cecinestpasunbot
What’s weird to me is that China and Vietnam’s turn towards a market economy is usually framed as a betrayal, especially by other socialists. The way they portray it, it’s as if the CPC or CPV are secretly neoliberals behind closed doors. All the debate over reforms in either country was apparently just an insincere and cynical grift. You’d think listening to these people that China and Vietnam didn’t lift millions out of poverty through their economic policies.
It’s especially baffling since we can look to the USSR where the revolution and working classes were genuinely betrayed. The net consequence was a massive decline in living standards for working people. That is decidedly not what happened in China and Vietnam.
I do suspect that part of the problem is better things are not currently possible in a western context. As such, the western left finds itself searching for that one weird trick which will spark off a revolutionary movement. This search inevitably leads them away from historical materialism and towards idealism.
I agree to some extent. However, the flip side of the coin is that great organizers often burn themselves out and then stop organizing altogether. I’d much rather western communists take things slow and organize more sustainably. The alternative is to maintain revolutionary optimism even in non-revolutionary times. Unfortunately, I think that’s just a recipe for burnout, idealism, and opportunism.
I wouldn’t blame Cixin Liu. People forget that sci-fi is often about the present day and that his use of the dark forest in his novels is not necessarily and endorsement of the theory as a solution to the Fermi paradox.
I also feel like, in the series, the dark forest is a reasonable stand in for capitalism, especially considering the obvious references to colonialism and imperialism. The final book even suggests the universe will cease to be livable unless sacrifices are made in the interests of cooperation.
There probably are DPRK exports. However because they have to subvert US sanctions I doubt tracking them down would be easy.
Voting is just a component of some democratic systems. There’s a lot more you have to consider. For example, imagine you have a system where people vote for their representatives but the media is owned by the wealthy and political parties depend on wealthy donors for funding. In that case policy will not reflect the interests of the people but instead the interests of a wealthy minority. I imagine that’s the kind of “democracy” the AP is referring to when they describe Jimmy Lai as pro-democracy.
It’s a fair description of the system the British set up in Hong Kong right before they had to hand it back to China. It’s the same system that “pro-democracy” advocates in Hong Kong were defending. As such I think it’s reasonable to assume that’s what the AP and Jimmy Lai are referring to.
As for voting I’m not saying it isn’t a useful mechanism through which the general will of a population can be expressed. Instead, I am saying that voting alone is not the crux upon which democracy hinges. I personally prefer voting as a mechanism over sortition and consensus in most cases. However, that wouldn’t mean either of those mechanisms couldn’t be the basis for democratic decision making.
Believing that this tech will solve the environmental and ethical problems of animal agriculture is anti materialist. Cultured meat is almost certainly going to be way more resource intensive to produce than plant based alternatives. There’s no way around it.
You also don’t need to convince anyone to go vegan. The world at large either has to wind down it’s reliance on animal agriculture or face the environmental devastation that comes with it. Remember culture develops as a consequence of material conditions. It’s anti materialist to think otherwise.