Other people have done good jobs of recommending sources on the specific areas you mentioned, so I’ll pivtot to methodology and media literacy. In the western, English-speaking world, the media is dominated by Capitalists and corporate interests, the US State Department, and more. The common narrative threads against foreign countries that do not fully capitulate to the West are controlled. They begin with kernals of truth, omit critical context, and massage the quality and quantity of their events as much as they can while still remaining plausible, often using “anonymous sources” for reference.
The reason the West does this is because the West wants these countries to destabilize, so it can freely plunder their markets and resources, as is standard for the rest of the world. As a Socialist state, the PRC has strong sovereignty over its own markets, and this is a problem for Western Capitalists. That’s what I want you to focus on as you look into these countries.
Sorry this is so fucking long, I have a horrible habit of being incredibly long-winded 🥲
I already agree with pretty much all of that but I don’t really buy into the idea that therefore only sources that agree with China can be correct (which I don’t think you’re necessarily saying, I’m just clarifying the way I look at things)
Someone alluded to the human rights commission article I linked being written by someone it sounds like is very biased against the PRC but his name isn’t on the article anywhere and I have no way to validate that claim, and the HRC has been more than critical of western “free” market capitalist countries too.
In fact, most if not all of the sources I regard highly are extremely critical of the us government, many of our allies, and a variety of western nations.
I don’t think the US isn’t warping the perspective of everyone they can, at home and abroad (along with all the other western countries with the budget to do so), but china and russia are also always carrying out their own disinformation, propaganda, and espionage campaigns. Its the nature of being a big important country in a world where those things are standard.
Understanding that the vast majority of media I have access to is tainted by the filter of “they’re able to make money saying this, and are getting paid for doing so which shapes their motives and can reflect a capitalist bias”, doesn’t really change the fact that I still have to discern what’s propaganda, and propaganda produced by who, and that if it were easy nations wouldn’t spend billions all competing with eachother to shape narratives
Sidebar- just realized tankie is probably an insult, that didn’t occur to me… I should probably apologize to the person I called a tankie and clarify that I just meant to refer to their broad political perspective not insinuate it was less valid…
I don’t take the perspective of pro-PRC communists wholesale because I see that as being just as filtered as most of the narratives I have access to in western media, but going the opposite direction- BUT its still extremely useful to learn how y’all look at things, take a look at the sources y’all feel are relevant, and see how they might change or not change my perspective. Being in even slight different parts of the political spectrum, we kinda live in bubbles with different facts, and its really helpful peek into other people’s bubbles to see other people’s facts and compare them to your own. (Which is why I feel so strongly about trying not to smugly antagonize people I disagree with, you’re just as complex and intelligent a human as I am and I’d like to learn from you, which requires respect.)
But I generally feel that every powerful government in the world has skeletons in the closet. To the best of my knowledge the PRC still hasn’t acknowledged the Tiananmen square massacre and still cracks down on gatherings at the anniversary. If a source isn’t willing to criticize both the west and the “communist block” (sorry, I don’t have a better way to refer to those commonly lumped together countries, if there’s something better I’d be interested to hear it!) Then I’m unlikely to consider them an especially trustworthy source. Is that perfect? Undoubtly no, propaganda is extremely sophisticated these days, but I think it’s a valid starting place. I’m open to disagreement or critique
It’s okay to be long-winded. One thing with HRW, is that it was essentially founded to be an anti-Communist tool of propaganda, not an impartial judge of national character. Criticism of HRW is frequent for its US-bias, even if it also critiques the US or Western countries, it does so with far more kindness than it does for non-Western countries.
As for the PRC and Tian’anmen, they absolutely do acknowlwdge it. They call the event the “June 4th Incident.” They disagree with the debunked UK diplomat cable that alleged 10,000 people killed in total, and a massacre on the square, on the basis of the UK diplomat Alan Donald admiting to have made up the figure from various sources and that he fled the scene well-before. All reputable sources report a relatively consistent story, no deaths (or up to 3ish by some reports) on the square, around 300-500 deaths of PLA soldiers and rioters combined. I recommend checking out the links on this document for more.
