I remember Hegseth, in an interview, talking about some sort of “war game” simulation in which the USN got completely obliterated by China. Not sure if it was against the PLAN specifically, but it was still defeated by China.

So if there is any truth to what he yapped on at that time, it seems the military brass would be very, very apprehensive to engaging China directly. I mean, they don’t admit it publically, at least not entirely & bluntly, at that, but behind the scenes in the current fiasco against Iran they know they’re in major hot water. I imagine many of them are anxious at the thought of having to openly engage with the PRC, especially while being simultaneously engaged on multiple other fronts.

Did they use some form of Juche necromancy on the fella?? I could’ve sworn he was not long for this world, what, with the cancer and all.

I disagree, mate. Talk to folks in real life and you’ll see that most folks don’t understand politics beyond their real-world experience and what they merely hear from word-of-mouth. Specifically, I mean working class folks who are too caught up trying to make ends meet. There are a lot of folks with humanity and decency, so don’t use the most loud and vocal liberals, fascists, and imperial apologists online as an accurate accounting of a significant portion of folks out there.

Remember that the bourgeois propaganda machine and its media apparatus are heavily curated to foster a specific worldview among the masses and that all content is filtered of any real, dissenting views or insights into the outside world.

The fact of the matter is that these liberals and conservatives overwhelmingly comprise the majority of thosel who live among us in the imperial core. Building socialism is a struggle, and reaching folks who are receptive to learning about class matters and the reason their material reality is as it is isn’t a walk in the park, especially because of the generations-worth of corporate propaganda against socialism and communism. We can’t afford to shut up and leave folks out to dry living in blindness to the world while the bourgeoisie and their opportunist forces continue to prey upon them at every turn. Many of us were once like them, many of us fell for the very lies that these people have no choice but to believe simply because they have not been met with the opportunity to learn a different path.

It’s not up to us to give up on folks, especially if that liberal or conservative, unknowingly to us, who is receptive to Marxism exists out there. We must reach these folks because we need them. They need us, too, and posterity needs us to struggle and work together towards a better world, because we’ve all lived under cruelty, terror, and exploitation for generations and these all need to desperately come to an end.

Just American Nazi things. None of this is of any surprise.

I saw that image of him reading “What Is To Be Done?” and I just imagined him reading Lenin to get an idea of the character of those whom he wrote polemics on, who reeked of opportunism and revisionism, so that he could adopt some of those traits lol

Awww that’s actually really kind of him! Telling people not to waste their time voting, lol 😆 I’m joking, unfortunately. We all know he was serious…

I would say that they skipped it perhaps in the sense that they stripped away the bourgeois class’s power and the apparatus of enforcement that would position them as the sole owners of the economy and main beneficiaries to the accumulation of capital. The market economic aspects are very much present, along with the billionaire class (class contradictions still very much exist in China, along with the glaring contradiction of income inequality; this is one of the great contradictions of modern China that was identified by Xi Jinping and the Party plans to tackle it further throughout the current 5 Year Plan. I don’t remember which year was mentioned, could be 2030 or 2050, but based on the trajectory of China’s development, they plan to enter into the stage of actual socialism. As it stands, the PRC is currently not a socialist country, but is developing towards it).

I think the West’s grave misunderstanding of what “capitalism” entails is what left them blindsided for decades and ultimately, got them into the economic and inescapable black hole that they’re in (the black hole being that the capitalists cannot fathom abandoning their almost entire dependence on Chinese manufacturing and cheap materials and restarting manufacturing back in their respective nations. Because of the costs, of course). They trusted that China was abandoning socialism and was going to transition to an actual capitalist society with a complete dictatorship of their own bourgeoisie, opening up the country to the Western vultures and their mass exploitation of the land and people. What happened instead was the utilization of market economics and China’s subsequent admission into the Western, global capitalist market. Here, they leveraged, among many things, “cheap” labor (dangled as a sort of carrot on a stick) as a way to entice the greed of the West to outsource their ENTIRE manufacturing capabilities. It made the West tremendously rich, but it also made the PRC tremendously rich, and since China had NOT abandoned the path to socialism, they utilized that massive influx of wealth and capital to bring China to exactly what we’re witnessing today. Meanwhile, the West continued to enrich their ruling minority while subjecting their colonies in the periphery to their imperialist terror and at-home, fascist brutality and economic austerity.

The global demand for cheap goods from cheap labor, boosted production in China and bolstered the overall strength of its labor production forces, which is a necessity for socialism.

Essentially, capitalism was used to expedite, at an unprecedented level, the development of China. Mind you, this was done entirely under the guidance and leadership of the CPC as the people’s vanguard party. China is on track to becoming a moderately wealthy, actual socialist country and they’ll probably do so according to their plans.

