• Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      31·
      3 months ago

      your name, face, age, money in your bank account

      Every developed country has this info on it’s citizenry, heck most developing countries these days do to. You’re arguing basic bureaucracy is totalitarian.

      where you spend your time, where you have been to, etc.

      And most countries have some means of keeping track of this too if they suspect you’re guilty of a crime. Again, describing this as some unique “evil” makes no sense, any sort of state administration does this, you have to prove it’s frequently being deployed in a extremely malicious way before you can argue any state is more “authoritarian” or whatever than any other.

        • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          20·
          3 months ago

          Okay I take it you’re an anarchist then.

          Fine, but then you really shouldn’t be focusing on China. The US is just as guilty of this, more so I’d argue, especially if we’re not just arguing domestically. Whatever country you’re from is also guilty of this. Every country is.

            • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              22·
              3 months ago

              The things you listed are so mundane it seems totally asinine to focus your criticism on China. You can literally say this about fucking Andorra 🇦🇩

              It’s like if you said you hated Bob but when I asked you why you listened a bunch of flaws most humans have and when I point that out to you, you retort “well I hate most people”. Okay, why are we discussing Bob then?

                • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  25·
                  3 months ago

                  Because there’s already an entire media empire dedicated to shitting on Bob. One person says something mildly positive about Bob yet you feel the need to jump in and reiterate the shit the media already tells us despite it being totally pointless.

                  I’m trying to get you to question whether you ACTUALLY hate all states equally or if certain media forces have gotten you to focus needless ire towards particular ones while giving only token criticisms of others.

    • sweatersocialist [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      24·
      3 months ago

      what is the practical application of that information? it’s to keep society safe and functioning. in an ideal world, this wouldn’t be necessary but china has 1.3 billion people and remains one of the safest nations on earth for a reason. you don’t see police constantly brutalizing people there, because their network of cameras and identification means that unless something presents an immediate threat, they can typically just let the person do their shit and then catch them at home. you can’t drive ten miles in america without seeing someone pulled over by police for some minor traffic violation- is that freedom, was that interaction necessary? what about the odds of that interaction escalating to the citizen being murdered by police? this isn’t an issue in china because firstly the police are trained and secondly many of those interactions are entirely eliminated

      america knows all that about me too but i can still get mugged walking a mile to the gas station and i’ll still see 5 homeless people along the way and multiple cops just posted up waiting to fuck with someone

      i used to be an anarchist. idealistic thinking isn’t realistic.

        • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          33·
          3 months ago

          I’m not an Idealist, but I’d rather die than live under a dictatorship

          brother then you know what to do because your ass is living under a dictatorship of the borugeoisie

            • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              21·
              3 months ago

              You don’t want to be ruled, then you’re a libertarian. Hence the “live free or die” slogan from the American imperialists in your header image

              Call yourself a syndicalist, but no unified council of syndicates to run a group? Best of luck

            • Black_Mald_Futures [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              20·
              3 months ago

              , I just want neither a political party nor the borgeoisi rule me

              Well guess what buttercup, you’re going to have to grow the fuck up and learn how politics works because even under whatever anarcho-whateverist bullshit you dream up you’re still going to be subject to the rules of the dominant parties.

              You’re a liberal larping as an anarchist if you think anarchy means “i’m totally free from the burdens of what others want”

        • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          24·
          3 months ago

          here is how they treat peaceful journalists:

          No way you just linked to a CNN dipshit shoving his way through a restricted area while speaking only English. Your “journalists” don’t exist they’re Western chauvinistic propagandists. Do some self crit and explore the resources hexbear shares on modern China.

            • sweatersocialist [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              22·
              3 months ago

              now that you know what that is, consider what views you’re espousing if you are indistinguishable from them. it’s western propaganda, complete blindness to your own material reality, anarkiddie bullshit. “i’m not an idealist, but i’d rather die than live in a dictatorship”. comrade what do you think capitalism is? it doesn’t matter which supposedly superior western nation you live in, you are in a capitalist dictatorship- refer to what i said about “complete blindness to your own material reality”.

              your post literally reads like “i can go to walmart and buy a tv on credit, how can you say i’m not free?”

