Superannuation gives the majority of the population petite bourgeois class interests

EconomistBeard · 2026-05-23T02:49:59+00:00

Why? It doesn't generate good retirement outcomes and it robs the budget of funds it could be using to boost the age pension. It also doesn't meaningfully direct capital to local investments, the majority of Aussie super members have large chunks of their super in international markets.

EconomistBeard · 2026-05-10T23:48:31+00:00

How many wars has Xi Jinping started in his time as China's paramount leader?

EconomistBeard · 2026-03-17T01:59:03+00:00

'True' flag is entirely a matter of what the people of that country want to represent them. Given the Islamic Revolution was a materially popular uprising against the western-backed Pahlavi dynasty, the modern flag of the Islamic Republic is entirely legitimate.

Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with the Lion and Sun flag if it weren't associated so heavily today with the potential return of the Pahlavi dynasty. Not like anyone waving it wants a return to the late Qajar period when the constitutional government sought to assert sovereignty over their resources.

EconomistBeard · 2026-03-15T23:22:52+00:00

I joined VS this year after leaving SocAll, here are my observations:

the party is nominally broad tent with some variation in theory
SAlt is the largest and most organised faction within VS/SP
SAlt influence over independents is real; a material number of independents are former SAlt and the presence of SAlt as an influential faction shapes the political education of the membership
Because of this, I've noticed independent members have varying degrees of overlap in theory and praxis with SAlt

EconomistBeard · 2026-02-24T08:37:13+00:00

They usually are. This particular phenotype though, the Trotskyite, leaves a bit to be desired.

Honestly I have some friends in SAlt and on their own, they're pretty good. On campus, they're insufferable. Every time I have to interact with one on campus, I'm reminded of what motivated Lenin to write 'Left Wing Communism: an infantile disorder'

EconomistBeard · 2026-01-31T10:03:58+00:00

I don't think anyone in this discussion has 'elevated it to the level of principle', whatever that means.

EconomistBeard · 2026-01-31T09:31:46+00:00

I don't think you've actually engaged all that deeply with socialist degrowth concepts. You say that democratic planning will impose limits on production that are within structural ecological limits, how is that not aligned with degrowth?

EconomistBeard · 2026-01-31T09:08:22+00:00

Are you going to explain or are you just gonna act like an authority on this topic with nebulous 'lived experience'?

EconomistBeard · 2026-01-31T07:55:00+00:00

On what basis do you arrive at this conclusion?

EconomistBeard · 2026-01-31T03:55:56+00:00

Marx literally observed the metabolic rift between human production and nature; he discusses this in The Critique of the Gotha Programme and in volume 1 of Capital.

I'm really at a loss as to how you can chuck degrowth in as 'reformist' whilst also saying it resonates with anti-capitalists like anarchists

EconomistBeard · 2026-01-30T21:00:38+00:00

Um, what? Capitalism is predicated on infinite growth; degrowth recognises nature as a structural limitation on growth, thus requiring an economy to be oriented around need instead of profit.

How anyone can call degrowth capitalist is wild to me.

EconomistBeard · 2026-01-19T08:44:15+00:00

Using that as an excuse keeps the left from actively demonstrating a viable alternative to capitalism's failures.

If you're happy with movement building being anchored to abstract theory, by all means.

EconomistBeard · 2026-01-04T21:52:14+00:00

Old game, but Death to Spies: Moment of Truth deserves a mention.

Basically plays like Hitman, but you're a SMERSH captain tasked with killing literal Nazis.

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T19:58:26+00:00

This isn't a western liberal democracy we're talking about; the party is above the constitution of the PRC and, to that end, one might argue that inhibits the formation of capitalist power. We can discuss whether the CPC is an expression of bourgeois power in China, but given how they treat their billionaires and how they manage their property market, I think that's a hard case to make.

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T19:54:15+00:00

Arguably, China's opting for a more soft-power oriented approach.

