Cowbee [he/they]

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Marxist-Leninist ☭

Interested in Marxism-Leninism? Check out my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory reading list!

  • 12 Posts
  • 5.31K Comments
Joined 1 年前
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Cake day: 2023年12月31日

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  • I don’t know what to tell you, other than that a lot of the most active users of Lemmy.ml are Anarchists, and most communities on Lemmy.ml are not affiliated with Marxism to begin with, even if you include communities like World News that are more politically focused as “Marxist.”

    Either way, I wouldn’t call Lemmy.world more tolerant, but tolerant of a different set of views. Lemmy.ml is more broadly federated than .world is, while .world selectively defederates from instances it isn’t aligned with politically. Even further, OP is on Lemm.ee, just asking on Lemmy.ml’s AskLemmy community, which makes sense as one of the biggest AskLemmy communities.

    I’m not even trying to dig on Lemmy.world or anything, I just want to point out that it’s not really accurate to consider Lemmy.ml a Marxist-Leninist instance, unlike Lemmygrad.ml, or even Hexbear.net which is an umbrella Leftist instance.


  • Gonna go against the grain, and recommend browsing the instance list and browse whichever instances look interesting to you locally, and then make that your “home” instance. Lemmy’s connectedness is equal in importance to its disconnectedness, niche instances thrive and create interesting experiences, while federation allows crossover and further engagement.

    Using Lemmy for its “all” sort is more of a replication of Reddit, while leaning into the strengths of federation can create a more unique experience IMO and usually a more pleasant one.

    And finally, welcome!



  • For clarity, China does tax the ultra-rich, they just don’t try to solve the conditions that give rise to wealth inequality through taxation alone like the Nordic Countries do, but through vast and rapid development of the productive forces. The former method, if exclusively focused on, can end up lengthening the process, whereas it is through development of the productive forces that the conditions that give rise to wealth inequality can be truly ended for good.

    Essentially, if 1 hour of labor in China can produce more on average than 1 hour of labor in, say, the US, then it becomes easier to fulfill the needs of all, while simultaneously preparing the ground for increasing the ratio of production in the public sector (which works best with large, massive firms, rather than smaller firms, which work best with markets). This is why Marx says markets erase their own foundations as they develop.



  • You’re actually getting really close to the truth of it all when you mention how media in the West is corporate dominated, you just took that to an odd conclusion and think that there is censorship of criticism against China, and not the opposite. The truth is that the US government pays media billions of dollars to drum up anti-PRC narratives, as they want to pressure China into capitulation and opening up its markets for foreign dominance and not to its currently limited and highly controlled wiggle room. Moreover, the idea that every channel that is positive about China is propaganda is silly, when there’s known support for paid anti-China propaganda.

    The CPC’s stance, and most Marxists in general, on Tian’anmen is that hundreds of protestors and PLA officers were killed in Beijing that day as the PLA advanced towards the square, but that the square itself was evacuated peacefully, which matches leaked US cables and the CPC’s official stance on what it calls the “June 4th incident”. This is a rejection of the commonly reported story in western media, such as BBC, of 10,000 people being killed on the square itself, which originated from a British diplomat’s cable. Said diplomat was later confirmed to have evacuated well before.

    I reiterate, the CPC’s stance isn’t that the massacre didn’t happen, but that Western nations intentionally sensationalize the quantity of deaths and the character of the events. This is also why Western Nations don’t frequently report on the South Korean Gwang-Ju massacre that occured around the same era, where the South Korean millitary murdered thousands of High School and College students protesting against Chun Do-Hwan’s dictatorship. All of what I said is backed up by the Wikipedia page for Tian’anmen Square Protests and Massacre, such as Alan Donald revising his estimate from 10,000 to the low thousands yet BBC continuing to report the 10,000 figure:

    In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a “good friend” in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died,[237] claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke,[238] but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided.[239][240] After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths, a number closer to, but still much higher than, other estimates.[241]

    In your Wikipedia blurb, you mention that the CPC censors articles like these that report on a clearly mythologized version of events. Quite right, they do, because they don’t want foreign governments trying to destabilize China so that they can take advantage and plunder their industry freely. The alternative is to just let western media do as it likes, and be subject to yet another US-sponsered coup.










  • Yes. The property supply is a big one for them, that’s where the “ghost cities” narrative comes from, they intentionally build rapidly in anticipation for future demand. They do have wealth inequality, but they seem to be focusing more on directly combatting underdevelopment and poverty than making a point to punish their wealthiest, as they are wary of repeating some of the more dogmatic consequences of the Cultural Revolution, putting Class Struggle above the other foundations of Marxism, rather than alongside. Ie, you can’t just kill Capitalists or sieze their assets to turn a largely underdeveloped economy into a developed and complex publicly owned one, you have to develop into one, and that requires a more methodical approach that analyzes which firms are large or small, and which industries or sectors hold power over others.

