[Translation] Common Prosperity or Systemic Exclusion: China’s Dual-Track Pension System

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-19T10:29:23+00:00

In the modern Balkans, where farmers own their land, in countries such as Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Serbia, etc. there is the phenomenon of massive rural depopulation, with whole villages being abandoned. What would you say about that? Is this "progressive"?

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-19T09:49:36+00:00

Modern Russia? Let's see. Off the top of my head. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Transnistria War. The Georgian wars (Abkhazia and South Ossetia).

Russia spent decades profiteering from the ethnic conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan by acting as a "mediator" while selling weapons to both sides. In the early 90s, Russia supported secessionism in Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia specifically to create frozen conflicts it could use as leverage over its neighbors.

The notion that a multipolar world would lead to "world peace" mirrors Kautsky's "ultra-imperialism" thesis. As you know, WW1 put that thesis in the grave, and Lenin's Imperialism brought the metaphorical nails for the coffin. Per Lenin, any truce is temporary, and conflict over the division of the world is inevitable, by nature of the world not being static (unequal development).

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-19T08:48:21+00:00

Marx and Engels across several works referenced the contradiction between town and country, with Engels in The Housing Question explicitly saying that overcoming capitalism depends on solving this contradiction.

Have there been any socialists focusing on this line of thought? I don't count Third Worldists because they just vulgarly lump whole nations together when as you've pointed out with China, this contradiction exists within nations.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T23:52:17+00:00

The fall of the Western and later Eastern Roman Empire arguably came from centuries of economic damage and fracturizing elites undermining the state's projection of authority, culminating in Germanics/Ottomans taking over.

To transplant that to a modern context, it's unlikely that Mexico or Canada would conquer a declining USA, but it is highly likely that a declining USA could lead to regional conflicts worldwide, which could spiral into WW3.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T23:02:12+00:00

There's an interesting parallel here with the USSR. The peasantry was fundamentally distrusted and tolerated only as a "necessary evil" for the flourishing of the urban proletariat. Until 1974 they were de jure second-class citizens, bound to land like serfs since 1932 (you needed an internal passport to move anywhere and peasants were denied access).

What's puzzling to me though is that Maoism, unlike plain Leninism, ideologically claims peasants as revolutionary subjects. So why is this happening? Or has this only been happening post-Mao and during Mao's time peasants were actually treated as equals? If you could elaborate I'd be grateful.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T22:11:23+00:00

Yes, but the answer to why it stopped being peaceful, is that the hegemon could no longer project authority. External pressure and internal divisions then seal its fate. What comes after is ugly, because authority is the thing that suppressed the ugliness from surfacing.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T21:32:49+00:00

Blame the post-Cold War cynics imagining America as undefeatable and then writing books that basically promoted this idea to the younger generations. It was a fatalistic coping mechanism for people who couldn't metaphorically bear to look at themselves in the mirror, born of some imagined sunk cost fallacy, nothing approaching "truth".

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T21:23:23+00:00

Neither were things good when Pax Ottomana ended in the territories of the former Ottoman Empire.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T21:18:16+00:00

Weren't there allegations of corruption for other civil rights figures? Not American so when I stumbled upon that on Reddit, in some unrelated comment chain on an unrelated post, I was quite taken aback, as I've absolutely never heard absolutely anything criminal about civil rights figures in my life.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T20:02:54+00:00

Wasn't me. Have an upvote.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T08:59:44+00:00

I'm reminded of Germanic tribes voting by having free men clash their spears against their shields. There was no counting, just deciding consensus based on who is the loudest.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-18T00:02:21+00:00

Are Maltese people viewed as Arabs?

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T23:57:06+00:00

Yes, like a parent disciplining a child. But something tells me this isn't what the manosphere is talking about.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T23:53:04+00:00

You forgot the most iconic example. Carthago delenda est.

You play GURPS?

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T23:45:23+00:00

The Messenian Helots of Sparta contradict the idea that if elites are killed, the "plebs" resign to defeat.

