AES- Actually-Existing Socialism

Edit: Dictatorship of the Proletariat + Predominant, collective ownership and control of the economy = AES?

      • EnsignRedshirt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I would also suggest that some of the support is in the form of challenging questionable and sometimes outright racist/xenophobic Western narratives on China. Red Scare propaganda is real, and has existed for generations, so regardless of whether China is good or bad, you would be an idiot to simply take the US State Department’s position as legitimate. All of that is completely aside from whether or not China is worth supporting for reasons A, B, or C above.

      • chickentendrils [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Pretty much all of the above for me. B with the qualifier that I just think the leadership is not as cartoonishly evil/stupid as the Western ruling class and the systems being put in place and claims being made by the state have a path to socialism. It’s not like the USA, where nothing is taught about socialism during education unless you go out of your way during university. I do think 1917 was the last truly realistic chance, which didn’t pan out mostly due to momentum (capitalist wealth stolen from other nations for decades/centuries and reinvested in the destruction of revolutions). It’s just that not all hope is lost.

        The ruling class of the West seems to be a mix of (1) too stupid to realize their class will eventually bring about the Fourth Reich and very possibly end the world and (2) smart enough to approximately realize it but mostly stupid enough to not be interested in addressing it as anything other than individuals with NZ bunkers/WALL-E ambitions.


        Also I just saw your handle and if you deal with that wanted to recommend benzoyl peroxide. I dealt with that (diagnosed) for a couple of years before finding this dermatology clinic’s report from the 80s. Cleared it up in a couple weeks.

      • markr [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Just anecdotally, I worked for a short period of time in China, and was simply stunned by the level of public investment that was occurring. There is so much we could do if we had the political power to do anything. Also, my colleagues were pretty open about their collective sigh of relief that the nightmare their parents went through was long over, their anxiety that it could return, and their enthusiasm for the current path. Of course this was a rather nonrandom sample of tech workers, so there is that. My opinion is that I have no idea if China will end up being AES, but at least it represents an intention to do so, and an alternative to the dominant system.

    • Judge_Jury [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I think one major aspect is that even if their leadership was 100% cynically lying about their intention to build socialism in China, they’ve still been a tremendously less evil superpower than any of their peers.

      Here in the US, we started with white supremacist genocides and have continued that tradition up to the present. Domestically we run a perpetual military counterinsurgency campaign against our population, and internationally we drop countless bombs on countries we “aren’t” at war with while we coup their elected leaders and train torturers and death squads for our puppet regimes. Western international “development” programs have been nakedly exploitative and repressive, while Chinese international development programs have instead been mutually beneficial

      All of this happens in public view, and the worst allegations anyone can make up against China always both pale in comparison to what the US admits to doing and get retracted after a few months of our Reputable Journalistic Institutions lying about them

    • captcha [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Our leaders are clearly trying to scapegoat our problems onto China. As things get worse they will get more and more aggressive to China. I don’t want a war with China. I want us to actually deal with our problems at home.

      China may merely be a lesser of two evils. But it makes no sense in doing my rulers work for them by letting people become more sinophobic.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      My personal answer always is, imagine China is really as evil as our propaganda portrays them to be. I have real, super reliable evidence that the US is just as bad or worse. What can I do about China? Absolutely nothing. What can I do about the US? Also not a whole lot to be honest, but when the working class organizes and we have collective power, it obviously behooves us to smash the state that sits over us, and cooperate with its enemies to do so as long as that doesn’t compromise our values (which might require questioning if that propaganda was really true in the first place).

    • JuneFall [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Do we? I have yet to see billions of Hexbear user’s money invested into China, yet USA’s, EU’s billionaires do. Seems that those capitalists are supporting China much more than Hexbear is supporting China.