    If Marxism’s key observations of markets are “correct,” then centralization of markets are an almost assured bet, and as that happens, more and more industry can be publicly owned and planned directly, so the wealth inequality problem is one that almost fixes itself as long as the CPC continues to place a large emphasis on combatting corruption (which used to be a much bigger issue in the past) and directly appealing to the people via large programs like the Extreme Poverty Eradication Program.


  • These are separate questions, so I’ll answer them in order.

    Why aren’t any governments focusing on wealth inequality and property supply-centered policies?

    There are governments that focus on reducing wealth inequality and increasing the overall property supply. Socialist countries, like the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. They still have some lesser degree of inequality, of course, as well as their own struggles and issues from standing against the broader Capitalist hegemony, but there is a concerted effort in Socialist countries to address the needs of the working class through their structures, reflected in improved metrics in areas sensitive to their Working Class, such as China’s directed and planned efforts at successfully eliminating extreme poverty at a breakneck pace, or Cuba’s advanced healthcare system. China in particular does focus on supply a lot, that’s why they are endlessly building new cities to anticipate future necessity, the famous “ghost cities” that in reality are sound planning and help increase employment. They also have some of the most advanced automation and manufacturing, their strategy in the long run depends on rapidly increasing the productive forces.

    As for small and medium-sized businesses, these disappear over time in favor of larger firms, and either grow or fail to be capable of influencing the system like the large firms do. In all countries, regardless of economic model, as long as markets persist there will be a gradual increase in proportion of production held by large firms compared to smaller firms, as competition forces growth and centralization. This is actually one of Marx’s most important observations, and forms the basis of Marxism’s scientific view of Socialism compared to earlier Utopian Socialist types like Robert Owen and Saint-Simon. The earlier Utopian Socialists thought that if you could picture in your head a good society, you could implement it directly, through fiat, simply by convincing others to follow suit. This ended up being wrong, of course.

    Why can’t any government in the world aim to tax ultra rich more whilst making easier for small to medium large businesses to thrive? And policies on property supply rather than property buyers like all sorts of first time buyers programs?

    The “ultra rich,” in Capitalist countries, control the government through mechanisms such as lobbying. In order to truly tax the rich and provide large safety nets, the working class needs to have control of the State. This is far easier said than done, however, even Capitalist democracies aren’t genuinely democratic. If you look at US policy polling, systems like Single Payer healthcare are extremely popular across the board, yet that isn’t seen as a genuine possibility despite being proven in many other countries in various forms. Revolution is necessary, and this requires working class organization.

    The Nordic Countries that, on the surface, seem to have the best of all worlds in this respect on the outside hide that they fund these nets through international usury, large IMF loans and the like. They function as landlords in country form, essentially, so their working class is just as exploited internally, yet bribed using much larger exploitation globally. The US, of course, is the largest Empire and consequently its Imperialism is on a far larger scale, but that doesn’t mean the Nordic model would “work” for the US, as the profits of Imperialism to a greater extent go to the US bourgeoisie as compared to the Nordics, where comparatively stronger labor organizing gives the Nordic working class more of a bargaining edge. Perhaps temporarily, but Capitalists in the US hold enourmous power and organization of labor is weak, ergo this is certainly an uphill battle to begin with and still leaves open the necessity of overcoming US Imperialism.

    Why are only same old policies keep being peddled when the world is still going to shit?

    Old policies rise as the contradictions within Capitalism, ie wealth inequality, concentration of Capital into fewer and fewer hands, and so forth, sharpen. Fascism in particular is like a self-defense system for Capitalism against rising Leftist organization, generally. As Gramsci said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”

    Look to Socialist countries to see where new ground is being tread. It isn’t all sunshine and roses, but progress is coming steadily. The CPC describes its process as “crossing the river by feeling for the stones,” you test for footing and pivot direction if it doesn’t work, gradually, and iteratively and continuously focus on refinement and improvement.

    That doesn’t involve reducing the government size and budget entirely or subscribing to any extreme left or right?

    The policies you ask for aren’t extreme anything, really. They are easy to think of, and easy to question why they aren’t seen as a priority. The part where this shifts dramatically to the Left, is translating those ideas into reality. Just like you cannot simply ask a banker to give you free money, Capitalist systems will not let you simply take from the dragon’s hoard, regardless of how that hoard was gained. The “right-wing,” liberal Capitalist answer is Imperialism in order to implement Social Democracy a la the Nordics, while the Left-wing answer is Socialism, as seen in previously mentioned countries like Cuba, the PRC, Vietnam, etc.

    Being “extreme” in the sense of being a solution outside the overton window doesn’t mean the stance is wrong, either. Socialism is correct, despite being outside of the status quo in Western countries.

    If you’re interested more in analysis along these lines, I keep an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list oriented towards absolute beginners to political theory.


  • Yea, agree with the description for this post. This is an example of a worker cooperative, which is certainly a form of business that usually is much better for the workers involved, but calling it Communist is certainly a stretch, as Communism is more about full public ownership of an economy than it is carving a niche out of a broader Capitalist system. Not saying it’s bad! Just that the title is definitely toungue-in-cheek, if I’m going to be annoyingly nitpicky.