                • sweatersocialist [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  26·
                  3 months ago

                  ends up like the USSR or China

                  yeah, that’s not a bad thing. i really think you have a lot of unlearning of western propaganda to do.

                  comrade, i mean no disrespect- i was an anarchist when i was a baby leftist as well. in an ideal world, and purely speaking ideologically, i am an anarchist. i would love if the world operated entirely free of any sort of state, if any sort of hierarchy was able to be examined and dismantled if need be

                  but i realize that the modern world is much more complicated than the answers anarchism provides

                  the only way to achieve communism, even if we’re talking entirely stateless communism, is to seize the state and use it as a vehicle to enact the will of the revolution. i am genuinely curious how you expect it to be done otherwise? let’s say antifa just shot joe brandon and took over the white house. okay, now what? they just declare amerikkka is over? come on.

                  • ttttux [none/use any]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    1·
                    3 months ago

                    I’m an anarcho syndicalist, I belive that we can build workers syndicates and communities where the workers own the means of production and only when we have those organisations we can even begin to think of overthrowing the state

                • Black_Mald_Futures [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  18·
                  3 months ago

                  stateist communism always ends up like the USSR or China

                  Advancing standards of living by leaps and bounds? Taking literal dirt farming feudal serfdoms to literally the world’s first space power in the span of literally 4 decades? Ending cyclical patterns of famine that have occurred for thousands of years, but never again under communism?

                  Oh man so awful

                  You’re the kinda guy who would hear about China building “ghost cities” and just believe the lies that they’re building useless shit to juice their GDP, aren’t you

          • ttttux [none/use any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            Then why are you alive right now?

            because I will fight against capitalism, imperialism, dictators and monarchs util my last dieing breath

            also what I meant with that is that I’ll rather die than live in a dictatorship and not do anything to destroy it’s chains of opression

                • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  13·
                  3 months ago

                  The media bombards us with “China bad” shit 24/7. Even if it is actually as bad as you say you’re personal efforts are such a tiny contribution they’re effectively useless. Your efforts would likely be better spent trying to inform people about other bad countries that the western media focuses far far less on, or actively downplay their badness. Like Israel for example.

                • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  12·
                  3 months ago

                  do you think the average Chinese person would benefit from having their state overthrown or that they’d even want that? The Chinese state is highly popular among Chinese citizens. It regularly has an approval rating of above 90%. To what end would China benefit from having a different arrangement?

        • T34_69 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          18·
          3 months ago

          here is how they treat peaceful journalists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjLt3XTY-rs Now you may say: tha

          Hahahahahaha oh fuck that was hilarious, thanks for posting. “Sirs! They are manhandling me! I say! We are in a public space and they are manhandling me!” Fuckin hilarious, I got no sympathy for CNN anglo propagandists trying to muscle their way into that space when they don’t even speak Mandarin and they’re obviously there to do a hit piece. Cry about it

        • heggs_bayer [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          11·
          3 months ago

          …what if someone else (someone else as within some other member of the CCP) came to power who doesn’t like free speech, they could use this against free speech.

          They can and do. Free speech is a bad thing, especially in a nation under siege from the Great Satan. I especially want you and people with your views to have their free speech suppressed.

          Now you may say: that’s not as bad as some US police brutality, but that is because in the US these things actually get investigated and the officers that did wrong at least sometimes get what they deserve.

          Unironically believing this farquaad-point. It took over a year of protests and riots all over the Great Satan to get one (1) pig to get anything more than a slap on the wrist!

          first: they know less about you than the CCP does about a chinese citizen

          Fake news.

        • miz [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          10·
          3 months ago
          zhenli explains anarchism's reliance on idealism (cw: critical discussion of tendencies)

          […]

          Second, it ignores the actual, real distinction between Marxists and anarchists, which is centralization and decentralization, originating from differing views on historical materialism and idealism.

          Anarchists want to break up society into decentralized units, they see the centralization tendency of capitalist society as a bad thing and want to smash it and build an entirely new and different society out of a void, while Marxists see the development of capitalist society as in fact laying the foundations for socialism which it will be built on top of, i.e. it will be centralized.