The West and the entire world need China, especially now more than ever. The West cannot afford to deviate from the influence that they helped create, back when they incorrectly thought that China was a revisionist state. Well, until the events of the most recent years up until presently, at least. They’re flailing about trying to reorder and restructure the world, reestablish their dominion in every corner of the globe, trying to stop or, at the very least, curtail China’s ever-growing influence. The more vicious the reaction of the West is, the greater the desperation to hold onto their dying order.

We know that capitalism is in major decline across the West. In China, they’re still on the path to improving prosperity for the people and with BRICS, they’re sharing that prosperity. There’s been a socialist revolution on a global scale the entire time. Sure, it wasn’t exported in the familiar form, with armies and tanks, but it was done in a way that improved the material reality of millions of lives in the global South, especially in colonies where some of the most brutal atrocities were committed by the liberal democracies of the West. This interpretation of revolution was a necessary adjustment from the types exported by previous socialist experiments, like the Soviet Union’s. The character of socialism and communism had been thoroughly tarnished by a number of things, including revisionism and deviation from Marxist-Leninism and its dialectical materialist framework, and Western bourgeois propaganda and Red Scare smear campaigns. The solution was to export prosperity, without any or hardly any strings attached. The West, as it does, continued and tried to disparage these humanitarian efforts. It’s worked within its own borders among the chauvinists and even some of the most “leftist” of its citizens, but that image becomes very difficult to enforce among the actual beneficiaries of the shared prosperity in the global South.

It’s becoming more and more difficult for the West and its ministries of propaganda to paint socialism as a “violent” movement of upstarts and usurpers, when socialism exports or “shares” the prosperity of their own with the most “underdeveloped” or, more accurately, over-exploited countries. The propaganda becomes nothing more than useless noise and drivel, at best, or insult to injury, at worst, as it has been resorting to austerity along with fascist violence against unarmed activists and protesters. It has no moral authority. Well, it never did, but it had an illusion and that illusion is becoming evermore frail when the reality is that denizens of the imperial core are subjected to their own countries’ violence, that which was the supposed character of the “vicious”, socialist countries!

Sorry, I know I deviated a lot from the main topic of “capitalism in China”, but I felt like the rest needed to be said since it’s a consequence of the economic development of China via market economics. There is a ton that I still don’t know, but I try to read here and there whenever I come across any relevant texts. This is more of a “broad” over-simplification and I’ve no doubt that far more studious and diligent comrades have more accurate insights than I do, presently.

I’m with the side that has dialectical materialism and science as its foundation. Everything else is reactionary or inhibits revolutionary-conscious development of people, which creates fetters for the advancement of socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletarian. So, they can be classified as either reactionary or obliviously counter-revolutionary; either way, against the people’s international struggle.

Maybe they haven’t clicked any of the Lemmygrad sign-up links. Or, they don’t want to do the vetting process for any number of reasons. For me, it took getting nuked off of Reddit for saying we should do unto ICE as they do unto people.

My only regret was not joining here sooner. The amount of friendly folks here, plus all of the updates on geopolitics and Marxist literature is phenomenal. A number of posts on here set me on the right trajectory to thoroughly study dialectical materialism and have that be the framework and worldview for understanding the world.

These spontaneous fires out in the middle of the ocean sure seem to be a real nuisance! I sure wonder what could be the cause of all this? 🤔

Everytime I hear or see an American talk about “how much is that going to cost us?”, I straight up feel like strangling the life out of them. Everything’s value, especially life, can only be measured in money. We live among barbarians.

I’d make coffee for my comrades, my fellow, caring compatriots and their kin, just as I do for my family. Hell, I’d make about a hundred dozen pupusas with some salsa and curtido for my comrades if I could (I really wish I could).

These people see working these barista jobs as unfathomable since they and the exploitative class have dragged the reputation of the service worker through the mud as much as they’ve done their wages.

But I’d wager that some folks would love to open a restaurant or cafe or lounge with good friends, build an inviting place of rest for their community if they weren’t at the whims of the capitalist looking to extract every last cent out of patrons and every last hour of labor from the workers, all without factoring socialization, and extending decency and kindness unto others into their practice.

They have such a twisted perception of this type of labor but because of the reality they’re subjected to under the ruling dictatorship of capital, they can’t separate work from the value it produces in terms of money. It’s always about money for these people, but that isn’t a mistake. The idea of seeing use-value instead of profit-value in things is such a foreign thing to those living with the corruption of bourgeois education. Take a car, for example. How many times you’ll hear “you’re better off just buying a new one; replacing xy and z plus the labor to put it all together would be unreasonably expensive. Just send that thing to the junkyard!”. What if I have sentimental attachment to that car? But how we feel is never important. The human part of us must always be stripped away from these decisions. But sadly, we really are in a bind and we must make the most reasonable choice given our circumstances. Even as a kid, this type of thinking always made me sick, and at this young point in my life, I was decades from ever having read any Marxist theory.

