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I’m having difficulty defending ML ideas when talking with people. The biggest issues being “if communism is so great why did it fail everywhere”, “Communist were just authoritarian”, “China is just as bad as the US”. I just don’t know how to defend these points properly tbh, I just don’t present the ideas clearly enough.
It hasn’t, there are still successful socialist projects in the world. When you bring that up, they switch to discrediting those; you simply point out that Cuba has a higher literacy rate, life expectancy rate and lower child mortality rate than the United States despite their poverty, to which you can point to the fact they’ve been under relentless sanction and embargo…making their achievements in spite of American action.
*"But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority.
Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists(reactionaries). Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?"* ~ On Authority
China has a higher life expectancy, higher literacy rate, higher home-ownership rate, higher protein consumed per capita and generally better social services when you compare the average of the U.S (including the deep south). The great transportation in this nation and infrastructure is an outlier where wealth is concentrated while productive forces build it for all.
Hope these help, comrade!
They may be gish galloping you:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/gish-gallop
The important thing to remember is that outside of strict debate club rules or something, there aren’t really any rules of debate. You aren’t obligated to respond to any given claim/point a person makes, much less take it seriously. Some people will try to use this against you, as in, “You’re ignoring what I said, you refuse to, blah blah” but too bad. They’re just trying to get you to adhere to an invisible scheme of debate rules that are to their advantage.
So for example, when they say “if communism is so great why did it fail everywhere”, you can shrug and continue to talk about ML ideas. Or you can go “idk what you’re talking about. anyway…” Or you can flip it around on them and go “according to what sources? the nazis? or perhaps the people who were barely through with owning slaves when they started saying communism is evil?”
In other words, set the terms you are willing to tolerate. People like this are leveraging talking points they (usually) don’t even understand that are designed to put you on the defensive for explaining things the average person would have a hard time being an expert in. So, figuratively speaking, recognize the CIA propagandist behind their words and argue with them rather than the propagandist.
First time hearing about that term and it actually explains so much. Thanks for this, I’ll be saving your comment
Other than in dreams, how china “just as bad as the US”? Quaiitatively its not remotely close, the US actively occupies hundreds of countries through their +100 military bases worldwide and actively deploys troops and bombs worldwide and engages in a brutal economic dictatorship towards all their enemies, when has china done something remotely close as this? China only has 1 military base abroad in Djibouti.
well in xinjiang i heard that xi jinping ate all the uyghurs then he pooped out all the uyghurs and i saw one of the uyghurs and the uyghur looked at me
I think one thing that helps is studying more yourself, and only speaking on subjects you’re confident in your own understanding. For example:
By what metrics? Socialist China is rising rapidly, and socialist countries do better than peer countries when it comes to quality of life metrics like life expectancy, despite increased international strain. I also recommend reading about some of the problems with the USSR and how it was dissolved, so you can prove that it wasn’t simply because they were socialist.
Ask them to define this! What tends to help is highlighting how the communists, when in power, asserted the authority of the working classes. This is in stark contrast to capitalist systems, where capitalists assert authority.
Again, how? China has much higher approval rates, engages in win-win economic cooperation instead of naked imperialism, only has a couple overseas millitary bases while the US Empire has hundreds, and maintains a defensive millitary instead of offensive. Plenty to show!
People often focus on argument before becoming confident in study. The rest, like learning how to engage and reach people, comes with practice and time.
The Liberals had always been redefining words like dictatorship, Liberalism, Capitalism, and Socialism to suit their political agenda. They could say that Communism failed because the Communists did not make Pax Americana dictate their success or when the Communists takeover countries that are mismanaged by corrupt genocidal governments to transform them into economic superpower. The Liberals had been complaining that the USSR are so successful that the invisible hand is recruiting Soviets into key positions of Pax Americana. They declare that Communism failed because the Communists made Pax Americana employ repressive command economy to rig the market competition just to stop Communist takeover.
The Pax Americana dictate that Communist is authoritarian either because they oppose the fake democracy of Pax Americana or because the Communists oppose plutocratic command economy of Capitalism in practice. They claim that China is just as bad because the Liberals dictate that Pax Americana can decide what is the truth about other countries or because they assume that other countries is as bad or worse than the British diaspora and former European colonies.
Yep, half of talking with liberals is clarifying terms.
the worst part is when they accuse you of splitting hairs or playing semantic games or something when you’re literally just trying to clearly define terms as they are scientifically. I think the hardest one is trying to explain how imperialism isn’t just when a big country picks on a little country.
imperalism is when prc wants to retake taiwan for being a running dog for usa the global imperialist.
