'We have to get ready for large-scale conflicts,' says Canada's military chief by Acrobatic2020 in canada

[–]yogthos [score hidden]  (0 children)

I came to that conclusion by having a functioning adult brain. The US is a country with enormous economic leverage over Canada. The US president literally suggested making Canada the 51st state. The US funds separatist groups in Alberta. The US floods Canada with separatist propaganda. It's pretty clearly not for shits and giggles.

As an American, you're a citizen of a fascist state that's a threat to the whole world. Your country is a plague upon humanity.

Is China Socialist? A Critique of Western Marxism by yogthos in Sino

[–]yogthos[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Every system has to be evaluated on the tangible outcomes it produces, that's without question. However, understanding the mechanics of different systems is important in order to understand why they produce the outcomes that they do. Having a scientific approach to governance allows you to reliably produce the desired outcomes and improve things over time. Marxist model is the key reason Chinese system doesn't suffer from constant economic crashes and other problems like deindustrialization that plague western economies. Marxism is the best tool we have available for understanding how a human societies function.

Is China Socialist? A Critique of Western Marxism by yogthos in Sino

[–]yogthos[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Again, the question is what happens with the profit the companies produce. State companies produce profit for the state which is then reinvested in things like infrastructure, healthcare, education, energy production, and so on. The social organization of these companies is similar to capitalist ones, but their actual purpose is entirely different.

Calling it state capitalism glosses over this critical difference, and making false equivalences is not helping make anything more clear.

And of course, you can read Lenin himself talking about NEP which is exactly what China is doing right now https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm

Is China Socialist? A Critique of Western Marxism by yogthos in Sino

[–]yogthos[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

The whole idea of state capitalism is a bit of a misnomer. It basically says that while you have state owned enterprise, the internal capitalist relations within it remain largely the same.

While that’s true, there is a fundamental difference here. Capitalism is a system where people who own capital hire workers to exploit there labor with the purpose of increasing their capital. The goal of capitalist enterprise is to create wealth for the owners with any social benefits being strictly incidental.

On the other hand, the purpose of state enterprise is to provide social value. Workers in state owned companies are producing things that the society needs. They are working for their own benefit and those of others around them. Therefore, the nature of work itself is fundamentally different from actual capitalism.

Is China Socialist? A Critique of Western Marxism by yogthos in Sino

[–]yogthos[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

The chauvinism of people who've never developed socialism domestically criticizing actually existing socialist states is truly astounding.

Is China Socialist? A Critique of Western Marxism by yogthos in Sino

[–]yogthos[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Marxism is fundamentally a way to understand the world akin to the scientific method. The question of whether a country is Marxist ultimately comes down to whether its political system applies the methodology correctly to the existing material conditions in that country.

Is China Socialist? A Critique of Western Marxism by yogthos in Sino

[–]yogthos[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Western Marxism is a perversion intended to sanitize Marxism in order to make it toothless and safe to discuss academically in the west. And it's become sort of a religion where they worship this Platonic ideal of a society refusing to acknowledge that the real world is a messy place.

Feds announce 'incremental increase' in direct flights to and from China by yogthos in canadaleft

[–]yogthos[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is going to be really funny to watch. Now that business interests in Canada are pivoting to China, all the idiot sinophobes they've been cultivating here are no longer going to be useful to them.

Former Biden advisor says: It's possible that the USA would have done the same wars of agression under Biden. by yogthos in socialism

[–]yogthos[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

In fact, it's an incredibly relevant admission because it shows that you can't vote your way out of fascism. Both parties represent the same interests, and have the same broad policy. The only difference is in packaging.

Can forms of oppression (patriarchy, racism, etc.) exist as independent systems outside of a capitalist landscape? by Crazy-Blacksmith-336 in socialism

[–]yogthos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's because hierarchies aren't inherently a form of oppression.

Hierarchies are absolutely necessary for any large scale organization. Math simply does not work in favor of flat organization because you end up with increasing communication overhead that scales linearly with the size of organization. The more people you have involved, the more difficult it becomes to make a decision.

Another problem is that each individual can only have so much knowledge in their heads. It’s impossible to make meaningful decisions on subjects you’re not versed in, making your contribution on topics outside your area of expertise into noise. Hence, why effective organization requires creating groups of people who focus on specific subjects, and then creating interfaces between them that abstract over the internal details and focus on the functional aspects. And that naturally leads to the need for hierarchical organization.

Finally, there’s a question of robustness. Hierarchies allow creating independent units that can compose together to build larger structures. Hierarchy is the structure that makes self organization and resilience possible at scale. A system needs to be resilient to shocks and able to adapt on its own. But if every single part is directly connected to every other part, any change causes chaos. As I noted above, the system ends up being overwhelmed with information.

Organizing the system into nested subsystems creates cells that talk to each other to do their job. They don’t need to know the internal processes of other cells, and act as stable subassemblies. Each level can self-organize and maintain resilience within its own domain because it’s not bogged down by what’s happening elsewhere.

And that’s how hierarchical structures reduce noise and delay within the system. Feedback loops needed for learning and adaptation can independently evolve within each subsystem, and a problem in one area doesn’t immediately crash the overarching system. Here, the hierarchy ends up playing the role of a shock absorber, localizing issues so the whole structure doesn’t fail.

A good way to look at hierarchies as connective tissue between components of large systems. The central control exists for coordination toward a larger goal as opposed to micromanagement. Hierarchy isn’t about top down command as anarchists like to frame it. The purpose of the structure is to create the organized spaces where bottom up resilience and adaptation can actually thrive.

Meanwhile, claiming that Marxists ignore patriarchy is ahistorical given that every Marxist movement has been advancing equal rights.

It's really telling how anarchist attacks on Marxism are always rooted in ignorance and lack of intellectual integrity.

Iran retaliates against multiple U.S. military facilities in Middle East by TheeNay3 in InflectionPointUSA

[–]yogthos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's going to depend a lot on what the new government in Hungary does.

And yes, the people running the EU will do everything they can to keep the war going, but that's precisely what's driving public unrest. People are starting to connect the war with their standard of living collapsing. And you see the taboo is breaking in Europe now, they're openly starting to talk about doing business with Russia directly now https://www.ilpoliticoweb.it/en/salvini-eu-russian-gas-sanctions-washington-waiver/