“I don’t pretend to know everything about leftist theory,”
This goes so far beyond that. You don’t even know the basics. What you’re doing is building a house of cards out of vibes on top of an ingrained liberal foundation. There’s no material or really any serious analysis across any of your comments, just assumptions about “power,” “freedom,” and “human nature” that you’ve inherited from Western ideology and never seriously interrogated. You think it’s simple because you’ve taken a vibes first approach to it as opposed to doing any study which might challenge your comfort.
If you’re British, German, American it doesn’t matter you are situated in the imperial core reaping the rewards of imperialism. You received concessions from the bourgeoisie to keep you from seriously challenging the largest most advanced immiseration machine in human history. Hence I used the term Euro-American. I could also just say white/western “leftist” or shitlib or radlib or whatever other word for privileged member of the imperial core it doesn’t really change much . Your class interest is aligned with the imperialist empire and in direct opposition to the oppressed of the world. You should read Settlers and Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism
Then you try to lecture me(someone actually from and living in China) about how corruption is handled here, and you’re simply wrong. Anti-corruption trials are public. Everyone knows about them. Officials, executives, generals(people right up to the very top) are investigated, removed, and jailed under the Communist Party of China. In the West, corruption is largely legalized through lobbying, revolving doors, and finance. And even when the line is crossed, it’s usually overlooked as long as it doesn’t threaten the moneyed class.
You also claim things “generally improve in the long term” in the West. Improve for whom? Whatever social-democratic gains Europe and the US had were built on and sustained by imperialism and neocolonial extraction. Euro-American countries raped and looted the periphery for centuries to fund the “treats” you now point to as progress at home. Meanwhile, without plundering the Global South, China alone lifted nearly a billion people out of poverty through planned socialist development. While your comfort was subsidized by other people’s misery.
Your fixation on “individual freedoms” just confirms to me your liberal foundation that you refuse to reckon with. You’re poisoned by hyper-individualism. You talk about freedom as personal expression divorced from class power, ownership, housing, healthcare, or production. That’s just consumer ideology. You don’t seem to understand that collective material conditions matter more than abstract personal liberty. Reactionaries and bourgeoisie current should be repressed, they should not have the freedom to exploit others.
And on “free speech”: you seriously overestimate how free it is in the West. Read Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti. He explains in a way that should be easy for you as a beginner to understand how media ownership and elite filtering manufacture topics and angles long before anything reaches public debate. Look at what’s happening right now: protesters arrested and brutalised en masse across Europe and the US, specific to your location Palestine Action being designated a terrorist organization in the UK, and in Germany open criticism of Israel being criminalized. So spare me the fairy tale about open discourse. You’re allowed to talk, as long as it doesn’t threaten capital or the empire but don’t forget who’s holding the reigns it’s not the people.
Finally, coming back to your “no hierarchy + automation + abolish money soon” vision, it avoids every serious question: how do you suppress bourgeois forces, organize production, defend society, and prevent capital from reasserting itself? You don’t answer any of that. You just gesture toward a futuristic fantasy. Marxists have already long addressed this: money and the state only wither away after global class abolition. Pretending we can skip the transition period is utopian fantasy.
Try read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and Critique of the Gotha Programme
I know I am badly informed about the way things are done in a functional Communist state, like China, and my views are entirely coloured by my western up bringing. I’m over 50yo so I have a lot of cultural assumptions to overcome. That said I struggle with the idea that communism can function without very strict controls and closed door bureaucracy. I guess I prefer to KNOW I’m being lied to by the media and my government, rather than only suspect it but not be able to talk about it.
Regards my desire for individual freedoms, this is not about consumerism. I’m a simplistic guy, I’m not dreaming of the shop-till-you-drop life, or a mansion with 50 cars. I’m talking about my ability to go places and say things without fear that I will be arrested for sharing my views. There will always be consequences for our actions, and if what we say directly results in destruction, pain, or death that is a good thing, but I won’t be silenced just to keep the peace.
I’ll say it again. We are in challenging times with hyper conservatism ruining everyone’s day, but I’m hopeful.
Look I understand a lot of where you’re coming from given your background, however:
Basically everything you “know” about politics and political economy is seemingly somewhere between wildly exaggerated and outright fairytale, and you don’t yet grasp the scale or sophistication of the narrative control you’re actually living under.
You say you prefer to know you’re being lied to, but in the West you usually don’t. That’s the point. Through ownership, framing, omission, and repetition, discourse is managed in the boardroom long before anything reaches you. I already linked you Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti for a reason: every story shown or not shown, every angle chosen, exists to shape what feels “normal” or “thinkable.” That ideological hegemony is deeper and more effective than the cartoon version of censorship projected onto China and socialist states in general.
Your second paragraph still rests on the same misunderstanding, communism isn’t about silencing people to “keep the peace,” it’s about suppressing reactionary and bourgeois forces so they can’t sabotage collective development as they have repeatedly proven themselves to do historically as their class interest is diametrically opposed to the interests of the masses.
Finally, this rise of conservatism(fascism) you’re talking about isn’t some temporary cultural mood swing, it’s capitalism in decay. When imperialism can’t externalize crisis anymore, its violence turns inward. That’s why you’re feeling it now. The teeth of empire always come home eventually. If you’re serious about understanding any of this, you need to move past liberal intuitions and actually study political economy. Hope without analysis just leaves you disarmed. You really should read the books/articles I linked in the last reply.
