FaeDrifter

What I actually said is that the standard of living is going up in China while it’s not going up in capitalist countries. If China was capitalist then you’d expect the same thing to happen as it does everywhere else where there is capitalism. China would look something like India right now.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-of-living-by-country

https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

Numbeo is ranking India at #56, China at #65 for quality of life index.

China is notable for having a recent rapid increase. It's easier to have a big delta number, when your starting number is so low.

Once you show me somebody doing it better than China then we’ll talk.

According to Numbeo there are still 64 counties doing better on the quality of life index than China.

And nobody is expecting them to voluntarily give up wealth, taking the wealth away and nationalizing things is the job of the government. Of course, you refuse to accept the fact that working class holds power in China and that’s what your fallacious view of China is premised on.

Working class holds what power? Tencent and Alibaba aren't owned by its workers. Why would the government ever decide to give up its joint wealth and power with the billionaire class? What could the workers possibly do to hold them accountable?

It’s pretty dishonest to claim ChInA Is DoInG StAtE CaPiTALiSM when it’s pretty clear that China is basically the only place in the world where standard of living is going up significantly. If China was doing what you claim it’s doing then we’d see the same results as we see under actual capitalism. It’d look like India today.

Circular reasoning: communism increases standard of living, China's standard of living is going up, therefore China is communist, therefore communism increases standard of living. This is a logical fallacy.

China's economic boom correlates to its involvement in the capitalist world economy. It's very easy to argue that the more China does capitalism, the more wealthier it gets, the better off the Chinese citizens.

India is not doing quite as well as China, but it's still seem a very dramatic decrease in poverty, especially if you go by the "$1.90/day" mark, which is not enough imho, but it's the one you choose to go by: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/september-2023-global-poverty-update-world-bank-new-data-poverty-during-pandemic-asia

To say "China is basically the only place in the world where standard of living is going up significantly", you're "basically" just straight-up wrong.

Point of communism is to have an equal society, but the question is how you get there from where we are now. Apparently anarchists believe that magic happens as opposed to this being a process the way things work in the real world.

So the path to communism is paved with mega-corps and billionaires? What do you expect them to do, voluntarily give up all their wealth and possessions when it's time for the communism to begin?

Meanwhile, China has to exist within the global capitalist system created by the west after WW2. That means having to participate within the global economy and engage with capitalism.

So China is speedrunning late-state Capitalism with private mega-corps like Tencent and exploiting its own cheap labor by giving them out to western capitalists so they can enrich their own billionaires. Of course, your excuse, as I already said it would be much earlier in the thread, "it's the West's fault".

Isn't that peak chauvinism of you, removing all agency from the communist people because "the West is forcing them to"?

Pointing at the fact that there are 500 billionaires in China as some sort of a gotcha

What is the point of communism?

Your source does not contradict mine, it just defines "poverty" as "less than $1.90 a day", which actually my source already covered.

This is a country with 500 billionaires, you can't do better than "you aren't poor as long as you make $2 a day"?

So communism is when your billionaire factory owner tells you, "Here are your 2 bucks for the day, now you aren't poor anymore".

colonizers live like parasites off the backs of the rest of the world, and majority of westerners are perfectly happy with the arrangement.

100% true, Western capitalists have been exploiting cheap Chinese labor, and labor of other Asian countries, for decades, plus stripping them of natural resources. With the consent of their (according to you - Communist) governments. This is where the government should be regulating labor, tariffs on imports and exports, and regulating involvement of foreign corporations. Instead, these governments are colluding with Western capitalists to enrich themselves.

A country that’s seen biggest poverty reduction in human history, where practically everyone owns their home, and people see their lives improve dramatically each and every year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/56213271

A very dramatic improvement, but about a quarter of China's population still makes less than $5.50 a day, and $600 million make just $154 a month. Meanwhile, China has about 500 billionaires.

If communism looks like a huge number of people living on less than $5.50 a day, while billionaires still exist, I'm really going to dislike communism for the exact same reasons I dislike capitalism.

Every single survey that comes out of China done by domestically as well as by western organizations consistently shows that people in China overwhelmingly support their government and see it as democratic.

You changed the subject, I was speaking of communism and socialism being much less popular than they should be.

people living in a communist country

A country with almost as much wealth disparity between the poor and wealth as the US?

Not at all what I'm saying.

I'm saying the government controls all the flow of information, and I don't trust their numbers to reflect reality. I don't trust Apple's customer satisfaction surveys either.

I mean, should anybody be surprised that a communist organization newspaper would survey high support for Marxism? That's like the NRA releasing survey results that show high support for zero gun regulation.

If you want to be effective at messaging for communism, besides learning to take criticism, you also have to be aware of your own confirmation bias.

If you're referring to this comment:

“Marxism” polls very popular in an authoritarian 1-party dictatorship that strictly controls the internet, media, and speech, polls unpopular where freedom of speech is allowed.

It's not "dehumanizing" to criticize a government. The people of China - for them I have a huge amount of empathy and sympathy. I believe they deserve freedom of speech, and LGBTQ rights, and all human rights. I go out of my way to pay more for fair-trade goods, and avoid companies that exploit Chinese laborers (hello Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon).

There is a distinctive difference between unhelpful slurs (westoid cesspool), and legitimate criticism (1-party dictatorship).

Point out precisely where in this conversation I dehumanized an outgroup like you did with "westoid cesspool", and I'll concede that I am as much of a fascist as you are.

(Also just a gentle reminder that dehumanizing an out-group is a red flag for fascism)

"Marxism" polls very popular in an authoritarian 1-party dictatorship that strictly controls the internet, media, and speech, polls unpopular where freedom of speech is allowed.

This is not the flex you want it to be, you're really just proving my point that communists are terrible at messaging.

Unfortunately I'm not making them up, because if I was, communism would be far more popular.

Instead of communists going, "well, maybe I could be better", they go, "it's all western propaganda that makes communism so unpopular, it could not possibly be me that ever does anything wrong".