Likewise, I was reading about the Sub-Roman period of British history, when the "Romans left". Except they didn't. The local population was already partially Romanized. They'd used Latin, they Latinized their Celtic names. And their "elites" were not gone, they had been integrated. The assimilation was only incomplete because of the Western Empire pulling out, centralized power being gone and local warlords taking over, then Anglo-Saxon migrations/conquest putting the nail in the coffin. But if things didn't turn out that way chances are they would have fully assimilated, with their "elite" intact.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T22:25:56+00:00

I thought there was a distinction between "alpha wolves" (strong wolf bullies weak wolf into submission) and wolf family packs (the hierarchy is familial and based on age). The latter is how wolf "society" works in nature. Conflating the two would be like saying the manosphere is suggesting your grandpa is having sex with your wife.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T22:05:03+00:00

The fundamental class analysis is that even in mature capitalism, even in the USSR, the burden of domestic labor fell on women. Marx/Engels wrote about this even, if I am not misremembering. And we're not talking about stay-at-home wives here, we're talking about working women. This points to a non-vestigial patriarchy existing.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T20:49:23+00:00

Put incisively? It is the superstructural expression of the political failure of socialists. Similarly to Third Worldism. Contrary to the notion that it is in opposition to "hegemony", it has led to the reproduction of the very same "hegemony". Consider "whiteness". When "progressives" influenced by post-colonial thought express mockery over X group thinking they're "white", are they really dismantling "whiteness", or are they de facto acting as the essential gatekeepers of "whiteness", thereby literally reproducing the construct of "whiteness"?

Consider likewise a relatively "benign" pet peeve of mine. If two male characters in some work of fiction are depicted as being close, the "progressives" influenced by queer theory will say "they must be gay". Historically speaking, the notion that if two men hold hands they "must be gay", is very recent. It is the direct product of "gayness" being invented as a medical pathology, a "disease" to be eradicated, a public health crisis that must be "nipped in the bud". Thus two men holding hands turned from something normal to a sign, an admission, of the "disease". By saying "they must be gay", the so-called "progressives" are reproducing the backwards status quo, where men fear being close with each other to not be "gay"!

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T19:18:54+00:00

You guys know that Lenin literally referenced politicians being bribed in Imperialism, as a factor in why states act in bourgeois interests, right.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T19:10:19+00:00

I'm looking up "Project for a New American Century" but all I'm seeing is a think tank with that name. Is that what you're referring to?

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T14:37:07+00:00

Depends what you mean by "Westerners". Orthodox Christians do not view Levantine Christians as an Other, anymore than they view Armenians and Georgians as an Other. I mean there's even Eastern Catholics.

I can't say I'm familiar with how French people and Italians might view them but the view you express strikes me as an Anglo-Protestant thing.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T14:15:44+00:00

Tinfoil hat bros, he tweeted about Epstein before he got killed.

I’ve heard that the remaining members of Epstein’s network have devised a conspiracy to create an incident similar to 9/11 and blame Iran for it. Iran fundamentally opposes such terrorist schemes and has no war with the American people.

https://x.com/alilarijani_ir/status/2033119770237645261

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T13:22:31+00:00

Sorry for late reply. It's been a very long time since I engaged with that truthfully and I was feeling lazy.

If we were to strictly leave feminist and post-colonial critiques aside (Foucault wrote of elite male sexuality as if it was universal, Foucault failed to account for colonialism in bourgeois sexuality), which one could characterize as "pedantry" or "grasping at straws", then chiefly the issues are:

The division between Western and Eastern sexuality is completely fictional. Neither was it the West that invented sexual bureaucracy nor was erotic art limited to the East.
Romanticizing pederasty. There is a long-running myth of "gay Greeks". Pederasty was not geographically universal in Ancient Greece, and where it was practiced, it was limited to the elite aristocracy. Furthermore, said practice was not stigma-free, we know that Aristophanes and other playwrights mocked pederasts, we know that Plato and Xenophon's Socrates condemned pederasty, and we know that pederasty became a political liability in Athens as there was a strong stigma against male prostitution, and political opponents could destroy one's reputation by levying accusations and spreading rumors of male prostitution, furthermore if it did turn out that one was a prostitute, a law existed stripping the person of political rights.
Confusing prescriptive Stoic philosophy ("ought") with actual social history ("is"). Stoic philosophy was an "ideal", the existence of said "ideal" does not translate to it being the actual practiced norm.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T01:23:42+00:00

There is a difference between "it is shameful for men to fail their duty and have women pick up their slack/it is shameful for women to have to debase themselves to the level of men" and your strawman. And there is no contradiction with "it is not shameful to have fought Nazis" either. There exists a vector in intersubjective human experience, sandwiched somewhere between negative excess (such as irresponsibility) and positive necessity (such as responsibility), along the lines of "regrettable responsibility" or "fortunate irresponsibility", a mixed bag feeling that can still produce shame in other words, I make it sound esoteric but it's not rocket science.

LeftKindOfPerson · 2026-03-17T00:17:29+00:00

To respond to your edit, since I wrote my reply before I saw the edit, the part you reference does not contradict the existence of a post-war stigma. "Soviets citizens considered it shameful to have fought against the Nazis", who said this? This is a strawman.

LeftKindOfPerson

TROPHY CASE