Coffee, pastries, or any sort of good that would bring us so much enjoyment are always given so little value through the lens of the twisted, capitalist worldview. Even the labor to create these things. To think of the centuries of human development, experimentation, experience, and culture that have contributed to the existence of these simple pleasures only for them to have someone say “who the hell wants to do THAT job!? Not me!” leaves me with a deep sadness.

I want there to be coffee brewers, pastry chefs, cooks, and all those laborers who create these simple marvels that undeniably bring us so much joy. And I want them to be liberated from the backwardness, selfishness, and ingratitude that capitalism foments among people.

I despise every last one of these military contracting corporations and ghouls that are its foundation and lifeline and create the tools that engulf the world in terror. Every last one of them deserves a cruel, miserable end.

Oh, but if only someone had warned the world about the perils it would be subjected to when capitalism finds itself imploding in on itself!

I always think of the amount of times revolutionaries were exiled to Siberia or otherwise imprisoned for revolutionary agitation. These people ain’t about any of that. I guess calling my bourgeois senator will do the trick, though. That sure worked wonders the last time they directed everybody to do that!

These typical, Western “leftists” and their servility to the imperialists getting caught up on slinging their leftist buzzwords and doing their useless “purity” checks instead of doing actual, material analysis and real, on-the-ground work to improve people’s lives. “Pragmatic socialist” this, “center-left blah blah blah” that, like, holy shit, these fools need to shut the hell up and go learn some dialectics and learn to do some actual, real-world work. That is, if they’re not too busy being on the CIA’s payroll. A bunch of useless, revisionist, counter-revolutionaries is what they are.

It’s one of those words that I’ve learned to disassociate from as I’ve abandoned liberalism and all “ultra”, uncritical or otherwise reactionary politics. I use the term Marxist-Leninist and I don’t see how any terms like “leftist” or “right-wing” apply to it, since those words are incredibly dogmatic and pigeonholing. One chooses those labels and adopts all that those labels stand for without much thought. It makes it easy to “shut the brain off” and strictly delegate all choice and action to what rules are detailed under any of these politics.

The foundations of Leninism take concern with capitalism in its imperialist, global form, and, coupled with the dialectical materialist grounding of Marxism, tackles it and gives people the tools necessary to gain an understanding of their realities under its hegemony and rule, so that they learn to think and resolve challenges in overthrowing its many fetters and contradictions.

Ultras love disparaging all existing socialist experiments almost as much as the imperialists and their reactionaries instead of understanding that they share a great, common enemy. They’re more concerned with whether a country is following Marxism as a doctrine or “holy scripture” to a tee; if they’re not, they throw their hands up and say “they’re not worth it, they’re revisionists”. They’re perfectly content abandoning these countries and their people in their struggle against the forces of imperialism and all of the terrors that we know it’s capable of.

They don’t “think” in a dialectically materialist way, and this has allowed them to be deposed and stuck in their tracks time and time again by agents working on behalf of the bourgeois order. They demonstrate that they’re not willing to struggle against, at the very least, the contradictions within their very own organizations and cadres or address issues in a good faith, selfless manner. They’re not willing to learn or advance beyond their book reading, which is a critical error. For fear of “betraying” the label of “leftism” and all of the static tenets of whatever flavor of leftism they ascribe to, they abandon reason, prudence, selflessness, science, and the international struggle, at large.

When one becomes more familiar with the dialectical materialist process of scrutinizing, analyzing, understanding the world and its phenomena, these terms like “leftism” become nothing more than set backs and impediments to the necessary development of the individual and their class into revolutionaries capable of challenging the bourgeois order, its many systems and proponents, and destroying them to make way for the dictatorship of the proletarian.

In short, leftism has such rigid, dogmatic “rules”. It focuses more on preserving the label and membership in these factions that it serves as nothing more than a set back for people in developing the dialectical materialist Marxist worldview necessary to face struggles, adapt to challenges, learn from losses, and ultimately, achieve wins.

Ask them to elaborate. What’s their proof of hedonism being the culprit for it?

Sometimes, I wish the US would undergo some “liberation” á la Carpet Bombing just so that these fucks could get a real-life taste of what millions have been subjected to abroad and are now forced to live with the memory of massacred family members and friends.

Oh, I hope they pump those numbers up!