Yep, have to explain why using the correct definition has value.
i love it when someone says something i have struggled to articulate for forever thank you p0ntyp00l
What exactly is Pax Americana?
It comes from the term Pax Romana, which refers to periods of “Roman peace” ergo peace dictated by the Roman Empire = Roman imperialism. Pax Americana is the same but for US.
this is what i most heavily associate with the the blissful neolib period where ‘history had ended’, in the period of parenti where communist projects had ‘failed’ (ussr collapse/decline, deng market reforms, quality of life increasing for westerners and their continually posturing at a better life for all their consumer goods + Assorted Good Freedoms) and so the term failed ideology was branded onto all communism and the body of theory of communism seemed as dead as ever. 80s to turn of 21st century(?)
the margie thatcher “capitalism is all we got” quote characterizes the period for me. a hapless throwing up of arms, announcing that communism had died a natural death when we had laced its drinks with polonium
That is the problem with the habit of Liberals to frequently redefine words like dictatorship to suit their political agenda. The Liberals claim that success in a Communist country means that the Communist country is now “Capitalist” even as they oppose the “Capitalism” in that Communist country. Likewise, the Liberals claim that failed Capitalist countries like US in 1930s are “Socialists” even as they seek to implement the policies and ideologies of the failed Capitalist countries. The recent Neo-Liberal practice of Pax Americana is to claim that Capitalism is against government intervention into the market to gain support for “Capitalism” and then redefine Capitalism to mean plutocratic command economy to implement “Capitalism”. Anyway, the election of Donald Trump should be destroying the free riders of Pax Americana and allowing the former European colonies to gain real development in human rights and economic prosperity.
I agree that staying out of debates that I don’t have much knowledge about should be better, however I can’t just not respond when people spew misinformation about things. Even when I answer with “China is socialist” they counter by saying that it can’t be since they have billionaires etc. It’s exhausting.
theres a redsails writeup with this exact name. + literally existence of wealth and markets doesnt contradict marxist leninist theory u r dealing people who dont know shit about what is communism egalitarianism and the theory most socialist states exist by. obviously the vulgar idea of the communism button is fucking stupid. /nay im not mad at u
China Has Billionaires
tanks comrade :)
No problem!
Thanks! Was just about to ask for the red sails article.
No problem!
I understand, comrade! For China, it’s pretty important to clarify that public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state. Looking into that more can help in explaining it.
Are there any sources that I could quickly reference? I know The Deprogram has a wiki that I usually use, but are there any others without having to read whole articles? I’m going to read them anyway, but just as quick info.
Depends on the subject, but my favorites are Jason Hickel’s 2 posts on approval rates and whether they are reliable, as well as Roland Boer’s 2 books Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners and Socialism in Power: The History and Theory of Socialist Governance.
Here’s a sample comment from my Lemmy.ml account:
Only major thing I need is a source backing the breakdown of the CPC beyond just an image.
Amazing, thanks again
No problem!
im glad ur so willing to engage and call out misinfo. u should honestly be proud of urself /gen
Thanks, but it’s exhausting tbh
yeah completely! again, as other commenters have pointed out many of these people are difficult to convince since they both dont have as much of a short term interest in overthrowing capitalism like impcore citizens/other petit bourgeoisie or reactionaries, and some are just plainly approaching in bad faith or are really so incapable due to indoctrination to imagine literally any other alternative to capitalism
there’s a lot to be said about the debate culture we’ve propagated that even in lib discussions is completely banal if not detrimental, since it makes unnecessary compromises by even treating fascist and other destructive ideologies as deserving of respect.
in this sense it also extends to those who adamantly push against the historical facts to be anti-communists. once more, if you sense anyone is being adversarial and inflammatory and unwilling to learn actually about communism, don’t waste your time on them!! yes misinformation hurts to see spread (i have a ventpost about this exact scenario where i also reacted visibly to such lies being fed) but at that point, if you can’t fix that situation and will expend energy trying to do so, try to find ways to cope! honestly, online spaces with comrades/people of similar tendencies does actually help + finding people irl especially even if it’s hard/impossible.
this isn’t to say you’ll never interact with a non-communist/anti-communist who cant be reasoned with, sometimes it’s worthwhile to pursue it, but honestly at this time focus on yourself, and really your own pursuit of better political education so one day you can dismantle these arguments easily in less time. i am rooting for you!!!