This is what I mean by the West taking a kernal of truth, and distorting the quality and quantity of the events. To this day, BBC reports the 10,000 figure as though it’s accurate, while Alan Donald himself has reduced his own estimates to 2000-3000, a number much higher than other estimates but much lower than his initial, and leaked cables back up the CPC’s claim of no deaths on the square. The west calls the denial of the debunked aspects censorship of the entire event, when pretty much everyone in China is familiar.
You’re correct, every government has skeletons in their closet. What’s important is having the media literacy to look at all sides, and not taking Western Sources about their enemies too seriously, as its a massive propaganda regime.
As a side-note, “tankie” is a pejorative for Marxist, but pretty much no Marxist takes it seriously, just like “commie” or “pinko.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to collect some links for me, those gave me a lot more to think about! I had missed the history section on the HRW Wikipedia page talking about its founding to watch the USSR specifically and slowly expanding to include more regions and whatnot. I’ll have to take a look at that page of their criticisms more closely, thank you for the link! The criticisms section in the HRC page was much more limited, I didn’t realize there was a dedicated page
Thats super interesting regarding them acknowledging the tianamen square massacre, if that’s true that totally changes my perception of that part of China’s history. If nothing else, I didn’t realize how close in time that was to the death of Mao, being about 10-15 years after he died, and that the deaths didn’t happen in the square. I think the argument for it being a significantly lower death toll are interesting and fairly compelling, I’ll keep that idea in the back of my mind as I learn more in the future, thank you for the sources! Do you happen to know any reputable, relatively impartial sources where I can learn more about how the event is talked about in China, and the governments acknowledgement of it? If not that’s okay but I wanted to ask :)
Wait, so does tankie not even really include maoists? I thought it was maoists marxists, stallinists (is that a thing?) Etc.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with me, I think these kinds of conversations are exhausting but I really appreciate them. O think it’s really important to be able to talk to people who’s perspective you don’t share and learn why they see things differently.
As for “Maoists,” Mao himself was a Marxist-Leninist. His contributions to Marxism-Leninism are called “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.” Maoists are a subsection of Marxists after Mao that believe certain individual characteristics of the Chinese Revolution are universal, rather than individual, ie they see Maoism as a higher stage of Marxism surpassing Marxism-Leninism. They get called “tankies” just as much, even if they reject most Socialist states as “valid.” “Stalinism” isn’t really a thing either, Stalin took the writings of Marx and Lenin and synthesized it into Marxism-Leninism, but didn’t really create any new theory. Those calling people “Stalinists” are generally trying to fearmonger around the name of Stalin, even if Marx, Engels, and Lenin are the broad majority of Marxism-Leninism, and Stalin more the first person after Lenin to really collect how Marxism and Leninism had changed and developed over time.
I would urge you to think about the question of wether or not there is a “correct” way to attain socialism. I am not talking about hypothetically in a synthetic environment, but in the real world where the material gain of the proletariat comes at the expense of the bourgeoisie (and will until we arrive at gay space communism, which is again purely theoretical).
How would you nationalize the resources and means of production of your country so as to distribute it fairly among the people? How would you stop those that resist on some stupid basis of “inalienable rights to private property” (🤢 btw)? If you are thinking about a country other than the US, how would you stop the hegemon from coming after you, either by assassination, invasion or both?
It is easy to critique AES states based on a comparison to fantasy. If you think that you have theory that is not just pure speculation that can never be realized due to it inherently ignoring material reality, please share it.
Note that I am not asking you to prove anything to me so that I can pick it apart at the seams while providing no viable alternative myself (that would be hypocritical with regards to the point I am trying to make). What I am asking is for you to consider this line of questions along with the specific historical material reality that have given way to say the PRC in particular.
That idea of what a practical implementation of left wing ideology would look like is something I think is super important! Though I should clarify, I don’t actually know if I’d describe myself as a socialist, my political ideology is still very much changing and evolving, there’s a ton for me to learn about still, but there are aspects of socialism, anarchism, and libertarianism (not anarcho-capitalism) that I have felt resonate with me. But my perspectives on political ideology are really fragmented and I’m still trying to learn enough to put together an actual image of each system and what I’d ideally want the world to look like
I think the most practical idea I have on how I’d like to see problems solved in the immediate short term is communalism, which if I understand right is more of a school of anarchism. But that’s a very small piece of a practical whole, that’s just how I think I’d like goods and services to be provided. I don’t really know enough to have meaningful answers to a lot of the other questions around how you build a better world, but I do like to think about it
It took me a long time before I engaged much with politics so I still have a fuckton to learn. I still don’t even really grasp what exactly communism is in an applied sense, and most schools of anarchism don’t really seem to make any sense to me in terms of how the world would actually work if they were implemented.