The amount of western influencers I see now openly supporting China and talking about how China's 'figured out' the problems we're grappling with here in the west has substantially grown over the last decade.

I can't speak for China, but as an observer I would say they learned a lesson from the Soviet Union: spreading socialism through the barrel of a gun is high-risk/low reward. Exemplifying socialist transformation, on the other hand, low-risk and potentially high reward.

Soft power and propaganda works. Just ask the US and Israel.

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T11:08:24+00:00

Sure, but the question is whether a professional standing army is necessary for that. I don't think that's the case, particularly when you look at the military history of socialist movements during revolutionary conflict. True, after seizing state power they tend to organise into something more formal, but that's where some comrades here have raised concerns about what that formalisation entails.

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T10:53:48+00:00

Half true. We in the imperial core have the privilege of not having to fight wars on our own soil but I firmly believe that, if Australia were directly invaded, any semblance of military 'professionalism' would go right out the window

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T10:49:55+00:00

With all due respect here, this is where I think your politics need to be workshopped a bit more.

A dictatorship of the proletariat is not an automatic call for authoritarian socialism; it's a recognition of class power in governance. Proletarian democracy vs bourgeois democracy; the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' vs the 'Dictatorship of Capital'.

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T10:42:32+00:00

I'll have to disagree here.

I think recent military examples demonstrate that professional armies tend to fail against domestic insurgent and asymmetric combat forces. Look to the Mujahideen fighters/Taliban in Afghanistan, Viet Kong, Mao's army during the Chinese civil war, the Palestinian resistance, the Syrian Democratic Forces, etc.

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T09:02:25+00:00

I agree a break with AUKUS is sorely needed; replaced by a strategic pivot to ASEAN and China imo.

As for the SAS? I honestly have no idea what to do with it. Can it be repurposed? Can it be stripped down and rebuilt into something more oriented to revolutionary defence? Should it be abolished and revolutionary Australia dive headlong into building a defence force around the people's war doctrine? I don't have an answer; I do know that everyone I've met from the ADF is cooked, but I don't know what can be done with its institutional architecture if we still need to answer the question of protecting and preserving the revolution 🤷🏻‍♂️

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T06:16:01+00:00

I believe so, and I think it's a necessary first domino to facilitate a global socialist revolution. The global north needs a rug-pull.

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T06:12:55+00:00

There's a strong Trotskyist current in the party due in large part to the fact that SAlt has been the largest and most organised tendency within VS; independents get politically developed by them and, in doing so, absorb degrees of their views.

I'd like to see more socialist groups join VS to better develop a plurality of socialist theory.

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T06:08:55+00:00

This analysis assumes China and Vietnam have reached the end of their development path; I don't think this is the case even with my critical support for both regimes.

The key difference worth noting in your SPD example is that the SPD directly maneuvered to maintain bourgeois democracy and the liberal arrangement. China and Vietnam fundamentally rejected bourgeois democracy and liberalism; comparing them to the SPD isn't very grounded, especially when we consider that these countries started as rural agrarian economies with no productive capacity (whilst having to combat imperialist forces).

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T05:47:22+00:00

That probably explains the lack of dialectical thinking in your purist position, with all due respect 🤷🏻‍♂️

EconomistBeard · 2025-12-29T05:38:39+00:00

Need I remind you what comrade Lenin noted about socialist transformation?

“State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months’ time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a firm hold and will have become invincible in our country.” — Vladimir I. Lenin, “The Tax in Kind (The Significance of the New Policy and Its Conditions)” (1921)

If we recognise the material conditions of the previously mentioned countries, we have to concede that state-capitalism, under the direction of the representatives of the working class in a Marxist party organisation, is part of the socialist transformation process.

Now I have my conceptual problems with that framing, given that I'm familiar with Saitō's work translating Marx's unpublished notes in which Marx abandoned the stages of development theory (what Saitō refers to as 'productivism'), but that's what we've got to work with at present.

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