• howmuchlonger@lemmy.org
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    6 days ago

    If the transition was ever going to be complete it would have been by now. Billionaires in “communist” countries are a hypocritical joke. Certain countries just lead the people on, promising communism “soon,” while have no intention of giving up power.

        • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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          5 days ago

          There isn’t a set one that’s the point, you have to work through and synthesise the contradictions not only nationally but globally this is an entirely new path being blazed currently expecting exact dates so you can dismiss the whole project is infantile behaviour.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          5 days ago

          The transition between capitalism and communism is already ongoing. It isn’t marked by target dates or hard numbers, but instead is a gradual transformation that happens constantly. China has already made the qualitative leap to socialism.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      No? What makes you think that China, for example, would need to collectivize all of the small and medium firms right this instant, before those even socialize? Being integrated with the global economy has brought tremendous growth and technology transfer that has helped with massive projects to uplift the working classes. Systems cannot remain static, as they develop they change. As production and development continues, these sovialize, become more interconnected and centralized. The path between capitalism and communism is lengthy.

      Again, where did you get your understanding from? It looks like there’s some serious misconceptions going on.

      • howmuchlonger@lemmy.org
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        6 days ago

        There are no missing gaps. I got it from years of talking to you guys and reading your links—then disagreeing. Billionaires equal capitalism and capitalism and those who support any form of it are the problem.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          6 days ago

          Billionaires do not equal capitalism, though. The nature of a system is what is rising in it, not what is dying away. It’s through these logical leaps that you have to resort to in order to justify your own lack of support for a system where public ownership is the principal aspect, where as production socializes and centralizes it is folded into the public sector, and where the working classes maintain dominance over the state.

          How do you get rid of private property? Is all private property the same? Is it all superfluous, or does it present a tradeoff? Since no system is static, what a system is working towards, its trajectory, is critical.

          You can insist that there are no gaps, but from what I can tell there are plenty. You place your hatred for billionaires over your desire for a better world for the working classes. You take socialist countries as enemies for not placing retribution over material reality.

          • howmuchlonger@lemmy.org
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            5 days ago

            Agree to disagree. Billionaires are the definition of capitalism. Defending their existence is just SINO

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              5 days ago

              Billionaires are bourgeoisie. The existence of the bourgeoisie does not mean a system is capitalist alone, what’s important is what is the principal aspect of the economy. You’re relying on the “one-drop” rule, which would imply that the existence of a public post office in the US means that the US is fully communist. That’s obviously ridiculous, private ownership is the principal aspect of the Statesian economy, but this is the limit of the “one-drop” rule.

              Capitalism is a mode of production, not a class. I am not defending the permanent existence of the bourgeoisie, but instead defending a system where the bourgeoisie is waning and socialized production is rising. I am defending the transitional status as valid and moving, not a static, unmoving snapshot.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  5 days ago

                  I never excused billionaires, I only defended socialism. Please, explain how your vehemont opposition to any movement that does not immediately result in communism makes you a “real socialist.” How do you think communism is to come into existence, if not through socialism?

          • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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            5 days ago

            Karl and Vlad aren’t exactly known for their concern for the environment or animal welfare beyond recognizing that things like soil fatigue and over-farming would eventually render it unfit for production to feed the humans. Anthropomorphic pragmatism at the expense of the ecosystem is a hard pass for me.

            • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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              5 days ago

              You’re telling me environmental sciences weren’t super advanced in the 1800s and 1910s I’m shocked. You people are so unserious. Socialism/Communism is the best shot we have at tackling these issues by removing the profit drive that necessitates exploitation at the very core of the current system. But sure let’s throw it all away because you don’t actually understand anything beyond vibes and idealist nonsense.

              • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                4 days ago

                What’a shocking isn’t that they weren’t environmentally conscious in their time, it’s shocking that a hundred plus years on and their cultists will disregard environmental science to support statecraft over climate. You tanked are out here defending Team China billionaires vs Team America billionaires, but neither of your systems can produce one that earned their billions without exploiting the planet. The both of you greenwash your rape with climate pledges and carbon free goals but at the end of the day it’s because both states know if the states rape the planet hard enough they can’t exist. I’m serious as fuck, you can’t justify the existence of commie billionaires when confronted with their profiteering at the expense of the planet any better than a western capitalist so you disregard the argument. Your systems both value humans over the rest of the lives we share this rock with.

                • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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                  4 days ago

                  “What’s shocking isn’t that they weren’t environmentally conscious in their time, it’s shocking that a hundred plus years on and their cultists will disregard environmental science to support statecraft over climate.”

                  Cultists. Right. Because analyzing material conditions is cult behavior but trusting market signals that literally price extinction as an externality is rational. Marx and Engels wrote about the metabolic rift between society and nature in the 1860s. That is foundational ecological critique. You dismiss a century of development in socialist environmental theory because it does not match your moral aesthetic. China’s ecological civilization framework is not statecraft over climate. It is state capacity applied to climate. Binding targets in the 14th Five-Year Plan. Provincial cadre evaluations tied to environmental metrics. The world’s largest carbon market covering power generation. That is not disregard. That is planning.

                  “You tankies are out here defending Team China billionaires vs Team America billionaires, but neither of your systems can produce one that earned their billions without exploiting the planet.”

                  Tankie is a thought-terminating slur. It replaces analysis with a label. Drop it. And commie billionaire is a contradiction in terms that you wield to avoid engaging with actually existing socialism. China’s billionaires operate within a system where the state controls land, finance, energy, and strategic industry. They are tolerated, regulated, and increasingly compressed under common prosperity. The number of billionaires in China has been shrinking. Platform economy crackdowns. Anti-monopoly fines. Wealth redistribution mechanisms. This is not capitalism with red flags. This is a transitional mode managing contradictions. Your false equivalence between a socialist state that directs capital and a capitalist state that is directed by it is either ignorance or bad faith.

                  “The both of you greenwash your rape with climate pledges and carbon free goals but at the end of the day it’s because both states know if the states rape the planet hard enough they can’t exist.”

                  Greenwash is a material accusation. Show the material. China manufactures over 70 percent of the world’s solar modules. Produces the majority of EVs and batteries. Built the largest electrified rail network on earth. Installed more renewable capacity in 2023 than the US has in its entire history. These are not pledges. These are material actions. Meanwhile the West offshores emissions, counts consumption poorly, and calls it progress. If this is greenwashing then the greenwash is building the actual infrastructure to decarbonize the global economy. Your rhetoric sounds radical but it erases the material difference between a system that plans for ecological transition and one that cannot because profit forbids it.

                  “I’m serious as fuck, you can’t justify the existence of commie billionaires when confronted with their profiteering at the expense of the planet any better than a western capitalist so you disregard the argument.”

                  You are serious. And you are wrong. We do not justify billionaires. We analyze them. In China, private wealth is subordinated to social goals through party discipline, state finance, and industrial policy. When a tech billionaire’s company harms workers or the environment, the state intervenes. Fines. Restructuring. Public re-education. That does not happen under capitalism. It cannot. The profit motive is the law. Under socialism, the profit motive is a tool. A managed contradiction. We are reducing the number of billionaires. We are expanding public ownership in strategic sectors. We are directing investment toward green tech. If you want to fight billionaires, fight the system that produces them as a structural necessity. Not the one that is actively dismantling their power.

                  “Your systems both value humans over the rest of the lives we share this rock with.”

                  This is idealist nonsense. Valuing human flourishing is not opposed to valuing nature. The rift is created by capitalism, which treats both labor and nature as disposable inputs. Socialism seeks a rational metabolism between society and nature. That means clean air, restored soils, protected biodiversity, and stable climate because human survival depends on it. China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty while expanding forest coverage, controlling desertification, and leading global renewable deployment. That is not human-über-alles. That is recognizing that ecological health and human development are dialectically united. You can posture about deep ecology while the planet burns. We are building the material base to actually save it.