This goes so far beyond that. You don’t even know the basics. What you’re doing is building a house of cards out of vibes on top of an ingrained liberal foundation. There’s no material or really any serious analysis across any of your comments, just assumptions about “power,” “freedom,” and “human nature” that you’ve inherited from Western ideology and never seriously interrogated. You think it’s simple because you’ve taken a vibes first approach to it as opposed to doing any study which might challenge your comfort.
If you’re British, German, American it doesn’t matter you are situated in the imperial core reaping the rewards of imperialism. You received concessions from the bourgeoisie to keep you from seriously challenging the largest most advanced immiseration machine in human history. Hence I used the term Euro-American. I could also just say white/western “leftist” or shitlib or radlib or whatever other word for privileged member of the imperial core it doesn’t really change much . Your class interest is aligned with the imperialist empire and in direct opposition to the oppressed of the world. You should read Settlers and Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism
Then you try to lecture me(someone actually from and living in China) about how corruption is handled here, and you’re simply wrong. Anti-corruption trials are public. Everyone knows about them. Officials, executives, generals(people right up to the very top) are investigated, removed, and jailed under the Communist Party of China. In the West, corruption is largely legalized through lobbying, revolving doors, and finance. And even when the line is crossed, it’s usually overlooked as long as it doesn’t threaten the moneyed class.
You also claim things “generally improve in the long term” in the West. Improve for whom? Whatever social-democratic gains Europe and the US had were built on and sustained by imperialism and neocolonial extraction. Euro-American countries raped and looted the periphery for centuries to fund the “treats” you now point to as progress at home. Meanwhile, without plundering the Global South, China alone lifted nearly a billion people out of poverty through planned socialist development. While your comfort was subsidized by other people’s misery.
Your fixation on “individual freedoms” just confirms to me your liberal foundation that you refuse to reckon with. You’re poisoned by hyper-individualism. You talk about freedom as personal expression divorced from class power, ownership, housing, healthcare, or production. That’s just consumer ideology. You don’t seem to understand that collective material conditions matter more than abstract personal liberty. Reactionaries and bourgeoisie current should be repressed, they should not have the freedom to exploit others.
And on “free speech”: you seriously overestimate how free it is in the West. Read Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti. He explains in a way that should be easy for you as a beginner to understand how media ownership and elite filtering manufacture topics and angles long before anything reaches public debate. Look at what’s happening right now: protesters arrested and brutalised en masse across Europe and the US, specific to your location Palestine Action being designated a terrorist organization in the UK, and in Germany open criticism of Israel being criminalized. So spare me the fairy tale about open discourse. You’re allowed to talk, as long as it doesn’t threaten capital or the empire but don’t forget who’s holding the reigns it’s not the people.
Finally, coming back to your “no hierarchy + automation + abolish money soon” vision, it avoids every serious question: how do you suppress bourgeois forces, organize production, defend society, and prevent capital from reasserting itself? You don’t answer any of that. You just gesture toward a futuristic fantasy. Marxists have already long addressed this: money and the state only wither away after global class abolition. Pretending we can skip the transition period is utopian fantasy. Try read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and Critique of the Gotha Programme
I know I am badly informed about the way things are done in a functional Communist state, like China, and my views are entirely coloured by my western up bringing. I’m over 50yo so I have a lot of cultural assumptions to overcome. That said I struggle with the idea that communism can function without very strict controls and closed door bureaucracy. I guess I prefer to KNOW I’m being lied to by the media and my government, rather than only suspect it but not be able to talk about it.
Regards my desire for individual freedoms, this is not about consumerism. I’m a simplistic guy, I’m not dreaming of the shop-till-you-drop life, or a mansion with 50 cars. I’m talking about my ability to go places and say things without fear that I will be arrested for sharing my views. There will always be consequences for our actions, and if what we say directly results in destruction, pain, or death that is a good thing, but I won’t be silenced just to keep the peace.
I’ll say it again. We are in challenging times with hyper conservatism ruining everyone’s day, but I’m hopeful.
Look I understand a lot of where you’re coming from given your background, however:
Basically everything you “know” about politics and political economy is seemingly somewhere between wildly exaggerated and outright fairytale, and you don’t yet grasp the scale or sophistication of the narrative control you’re actually living under.
You say you prefer to know you’re being lied to, but in the West you usually don’t. That’s the point. Through ownership, framing, omission, and repetition, discourse is managed in the boardroom long before anything reaches you. I already linked you Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti for a reason: every story shown or not shown, every angle chosen, exists to shape what feels “normal” or “thinkable.” That ideological hegemony is deeper and more effective than the cartoon version of censorship projected onto China and socialist states in general.
Your second paragraph still rests on the same misunderstanding, communism isn’t about silencing people to “keep the peace,” it’s about suppressing reactionary and bourgeois forces so they can’t sabotage collective development as they have repeatedly proven themselves to do historically as their class interest is diametrically opposed to the interests of the masses.
Finally, this rise of conservatism(fascism) you’re talking about isn’t some temporary cultural mood swing, it’s capitalism in decay. When imperialism can’t externalize crisis anymore, its violence turns inward. That’s why you’re feeling it now. The teeth of empire always come home eventually. If you’re serious about understanding any of this, you need to move past liberal intuitions and actually study political economy. Hope without analysis just leaves you disarmed. You really should read the books/articles I linked in the last reply.
I like your reply. It is generally constructive and reasonable, and shows an understanding of the many sides in this discussion.
Your last paragraph articulates a feeling I hear shared across my friends and colleagues, that Western life is imploding and has been for a long time.
I clearly need to read more.