Communism didn’t fail of its own accord, it was shot down, backstabbed and slaughtered by Western imperialists. No account of the failures of socialist governance is complete without acknowledgement of the wider context of the ‘Cold’ war and in particular US interventionism across the world post WW2.
i prefer to re-frame this one as “if the death of the USSR was inevitable, why did the us spend such an enormous amount of money, manpower, and resources to make it happen?”
I’ve gotten replies that this is just conspiracy theories (even after pointing out that the CIA said so in their documents I get hit with “why would the CIA out themselves like that”) along with “if the US didn’t do that we would be fucked from the Russians”
Claiming that authoritarian rule by a foreigners from the US is the only hope against authoritarianisn is a big indication that a person think that anything other than US dictatorship is dictatorship.
These people don’t want to learn or even think. They aren’t a good expenditure of your effort. Hit them with the
Parenti unfalsefiable orthodoxy quote
"During the Cold War the anti communist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If Soviets refused to negotiate a point they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off guard. By opposing arms limitations they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armaments treaties it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full this ment the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions) this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system. If they didn’t go on strike it was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated failure of the economic system; and improvement in consumer goods only meant that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communist in the US played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African Americans, women, and others this was only a their guileful way of gathering support among disenfranchised groups and aging power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is an unfalsefiable orthodoxy so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the political spectrum.”
and leave it at that.
Is this from Blackshirts & Reds? I have that in my reading queue and it’s probably going to be the most important text for me to frame against these types of arguments.
sometimes it’s safe to disengage friend, not saying this disparagingly you tried all you could but it’s also a maddening dialogue that often ends in nothing gained and all your energy lost, until the day westerners suffer a fraction of the imperial periphery will they actually realize that capitalism is an inherently evil and doomed system (which they can insult in minor ways all they want while disparaging any alternative, since they still have more to gain by keeping it around in the short term) and stop defending it so instinctively
You also have to observe the audience’s class orientation. I say this, having failed and realized the futility of trying to agitate to my Petite-Bourgeois & Labor Aristocratic family. It can be possible to successfully agitate non-Proletarians, but their class interest and conditions push them towards reactionary or conservative views- such as my family.
honestly i think these are fairly easy!!! like we can get into nuance and parts to critique about AES but youre talking about people who literally cannot fathom getting to a place where they can talk about AES like they’re actual things and not just the embodiment of evil or sin
constant siege/sanctions/blockades. even if they cite dissolution of ussr it’s simpler at this point (before getting into things like revisionists) just to say, china IS a socialist state that has survived till now, compliant to socialist theory. they’ll be like BUT IT HAS MARKETS at which point you can tell them that it’s not just communist button/egalitarianism/any similar vulgar mischaracterization or simplification and then you can explain what ML theory actually entails. you could also get to other AES but china is the easiest gate as an undeniably successful project at this point
so what? i mean, that’s reductive, but first of all they probably mean stalin era ussr, dprk, etc. or any other example that’s usually been mythologized. hell, people dont even think dprk is a place that exists in reality, only in a far off universe that produces fantasy stories for westerners to jerk off to.
it’s been very clear since october 7 that all pretense of free speech in the west is farcical, but regardless let’s look at the situations for each. ussr was literally under siege by nazis who wanted to exterminate all slavs and then colonize the region, THEN found itself in a cold war with the west who both absorbed a bunch of nazis + had crazy espionage campaigns that honestly even as a lib little kid i knew about. they were proclaimed ideological enemies of the ussr! they were of course going to be on their guard, only so long after the war and with such suspicious people being pardoned by other remaining world power. (this is again excluding the fact that capitalism naturally goes forward to fascism inexorably). again if u get them to this level u have a chance to explain capitalism and fascism being an integral part of it but youre focusing on the most blatant historical myths, this at least helps contextualize this before u can introduce theory
and there have been marked examples of color revolutions that destabilize + harm regions in long run, usamerican plants (they will scoff at you as conspiratorial but beg them to look past their blindness that they have gotten from believing they are the only ones free of all propaganda [which isnt ontologically good or bad]) that have existed and we have SEEN!!! like that one girl begging for an invasion of iraq!!! theyve been saying the arabs kill babies for forever!!!
