☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
I subscribe to Lenin’s distinction between Marxism and Anarchism that he presents in The State and Revolution:
The distinction between Marxists and the anarchists is this: (1) The former, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognize that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution, as the result of the establishment of socialism, which leads to the withering away of the state. The latter want to abolish he state completely overnight, not understanding the conditions under which the state can be abolished. (2) The former recognize that after the proletariat has won political power it must completely destroy the old state machine and replace it by a new one consisting of an organization of the armed workers, after the type of the Commune. The latter, while insisting on the destruction of the state machine, have a very vague idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power. The anarchists even deny that the revolutionary proletariat should use the state power, they reject its revolutionary dictatorship. (3) The former demand that the proletariat be trained for revolution by utilizing the present state. The anarchists reject this.
turns out this story has a happy ending
I think it’s pretty clear that China is nothing like US. I think it’s important to look where the labor and resources are allocated in the country. In a capitalist state like US, they’re primarily allocated towards producing surplus value for the capital owners, meanwhile production of socially useful things is entirely incidental.
On the other hand in China, we see huge amounts of resources devoted towards ending poverty. They are on track to eliminate abject poverty this year. They poured more concrete in three years than US has in the entire 20th century. They provide food, housing, healthcare, and education for the vast majority of the population.
China also hasn’t shown aggressive imperialist tendencies like US. Since the 1970s, China has not once gone to war while US has not spent a day at peace. Since 2001, the U.S. has spent over $6 trillion on military operations and war, money that might have been invested in the infrastructure of home.. So, while capitalism drives constant war and exploitation, socialism is improving the quality of life for the people of the nation.
Furthermore, CCP has 90 million members. This comes out to 15.5 citizens to every party member. Xi has also introduced reforms that make membership more strict in order to prevent careerism. So, every person in China either personally knows a party member or related to a party member. This translates to China having strong social programs, providing housing, education, and healthcare for their citizens that I mentioned above. People in China predominantly agree that the party is working in their interest.
China now surpassed US in number of fortune 500 companies, and 24 out of the 25 largest companies in China are state owned.The only private company on there is Huawei which is technically a cooperative. China also keeps their billionaires on a leash, and actually jails them which is unheard of in the West.
It’s also worth remembering that China is working towards communism. Nobody is saying that the current situation is the end state. Both Marx and Lenin say that you can’t just create a communist society out of the blue. It has to be a process to transform it gradually towards communism. This is the whole idea behind withering of the state. Lenin also correctly notes that it’s not possible for this to happen until communism is the dominant ideology in the world. The capitalist forces are always going to fight communism, and a state is needed to combat that.
China obviously has made mistakes, but that’s just how life works. It’s not possible to do something completely new and get everything right on the first try. However, what’s important is that China is clearly learning from their mistakes and improving as they go along. This is in line with the concept of implementing scientific communism.
Yeah I saw that, it may be a bit sensational with the title. However, having grown up in USSR I find the position relatable. We were taught Marxism as well, but most people didn’t really think too hard about it. It was seen as nothing more than a chore by most people.
I imagine a similar situation was happening in China because when you live in a particular system you tend to take it for granted. When capitalism was introduced, it brought a big boom along with it, and most people saw it as a net positive. It looks like now people are starting to see the problems associated with capitalism because they’re experiencing the negative effects first hand.
Luckily for China they didn’t flat out abandon communism the way we did in USSR. They still have a path back that doesn’t require having a revolution. Communism is still the state ideology and it’s actively promoted by the party. I think that young people becoming radicalized against capitalism will hopefully lead to further nationalization and eventual dismantling of the capitalist system there.
I grew up in Moscow, so my perspective might be a bit skewed by that. That said, I really liked my life during the soviet times. People were generally happy, and there wasn’t a lot of stress. Nobody worried about losing their job or not being able to retire. Nobody I knew worked overtime, and people generally had a lot of time off.
The city was very safe, and people let their kids out completely unsupervised and didn’t think twice about it. The neighborhoods were really well planned in my opinion. You’d have a bunch of apartment buildings around a central park with schools, hospitals, and grocery stores all within walking distance. You had everything you needed within walking distance from where you lived. Everybody lived in the same mixed housing, mechanics, plumbers, physicists, etc. all lived together.
Public transit was excellent, subways, trams, and buses were running at all times, and you never even had to think about it. You just go to a stop and something will come by in a 5-10 minutes.
Technology was less advanced. My family had a black and white TV without a remote, we used rotary phones even in the late 80s, and computers were rare. There was no personal computing to speak of, but schools were starting to have them right around the time of the collapse.
My overall memory of the time was of mostly being happy and optimistic about the future. Then the collapse happened and life went to shit real fast. Gorbachev and Yeltsin are motherfuckers.
I’ve been using Mastodon for a couple of years now and it’s become significantly more active in that time from what I see anecdotally. That said, I’d say the key question for health is whether the community is big enough to support ongoing development and hosting. I think at this point the answer to both questions is a definite yes. There are millions of users in the Fediverse now, plenty of users are technical and are actively contributing.
I think we’ll see active users fluctuate over time, but I don’t see the core base of users abandoning Fediverse at this point because they’ve already established their social networks here.
The thing to remember is that cryptography is very tricky business, and even when an algorithm is sound on paper that does not guarantee that it’s implemented in a secure way. A famous example is when NSA “helped” develop the Diffie-Hellman cryptographic key exchange standard and introduced a vulnerability that nobody noticed for a very long time.
Any standard that’s been developed in conjunction with US agencies should be considered compromised in my opinion.