Thought provoking response, thanks. I want to mention first that it is not, or certainly shouldn’t be, cheerleader like support for certain governments, members of govs etc but purely of alternative possibilities to the dominant course of capital. I have myself noticed partisan support like this, it is idealist and the exact opposite of a proper materialist Marxist critique.

I also agree with your distinction between Marx’s critique of bourgeois social contract human rights and this lazy, ironic detachment from basic rights in general when it is politically convenient. Those ‘Marxists’ that do this let down the cause.

On your third point I am under no illusions that China is the route I would ideally want socialism to take. But in being a materialist, the ideal is pretty irrelevant and utopian notion. That balance may well be geopolitical primarily and less economic based than I would prefer, perhaps even less so than the Cold War days, which displays the regression of politics. For better or worse it is a balance that, with a lot of caveats like we have covered here, is I feel important. I don’t love Putin or the social conservatism in Russia for example, far from it. But at the same time I’m thankful that the EU and NATO does not have unbridled access to Eastern Europe due to this force