of course there is going to be censorship! there have been people that speak out ‘on behalf of the country’ that beg for regime change!! so censorship then occurs to protect the country!! is it ideal? fuck no!! is it what other states (like DOTBs) do? yes!! does this equate them morally to DOTBs? no because measure the results first!! two countries can use the same means for different ends, like how a gun in the hand of a nazi was not the same as a gun in the hand of a red army soldier!! if you want to eliminate censorship still first you must remove those who place them under siege + endanger them. if they’re like ‘all censorship is ontologically bad’ you simply must just question this the same way you question the idea that all hierarchies are ontologically evil and not just natural!!! ask them how they think things like CSAM should be cracked down on!!! how they probably would and SHOULD endorse censorship in many fields!! free exchange of ideas should preclude totally nonsensical and antisocial and evil ideologies like fascism/racial ideology!!!
for many this will be backbreaking since they worship the ideas of rights that can never be infringed, but it honestly turned around for me just thinking about the alternatives, connected to the previous point. yes i could finally admit to myself censorship was needed in spaces, even in conjunction with restorative justice! things should be taken down and some evil things that can harm a country should be repressed lest they turn out inciting violence or causing a deeply detrimental regime change as so many of these people fiend for!!!
how many in collapsed socialist states have suffered more under new neolib regime?? we know this!! looking at russia alone post-ussr dissolution is proof of that but i digress!! how many eastern europeans prostituted themselves, children, the tweet ‘sadness in his eyes you can only see in eastern european gay porn’ is not that funny when you realize it’s fucking coercive by nature otherwise he’ll fucking STARVE. that may be too much humanization of evil eurasian orcs for one day, though!!! don’t scare them away by asking them to please imagine russians/slavs (well chinese and dprkoreans too but i truly ardently believe china is now an easier sell) as humans and not drones!!!
that assertion is still half untrue, honestly, it’s simply thought-termination and undying loyalty to western bourgeois rags under the impression this somehow passes as free press. first of all, on the purely global level?? never has china invaded another country since that minor fiasco with vietnam and since mao their foreign policy has been (to the point of criticism for many MLs/leftists) very lenient. they have never been particularly violent or exploitative, and again if we’re comparing to the satanic state of the usa it still isn’t a comparison to anyone remotely aware of what usamerikkka has even done, iraq war, afghanistan, vietnam, backing israel, etc. etc., and most allusions to this are myths that are beyond the pale (fucking go to xizang! they must look at what xizang was before the revolution instead of reading pedophile theocrats whine about how they cant enslave/skin women and kids anymore!! or xinjiang it’s fucking crazy!!!) or misconstruing real foreign policy that actually benefits people (so called debt trap diplomacy is as flimsy as paper) i just!!! IT’S FUCKING USA!! as soon as u show them what USA DOES this point is toilet paper!!
Another one regarding China is the mass surveillance and social points system. I’ve made a post in the past asking if the social points system even exists and in essence it doesn’t, but what would be a good answer to the surveillance one apart from saying “The West also does surveillance” but to this I’ve gotten answers such as “The number of cameras in London monitoring people are 30k (idk what the exact number was) and in China it’s in the millions”.
also, the social points thing isn’t true and it’s on them to find proof of its existence
i wrote this before in a bigger comment about completely baseless lib beliefs, but here
honestly this is the same thing as saying theyre using the eye of sauron to magically know if ur having dissenting thoughts brother get your head in the fuckiing GAME!! /nay (not at you)
like so many of these allegations when u really think about it defy physics / basically living in the material world and not just RFA fantasies
(edited becoz i worry it sounds mean but i really admire you for your patience)
these would be people that simply cannot interact with reality, so high on their own supply of propaganda. first of all. london is smaller than china. by… quite a lot. so it makes sense that there would be less cameras in london than in china. like i dont know if they meant beijing but they understand china is a region, right?
secondly well surveillance isn’t ontologically bad. if their allegation is that if the evil chinese cameras will explode anyone who so much sneezes weird you can just be like “i don’t know if you’re actually living in reality with the rest of us.” because they don’t really have any evidence to that claim, the burden of proof is on them unless theyre ogling to say No information escapes china which is fucking ludicrous and proves they truly cannot conceive of people outside west as human beings with agency. sorry im not mad at u im mad at them. which is funny bc theyre rhetorical in this instance.
(+ yanks have secret police just like us, + palantir + snowden whistleblowing case. so it’s throwing stones from a glass house. either way i’d rather have these powers in the hands of state cracking down on anti-people reactionaries and not, you know, the overlords of capital)
girl whose heart literally shakes and pulses weirdly when she gets mad at anticommunist talking points voice: yeah i mean like im normal and im happy and im not going crazy at all why do u ask
why are you describing me 😭
every girl whose heart shakes and pulses weirdly at anticommunism is the fucking coolest hell yea twin