          Bukharin explained this brilliantly a century ago.

          Communist society is, as such, a STATELESS society. If this is the case - and there is no doubt that it is - then what, in reality, does the distinction between anarchists and marxist communists consist of? Does the distinction, as such, vanish at least when it comes to examining the problem of the society to come and the “ultimate goal”? No, the distinction does exist; but it is to be found elsewhere; and can be defined as a distinction between production centralised under large trusts and small, decentralised production.

          …Our ideal solution to this is centralised production, methodically organised in large units and, in the final analysis, the organisation of the world economy as a whole. Anarchists, on the other hand, prefer a completely different type of relations of production; their ideal consists of tiny communes which by their very structure are disqualified from managing any large enterprises, but reach “agreements” with one another and link up through a network of free contracts. From an economic point of view, that sort of system of production is clearly closer to the medieval communes, rather than the mode of production destined to supplant the capitalist system. But this system is not merely a retrograde step: it is also utterly utopian. The society of the future will not be conjured out of a void, nor will it be brought by a heavenly angel. It will arise out of the old society, out of the relations created by the gigantic apparatus of finance capital.

          —Bukharin, Anarchy and Scientific Communism

          It is very important to understand that anarchists aren’t simply Marxists who want to get to statelessness faster. They are in many ways the polar opposite of Marxists, the gulf that separates Marxists from anarchists is just as large as pretty much any other ideology.

          Anarchists reject historical materialism and view history through an idealist lens, believing that all new societies are “conjured out of a void” as Bukharin put it, and thus they believe this new society can be anything they want it to be, if they can imagine it then it can be implemented.

          Marxists on the other hand, with a historical materialist analysis, see new systems as inherently being built upon new conditions brought into existence by the old system, i.e. socialism cannot be anything we want it to be but must be built upon foundations created by capitalism itself.

          Hence, Marxists see the centralization tendency of capitalism as the basis for what socialism will be built upon, while anarchists not only do not hold this view, but they view the conditions capitalism is bringing forth as a bad thing that must be entirely destroyed.

          A wide gulf separates socialism from anarchism, and it is in vain that the agents-provocateurs of the secret police and the news paper lackeys of reactionary governments pretend that this gulf does not exist. The philosophy of the anarchists is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out. Their individualistic theories and their individualistic ideal are the very opposite of socialism. Their views express, not the future of bourgeois society, which is striding with irresistible force towards the socialisation of labour, but the present and even the past of that society, the domination of blind chance over the scattered and isolated small, producer.

          —Lenin, Socialism and Anarchism

          […]

    • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      3 months ago

      “the Joe Biden knows everything about you, your name, face, age, money in your bank account, where you spend your time, where you have been to, etc. I don’t think you could call that good use of surveillance.”

      America’s surveillance apparatus is leagues more brutal than any Chinese system but USians don’t hear about it because it’s being field tested in the genocide of Palestine and hunting down migrants at the border. It’s also incredibly fucked, your 9 digit SSN is basically used for anything govt. related and can basically be considered your state mandated government ID from birth. So much of American data is held up in data brokers who will literally sell your personal info (enough for anyone to impersonate you) to the government or to other companies, the 3 letter agencies literally hoard petabytes of American data they gathered after 9/11 when the US basically became what the liberal imagination thinks China is.

      China has spent decades perfecting their surveillance apparatus and yet it’s not the extrajudicial murder, school shooting, prisoner capital of the world.

        • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          18·
          3 months ago

          i’d like to introduce you to a bunch of my comrades who protested the genocide of Palestinians on college campuses

          i want you to tell them they’re very free to protest in the USA and their efforts have viable effects. You might have to do it in person since some of them still can’t see through the pepper spray and can’t hear very well from their head injuries

        • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          14·
          3 months ago

          Which country do you live in?

          If it’s the US I’d suggest you focus on criticizing your own country first.

          If it’s another country the US probably has far more geopolitical influencer over your country than China does, so you’re still using your time better criticizing them.