Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide
https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342
Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.
Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):
Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:
https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:
https://lemmy.world/post/16235541
What is a tankie?
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.
As a fellow communist, I was always bewildered by this urge of many tankies to prove by all means, against any evidence, that China is socialist and ultimately good.
It’s neither. China turned to markets, privatized many industries, and really did commit atrocities on Tiannamen square and in Xinjiang.
Doesn’t mean socialism as a system is dysfunctional. United States are directly responsible for insane atrocities all over the world, and we don’t need to deny that either.
We need to learn from the experience and strive for it not to happen again. Not close our eyes, scream “blah-blah-blah” and pretend it never happened.
China and the Soviet Union were responsible for acts of genocide, mass murdering/starving people, etc.
Doesn’t mean this didn’t happen in a capitalist world, and doesn’t mean we should close our eyes on that to defend the good look of the system. If anything, this does the opposite. Problems need to be solved, not ignored.
Taps life expectancy, infant mortality, and education statics
That’s it. That’s the nefarious methodology of the villainous Wumao.
By that I primarily meant “Chinese government is not guilty in atrocities it ordered to commit”
But in general, of course China is a miracle in many ways.
You could write textbooks about bad Chinese policies - foreign and domestic.
But a country on it’s fifteenth five year plan is most definitely socialist. And if any nation can qualify as “good”, the miracle of Chinese central planning would seem to qualify.
That’s why leftists are prone to like it. That, and the derth of foreign military conflicts. At least from the perspective of an American, the Chinese government is practically saint-like, simply because it isn’t trying to regime change every country it doesn’t like.
Pre-Iraq, I think you could make a much stronger “China bad” argument. But the bar is so much lower now.
The economy of China is not characterized by the common/social ownership of the means of production, which means it is not socialist. No amount of five-year plans can change that.
China does spark international conflicts and does bully its neighbors, but it is true that the country doesn’t cosplay world police and doesn’t participate much in military operations outside the country, which is a big plus.
As per the bar, it shouldn’t fall lower just because some country got even more evil. We can compare the evils, but the evil will be there.
With all that said, I do not say “China bad”. But claiming “China good” would also not be correct.
30% of their industry is SOEs. They have a 90% home ownership rate and one of the most generous pension systems left standing - affording Chinese workers the opportunity to retire inside their 50s. The local property laws force foreign companies to share equity with regional firms, keeping both profits and IP domestic.
And while the high point of the old-school Commune System is long passed, the household responsibility system still guarantees public ownership of arable land. If you work the land, you own the fruit of your labor. That’s textbook Communism.
It goes beyond the negative. They’ve been a positive force for international relations, helping to buffer North and South Korea to prevent a new war, exporting $100B/year in agriculture products to curb global hunger, and pioneering industrial scale solar, wind, and nuclear technologies to mitigate climate change.
As a global diplomat, they’ve got cache that the Western states have squandered, making them a popular back channel in Middle Eastern politics.
And to quote Dr. Lubinda Haabazoka, Director at the University of Zambia’s Graduate School of Business
I would say that alone illustrates why Chinese foreign policy deserves praise.
Textbook communism is an economy that is 100% worker-owned, with everyone’s needs directly met without the intervention of money. The rest is not that, by literal definition. Let’s not play into the hands of people who want to call that communism and ultra-left to exploit in their own needs.
China does have some strong policies, but it doesn’t make it communist by any definition. Also, high home ownership rate is mostly a cultural phenomenon, with housing still seen as “best investment” despite the fact there are entire ghost towns full of houses that never ever filled.
I’m well aware that US pressures China militarily, and that China has a much more peaceful approach. However, Chinese ships regularly bully other countries in the South China Sea against international maritime laws.
The infrastructure China builds is not just a gift - but an investment on which China expects a return. I’m not convinced China is actively pursuing debt trap diplomacy, but it certainly uses economic power to pressure other countries into various concessions.
Utopian Communism is a stateless, moniless society that was hypothized by 19th century European theorists as a possible result of generations of revolutionary struggle.
But if you sit down and read the textbook, you’ll discover even the most idealistic thinkers don’t hold that it would happen overnight. Marx, himself, asserts a number of transitional states - industrial capitalism being one of them - necessary to reach surplus volumes capable of sustaining a post-money society.
The policies are the direct result of experimental application of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist socio-economic theory. They are explicitly and deliberately Communist, in the same way that American socio-economic policy is Capitalist.
The end goal of Chinese state policy is to advance to a state of publicly controlled superabundance. This is markedly different from the American policies intended to fashion fully privatized ownership of an artificially scare pool of goods and services.
A return in the form of improved economic and political relations. It is for the same reason you would bring a gift to a birthday party.
You’re right on classics - but off topic.
I’m saying that China does not economically classify as a communist state, neither did even USSR, because it just wasn’t feasible at the moment.
I’m combating the change of meaning where communism as officially proclaimed ideology is conflated with communism as an actual economic system. As a result of this, people start thinking that communism is when a state controls some sides of economy and gets involved in social programs, which is not a definition of communism, it’s a capitalist state with social elements.
A state can even apply some of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist principles, but it is economically capitalist as long as means of production are controlled by private entities looking for profit. This is not an argument about what China should or shouldn’t do - this is an argument that China is not economically communist or even socialist, like it or not. Neither was USSR during the so-called New Economic Policy.
A return in form of cash or lease.
Not sure where you are from, but your type of worldly reasoned view does not come without exposure to multiple systems of governance. Labels like “socialism”, “communism”, “capitalism” are the Newspeak that are used to place the populace opinion into buckets with which to control. And I completely agree about the US - its entire history is based upon capitalism and will always be based upon capitalism. Biden is the MOST progressive president in 50 years, yet it’s a stretch to even call him a centrist he’s so enmeshed with the existing corporatists.
I operate dictionary definitions.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production.
Socialism is dictated by the common (social) ownership of the means of production, and communism is a subset of socialism that entails absence of money and private property (note: not personal property).
US is blatantly capitalist. Nordic countries are capitalist, too. USSR was socialist, Russia is capitalist; revolutionary regime preceding the creation of USSR was also briefly communist (see: War communism), though, make no mistake, this wasn’t the kind of communism anyone wanted, it’s just that government couldn’t run monetary policy properly at the time and had even bigger issues.
What. The. Fuck?