and come to some terms/ reality.
Imagine telling this to someone when France was under occupation by Germany
Seems like a clear improvement to me
Dude who ushered in neoliberalism in the US: "wow, you guys sure have a shitty system"
The Russian Federation was founded about 30 years ago due to NATO and its work with the USSR's internal compradores. It's difficult to discuss modern Russia without involving the West.
"Restored order" is such a bullshit line
If you are unable to recognize atrocity propaganda by the US and/or Nazi collaborators or evangelical wackos who believe God tasked them with destroying a country, you're a chump.
Most of those questions are full of tacit assumptions, but I'd like to answer the general question "Why do you commies dislike landlords so much?" You may restate any of those questions or present new ones if you feel them to be relevant in response.
You complain about people citing Marxist literature, so let's try citing the central figure of classical liberal economics, Adam Smith:
Wealth of Nations, Chpt 11 -- Excerpts
Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more. Whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing, whatever part of its price is over and above this share, he naturally endeavours to reserve to himself as the rent of his land, which is evidently the highest the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. Sometimes, indeed, the liberality, more frequently the ignorance, of the landlord, makes him accept of somewhat less than this portion; and sometimes too, though more rarely, the ignorance of the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more, or to content himself with somewhat less than the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This portion, however, may still be considered as the natural rent of land, or the rent for which it is naturally meant that land should for the most part be let.
The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions; for it can scarce ever be more than partly the case. The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent as if they had been all made by his own.
. . . The rent of the land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give.
Obviously, Smith here is discussing a different type of landlord here, one who rents land for farming (etc.) rather than just habitation, but this contrast is largely to the detriment of the modern landlord as they leave it up to the geographic location of the rented property (i.e. availability of jobs within commuting distance) rather than have the possibility of issuing improvements to the farmland or otherwise assuring that rent can be paid by that individual.
The apologetics around landlords would have a chance if not for the basic fact that they operate on the principle of monopoly, as all of the land has been "accounted for," it is all publicly or privately owned, and there are extensive efforts to keep people from sleeping on public land. There's often no camping in a tent, there are specific "public awareness" campaigns encouraging private citizens to report those for destruction, and the settlements that remain are at any time liable to be cleared out by a police squad for the crime of existing. Sleeping on benches, when the benches aren't specifically designed to prevent this, is "loitering" or "trespassing" (many public sites are officially considered to be closed at night), and in any case is immensely dangerous even if one only considers things like precipitation. Landlords make their profit from the fact that renting land and buying land are the only possible options for someone who doesn't want to die of exposure or state violence. If there was land open for grabs and it wasn't being bought up by land sharks, there would be very few homeless because they could at least have little shacks on such land.
Without the power of monopoly, rent would be drastically less, in proportion to the actual maintenance and management labor performed by the owner (or their property manager). We communists have nothing against paying for maintenance or management, but merely owning a vital resource that is monopolized is not a job.
See? You're demonstrating my point, it's not just indifferent, it has a motive.
Though I don't think you're helping since Russia did invade while China is doing zero genocides.
She went fully lib like two or three years ago and has not had even a trace of being a socialist since.
Letting liberals write your political theory isn't doing you any favors. I don't give a shit what sect you are, you're no better than a Blairite. All states are maintained through force and that judicial bit is 100% extraneous because, if the judicial branch has observable sway, it will be declared to either be kabuki theater or part of the oligarchy (see: people talking about China's Supreme Court).
So you are basically just saying "undemocratic" but with a pretentious buzzword sanctioned by liberal morons and hucksters.
Here's a fun one though: if that's the only relevant measurement, China does great because it has immense public approval even according to hostile western polling!
So you would therefore need to admit that it wasn't a good fit for the term "authoritarian," right?
Whoops, I misread the reply chain pretty severely, you can ignore the edit. You were picking a fight, but not along the lines I wrote there.
I don't they've expressed any liberal sentiments here at all.
Neoliberal is a subset of liberal (in the traditional philosophical sense, not American vernacular), and there is a very clear divide in the thread between neoliberal and socialist.
I legitimately don't care either way tbh.
With due respect, you're just a little Not Mad, but let's not belabor the point. I've been Not Mad too, it's not a sin.
All this does is once again reinforce the idea that leftist spaces on the Internet are hostile to anything besides a very narrow set of ideas which makes up a very small and myopic subset of leftist thought
There are a bunch of things wrong with this, starting with that the article was misleading dogshit and deserves to be mocked. Beyond that, the cultural clique of Hexbear can be myopic, but I think that it does not compare negatively to modern neoliberals in this respect. It is much more interested in international perspectives rather than the perspective of the "international community" (i.e. the EU + the Anglosphere + the most convenient elements of Taiwan, Japan, and SK). They quite frequently read neoliberal writing and listen to neoliberal speeches and so on, while neoliberals are usually content to hear about anything to do with their opposition exclusively through second- and third-hand reporting by their own media.
Which leads me into my next point, that "tankies" etc. are readily called fringe by liberals on the internet, but internationally represent a very common set of opinions (or a strong overlap therewith). It is itself myopia to dismiss the opinions of Chinese and many other people in the imperial periphery and consider only the opinions of the imperial core when evaluating what people think and what "leftist thought" consists of. You could not serious believe, for example, that the Collected Writings of Chairman Mao are important to only a "small subset of leftist thought," right? Sure, you are unlikely to know anyone -- or even to have ever met anyone in your real life -- who regards such a thing positively, but your personal experiences are not the world.
As an aside, the "bot" rhetoric that the liberals so often display is not really helping your case about the tankies being especially closed-minded.
I am not here to cure anyone's ignorance.
Do you see how most people would not be interested in talking with someone who says things like this? That level of condescension rarely produces anything other than scorn.
"You are being condescending to me too!"
Sure, I don't think that's an unreasonable view (though not my intention), but I am nonetheless explaining and substantiating my differences rather than merely denouncing what you say as "ignorant," and even if we nonetheless accept my fault, that just results in a criticism towards both of us rather than solely towards me.
I am engaging earnestly with you because you are actually making an effort to converse instead of just posting literal pig shit.
I would not have replied at all if I didn't recognize your username. You hadn't been saying anything in this thread that someone would normally think merits a serious response. You were derisive right out of the gate. To act this way and then complain about other people not turning the other cheek and speaking patiently to you is silly.
I promise you that if you make an alt (preferably with a different username in case people are grumpy with the interaction here) and post a thread on asklemmygrad or askchapo to the effect of "Hey, I'm a [whatever you call your flavor of liberalism], but I want to learn about what you believe on various topics and what you think of certain criticisms . . ." you will get mostly responses that are earnest. If you expect people to be polite and unassuming towards you when you begin by being aggressive and presumptuous, you will almost exclusively be disappointed, and I don't just mean that for interacting with commies.
GarbageShoot
joined 2 years ago
To encourage them to engage in better behaviors when they can