                  If you want to criticize, criticize from the left. Criticize from materialism. But do not equate a system that plans for ecological survival with one that structurally cannot. One of these systems is building the solar panels, the batteries, the rail, the grid. The other is writing net-zero pledges on paper while approving new oil fields. Pick a side based on what is being built, not on vibes.

                  • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                    4 days ago

                    > “What’s shocking isn’t that they weren’t environmentally conscious in their time, it’s shocking that a hundred plus years on and their cultists will disregard environmental science to support statecraft over climate.”

                    >Marx and Engels wrote about the metabolic rift between society and nature in the 1860s. That is foundational ecological critique.

                    Indeed it is, but they wrote about in terms of how abuse of the environment makes it difficult to maintain human systems. They weren’t in it for the sake of the environment itself. Every society that has tried to overhaul itself and transition out of whatever version of feudal state it was in has just repeated the industrial revolution’s rape of the land at a speed run.

                    >You dismiss a century of development in socialist environmental theory because it does not match your moral aesthetic.

                    China’s ecological civilization framework is not statecraft over climate. It is state capacity applied to climate. Binding targets in the 14th Five-Year Plan.

                    Indeed I do. You’ve had a century and are still trying to formulate “plans” that sound great on paper but are often ignored locally because the existence of the state will always override the consequences to the environment. Opposition to this is framed as immoral aesthetics?

                    >Tankie is a thought-terminating slur. It replaces analysis with a label. Drop it. And commie billionaire is a contradiction in terms that you wield to avoid engaging with actually existing socialism. China’s billionaires operate within a system where the state controls land, finance, energy, and strategic industry. They are tolerated, regulated, and increasingly compressed under common prosperity.

                    Nobody gets to billionaire status clean. The typical argument tankies push is that unlike western oligarchs, they somehow don’t exploit the state or people. Your defense of their existence falls flat when pressed about what they did to the environment to get there. You tolerate them? Why? And unless your fines are bankrupting them, billionaires can pay fines like it’s a subscription service as long as whatever they’re being fined for is more profitable. That’s capitalism 101 and no different than Bezos having an illegal fence he pays a pittance as a penalty for.

                    >Greenwash is a material accusation. Show the material.

                    “China manufactures over 70 percent of the world’s solar modules. Produces the majority of EVs and batteries. Built the largest electrified rail network on earth. Installed more renewable capacity in 2023 than the US has in its entire history. These are not pledges. These are material actions.”

                    Your words. These actions are not taken for the sake of the environment, but because the human and economic growth demands it. Where are all the materials for this coming from? What’s the impact of building all that? Greenwashing at its finest- we still did it, we just did it a little cleaner than you.

                    >You are serious. And you are wrong. We do not justify billionaires. We analyze them. In China, private wealth is subordinated to social goals through party discipline, state finance, and industrial policy. When a tech billionaire’s company harms workers or the environment, the state intervenes. Fines. Restructuring. Public re-education.

                    Fines, restructuring, and public re-education happens all the time in the west because, again, billionaires and corporations can eat the fines as long as their profits prevail. You said you tolerate billionaires that arise in your system. Are there not enough western billionaires to be studied, how they act and exploit, that you couldn’t see their methods and be intolerant of them occurring in your system?

                    >This is idealist nonsense. Valuing human flourishing is not opposed to valuing nature.

                    Again, criticism of the system is disregarded as nonsense. Human flourishing has always come at the expense of nature.

                    >Criticize from materialism. But do not equate a system that plans for ecological survival with one that structurally cannot. One of these systems is building the solar panels, the batteries, the rail, the grid.

