Reminds me of people who (from outside “the left”) criticize it as squashing individual expression and being cult-like. And then one of the first things I see about any “left” space or org is that there’s intense disagreement, if not sectarian splits. Not to say “the left” is unusual in this way. Disagreements and sometimes splits can happen anywhere, regardless of ideology. But it’s also not unusually agreeable to each other.
The unifying ML-style position around China, as far as I can tell, goes something like: imperialism is the primary contradiction, not a lack of local communes, and China is heading up an alternative anti-imperialist world order, while also doing an overall good job as a socialist transition state that is by its people and looks after its people.
This doesn’t mean China can do no wrong. But much of the time, outside criticisms levied at China are poorly constructed and come from a place of alignment with western imperialist interests, rather than alignment with global liberation. Or they come from a place of essentially wishful thinking, wanting China to be the liberation world police that the US never was but pretended to be, without considering the logistics of what that would mean for China’s position in the world, what kind of sacrifice it would require from its people, and the risk it would involve in dealing with an increasingly mask off rabid western empire that still has nukes. None of it’s remotely fair and hasn’t been since before the inception of the Communist Party of China, when it was suffering under feudal conditions. It still has to be worked through logistically, with planning. If people can offer criticisms of China that allege to logistical and planning mistakes that could be course-corrected, that would, I think, be a lot more substantive as criticism than the majority. The problem with ideological criticisms alone is that they have a tendency to assume that a seemingly subpar or undesirable decision is being made due to a lack of ideological interest in something better. Rather than a decision being made due to a belief that the conditions are not yet right for one approach or another, or due to a logistical mistake in analysis. Discerning that difference properly is critical. If we were to judge AES states in the purely ideological way at all times, they would always be failures because they are not instantly going for global communism and sacrificing everything for it. Which leads to ultra left opining about someone else not doing a thing we want, without effecting the desired change.
Are you going to write a novel about how America pulled itself up by its bootstraps in its revolution against Britain next?
I’m aware you are on a little time out, but I found this post an easy-peasy overview of China’s abstention, I hope you take the time to read it:
Excuse me?
The US built its state through genocide and slavery, and split from Britain in order to cement its independent interests in that realm.
What strange view do you have of China that you think talking about the processes of a socialist state in international politics is remotely the same as talking about the birth of a settler nation (the US) that has been terrorizing and exploiting the world since it became globally powerful? What forum did you think you posted on?
Just look at the post history, lol. Most of what you said went over their head already.
Hmm, I looked. Far as I can tell, their thing is that Russia and China are failing a moral test on Palestine and so are traitors as a whole. If so, I can certainly understand their frustration, but the criticism needs to have more depth than “they [allegedly] could be doing x and they aren’t”.
One of the reasons I try not to say much on China in detail is because I don’t actually know all that much about how it is in the details and so trying to judge properly what it could or couldn’t be doing logistically in this moment would be a wild guess at best. For all I know, there are experienced members of the CPC who think China should be doing more on the Palestine issue and are trying to make it happen. But I don’t know and I never see people citing stuff like that. Instead, people tend to talk about morality in isolation from conditions and it comes across as something like “the foreigner has to be one of perfect victim, perfect savior, or member of the villain squad, there is no inbetween.” I don’t think China is perfect (nor do I think anyone or entity is) and I wish that people who criticized them would go beyond these categories.
When will we (leftist) finally graduate from liberal thought such as “Overton Window”, “Brainwashing” and general supremacy of moralism. Its CLASS ANALYSIS that is our primary modus operandi and Historical Materialism is our eye. You will never lecture people into doing the right thing - ESPECIALLY when it will have an negative economic effect on them.
Return to your point, I agree with a 100% - the incessant need to declare china as your enemy is very strange (not really) for the western left - like they actively want china to this revisionist “bad country” so they can support us state line in “good leftist way”. My heart breaks everyday the genocide of the Palestinian continues and I wish like most of this site that it would end no matter. But the brains ought to know that WISHING and WANTING the world to be a way, does not make it so. We need the collective power to actually create the change we want to see, and the first step is perceiving what is in front of us, not what we WISH to see.
China will not help unless Hamas is the undisputed authoritative voice of the Palestinian people, unless a significant amount of Muslim - especially arab countries actually want to oppose the west. Even the most internationalist force that was the soviet union only helped when there was enough support for resistance, they never created communist revolutions in vast colonial estates of the west out of thin air. Not only is the harsh truth that the PRC’s responsibility is to the Chinese people first and foremost, but also that china increasingly meddling in an outright hostile (more and more governments sign the Abraham accords for example) region is contrary to their grand multipolar non-interventionist order they are selling as the alternative to the west empire.
Comrades in the middle east need to create the strong, UNITED, and organized anti-west force that china and russia are willing to court.