Maybe someday I’ll have more answers, but today I’m content to just learn when I have energy and remain cognizant of the fact that I don’t have an idea for how I’d like a nation to work in its totality. I just keep assembling small policy stances until I get a bit more complete of a picture, bit by bit.
But I do think that pragmatic, “what would this actually look like in practice, complete with how you would solve major pitfalls” discussion doesn’t happen enough in left wing spaces, a lot of it feels super “pie in the sky”
By the way, what does AES mean in this context, all I could find is “Alliance of Sahel States”, is that what you’re referring to?
AES referer to acutally existing socialism in this context. I think most socialist have to go through some traumatic internal development in order to mature and and grow their political views. The main part of Marxist theory, as per my understanding of it (still learning), is to analyze the means of production through the view of historical dialectial materialism.
I will explain these terms after a quick digression. The kernel of my belief in socialism is just the basic belief that every person by birth has the same right as me to have a good life. I also understand that earth’s resources are finite and that our means of production are as well (although increasing, historically).
Thus the crux of the problem is this: If we both want something that is finite in supply, how does my gain not come at your expense? The answer is that it is not possible, which begs the question of who gets the pie? The easy answer is that we share it, but then how? This is where we begin to move away from morals and ethics and should start to analyze this objectively, more as a social contract. For me, that is what the origin of socialism is.
Now, anyone born today has no part of any pie by right. Sure, some get bestowed something by their parents, but the truth is that all of earth is owned by someone or something (with few caveats). Who owns what is clearly a matter of history (usually those that owned something yesterday owns that and maybe even more today).
So how does this fit in with the idea of a social contract that should serve the goal of an egalitarian society? It does not. It is clearly not in the direct personal interest (from a materialist point of view) for the people that own something to just give that stuff away and so we see that they don’t.
I am already now hinting at the core Marxist idea of dividing people into classes according to ownership, since after all the poor have in common that they deserve a larger share and the rich have in common that they do not want to lose their wealth (after all it is finite at a global scale, so without the development of the means of production it is static). The unadressed term dialectical is in essence the study of contradictions within societies such as these, in order to solve them.
From the historical point of view we see the rise of capitalism as a bourgeoisie revolution (against the prior feudal economic structure on which another societal structure rested). Marxists do not believe that the vehicle of this revolution was that some people started nailing messages on doors nor that somebody just woke up and wanted to free themselves of feudal tyranny and so did. They instead argue that the technological and material development forced a shift in power away from those that held landed power and over to the mercantilist bourgeoisie.
Thus we only need to view the historical trend that the powerful rule, and the fall of feudalism seem almost inescapable. If we return to actual Marxist theory again, we can recognize that the means of production is dependant on a social class that does not really reap the full benefit from it: the workers. Analogously to the bourgeoisie revolution, we believe that the technological and materialist development of capital (i.e. the means of production) are what is needed for everyone to have enough to share, and that it must be wielded by the workers (the proletariat), whose interest it actually is to divide fairly among all people.
I have tried to make this more colloquial, at the unfortunate expense of accuracy. However, if parts of this story resonates with you, you might just be a budding socialist yourself. I would either way implore you to analyze the world from the pragmatic point of “what if everyone did/had the same as me” even if you do not believe that we are all more or less equal. In the same line, if you think you are entitled to more than anyone else, how would you stop those that disagree they deserve less from taking your wealth? If you think you are entitled to defend your wealth by force, why are those that need commodities not entitled to take what they need by force.
And thus we return to the necessity of a social contract or maybe just plain socialism.
how would you stop the hegemon from coming after you, either by assassination, invasion or both?
Or by funding, organizing, and fueling internal unrest/insurrection, which is what the US did in Beijing in 1989, in Hong Kong in ~1999, and in Xinjiang in ~2000–2015.
