gaza and other atrocities worldwide and prosecute protesters locally.
If you want me to agree with you that the present day EU is better you'll have to point to something worse that Russia and especially China are doing.
I stated that the present EU is a hell hole, but oligarch Russia, imperialist america and authoritarian capitalist china are better at being a hell hole nothing more and nothing less.
You imaging me not standing for Gaza or loving colonialism is typical tankie "if your not a Stalinist you must be a neoliberal" is so telling.
You make up a picture in your head, where you are the good guys, everyone else is evil, and nuances dont exist. Same attitude as maga, puti lovers or ai fanboys, just different made up narrative.
The EU is imperialist, just like the US. Russia is run by oligarchs, true, but China is both democratic and a socialist country.
Explicitly tell me how the EU is less bad, let's discuss facts. And no, I didn't assume your position on Gaza or whatever else, I explained what the European leadership's position is.
Freedom of expression Freedom of assembly Surveillance state Freedom of press / censorship Privacy rights Medical security (at least better than USA and russia, dont know enough about chinas medical system to judge) Queer rights Climate destruction (EU is worse than china but better than Russia and USA by relative standards)
Not to say anything of those is good here, just not as bad
because the other regions are just as capitalistic?
Don't bother with the propaganda, Europe is the best place to live in, we are happiest and healthiest population. US is nothing but a European colony in Native American land with hybris. We had fascism here 100 years ago, US is just now starting to explore it. Democracy can be simple populism if the population is uneducated, thats what Europeans concluded 2000 years ago in Greece.
Europe is only a decent place to live because it's reliant on imperialism, and until now has been able to rely on the US Empire propping up NATO to lower Europe's millitary spending. Now that imperialism is drying up and the US Empire no longer wants to be the only one paying for NATO, European countries are enforcing austerity and sliding to the far-right.
To be fair, far-right ideologies have been ramping up worldwide since a decade or two.
The current political context just embolden the far right actors to go mask off.
But why? What is the material cause of this? I'd say it's the gradual decline in imperialism breeding right-wing populism as the smaller capitalists are pressed downward toward the working classes, and the necessity of austerity to cover for losses in gains from imperialism.
There is certainly a big part that can be attributed to imperialism, but my (uneducated) pet theory is that technocrats were able to harness the accessibility of big data after the great recession to siphon wealth from working class a lot more efficiently, by radicalizing people.
There had been a big leap from 2005 to 2015-2016 on computing power that enabled the widespread of big data and the corpos with the means to get in on it used it to further enrich their corporation and themselves and created this extremely toxic environment where everything is polarized and monetized.
And with big data, populists can change in real time their message so that they get more money and influence. And tribalism seems to work pretty fucking well. So they finetuned their message to radicalize people and achieve that goal.
People can isolate themselves into online communities that will echo and amplify their views of the world. And now they are pouring on the streets because they've became enough of a big group to do so.
Technocrats created this big machine to get rich, and the machine feed itself, giving more power to the ultra rich, which grab more power and influence by radicalizing people.
I think one thing that would help, is looking into cultural hegemony. The tools have changed, so too has how hegemony functions.
Are you saying that we aren't completely vassalized and beholden to the yankee empire?? Who rebuilt west europe after WW2? Do you think they just did that and handed the reigns back to the europeans? Do you really think that Europe is equal to and independent from the US? Because this is how they talk about us:
https://x.com/acyn/status/1860153637382815921
and we just take it. Any project of ours trying to distance ourselves from yankee dependence like e.g. Nord Stream 2, they bomb it. And we just take it. Hate the yankee, but remember they're our master and hate them more.
So you are just going to ignore the European far right who are still have a good % of support from the population and in some cases they are the ruling goverment like in italy
Lol thanks for the laugh