                    Solar panels, batteries, the rail, and the grid are all materials. They require resources to be build and their purpose is to make the human condition more comfortable. That aspect of human nature is never going to change, so we have to figure out how to mitigate what we do to the planet while progress. But if your system is tearing apart the planet for rare earth elements so you can build the infrastructure to raise up your population of the expense of whomever and whatever animals/plants are living atop them, just so you can mass manufacture said “ecofriendly” equipment to nations of consumers to build your GDP, while tolerating and analyzing how your system creates billionaires and wealth inequality, you’re just the opposite side of the consumer coin. The west demands, China supplies, and neither would be where they are without the other.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  4 days ago

                  China is at the forefront of combatting desertification, proliferation of solar, and electrification. This is made possible by strong central planning in a socialist market economy, and is entirely different from an economy that could transition to clean energy and strong environmental protections but refuses to for profit alone.

            • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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              4 days ago

              Anti-communist environmentalism is just imperialism and commodity fetishization with green wrapping paper.

              The ending of fossil fuel energy and factory farming cannot come about under capitalism. It is baked into Communism.

              • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                4 days ago

                You’ve had a few hundred years and a few attempts but even your allies in the comments can only offer that it’s being pledged and that there’s plans, eventually, maybe, we’re working on it. You can defend Chinese methods against a lot of western criticism, but seriously, the end of factory farming? They’re making no moves to address how they feed their people.

                • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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                  4 days ago

                  I didn’t say anything about China.

                  But since you brought them up: hey’re certainly now the cutting edge on renewable energy and smart grid tech. Agriculture emissions are still second place behind fossil fuel emissions, so for what my opinion is worth (not much) they’re following the right course by focusing on that first. But don’t be surprised if the next big innovation in reducing agriculture emissions comes out of an AES country. They’re certainly far more likely to devote massive resources to the problem than anywhere in the West.

                  • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                    4 days ago

                    You’re in an entire thread about China, and once again, miss the point I made earlier. China’s concern is the emissions because those negatively affect the human population, which is very inline with ML attitudes about environmentalism. What’s the living conditions of the cows, chickens, swine, and dogs in those farms?

            • deathmetaldawgy@lemmy.ml
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              4 days ago

              aren’t exactly known for their concern for the environment or animal welfare beyond recognizing that things like soil fatigue and over-farming would eventually render it unfit for production to feed the humans.

              lol… so in other words you mean recognizing environmental concern. Is this that materialism I keep hearing about?

              • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                4 days ago

                Yeah. If you’re only concern is “how much can we exploit the environment until it’s unfit for human use”, you’re treating the environment like it’s a material for human consumption.

            • m532@lemmy.ml
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              5 days ago

              “The change is not good enough, better change nothing so the even worse status quo prevails”

              • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                5 days ago

                The change is not good enough because is it still thinks humans are exceptional. Better argue over which political system is worse for our species while both exploits the planet so we can feel better about who was right when the status quo prevails. Yeah, your change isn’t good enough.

            • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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              4 days ago

              I have no unity with people who oppose the Dictatorship of the Proletariate, and do not consider them part of the left. They are at best, misguided folks with their hearts in the right place, but far more often they are knowing Imperialist tools trying to suppress class consciousness.

        • orc girly@lemmy.ml
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          5 days ago

          LMAO you talked big game about knowing our arguments and your understanding of Marxism is surface level at best

    • RosaLuxemburgsGhost@lemmy.ml
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      5 days ago

      Well, it is impossible to work toward communism while trying to appease imperialists who are constantly attacking you - through propaganda, economic embargoes that starve your country, and actual bombs. Revolutions need to continue to spread internationally, and capitalism needs to be defeated globally…only then will we have communism. Workers of the world will finally lose their chains when this happens.

      • TiredTiger@lemmy.ml
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        5 days ago

        Exactly this. This idea that any country could just will itself into communism is deeply anti-materialist. If that were possible, it would have been done already. The fact that these vibes-based “socialists” always reject actually existing socialist states makes me suspect that they’re actually just racist.