Other people have done good jobs of recommending sources on the specific areas you mentioned, so I’ll pivtot to methodology and media literacy. In the western, English-speaking world, the media is dominated by Capitalists and corporate interests, the US State Department, and more. The common narrative threads against foreign countries that do not fully capitulate to the West are controlled. They begin with kernals of truth, omit critical context, and massage the quality and quantity of their events as much as they can while still remaining plausible, often using “anonymous sources” for reference.
The reason the West does this is because the West wants these countries to destabilize, so it can freely plunder their markets and resources, as is standard for the rest of the world. As a Socialist state, the PRC has strong sovereignty over its own markets, and this is a problem for Western Capitalists. That’s what I want you to focus on as you look into these countries.
Sorry this is so fucking long, I have a horrible habit of being incredibly long-winded 🥲
I already agree with pretty much all of that but I don’t really buy into the idea that therefore only sources that agree with China can be correct (which I don’t think you’re necessarily saying, I’m just clarifying the way I look at things)
Someone alluded to the human rights commission article I linked being written by someone it sounds like is very biased against the PRC but his name isn’t on the article anywhere and I have no way to validate that claim, and the HRC has been more than critical of western “free” market capitalist countries too.
In fact, most if not all of the sources I regard highly are extremely critical of the us government, many of our allies, and a variety of western nations.
I don’t think the US isn’t warping the perspective of everyone they can, at home and abroad (along with all the other western countries with the budget to do so), but china and russia are also always carrying out their own disinformation, propaganda, and espionage campaigns. Its the nature of being a big important country in a world where those things are standard.
Understanding that the vast majority of media I have access to is tainted by the filter of “they’re able to make money saying this, and are getting paid for doing so which shapes their motives and can reflect a capitalist bias”, doesn’t really change the fact that I still have to discern what’s propaganda, and propaganda produced by who, and that if it were easy nations wouldn’t spend billions all competing with eachother to shape narratives
Sidebar- just realized tankie is probably an insult, that didn’t occur to me… I should probably apologize to the person I called a tankie and clarify that I just meant to refer to their broad political perspective not insinuate it was less valid…
I don’t take the perspective of pro-PRC communists wholesale because I see that as being just as filtered as most of the narratives I have access to in western media, but going the opposite direction- BUT its still extremely useful to learn how y’all look at things, take a look at the sources y’all feel are relevant, and see how they might change or not change my perspective. Being in even slight different parts of the political spectrum, we kinda live in bubbles with different facts, and its really helpful peek into other people’s bubbles to see other people’s facts and compare them to your own. (Which is why I feel so strongly about trying not to smugly antagonize people I disagree with, you’re just as complex and intelligent a human as I am and I’d like to learn from you, which requires respect.)
But I generally feel that every powerful government in the world has skeletons in the closet. To the best of my knowledge the PRC still hasn’t acknowledged the Tiananmen square massacre and still cracks down on gatherings at the anniversary. If a source isn’t willing to criticize both the west and the “communist block” (sorry, I don’t have a better way to refer to those commonly lumped together countries, if there’s something better I’d be interested to hear it!) Then I’m unlikely to consider them an especially trustworthy source. Is that perfect? Undoubtly no, propaganda is extremely sophisticated these days, but I think it’s a valid starting place. I’m open to disagreement or critique
It’s okay to be long-winded. One thing with HRW, is that it was essentially founded to be an anti-Communist tool of propaganda, not an impartial judge of national character. Criticism of HRW is frequent for its US-bias, even if it also critiques the US or Western countries, it does so with far more kindness than it does for non-Western countries.
As for the PRC and Tian’anmen, they absolutely do acknowlwdge it. They call the event the “June 4th Incident.” They disagree with the debunked UK diplomat cable that alleged 10,000 people killed in total, and a massacre on the square, on the basis of the UK diplomat Alan Donald admiting to have made up the figure from various sources and that he fled the scene well-before. All reputable sources report a relatively consistent story, no deaths (or up to 3ish by some reports) on the square, around 300-500 deaths of PLA soldiers and rioters combined. I recommend checking out the links on this document for more.
This is what I mean by the West taking a kernal of truth, and distorting the quality and quantity of the events. To this day, BBC reports the 10,000 figure as though it’s accurate, while Alan Donald himself has reduced his own estimates to 2000-3000, a number much higher than other estimates but much lower than his initial, and leaked cables back up the CPC’s claim of no deaths on the square. The west calls the denial of the debunked aspects censorship of the entire event, when pretty much everyone in China is familiar.