China had a big mouth for 2 years and now endorses the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians and supports Israeli colonization of Gaza.
What would you have wanted done differently then? Genuinely asking.
They specifically abstained and did not endorse it in any way
Damn cool story you should write more fiction. Who supports the genocide in Myanmar again?
China and Russia are both on the UNSC they are no longer doing a “popular civil revolution”. Complicity in the genocide of Palestine is a massive failure and L.
Which part of what I said is supposedly fictional? Point me to the exact quote(s), please.
Siding with Israel and calling a country socialist is a great joke. Respond to who is supporting the genocide in Myanmar and the rest because you sure are evading it.
Do you not believe that China is run by a working class vanguard party (also known as a dictatorship of the proletariat)? What do you think a socialist state is?
Do you not care about the semantics of who is doing imperialism and settler colonialism
no
it’s fucking wild to see people in the imperial core (as The Lorax here has in their bio) criticize China for not standing up enough against the empire. that’s literally our job in the imperial core!
Chu mean? China is literally part of the imperial core. Do you know what UNSC is?
China is not part of the Western block, what we call the imperial core. The Imperial core is led by the US, followed by Western Europe (especially France, Germany and the UK), and then some specific states like Israel, Japan, Canada and Australia. They are a block because they follow the same economic policies, they have the same ideological vision on the rest of the world, they are in the same military alliances, they usually back each others policies etc.
China does not partake in US foreign policy or the whole set of imperial core policies. US can support Ukraine against Russia but China won’t follow the US just because it said so. China won’t stop trading with Iran even if the US and Europe decided Iran should be a pariah country. China did not back the US against Iraq and Afghanistan, like the UK, Germany and France did. China won’t back the IMF in strangling under developed countries, it will instead alternative forms of funding that won’t go through the West backed institutions. China backs Cuba even though it avoids putting themselves under sanctions.
That said, there’s plenty of criticisms to be done about China, like it acted as a US partner for a short period during the Sino-Soviet split. China invaded Vietnam in one of the worst foreign policy decisions in the last century just to appease the US. China sees no problem in trading with Israel, even though it maintains a pro-palestine rhetoric. China sees no problem in trading commodities with Latin American countries, even if this trade makes many right wing reactionary capitalist strata richer in these countries. China has shown multiple times if it has to choose between a pragmatic position in support for its own national interests it will choose so, even if it harms international proletarian solidarity.
There are many different Marxist positions on China, so it’s not like they all support it acritically. There are Marxists that treat China as just another capitalist superpower; and there are many others who see China as an advanced position regarding socialism, but with many critical positions in different specific points, with many different degrees of criticsm.
What we are different from many Westerners, or the liberal Western left, is that we don’t consume histerical anti-China propaganda acritically. We don’t see China as devil or savior, we try to see it for what it is. And today, liking China or not, China is the main force challenging Western imperialism, so if any country or political organization is serious on fighting imperialism, it needs to have a serious position on China, because of its crucial position in the geopolitics have influence in whatever action it may take.
China has veto rights at the UNSC which literally is the imperial core at this point. They aren’t a poor little baby toddler who accidentally supported genocide and colonizaztion.
You are confusing two different universes:
- The universe where the UN Charter has binding force on the U.S.
- And the universe we actually live in.
It is time to drop that fantasy that the UN or the international law has any power over the US or Europe imperialist bloodlust. The turd Marco Rubio perfectly summarized what the US thinks of the UN: "“I don’t care what the UN says”.
In summary, the U.S. does not obey international law.
Do you know what veto rights at UNSC are?
Do you know the UN literally has an army?
Did you read up about anything in the resolution before jumping to China’s defense?
I know what it is and that’s why I am telling you that you are believing in this fantasy that the international law has any binding effect over the US.
One example of the many failures of the UNSC is Haiti. Has the UNSC stopped the US from arms smuggling weapons to Haiti? As a reminder, UNSC imposed an arms embargo on Haiti in 2022
What you are currently doing is desperately diluting the blame from the imperialists and to remove the focus on the real aggressors(Europe and the US).
Do yourself a favor and read the resolution which China just passed before pulling out random stuff about Haiti, this is getting emberassing.
What you are currently doing is desperately diluting the blame from the imperialists and to remove the focus on the real aggressors (every member of UNSC including China and Russia)
you’re not a very good troll
I don’t think they’re trolling, and I don’t doubt they’re better read than myself; I do think I’ve had (brief, but that’s my fault) encounters with material here on the Troika that would benefit them reading, if they could bother/ find the time.
no u
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Triggered lib detected.
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Holy shit i remember many OP posts from .ml as somewhat centrist but not that bad for a westolefto but then they went fully Zenz crusade level over an UN resolution of all things.
Yeah lol same, I was used to thinking of them relatively positively.
Although this was a dogshit troll I loved reading the comments in this thread; I love this community.