You’re correct, every government has skeletons in their closet. What’s important is having the media literacy to look at all sides, and not taking Western Sources about their enemies too seriously, as its a massive propaganda regime.
As a side-note, “tankie” is a pejorative for Marxist, but pretty much no Marxist takes it seriously, just like “commie” or “pinko.”
Thank you so much for taking the time to collect some links for me, those gave me a lot more to think about! I had missed the history section on the HRW Wikipedia page talking about its founding to watch the USSR specifically and slowly expanding to include more regions and whatnot. I’ll have to take a look at that page of their criticisms more closely, thank you for the link! The criticisms section in the HRC page was much more limited, I didn’t realize there was a dedicated page
Thats super interesting regarding them acknowledging the tianamen square massacre, if that’s true that totally changes my perception of that part of China’s history. If nothing else, I didn’t realize how close in time that was to the death of Mao, being about 10-15 years after he died, and that the deaths didn’t happen in the square. I think the argument for it being a significantly lower death toll are interesting and fairly compelling, I’ll keep that idea in the back of my mind as I learn more in the future, thank you for the sources! Do you happen to know any reputable, relatively impartial sources where I can learn more about how the event is talked about in China, and the governments acknowledgement of it? If not that’s okay but I wanted to ask :)
Wait, so does tankie not even really include maoists? I thought it was maoists marxists, stallinists (is that a thing?) Etc.
Thank you for taking the time to engage with me, I think these kinds of conversations are exhausting but I really appreciate them. O think it’s really important to be able to talk to people who’s perspective you don’t share and learn why they see things differently.
No problem!
Regarding “unbiased sources,” you’ll find that there’s really no such thing in general. Bias is like perspective, everyone has it. Here’s a ProleWiki page section going over state media directly speaking about the “June 4th Incident” as it’s called in China. ProleWiki is a Marxist-Leninist Wikipedia, so definitely biased, but also has sources backing it up for most claims.
As for “Maoists,” Mao himself was a Marxist-Leninist. His contributions to Marxism-Leninism are called “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought.” Maoists are a subsection of Marxists after Mao that believe certain individual characteristics of the Chinese Revolution are universal, rather than individual, ie they see Maoism as a higher stage of Marxism surpassing Marxism-Leninism. They get called “tankies” just as much, even if they reject most Socialist states as “valid.” “Stalinism” isn’t really a thing either, Stalin took the writings of Marx and Lenin and synthesized it into Marxism-Leninism, but didn’t really create any new theory. Those calling people “Stalinists” are generally trying to fearmonger around the name of Stalin, even if Marx, Engels, and Lenin are the broad majority of Marxism-Leninism, and Stalin more the first person after Lenin to really collect how Marxism and Leninism had changed and developed over time.
I would urge you to think about the question of wether or not there is a “correct” way to attain socialism. I am not talking about hypothetically in a synthetic environment, but in the real world where the material gain of the proletariat comes at the expense of the bourgeoisie (and will until we arrive at gay space communism, which is again purely theoretical).
How would you nationalize the resources and means of production of your country so as to distribute it fairly among the people? How would you stop those that resist on some stupid basis of “inalienable rights to private property” (🤢 btw)? If you are thinking about a country other than the US, how would you stop the hegemon from coming after you, either by assassination, invasion or both?
It is easy to critique AES states based on a comparison to fantasy. If you think that you have theory that is not just pure speculation that can never be realized due to it inherently ignoring material reality, please share it.
Note that I am not asking you to prove anything to me so that I can pick it apart at the seams while providing no viable alternative myself (that would be hypocritical with regards to the point I am trying to make). What I am asking is for you to consider this line of questions along with the specific historical material reality that have given way to say the PRC in particular.
That idea of what a practical implementation of left wing ideology would look like is something I think is super important! Though I should clarify, I don’t actually know if I’d describe myself as a socialist, my political ideology is still very much changing and evolving, there’s a ton for me to learn about still, but there are aspects of socialism, anarchism, and libertarianism (not anarcho-capitalism) that I have felt resonate with me. But my perspectives on political ideology are really fragmented and I’m still trying to learn enough to put together an actual image of each system and what I’d ideally want the world to look like
I think the most practical idea I have on how I’d like to see problems solved in the immediate short term is communalism, which if I understand right is more of a school of anarchism. But that’s a very small piece of a practical whole, that’s just how I think I’d like goods and services to be provided. I don’t really know enough to have meaningful answers to a lot of the other questions around how you build a better world, but I do like to think about it
It took me a long time before I engaged much with politics so I still have a fuckton to learn. I still don’t even really grasp what exactly communism is in an applied sense, and most schools of anarchism don’t really seem to make any sense to me in terms of how the world would actually work if they were implemented.
Maybe someday I’ll have more answers, but today I’m content to just learn when I have energy and remain cognizant of the fact that I don’t have an idea for how I’d like a nation to work in its totality. I just keep assembling small policy stances until I get a bit more complete of a picture, bit by bit.
But I do think that pragmatic, “what would this actually look like in practice, complete with how you would solve major pitfalls” discussion doesn’t happen enough in left wing spaces, a lot of it feels super “pie in the sky”
By the way, what does AES mean in this context, all I could find is “Alliance of Sahel States”, is that what you’re referring to?
AES referer to acutally existing socialism in this context. I think most socialist have to go through some traumatic internal development in order to mature and and grow their political views. The main part of Marxist theory, as per my understanding of it (still learning), is to analyze the means of production through the view of historical dialectial materialism.
I will explain these terms after a quick digression. The kernel of my belief in socialism is just the basic belief that every person by birth has the same right as me to have a good life. I also understand that earth’s resources are finite and that our means of production are as well (although increasing, historically).
Thus the crux of the problem is this: If we both want something that is finite in supply, how does my gain not come at your expense? The answer is that it is not possible, which begs the question of who gets the pie? The easy answer is that we share it, but then how? This is where we begin to move away from morals and ethics and should start to analyze this objectively, more as a social contract. For me, that is what the origin of socialism is.
Now, anyone born today has no part of any pie by right. Sure, some get bestowed something by their parents, but the truth is that all of earth is owned by someone or something (with few caveats). Who owns what is clearly a matter of history (usually those that owned something yesterday owns that and maybe even more today).
So how does this fit in with the idea of a social contract that should serve the goal of an egalitarian society? It does not. It is clearly not in the direct personal interest (from a materialist point of view) for the people that own something to just give that stuff away and so we see that they don’t.
I am already now hinting at the core Marxist idea of dividing people into classes according to ownership, since after all the poor have in common that they deserve a larger share and the rich have in common that they do not want to lose their wealth (after all it is finite at a global scale, so without the development of the means of production it is static). The unadressed term dialectical is in essence the study of contradictions within societies such as these, in order to solve them.
From the historical point of view we see the rise of capitalism as a bourgeoisie revolution (against the prior feudal economic structure on which another societal structure rested). Marxists do not believe that the vehicle of this revolution was that some people started nailing messages on doors nor that somebody just woke up and wanted to free themselves of feudal tyranny and so did. They instead argue that the technological and material development forced a shift in power away from those that held landed power and over to the mercantilist bourgeoisie.
Thus we only need to view the historical trend that the powerful rule, and the fall of feudalism seem almost inescapable. If we return to actual Marxist theory again, we can recognize that the means of production is dependant on a social class that does not really reap the full benefit from it: the workers. Analogously to the bourgeoisie revolution, we believe that the technological and materialist development of capital (i.e. the means of production) are what is needed for everyone to have enough to share, and that it must be wielded by the workers (the proletariat), whose interest it actually is to divide fairly among all people.
I have tried to make this more colloquial, at the unfortunate expense of accuracy. However, if parts of this story resonates with you, you might just be a budding socialist yourself. I would either way implore you to analyze the world from the pragmatic point of “what if everyone did/had the same as me” even if you do not believe that we are all more or less equal. In the same line, if you think you are entitled to more than anyone else, how would you stop those that disagree they deserve less from taking your wealth? If you think you are entitled to defend your wealth by force, why are those that need commodities not entitled to take what they need by force.
And thus we return to the necessity of a social contract or maybe just plain socialism.
Or by funding, organizing, and fueling internal unrest/insurrection, which is what the US did in Beijing in 1989, in Hong Kong in ~1999, and in Xinjiang in ~2000–2015.